The 5-minute walk from school to home is what I enjoyed the most during my childhood years. Just walkout of the school gate, make a right turn, and I’m home. Of course, there are plenty of shops and restaurants along the road. The excitement of getting a new yo-yo, the flavor of sesame sauce noodles, seems like the best part of the way home. Sometimes it’s always the things along the way that give you the most memories.

It was July of 2017. As usual, I was walking back home with my mom after school. Suddenly, I saw an old man sitting on the sidewalk, with piles of recyclable cardboard and bottles around him, tied up with a red plastic rope. The man was wearing a black jacket with stains and a military-style hat. It’s not hard to tell the rickety back. A woman was standing in front of him, it seemed that they were having a conversation.

Usually, when I see a homeless person on the street, my mom will just give a couple of yuan and hand it to the person. But when I handed the money to the many, it seemed that he didn’t want to take it.

Out of curiosity, I tried to figure out what they were talking about. The man looked at me. He seemed a bit eccentric, talking in unorganized words. I was able to tell that he was trying to find a way back home. Meanwhile, he took out a pencil from his pocket and started to write about his life experience on a piece of cardboard. I was surprised that he had such good handwriting.  He seemed like a well-educated man. What made him in today’s situation?

“What’s your name?’ I asked. No words replied, just the sound of pencil scraping on the paper.

“Where do you come from?”

Still no reply, the many kept on writing.

(This was the cardboard that he wrote on.)

Through his handwriting, I was able to learn that his name is “狄栏”, he left his family a couple years ago to make a living. At first, he went to a kiln factory and started to fire ceramics and brick. It was a crude place, sometimes he couldn’t even see the daylight for the day; he was mostly starving every day, but he still hoped that he could get some money to help his family. However, the owner of the factory never paid his salary. He felt that he was lied to and scammed. So, he quit the job. After that, he found a farmer who needed help herding cattle along the Yellow River beach, and he guaranteed that the man could get food and salary covered. He did really well caring for the cattle, and the farmer was quite satisfied. However, after a couple of months or so, the same thing happened again. Every time during lunch time, the employer just forced him away, and his salary was owed again. He wanted to fight back, but there was nothing that he could really do.

After this, he found himself in a situation where he could no longer find a place to live. From then on, he started his life as a homeless person, he couldn’t find his way back, or so to say, he was not willing to. He wandered on the streets and eventually came to the street in front of my house. Along with the wandering, he did some other things to survive, helping the furniture store to clean the floor, sweeping the street to get paid 50 yuan daily. The cardboard boxes were meant to be sold to the recycle station to get through the day.

I didn’t really want to talk too much about the suffering. It seemed to me that he is still just like a child who tries to find his way back home. Just like I was. He definitely wants to get back to his family. And this might be part of the reason why even though he was really mentally unstable, he still remembers the name of his village. 

I turned around and asked my mom, “Mom, I want to help him.”

“Well, how do you think we can help?” 

I asked him to help me to dial the police.

I asked the police officer to look for missing cases around the village where he lives, they did find a matching document from three years ago. Later, the officer reached contact with the family and sent him back home.

This experience had long been part of my life philosophy. It reminded me of the saying that I’ve read in a poem: “Could I get mansions covering ten thousand miles? I’d house all poor scholars and make them beam with smiles.” This saying is not just about the world but also about family.

“Through others we can see ourselves.” This is what comes into my mind when I think of the story. Families are the closest “others” to us. We grew out of our family and became part of our family.

Photo by Daniel Curran on Unsplash