Author: Li Jun
When talking about her past experience, this Dunhou peasant woman from Xihaigu had some ups and downs. She didn't expect that she would become a writer, let alone that one day she would walk into the Great Hall of the People from the Yellow Land.
Before becoming a writer, Ma Huijuan was an out-and-out Northwest farmer.
After dropping out of junior high school, she did everything like plowing, planting, and harvesting wheat. She thought she would lose her name in the day-to-day toil like other women in Black Eye Bay...
The sky of Blackeye Bay
"Looking on the ridge of Dazui Mountain, the sky in Black Eye Bay now belongs to an eagle." Many years later, Ma Huijuan described the uninhabited hometown in the book.
This is not common in her works full of life. What used to appear before her eyes is the earth, and the sky is the world with her back.
The picture shows the former Black Eye Bay Mountain Village.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee
In 1980, Ma Huijuan was born in the small mountain village of Heiyanwan in Xihaigu, Ningxia.
The only way between the village and the outside world is a mountain path, which is 4 to 5 hours away from the nearest village.
There, people stood at the roots of the wall to soak up the sun after finishing their farm work.
Being "trapped" in the mountains, Ma Huijuan can only go out by studying.
When she was a child, Ma Huijuan loved to read very much, and was even obsessed with reading newspapers on the wall.
Unfortunately, when she graduated from junior high school, her family conditions suddenly deteriorated and she dropped out of school and went home to work in farming.
At the age of 16, she left her desk, carried an iron plough, and led a donkey up and down the mountain, becoming a farmer facing the land.
Ma Huijuan was interviewed.
Photo by Chinanews reporter Li Jun
"That kind of life will be the same for another ten years." Speaking of life in Black Eye Bay, in Ma Huijuan's eyes, it was a life without hope.
Writing with classmates became Ma Huijuan's only contact with Shanwai. In the letter, she listened to her classmates talking about distant places and asked about opportunities to return to school.
Ma Huijuan took a photo with her husband Xian Tianming.
Photo by Chinanews reporter Li Jun
At the age of 20, Ma Huijuan chose to marry her childhood playmate Xian Tianming.
Before getting married, she threw a stack of letters and textbooks into the fire. The distance in those letters and the dream of reading, together with her name on the letter, were turned into ashes.
At that time, Ma Huijuan thought she could only stay in Black Eye Bay from now on, but her fate or the entire Black Eye Bay changed in that year.
"Out of nothing" Yuchi Village
In 2000, under the influence of the national ecological immigration policy, the villagers in Black Eye Bay began to emigrate.
One after another, more than 20 villagers moved to Yuchi Village, Hongsibao District, Wuzhong, including Ma Huijuan's family.
Hongsibao is the main battlefield of the Ningxia Poverty Alleviation and Yellow River Irrigation Project, and the country's largest ecological poverty alleviation migration area.
Ma Huijuan and her daughter are standing on the yellow ground.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee
"We left happily at the time." Ma Huijuan said, recalling the scene of the relocation.
Although the Red Temple Fort was still a deserted beach at the time, and the entire town had nothing but a station shrouded in yellow sand, she walked out of the mountain and moved to a "distant place" more than 8 hours away from Black Eye Bay.
The year 2000 was the period of the construction of Hongsi Fort. At that time, there was no access to water and electricity, and the living conditions of the newly moved immigrants were also very poor.
But unlike Black Eye Bay, there is a road here, and there is hope for the days.
Ma Huijuan talked to the neighborhood about the harvest this year.
Photo by Chinanews reporter Li Jun
"In the past, people always said that the people in our place were lazy. After finishing the work in the field, they had nothing to do except to bask in the sun." After arriving in Yuchi Village, Ma Huijuan realized that it was not their lazy people. "After arriving here, Others are busy working, earning money, building houses, and giving you time is not embarrassed to sunbathe."
Ma Huijuan's family lived in a third-generation immigrant house.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee
After several years of construction, the immigrants built houses, built streets and alleys, and leveled the land. Yuchi Village gradually took shape, and slowly took root on this deserted beach like corn in the ground.
The land in Yuchi Village is a large area of flat loess. Labor can no longer rely solely on human and animal power. The application of large-scale machinery frees the immigrants from the land and finds some new ways to survive.
The motorcycle purchased by Ma Huijuan at home.
Photo by Chinanews reporter Li Jun
During the slack season, young people in Yuchi Village will go to the nearby county labor market to do odd jobs, or to work in the greenhouse in the village.
As the day gets better with hard work day by day, Ma Huijuan's enthusiasm for writing and reading is gradually revealed again.
