Xiaoju Leng
Text | Bingxin
This happened more than ten years ago.
On the afternoon before the Spring Festival, I went to see a friend outside Chongqing. She lives on the upper floor of the rural office in that countryside. I walked up a dark and sloping staircase and entered a room with a square table, a few bamboo stools, and a telephone on the wall. Then I entered was my friend's room, which was separated from the outer room by a curtain. She was not at home, and there was a note on the table in front of the window, saying that she had something to do and asked me to wait for her.
I sat down at her desk, picked up a newspaper and read it. Suddenly, I heard the outer slab door creakingly open. After a while, I heard someone moving the bamboo stool. I lifted the curtain and saw a little girl, who was only eight or nine years old, with a thin and pale face, purple lips, short hair, very worn clothes, barefoot and a pair of straw sandals, and was climbing onto a bamboo stool to pick the obedient instrument on the wall. When I saw me, I seemed surprised and shrunk my hand. I asked her, "Do you want to call?" She climbed down the bamboo stool and nodded and said, "I want xx hospital to look for Dr. Hu. My mother vomited a lot of blood just now!" I asked, "Do you know the phone number of xx hospital?" She shook her head and said, "I was about to ask the telephone bureau..." I quickly found the number of the hospital from the phone book next to the machine, and asked her again, "I found the doctor, whose house will I ask him to?" She said, "Just say that Wang Chunlin's family is sick, she will come."
I called the phone, and she thanked me gratefully and turned around and left. I grabbed her and asked, "Is your home far away?" She pointed out the window and said, "" It was just under the big yellow fruit tree in the mountain nest, and I walked there in an instant." As she said that, she went downstairs, thud, thud.
I went back to the inner room, finished reading the newspaper, picked up another book "Three Hundred Tang Poems". Halfway through reading it, the sky became more and more gloomy, and my friend wouldn't come back. I stood up boredly, looked at the confused mountain view in the thick fog outside the window, saw the small house under the yellow fruit tree, and suddenly wanted to visit the little girl and her sick mother. I went downstairs and bought a few big red oranges at the door, stuffed them in my handbag, and walked along the uneven stone road to the door of the cottage.
I gently knocked on the board door. The little girl came out and opened the door just now. She looked up at me. She was stunned for a moment, then smiled and waved to me in. The room was very small and dark. It was covered with boards against the wall. Her mother lay flat with her eyes closed. She was probably asleep. There were bloodstains on her head. Her face was facing inward. She only saw the messy hair on her face and a big bun behind her head. There is a small charcoal stove next to the door, with a small casserole on it, which is slightly steaming. The little girl let me sit on the small stool in front of the stove, and she squatted beside me and kept looking at me. I asked softly, "Have the doctor been here?" She said, "I've been here, I gave my mother an injection... She's fine now." She said, as if comforting me, "Don't worry, the doctor will come tomorrow morning." I asked, "Have she eaten? What is in the pot?" She smiled and said, "Sweet potato porridge - our New Year's Eve dinner." I remembered the oranges I brought, and took them out and placed them on the small table beside the bed. She didn't make a sound, but reached out to grab the largest orange, cut off a piece of skin on it with a knife, and gently kneaded most of the bottom with both hands.
I asked in a low voice: "Who else is there in your family?" She said: "Now there are no one, my dad is out..." She didn't say anything, but slowly took out the orange petals from the orange peel and placed them next to her mother's pillow.
The glimmer of the fire gradually darkened and the outside became dark. I stood up and wanted to leave. She grabbed me and took the big needle in twine very quickly, and put the small orange bowl close to each other, like a small basket, carrying it with a small bamboo stick, and then took a short wax head from the windowsill, put it inside and light it up, and handed it to me: "It's dark, the road is slippery, let's shine this little orange lamp on you up the mountain!"
I took it with appreciation, thanked her, she sent me out to the door, I didn't know what to say, but she said as if comforting me: "My father will definitely come back soon. My mother will be fine at that time." She drew a circle in front of her with her little hand, and finally pressed it on my hand: "We are all well!" Obviously, this "everyone" also includes me.
I carried this clever little orange lamp and slowly walked on the dark and wet mountain road. The hazy orange-red light really can't shine far, but the calm, brave and optimistic spirit of this little girl inspired me, and I seemed to feel that there was infinite light in front of me!
My friend has come back and saw me holding a small orange lamp, so he asked me where I came from. I said, "From... from Wang Chunlin's house." She said in surprise, "Wang Chunlin, that carpenter, how do you recognize him? Last year, several students in Shanxia Medical College were arrested as the Communist Party. Wang Chunlin also disappeared from the future. It is said that he often delivers letters to those students..."
That night, I left the mountain village and never heard of the little girl and her mother again.
But since then, every Spring Festival, I think of that little orange lamp. Twelve years have passed, and the little girl’s father must have been back long ago. Her mother must be well, right? Because we are all "well"!
(originally published in " China Youth Daily " on January 31, 1957)
11 On January 19, 1957, Bing Xin wrote a short story entitled "Little Orange Lamp" at the appointment of "China Youth Daily", which was published in "China Youth Daily" on January 31, 1957. It was just before the Spring Festival, which reminded the author of 1945 before the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan twelve years ago. It was also the eve of the Spring Festival. The author met a little girl when he was visiting a friend while living in Geleshan, a suburb of Chongqing. She was "calm, brave and optimistic" and sewed a small orange lamp with a thick needle to illuminate the night road for the author, making the author "seem to feel infinite light in front of him." This work was later selected as a middle school Chinese textbook. Its unusually bright tones and poetic and implicit beauty have moved generations of readers and friends.
We invite Bing Xin research scholar Li Ling to select representative children's essays and novels such as Bing Xin, including "Little Orange Lamp", "Hello Tsubasa ", "Mingzi and Mizi", "Tao Qi's Summer Diary", etc., as well as the early fresh and graceful and popular essays "Laughter", "Past Events (I)", "Past Events (II)", etc., so that readers can better appreciate the maternal and gentle characteristics of Bing Xin's children's literature creation, as well as the purity and elegance that flows slowly like a spring and is told like a poem.
Bing Xin (1900-1999)
was originally named Xie Wanying, and his ancestral home was Changle County, Fujian Province (now Changle District, Fuzhou City). In 1923, he graduated from Yanjing University with a bachelor's degree in ; in 1926, he graduated from Wellesley College in the United States with a master's degree in arts; he taught at Yenching University, Tsinghua University , and Tokyo Imperial University in Japan. Literary creation began during the May Fourth Movement, and was first known for its "problem novels", and then had a wide influence in the fields of prose, poetry, and translation. His main works include the poetry collection " Stars " and "Spring Water", the collection of prose and novels "Send to the Little Reader", " Returning to the South ", "Past Events", "Little Orange Lamp", " Cherry Blossoms ", " We Wake Up Spring ", "Gao Little Letter", "About Women and Men" and translated works "Prophet", "Sand and Mo", "Indian Fairy Tales", "Indian Folk Story", "Tagore Drama Collection", etc., and "Full Works of Bing Xin" (10 volumes).
manuscript preliminary review: Zhou Bei
manuscript review: Wang Wei
manuscript final review: Wang Qiuling
