If there is no live broadcast, Xia Wanqing may still be "chasing the field" now, and playing the guzheng on folk stages across the country is her only livelihood. When she first graduated in 2012, she earned 200 for a performance. Four years later, it rose to 500, but even then, she was barely able to make ends meet—the performer did not reimburse her room and board, and she did not receive performances every day.

Compared with many music students from wealthy families, Xia Wanqing has never been the lucky one. As long as she can remember, poverty is an insurmountable mountain, and she has lost many possibilities. To this day, she still can't presume another path: with her love and talent, if the family is well-off, what can she achieve? achievement?

Fortunately it wasn't too late. After finding another stage, she finally no longer has to live and sleep, and she no longer has to endure cold eyes and loneliness. The story of this girl from a mountain village in Henan is not a fairy tale of overnight fame, but an ordinary life.

"You don't know how good kids are from elementary school to adulthood"

Xia Wanqing discovered that she liked music when she was in kindergarten. There was a pedal piano at school, and she thought it was amazing. "Why does it make a sound when you press the keyboard?" She went home with her mother to mow the grass, and she drew the keys on the ground.

Xia Wanqing was born in a remote small mountain village in Nanyang, Henan, and her family made a living by farming. After being enlightened by the pedal piano, she wanted an electronic organ with three sets of keys for her sixth birthday. That piano cost 200 yuan, which was equivalent to half a year's living expenses for the whole family in the 1990s. Her parents didn't agree at first. She cried a lot and didn't come down to eat for a whole day. At four o'clock in the afternoon, her mother finally gave in. Many years later, Xia Wanqing realized how embarrassed her family was at the time. Her father failed to set up a brick kiln factory and owed more than 100,000 yuan in debt.

In this way, Xia Wanqing started her "music career". The kindergarten teacher had a sheet music book, so she went to "class". Amazingly, she can sing out many melodies just by listening to them once. She also likes to sing. When the villagers gather at the entrance of the village with their rice bowls, she often jumps on the big rock to announce to herself: "Next, I will ask Xia Wanqing to bring everyone a solo folk song "A Big River"." At that time, one went to the village The Fujian boss who collected mushrooms heard her singing and suggested her to participate in the children's music competition. She was very excited when she heard it, but when she learned that the registration fee alone would cost more than 10,000 yuan, she had to quit. At that time, there were no households with ten thousand yuan in the village.

But since then, the dream of the stage has been buried in Xia Wanqing's heart. She decided to follow the path of music and used a five-key electronic keyboard given by her uncle who was working outside. She taught herself a simplified version of the "Turkish March" and was admitted to the music class of the county high school. Music classes can specialize in piano or guzheng. Because the piano is too expensive, Xia Wanqing chose the guzheng.

Without Tongzigong, and wanting to catch up with other classmates as soon as possible, Xia Wanqing spends the rest of her time practicing the piano except for eating, sleeping, and taking cultural classes. In the first half year, the blood blisters were rubbed off, fell off, and rubbed again on the fingers, and finally reached the point where I couldn't feel the fingers when I pinched them. However, even so, she still failed to enter the ideal music school. In the third year of high school, Xia Wanqing found a music professor at the Minzu University of China for an uncle in the village who worked in Beijing. Hearing the sound of the piano, the professor shook his head: "You don't know how powerful children are from elementary school to adulthood."

Back in Henan, she found a guzheng teacher from the music department of a local university, took 30 lessons with 9,000 yuan borrowed from her father, and finally went to the university with student loans. In those four years, in addition to taking classes at school, Xia Wanqing was working outside. She lived frugally, but until she graduated from college, she still failed to fill the hole left by her previous piano lessons. (She couldn't understand why her father went into the mountains to collect mushrooms every day, from three in the morning to twelve in the evening, and the family was still so poor.)

"Go to sleep, you have to go to the show at eight o'clock tomorrow morning!"

After graduating from university, Xia Wanqing became a folk guzheng performer and began a life of displacement for more than five years. In her own words, every move was like "fleeing".

She has been to countless folk stages, from Hohhot in the north to Haikou in the south. She has no fixed residence, and her clothes for spring, summer, autumn and winter are stuffed into a 28-inch suitcase. In order to move the guzheng conveniently, she often drags a small cart with wheels, and the cart gurgles loudly, attracting the attention of onlookers wherever she goes. Every time she went up the stairs, she could only move these two behemoths step by step. When it rained or snowed, she couldn't even get an umbrella. "At this time, I always think about who can help me get something. I will be grateful to him for the rest of my life."

At that time, she only earned 200 yuan a day. In order to save money, she lived in a simple hotel with 30 to 50 yuan a night. There was nothing in the room except the bed, the table and the noise from the next door. She is also reluctant to take a taxi. Every time she carries 80 catties of luggage on the bus, everyone will look at her with strange eyes. "This life is insecure, and she often wakes up in a trance: Who am I? Where am I?

