The Father in the Corner is a good article that moves thousands to tears

By Li Yu

Helping my fellow townsman Dajiang move. While sorting through a pile of old books, Dajiang squatted on the ground and began to sob loudly.

What Dajiang opened was a notebook, on which daily expenses were recorded, one entry at a time, down to a one-yuan breakfast and a three-yuan lunch. A little later, Dajiang told me a story about him and his father.

Dajiang's home was in a village in the countryside of Xuzhou. In his memory, his father had always worked odd jobs near Xuzhou Railway Station and rarely came home.

When Dajiang was admitted to a university in Xi'an, his father took out a bundle of money from the bank, moistened his fingers with saliva and counted one bill at a time, counting them over and over again.

In his freshman year, Dajiang became addicted to online games and often spent entire nights at internet cafes off campus. Although he felt he was somewhat wasting his time, the classmates around him were much the same, either playing ball, watching movies or going online to play games, so Dajiang let it go.

When he went home for summer vacation, Dajiang stayed in the village for a few days and felt extremely bored, so he nervously asked his father if he could go stay with him for a few days. At least there would be internet cafes there! To his surprise, his father agreed, for the first time ever.

From a distance, Dajiang saw his father waiting at the exit of the railway station. After a year of university life, Dajiang felt for the first time that his father stood out so sharply in the crowd - his clothes were worn and so loose that they did not quite fit. He reminded his father that the clothes were too old. His father said, I do manual labor, I don't sit in an office, why would I wear something so new? He also said, but they're also too big. His father said again, if the clothes are a bit bigger, I can stretch my arms and legs when I work, otherwise as soon as I reach out, the clothes tear.

What Dajiang had never expected was that in 2003, his father, who already earned more than four thousand yuan a month, was actually living in the attic of a civilian house, only six or seven square meters. Besides an iron-frame bed, there was a wooden stand for a washbasin, and on that enamel basin, chipped in many places, hung an old towel whose original color could no longer be told... Dajiang had always thought that his father lived quite comfortably in the city, and never imagined it was so hard.

His father brought Dajiang back to the place where he lived and said, "You sit here, I have to go work." With that, he went thud-thud-thud down the stairs and left. Dajiang could not sit still, so he quietly closed the door, went downstairs and followed behind his father. He wanted to see what his father did.

After many twists and turns, Dajiang followed his father to the Xuzhou cold storage. More than ten people similar to his father had gathered there, some pushing carts, some carrying shoulder poles. Dajiang saw his father wheel out his own handcart from the guard's place. Just then, a large truck entered the yard, and his father and the others crowded in after the vehicle.

A few minutes later, Dajiang saw his father, bent at the waist and carrying a large cardboard box. After a few steps, he stopped, wiped the sweat from his forehead with the towel tied at his wrist, then walked a few more steps and put the cardboard box on his back onto the handcart, then rushed back toward the large truck, and a few seconds later came back bent at the waist carrying another cardboard box.

After repeating this seven times, his father pushed the cart toward the cold storage, bent at the waist, legs straining hard, and from several dozen meters away Dajiang could even see the blue veins on his father's legs.

So his father earned money with blood and sweat! Dajiang was filled with sorrow. He asked the guard how much one could earn for moving a load of goods. The guard told him, five mao per box. Dajiang calculated in his heart: his father had moved seven boxes at once, earning three yuan and five mao.

Dajiang went home that very afternoon. He no longer thought about going online, and before his eyes always hovered his father's legs with their bulging blue veins. He also did the math on how much of his father's sweat he had wasted in internet cafes.

When Dajiang returned to school, his father again took a thick stack of money out of the bank, counted it over and over, and handed it to Dajiang. Dajiang counted it and said, "This semester is short, two thousand is enough." With that, he divided out half and left it for his father. That day, Dajiang made up his mind to be a good son and a good student.

But this resolve of his quickly became a thing of the past. When those old playmates again shouted for him to go to the internet cafe, and when he consciously or unconsciously saw the pattern of the Warcraft game, he could never keep the restlessness in his heart from stirring. In the end, he walked into the internet cafe once again.

During National Day, his roommates organized a trip to sing karaoke, go to bars and even take a sauna. The two thousand yuan he had brought from home was gone by the end of October.

