Siheyuan, my new life

A middle-aged man in his fifties stood alone on the edge of a cliff shrouded in darkness, the cigarette in his hand flickering with the mountain breeze. The man took a deep puff of the cigarette and flicked the cigarette butt away, and a faint flame slowly fell into the cliff.

The man sighed deeply, and recalled the first half of his life in his mind like a slide show.

The man's name is Zhou Lin. He is a freelancer, or in other words, a vagrant. He was born in 1971, the youngest of five siblings. His father is the director of the township supply and marketing cooperative, and his mother is a farmer. His family conditions are considered good in the surrounding area.

It is said that the eldest son and the youngest grandson are the lifeblood of the elderly in the family. As the youngest in the family, he was infected with pneumonia due to the limited conditions of the township health center when he was born. The newborn baby could not be injected with large doses of drugs, so the health center could only take conservative treatment. Later, although he saved his life, he was left with bronchial asthma. Every year, he would be out of breath as soon as the cucumbers bloomed, until late autumn and early winter.

Whenever Zhou Lin recalled his childhood experiences, he couldn't help but smack his lips. Every time he had an attack, Zhou Lin had to go to the village clinic to get an injection of aminophylline. As his drug resistance increased, he increased the number of injections from one injection a day to four injections a day. Anyone who has ever had an injection of aminophylline knows the excruciating pain and sour taste.

Year after year, Zhou Lin's little buttocks were as hard as two stones. Every day, his mother would use a hot water bottle to apply warm compresses to her son. In the hot summer, with the hot water bottle on his buttocks, his mother would grit her teeth every time she thought of Zhou Lin.

Seeing Zhou Lin's breathlessness and discomfort, his family tried every possible way and searched for folk remedies. For example, they caught a live bat, made a small hole in one end of an egg, slowly stuffed the bat in, and then roasted it over fire before letting Zhou Lin eat it.

At that time, little Zhou Lin naively asked his mother why there were bones in the eggs.

If eating bats was considered a side dish, then eating maggots roasted on tiles became a lifelong shadow that Zhou Lin would never be able to shake off.

This kind of suffering did not end until Zhou Lin was twelve years old, and his bronchial asthma was miraculously cured.

After that, Zhou Lin's life was not much different from that of his peers. He only went to school and played. Before he graduated from high school, his father arranged for him to work in a supply and marketing cooperative. At that time, having such a job was enough to gain the envy of his friends.

Because his father was the director of the supply and marketing cooperative, Zhou Lin was taken care of and assigned to the oil depot as a custodian. You have to know that in the planned economy era, whether it was bicycles, sewing machines, watches, or non-staple food and cloth, you needed tickets to buy all kinds of supplies, not to mention the controlled diesel and gasoline.

The oil depot where Zhou Lin worked was responsible for the supply of fuel to all units in the township. According to the policy at the time, oil prices were divided into planned and unplanned types. The planned price of gasoline was less than 0.8 yuan per kilogram, while the price of unplanned gasoline doubled or tripled.

If you can work in such a unit, you will get some quotas in the plan. Some educated youths would use various methods, such as treating guests or giving away cigarettes and alcohol, to exchange for quotas. At that time, as long as you did not directly accept money for reselling, you would not be held accountable.

Therefore, since Zhou Lin started working, he has been treated to meals almost every few days, and he smokes Shilin cigarettes that cost two or three yuan a pack.

Although the country had begun to gradually open up the market and carry out economic reforms when Zhou Lin was working, Zhou Lin's hometown was neither a coastal area nor a large economically developed city, but just a small county town with a backward economy in the peninsula region.

Although the county responded to the call from the higher authorities and established some village and town enterprises, due to various factors, the scale of the factories was generally small and the benefits were average. Some smart people responded to the call and boldly started their own businesses. Some succeeded and gained a lot of money, while others failed and lost everything.

In the second year of his work, Zhou Lin was introduced to a self-employed gasoline dealer by the oil depot manager. After serving in the army, this dealer used his comrades' connections to get some unplanned gasoline from the oil field refinery, transported it back in a tanker truck, and resold it to various supply and marketing cooperatives at a higher price.

After meeting this self-employed gasoline reseller, Zhou Lin's horizons were broadened. Expensive items such as famous cigarettes, famous liquors, brand-name clothes, shoes and socks became small gifts for his younger brother. In return, Zhou Lin provided him with a lot of conveniences, such as timely informing him of the inventory status of the oil depot, the prices of other deliverymen and so on.

