Ruoping's roots are deeply rooted in the big mountain col on the edge of the primeval forest - Luxianggou.

Because she was born 2 minutes and 58 seconds later than Zhenping, Ruoping became Zhenping's twin sister, and they grew up in a bamboo hut by the stream. This is the wilderness of the field of hearts, and they have loved it all their lives. In Ruoping's childhood memories, with the unique conditions of nature, the family has never been cut off from cooking, but there is no extra money. She often had to follow her brother to the forest to pick mushrooms and dig wild vegetables.

After the rain, the forest is as clear as washing, and the fallen leaves accumulate on the damp ground, giving off a smell of decay. Patches of mushrooms popped up from the grass and tree stumps with great interest. If Apple pulls down the large mushrooms on the ground and throws them into the small basket on her shoulder, so that you can pick up so many mushrooms that you can fill a small basket in a few minutes, and you can also pick the mushroom cap and pick the fat ones. Ruoping poured all the mushrooms she had picked into two large bamboo baskets that Zhenping had picked up with a flat pole.

Zhenping carefully picks a bunch of mushrooms picked by his sister, because poisonous mushrooms are often mistaken for edible mushrooms. Zhenping remembered all the characteristics that the adults had given him to distinguish poisonous mushrooms. Some poisonous mushrooms resemble edible mushrooms and also grow on tree stumps. However, these poisonous mushrooms do not have collars under their caps, nor do they have scales on their caps. The poisonous mushroom cap is particularly bright in color, including bright yellow, pink, and light green, and has a very attractive appearance, trying its best to confuse those careless diners.

The appearance of white mushrooms is very good. Most of the mushrooms were still very small, their hats taut like a headband on a little doll's head, and a small white velvet scarf wrapped underneath. A few larger mushrooms will turn up at the brim of the hat to become a bowler hat with a large brim, and the scarf will become a doll collar. The entire cap is covered with small scales like tobacco. The color of the mushroom hat is very young and cute, and it is a pleasant and quiet hazel. The mushroom folds under the mushroom caps looked extremely simple and delicate in Ruoping's slender hands.

Nature is the greatest artist. Influenced by the pure natural environment, Ruoping and Zhenping occasionally like to pick up a few branches and write and draw on the fragrant dirt floor, without any rules. This situation lasted until Ruoping was 8 years old, when the village set up a Hope Primary School, and a young woman dressed in literature and art volunteered to teach in the mountains. It was only then that the siblings were truly exposed to books, paintings, and music, and the seeds of art took root in their hearts. In this poor rural area with inaccessibility, most of the people in the mountains have never seen the outside world, and the children cherish the rare but precious spiritual wealth that they can learn every day.

The entire Hope Primary School is divided into three classes: lower, middle, and upper, and the whole school gathers in one classroom. All classes are taught by only one teacher to the children in 3 classes, and the children all call her Ms. Satsuki. People always wonder why such an excellent girl would voluntarily give up the prosperity of the big city and come to teach in this poor ravine, and she said that it was because she liked the sky, streams, woods and air here, and there was no burden in the mood of living here.

Satsuki can play the guitar, and every quiet night when the mountain wind blows, Satsuki sits on a high haystack, and the children surround her excitedly. Xiao Yue's favorite song to play is "The Outside World", she flashed her pure eyes and sang to herself, "The outside world is wonderful, and the outside world is helpless." When you feel that the outside world is wonderful, I will be here to bless you from the bottom of my heart." A flowing white dress looked particularly ethereal in the soft moonlight, and in the eyes of this group of children, she looked like a moonlight fairy.

Ruoping regards Satsuki as her best friend, her parents have gone to work in the city, and only her grandparents and brother of the same age are left at home, and the life of left-behind children is lonely, and Ruoping confides in Satsuki about everything on her mind. Fortunately, Ruoping and Zhenping have always been excellent in their academic performance, and whenever they finish their schoolwork, they lie on the sand in the yard to draw and pass the time. A visit to their home by Satsuki untapped into their talents, and she gave them all the brushes, paints, and art papers she had used in the past, and occasionally gave them some guidance as much as she could.

