Chapter 255 Entropy

In early March 1994, shortly after the Waking of Insects and International Women's Day, the Arbor Day, which the students of the No. 3 Middle School in the city had been looking forward to for many days, arrived as scheduled.

The school, together with the city's Propaganda Department and the local government, went to Jinping Township's mining area to plant trees. There were many students in the school, so it was impossible for everyone to participate. But each class in the high school department had some places, and after they registered voluntarily, the decision was made by the class teacher.

According to the class cadre rotation system set up by class teacher Wang Mingzhen, Zhang Yunqi just happened to take over the position of rotating monitor of Class 156 this week. All the classmates in the class asked him to sign up for the school's Arbor Day activities so that they could go out and have fun. No one wanted to stay in school and study hard, but there were only seven places in their class, so the competition was fierce.

Zhang Yunqi had a very comfortable time in the class during those days. Anyone who wanted to participate in the Arbor Day activities had to go through him. Unfortunately, he only had the right to count, not the right to make decisions.

After the statistics were completed, Zhang Yunqi directly gave the list to Wang Mingzhen. He thought about it and said, "Teacher, I checked the weather conditions. There may be showers in Fengyang on Arbor Day. In addition, the environment in Jinping Township's mining area is not very good. It rains a lot in this season."

Wang Mingzhen looked up at Zhang Yunqi and said with a smile, "For such a large event, the school should take the weather conditions into consideration. However, I will report the situation to them."

Zhang Yunqi said no more.

The school had its own arrangements, so he just had to take care of himself and his classmates. He found Wang Xiaokai and asked him to buy seven sets of raincoats and rain boots. Zhang Yunqi didn't know if it would rain at that time, but for some things, it was always necessary to take precautions. If it really rained, it wouldn't be a mess.

On the Arbor Day, we set out very early, at seven o'clock. The weather was very good and the sun was shining brightly. The school leaders came in a Santana, and several leaders from the Municipal Education Bureau also came, as well as several reporters from the Jiangchuan Daily. It was quite a grand occasion. The students followed behind in several large buses. There were two hundred people, and there were not enough seats. Some of them had to stand.

Facing the spring sunshine, the convoy drove out of Jiangchuan City in a mighty manner. After passing through Fengyang City, the road became dilapidated and uncomfortable to sit on. However, the students were in high spirits and did not feel any pain at all. They drove towards the mining area in Jinping Township, Fengyang County with laughter all the way.

The students from Class 156 who were participating in the Arbor Day activities were all on the same bus. Zhang Yunqi and Wang Xiaokai sat together, with Chu Jian and Yu Xiaorui sitting next to them, and in front of them were Li Yufei, Xiao Xuemei and Lin Xueqing.

Among this group of people, except for Wang Xiaokai, who was hopelessly unsuccessful, the others were considered to be students with relatively good grades in the class. Yu Xiaorui asked him, "Kaizi, how come you were also selected? This doesn't make sense."

Wang Xiaokai was chewing on pickled pepper chicken feet: "What do you mean? What's wrong with me being selected?"

Yu Xiaorui smiled and said, "It's nothing special. Look, the students selected from our class are all excellent students with both good character and good academic performance."

Wang Xiaokai nodded: "Yes, we are both excellent in character and learning. We are the budding flowers of the motherland."

Li Yufei couldn't help laughing.

The early spring sunshine poured down on her face, making her look pretty and charming.

At this time, someone started singing from the front of the bus. It was "The Stars Still Shine", the comeback song of Little Tigers after they regrouped at the end of last year.

The stars are still shining
My heart has not changed
With tears and sweat

Only then can we wash away the sorrows and joys of separation
……

Amid the singing, the convoy bumped along the dirt road. The fields on both sides were vast and boundless, the mountains were towering, and the sky was high.

It was the busy farming season of spring, and the emerald green crops covered the earth like a thick blanket. Everyone looked at the rural world outside the window. For this group of students, most of whom grew up in cities, everything in the mountains and fields was fresh and full of vitality. Several girls were always enthusiastic about these novel things that should have been ordinary, and they never tired of asking questions about them. The plants, birds and animals that they had never seen before, the dilapidated and crooked Taoist temples, and the wisps of faint smoke from human cooking seemed to shine from the books into reality.

On the way, he saw a group of sparrows circling in the fields. Suddenly, he remembered something and asked Zhang Yunqi, "By the way, Yunqi, I remember that our country seemed to have killed sparrows on a large scale. Do you know the reason?"

"They stole our food. We were poor at that time and we considered sparrows to be pests. I guess my knowledge is limited. I won't do that anymore."

“So is this bird good or bad?”

“That’s a difficult question to answer.”

"why?"

"Because what is the standard for good and bad? Defined by human standards, good and bad are just a matter of thought; defined by the earth's ecosystem, all living things are for survival, so how can we talk about good and bad? Dogs are good friends of humans, isn't it cruel to eat them? But if humans are really prohibited from eating dog meat, are pigs and cows bad? Aren't the cows that farm for us our good friends? How innocent are they to be eaten by us? Do you know the law of increasing entropy? Physicist Schrödinger said that people live to fight against the law of increasing entropy, and life survives on negative entropy. In order to fight against entropy increase, cattle and sheep eat low-entropy grass, and humans eat low-entropy cattle and sheep. This has nothing to do with good or bad, it's just survival, but the energy and feces we emit are still high entropy. According to Schrödinger, everything in the universe is increasing entropy until the end, heat death, which is constant temperature, dark nothingness. From this perspective, is civilization meaningless? Then is it even more meaningless to talk about the good and bad of animals?" When Zhang Yunqi said this, several girls looked at him. Or they thought his insights were novel. Actually, Zhang Yunqi just talked nonsense casually, and he didn't understand it. Sometimes he would have such doubts. After all, one flower is a world, one leaf is a bodhi, and the universe is vast with stars. Who can understand this world and this universe?

