Exploring the pain of others is a pain in itself. It's something I don't want to do, but it's something I have to do.From the first step I stepped into the university campus, my body, mind and soul can no longer be at peace.Originally, this work, which was written for a special group in the university, could have been closed earlier, but another shocking news came from Shaanxi: a farmer couple in Baijiapo Village, Tangyu Town, Lantian County, Shaanxi After the children went to college, they couldn't afford the high fees. On the evening of April 4 this year, they both committed suicide by taking highly toxic pesticides.For this reason, I had to find time to go to Shaanxi again.

The day I went there happened to be June 1st, and the sunny city of Xi'an was immersed in the atmosphere of flowers and songs for "Children's Day".However, Baijiapo Village, Lantian County, which is also under the jurisdiction of Xi'an City, did not see the slightest joy. On the contrary, it was still shrouded in sorrowful clouds because of the tragic death of Bai Yinming and his wife.Along the way, my friend who accompanied me to Lantian pointed to the high loess slope that stretches for hundreds of miles on the Xiaoqinling Mountains, saying that this is the Bailuyuan written by Chen Zhongshi.Baijiapo Village is less than two hours' drive from Xi'an, but the living standards of the farmers here are beyond our imagination.Lantian County is affiliated to Xi'an City. There is not only the famous "Lantian Jade", but also the birthplace of China's "Lantian Australopithecus", which is as famous as Beijing Zhoukoudian Ape Man.However, Lantian people did not become rich because of this. On the contrary, they are listed by the country as one of more than 100 national-level "poor counties" in the country today, and they are the only poverty-stricken counties within the jurisdiction of a provincial city.Lantian people are very friendly, but when they led me into the row of dilapidated bungalows, when I sat down in the office of the deputy director of the organization department of the county party committee and looked around for a while, it was like returning to the production brigade in the 1970s in my memory The scene in the Ministry.The floor is paved with uneven broken bricks; the roof is still broken bamboo pieces; a pile of briquettes and an iron stove are all the utensils in this room except the office desk and chairs. "I have been working for nearly 30 years, and now my total salary income is 520 yuan per month. But this monthly income has not been cashed out on a monthly basis for a long time. After the Spring Festival this year, the cadres only receive salary once." Deputy Wang Zhanke The minister's words make it possible to imagine the living standards of the farmers here who depend on the sky for food.

Baijiapo Village is about 30 miles away from the county seat. A road extends to the edge of the village. The traffic is not blocked. Most of the houses that farmers live in are new houses. The wheat waves are rolling in the fields. It cannot be seen that it is the kind of poverty that one imagined. village.But when the villagers learned that I was going to interview Bai Yinming and his wife who committed suicide nearly two months ago, many of them hid in their houses.The comrades from the organization department of the county party committee first took me to the house of the village party branch secretary, hoping that it would be smoother to ask the village party secretary to take us to Bai Yinming's house for an interview.But after waiting for a long time without seeing the village party secretary, the family members said that he was working in the field, and that he had gone to the market, but he never showed up.It was already three or four o'clock in the afternoon, and we couldn't wait any longer, so we came out from the branch secretary's house and inquired directly about Bai Yinming's house, and prepared to go by ourselves.At this moment, we met the director of the village committee head-on.After explaining the purpose of coming, I don't want the village director to look unhappy, and he doesn't want to lead us the way no matter what.Helpless, we had to go to the village by ourselves.Baijiapo Village is a large village with two to three hundred households. Someone told us that Bai Yinming's home is at the innermost part of the village, and the dirt road leading to the village is extremely muddy.When we were about to reach Bai Yinming's house, a farmer couple in their thirties came up to us and led us into a small courtyard.

"My name is Bai Yinqi. Bai Yinming is my elder brother..." The man introduced himself and led us into the inner room of his house very enthusiastically.At this moment, several people came in outside. "This is my third brother. This is my niece." Bai Yinqi introduced another man to me, and specially led the girl he called "niece" to him. "She just came back from Changsha for a week, and her parents haven't told her since the accident..." "Are you the daughter of Bai Yinming who is studying in a technical secondary school in Changsha?"

