Chapter 3 <Children from Far Away>

As a professor of the history department of a university, even if he does not hold any administrative positions, he still has to participate in various on-campus and off-campus meetings.This year I finally had a chance to take a year off, and I chose Princeton University as my vacation place. When I first came here, it was summer vacation. Although there were some summer students, the campus was still very deserted. For me, this is really a paradise. I can often take a walk in the campus and enjoy the beauty of the tranquility of the campus. At this moment, I saw that kid, he was dark-skinned, about thirteen or fourteen years old, and he was from Central and South America. He wore a T-shirt and often wandered around the campus, which made me a little What is puzzling is that he is always alone. In the United States, although individualism is popular, loneliness is not advocated. Teenagers always hang out with their friends. I have never seen him wandering alone like this forever.

I saw him not only on campus, but also in the library, the student cafeteria, and even the bookstore.I noticed curiously that he is not only always alone, but also always a bystander. For him, it seems that we have to eat, go to the library, etc. are all things worthy of his observation.But he only observes, never participates.For example, I never saw him line up for food. Once, when I was in New York, on the top floor of the Empire State Building, I suddenly saw him again. This time he smiled at me, showing his white teeth.That night, in the subway car, I saw him again, sitting behind me, just the two of us in the car.

I began to feel a little unbelievable, why does he always follow me? Autumn is here, and the leaves on the Princeton campus turned golden overnight. I prefer to take a walk on the campus, because the autumn scenery in the eastern part of the United States is intoxicatingly beautiful.But what puzzled me was that the boy was still wandering around the campus, the only change was that he was wearing a jacket.All the secondary schools are already open, shouldn't he go to school?If you don't go to school, why don't you go to work? One day, when I was about to go into the library, I saw him again, leaning against a pillar in front of the library, as if waiting for me, I couldn't help asking to myself: What the hell is he? who?Why are you always here?

Unexpectedly, he replied: Professor, do you want to know who I am?Come with me to the library and I'll tell you who I am.To my surprise, he answered me in Chinese.While he answered me, he led me proudly to a computer terminal where I was looking for information. I followed his instructions and activated a multimedia computer system. After a few times, the boy told me that I had found the material. It was a video tape. After pressing a button, I saw this on the terminal. A video, I have seen this video. Last year, the university I worked for held the 30th Hunger event. The organizer borrowed this video from World Vision to play. It records all the stories of impoverished young people from all over the world. Tragically, most of the footage was shot in Africa and Central and South America, and I watched it again on TV afterwards, and today I watched it for the third time.

Although the scenes in this video are all sad, what I remember most is the scene of a young beggar sitting on a bridge and kowtowing to passers-by from time to time.To be honest, although I watched this video twice, I don't remember other scenes, but I always remember the scene of the boy kowtowing. About five minutes later, the shot of the young beggar kowtowing appeared. The kid next to me asked me to pause the video, and there was only a still shot of the little beggar’s silhouette on the screen. The silhouette of the beggar appeared very clearly. He said: This is me. I looked up and saw a healthy and smiling child. I didn't believe a little beggar could have such a big change.

I said: Why have you completely changed? The kid explained to me: Ever since World Vision made this documentary in Brazil, the whole world knew that there were thousands of teenagers living on the streets in Brazil, and the Brazilian government was furious, so they cracked down on us in big cities These teenage beggars.These policemen hated us very much. Apart from beating us often, they would also take us into the wilderness and exile us so that we could not return to the city. Many children either starved to death or froze to death in the wilderness. One day, I suddenly found a large number of policemen coming from both ends of the bridge. I also saw a child being dragged to the middle of the bridge and beaten. I had only one way to go, and that was to jump off the bridge.

I was taken aback: Have you already left this world? He nodded: Yes, now it is my soul talking to your soul. As for this body, it is just an image, not a real entity. When I was alive, I always envied others to have such a healthy body, so I Just choose this body, you can't touch mine, others can't see me, and we can't hear our voice, because the conversation of the soul is silent, don't you notice that your lips and mine are not moving , I actually don't know Chinese, but you think I know Chinese. I finally understood, no wonder he never ate, and looking back now, I didn't even see him open the door.

