I went to Tailuo village once a week, teaching Mandarin for two hours. With the arrival of a new teacher, the children's enthusiasm for learning Mandarin suddenly increased. Students came from several nearby villages, ranging from seven or eight years old to eighteen years old. Mr. Maung's Chinese pronunciation needed to be sharpened, so sometimes he sat in on my class.
The students were curious about me and the world in the ravine, just like my desire for the world outside the forest. I quickly became friends with many of them.
Zabow and I were about the same age. He was an older boy and was very enthusiastic. He told me many of their customs, and he sometimes took me hunting and taught me how to use a gun. I remembered the first time he asked me to aim at a rabbit with a barrel gun and lit the fire for me. I watched the flames burn and was frightened. Suddenly, I threw the gun out, forgetting what happened after that.
There was also a fifteen-year-old girl named Mia in the class. One day she and the other girls grabbed my arms and asked me to go to her house. After entering the courtyard of her home, she asked her mother to come out to see me. She said to her mother, "Does my teacher look like my brother?"
Her mother looked me up and down and asked how old I was, and I said I was almost nineteen. I didn't understand their words, my students were my translators anyway.
"Really! My son is the same age." Her mother laughed happily, took me up the bamboo building, and handed me a picture frame with a half-length photo of a soldier in it. His face shape kind of looked like mine.
I put the photo on my chest for everyone to see, and the students shouted in unison, "It's like the same person!"
Mia's mother insisted on keeping me for dinner and proudly told the story of her son's military service somewhere outside of the mountains.
Not long after, news came from the inland that the country would resume the university entrance examination at the end of the year, and many Zhiqing were already racing against time to review and prepare. Even though I had just studied a little math and science in high school, that didn't stop me from giving it a shot. I had to tell Principal Maung that I couldn't go up the mountain anymore.
In the last class, the teenage girls were neatly dressed and wearing jewelry, which I thought was a way of saying goodbye. As soon as the class was over, the girls gathered and pushed Mia in front of me.
Mia asked me shyly, "Teacher, my mother wanted to ask, can you attend my coming-of-age ceremony today?"
"Teacher, let's go, let's go!" the girls chirped.
"Mia, of course," I agreed excitedly. I never had the chance to witness such a meaningful ceremony with my own eyes. I only heard Donna mention it.
Surrounded by students, I came to Mia's house. There were seven or eight wooden tables outside the courtyard, and some male guests sat at the tables drinking tea. Zabow and the other boys were blocked outside the yard, but Mia dragged me inside, followed by the schoolgirls. I saw several old women give me a strange look, mumbling something. Mia turned to them, "This is my brother!" Then she whispered to me, "You are the only man who could enter this yard because you look like my brother."
We went up to the bamboo building, and when Mia's mother saw me, her already happy face bloomed like a flower. She said, "Son, Mia's brother is not at home. We want a brother today, and I thought about it. You! Are you willing to help?"
"Tell me how, I will listen to you." Of course, I would love to do something for such a lovely family. Besides, I had been a brother since I was a child, and I was able to deal with a naughty sister of my own. So, a ceremony for Mia couldn't intimate me.
Several aunts of Mia's family took me to another room and helped me put on some baggy black linen pants and a jacket. On the jacket, there were red and white stripes along the neckline, cuffs, and chest, decorated with silver buttons. Then, I put on a melon cap with a red hydrangea on the top.
Looking from the window, I saw many women in the courtyard, all dressed in festive costumes, sitting down along the courtyard wall. The aunts led me into the yard, and I heard everyone calling me "Mihan." Mihan was Mia's brother. I sat among Mia's mother and relatives. In the center of the yard, there was a table covered with red silk cloth, on which was a women's suit. The silver ornaments glistened in the morning sun.
All of a sudden, there was a crisp and happy female voice in the crowd, and then all the women sang along. Mia, accompanied by her best friend, went down the bamboo building and stood shyly beside the set table in the sweet singing. By my standards, she's still a minor, but her mother had the final say. The master of ceremonies, an old woman, went up to meet Mia. She took off the small gourd bottle around her waist, read the words of blessing in her native tongue, sprinkled the dew collected from the flowers on the table and skirt, and then faced Mia and her best friend and dotted a few drops onto them with her fingers.
The singing resumed, and under the greeting of the master of ceremonies, a group of girls surrounded Mia. They removed her teenage short skirt, and tied her adult floor-length dress around her waist. It was colored black, red, and white, and accompanied by a short, silver top. Mia's aunt stepped forward and opened Mia's long single braid. The master of ceremonies took a moment to sprinkle some auspicious water on her waterfall-like silk hair, and her aunt braided them into two delicate long braids.
The master signaled that her work had been completed and was about to leave the venue.
The people in the courtyard shouted, "There's still a headscarf!" It turned out that she was playing a gimmick. She invited Mia's aunt to appear and put a flower-embroidered headscarf on Mia's head to make a dignified lotus shape.
"And earrings!" the crowd shouted again. The master changed Mia's emerald earrings and watched them lightly flickering under Mia's earlobes, reflecting her slender neck.
There were cheers in the yard, and the little girl just now suddenly turned into a dignified, beautiful young woman. Mia stood there with a smile, her face full of happiness. From that day, she could go to the market freely, find the boy she liked, and bring home the lover she wanted to like other women.