Chapter 106: Chapter 106: The struggle of a young mountain boy
Feng Yiping was like a fish in water at school. No one mentioned the fact that he had taken four and a half days off work and another day and a half of unauthorised absence after he returned to school.
There was nothing he could do about it. In this day and age, having money doesn't necessarily mean you can be selfish. But at school, as long as you get good grades, you can be as selfish as you like.
After spending two or three days catching up on his studies, Feng Yiping started messing around with the new camera he had brought back.
Later, people who played with photography either needed it for their profession or were rich people. Feng Yiping was neither, so he just followed the trend and bought some DVs and cameras, most of which were RB goods. However, as the camera functions in mobile phones became better and better, those things stayed in the drawer most of the time.
As for high-end goods like Leica, he had only heard of them but had never seen them. He might have seen them before but had no impression. Now that he had them in his hands, he knew that there were really some reasons why they were expensive.
Not to mention the optical lens, which is a weakness of our country, or industrial design, which is a field of study that has yet to take off in China. Just in terms of the processing of metal parts, the gap is extremely wide.
In such a remote mountainous area, taking photos was still considered a big deal. There was only one photo studio in the entire town, and even fewer cameras. In the entire school, only the principal had a Phoenix camera.
So Feng Yiping's show-off trip quickly turned into a money-spending trip. From the teacher to the classmates, everyone wanted to be photographed. In just a few days, they used up three of the five films he brought back, and the homeroom teacher and his family had more than ten photos taken of them.
The old saying is right: there are always two sides to everything.
The camera was really well made, for example, it didn't even make a sound when the shutter was pressed, which had an unfortunate result: the people didn't hear the familiar 'click' sound and kept posing for the camera.
While directing them to strike a pose, Feng Yiping pressed the silent shutter with a heavy heart – film was not cheap these days!
After waiting until he had found out the price of developing photos, he even had the idea of buying something and developing it himself. There was no choice, developing photos was expensive now!
But it seems that in the photography industry, some awesome masters can sell a bunch of money for a single photo. This is also a way to go, isn't it? Can you develop in this direction?
Apart from taking pictures as a hobby, studying is still as boring and intense as ever. Nowadays, before and after morning and evening study sessions every day, many students have already lit candles and gone to the classroom to study. They really get up earlier than the rooster and sleep later than a dog.
Wang Changning is the same. Every day at 5:30, the light in his room will come on. First, he goes to the kitchen to cook congee, then he recites Chinese, political science and English. Sometimes, he is so angry that Feng Yiping still gets up on time that he goes to Feng's room on purpose and reads aloud to disturb him.
One morning, the two of them went crazy and got up at 5:30 and headed straight for school.
It was still dark, and with their average 1.5 eyesight, they could only see a few metres ahead. But there were no other people on the road, not even a dog, and the road belonged entirely to the two of them. They could safely and boldly ride their bikes across the road.
It is now at the end of late autumn, a little cool, and the leaves on the trees have almost all fallen, leaving the branches above clean and fresh, but inevitably a little lonely. Occasionally, an autumn insect in the dry grass by the roadside seems to proclaim its existence with a clear cry.
Not a single light is on in the teachers' building, which looks dark and gloomy. In the classrooms of the second and third grades, however, the flickering candlelight is already visible on the window panes.
Feng Yiping takes a quick look around. At least two-thirds of the seats in the two third grade classrooms are occupied. In the second grade, nearly half of the students are already in the classroom. Only the three first grade classrooms are relatively carefree at the moment, as they are still sleeping and the classrooms are empty.
In the flickering candlelight, everyone was reading quietly with their heads bowed. Some were simply reciting silently without making a sound at all. In several classrooms, not even a loud cough could be heard. Three metres away from the classroom, you couldn't hear any sound at all. Only when you walked in could you hear a low hum.
This humming sound is very similar to the sound of the monks chanting morning and evening prayers that Feng Yiping heard from several blocks away during his trip to XZ. Feng Yiping felt that, like the monks' chanting, this sound was also almost devout, exuding an aura and a kind of power.
He suddenly really wanted to film this scene.
No matter how many of those in the classroom now really feel that time is running out and they need to get up early to study hard, and how many are just going along with the crowd, and some may also have just got up early on a whim, what is certain is that in a few years' time, most of them will join the tide of people heading south to work as migrant workers.
From then on, they will be called "migrant workers" and, like migratory birds, they will travel between their hometowns and the south every year.
Most of the girls will marry someone else in a few years' time, either going to work in the south with their husbands or staying behind to look after the elderly and children. They will grow old year after year. When they send their children to school, they will probably regret not studying hard enough when they were young.
Therefore, if we judge people by their achievements, most of them will certainly not be as good as their urban peers in the future. But at least for now, these teenage mountain boys deserve the admiration of most of their urban peers.
Although the weather is getting cooler, Feng Yiping and the other two now eat meals not in the classroom, but either in the corridor or in a less crowded place around the kitchen. It's not that they are stingy, except for Feng Wen, who has a thick skin and often comes to pick up a few chopsticks, no other students will come and disturb them.
There was nothing they could do about it. The other students were eating pickled vegetables, but the three of them were eating fresh vegetables that had been poured out of a thermos and were still hot, which made them the target of everyone's hatred.
They were actually quite embarrassed about their situation. Sometimes, they felt as if they were hiding when they ate, for fear that the contents of their bowls would irritate the other students.
This situation cannot be improved at the school, nor can Feng Yiping change it. He cannot provide so many resources at the moment. It seems that it will be many years before the Free Lunch Project is launched in society, and students at that time will not have to eat pickled vegetables all the time.
Feng Yiping is not used to the fact that he has inadvertently become a small group independent of most of his classmates. Therefore, he often makes an excuse to go to Wang Yumin's house and eat with them.
We all like to chat while we eat. He and Teacher Zhu get along well, and Teacher Zhu likes to talk with a student like him, who often has strange ideas.
But these past two days, it's not been a good place to go. The day before yesterday, when they were chatting, Teacher Zhu asked him, 'What do you think the common ground is between a photograph and a painting?'
He casually said, 'It's just about playing with light and shadow and lines.'
That careless attitude, thinking that there's really nothing to it, instantly angered Teacher Zhu.
Afterwards, Feng Yiping learned that offending a seemingly generous man is worse than offending a woman known for her stinginess. It is not good enough to just avoid him at home; even if you meet him on the street, he will always find something to mock you about.
So, men in menopause, don't offend them!
Before he could finish eating, he saw Zhang Qiuling coming from afar, skipping and jumping. He and Xiao Zhijie blocked her way. Looking at Feng Yiping's smiling face, Zhang Qiuling felt a little uneasy and subconsciously leaned towards Xiao Zhijie. 'Feng Yiping, what do you want?'
'Please do me a favour and discuss it with the headmaster. Now that so many students are studying hard every morning and evening, they have to read by candlelight, which is bad for their eyes. Can they turn on the lights?'
I don't know what Zhang Qiuling told her father, but two days later, the school announced that during morning and evening study hours, if more than half of the students in the classroom were studying, they would be allowed to turn on the lights.