Siheyuan: Sizhu starts blindly and takes a new path

Sha Zhu, carrying a lunch box, arrived at the factory gate, said hello to Niu Xihua who was on duty with Lao Hongtou, and left.

"Why is he taking the lunch box again? The supplies have just been restored and he is going back to his old ways?" Niu Xihua muttered in a low voice.

Old Hong asked, "Xiaohua, what are you mumbling about?"

"Uncle Hong, Zhuzi was doing pretty well recently, but why is he carrying a lunch box again today? Is he going to take advantage of the government again?"

"Yeah, I wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't told me. You've made a lot of progress since becoming the squad leader." Old Hongtou gave Niu Xihua a compliment first, "He seemed to be carrying three lunch boxes, so there couldn't be so much left even from lunch, and the shaking amplitude of the net bag doesn't seem like it's empty. You talk to Zheng'er later and ask him to remind Sha Zhu." After carefully observing Sha Zhu's back, Old Hongtou instructed Niu Xihua.

"Yes, I will ensure that the task is completed." Niu Xihua stood at attention.

"You little monkey." Old Hong smiled and rolled his eyes at him.

Sha Zhu put the lunch box on the desk under the window of the guard room. "Wait for me to send Yu Li home first, and then I'll bring the wine over. Don't touch the food. I'll heat it up. It won't taste good if it's heated up too much."

"Okay, I won't move. I'll just wait until the meal is done." Uncle Guan answered casually as he looked at the people coming and going at the gate.

"Not bad, the food you heated up is really good." Uncle Guan gave his approval while eating the dish.

"I'm a cook." Sha Zhu said complacently, "Is this Daqu good to drink?"

"Well, it's okay, but a little worse than being stuffy." Uncle Guan picked up the teacup in front of him and took a big gulp.

"You are proud of drinking strong alcohol. Okay, I will find you something stronger next time." Sha Zhu nodded and took note of it. He then said, "But you should drink less strong alcohol at your age."

"Forget about death. It's useless to be alive now." Grandpa Guan waved his hands and stared at Sha Zhu for a long time. "Tell me, why do you care about me so much? What do you want from me? I'm just an old man with nothing."

"What are you talking about? I just feel like dealing with you, I just want to be close to you."

"Chad, are you in need of an uncle or a father? So you want to find an older man to take care of you?" Uncle Guan didn't believe what Sha Zhu said and teased.

Sha Zhu blurted out: "You are right, I really do need a father."

"What are you doing? Without a father, you would not exist." Uncle Guan cursed.

"Don't scold me first. I didn't say that I was lacking since I was a child. I became lacking later." Sha Zhu couldn't express his feelings when talking about his father He Daqing.

Seeing Sha Zhu's expression of missing, disliking and even hating him, Uncle Guan became interested. "Come on, tell me. I have nothing to do. Let me tell you a story."

"Okay, I'll tell you about my previous experiences. Except for some old neighbors in our yard who know a little about these, I haven't told anyone else.

"My family is originally from the capital, and several generations of our ancestors worked as waiters in the kitchen. However, my great-grandfather was diligent and caught the eye of his master, so he took him in as his disciple and taught him good cooking skills. This made my great-grandfather somewhat famous among the chefs in the Tan Mansion. Later, this skill was passed on to my grandfather, then to my father, and my father passed it on to me."

"Oh, this is a family skill. If you have a good skill, you will never go hungry. Especially since you are a cook, you will never go hungry."

"Yes, we won't starve." Sha Zhu nodded, "But when people are not hungry, they will think about other things. When we just drove the Japanese away in 45, my mother died of illness, and my father raised me and my one-year-old sister alone. Although we didn't have a mother, my old man was not bad. He had skills and could make money. He provided us with food and drink every month. When our clothes were torn or small, he would ask the neighbor to make them for us, so we didn't freeze or starve."

"Isn't this good? Why did you look like that when you just mentioned your father?"

"Wait a minute." Sha Zhu swallowed a big mouthful of wine and ate a peanut. "After liberation, we ordinary people all thought that good days were coming, but hard days for my sister and I began.

"My old man met a widow in 51 and wanted to live with her without consulting me. He left a letter and 55 yuan (the second set of RMB appeared in 1 and the ratio was :) and ran away."

