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墨書 Inktalez
The summer vacation of New Year's Day was filled to the brim with the heavy burden of Double Grab, leaving me no chance to let my thoughts wander. In the blink of an eye, the new semester was about to begin, and my parents informed me that starting from the Second Day of the Lunar New Year, my father had been reassigned to Dongkou County as the principal of Garden Middle School, which was just over ten miles away from home. I was to attend Garden Middle School along with him.
Without any prior warning or discussion with me, I silently bid farewell to Stove Middle School, leaving behind classmates and teachers I had yet to get to know. Since my father was the new principal at the school, I didn't even go through the basic transfer procedures at my old school.
Suddenly, I recalled when my younger brother enrolled in First Grade at Osmanthus Primary School. I had taken him there and paid a tuition fee of three yuan. His homeroom teacher, Mr. Zhou Zhengxiang, could hardly understand my rural dialect mixed with a child's voice and mistakenly wrote my brother's name as "Long Xiusheng." Later, my parents decided to send him to the elementary school where my father was teaching at Loess Mine (my mother had to work in the production team while taking care of three children, which was quite exhausting for her, so my father took my brother along). I helped him with the transfer procedures, which turned out to be quite complicated. Little did I know that when it came time for me to transfer schools, it would be so simple.
Teachers start school earlier than students; it seemed like around August 20th when my father took me with him, carrying only a few simple belongings. His larger luggage had already been placed at Garden Middle School when he transferred back from Suining. My luggage consisted of just a few pieces of clothing since the weather was still warm. My mother insisted we bring a bamboo mat and also packed over ten pounds of rice for me (my father received government-supplied grain while I had to bring my own).
The weather was clear, and it felt like we weren't in a hurry. We left home later in the day with the sun high in the sky. My father chose a route that first led us past Osmanthus Primary School where we had attended elementary school, then through Jiujiantang and along a long mountain path near our old house. We crossed several ridges that had left a deep impression on me when I got "lost" before reaching Reverse Flow and followed Tiao Shui River straight until we arrived at Garden Street.
On Old Street, my father ran into his cousin (his mother's nephew), exchanged a few pleasantries, and after crossing Garden Bridge, we walked along an asphalt road that was quite rare at that time for about another mile before finally arriving at Garden Middle School—a place where I would spend some time and create many memories.
Though it was called Garden Middle School, as my father put it, there were "no flowers" before. Fortunately, he noticed this situation during summer vacation and specifically went to the county town to buy many flower seeds. He encouraged all the teachers to take some time during their break to cultivate small flowerbeds on the school's vacant land. By the time I arrived at school, many flower seedlings had already sprouted, occasionally adorned by two or three delicate blossoms—truly living up to its name of "garden."
Compared to Stove Middle School on New Year's Day, Garden Middle School being the only middle school in Garden County offered much more spacious grounds. Built against Yuyajing at the foot of the mountain facing Garden Middle School, two long rows of teaching buildings were connected by several teachers' residences forming a courtyard layout.
In front of the teaching buildings lay a row of embankments made from pebbles. Below these embankments was a large playground sporadically overgrown with weeds. In front of the playground lay a dirt road wide enough for tractors that faced a canal. This canal had significant origins; it connected upstream with Tiao Shui River and flowed downstream into a large reservoir while irrigating thousands of acres of rice fields across several communes including Garden, Xizhong, Meitian, and Shiqiao.
Behind the teaching buildings lay a vast expanse of mountainous land belonging to the school where a restroom had been built along with some vegetable patches and fruit trees—some young orange trees among them—while much of it remained open land. Any teacher willing could cultivate their own plots for vegetables or fruit trees as they pleased.
There were more students and teachers here than at Stove Middle School. Thanks to my father's position as principal, I quickly got acquainted with most of the teachers and began a new chapter in life alongside many classmates.
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