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At the end of this semester, when my colleagues who went out to supervise exams with me stepped on the accelerator and returned to their homes in the city, I, who had no house in the county town, had to stay alone in an unfamiliar rural campus waiting for the next day's supervision. My mood fell to the lowest point and I once again questioned my job.

In 2020, four years after graduating from university, I struggled back and forth in several small units in Xi'an. Finally, after many failures, I was admitted to the junior high school in the township of my hometown in Shangluo, which is also my alma mater. Although the work location is in the countryside, for me who was struggling to make a living in an unstable environment at the time, this job was like a life-saving straw, pulling me out of confusion.

I still remember the scene in September of that year when I took a bus from my hometown to school (my home is 11 kilometers away from the town school) to register. I have walked this road for more than 20 years, from elementary school to middle school, and then to high school and university. In fact, it is very familiar, but this time on the road, my mood was more complicated than ever before. I was happy that from then on, I had a decent job in the eyes of my neighbors and parents, which was not easy for a rural child. The sad thing was that I didn't expect that after going around in circles, I returned to the heavy mountains that I tried my best to escape from during my student days.

■《Junior Class》Stills

At that time, my boyfriend of four years stayed in Xi'an to work. Although what people said on the Internet was that you can get a job in a different place without moving to another place, and you can get a job in a different place without moving to a township, for me who had experienced four years of social abuse, a stable job was really important. Relationships came after survival. Besides, I firmly believed that as long as our feelings were deep, distance would not be a problem.

In my first year of work, I was appointed as the head teacher of the seventh grade Chinese class (I later learned that most Chinese teachers are head teachers), and it happened that the class I was in charge of was considered the most difficult to manage in the primary school. Although my colleagues who were familiar with the situation disclosed this information to me in advance, at that time, I was extremely enthusiastic and motivated about this hard-won job, and I firmly believed that as long as I worked hard, I could overcome all difficulties. Now that I think about it, this kind of blind enthusiasm may only be experienced by people who have just entered the system.

After I officially took up the post, I kept in mind the experience of the old teachers: To make students love you, you must first make them fear you. So at the beginning, I acted very fiercely, and the students behaved relatively honestly in the first few weeks and did not make any mistakes. I was confident that this class was just like this, and it must be that their previous teacher was not fierce enough. The facts soon slapped me in the face, and soon, the bad habits of the students in the class began to gradually reveal themselves.

First of all, the grades. There are more than 40 students in my class. It is hard to describe their academic performance. Almost half of them failed the small tests in Chinese, math and English. Their learning attitude is simply incomparable to the enthusiasm we used to study. I don’t understand why they have become like this. In order to improve their grades, in addition to normal teaching, I also made plans for students of different levels and gave them tutoring after lunch. The physical education teacher who joined the company with me unfortunately taught math at the time. In order to prevent students from being teased that math was taught by the physical education teacher in the future, he gave math tutoring to students after evening self-study.

After persisting for a while, the students' grades were still as poor as a rock. We were exhausted and gave up. Three years later, when we talked about this again, we both felt that we were stupid and ridiculous at the time. Of course, this is a story for later.

■ Stills from Female Teacher

If the students were well behaved, it would be acceptable if their grades were not good, but the problem was that these students were very naughty. Later, I realized that the well behaved behavior in the first two weeks of school was just a disguise. As time went on, they could no longer pretend and began to reveal their true nature: not handing in homework, talking in class, fighting with each other, pretending to be sick and asking for leave, and even worse, insulting the teacher... Various unexpected phenomena appeared. I reported them to the school and communicated with the parents. After a lot of trouble, I finally found that the reason behind the children's naughtiness was the long-term absence of their parents, as well as the neglect and indulgence of their grandparents. The power of teachers is really limited.

During those two years, as a class teacher, I never had a full nap. Even if I had just left the classroom and went back to my room and lay down, someone would bang on my door, saying that someone had hit someone again. Even at 10 o'clock in the evening, there were students knocking on the door, saying that someone in the dormitory had caused trouble again.

Fighting wits and courage with this group of energetic kids all day long, I was exhausted physically and mentally. I secretly cried many times in the middle of the night. The idea of ​​resigning kept lingering in my mind, but I didn't know what to do after resigning. I went home to talk to my parents. As farmers, they could only sigh and wipe tears with me, and advised me to be patient. It's not easy to get a job, just get through it. Later, I simply stopped telling them. It would be useless except to make them worry.

