Pei Congyue: If you have the ability, you must help those in need

In Mucun, Xinle City, almost everyone knows the names of the sisters Pei Congyue and Pei Yueran. When the sisters were young, their parents divorced and their father went blind, and they held up a family with their young hands. Even more admirable is that the sisters not only supported themselves in life, but also studied diligently and achieved excellent grades. Soon, the elder sister Pei Congyue will attend Shijiazhuang Tiedao University to study Engineering Mechanics, and her greatest wish now is to find a good job after graduation so that her father and younger sister can live a better life.

Pei Congyue is about 1.6 m tall, wears glasses, and looks very quiet, speaking shyly. The yard is full of cucumbers, carrots and other vegetables planted by her and her sister themselves. The two adobe houses look very dilapidated due to years of neglect, and after the continuous heavy rain some time ago, the roof leaks very seriously. Pei Congyue said that every time it rains, she has to dig some soil and climb onto the roof to patch it. Pei Congyue's room is connected to the kitchen, and much of the wall plaster has fallen off because of years of dampness. The table and chairs by the kang were donated by kind people, for Pei Congyue and her sister to study at.

As the saying goes, the children of the poor take charge early. When Pei Congyue was 11, her parents divorced for various reasons, and she voluntarily stayed to take care of her father. Her younger sister Pei Yueran, who is two years younger, was taken away by their mother, but within a few days, because she missed her father and sister so much, the younger sister ran back home again. Their mother was gone, their father was blind, and their younger sister was too young, so the work of washing clothes, cooking and cleaning naturally fell to little Congyue. She got up early and went to bed late every day, holding up a home with her young hands for her blind father and young sister. "At home, it's just tidying things and cooking. My sister and I are both grown up now, so we take turns doing it," Pei Congyue said. To save money, the sisters, under their father's guidance, opened up a vegetable plot in their own yard, planting green beans, cucumbers, eggplants and rape in spring; in autumn, they planted cabbage and radishes. With this vegetable garden, the family's vegetables could be eaten from spring until Frost's Descent. "Now the family's farmland has been rented out, and every year they give us wheat, plus some subsidies, so life is still all right." Although they have the minimum living allowance, the pressure of life is still great. To earn money for household expenses, during every holiday they go to nearby villages to set up a stall selling balloons. The hardest time is winter, when the sisters shiver in the cold wind in thin old cotton-padded clothes.

This summer vacation, Congyue and Yueran, as in previous years, are also working at a village enterprise to earn the next semester's tuition and living expenses. "Usually I work at the electric blanket factory in the village, mainly checking the electric blanket wires to see whether they are neat or not. I've done it for three years," Congyue said. Her younger sister began working in the summer vacation of the year she graduated from the sixth grade of primary school. "It has been like this until now, working every year, and it's usually for a whole summer vacation."

"When you go, do they just let you work?" In response to the reporter's question, Congyue said that because they were young, at first the people there were not willing. "We told them to let us try first, and maybe because they saw it was quite hard for us, they let us work." The younger sister Yueran told the reporter that the factory pays the sisters by the day. "Last year I earned more than 1,700 yuan by myself."

In this difficult family environment, the two sisters persisted in studying late into the night every day. In the sisters' room, there is not a single decent piece of furniture, but books are placed everywhere, and a simple desk and a 15-watt incandescent lamp accompany them every day as they study late into the night. "The teacher always says that studying can change your destiny, so I just think about studying hard so that when I grow up I can improve the family's situation." In Pei Congyue's view, studying is actually quite enjoyable. "Take senior year of high school, for example. That year, test papers and questions kept being handed out nonstop, but I never once thought of not wanting to study. The more I studied, the more energetic I felt, and when I solved a problem I felt happy inside."

This year, the elder sister Pei Congyue was admitted to Shijiazhuang Tiedao University with an excellent college entrance examination score, and the younger sister Pei Yueran is in her second year of high school at Xinle No. 1 Middle School and also has excellent grades. Pei Congyue said that with a college entrance examination score of 575, she could have had many choices, but she resolutely chose a school in the provincial capital just to be closer to home and make it easier to care for her father and sister. "I want my father and sister to be safe and sound, healthy, and to make progress in their studies every day." Pei Congyue also hopes to find a good job after graduation and for everything to get better and better. "When I have the ability, I will definitely help those in need and keep passing this love on." (Reporter Cui Hong)