Dajiang called his mother and said that he had been ill some time ago and that the money he had brought was all spent.

On the afternoon of the third day, the temperature in Xi'an suddenly dropped. Dajiang, who was playing cards with classmates in the dormitory, received a call saying someone was looking for him at the school gate. Dajiang ran to the school gate and saw his father. His father, over fifty, looked like a seventy-year-old man, doddering, his face full of exhaustion, with a quilt of cotton wadding on his back. Dajiang brought his father into the campus and only then asked him softly, "Why did you come? I left Mom the account number, you could just have deposited the money into that card. You came all this way and even carried this thing, it's hard work and a waste of money."

His father smiled at him ingratiatingly and said, "I heard from your mother that you were sick a while ago. How are you now, better? You need to eat well and take good care of yourself. Don't worry about living expenses. As long as you can build a strong body and get good grades, no matter how much the living expenses are, your dad can afford it. It's getting cold, and this is a cotton quilt your mother made for you from cotton she grew herself." Dajiang stammered, "It's... already... better..."

On the way to the teaching building, his father said, "Seeing that you're doing well, I can set my mind at ease. I'll give you the living expenses and then go back. I won't disturb you." Dajiang took the money his father handed over and was just about to suggest taking his father to the school guesthouse to stay when his father spoke again, "Winter vacation is in another two months, right? This time I brought you three thousand yuan. You've just been sick, so you need to eat well and build yourself up, only then will you have the energy to study well." His father stopped walking. "You go back!"

Dajiang knew his father's temper and said no more. He had not gone far when he turned back and found his father still standing in the same place, waving to him. He remembered how, during high school, every time his father saw him off to the school in the county town, it was this same scene, and tears filled his eyes.

His shrunken wallet finally swelled again, and Warcraft, unseen for a week, was calling to Dajiang once more. After dinner, Dajiang went again to the internet cafe off campus. After five hours of fierce fighting, Dajiang was about to return to the dormitory. As usual, he came again to a large banyan tree off campus and climbed over the wall into the school from there.

At the very moment he climbed onto the top of the wall, his heart suddenly ached! The dim yellow streetlight shone on his father, who was huddled in that corner of the wall, with a piece of broken cardboard of unknown origin spread under him. At that moment, he was wrapping his cotton-padded coat around himself again and again, while the scarf Dajiang had worn in high school was wrapped tightly around his father's head.

When Dajiang got to this point, he could not help but burst into loud sobs again. After crying for a while, Dajiang went on, "Later my mother told me that when my dad heard I was sick, he insisted on coming to see me no matter what. He couldn't get a seat ticket and couldn't bear to buy a sleeper, so he stood for more than twenty hours to get to Xi'an. To save money on lodging, he squatted for a night at the corner of our school wall... I cried on my end of the phone. Before my mother told me, I had always pretended not to know. Because I knew how stubborn my father is. Even if I had woken him then, he would have insisted on staying there. I quietly went back to the dormitory, but my heart kept aching. Thinking of the way he wrapped his clothes tightly around himself, my heart hurt. That night I deleted all my game accounts.

From then on, I never entered an internet cafe again and never wasted a single cent. And it was from that day that I prepared this account book and began little by little to make up for the schoolwork I had fallen behind on."

"I used to think it was because he had bad luck and no fortune to enjoy life. After that incident, I realized it wasn't that he had no fortune, but that he was used to giving all enjoyment to his son..."

"He started working at that cold storage when he was seventeen and kept at it until last spring." Dajiang could not go on.

I know that Dajiang's father passed away last spring and left Dajiang savings of three hundred seventy thousand yuan.

Dajiang's father is the epitome of many impoverished fathers, with a deep and selfless love. Fortunately, his child saw the father in the corner, and I know that many children cannot imagine and cannot see the love in the corner.

In fear, a father's love is a stepping stone;

In darkness, a father's love is a lamp that gives light;

When dried up, a father's love is a bay of the water of life;

In effort, a father's love is a spiritual pillar;

In success, a father's love is both encouragement and a warning bell.

Father is like this, our timely rain, our charcoal in the snow. Though he does not stay by our side as often as mother does, he can always hold up a patch of blue sky for us at the critical moment!

Wonderful content