She longs for a stable stage and the company of her family. The first Spring Festival after work, she stayed in Hangzhou. Her mother asked her to go back. She said that she didn't usually perform, and that there were not only extra performances during the Spring Festival, but also double the remuneration, so just stay outside to make money. Her father choked on the phone. She had never seen such a soft father since she was a child.

In those years, Xia Wanqing had almost no friends. Every day I eat, ride in the car, perform, and call the curtain.

After four or five years, she finally got an invitation to perform for a month. That time, she earned 10,000 yuan and got paid. She spread the banknotes one by one on the bed of the small hotel and took pictures for her mother to see. Until two or three o'clock in the morning, she was so excited that she couldn't sleep, and finally her mother had to urge: "Go to bed now, we have to go to the field at eight o'clock tomorrow morning!"

In fact, Xia Wanqing played the qin pretty well. She participated in the audition for "Avenue of Stars" and stood on the final stage from among 3,000 people, but such an appearance did not change her embarrassment.

"Finally turned over!"

A few years ago, the live broadcast became popular, and Xia Wanqing started the broadcast with the idea of giving it a try. "The audience really appreciates my talent, and I felt I was in the right place on the first day." On November 28, Xia Wanqing officially started broadcasting. From morning to night, she sings and plays the guzheng for fans for twelve hours a day. She is afraid that the number of people in the live broadcast room will drop if she stops, so even if her hands are too sore to lift, she will spare no effort. Years of stage experience have accumulated more than 600 playlists for her, and the "Iron Blood Danxin", "A Laugh in the Sea" and "Shanghai Beach", which are frequently requested by fans on Douyin, are even more handy.

However, just when she thought life was about to get better, her grandfather who had always loved her was diagnosed with advanced gastric cancer. She rushed back to her hometown to take care of her grandfather and stopped broadcasting for a while, but where can her family afford the medical expenses of 2,000 yuan per day? She can only replay. "I didn't say anything to the people in the live broadcast room, I just thought that I could earn a little bit and let my grandfather live a few more days."

On New Year's Eve that year, her parents accompanied her grandfather in the hospital, and she made money by live broadcasting at home alone. On the seventeenth day of the first lunar month, my father brought my grandfather home. That night, my grandfather left. Later, in retrospect, Xia Wanqing always felt conflicted. Grandpa was not by her side in his last days. On the other hand, the more than 60,000 medical expenses earned by live broadcast really solved the urgent needs of the whole family. "At least I didn't give up because I had no money."

This incident made Xia Wanqing have a deeper affection for the live broadcast. "I'm very grateful to these fans. They let me at least not have to run around all year round, so I can rent a house and have more energy to do what I like." In the past two years, Xia Wanqing has finally paid off all the family's debts through live broadcast.

"My God, that feeling is that I have finally turned over, although I still can't afford a house." Now Xia Wanqing rents a three-bedroom, one-bedroom house in the suburbs of Hangzhou for 5,000 yuan, leaving two bedrooms for her parents and herself. The other one is used for live streaming. After the New Year, she picked up her parents from her hometown. They are all in their sixties, their hair is gray, and they haven't had a good time. "I wish I could work a little bit harder and they would work a little bit less."

In Xia Wanqing's heart, there is still an unfinished stage dream. When she traveled across the country to go to the show, she always thought that it would be great if one day she stood on the stage purely to express her artistic feelings rather than to survive, and if the audience came to the performance purely because they liked her. "Douyin has fulfilled a little dream. Many viewers say that I play the piano well. After so many years of hard work, I have finally been recognized. I am really happy. And after many people know you, they will come to see you every day, and finally feel that they are valued. ."

In Xia Wanqing's live broadcast room, new guzheng enthusiasts will join every day, and many parents will bring their children who are beginners to guzheng to listen to the performance. "Because I play mostly pop songs that are easy to learn, so everyone can understand it." The most common sentence that fans said in the live broadcast room was "It's very peaceful to listen to you playing the piano, and all the troubles can be dissipated." The second time I heard the audience say this, Xia Wanqing felt comforted: "I feel that my existence is very valuable."

After so many years of work, she can finally relax now. She goes to bed early and gets up early every day, broadcasts for two hours in the morning, eats her mother’s cooking at noon, and learns to draw and practice calligraphy in the afternoon. , dance square dance. When the epidemic situation is better, she plans to resume professional performance, go to the audition of the conservatory of music or find a professor for private lessons.

There was no way to make up for the skills she had left in her childhood, but she still wanted to make up for the twenty-something herself who had no choice - fortunately, it was not too late.