"It's harder to borrow books than money!" Ma Huijuan recalled the scene when she first arrived in Yuchi. At first, she could only read old newspapers sent by relatives to prop up the legs of the table.
Later, life gradually got better. With a mobile phone, a huge amount of offline novels followed. Ma Huijuan began to read books, eat, watch, walk, and between work, she would also take out her mobile phone to read a paragraph...
A pen in one hand and a hoe in one hand
In the first thirty years of her life, Ma Huijuan tried to grasp every word that appeared in her life. She used an almost instinctive persistence to read words that didn't know the meaning at the time.
Ma Huijuan was interviewed.
Photo by Chinanews reporter Li Jun
Around 2008, mobile phones as a new thing gradually became popular in Yuchi Village. Ma Huijuan also bought a mobile phone with the money she saved from working in a greenhouse.
"The scent of acacia flowers floats on the streets of Hongsibao in May. The season has reached early summer, and there is a hint of green in this land." After opening the mobile phone network, Ma Huijuan wrote such a comment on the Qzone.
Gradually, through her mobile phone, Ma Huijuan discovered a whole new world.
Ma Huijuan discusses literature with young people.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee
In the new world, Ma Huijuan met many people who belonged to afar.
An 18-year-old boy named "Red Twilight" encouraged her to stick to the occasional "Talk" and record her life; in 2014, "Mingyue" learned that she could only write "Talk" because of insufficient traffic. When writing similar texts, she charged 100 yuan for her phone bill to provide traffic, and encouraged her to write a log to express her inner thoughts; "Qi Guoping" helped her contribute the log in the space to "Yellow River Literature"...
Ma Huijuan's essay collection-"Sounds of the Stream and Wind".
Photo by Chinanews reporter Li Jun
After his essays were published in "Yellow River Literature", Ma Huijuan began to attract more and more people's attention, and his works often appeared in literary journals.
In recent years, she has also successively published books such as "Sounds of the Stream Wind", "Hope Growing in the Mud", and "Out of the Black Eye Bay".
Ma Huijuan turned the self-deprecation of "holding a pen in one hand and a hoe in the other" into reality, but she was not holding a pen but a mobile phone.
With only a junior high school education, she used her thumb to knock down millions of words of work, and she broke 13 mobile phones back and forth. She was called a "thumb writer" for this reason.
The old phone that was broken by Ma Huijuan.
Photo by Chinanews reporter Li Jun
Ma Huijuan wrote on her mobile phone her life experience, the long relocation roads of the villagers in Heiyanwan, and the bit by bit of the immigrants from Hongsipu rushing to a new life.
She transformed the words she had grasped into her own words, and paved a winding path from the barren mountain village of Xihaigu in Ningxia to the Wuzhong immigration resettlement area, and then paved further.
More people in the distance
In 2018, Ma Huijuan was elected as a representative of the 13th National People's Congress.
"Standing on the steps in front of the Great Hall of the People, I have an unreal feeling in my heart." In her eyes, it is precisely with the national immigration and relocation policy that she can have the opportunity to enter the Great Hall of the People from the Yellow Land through reading and writing. .
Ma Huijuan opened a book club in Yuchi Village.
Photo by Chinanews reporter Li Jun
Now that the conditions are good, she also wants more people to understand, learn, and spread culture.
In 2018, Ma Huijuan took the lead in the establishment of the "Earth Scholar Reading Club" mainly aimed at women by using the farmhouse in the village to teach women in the village to read and write, so that they can realize their value and attach importance to children's education.
The children lie in front of the window and look at the adults in the book club.
Photo by Chinanews reporter Li Jun
With the development of society, culture has changed the destiny of Ma Huijuan, as well as the destiny of many people in this yellow land.
At present, the reading club has more than 50 students, some of whom have reached the level of literacy, and some have won awards for participating in the filming of micro movies.
Outside of the reading club, more profound changes have already happened quietly among young people. "In the past, a college student would make a sensation in ten miles and eight townships. In recent years, we have too many college students here."
Ma Huijuan came home from the scholarship club with a stack of books in her hand.
Photo by Chinanews reporter Li Jun
In autumn, the sky of Hongsibao is high and far away. Pieces of fully mature corn stand quietly in the wilderness waiting for people to harvest. The corn here is golden and full, which is not in Black Eye Bay.
Ma Huijuan was walking on the road and talking to her neighbors about the harvest in the ground. A stack of books in her arms distinguished her from those around her, but life did not leave anyone behind.
The asphalt road that has just hardened under her feet stretches to the end of the village, where the slender village road connects to a wider road...