The Mailman Who Climbed the Mountain - 爬山的邮差

Day had just broken, and the small path on the Sichuan-Tibet route was still wet. It was very quiet in the mountains, and only the sound of water could be heard. An old man stood at the head of the trail, tying a heavy canvas mail bag onto his back. The bag was full of letters. His name was Laoshan, and he was over sixty this year. He looked up at the mountain, then began to walk up.

The mountain path was narrow and slippery, and the mud was deep. Laoshan did not walk fast, but he never stopped. He planted each step very steadily. He had walked this road for decades, and could recognize it even with his eyes closed. This year motorbikes reached the foot of the mountain and signal towers went up, but this small path was still here, and the several small villages up the mountain were still waiting for him to deliver their letters.

After walking for an hour, footsteps came from behind. A young woman reporter had caught up. She carried a camera on her back and was breathing very heavily. "Hello!" she said while walking, "I've come to interview you. Everyone says you're a hero." Laoshan said nothing, and only kept walking forward.

The reporter raised her camera and took many photos of him. "You've walked alone in these mountains for so many years," she asked, "don't you find it hard?" Laoshan paused for a moment, pointed at a tree root under his feet and said: "This one's slippery, be careful." Having said that, he walked on again.

The reporter was a little puzzled. She asked many questions, and Laoshan answered not a single one. He only reminded her at the hard parts of the road: "The stones here are loose," "don't step in the water over there." Apart from these, he said nothing at all. The sun slowly rose higher, and the two of them kept climbing up the mountain.

Reaching the first village, Laoshan took several letters out of his bag and delivered them to one door after another. The villagers took their letters and went back inside, no one saying anything more. Laoshan seemed not to mind in the first place; he took a sip of water, then shouldered the mail bag again and headed for the next village.

The reporter followed him, snapping photos nonstop the whole way. She had already thought out a very moving report in her mind, titled "The Hero of the Great Mountains." She felt that a person like this must have kept going for so long out of love for this work.

At noon, they reached the last village at the mountain's summit. It was high and cold here, with clouds right beneath their feet. After Laoshan delivered the last few letters, the reporter couldn't help asking again: "Why did you choose this job back then? Did you want to be a mailman ever since you were small?"

Laoshan looked at her and gave a small smile. "I never wanted to do this in the first place," he said, "I never once thought about being any kind of mailman." The reporter was stunned. "Then why did you..." "Back in those years my family was poor," Laoshan said, "we needed money. This job had wages, so I came."

"So it turns out you didn't come because you loved it." the reporter said softly. "Right," Laoshan nodded, "at the start I didn't really plan to stay. But the pay came on time, I grew familiar with the road, and year after year just went by. In all these years, no one has ever thanked me either." The reporter slowly lowered her camera.

She had originally wanted to write the story of a hero, but the old man in front of her was completely different from what she had imagined. He did not think himself great, and he never spoke any grand principles. He was just an ordinary person who needed work in the first place, and then kept walking on.

Laoshan set the now-empty mail bag on the ground and sat down on a large stone. He took out an old kettle, poured a little hot tea, and drank it slowly. The wind at the summit was strong, but he sat very comfortably. "Having done it all these years," he said, "it's actually been quite alright."

The reporter wrote that sentence down in her notebook. She did not write the two words "hero." On the way down the mountain, Laoshan still walked in front, and at the slippery spots, he would turn back to remind her. The clouds parted, and the distant villages could be seen perfectly clearly.

A few days later, that report was published. The article had no "great," and no "hero." It only wrote of a man who originally hadn't wanted this line of work, and how, carrying a mail bag, year after year, he delivered the letters up the mountain.