In a fourth-grade Chinese class, Teacher Wang assigned an essay topic: “My Home.”
The students began writing immediately, scratching away at their papers.
Some wrote about the yellow dog at home, others about setting off fireworks during the Lunar New Year, and some about the new pencils their fathers had bought for them.
Feifei held her pen, but couldn’t bring herself to write.
What was her home, really?
Was it that earthen hut that leaked whenever it rained?
Was it the thin, rocky field on the southern slope?
The little wooden stool by the stove?
The two skinny pigs in the pigpen?
Her father’s limp leg?
Or her mother’s silent “ah”?
She remembered the day Teacher Wang had visited her home.
She picked up her pen and slowly wrote the first line on the lined paper:
“My family has four people: my father, my mother, my brother, and me.”
“My mother cannot speak, and she can’t hear either.
But she has very skillful hands.”
“The light in our house is dim.
At night, my mother embroiders shoe pads by that faint light.
Each pair earns her twenty cents.
She hides the money under her pillow, saving it all up, saying it will pay for my school fees.”
“My father walks with a limp.
Even when it rains, he still goes out to work the fields.
When he returns, his pants are covered in mud.
His hands are big and rough, full of cuts.
Yet it was these very hands that once lifted me from the ground. Find the original chapter at g.com.
That time I had a fever, he carried me eight li to the clinic.
Though he limped along, I felt completely safe on his back.”
“The hands in my family aren’t beautiful.
My mother’s hands have needle pricks, and my father’s are stained with dirt.
But I love these two pairs of hands.
Other children have new clothes and new schoolbags.
I have nothing like that.
But I have these two hands.”
“Our family is poor.
But I’m not afraid.
My father says, ‘Fei’ means lush growth—just as grass grows through cracks in the stones, it can still rise upward.”
When she reached the last sentence, tears welled up in her eyes.
She raised her hand, wiped her eyes with her sleeve, closed the notebook, and handed it in.
For several days afterward, she stayed anxious.
She feared the teacher would laugh at her simple words, or that classmates might mock her when they heard, “My mother cannot speak.”
On the day the essays were returned, Teacher Wang didn’t rush to distribute them.
Standing at the front of the classroom, he cleared his throat.
“Today, I’d like to read one essay,” he said, pushing up his reading glasses.
“Let’s read ‘My Home.'”
Silence fell over the classroom.
Teacher Wang’s voice drifted slowly through the room: “‘My family has four people: my father, my mother, my brother, and me.'” ‘”
Feifei’s face suddenly turned red.
She buried her head so low that she could see only the tips of her shoes—those old cloth shoes, with a split at the toe. New chapters come out on g.com first.
“‘My mother can’t speak…'” Teacher Wang continued reading.
No one in the classroom laughed.
When he reached “my father carried me for eight li,” someone sniffed quietly.
By the time he read “but I love these two hands,” the room fell so still that the chirping of birds outside the window could be heard clearly.
He finished.
Setting down the notebook, Teacher Wang stood at the front of the class and glanced around.
“This essay deserves a perfect score,” he said.
“Whether it’s good or not—you’ve all just heard it.”
At first, there was silence.
Then, someone started clapping, and soon the whole class burst into applause.
Feifei sat in the corner, twisting the edges of her clothes until her knuckles turned white.
She didn’t dare look up.
But the applause came like water, slowly rising and pushing her out from that corner.
That afternoon, when she left school, she walked down the middle of the road for the first time instead of hugging the wall.
Her backpack bounced gently on her back.
She didn’t know that this very essay had been copied and pasted onto the bulletin board at the back of the classroom.
She also didn’t know that in his office, Teacher Wang had told another teacher:
“This child will go far in life.”
The wind blew in from the east end of the village, rustling the corners of the bulletin paper.
Feifei looked back once.
And just then, she saw the wind lifting her essay.