The more I listened, the more depressed I became, wondering how there were still such poor and backward villages in Guangdong. Ms. Huang seemed to see my confusion and said, "The richest place in China is in Guangdong, but the poorest is also here." ”

"I don't think your two daughters look very good," I asked, "You can't eat any meat in the village, right?" Ms. Huang nodded, helplessly said no way, she and her husband work in Guangzhou, because they know a little Mandarin, and they can also find a restaurant job with food and accommodation, and the food is better than in the village. But he couldn't bring his two children with him, so he had to stay in the village. My hometown is too poor, and every meal is basically fried vegetables and loofah soup, and children don't have enough nutrition at all.

I couldn't help asking, "Don't you and your husband still have a salary, how can you still eat?" ”

Ms. Huang sighed: "Didn't you save it for Ah Yong to finish the unfinished house!" At this time, the little daughter in her arms started crying, I asked her to go back to coax the child, I walked around the neighborhood by myself, Ms. Huang asked me not to go far, the mobile phone signal in the village is not very good, sometimes I can't get through.

Although the village is dilapidated, I like to turn around this kind of old street and old house with a sense of age, just like I like to visit thrift markets and street stalls far more than shopping malls. As I walked towards the back of the village, I saw a small forest in the distance, and there seemed to be an unfinished house between the village and the woods, so I went over to look. Sure enough, it was a three-room brick house, built in an open field, and the terrain was relatively high, presumably to prevent flooding during the rainy season. But only the foundation and exterior walls were repaired, not to mention the windows, not even the roof, it was a rotten house. Looking through the window opening, the layout seems to be not bad, remembering that Ms. Huang said before that her brother-in-law's house was halfway repaired and there was no money to stop work, maybe this is it.

Just as he was about to walk back, he suddenly saw a hunchbacked old lady on crutches, trembling out of the side of the unfinished house, walking against the root of the wall and looking at the wall, still muttering something. The old lady must have been at least eighty years old, with a wrinkled face, shabby clothes, and a shriveled mouth. Seeing me wandering around here, the old lady stopped looking at the unfinished room, but came towards me. She's noticeably quickened, but still didn't think much faster than a two-year-old. Coming to me, the old lady said a word to me with a look on her face.

If I can still understand two or three words in Ayong's native dialect once in a while, the old lady's old and muffled pronunciation is an alien language to me. I smiled and waved my hand, then pointed to my ear and told her I didn't understand. The old lady seemed to know that I was speaking Mandarin, but she couldn't understand it, so she had to nod her head again and again. Pointing to the unfinished house, he talked to me for a long time. I don't think she seems to be expecting me to understand her language, but just asking me to guess the meaning, or just a kind of self-talk.

As the old lady spoke, I smiled and nodded, as if I understood. After talking for a long time, the old lady stopped nagging me, faced the unfinished room, and looked at this wall in a daze. It was getting darker and darker, and I repeated the word "home" to the old lady several times. Apparently understood, she nodded her head and walked towards the village. I also walked into the village from memory, and when I entered the village, I realized that she was actually the grandmother of Ms. Huang's husband, that is, the eighty-four-year-old lady who lived in the old house on the west side.

Ms. Huang was coming out of the house, and the old lady also saw that I was entering her yard, and her expression was very strange. Ms. Huang said something to her, and I thought that the old lady would talk to me again, but I didn't expect her to come forward, hold my hand tightly, and actually kneel down for me.

"Hey, don't, don't!" I was so frightened that I hurriedly went to help, and Ms. Huang and Ah Yong, who came out, also came over, carried the old lady to the door, and sat on a large thick stump lying horizontally. The old lady burst into tears, and while crying, she gestured to me, stretched out her index and middle fingers, and kept making a gesture of "two" to me. Ms. Huang said apologetically that the old lady has two wishes in this life, one is to live in a new house, and the other is to hold her great-grandson.

I said, "I saw an unfinished house over there just now, it was built by Ah Yong, right?" Ms. Huang nodded and said yes, it cost 40,000 yuan, and it will cost more than 30,000 yuan to finish it. But now that we want to find a teacher, the boy can't use the money to build a house. For the old lady, it is okay to be able to fulfill a wish. I really don't understand in my heart, why such a poor village and such a poor family have to give birth to a boy? Is there a hereditary title, or is the ancestral treasure of the family afraid of falling into the hands of the son-in-law? At this time, two villagers passed by with hoes, and when they saw that the Zheng family was in the courtyard, they walked in and chatted. Of course, I couldn't understand what they were talking about, but it would be a shame to know that the Zheng family would definitely not tell me about inviting a mage.

I slept in the Westinghouse that night, next door to the old lady's bedroom. The wooden bed is very shabby, and the house seems to have not been inhabited for a long time, and it smells of dirt, but I used to spend the night in many of Azan's houses, and the conditions are similar to this house, so I don't think it is so bad. It's nothing more than a matter of sleeping overnight, as long as you have a bed. The weather is hot, and there seems to be no habit of installing screen windows in the summer in the south, and the windows are open for fear of blocking the wind. Yong helped me light two plates of mosquito coils in the house, and said a few words to me with a smile, as if he wanted to talk about something. But I really couldn't understand it, so he had to give up.

The next morning, I ate the same steamed chicken from last night, and I wondered that the Zheng family didn't have a refrigerator, so how to store the food on such a hot day? Throwing out questions to Ms. Huang, she smiled and said: "After heating it thoroughly, put the food in the cellar, and it won't spoil the next day." I nodded repeatedly.

At half past ten in the morning, Ms. Huang's husband, Mr. Zheng, returned to the village, and he looked very much like his younger brother Ah Yong, but he was taller, and he knew some Mandarin like Ms. Huang, so it was much easier to communicate. The five members of the Zheng family sat in the house and began to discuss, I didn't understand anyway, so I helped Ms. Huang play with her two daughters in the yard. My eldest daughter, who is three or four years old, asked her where she went to kindergarten, and she looked at me in confusion and spoke the Teochew dialect. I thought to myself, even if she could understand Mandarin, I am afraid she would not know what a kindergarten is.

In the end, the Zheng family discussed it and said that they thought I was a reliable businessman and could pay me a deposit of 10,000 yuan first, but I had better wait for the Thai master to come in the village, otherwise the family would not be able to feel at ease. I said it was all right, took out a bank card and handed it to Ms. Huang, and asked her to transfer the money to the card and bring me the slip. I will not leave the Zheng family until the Thai master enters the village.