The brother and sister relied on their imagination on the drawing paper, and only painting could bring them back to their inner peace. The stack of drawing paper that Xiao Yue gave was painted on both sides of the front and back. The meagre living expenses sent by their parents who worked hard to go out to work were pitiful, and the sensible brother and sister could not afford to buy pen and paper, so they imitated the ancients and painted on the ground. When there was no paint, Ruoping made her own with colorful flowers and powdered from stones, and even the water from gardenia seeds, and they painted one wonderful painting after another. The two siblings relied on this simple wild way, and did not miss any opportunity to practice painting, and went further and further on the road of painting. Happily, the addiction to painting did not affect their test scores, and Zhenping and Ruoping were still among the best in the county's key high schools.

When the arts and sciences were divided, they were puzzled, Zhenping was not biased, and he was very good at both history and physiology, but he felt that these were not his interests, and the most attractive thing for him was painting; Ruoping, on the other hand, is not good at science, her math often hovers around thirty or forty points, no matter how Zhenping explained it to her, she understood it at the time, and then she couldn't understand it after changing a question. As a result, they all wanted to transfer to the art class, but they were worried that it would affect their future employment, so they couldn't make up their minds for a while. They knew that they didn't know if such a question was thrown to the adults in the family, and in a hurry, Ruoping thought of Xiao Yue, maybe she could help them solve this puzzle.

Satsuki watched them grow up and even understood them better than their parents. She was also the only one in the entire village who encouraged them to keep drawing, and although there was nothing left to teach them with Satsuki's drawing skills, she never suppressed their imagination. Satsuki believes that to pursue your dreams, as long as you don't do bad things and don't go hungry, you can fight for what you want. She supported them to transfer to art classes, art majors are not more difficult to find employment than other majors, and they still have a lot of choices, as many of Satsuki's classmates have proved with their own experiences.

Without worries, the talents of the brother and sister began to unleash in the world of painting. Because they have no professional training, Ruoping and Zhenping's painting style is unrestrained, and their natural methods are their own. Ruoping's painting style is tactful and ethereal, and she can sketch a full composition with a casual brush, with bright colors, dense layers, and a unique girlish atmosphere. And Zhenping likes to paint the prodigal son of the ranger, the ink is swaying wantonly on rice paper, and the heroic atmosphere of the rivers and lakes is magnificent under his pen. They were born wild and could not be taught by teachers, but they unexpectedly won the municipal painting award, which attracted the special attention of the principal. The principal arranged for them to share their award-winning experience in front of all the teachers and students of the school, Ruoping was too shy to speak incoherently, Zhenping took the microphone and spoke their hearts for Ruoping: "People often say that painting is happy, but I think painting is like climbing a mountain, it takes a lot of preparation in the early stage, the mountain road is difficult, and the injury cannot be stopped, so in the end, it is almost a matter of will." But once you reach the top of the mountain, you will be touched beyond words. After Zhenping finished speaking, the whole school applauded, and their families and parents were proud of the two brothers.

However, everything in the world is endlessly changing, there are mountains beyond the mountains, and the road still continues. After unremitting efforts, Ruoping and Zhenping were admitted to the environmental art and design major of M University in Y City at the same time. The parents of the two siblings also took a day and a night train from the city where they worked to share the joy, after all, they were the only college students in the whole family. But after a short period of joy, the old couple began to frown, in order to provide for them to study in middle school these years, the family has almost emptied their savings, and the two old people have to buy medicine from time to time, and there is really no spare money for them to go to college. But the baby's future cannot be delayed, and after discussing with his wife, the father of the two brothers and sisters decided to grit their teeth and borrow from door to door. After the couple begged almost the whole village in a low voice, they only barely scraped together enough money for the first year of tuition and travel expenses for their two children. After knowing their difficult situation, Xiao Yue secretly went to the county town to become her own pair of gold earrings, and forced the money to be stuffed into them, which can be regarded as a piece of her heart. Tears rolled down her eyes, wetting the roll of bills with warm body temperature.