In my third year of work, I was tortured by the students and could no longer bear it. The school then let an experienced male teacher who looked more intimidating take over as the head teacher, and I was relieved. Ironically, there was another female teacher who entered the school with me during those two years. After teaching the head teacher for half a semester, she got rid of the responsibility because she could not manage the students. She became the only person in the school who enjoyed retirement at a young age. We other young people who worked hard but got the same salary were envious and resentful. But no matter how resentful we were, practice proved that they had the easiest life. We later concluded that the crying child gets the candy, as long as you are crazy enough, the crazy one is the leader.

After I stopped being a class teacher, my mood gradually improved. Later, I took maternity leave because I was pregnant and did not serve as a class teacher. However, the class teacher was like a sword hanging over my head, and I didn’t know when it would fall. But the current situation is much better than when I first came to the school. Although the school has many cross-checks, it is still a little easier than in cities and towns. When I was gradually satisfied with the content of my work, my personal life was tested by working in a different place.

■《Summer in Xixiao River》Stills

As mentioned above, when I returned to Shangluo to work, I had a boyfriend. Although someone introduced me to someone as soon as I arrived at the company, I thought clearly before the teacher examination that it was just a long-distance relationship, I could go to Xi'an on weekends, and there were still winter and summer vacations (I later learned that winter and summer vacations were for healing). With this idea in mind, I ignored the advice of my relatives and friends to break up, and confidently survived the long-distance relationship and finally entered into marriage.

I originally thought that the test of being in a long-distance relationship was nothing special, but after getting married and having a child, I realized that I was too naive in the past. Many difficulties in life are not revealed all at once, but emerge gradually over time.

During the mask period, I was pregnant and stranded in Shangluo. I worked at school during the week and lived in a rented house in the city at the time on weekends. It was frustrating and lonely to do prenatal checkups, laundry, and cooking alone, but it was acceptable at the time until the child was born. I couldn't understand it before I became a mother, but after becoming a mother, the feeling of wanting to go home every day to accompany my baby made me feel that every day at school was so difficult. However, boarding junior high schools usually have evening self-study classes in the evening, and the distance is far, so I can only go home on weekends.

The child is too young, and I don't want to miss her growth. If I bring her with me, the road will be bumpy, and the accommodation conditions in the school are not very good, so I can only leave the child to my mother-in-law and husband. It's okay at ordinary times, but the feeling of powerlessness when the child is sick is really crazy. And my husband also said that he was afraid that the child would have psychological problems without the company of his mother. After having a child, we also had disputes and conflicts, but more of them were out of love for the child. Once, I came home on Friday, and the child saw my expression, with a hint of surprise and disbelief in her tender and clear eyes. After seeing clearly that it was me, she excitedly shouted and ran towards me. I was surprised that the child had so many emotions. So, even though the child is only over one year old, she just can't express herself, but she really understands everything. At that moment, I felt very sad.

Of course, the root of all this is actually the distance. My workplace is about 111 kilometers away from my home in Xi'an. In addition, the school is in a township, so there are generally no regular buses that go directly to Xi'an. Every time I go home, I take the village bus to the city and then take a bus, a black car, the subway, and a bus/taxi. At the beginning, I had to change the subway three times. Later, Line 6 was opened near the Textile City, which was better. I only had to sit 29 stations from beginning to end. In the bumpy ride, I thoroughly understood what the ancients meant by "traveling by boat and car". I won't say that it's tiring, but the key is that it takes at least 3 hours to get there. Of course, after I get home, I can't complain to my husband about the hardship on the road, because he will say, who told you not to drive? Although I have learned to drive, I don't have enough courage and I still dare not go on the road, so the travel is another big problem.

■ Stills from "Kim Ji-young, Born 1982"

Going back to Xi'an is not so difficult, after all, there are many transportation options in Xi'an, but the return trip is troublesome. I have to take a taxi/bus + a bus (direct to the county town) + a village bus (from the county town back to the town, the time is not fixed). And our Sundays are always incomplete, because we have meetings on weekend nights, so I have to leave at around 3 o'clock on Sunday afternoon.

Sometimes I find it troublesome to transfer, so I will take a ride. It is expensive, but at least it is faster. Anyway, the transportation cost has already made my salary, which is not rich, even worse, so I just don't care. I have also encountered many things during the ride.

