Legend of Hua Buqi (I Will Never Let You Go) - Chapter 80: Postscript: a prototype of flowers

There were once six children who sold flowers and were beaten because they did not sell enough flowers per day. They wanted to go home, and they found the police. When I followed the interview, I found that they live in Honghuayan, Chengdu.

This is the suburban junction. There are three or four storeys of red brick houses, illegally built sheds, and low-rise bungalows. Because the rent is cheap, a house is about 200 yuan a month, so it is full of beggars, migrant workers, thieves, etc.

Among the six flower-selling girls, the oldest is 14 and the youngest is 8. They were taken by a man in his forties and rented in a house of less than 20 square meters. A wooden bed and a sofa bed were placed in the room, and messy luggage and clothes filled the room. You can imagine the crowded and cluttered rooms, but we can hardly imagine them living in a room with a man in his forties. Because of this clue, my partner and I turned our attention to the flower seller on the street.

I remember it was a winter night outside a KTV on the first ring road.

While eating the barbecue, a group of children came holding roses and stood beside them sweetly asking my partner to buy a rose. To understand their situation, I bought one. This group of children flocked up and bought again.

One flower is one heart and one heart, two flowers are two hearts. They used foreign accents to speak words that were incompatible with their age.

We learned from the conversation that they will come out to sell flowers around 4 pm and go back around 3 am.

These children are very clever, they won’t frown when they lie.

A five-year-old girl told me that she came to KTV by bicycle. She also pointedly naively pointed at another six-year-old boy and told me that she came with him and was riding a two or eight lap bike.

A five-year-old girl rides a two- or eight-lap bicycle with a six-year-old boy? You don’t believe such a lie, she said fluently. While lying, the little girl’s eyes were calm and calm, with no flicker at all, as if to say it was true.

Driving from Honghuayan to KTV in the south of the city, it takes 30 minutes when no one is driving on the road in the early morning. As for riding a bicycle, it is impossible to arrive in an hour.

After I paid a dollar to buy a flower, these children gathered around and asked me to buy it. Only then can the question continue. If you don’t buy it, no child will talk to you, very realistic and direct. The mouths of these children are very sweet, and I listened to the host’s words to bless the newcomer when I attended the wedding.

They told me that they ate two meals a day, they would have a meal before they came out in the afternoon, and they would cook a bowl of noodles after returning to the rental room in the early morning.

Older children sell at least 30 flowers a day, and a five-year-old boy says his task is 60 flowers a day. Ask them what would happen if they couldn’t complete the task, and they all smiled and didn’t answer.

There are stray children among them, and more are rented by uncles, aunts, elder brothers, and older sisters from the remote mountain villages of Guizhou and Anhui at a price of 1,000 yuan to 1,500 yuan per year.

A child told me seriously that there are younger brothers and younger sisters at home. After selling for a few years, when she was seven or eight years old, she could earn enough money to study, but this is just their naive thought. For some remote mountain villages, a family’s income is only a few hundred bucks except for their own meals, so if the girls in the family rent out, they can earn more than 1,000 yuan a year. Even if these children were sent home by the police, the next year, they would still be rented out by acquaintances in the village and taken to the city to continue selling flowers.

Some children said that he would not go back in the future. The big city is good, and the city gave them too much temptation. Even if no one rents them to sell flowers, some of them will sneak into the city to become street children. A 13-year-old girl said that she was a little older and went to work in a restaurant in the city.

These rented children are pretty good. There are also some stray children who do not have parents or who ca n’t remember where they came from and can only live with the idlers in society. Steal things, rob, do everything.

During the interview, a little girl pointed to half of the bottle of orange juice in my hand to drink. I said, “I’ll buy you a bottle.” She shook her head. The reason is that if it is a brand new bottle, she must turn it in. I gave it to her, and she can drink it now.

At three in the morning, seven or eight bicycles appeared on the road. The children rushed past with joy. Take one or two children on a bicycle.

We drove the track and were recognized by these children, not only showing them to the adults, but also leading us to the dead end. We watched the bicycle passing by the narrow road, and heard the children laugh out loud.

I once asked the police how to solve such a thing. The police are also very helpless, send them home, they will also come out.

What impressed me the most was the little girl who didn’t blink when she lied. When I wrote “The Flower Does Not Abandon”, I remembered these children who sold flowers. There is no way to do more for them, sometimes it is very helpless. As many readers have reflected, buy flowers, in fact, the adults behind them make money; do not buy them, and pity them.

If they pass through, with their precocious hearts and early recognition of society, what kind of life will they live in a brand new environment? I hope that the heroine in this book will not give up the blessings of all of us. Some people love others and others have a better life.

——Pile pile