Silent River

The memories of the village of Jiajia begin with the pig that ran hard. I saw my ten-year-old self standing on a dry tree in front of the drying field, holding the rough trunk with one hand and putting the other on my forehead, looking at the drying field not far away with interest. A grand sacrifice will be held there. After I had eaten a hearty meal for a long time, my stomach, which had long since become accustomed to hunger, groaned reproachfully again and again. After burping, I farted several loud and smelly farts. Looking back now, I have some doubts. The pig heard my loud fart and took it as a kind of command, whereupon it broke away from the humans and ran off. "Damn it! The pig ran away!" Then I heard the angry cries of my adoptive father. Jia Yiren's broken shouts were stretched and torn by the wind, floating in the sky above Jiajia Village. "Catch the pigs for me!" he ordered, looking very proud. Thereupon the members of the Jia family, who had just been huddled together in the drying field, scattered and began to chase the runaway pigs. My adoptive father vigorously swung his healthy right arm, hobbled on and was soon thrown to the back of the crowd. His swaying posture resembled the once majestic and cocky goose in the village, but half his body was tilted so comically that I crouched down and clung to the tree trunk, bursting into tears with laughter. My voice has become hoarse from the constant grief, so my laughter is as broken as Jia Yiren's shouts. Guangtou Jia was the fastest runner in the crowd, and he caught up with the pig in a short time. Since he had no hair, his smooth head shone particularly brightly in the sunlight. He rolled up his sleeves, coughed, spat into his palm, then rubbed it and tried to pull the pig by the tail, but failed. So he adopted a hopping posture like a toad, walked towards the pig, tried to jump up and subdued it with his own weight. He spread his arms, lowered his center of gravity and swayed left and right with the pig. Then, recognizing the opportunity, he quickly leaned on the pig's back with both hands and spread his upper body. The pig swayed its hooves, turned in a circle a few times and then slowly stopped. When Jia Guangtou sat upright on its back and even showed off to the people who were late with ropes, it suddenly bent its two front legs, lifted its buttocks with all its might and threw the forward-facing Jia Guangtou upside down. Then it nimbly passed through the panting and coughing crowd and ran towards the wide field in front of the drying area. My eyes followed the running pigs, and my gaze wandered from the bustling crowd to the barren and cracked fields. In earlier years at this time, the dry fields were covered with round, plump, golden grains of rice, and the fields were covered with a thick, soft layer of straw that exuded a beguiling fragrance. Nowadays, the drying field is completely empty. After the expansion of the chemical plant, the remaining fields were also empty. The dark soil, which was once fertile, is now dry, yellow, full of cracks and has become an empty shell in which no plants can grow, as if the body had lost the nourishment of blood. Against the backdrop of the destroyed Jia family and the ruined land, the pig running on the dusty field looked extremely lively. Its sturdy figure made me sceptical at first. In the next second, it would take off from the runway in the field, grow wings and fly into the distant sky, towards survival and freedom. The last living pig in Jiajia Village used all its cleverness to avoid the crowd and ran from the dry field to the field, from the field to the small grove I was in, and then through the forest to the bumpy road, and then straight down the road. Run to the widow's house, which is its home. The widow sat on the threshold, clutching her handkerchief tightly and weeping with grief at the loss of her last pig. It was hard to find the charm of the past in her sad face. When she heard the sound of the pig running into the yard and saw it walking to her side, the widow blinked her eyes, wiped her face with her handkerchief in disbelief, then slapped her thigh in surprise and exclaimed, shouting"Aiya aiya." She stuffed the handkerchief into her pocket, stood up with the help of the door frame and touched the pig's head with great affection. The pig shook its head and rubbed it against her palm. "What a spiritual animal." The widow sighed sincerely. The noise of the crowd reached the courtyard before the disorderly footsteps, causing the widow to suppress her surprise at having found what she had lost and to feel fear instead. "Hey, the pigs are back again!" Jia Guangtou ran into the courtyard, panting, with a layer of sweat on his forehead. The widow bent down, put her hand on the pig's head and looked at him nervously. "It's so funny! Why did it run back?" “Pigs run faster than people.” "My body is really broken, I have no strength left..." "No, no, I can't breathe..." A huge crowd of people followed Jia Guangtou and rushed into the courtyard, coughing and red-faced. When they saw the escaped pig that had taken up residence next to the widow, they were in a dilemma. It took a lot of effort to persuade the widow to donate the last living pig in the house. It was not easy to persuade people to take the pig away, but such a joke happened again. The members of the Jia family gathered in the courtyard, looking at each other and recalling the warmth of the past. No one was willing to be the villain and make the widow who had lost and then found her relive the grief of loss. “I really treat it as my own child.” The widow hugged the pig's neck and spoke to everyone with tears in her eyes. The pig seemed to understand her words, wagged its tail and stuck close to her in response. Now, no one dared to take the pig away. The village headman Jia Xiande looked at everyone, sighed and went to the widow: "My dear sister, you know that there really is no way. The chickens, ducks, pigs and sheep in the village have all been poisoned... If there was one left, they would not come to catch your pig. Everyone knows how carefully you take care of it... But there's really... no way..." Jia Xiande spoke sincerely with a sense of guilt. It was he who did the ideological work for the villagers and secretly leased the land of the elementary school to outsiders to open a chemical factory because they could not earn money from farming and did not even have enough to eat. He also thought that after the chemical factory was built, the village would be prosperous and everyone would have money in their pockets, he would build a university and invite teachers from the town to teach the children. The next generation of the village must study hard. But who could have guessed that the bright and beautiful future would be as fleeting as a soap bubble. The boss ran away, the chemical factory collapsed and the money he deserved was gone; the water and soil were contaminated, the fields could no longer be cultivated, the cattle were poisoned, and the Jia family's health was also damaged... In the end, they were reduced to stealing a poor widow's pig! "There really is no other way." Jia Xiande kept repeating this sentence helplessly. "I really raised it as a child." The widow kept repeating this sentence helplessly. Everyone looked at each other, not knowing what to do.