"Yes. My name is Bai Minjuan." This girl is much stronger than I imagined. "Do you know the reason and process of your parents' accident?" I said the purpose of coming here. The girl immediately lowered her head and said in extreme distress that she had better ask her fourth uncle.So her fourth uncle Bai Yinqi introduced the process of Bai Minjuan's parents' accident: "...After the Spring Festival this year, my elder brother and sister-in-law felt that life at home was getting more and more difficult. From New Year's Day to before Minjuan and her brother who was in the third year of high school left for school. For more than two months, the family has not even touched a drop of oil, and they still owe more than 2,800 yuan in debt. My brother and sister-in-law called my nephew who was in high school in the county home several times in March to persuade him Stop thinking about college. My nephew went to a key middle school in the county, and his grades are good, so I don’t want to give up the idea of ​​college admission. After graduating from technical secondary school this year, I don’t know if I will be able to find a job, and my son will go to college again. Not to mention the debts that I have owed for my children’s education over the past ten years cannot be repaid. Four to five thousand yuan, tens of thousands of yuan in four years! My brother has always been in poor health, and my sister-in-law is disabled. The whole family only relies on three acres of fruit trees and more than one acre of land. How can they make so much money? For the children to find jobs and go to college? No, the more the two of them thought about it, the more they memorized it. On the night of April 4th, they drank two bottles of pesticides for killing fruit tree pests at home..."

When Bai Yinqi narrated the death of his elder brother and sister-in-law, he spoke very calmly, but all of us who were present at that time felt as uncomfortable as if we were stuck in a ball of cotton. "How old is your brother-in-law?" "My brother is 51 years old, and my sister-in-law is a few years younger than him." Bai Yinqi said. "Usually, you don't feel any sign that your brother and sister-in-law are going to die?" "Although my sister-in-law is disabled, she has always been very strong. My brother is always talking about things in front of us. Now people in the city are getting laid off everywhere. In the future, even if our two nephews go to high school and graduate from college, we still can't find them." It can be seen that the psychological pressure from work has always been great, but no one thought that they would go to a dead end. No, my brother asked us brothers to help his two big trees together a few years ago. They were sawed into boards, ready to pay their children’s tuition fees for the next semester. But before they were used, these tree boards became the coffin wood for their own burial, and there was only enough material for one coffin..." Bai Yinqi swallowed at this point Living.

Everyone in the room wept.It was a scene of unimaginable grief and desolation. In order to take care of the two children so that their studies would not be affected by the death of their parents, Bai Yinqi and his third brother, who are uncles, let their niece Bai Minjuan, who was waiting for a job assignment, to live in their home. After burying his parents, he never returned home.On the second day of the funeral, Bai Yinqi sent his nephew away, and said to him: "You don't have to think about anything now, the one thing you have to do is to go to university this year, this is the greatest filial piety to your deceased father and mother. "It is said that Bai Minjuan's younger brother received a donation from the government and classmates after returning to school, but he unexpectedly failed the college entrance examination this year, and now he is wandering at a fork in the road in his life...

It was dusk.With my insistence, the Bai family took me to the small courtyard where Bai Yinming and his wife lived.It has been locked here since the funeral on April 6. When the brother of the deceased opened the locked door, I felt a chill in the room penetrating my skin, followed by a deep chill in my heart: empty In the three rooms, apart from the dusty kang and the stove, only the portrait of Chairman Mao still hung on the wall... This scene was beyond my expectation.Because before entering the house, I thought that there would be a special altar for the poor dead couple in the house, but in fact there was not, so I couldn't bow to the tablet of Bai Yinming and his wife as a visitor from afar .I don't know what to do in the face of people going to the empty farm yard...

When we parted from Baijiapo, Bai Minjuan and her uncles and aunts saw us off from a distance, as if for the first time they felt that someone was sharing their misfortune for them.This made my heart feel even heavier. The family of Bai Yinming and his wife who committed suicide are actually not particularly difficult compared with the more than 5 million families of college students.There are 318 households in their village, with a per capita income of 1,800 yuan last year. According to the national standard for classifying poverty-stricken areas, they have already belonged to farmers who have been lifted out of poverty.However, Bai Yinming's family, who can be regarded as having a middle-income level in this village, is burdened with high debts because of supporting their two children's education, and they have embarked on a road that they should not have taken.Their deaths caused a sensation in the local area, and people were talking about whether poor families could still afford their children to go to college.

In fact, from the hundreds of impoverished college students I interviewed and their family conditions, none of them was not in a similar financial situation to Bai Yinming's family, and more families were far more difficult than Bai Yinming's family.So how do these thousands of families provide for their children to go to college?And those impoverished college students whose family circumstances are much more difficult than those of Bai Yinming's family, how can they work hard to go through four years or even longer in school?What about their reality and future destiny?