At the beginning of March 1994, shortly after the sting, after Women's Day, the students of the city's No. 1 Middle School looked forward to the multi-day Arbor Day as scheduled.

The school, in conjunction with the Propaganda Department of the city and the local government, went to the Jinping Township mining area to plant trees, and there were many students in the school, so it was impossible for everyone to participate, but each class in the high school had some places, and after signing up independently, the class teacher decided.

According to the class teacher Wang Mingzhen's class cadre rotation system, Zhang Yunqi just took over the position of 156 shift shift leader this week, and the classmates in the class all asked him to sign up for the school's Arbor Day activities.

In those days, Zhang Yunqi's life in the class was very nourishing, and anyone who wanted to participate in the Arbor Day activities had to pass through him, but unfortunately he only had the right to count, not the right to decide.

After the statistics were counted, Zhang Yunqi directly gave the list to Wang Mingzhen, he thought about it, and mentioned it in passing: "Teacher, I checked the weather conditions, there may be showers on the Fengyang side on Arbor Day, in addition, the environment in the Jinping Township mining area is not very good, and it will be rainy this season." ”

Wang Mingzhen raised his eyes and looked at Zhang Yunqi, and said with a smile: "For such a big event, the school should take into account the weather situation, but I will report this situation to them." ”

Zhang Yunqi didn't say anything more.

The school has a school arrangement, and he takes care of himself and his classmates, so he finds Wang Xiaokai and asks him to buy seven sets of raincoats and rain boots. Zhang Yunqi doesn't know if it will rain then, but there are some things that are always necessary to prevent it before it happens, and if it really rains by then, it will not be messy.

On the day of Arbor Day, the departure time was very early, seven o'clock, the weather was very good, the sun was shining, the school leaders sat in Santana, the Municipal Education Bureau also came to a few leaders, as well as a few reporters from the Jiangchuan Daily, the battle was quite big, and the students were in a few buses to follow behind, two hundred people, more buttocks and fewer positions, and some people had to stand.

Facing the spring light, the convoy went out of Jiangchuan City, after passing through Fengyang City, the road became tattered, and the thieves and chickens sitting on the buttocks were uncomfortable, but the students were very interested, and they did not feel guilty at all, and drove towards the Jinping Township mining area in Fengyang County in laughter and laughter.

The students of class 156 who participated in the Arbor Day activities were all on the same bus, Zhang Yunqi and Wang Xiaokai sat together, next to Chu Jian and Yu Xiaorui, and in front of Li Yufei, Xiao Xuemei and Lin Xueqing.

In this group, except for Wang Xiaokai, an incorrigible salted fish, the others are all students with relatively good grades in the class. Yu Xiaorui asked him, "Kaizi, why did you get selected? ”

Wang Xiaokai was nibbling on pickled pepper phoenix feet: "What do you mean, what did I choose?"

Yu Xiaorui smiled: "It's not interesting, just take a look, these people in our class who were selected are all good students with excellent character and learning." ”

Wang Xiaokai nodded: "Yes, we are both excellent in character and learning." The motherland is full of flowers. ”

Li Yufei couldn't hold back her laughter.

The early spring sun poured down on her face, and she looked beautiful and lovely.

At this time, I don't know who started in front of the passenger car, and there is a singing voice, which is the return work of the Little Tigers after being reorganized at the end of last year, "The Starlight is Still Brilliant".

The stars are still shining

The sincerity has not changed

With tears and sweat

in order to wash away the joys and sorrows

......

In the midst of the song, the convoy jolted along the dirt road, with vast fields, majestic mountains, and high skies on both sides.

It is the busy season of spring ploughing, the green crops are covered on the ground like a thick blanket, everyone looks at the rural world outside the window, for this group of students who mostly grow up in the city, everything in the mountains and wilderness is fresh and vibrant, several girls are always full of enthusiasm for these novelties that should be ordinary, and they are tired of digging into the roots, those plants, trees, birds and beasts that have never been seen, the tattered and crooked Taoist temples, and the wisps of looming human cooking smoke, as if shining into reality from books.

On the way, when I saw a group of sparrows circling in the field, I suddenly remembered something and asked Zhang Yunqi: "By the way, Yunqi, I remember that our country seemed to have killed sparrows on a large scale back then, do you know the reason?"

"Stealing our food, we were poor at that time, and we regarded sparrows as the four evils. There are limitations to understanding, and then you won't do that. ”

"And is this bird good or bad?"

That's not a good question to answer. ”

"Why?"

"Because what is the criterion for distinguishing between good and bad? Defined by human standards, good and bad are only in a thought; Defined by the earth's ecosystem, all living beings are for survival, so how can we talk about good or bad? Dogs are good friends of human beings, isn't it cruel to eat them? But if human beings are really forbidden to eat dog meat, are pigs and cows bad? Aren't the cattle that farm for us our good friends? How innocent are they eaten by us? Do you know the law of entropy increase? Physicist Schrödinger said that human life is against the law of increasing entropy, and life lives on negative entropy. In order to combat the increase in entropy, cattle and sheep eat low-entropy grass, and humans eat low-entropy cattle and sheep, which has nothing to do with good or bad, just survival, but the energy and feces we emit are still high-entropy, according to Schrödinger, everything in the universe is increasing entropy, until the end, heat death, is the dark nothingness of constant temperature, from such a point of view, is civilization meaningless? So is it even more meaningless to talk about the good and bad of animals?

When Zhang Yunqi said this, several girls looked at him. Or maybe they think his insights are novel. Actually, Zhang Yunqi just casually talked such nonsense, he didn't understand, and sometimes he had this kind of doubt, after all, a flower and a world, a leaf and a Bodhi, the universe is vast and starry, who understands this world and this universe?

