The home page of shengliver.com is as simple as it could be. The title extends across the middle of the page, with a navigation arrow in the top right-hand corner and an image directly under the banner Shengliver Studio. Readers can pull down the navigation arrow to access the sidebar, where updates are found and a simple search of the website can be performed. What is the significance of the single image then?

The photo was taken at a location about 200 metres from my birthplace, in June 2016, on a Huawei P9. It was my first smartphone, and I am still using it day in day out. This is 2023.

The photo, for the most part, features a country road with poplar trees lining both its sides. When I was a kid, the road was just dirt. It was access to the seat of the People’s Commune in one direction. It led to the county town in the other. Sometime in 1976 or 1977, the construction of the road linking my People’s Commune to the County Town was completed. My hometown, which lies where three Chinese Provinces converge, is the remotest cranny of my county. The entire length of the road is over 100 kilometres.

Upon the completion of the road in 1977, an official motorcade made a round trip between the county town and my hometown. It was the first time in history that such a road had been built although it was paved with no more than dirt and gravel. I bet the county governor and other important officials were in the procession. Revolutionary songs and propaganda were being broadcasted through a blaster installed on the jeep roof as the grand fleet of vehicles was passing by the ancient village. It was a magnificent spectacle in a forgotten nook of sleepy back country, where all the villagers, young and old, men and women, came out of their cottages to admire the high official and his entourage. Never before had they been greeted by so many motor vehicles at a time.

The road is flanked by farmland, which the villagers work for a living. In the foreground is a field of peanut seedlings, which was sown probably weeks ago. Actually, the plot belongs to my uncle.

My grandfather’s and grandma’s tombs were on a slope of a hill just next to the peanut plot. I did not see any of Gran because she had died long before my birth. Although Grandad remarried twice, upon his death, the family had him buried next to his first wife, who suffered unspeakable misery during her short years in the world.

As a preteen, I herded cattle by the road. I played with my mates on the road. I learned to ride a bike along the road. I saw a lot of serpents and killed them around the road. The road is where my memories reside.