Reborn 92's Business Tycoon

Chapter 25: A life more bizarre than art

The last animal that many families in the countryside kept was the dog, which was also a good companion for children in the countryside.

In the past, when people talked about it, they would say it was their family dog. However, as the pet market gradually emerged and more and more breeds became available, more and more people talked about their family Pekingese, Samoyeds, Labradors, Chihuahuas, Dobermans, Beagles... He suddenly didn't know how to refer to the dogs he had kept as a child and played with. What breeds were they and what were their names?

Many people called them '土狗' (tǔgǒu), which Feng Yiping of course did not accept! The word '土' (tǔ) means 'local' or 'rustic', and '狗' (gǒu) means 'dog', so '土狗' (tǔgǒu) literally means 'local dog'. What kind of mentality is this? It's the modern age, and they still think that even foreign dogs are better than those originally from our country?

Later, it seems that many people also thought about this, so these types of dogs were given a lofty name, 'Chinese Pastoral Dog'! The name is grand, but Feng Yiping finds it strange and not at all endearing. The dog he had as a child just doesn't match this name.

Now, in a political class, Feng Yiping, who is twelve years old in body but in his thirties in spirit, is pretending to concentrate on the lecture, but in reality Feng Yiping, who is preparing to create for money, is thinking about a question: why do almost every household in the countryside now keep dogs? To guard the home and the yard? No, at this time, there is nothing of value in every household, and there is nothing to look at. There is little rural migrant population, and there are almost no outsiders, so there is nothing to protect.

Moreover, in more than twenty years, when almost every household has upstairs and downstairs, when everything is electrified, when the road leads directly to the door, when there are many people coming and going, and when there is a greater need to protect the home, there are surprisingly not many households in the village that keep dogs. What is the reason for this? He can't understand it. Anyway, at this time, there are many households that keep dogs.

The same was true in Feng Yiping's family. As far as he could remember, the first dog they had was a female dog that gave birth to two litters a year, but each litter only had four or five puppies. Feng Yiping was still young at the time and had not yet started school, but he loved these furry little things.

He had been sickly and weak since childhood, and the other children in the neighbourhood, such as Feng Wen, would bully him, so he simply took a group of dogs with him everywhere he went. He even gave the dogs names, such as Xiaohei, Xiaogui, Xiaokuai and Xiaoman, and thus earned himself the nickname 'Dog Commander'! He was so close to the dogs that even after they were given away to other people's families when they grew up, they would still come wagging their tails to play with him when they saw him.

That year, the mother dog gave birth to six puppies, and before the puppies were old enough to be given away, the mother dog became ill and could no longer get up. So the family chose one of the six puppies, which Feng Yiping named Xiaogui, to keep. From then on, the dog was Feng Yiping's friend and brother, and the two were inseparable.

When Feng Yiping's sister went to school and his parents went to work in the mountains, he was left with his grandmother. His grandmother was old and had many grandchildren, so she couldn't take care of them all. In addition, she never liked Mei Qiuping, so Feng Yiping and his grandmother were not very close.

So, when he got tired from playing outside, every day at noon, he would take his little friend and sit on the stone steps in front of the house, waiting for his parents to come home. Often, after waiting for a long time, he would fall asleep, and then he would hug the puppy and fall asleep on the stone steps. People who passed by would say that Feng Yiping and his dog brother had a really good relationship.

When Feng Yiping started primary school when he was six years old, every morning, his little friend would send Feng Yiping to the hill where he could see the village primary school before going home. Every day at noon and in the evening after school, when Feng Yiping walked across the stone bridge in front of the village, Xiaogui would definitely rush out from behind the house, put his legs on Feng Yiping's shoulders, and lick his face with his long tongue, showing great affection.

But the good times didn't last long. In the third grade, the dog was in heat, and it ran around the village, looking for females with similar scents. Unfortunately, some idle men could not bear to see this, and took pleasure in hitting them with big sticks while they were together. At that time, Xiaogui was no longer young, and I guess he had some temper as well. After the same thing happened a few times, he chased after the people who beat them up and bit them, biting a total of two people. The people who were bitten came to the door that day, and Feng Zhenchang and Mei Qiuping said a lot of nice things before they stopped.

The village's saying was that once a dog started biting people, it would bite anyone it met in the future. In the village's words, the dog was crazy and couldn't be kept.