There is an old Chinese saying that is called forty is not confused.

Zhang Yunqi used to think that the meaning of this sentence was that when you reach the age of forty, you will understand everything, everything. However, when he really lived to that age, he figured out that he didn't know what he meant by not being confused, and you didn't want to understand what you didn't understand. Because no one can understand it, even if the person you love the most is sitting across from you, you may not be able to understand it all.

However, when he was young, it was different, he wanted to understand everything, everyone wanted to see through it carefully, and even this society, this era, especially wanted to understand, because I always felt that there were some things that I didn't understand was the panic of life, but when I got older, I would understand that panic was youth, and if you don't panic, your youth will be gone.

So, what is youth?

Youth is these half-grown children in the car, when they see a flock of ducks coming out of the dirt road, they will scream in surprise and talk about it; youth is that he said some problems that seem to be profound and reasonable, but in fact have no use for life, these young people have a feeling of being enlightened and deeply understood, youth is like this, chickens and dogs are broken, moaning without disease, pretending to be posturing, ignorant, sentimental, and panicked.

When you are not happy with chickens, dogs, broken diseases, moaning, pretending to be ignorant, sentimental, and panicked, your youth is gone, and you have grown up.

But, I'm sorry, you're old too.

After several buses arrived in Jinping Township, they stopped at the local township government, where the students got off the bus to drink water and go to the toilet, and the staff of the township government joined the team with materials and tools such as pine and cypress saplings and shovels that had been prepared long ago, and then continued to move forward on the rugged muddy mountain road.

Laughter and laughter along the way, the closer the convoy approached the Jinping Township mining area, the color of the land on both sides became darker and darker, there were more and more dead trees, there were fewer and fewer ordinary livestock crops, the soil and trees gradually turned black and gray, a desolate and corrupt breath came to the face, the dust was flying, the earth was cracked, and when he arrived at the Jinping Township mining area, although Zhang Yunqi had come many years ago, the scene in front of him still made him suddenly have a sense of desolation.

As far as the eye could see in the Jinping mining area, he saw holes one after another, washing and shaking machines one after another, arsenic ash stoves one after another, thousands of dilapidated sheds were connected in a black and pressed ground, the sound of cannons, noise, and machine rotation came and went, waste rocks, tailings, feces and urine were everywhere, the smell was unpleasant, the arsenic smoke was pungent, the grass and trees on the mountains withered, and there was no grass on the flat land!

Such a scene is also novel for the students living in the city, after getting off the bus, they are laughing and running, but Zhang Yunqi is a little full of thoughts.

The origin of Jinping Mine is a long story.

At the beginning of the sixties, state secrets carried out a great project that attracted worldwide attention.

The project required a raw material – uranium ore.

After the state conducted a nationwide survey, it was found that there was uranium ore underground in Jinping Township, Fengyang County, Jiangchuan City, Hunan Province, but foreign construction experts determined that the grade was too low and had no significance for exploitation, but copper, zinc, lead, tin, arsenic and other metals were symbiotic and extremely rich.

Thus, there was the Jinping Mine.

Since 1970, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Liangguang and other provinces and the border of Jinping Township in southern Hunan Province have poured into the Jinping Township mining area, hitting the mountain, opening holes, burning arsenic ash, one after another booming fire, the rich mine boss like a leek stubble after stubble, but these people ignore the relevant provisions of the "Environmental Protection Law", soil refining, excessive and indiscriminate mining, causing a devastating blow to the ecological environment.

I remember many years ago, Zhang Yunqi attended a reunion of junior high school classmates, came to play in Shaweiba, Jinping Township, and visited the mining area by the way, at that time he was in his early twenties, and many things still did not understand, could not understand, and could not think thoroughly, but seeing those arsenic refining stoves dotted with pus, like abscesses sticking to the skin of the earth, the shock in his heart is still vivid.

Those large-scale smelting arsenic stoves are all over the villages near the Jinping mining area, with random site selection, soil method, poor equipment, backward technology, no "three wastes" treatment measures, carbon dioxide and other waste gases and arsenic-containing waste residues, Wastewater, polluting the surrounding field vegetation, water sources and soil, billowing smoke blows all over the village, causing the death of livestock, the destruction of mountains and forests, the death of crops, the abandonment of fertile paddy fields, the soil erosion of landslides, the crisscrossing tailings of the sand bars are heavy with silt, and when the mountain rain comes, there is a possibility that the dam will collapse and swallow the village at any time!

It was not until 1989 that the People's Daily published an article entitled "Jinping Nonferrous Metal Mine Will Be Destroyed by Indiscriminate Mining and Digging" Especially after entering the 21st century, many times the crackdown on illegal mining stoves, the closure of a large number of mines, illegal mining and smelting have been effectively controlled, however, the family farming villa has been barren and barren, the scars of the earth are full of devastation, the air breathed on the road every day carries sulfur and iron dust, and the water drunk is polluted by the indiscriminate discharge of sewage from the mine concentrator.

Standing on such a devastated land, Zhang Yunqi had an indescribable feeling in his heart.

At this time, several trendy students passed by him, and one of the boys with a camera said to him, "This buddy, do you have time, can you please take a picture of us?"

Zhang Yunqi was stunned, nodded, and took the camera.

The boy beckoned the others to a large black rock, and Zhang Yunqi waited for them to pose, put his hand on the shutter, and looked at the viewfinder.

In the background of the viewfinder, there is a mine, a mine full of black and gray rubble, and not far away there is a withered tree trunk, on which stands a scrawny crow, with black diamond-like eyes looking at the gray sky, several students hooking their shoulders, grinning and smiling heartlessly, but perhaps the only bit of color in the picture.

Zhang Yunqi pressed the shutter.