"Is this No. 172 Fengshen Avenue?" Lin Bao asked Yang Fan in the junior high school campus where the teaching buildings and school buildings still looked brand new.
The junior high and primary school campuses in the mountains are not as closed as those in the city.
Even during classes, outsiders are allowed to enter and exit.
Even during the harvest season, many people took their crops to the school playground to dry them in the sun.
"No." After taking a closer look, Yang Fan shook his head: "Record a few shots, and then we'll go find No. 172 Fengshen Avenue."
But when Yang Fan and Lin Bao took out the camera and started filming, someone from the school ran over and said in an unfriendly tone: "You are not welcome here, please get out!"
"We're not interviewing anyone, we're just taking a few shots." Yang Fan explained to the visitor.
"That won't work either. Please don't disturb us if you mean well." The expression on the visitor's face was not very natural.
"You just go to your class, we are not disturbing you." Lin Bao was very unhappy. He knew that the good intention was not appreciated and instead he drove people away.
"No means no. If you keep making trouble, I will call people and prevent you from leaving town." The man became strong and aggressive.
Yang Fan didn't say much, put away the camera, and pulled Lin Bao out of the school.
"What's going on in this school?" Lin Bao was very puzzled. The incident involving that girl a few years ago had caused quite a stir on the Internet.
But it soon disappeared, and Lin Bao didn't pay much attention to what was happening on the Internet at that time, so he didn't know much about it.
"Maybe the people here think it's a shame." Yang Fan got in the car and asked the driver to leave.
The driver quickly started the car and left the town, continuing to move deeper into the mountains.
The girl's home was not in the town, but in a small village deeper in the mountains.
The small mountain village is not small, and there are still dozens of households.
After arriving at the entrance of the village, Yang Fan took a look and estimated that there might be hundreds of households.
The more backward the place, the higher the fertility rate.
There are actually quite a few adobe houses and thatched houses here, which makes Yang Fan feel uncomfortable.
No wonder Feng Girl was determined to change the appearance and backwardness of her hometown.
It takes ten years to grow a tree, and a hundred years to cultivate a person.
After she got out, she understood this principle, so from the age of fifteen, she used all the money she earned to support the village primary school.
After she turned seventeen, she even started supporting junior high schools in the town.
In fact, she dropped out of school before she even graduated from junior high school and went out to work.
Yang Fan heard her say that she dropped out of school not because her family couldn't afford it, but because the school couldn't afford to pay the teachers' salaries. After a few months of arrears, almost all the teachers ran away.
The teachers who did not run away were locals.
It’s not that the country cannot afford to pay teachers’ salaries, but that the more remote and backward the place, the more serious the corruption.
After arriving at Feng Girl's hometown, Yang Fan asked several villagers about her grave, but no one paid attention to him and didn't want to tell him.
Finally he asked a child and gave him some food, and the child took him there.
The cemetery is deep in the mountains and forests. It is very quiet, overgrown with weeds, and there is not even a road.
"Is this really the place?" Yang Fan asked the child who was leading the way in disbelief when they arrived at a small mound of earth, which was covered by weeds all around.
"Yes, she sleeps here." The child's Mandarin was not very standard. He nodded and ran away.
Yang Fan and Lin Bao stood beside the small grave.
"This is No. 172 Fengshen Avenue." After a long time, Yang Fan put down his camera and backpack.
Lin Bao, a grown man, suddenly had red eyes.
"She slept here for three years." He couldn't help himself: "If she hadn't slept here at the beginning, she would be younger than me now."
"She is the same age as me, but a few months younger. She suffered from severe depression at the age of 18," said Yang Fan.
He wanted to weed the ground so that the cemetery would look like a cemetery, but he didn't bring any tools.
Just when they were at a loss as to where to start, a woman with a big belly came into the woods.
The woman didn't look very old, maybe around 26 or 27 years old.
She carried a basket on her back, walked to the cemetery sweating profusely, and then put the basket down with difficulty.
There are sickles, shovels, hoes and other farm tools in the basket.
"I am A Xiang's cousin." Looking at the small grave buried in weeds, the pregnant woman burst into tears on the spot.
She hadn't been home for three years and this year she came back for the first time to take care of her second baby.
"The villagers, including her parents, think she is a shame to them." The pregnant woman started to clear the weeds in the cemetery.
Yang Fan and Lin Bao didn't ask any questions, picked up the tools and started weeding.
"But they don't know that I was the one who brought Ah Xiang into the industry." The pregnant woman was not afraid of Yang Fan and Lin Bao knowing her past, and said to herself: "But I only spend the money I earn on myself and my family. Ah Xiang spends it on the teachers and children of the village's primary school, on the teachers and students of the junior high school, and even built a library."
"A Xiang dropped out of school at the age of 15 to work and came to live with me. Before she was 17, she made very little money, which was only enough to support the village primary school."
"After she found out what I did, she left and went to work somewhere else."
"When she was seventeen, she came back to me."
"She is prettier than me, has better appearance than me, and earns more than me."
"But except when she's at work and puts on some makeup, she can't afford to buy even a piece of expensive clothing."
"She said we can't let our children follow our old path. Apart from going to school, we mountain people have no other way to go."
An hour later, the three men had cleared the weeds around the cemetery.
The pregnant woman told Yang Fan and Lin Bao a lot of truths and details that were not available on the Internet.
"Haha, that's ridiculous." Lin Bao didn't feel sad after hearing this, because he was filled with anger: "So we should thank those prostitutes?"
The pregnant woman shook her head: "No, Ah Xiang died at the hands of her clients. It was those perverted clients who made her suffer from depression."
"After four years in the industry at the age of 17, Ah Xiang has never been ashamed to go home and has always spent the New Year alone outside."
"After the incident, everyone here regarded her as a disgrace. The school teachers ran away and reporters were not allowed to come for interviews."
"I watched online public opinion explode, and then watched it vanish overnight."
"It was as if Ah Xiang had never been in this world. She died in humiliation and misery."
"I remember that during the Chinese New Year before she died, she told me that she wanted to eat a bowl of noodles from her hometown. Although there were noodles available outside, they didn't taste like the ones from her hometown."
"Then, just after the Chinese New Year, he died in February."
Lin Bao remained silent.
Yang Fan piled stones around the small grave and said, "It won't be long before those who think she is a shame will eat the same bowl of noodles she loved to eat when she was alive, happily eating what they think is a shame."
"Do you know A Xiang?" asked the pregnant woman. She felt that Yang Fan was not the kind of media who came to find out the truth or for news.
"We know each other, online friends, and have chatted for many years. At first I thought she was lying, but later I found out she was telling the truth." Yang Fan said, "I advised her to live for herself, let go of the past, and get medical treatment, but she didn't listen."