Shengliver’s Note: The real world is the biggest school.

Yaofei did not go back to his home village in Yunxi when the winter holidays (2011-2012) started. Instead, he travelled all the way up north to a town in Shaanxi called Tongguan, where his parents have been gold miners for years in the mountains.

It is the custom that Chinese families get together for a reunion in their home places at the Spring Festival. My readers might believe Yaofei must have moaned about not being able to go back to his roots in Yunxi. The teen stressed in the journal that he did not feel any regret at all, because all his family members were there at the gold mine for the festival—parents, sis and him. Apart from his immediate family, Yaofei’s uncle and aunt worked at the mine too, his cousin there with the parents.

One day the family hiked the mountain where the mine was. They were greeted with a majestic vista at the pinnacle, where they saw all around them ranges of mountains blanketed in snow. A crystal picture, the view was simply out of this world. Yaofei was in a merry mood. Back in Shiyan, there was very little snowfall at the time.

Time with sis and cousin was heavenly. They had not been together for two years, so they relished each other’s company all the more. Snow added to their joy. The slopes at the mine, down which they were skating and tobogganing amidst mirth, were their playground, where they were having the time of their lives.

Despite the homely atmosphere, life at the camp was harsh. The parents were lodged at some huts. It was freezing there. Wind crept in through the cracks. When it rained, water found its way through the leaky roof into the dwelling. Inside there was no decent furniture at all, let alone modern amenities like an electric cooker or a microwave oven. What was worse, they even had trouble getting access to clean water due to the weather. The pipes were frozen solid. They had to walk a long distance to fetch water from a water hole at the mine.

One morning, Yaofei offered to go and get water in two buckets. When he reached the water hole, a fierce dog was guarding the place, snarling at him. He did not dare to approach the source of water. Luckily, an adult nearby came over to hold the animal back. After the buckets were laden, he carried them back to the lodge on a pole, each bucket hanging from one end. It was a hard slog, Yaofei realised.

The Spring Festival is generally a time of good meals for the Chinese, but Yaofei’s family did not have festive delicacies for the occasion. Sub-zero temperatures made the roads to town treacherous, so the family could not get any decent foods or ingredients from shops in town. They had to make do with reserves stored at the huts.

Yaofei did not have a great time in Tongguan as far as comfort was concerned. Nevertheless, the holiday there was a great lesson to him. It raised the teen’s awareness of the family’s existence at the mine, which has in turn shaken him up and brought him down to earth.

Studying in high school without any family around is hard for Yaofei. He must be lonely at times. Last term, after a monthly exam, he stayed at a cybercafé for a whole night. It alarmed his class director so much that the master lay in the teen’s bunk bed in the dorm throughout the night until Yaofei returned at dawn the next day. The boy was subsequently rebuked by the school admins for breaching the code of conduct.

Anyway, Yaofei has grown by leaps and bounds through his irregular Spring Festival with his family at Tongguan. The lesson learned there, having instilled a sense of urgency and responsibility in him, hopefully will help the teen fare better through the remainder of his high school journey.

Good luck, lad.