Feng Zhenchang didn't discuss it with Feng Yiping either, he just asked two people from the village to come. One was someone who used to beat the dog a lot, and the other had a gun. There wasn't much to shoot on the mountain, so he usually used the gun to shoot birds in the trees and such.

The person who often shot the dog took the noose, and the other person took his gun. From the moment they entered the house, Xiaogui must have realised that something was wrong. His ears stood up, and he made a low 'woof woof' sound in protest, taking an offensive stance. Suddenly, he saw an opportunity and ran towards the door. Unfortunately, he was blocked by the person who had been waiting.

The sight of the door slamming made Feng Yiping realise what it meant to be desperate – Xiaogui saw that it was impossible to escape through the door, so he tried to jump onto the beam. He turned and ran backwards, jumping time and time again against the wall, leaving marks on the adobe wall with his paws. The highest he managed was to get his front paws just about to the beam...

Feng Yiping did not cry at the time because he knew that crying would be useless. He could not change his father's decision. While they were still struggling inside, he could only run away again.

Later, he heard from his sister that when Xiaogui saw that he could not escape, he simply bit the barrel of the gun...! If we draw an analogy, this is also a brave man who faced the enemy's gun with his chest!

Xiao Gui was eventually eaten by everyone. Feng Yiping didn't know whether he had eaten it or not, but he seemed to have selectively forgotten about it. However, it can be inferred that Feng Yiping, who was already in the third grade at the time, was sensible, knew about emotions, felt guilty and could make choices. Although he couldn't change Xiao Gui's fate or prevent his parents from serving it on the table in the end, at least he would respect it himself!

Since then, the family has never kept a dog again.

Of course, Feng Yiping had eaten dog meat before. The year before, just after the beginning of the twelfth lunar month, his second uncle had sent over a dog's leg, which the family had stewed and eaten. Feng Yiping remembered that the soup was delicious.

Oh, forgive me, little doggie!

People are always forgetful. Feng Yiping, who was now in junior high school, remembered these things. Later, all of this would be forgotten, until one day in 2010.

By then, Feng Yiping's business was already on the right track, and in his spare time, he often watched movies online. After a long time, he had watched almost everything he liked. This day, he was browsing on Baofeng Video, and saw 'Hachi: A Dog's Tale,' which he had ignored many times before. Zhang Yan was next to him and said, 'This one has a high score, let's watch it.'

Feng Yiping knew from the rating that the movie might be good, but from the name, he knew it was about an RB dog. The lead actor was Richard Gere, a fan of the exiled Indian ** lama. In 2008, he was one of the guys who boycotted the Olympics in China, so he wasn't too happy about it and never watched it. But since Zhang Yan had said it, there weren't many other options, so he watched it.

At first, I found it a bit dull, but some of the later episodes, such as Hachi flying under the fence and burrowing through to get out, and him and the professor cautiously dealing with the skunk, which they still got bitten by in the end, made me laugh.

But as I watched on, the professor's wife returned to the town years later and saw Hachi, whose fur was no longer smooth and whose gait was no longer nimble, still waiting at the train station. Finally, on the snowy evening when Hachi knew his time was running out, he went to the flower bed in front of the station for the last time and held his eyelids open as he looked at the door that the professor had pushed open again and again, then walked out and called out to him with a smile. He reminisced about the bits and pieces of time the professor had spent with him from the very beginning, and finally, unable to hold back any longer, he closed his eyes. Zhang Yan was already crying her heart out.

Feng Yiping didn't cry, but he kept blowing his nose, and there was a big pile of tissue paper on the table.

Yes, some stories are not full of twists and turns, ups and downs, but they are plain and simple, so plain and simple that they make you cry like rain.

Later, Feng Yiping told Zhang Yan the story of Xiaogui. Zhang Yan's eyes were red as she said that something similar had happened in her family. A dog, after its owner died, went with the villagers to send the owner to the mountain, and then stayed by his grave. On the seventh day, the dog followed him to the afterlife.

Later, Feng Yiping even specifically asked his father-in-law for confirmation, and it was indeed true. So, although it is said that art is derived from life but is higher than life, in fact, very often, life is actually more unexpected and more bizarre than art.

So, this time, what Feng Yiping wants to write is to combine all of this and weave it into a story, to write about the story of an elderly widow and her old dog, who are dependent on each other.

If this story is published, it can be considered an original work by Feng Yiping. He can't guarantee how wonderful it is, but he has personally experienced many of the plot points, so at least he can guarantee that it is based on real life and that it expresses his true feelings without exaggeration or pretension.