At that time, one of the most popular topics in society was who made a fortune and who made a lot of money in business. Zhou Lin was also very excited. The salary of 30 or 40 yuan a month could not meet his needs, so he resigned from his job and plunged into the business world regardless of his father's opposition.

Zhou Lin had resold gasoline and diesel, sold coal and fertilizer, and even opened clothing stores and shops. Although he did not make a fortune, he was considered a well-known and capable person in the surrounding area.

When he was 30, Zhou Lin got married and had a family. The following year, he had a son. With the nationwide business boom, it became increasingly difficult to do business alone without connections and capital. After several setbacks and losses, Zhou Lin applied for a sales job to support his family, while his wife opened a clothing store with a friend.

Twenty years passed in a flash. Zhou Lin, who was already in his fifties, was diagnosed with high blood pressure during a physical examination. However, his sales job required frequent business trips and social events, and it was obvious that his physical condition no longer allowed him to continue doing this kind of work.

At this time, his wife's clothing store business was doing well, and he had saved a lot of money over the years, so after discussing with his wife, Zhou Lin started his retirement life early. He bought groceries and cooked at home every day, and surfed the Internet and read novels in his spare time. His life was quite comfortable.

Unfortunately, the peaceful and leisurely life didn't last for a few years. His son, who had just entered college, was arrested by the police on suspicion of credit card money laundering. For the sake of his child, Zhou Lin ran around asking people for help, but in the end his son was still sentenced to three years in prison.

Zhou Lin was hit hard by his son's incident. He seemed to feel the gossips of outsiders every time he went out. This made Zhou Lin, who always paid great attention to his appearance, stay at home for several days. His originally black hair turned nearly half gray without him noticing.

After finally serving his three-year prison sentence, Zhou Lin and his wife earnestly advised their son to learn from his experience, find a job and work honestly for a few years, then consider other things after gaining experience.

I originally thought that with the previous lesson, my son would be able to behave himself for a few years, but the opposite happened. Less than a year after he was released from prison, he got back into the bad habit of gambling and secretly borrowed usury.

When the loan shark came to collect the debt, Zhou Lin realized what his son had done. He was so angry that he vomited blood.

After consulting a lawyer friend, Zhou Lin had no choice but to repay his son's debt. Exhausted, Zhou Lin could no longer hold on and was rushed to the hospital.

As requested by the doctor, Zhou Lin underwent a comprehensive examination. The results shocked his family like a bolt from the blue. In addition to his old illnesses such as high blood pressure and high blood lipids, Zhou Lin was also diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Worried about misdiagnosis by the local hospital, Zhou Lin's wife transferred him to the provincial hospital. The examination results still showed that he was in the middle stage of pancreatic cancer. If he was admitted to the hospital and underwent surgery and chemotherapy in time, there was hope that his life would be extended by three to five years.

Zhou Lin insisted on being discharged from the hospital and returning home despite his wife's persuasion. He knew very well that even if he could linger on for a few more years, not only would he have to endure the pain of the disease, but his family would also have to spend huge financial expenses.

Zhou Lin sat alone in the study for a whole day. In front of him was a family photo of the Zhang family of three. Looking at his son's bright smile in the photo, Zhou Lin couldn't help but recall every detail of his son's life from childhood to adulthood, and sighed secretly that it was a pity that time could not be reversed.

Zhou Lin left home early the next morning. He first found a lawyer friend to make a will, stating that all his property would be inherited by his wife after his death. He then took his marriage certificate to the housing authority to go through the procedures for changing the name of the house, changing the owner to his wife.

After finishing these things, he went home and left a letter for his wife and son respectively, cooked a table full of sumptuous dishes himself, had dinner with his wife and children with a calm expression, and then walked out of the house alone in the middle of the night, walking towards the distance with firm steps.

After more than two hours, Zhou Lin finally climbed up the highest cliff nearby. He looked back in the direction of home, and although he was reluctant to leave, he could not bear to look back on the torture he had suffered from childhood illness. Even if he was willing to endure it again, he could only survive for another three to five years.

Zhou Lin secretly greeted his wife and children in his heart, shouted "Goodbye, my family", and then jumped off the cliff with all his strength.

At the moment Zhou Lin jumped up, an imperceptible light blue light cut through the night sky and appeared in an instant. Silently, the cliff over a thousand meters high and Zhou Lin who had just jumped up disappeared, leaving a bottomless pit at the original site. Faint sounds of water could be heard coming from below.