Rebirth: My 80s

[Our station reported that a Boeing 767 passenger plane crashed in Cambodia early yesterday morning, causing a forest fire...

[It is reported that this plane belongs to Cathay Pacific Airways of Hong Kong City. The route was originally from Los Angeles to Hong Kong City, but it obviously deviated from the route. Fortunately, this is a special plane and there are not many passengers on board...

[The cause of the crash is currently unknown, and the number of casualties is also unknown. Cambodia has dispatched personnel to launch a search and rescue operation. We hope that the crew and passengers can survive. ]

……

……

squeak-

Wow wow——

hiss--

The chirping of insects and birds weaves into a melody of nature in your ears.

The nose is filled with the fresh fragrance of green leafy plants and the musty smell of rotting leaves.

The air is hot and humid.

This is a village located in the mountains, which is very common in Cambodia.

It was lunch time and smoke was rising from the village. The people living here still maintained a very primitive lifestyle, cooking outside the house using local fire.

At the same time, a piece of news spread in the village, and the naughty children ran around telling each other.

After all, in a small village like this, few big things happen.

"Dad Old An picked up a man in the mountains!"

"Old An's father said it flew down from the sky!"

"He's a foreigner and can't understand us!"

"Old An's father sent it to Xia Bo Luo!"

...

When the news finally spread, it turned out that Xia Boli picked up a man in the mountains.

Xia Boli is the only person in the village who can speak a few words of foreign language. She went to middle school and worked in the city. Later, her father passed away and her mother was the only one left at home, so she returned home.

A very simple stilt house with a bamboo and wood structure and a round roof covered with thick thatch.

There are two floors, about two meters above the ground, and they can be accessed by wooden ladders.

People live on the upper floor, and there are no walls on the lower floor, only a few wooden pillars to support the structure of the house, store farm tools, and people cook in it on rainy days.

Second floor.

Li Jiankun was lying on a straw mat on the ground. His whole body ached, as if he was falling apart. His eyelids were extremely heavy, and if he hadn't bitten the tip of his tongue, he would have fallen asleep at any time.

In the hazy vision, there were two people kneeling beside me.

An old man with a wrinkled face, whose gender could not be determined, was holding a wooden mortar in his arms and a wooden stick in his right hand. He kept pounding it and spat into the mortar from time to time.

Then, he used his hands to scoop out some green mud-like substances from the wooden mortar and smeared them on the extremely painful areas on Li Jiankun's body.

This was the first time Li Jiankun had met this man. He was probably a barefoot doctor from a foreign country.

He had seen this girl who was closer to him before he fell asleep last time, although he still couldn't see what she looked like.

His vision now was like that of a severely myopic person who had lost his glasses.

Li Jiankun opened his mouth as hard as he could and uttered a sentence in Chinese:

"Where is this?"

"This is Cambodia. My village has no official name. People call it 'Budai'." The girl replied slowly in broken Chinese.

The official language of Cambodia is Khmer. English is more commonly used in government departments, and Chinese and Vietnamese are foreign languages ​​that are more commonly used by ordinary citizens.

In a monarchy, there are clear distinctions between different classes.

"Thank you."

The girl seemed to smile.

Li Jiankun finally couldn't hold on and fainted again.

In a daze, he tasted something sweet in his mouth. He tried to open his eyes. The girl seemed to be feeding him with a straw made of leaves.

He wanted to say thank you again, but couldn't.

I don't know how much time had passed before I heard the sound of quarreling.

"No matter what you say about Xia Boli, he must not sleep here tonight!"

"Xiangli, Sipo said he was too weak to move."

"I do not care!"

In the room, a strong young man wanted to go forward and pick up Li Jiankun, but Xia Boli stood up and stopped him.

"Get out of the way!"

"No."

Snapped!

Xia Boli was slapped.

Li Jiankun wanted to do something, but he could do nothing.

Xia Boli's persistence paid off, and Li Jiankun was able to stay here and live with the mother and daughter.

Two days later, Li Jiankun became more conscious, his vision began to return, and he regained some strength.

He finally saw Xia Boli clearly.

The girl was not very pretty, but she was dressed neatly and had white teeth. She did not look like someone who lived in such a primitive village. She was wearing a light brown round-necked, double-breasted short-sleeved shirt and a white gauze skirt with a "fishtail" pattern.

Cambodians call it "sarong" or "sarong".

Men wear it too.

All year round.

It is close to the equator and has a typical tropical climate.

That's the benefit of living a long time - knowing a little bit about a lot of things.

The girl also had a long black cloth with an elegant pattern wrapped around her waist.

This is very particular.

Li Jiankun now knows that she is engaged to Siamli, the son of the village elder.

This guy comes here several times every day.

I wish I could throw Li Jiankun into the forest to feed the wild dogs.

There seems to be a jealous person between the two of them, spreading rumors all day long.

In the past two days, many elders in the village have come to visit Xia Boli, either to question, scold, or warn him.

"I went to the place where Old An's father found you. Did you really fly down from the sky?"

Xia Boli knelt beside the straw mat, his light brown pupils full of curiosity.

Somewhere on the back mountain, a large yellow umbrella canopy was entangled among the woods. The fabric was of extremely good quality and could not even be scratched by a knife. This caused a scramble among the villagers, who were eventually stopped by the elders.

The elders planned to use it to build a big tent as a place for future village gatherings.

"I parachuted from a plane. The place where the plane crashed should not be far from here—"

Li Jiankun paused, but didn't know what to say.

