Yuan Lifen has a small house on Tongwei Road, but in order to take care of the elderly and her child, she is temporarily sleeping on the floor in the community's water pump room. Her son sleeps in another water pump room not far away, and her father-in-law, over 70 years old, works on a construction site while helping to take care of his grandson. Yuan Lifen's "home" is in the shade, and it's impossible to live there in the dead of winter.
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The reporter really couldn't bear to touch upon Yuan Lifen's old wounds, especially at such a time of bidding farewell to the old and welcoming the new. From the community staff, we learned about that segment of her past which was darker than night: with only an elementary school education, she came from her hometown of Bengbu, Anhui to work at Nanjing Agricultural University, later meeting and marrying her husband through an introduction. Her husband was originally a driving school coach, but he suddenly died of a cerebral hemorrhage two years ago, leaving behind their eight-year-old son and over 100,000 yuan in debt incurred for medical expenses. Yuan Lifen was originally a dormitory manager at Nanjing Agricultural University, but her meager salary of 960 yuan per month was just a drop in the bucket for this family that had lost its economic support. In order to pay off the debt as soon as possible, Yuan Lifen eventually resigned from her position as a dormitory manager and became a cloakroom attendant at a bar in the 1912 district. To balance work with the lives of her elders and child, she chose to work from six-thirty in the evening until three-thirty in the morning. "Generally, I have to get up at seven in the morning to prepare food for the elderly and children." The reporter roughly calculated Yuan Lifen's daily sleep time, and it did not exceed four hours.
Two years ago, an unexpected disaster turned Yuan Lifen into a single mother. At the age of 33, she has no time or money to go shopping for clothes. She said that she needs to earn more money to raise her child and repay the debts left over from her husband's medical treatment. Yesterday, the "Love Year Goods" warm-hearted action organized by our newspaper and Nongda Food arrived at her home on Tongwei Road in Xuanwu District.
When asked about her greatest New Year's wish, Yuan Lifen said she had only two: one is hoping that her child will achieve excellent academic results and become one of the many young and capable university students she sees on campus, making all her hard work worthwhile. The other hope is to repay the debts borrowed to save her husband as soon as possible. She willingly works night shifts, working harder to earn more money and pay off the debts sooner.
Speaking of her work at the cloakroom, the naturally resilient and honest Yuan Lifen said the job pressure is very high. With over 200 cabinets coming and going, they all contain valuable items, allowing no room for mistakes. "There isn't even time to go to the bathroom or change clothes, and I'm particularly afraid of being fined. A fine of five hundred yuan is something we can't afford," Yuan Lifen said, her brows furrowing like a knot. But soon, she excitedly introduced her long-term plans to the reporter, "Once I save enough money, I hope to open my own store and do some small business. This way, I'll have flexible working hours and can also take care of my family." Yuan Lifen frankly admitted that opening a store at this stage is still just a plan. She had once consulted acquaintances and learned that storefronts near Nongda cost around 40,000 yuan per year, which is quite a large sum for her, but she firmly believes that this goal will be achievable someday.
Whenever Yuan Lifen talks about her ten-year-old son, she becomes talkative. According to her, her son is now in the fourth grade at Xiaolingwei Primary School, and what concerns her most is his English grades. Coincidentally, yesterday was the day for his English tutoring, and Yuan Lifen planned to pick him up from school at three-thirty. "Junior high school admission mainly looks at the main subject scores, and I'm very worried about his English grades," Yuan Lifen helplessly said. For this reason, Yuan Lifen saved and scrimped to spend 1700 yuan enrolling her son in an English tutoring class on Ruijin Road.
The "Love Year Goods" warm-hearted action organized by our newspaper and Nongda Food has started. Before the Spring Festival, reporters from our newspaper and a team of love ambassadors composed of students from Nanjing Agricultural University will visit 500 needy families in 50 communities in Nanjing, bringing them warmth. We will also hold activities such as concentrated distribution of love goods, setting up a loving New Year's Eve dinner, and organizing primary and secondary school students and children from special-needs families to buy new clothes together, so that everyone can feel the hardships of these families and extend a helping hand to accompany them in celebrating the New Year peacefully.
If there are self-reliant extremely poor families facing difficulties in your community; if there are people around you who need help; if you want to join our team of young citizens and young reporters; if you want to recognize a "poor" relative, please call our newspaper's reader hotline (025) 96096.
By the wall near the door, there were four or five balls of gray yarn and an unfinished sweater, which were quite eye-catching. When the reporter asked who the gray sweater by the wall was for, Yuan Lifen shyly told the reporter it was for her son, as she was afraid of doing a bad job. Her son saw the yarn she bought and said he liked the color, which made Yuan Lifen very excited and gave her more motivation. "I plan to finish knitting it before the New Year and give it to him as a New Year's gift," Yuan Lifen said. "This is my second piece of work. The first sweater I knitted was for myself when I was sixteen or seventeen. Now I'm over thirty and should knit one for my child, which is very meaningful."
What comforts Yuan Lifen is that her son has been obedient and sensible since childhood. "Every time I send him to school, he recites words and texts on the back seat for me to check along the way. On the road, he can sometimes recite up to four articles at once," Yuan Lifen proudly and contentedly said, making the reporter feel as if they were right there. In the cold morning breeze, the mother and son, nestled close together, were sharing the most wonderful morning in the world, with the clear and innocent voice of the child permeating through the faint morning mist, straight to the heart of a mother full of love and confidence for the new life.
When the reporter went to the community, the director of the community said she was working night shifts and should be at home. However, when they arrived at her house, she had gone out looking for work. The director of the community said that the cotton overcoat she was wearing was given to her by a colleague when she worked as a dormitory manager; her pants and shoes were bought from a second-hand stall set up when university students left school, with the pants costing 2 yuan and the shoes 10 yuan. Even her ten-year-old son's clothes mostly came from donations from kind-hearted people in the community.
Our newspaper, Nongda Food, and community workers delivered the love goods to her home.