When Sha Zhu said this, his eyes suddenly became fierce and he stared out the window, as if He Daqing and the widow were right outside.

After a while, Sha Zhu recovered, took another sip of wine, and said, "Let him run away. He can live with whoever he wants. I won't stop him. I can't let him be single forever. But when he ran away, I was only fourteen or fifteen, and my sister was only six or seven. Couldn't he stay in the capital? Why did he abandon us and run away? We are so unwelcome.

"Later, I took my sister to find him and wanted to ask him why. But the widow stopped us and didn't even let us see her.

"At that time, I was still learning to cook in a restaurant. I hadn't graduated yet and was earning an apprentice's salary, which was barely enough to cover my expenses. But the restaurant work was all done at night, and it was already 9:00 when I got home from get off work. It was not convenient for me to take my sister there. I could leave it to a neighbor for a day or two, but why would they take care of our children for a long time? Don't you think so?

"So, I found a way to get into the steel mill. My master was mad at me for a long time because of this."

"Everyone has his or her own path to follow. Maybe this is your path." Uncle Guan comforted Sha Zhu.

"You know, ever since my old man ran away, I've been bullied a lot by others, both adults and children older than me."

"Yeah, that's what happens when there's no adult at home."

"So, I can only fight with people. They are better at reasoning than me, so I won't talk. I'll just use my fists and be a jerk. They won't dare to provoke me and won't want to pay attention to me. That's good."

"Look, he's not like that now. He speaks politely and treats his wife very well. He doesn't seem like a bad-tempered person."

"Did you know that I was blind last year?" Sha Zhu dropped a small bomb.

"If you are blind, can you regain your sight?"

"The doctor said that the blood congestion caused the nerves and caused temporary blindness." Sha Zhu explained, "Because of being blind, I can see many things clearly and I have changed a lot. It can be said that it is a blessing in disguise."

Uncle Guan became more interested, "Oh, then you have to tell me about this part."

"There is a family next door to my house named Jia. There is a boy named Jia Dongxu in this family. His father died early, and his mother raised him. He is a few years older than me. When my old man ran away, Dongxu worked in the steel mill. He was always very nice to me. When someone bullied me, he would help me.

"He had an accident at work last year and passed away. He left behind my mother, my wife and three children. The old man who manages our yard asked me to help. In fact, even if he didn't say it, I would have done it. The old man even gave me some advice and asked me to bring them more leftovers from the cafeteria."

When Uncle Guan heard this, his eyes narrowed.

"I know you want to say that it is a self-serving crime at the expense of the public. I didn't know that at the time. I thought it was natural to take care of orphans and widows. Later, my canteen director caught me and criticized me, and even sent me to the workshop for training.

"I had no lunch box to bring, so I donated my own food. I had no choice. It is the hardest to repay favors in this world. Who told me to owe them back then? And I can't stand seeing people being pitiful. I have been caught in the rain and injured myself.

"One day I was not feeling well and my legs were shaky. A guy in the yard who I had been fighting with since childhood started to get angry with me. How could I let him go? So we started fighting. Maybe it was God's will, I slipped and fell and hit my head. When I woke up, I was blind.

"The old man in the courtyard helped punish the guy who had fought with me, and handed the task of taking care of me to Brother Dongxu's wife. At the beginning, it was fine. It might be because the doctor said that I would regain my sight at any time, or it might be because my sister often came to see me, so everyone was nice to me. They would come to look at me from time to time. I also blamed myself. I was blind and in a bad mood, and I seldom talked. Gradually, no one came. My sister couldn't come back because of the school exam. Maybe it was because they saw that there was no hope for me to regain my sight, or maybe it was because the Jia family had so many children and they really couldn't eat enough. Anyway, I was eating less and less, and I was getting thinner day by day. Later, my sister came home and saw that my cheeks were sunken. She asked the Jia family for an explanation and asked the old man for justice, but no one paid attention. If I hadn't fallen again and my eyes could be seen again, it's hard to say whether I would still be alive now."

After listening to Sha Zhu's story, Uncle Guan was silent for a while. "You fell twice at a good time, and the result was also good."

Uncle Guan picked up the teacup and clinked it with Sha Zhu, "So you are still helping the Jia family?"