The distance that an airplane travels in the sky for a few seconds may be tens of kilometers when it is on the ground.

Xia Boli understood what he meant and said regretfully, "You can see that our village doesn't even have electricity, so it's hard to get information from the outside world."

"Can you do me another favor?" Li Jiankun said somewhat embarrassedly.

The girl had helped him enough.

Including Old An who carried him back, and Fourth Aunt who applied medicine to him every day.

If it weren't for these three people, even if he had successfully parachuted and survived when he landed on the ground, the scratches and punctures from the branches in the mountains would have taken his life.

"Okay."

Xia Boli didn't mind the trouble at all, and smiled and said, "You say."

"Go outside and ask around for information about the plane crash. Someone should be looking for me. See if you can get in touch with them. If that doesn't work, call the police for me."

Xia Boli thought about it and said, "Okay, I'll go right away."

What Li Jiankun didn't know was that it took nearly fifty miles to walk from Budie Village to the nearest town.

And most of them are mountains and wild forests.

Xia Boli packed up simply, picked up a small bamboo basket, wrapped the brown rice left over from the morning into a rice ball with leaves and stuffed it into the basket, then took a hatchet with him, and after giving some instructions to his old mother, he hurried out.

She had to reach town before dark.

Otherwise, after nightfall, only hunters like Lao An's father would dare to travel through the mountains and forests.

After leaving home, Xia Boli was unable to leave smoothly immediately.

Under a big banyan tree in the village, Hong Ma was dancing and telling a group of villagers how she had stolen men, as if she had seen it with her own eyes.

"Hongma, that's enough!"

Xia Boli is not always so good-tempered.

"Oh, the indecent woman is out."

Hearing the voice, Hong Ma turned her head and looked over, teasing, "What are you doing? Picking fruit for your wild man again?"

"First of all, Hongma, if Xianli wants to marry you, you can just go find him instead of ruining my reputation like this.

"Besides, he is not a wild man. He is so much more respectable than you. You don't understand anything."

Xia Pineapple thought, although Brother Li's clothes were torn into pieces, they were still casual suits made of excellent fabric.

She used to work in the city, selling clothes.

She couldn't even recognize what kind of fabric it was.

And she very much suspected that maybe it was the legendary custom-made suit.

Because the silhouette of the clothes was so fitted and she didn't notice any tags.

"Yo yo, we've only been together for a few days and you're already speaking up for a wild man."

As Hong Ma spoke, he glanced at the villagers under the big banyan tree with a look that said, "See, I didn't say anything nonsense."

Then, he turned his head back to look at Xia Boli and said sarcastically:

"Xiangli is such a good man, but you don't know how to cherish him. You don't deserve to marry him.

"I know that although you have returned, your heart is still outside, and you will not miss any opportunity to take your mother and leave the village.

"Oh, do you really think that saving a 'birdman' will get you what you want?

"I want to see if this 'birdman' can take you away in the end."

Hong Ma paused for a moment, glanced at the villagers and said:

"And everyone, I suspect this 'bird man' is not a good person, he is probably from... the Golden Triangle. Otherwise, think about it, who would jump down from the sky? He must be being hunted by his enemies!"

As soon as these words were spoken, the villagers frowned and started talking.

Everyone is afraid of getting into trouble.

Hearing that they were all discussing going to the elders, Xia Boli became very anxious.

At this moment, a shirtless, strong young man appeared from the side.

Xia Pineapple trotted forward.

Xianli frowned and asked, "Where are you going again?"

"I'm going into town."

"Don't go!"

"Xiangli, I haven't married you yet."

"But we are engaged!"

"That's not an excuse for you to restrict me. Even if I marry you, you can't control me like other men in the village treat women, otherwise I would rather not marry you."

Xianli, who had a bad temper, raised his hand, wanting to slap her again.

But after hesitation, he put it down again.

He is sincere to Xia Boli.

He thought, the reason why he loved her so much was because she was different.

If she can be a good wife, he can give her the greatest respect.

"Can that man walk? Let him go!"

"Not yet."

"Humph!"

"Xiangli, you have to do me a favor."

Xia Boli pointed at Hong Ma, who was still spitting under the banyan tree, and said, "You can't let him be thrown out while I'm away. He's not a bad guy. I can tell."

Xianli’s nose almost got crooked with anger: “Why should I do this?!”

Xia Boli wrinkled his nose and said, "I told you, he's not a bad guy. Throwing him out now would be the same as killing him. Aren't you afraid of being blamed by the Buddha?"

Buddhism is the state religion of Cambodia, and people who believe in Theravada Buddhism account for more than 85% of the country's population.

Monks have a very high status, and ordinary people have to kneel down and bow to them when they see them.

Xianli raised his eyebrows and said thoughtfully, "This is not enough."

"So what do you want to do?" Xia Boli asked.

Xian said forcefully: "Our wedding date must be set. You must marry me within six months at the latest."

It’s finally here… Xia Boli thought.

The marriage was arranged by her late father and the elders, and after returning to the village from the city, she had been finding excuses to delay it.

Because she was not sure whether she loved Xianli, even though they grew up together.

But it seems that there is no better choice than Siem Li in this village.

"Okay." Xia Boli said.

Xianli was overjoyed, patting his chest and saying, "Don't worry, leave it to me. By the way, be careful on the road, I'll call someone to go with you."

"Need not."

Xia Boli's worries disappeared, he waved his hand, and hurried out of the village.