Literary Master 1983

Chapter 206: Poliomyelitis (II)
What is polio?
This disease has a more common folk name: polio.

It is not a congenital disease, but an acute viral infectious disease. Yu Qie still remembers that many great figures in history died of this disease, including the lame priest of ancient Egypt - people found a mural from 1500 BC showing a priest whose right leg was shorter and thinner than his left leg, and whose right foot was in the shape of a horseshoe.

This is a typical symptom of polio.

A more recent example is Roosevelt, one of the greatest presidents in the history of the United States. He was originally strong enough to play football, but one time he jumped into the freezing cold lake to swim, and then he contracted polio, and his lower body was completely paralyzed ever since.

There are polio patients in the literary world, and Shi Tiesheng is one of them.

It is a terminal illness that cannot be cured by modern medicine, and we can only pray that it will never happen to us.

Yu Qie comforted Alai: "Alai, I am in deep sorrow. Polio is a terminal disease. There is nothing you can do about it. This is not your fault."

He added: "What kind of place is Aba? Although I have never been there, I know a little bit about it! It is a place with high mountains and steep cliffs and fast-flowing rivers. In such an environment, if a child has such a disease, and an adult labor force is needed to raise the child... This is a disease of the rich that cannot be afforded!"

"Alai, maybe the death of that child is a relief for him."

Think about how much torture Shi Tiesheng’s mother must have suffered after he fell ill?
Shi Tiesheng is a native of Beijing.

After hearing this, Alai suddenly shook his head and said, "I know all this, but I just can't accept it!"

Yu Qie patted him on the back.

Alai sniffed, wiped away his tears, and apologized to the others: "I'm sorry to have embarrassed you all."

Everyone comforted Alai. Alai squatted down again and said to the little girl, "I didn't mean to say that. What's your name?"

"My name is Zhu Yunli! You can call me Duanduan. I am six years old this year."

Alai said, "Duanduan, I apologize to you! Do you understand? There was a child about your age who died of illness... You are so cute, I just thought of him."

Duanduan wiped away Alai's tears: "Don't cry, is your name Alai? Alai, I'm not angry."

Yu Qie saw this scene and thought to himself, I didn't expect that after not seeing him for such a long time, Alai would become so sentimental. He is indeed a poet.

On the first night in Hangzhou, Yu Qie and Alai chatted until late at night. They no longer had to live together in the past, and now they each had a single room. For this Hangzhou conference, the writers stayed at the Hangzhou Xinxin Hotel, known as the "Peace Hotel of Hangzhou". The building combines Chinese and Western styles, is located close to Beishan Street, and faces the ten scenic spots of West Lake.

Historically, celebrities such as Lu Xun and Xu Zhimo have lived here. Japan's Ryunosuke Akutagawa has also been here. He ate a famous dish, "West Lake Vinegar Fish" at that time. I wonder how he thought it tasted.

Yu Qie was writing at his desk as he did in the past, while Alai took the time to look through his recent manuscript.

There are many schools of thought among the writers at this conference, and Yu Qie certainly knows their strengths and weaknesses, but Alai, who is hiding in Aba, is clueless about anything.

However, after reading the manuscript for a while, Alai sighed again: "Yu Qie, sometimes I wish I were a doctor so that I could help people relieve their pain."

He was very emotional: "If I could be as capable as you, I would like to be you. Our Aba is a small place. A child died and no one knew about it... This child is not the president of the United States, nor is he a famous writer. He is just a cowherd I saw. He wanted to learn some cultural knowledge, so he crossed the river and went into the water."

At this point, Alai couldn't help crying again.

Yu Qie could only say: "Alai, take a rest. Everything in the past is in the past."

"Yu Qie, you are right."

After saying this, Alai took a few novels and magazines and returned to his room. After he left, Yu Qie felt a little uneasy and walked around the house for a while.

Some people think that Yu Qie cannot write about small characters and small things. Is this cowherd boy a new breakthrough in Yu Qie's novel career? Soon, he suddenly heard a song:

"King Gesar!
The waves dance and sing for you

Xiuma's milk tea is still fragrant because of you

......"

It's Alai singing.

This Alai!

The rooms in Xinxin Hotel have a common balcony, so the singing can easily reach the next door. Yu Qie still doesn't know who King Gesar is, but Alai worships this deity very much. He sang with great emotion and his voice became hoarse.

"Hagaro! Hagaro! Hagaro! Hagaro!"

"You are the auspicious sun! You are the eternal light of the snowy land!"

Yu Qie laughed in silence. After all, Alai was not a Han Chinese scholar. He was different in his bones.

That night passed just like that.

The next day, Yu Qie took Alai, Liu Zhenyun and others to meet friends everywhere and took a boat to enjoy the scenery of West Lake. They returned very late. There were several boats on the West Lake at that time. The writers stood up across the lake to greet each other, but the boats were too small and easily capsized. There were many northerners this time, and they could not swim and did not know the dangers in the lake.

Many people have drowned in West Lake.

The boatman, who also serves as the tour guide, does not allow anyone to stand up again. If anyone stands up again, he will be forced to row the boat back immediately!
After getting off the boat, Li Duo from "Beijing Literature" suggested counting who can swim. Unexpectedly, only a few people raised their hands. Suddenly, everyone felt scared!
Especially those who came from Beijing, almost all of them were wiped out. Li Duo himself, as well as Chen Jiangong (The Confused Starry Sky), A Cheng (The Chess King) and others, none of them knew how to play.

Yu Qie could barely be considered as coming from the capital, and he was the only one who could swim.

Before he traveled through time, the native Yu Qie had to cross a river when he was a child to go to school. He learned the skill of backstroke. He could take off all his clothes, hold them on his head, and cross the river without getting his clothes wet. He has not lost this skill now.

The people from the capital found it unbelievable, but the writers from the south all believed it, as they had all seen such people to some extent.

The little girl Duanduan asked her mother: "Why can some people swim but some can't?"

In order to save face for the northern writer, her mother Li Xiaolin mentioned the "polio" that Alai had mentioned, saying, "There are many invisible germs in the water. Once some people are infected, they will become paralyzed, so they never swim in their lives, so they won't get sick."

"Then why didn't Yu Qie get sick?"

"Yu Qie had it when he was a child, so he has antibodies."

What he said was actually true!

This is basically how polio was eradicated. There is a vaccine specifically for this disease, which essentially "mildly infects" you first, then produces antibodies that will prevent the disease for life.

However, since most of the people who get polio are children, who are unwilling and unsuitable for injections, and the cost of injections is too high, the vaccine was made into sugar pills. The sugar pills that many people ate when they were children are actually this oral vaccine.

Why isn’t there one in Aba?
Unfortunately, this kind of sugar pill is quite expensive, and sometimes even big cities cannot supply it in unlimited quantities, let alone Aba.

(End of this chapter)