NongxunNET Reader Submission: Real Voices from the Frontlines of the Fields

Literature is like a rare and delicate potted plant that cannot withstand wind and rain. When it first breaks through the soil and sprouts, you feel its extraordinary strength and boundless vitality, and all who admire it marvel at such a tender yet vibrant life. But as time flows on, the tender sprout gradually grows, and it needs more and more fertilizer and sunlight to thrive. Yet at this very time, the owner who cares for it is forced by life's circumstances to leave it behind for a while.

It falls into a desperate situation of being ignored by everyone, but it still struggles to stay alive. It tries to reduce its consumption, strains its body toward the sunlight, survives by absorbing rainwater, and lets weeds and small insects invade its body. It lives on at any cost! Living, waiting for its owner's return. Finally one day, the door handle, wrapped several times around by spiderwebs, is turned by someone. In the creaking sound of the door opening, the owner's face slowly appears. The owner, full of excitement, crosses the living room, passes through the hallway, and hastily opens the door to the greenhouse, his mind fixed on the appearance of that rare potted plant. But when he sees the potted plant, he is utterly disappointed.

It is no longer the peerless, renowned beauty that everyone admired, the one of a kind in the hundred-flower garden. Instead, it has become a twisted, filthy, ugly and grotesque inferior variety. The owner howls at the sky, complaining about why the flower he had always cherished and longed for, eagerly awaited, had deteriorated into such a state. At this moment, the potted plant, using its last shred of strength, turns its broken, trembling flower stem around to face its owner, as if to say: You've finally come back! After making this final movement, the potted plant withers and dies, leaving the heartbroken owner standing alone in the greenhouse. He is filled with such rage that he nearly goes mad! In the end, he slams the door and leaves.

After that, he still grows flowers, but never again could any one be as vivid as that one, nor could any pot truly enter his heart.