Once I booked a car for more than three o'clock, but the driver canceled the order at the appointed time and didn't call me to tell me, which delayed my bus ride. I wanted to cry but had no tears at that time because I was not familiar with the rules of the ride-hailing platform and there was no accountability. Now I think about it and I still regret it very much. Another time, I took a ride, but as soon as I got in the car, the driver told me that I had to talk to him all the time. My throat was sore, and I just wanted to rest because I was coaxing my baby on the weekend. As a result, the driver said that he would fall asleep easily if I didn't talk to him. Why do you want to be a driver if you love to fall asleep? I don't understand it. It's simply irresponsible to myself and the passengers, but for safety reasons, I still chatted with him all the way. And this driver suddenly said that he wanted to take me to experience drifting. I tried to stop him but it was ineffective. Seeing that the car was speeding up to more than 170 kilometers per hour on the highway, I thought, it's over, I met a fool. At that moment, I really wanted to curse, but I was afraid that the driver would go crazy. After all, the steering wheel was in his hands, so I could only endure it silently...

There are so many stories on the road that every time the car travels through tunnels of all sizes in the Qinling Mountains, I curl up in the seat, feeling that my future is not bright in the uncertainty of the flickering light.

I always thought that there were few people like me who worked across cities for the sake of employment. It was not until I met two female teachers who worked in Yan'an and Ankang respectively in the community that I realized that I was not the only one trapped in the siege for the sake of so-called stability.

I met a girl who was in a similar situation to me. She also shared with me the story of another girl in her unit: this girl was from Xi'an and worked in a bank in Xi'an. In order to pursue a junior who was from Shangluo, she resolutely quit her job in Xi'an and took the exam in Shangluo. Later, they got married and had a baby. As a result, the boy's service period expired and he took the exam in Xi'an again, so he asked the girl to take the exam in Xi'an as well. She was also in her 30s. After listening to this, I was silent for a long time. I can only say that sometimes men are more pragmatic than women, and work is more reliable than love.

We, the long-distance editors, often complain to each other about the inconvenience caused by the distance. I know that we are all trying to find a little comfort from each other to prove that we are not alone on this road. We all want to dilute our guilt towards our families through the resonance of similar situations, find recognition for the hard work and a kind of self-comfort for ourselves that we cannot return to Xi'an at the moment.

It is said that the end of the universe is the organization. In order to pursue this end, we have taken a roundabout way to avoid the surging crowds in the provincial capital and worked in slightly remote towns in other places. At first we thought we had found a suitable path, but only after we got on the road did we realize that there were more problems blocking the road, and you can't escape or hide from them.

■ Stills from "We Who Can't Become Beasts"

I will be 35 in two years. After having a baby, my husband often urged me to take the exam and return to Xi'an before I turned 35. It is too difficult to pass the civil service exam. I know I have no hope. What about becoming a teacher? I studied a non-teaching major. Xi'an hardly recruited in the past few years. Now it has started to recruit, but there are few places and the competition is greater. In addition, I may no longer be in the state of mind for the exam. I always feel that I will not pass the exam. As for other jobs, I know that I may not be competent for them now. In short, I don't want to suffer the pain of taking the exam again, but I am unwilling to suffer the pain of distance.

However, the environment is very pressing. Many times, in the quiet countryside nights when my colleagues all went home, I looked at the dark mountains around me, thinking of the loneliness of not being able to go home often, thinking of the weekend rush, and my heart was always tormented. Sometimes I advised myself to accept reality, sometimes I hated my incompetence, and sometimes I wanted to buy books and fight again. At this time, I always think of the sentence I read when I was in school: The ideal of life is to live an ideal life. At first, I thought that studying hard would lead to an ideal life, but now with limited academic qualifications, I am getting further and further away from my ideal life. When I grew up, I realized that the ultimate reason for my hard work in studying was just to become an ordinary person with an ordinary job.

I know that my inner struggles all along are just excuses for me to escape or lie down. I also know that it is not me who chose the siege, but the system that tolerates my mediocrity. However, thinking about the next few decades of my life still having to rush around like this, I feel a deep sense of fatigue in advance. Cross-city work is really too challenging. This time, my husband doesn't need to urge me, I have figured it out myself, and I have to fight while there is still a chance. Whether I can pass the exam or not is another matter, but I can't not take action, otherwise I will regret it later.

Looking back on my journey to becoming a civil servant, perhaps it is just like what people say online: the only moment you are happy is when you pass the civil service exam. Going to work across the city is like a battle without the smoke of gunpowder. It records the forward posture of everyone who is struggling for life. Even if we are tired, we dare not leave easily. Now I just hope that I can get ashore again before I turn 35.