My father is a hardworking, kind, and simple farmer who has lived in a barren land all his life. In order to raise five children, there was never a chance to breathe. In my impression, he is always carrying water, firewood, crops and other weights that must be carried on his shoulders. The villagers often praised his father's strength and hard work throughout his life. With two shoulders, he provoked a large family of seven people and led us through the hungry and impoverished sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties.
Due to the extreme poverty of the family and lack of labor, the older brother returned to work in his hometown after failing to upgrade to junior high school. At that time he was fifteen or sixteen years old, chopping wood, collecting medicine, fetching water, and farming, becoming a powerful helper for his father. He is not good at speech and withdrawn, but he never spares his strength. He always collects medicine on the mountain during busy periods of farming, and sells it to subsidize his family. More than 40 years later, even though his life has improved a lot, his elder brother who is over half a hundred years old is still returning to his old business during the slack.
My younger brother likes livestock since childhood. When his father was a breeder in the production team, he helped his father take care of the animals. After graduating from the fifth grade of elementary school, he was talented and had good grades and decided to drop out. He went home to work in agriculture at the age of twelve or thirteen. He had contracted land with his father in the mountains and forests tens of kilometers away for four or five years in order to earn some money for his family extra income. My brother got married early, and when we separated soon after marriage, apart from the two-hole brick kiln, a water tank, a few surface urns, and a few simple farm tools, it could be said that he was a family member. He realized the weight of his shoulders prematurely, and went to a coal mine a hundred miles away to dig for coal regardless of his body's thinness. However, it was too difficult to survive. After a few months, he had to return home, re-engage his farm tools, and work in the fields greedily in the morning, taking on the heavy responsibility of raising his two children. Too heavy burden made him thinner and weaker.
Because of God's favor and my own efforts, I took a different path from my father, brother and younger brother. After entering the university in 1983, I bid farewell to the life of my parents facing the loess and back to the sky. At the same time, I realized the burden on my shoulders and began to think about how to take my home out of the abyss of poverty and hardship. My father, mother, elder brother, younger brother and two younger sisters worked day and night in high school and university in order to survive and support me. Sometimes after eating and not leaving get off work, I would be able to bring a week’s dry food. After going to college, I must not abandon them and only consider my own future. I need to remember that there is a home behind me that needs my help. This burden, coupled with the arduous tasks of university studies, both weighed on my shoulders. I dare not relax in the slightest. I told myself that I can only succeed, not fail. No matter what the price is, I must graduate from university and take my responsibility for the embarrassment of the family as soon as possible. When I graduated from college, I won an outstanding graduate award set up by an American professor in my department, which was 300 US dollars. At that time, my family was eager to spend money to make kiln surfaces and install doors and windows for the newly built two-air brick kiln. I immediately gave the money to my brother. This is the first time that I have shared responsibility for my family. From then on, I started the long road of helping my family for more than 30 years.
On the eve of university graduation, I worked hard and successfully passed the postgraduate entrance of the school, with a monthly stipend of 72 yuan. At the same time, I was also taking some courses in the evening university. I had a monthly income of more than 200 yuan. I was very excited and got the economy for the first time. Independence, never asked the family to pay a penny ever since. I bought myself a few clothes and a bicycle. At the same time, I started to send money to my family to share some of the expenses at home. Like all the first-generation college students of that generation who walked out of poor rural areas, we all bear a heavy burden. Helping our families out of poverty is our unshirkable responsibility. This kind of responsibility is ashamed because it is too heavy and often makes us unable to bear it. At the same time, we are also living with unrealistic expectations of our family and society.