Chapter 10 Bury Peng Xiucai

During the week after the summer vacation, Taiming visited the students' families every day.The casuarinas blown by the wind were like the sound of gurgling water. Walking on that country road, he felt a strange sense of loneliness. One day, he was also going to visit a student's family. He walked by a big banyan tree with thick green and new green growing on it. The leaves of the banyan tree were luxuriant. The farmer is resting.When Taiming was studying at Yunti Academy, the teacher taught them to worship before passing the Fude Temple, so Taiming stopped and respectfully worshiped in front of the temple.

Seeing Taiming's behavior, the farmers were very moved. 'My lord, worship the land god! 'The farmers whispered to each other.Taiming said: "I am a teacher at the school. . . ’ He asked the farmers for directions and found the one for family visits. Barking non-stop.Then an old woman bent over came out and hurriedly chased the dog away, clapped her hands together and called out to Taiming, "My lord! My lord!" to say hello. Her piercing eyes contained mixed feelings of uneasiness and obedience. Taiming was just like the farmer just now. The same attitude, I don’t like to give others a sense of oppression, so I immediately explained my identity. The old lady said: "Mr. from the school? I thought it was an adult again..." She seemed relieved. Then At that time, Taiming came to visit, and everyone knew about it. From the side of the horizontal door in the main hall, children with runny noses, or women with babies on their backs looked curiously.

'Mister of the school, but no sword. ’ Hearing such whispers, everyone surrounded Taiming from a distance with expressions of awe. Taiming earnestly explained to the old woman what middle school students should pay attention to during the summer vacation, and then he left.And the family visit is over. The school is empty during the summer vacation.Taiming stayed at the school to work on duty. In the morning, he spent two or three hours tutoring candidates for middle school. In the afternoon, he had nothing to do, but students who graduated often came to visit him. The graduates on the island are short-sighted, have a narrow vision, and feel a little stagnant, but the international students who have been to Japan are different. They have a wide range of knowledge and are very lively.They talked about world trends of thought and social issues, etc. Taiming felt that his knowledge was outdated, and he became anxious.

One day, a former classmate of Taiming’s normal school came back from mainland China. He visited Taiming. He graduated from the sixth or seventh term of Taiming earlier. After graduating from Meiji University in Japan, he went to mainland China and lived there for about four years. . Some things this senior said to Taiming aroused Taiming's enthusiasm for studying in Japan at that time, aroused strong shaking, and he hesitated.According to what this senior said, Taiwanese are discriminated against wherever they go because they are Taiwanese, especially in mainland China. Because of the instigation of the anti-Japanese atmosphere, Taiwanese are not accepted happily.He also said that he himself was troubled by knowing all kinds of things because he had enriched his knowledge a little. It was not easy to find a job in this recession, and no one hired him. He said that he might as well become a farmer and farm.However, the words of this senior classmate from the past did not completely dissuade Taiming from the idea of ​​studying abroad.In short, his intention remains the same, he wants to observe various things with his own eyes.

'In short, to go out, in short. . . . . . ’ Taiming said to his own heart. Halfway through the summer vacation, my grandfather suddenly sent someone to inform Taiming that Peng Xiucai had passed away.Because my grandfather was getting old, he couldn't go to Peng Xiucai Academy near the border of Tibet, where transportation was inconvenient, so he hoped that Taiming would go to mourn the funeral on his behalf.Taiming and Peng Xiucai have no contact with each other, but he used to look up to him as a teacher, especially because of his grandfather's order, so he had to go. 'A teacher for a day, a father for life', Taiming murmured in his heart, packed his luggage, and left immediately.

To go to Peng Xiucai's academy, one must first take a train and then a car, and then be shaken by the trolley to reach that remote place.The trolley is not a commercial vehicle, but a line for transporting coal, and the interior is polluted by coal. When Taiming boarded the trolley and was about to set off, a poorly dressed woman with a child in her arms came and wanted to hitch a ride. She looked up at Taiming, but saw that he was wearing civilian clothes, and dared not speak out. The coachman looked at it and scolded, "Don't go near the adults!"go away!go away! The woman jumped down as if being ejected, and kept looking at Taiming pleadingly with tearful eyes.Taiming said to the coachman: "It doesn't matter, let her ride!" ’ Just let the woman hitch a ride, but he felt disgusted with himself for doing it like a patronizing charity.The child in the woman's arms was suffering from pneumonia and a high fever, and the doctor told him to be absolutely quiet. When Taiming learned from the woman's careful explanation, his heart couldn't bear it even more.It was as if the woman in front of her was a silent protest.

When the woman got out of the car on the way, Taiming felt relieved and relaxed. The trolley advances across the valley along the valley.The trolley continuously makes a rumbling sound like thunder, echoing in the mountains. As the trolley advances, the scenery you can see changes one after another. Looking up at the cliffs, it seems to be pressed down from above, but right now is the display of the deep abyss with clear water like blue, with kites flying above the head, in the nature of this deep place, the only human beings are Taiming and the coachman.Taiming felt a deep sense of loneliness in his heart.

Although the coachman looks rough, he is actually very kind. For example, when the trolley arrived at "Niudoukou", he explained the stories in that area.That area used to be a place where the Fan people came and went without a name, and there were dozens of victims.There are also heroic stories about Ai Yong (Taiwanese policeman at the time) who pioneered this place. It is said that there are only a few of them guarding the Ai Yong line to maintain local law and order. When the trolley approached the coal mine, it encountered many coal trucks and saw miners.Then came a side street, which had a kind of rough air of Cinder Street.

It was already dusk when Taiming arrived in front of the shabby house with the inscription "Yunti Academy" in familiar handwriting. This desolate remote place is too desolate as the resting place of Peng Xiucai who devoted his life to ethics. A symbolic landscape of a vanished era. Taiming had mixed emotions in his heart. He stood in front of the door, looking at the familiar handwriting. However, Peng Xiucai's funeral was quite respectable. From among his survivors and disciples, Taiming saw his former classmate Li Qishi, and most of the rest were former and later classmates of Yunti Academy who he didn't know.

The funeral ceremony was held at 10:00 am the next day. After the ceremony, the funeral procession set out solemnly, led by a large banner with the words "Mr. You' and other 20 to 30 hanging flags were sent to the funeral procession by miners who were off work. This was the last decoration for Peng Xiucai who spent the rest of his life in that small street. After the funeral, Taiming went back immediately.He had a feeling as if he had escaped from the ancient undead, the ancient space.Peng Xiucai was in Peng Xiucai's era, and there were his efforts, sacrifices and achievements in pioneering.Maybe he wants to live forever behind closed doors in his habitual thoughts.So let him do it.And I have my time.When Taiming thought about it, he felt that the splendid new era seemed to be beckoning to him.When he calmed down from his meditation, the trolley had passed the Niudoukou with a rumbling sound, and was running towards the street, and the mountains and trees on both sides ran back and forth.