My enlightenment teacher, Mr. Xu Shenxing, has long since retired and returned to his hometown to live in the countryside. He came to me in the late autumn of the previous year, and I haven't seen him for many years, and I can't imagine that his body is still so strong.

He lives in the original village of Yangxu, 20 miles away from the village of Xiaohechuan Road, where I live, and is neither connected by car nor bicycle. He walked more than 20 miles uphill and came from afar, and my first reaction was to ask me to help him with something. He took the tea and cigarettes I handed him, and when he sat down, he first explained that he had nothing to do, just to make small talk to me. He was really just small talking. A whole afternoon passed, and it was getting dark, and he took his leave again with a thin straw hat. He said that he buried his wife more than three months ago, and after 100 days, he was really lonely and couldn't stand it, so he suddenly thought of coming to talk to me. I took his word for it. His wife has just died, his daughter has married, and the boy is teaching physical education in a county elementary school, and he is the only one left in the house.

In the month of Wax, the first good snow since the beginning of winter covered the original slopes and rivers, relieved the winter drought, and the heavy snow blocked the roads, and the farmers who ran small businesses hung up the scale poles and slept under the blankets. At noon on the first day of heavy snowfall, it was very cold and cold, and Mr. Xu Shenxing walked into my yard again, which amazed me. His body and elbows, knees and buttocks were stained with water and mud from melting snow, and his two cotton shoes were filled with snow particles, and they were slippery.

"I have one thing to discuss with you. ”

Mr. Xu Shenxing took a sip of tea and opened his mouth bluntly. His face glowed red, perhaps because he was sweating from the hardships of the trek, but there was a shy look in his eyes, which was very incongruous with the complexion of a sixty-year-old. He finally told me that he had been introduced to his next wife, who was in her fifties, and that he had met him once, and that he thought it was appropriate, but that his two daughters and son were opposed to each other, and could not convince them. Of course, it was not easy for him to discuss directly with his daughter, so he had to ask relatives and friends to explain to his children. His eldest daughter married in Zhou Village, Xiaohechuan Province, which is not far from my residence and knows me, so he wanted me to explain to his eldest daughter.

Without thinking, I took it in one gulp.

In the spring of the following year, the grass sprouted, and I never saw him, and I wondered how his marriage went, and I was a little worried. I am an acquaintance with his eldest daughter and son-in-law, and I can talk openly, I said many benefits that should be done, such as Mr. Xu's food and clothing problems, sick medicine problems, and housework problems, all of which have been solved, and there is a lot less burden on the children. He also explained the most worried question of the children: Will the use of the old man's retirement salary be stuck? Finally, the couple nodded and said that they would not interfere again, and I could be regarded as doing a little bit of care for the enlightenment teacher. It is said that the main obstacle is the second woman, who does not come forward, but connives and instigates her younger brother to come forward and make trouble......

Mr. Xu Shenxing came, and the peach blossoms on the rivers and slopes were blooming in March. As soon as he came, I guessed the result from the shyness in his eyes.

"I want to get this done. He said, "When the time comes, you can come and sit down." ”

I gladly accepted the teacher's invitation.

He sat down to drink tea, smoked cigarettes, and talked about his wife's temper and background. You could tell from his tone that he was very satisfied. When it comes to her human appearance and her appearance, he said that he can see that she was very handsome when she was young......

I really didn't expect that after the summer harvest, when he came to my house for the fourth time, he had a depressed look on his face, and sighed three times, saying that the matter finally collapsed!

I was amazed and asked him, what went wrong, and who was doing something bad about it?

"There's nothing bad about anyone, there's nothing wrong with it—" he said lightly, "I'm not going to do it!"

"Why?" I couldn't figure out.

"Alas—" he shook his head, sighing, not looking up, "I'm coming to an end, and I'm ......"

Since he didn't feel it was easy to speak, I no longer had trouble being strong, so I started gossiping. He gently shook his fan, squinted his eyes, and pulled up the past events in his more than 30 years of teaching career, sighing and emotion......

After I sent him away, I felt very uncomfortable and depressed, a kind of depression that was blocked by an iron hoop, which made people almost breathless, and he had lived under that invisible iron hoop for decades, and he still could not get rid of it......