Yunnan Sent-Down Youth

  After the footsteps of the peasants faded away, Lin Zhenhua squatted down and asked the little thief who was still holding his head: "How is it, brother, can you get up?"

  The thief slowly released his hands from his head and sat up slowly. With the light of Yang Chunshan's flashlight, Lin Zhenhua could see that as the thief sat up, the muscles on his face twitched constantly, obviously in great pain where he had been hit. However, he gritted his teeth and did not make a sound.

  "Thank you, two brothers." The thief took a breath and nodded his head to Yang Chunshan and Lin Zhenhua. He knew that if it weren't for these two intervening, he would have been beaten even more severely.

  Lin Zhenhua carefully observed the young thief, who was about 17 or 18 years old. His face still had a childish appearance, but his complexion was pale and thin, with unkempt hair that seemed to have not been washed for a long time. The clothes on his body were patched up multiple times, revealing an impoverished family background. However, Lin Zhenhua did not see any signs of shame or fear on the young thief's face, nor was there any hint of resentment. It seemed as though he thought stealing was a matter of course, and being beaten by others was also a normal occurrence. When facing his two saviors, the young thief merely expressed a faint "thank you", as if he had lost all human emotions on his body.

  "Why steal things?" Lin Zhenhua asked again.

  "I'm hungry." The thief replied with two words, he felt around and found the half radish that the farmer had thrown away earlier, picked it up, wiped it with his sleeve, and hastily took a bite.

  "Come on, Little Hua," Yang Chunshan said to Lin Zhenhua. As for a thief, he could only save him from the peasants' hands; other things were none of his business. If Lin Zhenhua hadn't been present at that time, Yang Chunshan wouldn't have even bothered with this much.

  "Alright." Lin Zhenhua nodded and asked the thief with concern: "Brother, are you really okay? Can you get home by yourself?"

  "It's nothing, big brother." The thief replied, and as soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly turned his face to one side and spat out a mouthful of clear water. Having eaten half a radish on an empty stomach, his stomach was now churning like a stormy sea.

  Lin Zhenhua suddenly felt a pang of sympathy, and he remembered that he still had two pieces of rice cake in his pocket that he had taken from Director Mao to bring back for Xiaofang to eat. He took them out and handed them over to the thief: "Brother, when you're hungry, don't eat raw turnips. Here are two pieces of rice cake, take them."

  The thief was taken aback, stretched out his hand to take the rice cake, opened the paper package, and a fragrance wafted up. This kind of rice cake is made by farmers in the countryside using green vegetables and glutinous rice together, and when eaten, it's pan-fried with tea oil, extremely fragrant. The thief didn't stand on ceremony either; he picked up a rice cake and wolfed it down in three bites, his eyes regaining their vitality, no longer having that apathetic look from before.

  "Hey, you're so young, you should be doing something with your life, how can you steal?" Yang Chunshan also squatted down and spoke to the thief in a tone of an elder. Seeing Lin Zhenhua give food to the thief to eat, he didn't hurry to leave either, and instead chatted with the thief for a bit.

  "I'm an undocumented person, I don't have a job," said the thief.

  "What about your household registration?" Yang Chunshan asked.

  "I'm a sent-down youth, my household registration is in Yunnan, I ran back." said the thief.

  Lin Zhenhua knew a bit about the Yunnan zhiqing. Starting from 1968, Yunnan's agricultural reclamation system had been receiving and resettling educated youth from various places, with a total of over 100,000 people accepted, mainly from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Kunming and other cities. The zhiqing from Jiangnan Province were not originally assigned to Yunnan, but one year, a leader in Jiangnan Province suddenly had an unusual idea and sent some of that year's zhiqing to Yunnan as well. It seems that Lan Wufeng was one of the unlucky experimental products of that batch. According to the time, when Lan Wufeng went, he should have been only 14 or 15 years old, just graduated from junior high school.

  In later generations, Yunnan zhiqing is a very famous group. The reason for this is that a large number of cultural celebrities such as Wang Xiaobo, Ah Cheng and Chen Kaige were born among the Yunnan zhiqing. Secondly, it was in Yunnan that the massive return to the cities of the zhiqing began. In late 1978, due to the death of a female zhiqing in a medical matter, the Yunnan zhiqing lay down on the tracks and blocked trains heading for Beijing to file a complaint, which eventually led to a bloody petition to the central government, prompting a change in the policy towards the zhiqing, allowing millions of them across the country to return to the cities.

  The turmoil of the educated youth returning to the city first occurred in Yunnan, and there were specific reasons for this. The living environment of the educated youth in Yunnan was extremely poor, exceeding the bottom line that young people could bear.

  Of course, there is another legend about Yunnan's educated youth that people love to talk about, which we will mention later.

  "There is a policy from the central government, and the educated youth have already started returning to the city. Actually, you don't need to escape," said Yang Chunshan.

  "I was the one who ran back last year. At that time, my mother's body was ill and no one took care of her. I wanted to ask for leave but it wasn't possible, so I had to sneak back. Now my household registration and file are all gone, and even if I want to do something, there is nowhere to accept me."

  "Isn't there anyone else in your family?" Lin Zhenhua asked.

  "My dad died young, it was a work-related injury, I was only three years old at that time, and I'm an only child."

