noveldrama
Chapter 532: 531: From Young to Old (7)
Chapter 532: 531: From Young to Old (7)
Chapter 532: Chapter 531: From Young to Old (7)
Xia Siyu didn’t have the word “awkward” in her dictionary. Since it was the other person who asked me to speak, I would definitely explain things seriously and earnestly, and if it wasn’t for his sincere request for advice, she wouldn’t have bothered to answer!
She also spoke with great emphasis, “Study hard not for others, but for yourselves. I often feel that I’ve suffered for my lack of education. I should have continued my studies back then and at least finished college.”
She spoke from the heart. Her recent interactions with Bo Yan had made her deeply aware of her intellectual suppression. It wasn’t just a feeling of being suppressed, but also realizing what she had missed out on in terms of film theory, methods, and techniques that she could have learned in university courses. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have taken so many detours in her acting career. After going full circle, she came back to realize that she still needed a systematic education. Luckily, Bo Yan could fill that gap.
Although some people did mock her for being uneducated, she nonetheless had been admitted to N University. Moreover, she had recently shown her linguistic prowess on a show with her fluent Italian and English. It was just her comparison with Bo Yan that highlighted the vast gap, making her seem quite weak.
But you know what, Xia Siyu’s self-deprecating humor was tremendously effective. With her overly beautiful but admittedly somewhat ‘beauty-with-no-brains’ face, and then looking at Bo Yan, a bunch of students nodded in agreement that they really needed to study more!
**
After dinner, Bo Yan and Xia Siyu took photos for keepsakes with the school’s teachers and students. When the bell for class rang, the teachers and students reluctantly left and returned to their classrooms.
As she passed by a classroom, Xia Siyu saw students holding their books, innocently reciting Tang poetry. On the playground, fifth graders were learning sports, practicing high jump and pommel horse. The rooms were spotlessly clean, filled with the sounds of reading; the playground a scene of striving, with dust swirling in the air. It was a sensation of vibrant, upward, inherent vitality.
Xia Siyu had studied abroad as a child, in small classes where the teacher covered one topic at a time. The modulation of the Chinese language, so different from Italian and English, sounded like a tuneless symphony to her ears.
After visiting the students, they went to see the elderly.
In Northwest towns, nursing homes are rare. The elderly here still prefer to live at home, and those in the villages even consider moving to a nursing home equivalent to saying their sons and daughters are unfilial and don’t take care of them. Of course, nursing homes also cost money, and some older folks who can’t afford it don’t want to go either.
Therefore, to address this situation, the country’s focus is on renovating dilapidated housing. Since most of the working-age labor force from the village has gone out to work, in reality, the elderly left in the villages are mostly living in poverty.
Bo Yan had understood the situation of their village during his stay at the host’s home over the past few days. After leaving the school, he visited the poorest households nearby.
That’s how rural life is: even within one village or township, two houses could be quite far apart, especially in the gullies of the Loess Plateau.
As they left an elderly person’s house, the sun was already setting. Passing by the River Bay they had visited the day before, Bo Yan consciously got off his vehicle to join Xia Siyu in her car. This time, he even shooed Wei Jingjing and Little Tang out, having them squeeze into Song Fengzhi’s car.
They had started their day early, visited the elementary school, and then the elderly, witnessing life from young to old.
By the time they were heading back, the sun had already set in the west.