"No, I've already repaid the favor. I feel relieved now that I'm debt-free." Sha Zhu stretched himself, took out two cigarettes, handed one to Grandpa Guan and lit one for himself, "After my eyes recovered, I reflected on what happened before, and I couldn't understand why I helped others with good intentions, but ended up like that. It's because people are inherently bad, and I was really forced by the environment. I can't tell anyone else, and I wouldn't have told you if you hadn't asked me today."

"I don't know how to answer your question. The people I met were either bad guys or brothers who had fought for their lives. I've never seen anything like this."

"Brothers who have shared life and death together? What kind of brothers can share life and death together?"

"Those who ate tree bark and grass leaves from the same pot with you, bandaged your wounds, blocked bullets for you, and carried you across the line of fire." Grandpa Guan said softly, his eyes full of memories, "and those who you helped close their eyes with your own hands, and saw the new world for them, are all your brothers who have shared life and death with you." Sha Zhu saw Grandpa Guan raise his hand to wipe away a tear from the corner of his eye.

The room became very quiet again. Neither of them spoke or moved until the cigarette butt burned Sha Zhu's fingers. He woke up and saw that the cigarette butt between Guan's two fingers was extinguished by the other party rubbing three fingers together after burning Guan. This endurance is beyond words.

"My hometown is Puyang, Shanxi. When the Japanese invaded Shanxi, they destroyed our village. I followed a few people from the same village into the mountains to hunt, so I escaped. My parents, wife, children, brothers and sisters were all killed by the Japanese. In order to avenge our relatives, we all joined the army.

"I vowed to avenge my family, and I trained with the soldiers desperately. I did twice as much as they did. When the captain saw me training like that, he always advised me not to train too much, because it would hurt my body and it would not be worth it. Our captain is a good man.

"The first time I participated in a battle was to attack the Japanese's artillery tower at night. Don't say we don't have martial ethics. We had to fight at night and attack by surprise. The Japanese's weapons were better than ours, and they did things worse than animals. Why should we talk about morality with animals?"

"Yes, those who try to talk about morality with beasts are all stupid idiots with sick brains. Such people don't deserve to live, and they should be killed by beasts." Sha Zhu nodded frantically.

"Our captain is a capable man. He took advantage of the darkness to help us cut the barbed wires set up by the Japanese and use sacks to pad the trenches they dug. It was very smooth at the beginning, but we were smart and the Japanese were not stupid either. They put a lot of iron boxes under the artillery tower. We all thought there were no traps, so we were careless. The iron box made a sound, and the Japanese were awakened. The machine guns fired like crazy. We were very close to the artillery tower. We rushed forward together under the bullets and risked our lives. When we got to the base of the wall where the machine guns couldn't reach, we desperately used grenades to greet them. We threw them in, and others threw them out. In order to prevent others from throwing grenades out, one comrade blocked the entrance of the hole with his body, and he was stabbed to death by the Japanese with a bayonet. It was a life-and-death struggle. Whoever gave in or relaxed his strength would die. Fortunately, we were not afraid of death, so many of us survived and the mission was completed. The Japanese were either blown to death or shot for refusing to surrender. Anyway, they all died.

"That was the first time I faced bloodshed and life and death. Although I had seen the bodies of relatives who were shot to death before, this time, I saw with my own eyes that the enemy's bullets shot through my comrade's body and broke his leg. I saw that comrade who was stabbed with a bayonet more than ten times and his intestines were spilling out, but he held the wall tightly with both hands to prevent himself from falling. When he died, his eyes were still wide open. My tears kept flowing, my heart was aching, and my spirit was forged by their actions.

"I didn't get a gun in that battle, but only a grenade. When I got close to the bunker, I threw the grenade in, but I don't know if the grenade killed the Japanese. However, after the battle, I picked up an undamaged Type 38 rifle while cleaning the battlefield. This gun has been with me for a long time. It has changed from a gun of sin to a thunderbolt of justice.

"When I got back to the village, the captain asked me if I was afraid and if I wanted to stay in the team. I nodded and said I was afraid. Of course I wasn't afraid. I wanted revenge. How could I not be afraid of death if I didn't get my revenge? But I still wanted to stay in the team because I knew that those comrades who died and were injured were also afraid of death, but they were not afraid of death. They were afraid that their death would be in vain and that they would not be able to die with the Japanese. I wanted to be like them and not be afraid of death.