  "Oh." Yang Chunshan responded lightly, unable to help but turn his head to glance at Lin Zhenhua. Lin Zhenhua's parents had also died from work-related injuries, but Lin Zhenhua's fate was better than this thief's, mainly because his parents' factory was large and prosperous, and they gave more generous compensation to the families of the deceased.

  "Isn't being an only child a way of not having to go to the countryside as a youth?" Yang Chunshan asked skeptically.

  Lan Wufeng smiled faintly: "This is just a policy, whether or not to go, isn't it up to the officials' words?"

  Lin Zhenhua suddenly felt a little sympathetic towards the thief, and he continued to ask: "Then how do you and your mother make a living?"

  "My dad's unit gave my mom a monthly allowance of 10 yuan, and she used to do temporary work to raise me. Last year, she got sick and couldn't do the temporary work anymore, so now my mom and I rely on this 10 yuan per month to survive."

  "Living on just 10 yuan?" Lin Zhenhua was shocked.

  The thief flashed a self-deprecating smile: "Just relying on this 10 yuan, of course I couldn't make a living. I had to tell my mom that I could go out and do some odd jobs to earn some money."

  "What's your job?"

  The thief smiled but didn't speak, his smile revealing a hint of self-mockery. Lin Zhenhua understood; what he called "small work" was actually stealing things.

  "I was caught by the police station more than a dozen times, and every time I went in, they locked me up for two hours and then let me out. The police also knew about my family situation, if they detained me, even if my mother didn't die from illness, she would have starved to death. Sometimes when I got caught stealing, it was like this, a beating, and sometimes the beatings were worse than this." The thief spoke as if he was talking about someone else's affairs, in a calm and flat tone.

  "What's your name?"

  "My name is Lan Wufeng, when I was sent to the countryside, everyone called me Fengzi."

  "Madman?" Lin Zhenhua didn't react, "What does it mean?"

  Lan Wufeng corrected him, "It's the 'Feng' in my name, as in mountain peak. However, after being called that for so long, I can no longer tell which 'Feng' it is, you might as well call me a madman."

  "Why?"

  "I fought fiercely and dared to fight to the death, so my friends at the youth point called me a madman. Actually, if I really wanted to fight, those few old villagers couldn't stop me earlier. However, I stole their things, they hit me is justified, I couldn't fight back."

  "There's a way of being a thief." Lin Zhenhua suddenly thought of this sentence for some reason.

  "What is called 'theft also has its own way'." Lan Wufeng asked.

  "It means that even if you're a thief, there's still a moral standard for thieves, what should be done and what shouldn't. When being a thief isn't considered shameful, what's shameful is not following the rules of being a thief. You can think that getting beaten after stealing something means you're a thief who strictly follows the rules."

  Lin Zhenhua's words were quite shocking and unconventional at that time. In those days, people only evaluated others as either good or bad, with no middle ground. However, in later generations, people's understanding of the world became more diversified, and they developed new standards for evaluating various things. Lin Zhenhua remembered a popular online joke: A prostitute told a corrupt official, "Although I sell my body, at least I'm selling something that belongs to me; I'm cleaner than you."

  "There is a way of thievery……" Lan Wufeng muttered to himself, unable to help but sink into thought. For over a year now, he had grown accustomed to the insults and ridicule from others, and had long since given up on his own fate. If it weren't for his ailing mother, perhaps he would have chosen an even more absurd path of no return. Yet, this young man standing before him, only one or two years older than himself, kept calling him "brother" and spoke words that made sense - "there is a way of thievery". Of course, Lin Zhenhua's "way" referred to morality, but in Lan Wufeng's heart, he thought of another word: righteousness.

  "Alright, finish your food and head back home early, don't worry your mother." Lin Zhenhua said, he dug into his pocket again, pulled out the two dollars he had just earned, and stuffed them into Lan Wufeng's hand. "Take it, buy some nutritious food for your mother. My name is Lin Zhenhua, I'm from Hanhua Machinery Factory, if you're really struggling, come find me at the factory."

  Lan Wufeng took the money without refusing or saying thank you. His cultural level was not high, and he didn't know that there were such elegant sayings as "great kindness doesn't need to be thanked" in the world, but he also knew that saying thank you at this time was really too light.

  "Brother Lin, my home is at Lu's Alley 16, if you have anything for me to do, just give the order, I'm willing to risk my life." Lan Wufeng promised solemnly. Now he has nothing but his own worthless life, and the only way to repay Lin Zhenhua is by risking his life.

  Lin Zhenhua looked at Lan Wufeng's childish face, listened to this promise full of vicissitudes, and didn't feel a little moved. He patted Lan Wufeng's shoulder and said: "I don't have anything for you to do now, but I hope you won't do such things in the future, change to some proper things to do."

  "Doing the right thing is not that easy." Lan Wufeng sighed, "Actually, my mom also knew I was stealing outside. At first, she beat me, and later she could only hold me and cry. I wanted to promise her that I would never do it again, but I couldn't. If I didn't do this, the whole family would starve to death. I couldn't bear to let my mom starve to death, and my mom couldn't bear to let me starve to death."

  Lin Zhenhua said: "Fengzi, you go home first. In a few days, when I'm free, I'll come to find you, and we can discuss it then, see if there's any way to make some clean money."

  "Thank you, big brother." Lan Wufeng made a fist and cupped his other hand over it in a gesture of respect, thanking Lin Zhenhua with the etiquette of the Jianghu.