The night before leaving, Ruoping had insomnia, and she quietly ran out of the house and sat on the haystack in a daze. She saw a little starlight shining in the dark sky, and she couldn't believe that tomorrow she would have to walk out of this big ravine with her brother. Ruoping listened quietly, and it was quiet, and after a while, it seemed like a shadowy thing swept through the air in an instant. A soft, intermittent whistling sound came from afar, echoing faintly in the vast night. When Apple looked closely, it turned out to be a black cat, and she jumped onto the treetops, swaying the shadows of the trees from near and far.

Only then did she realize that the tree next to the bamboo house had grown to the height of a four-story building, and there were two trees planted next to her house, one was a ginkgo tree and the other was an old elm tree. I remember that in the days when the old elm tree was full of strings of elm money, she and Zhenping would always look at the tree with their eyes, and the happy things in the eyes of children were often as simple as a bowl of elm money. The agile Zhenping climbed the tree in a few clicks, and he handed the young elm leaves he had picked to Ruoping, who lifted up her coat and grabbed a large handful of elm leaves. In spring, the most difficult season of the year, elm money, mushrooms, bamboo shoots and wild vegetables are nature's best gifts to human beings, and too many people have survived because of these wild games that first sprout in spring.

Sweet, crisp and tender, with a moderate water content, without any strange smell or taste, it can be paired with any grain and side dish seasoning, so it has become everyone's favorite and easiest food. Yuqian is small, and it is easier to hide dust and gravel than vegetables, and grandma usually has to wash it by the creek more than 4 times in order to cook Yuqian rice for the family. Then drain the water, put it in the bamboo tube, mix with corn flour, this large bucket of elm money rice, the amount of corn flour used is only a small wooden bowl, with the amount of corn flour and elm money to compare, about 1:9 ratio, is really saving grain. Grandma carefully mixed with bamboo chopsticks, the appearance of each piece of elm money was covered with corn flour, because of the excess water drained in advance, and the poor viscosity of corn flour, the corn flour was wrapped extremely thinly, and the golden coat showed the tender green of the elm money, and the two brothers and sisters looked at the saliva flow. Zhenping went outside the house and picked up a bundle of freshly chopped firewood, and put a large bucket of elm money rice into the steamer to steam it slowly. With some soy tofu and chili oil, the family ate their stomachs to their full, and also took some and distributed them to their neighbors.

Looking back on those days, how vivid they are. As the mountain breeze cooled, Ruoping gathered her thin clothes, yawned profusely, and went into the house to sleep. In the early morning of the next day, when the rooster had only crowed, the adults of the family called out to the brother and sister, the luggage had already been ordered, and the two embarked on the journey with everyone's expectations of them.

The red wild fruits on the roadside were ripe, and they grew on the peat mounds, and the berries lay on the soft moss, surrounded by small green leaves. The berries could be seen from a distance, and Ruoping naughtily wanted to pick some, but she was afraid that she would miss the car. From here to report to school, they first have to walk an hour's mountain road to the county seat to catch a car, and then transfer to a train to reach the city where they will live for the next four years. A flock of migratory birds are reluctant to leave their birthplace, and the twin siblings are just as winged as the winged travelers.

All the fathers and villagers gathered around the side of the road to see them off, and Ruoping saw Xiaoyue standing in the crowd wrapped in a red scarf to see them off from a distance, she was so eye-catching, Ruoping couldn't help but feel the tip of her nose sour when she thought that she couldn't meet and chat with Xiaoyue often in the future. However, according to the rules of the village, it is unlucky to go out to cry, so Ruoping had to hold back her tears and cheer up to say goodbye to the villagers one by one. The father and mother of the brother and sister and their grandparents were beaming at the envious and admiring gaze of the people, and even their hair raised their eyebrows.

The two men had been jolting in the car for nearly a day before they reached the train station, and soon after they squeezed into the carriage, the train rumbled and started, and the smoke of the cooking stove over the village gradually blurred in their minds, and the sunset stained the western sky red......