Although I was talking to a spirit, I wasn't afraid at all, he seemed very friendly and didn't seem like he was going to hurt me. Why did you choose me? You end this computer system first, and we go outside to chat. We left the campus and walked to a valley. There was a pond in the valley. The valley and the pond were full of wild ducks flying from the north. We found a piece of grass and sat down. After I left this world, I finally arrived at a place where there is no pain and no sorrow.Even so, I still met countless poor people. After chatting with each other, they recommended me to come to you.

You are a historian, have you noticed that the history of our mankind always records the stories of emperors and generals, but never records the stories of us poor people.No wonder you, after all, those who write history are not poor people, you don't know our existence at all, and of course you can't see the world from our eyes. All the history museums in the world only exhibit the deeds of emperors, dukes, and archbishops. I searched all over the world and only found one or two paintings depicting us poor people.Napoleon was a warmonger at all. He made millions of people homeless, orphans and widows, but his cultural relics are always displayed in museums.

Before the famous Zhenguan Reign in your Chinese history, in just a few decades, your population was reduced to only 10% due to the war.Ninety percent of the people died of starvation, yet your history textbooks only lightly mention this event. I also started to read World Geographic magazine recently. The earth described in this magazine is an extremely beautiful place. When they introduce India, they always introduce those palaces made of marble, and they never dare to take a picture of the garbage dumps in Indian cities. , and poor people begging for a living next to garbage dumps; they only introduce Rio de Janeiro, and they only introduce people who swim on the beach, but they dare not introduce thousands of children who sleep on the streets.

You may think our campus is so beautiful, and the place where we sit is even more beautiful, but is the world really so beautiful?You only need to drive for an hour to reach Trenton, New Jersey, where a black kid will die in a drug-related vendetta at the age of twelve. If he is not poor, he will die at twelve. Do you sell drugs when you are young? We poor people who died have a consensus that as long as history does not record our poor people, as long as historians do not write history from the perspective of the poor, human poverty will never disappear. We hope you change the way history is written so that history can faithfully record the poverty of human beings. Even these wild ducks from the north are cared about, but why no one cares about the poor? I understand, but I am still curious: There are so many historians in the world, why did you choose me? Because we poor people have confidence in you and know that you will not provoke another class struggle because of your sympathy for the poor. We only hope that the world will have more love and care, and we will not see any class hatred anymore . I nodded and agreed to his request.He gestured to thank me.Then he told me to walk in the direction of the school and don't look back, as soon as I heard his singing, he would disappear. After a while, I heard a flute, and then I heard the desolate singing of a boy.One year, when I was in college, I joined the mountain service group and happened to attend the funeral of an aborigine.During the funeral, I heard similar desolate singing. A few minutes later, I heard a girl join in the singing. Finally, many people joined in. The singing of the chorus spread to my head in all directions. Although I couldn’t understand the lyrics, I knew that the people who sang were poor. People, they try to tell me that the world is not as beautiful as we see it.Now I am walking in the quiet campus where the autumn sun is like wine, my world is both happy and beautiful, but at this moment, there are many poor people in the world who are living very miserable, but I don't want to see them.I know that from now on, as long as I live, I will hear this singing in the dead of night. In 2100 A.D., the World History Association held a meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This meeting had a special theme. Scholars participating in the meeting would pay tribute to a historian who passed away for a hundred years. Because of this Taiwan scholar’s It vigorously advocates that the history of mankind no longer only records the changes of emperors and generals, but can faithfully reflect the lives of all mankind. Therefore, history has begun to record the poverty of mankind, and historical relic museums have also begun to exhibit the tragic situation of unfortunate compatriots among mankind. This professor has greatly impacted the conscience of mankind, and many people are no longer indifferent to the poor. Because of this awakening of conscience, governments of all countries have tried their best to eliminate poverty.The historian not only changed the way history is written, but also rewrote the history of mankind.