There is an old Chinese saying that goes, "At forty, one is free from doubts."

Zhang Yunqi used to think that this sentence meant that you would understand everything after you reach 40. However, when he really reached that age, he finally understood that the meaning of "no confusion" is that you don't want to understand things you don't understand. Because no one can understand, even the person you love most sitting opposite you, you may not understand everything.

However, it is different when you are young. You want to understand everything. You want to see everything clearly, even this society and this era. You always feel that not understanding some things is the hecticness of life. But when you get older, you will understand that the hecticness is youth. If you are no longer hesitant, your youth is gone.

So, what is youth?
Youth is these half-grown children in the car, who will scream in surprise and talk about it when they see a group of ducks running out on the dirt road; Youth is when he said some questions that seem profound and reasonable but are actually useless to life, and these young people have a feeling of enlightenment and agree with them deeply. Youth is like this, trivial, whining, pretentious, ignorant, sentimental, and flustered.

When you are unwilling to be trivial, complain without reason, act pretentiously, be ignorant, sentimental and flustered, your youth is gone and you have grown up.

But, I'm sorry, you're old too.

After several buses arrived at Jinping Township, they stopped briefly at the local township government. Students got off the bus to drink water, fetch water, and go to the toilet. Township government staff joined the team, bringing with them pine and cypress saplings, shovels and other supplies that had been prepared long ago, and then continued to move forward on the rugged muddy mountain road.

Amidst laughter and joy along the way, the convoy got closer to the Jinping Township mining area, the land on both sides became darker in color, there were more and more dead trees, and fewer and fewer ordinary livestock and crops. The soil and trees gradually turned black and gray, and a desolate and corrupt smell came to the face. Dust was flying, and the ground was cracked. When they arrived at the Jinping Township mining area, although Zhang Yunqi had been here many years ago, the scene before him still made him suddenly feel desolate.

Everywhere he looked in the Jinping mining area, he saw holes one after another, washing and shaking machines one after another, arsenic ash furnaces one after another, and thousands of dilapidated sheds connected together in a dark mass. The sounds of cannons, noise, and machines running could be heard one after another. Waste rock, tailings, feces and urine were everywhere, the stench was unpleasant, the arsenic smoke was pungent, the grass and trees on the mountains were withered, and there was no grass on the plains!

Such a scene was also novel to the students living in the city. After getting off the bus, they laughed and ran around, but Zhang Yunqi was a little confused.

The origin of Jinping Mine is a long story.

In the early 1960s, the country secretly carried out a great project that attracted worldwide attention.

The project requires a raw material - uranium ore.

After conducting exploration across the country, the country discovered that there were uranium mines underground in Jinping Township, Fengyang County, Jiangchuan City, southern Hunan Province. However, after testing, foreign aid experts determined that the grade was too low and there was no point in mining. However, a variety of metals such as copper, zinc, lead, tin, and arsenic coexisted in the mines, making them extremely rich.

So, Jinping Mine came into being.

Since 1970, villagers from the border areas of Jinping Township in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi and other provinces as well as southern Hunan Province have flocked to the mining area in Jinping Township, dug holes, burned arsenic, and started one raging fire after another. Rich mine owners have emerged one after another like leeks, but these people ignored the relevant provisions of the Environmental Protection Law, used traditional methods to refine mines, and engaged in excessive and indiscriminate mining, which caused devastating damage to the ecological environment.

I remember that many years ago, Zhang Yunqi attended a reunion with his junior high school classmates and came to Shaweiba in Jinping Township to play. He also visited the mining area. At that time, he was only in his early twenties. He did not understand many things, could not see clearly, and could not think thoroughly. However, when he saw those arsenic refining stoves scattered around like abscesses on the skin of the earth, the shock in his heart is still vivid in his mind.

Those large-scale arsenic smelting stoves are scattered throughout the villages near the Jinping mining area. They are located at random, operated using primitive methods, have simple equipment, backward technology, and no measures to treat the "three wastes". The waste gases such as carbon dioxide and arsenic-containing waste slag and wastewater emitted pollute the surrounding wild vegetation, water sources and soil. Thick smoke blows all over the villages, causing the death of livestock, destruction of forests, withering of crops, abandonment of fertile rice fields, landslides and soil erosion, and the criss-crossing tailings dams are heavy with silt. When a mountain rain comes, there is always the possibility that the dam will collapse and swallow the village!

It was not until 1989 that the People's Daily published an editorial entitled "Jinping Nonferrous Metal Mine to be Destroyed by Excessive Mining", which severely criticized the excessive mining and pollution of the environment in the mining area. Only then did the local government begin to gradually rectify the situation, especially after entering the st century. It has repeatedly cracked down on illegal mines and closed a large number of mines. As a result, illegal mining and smelting have been effectively controlled. However, Jiageng Villa is now barren and dry, and the land is scarred. The air you breathe on the road every day is filled with sulfur and iron dust, and the water you drink is polluted by the indiscriminate discharge of wastewater from the mine concentrator. The beautiful Jinping Mine will never be seen again.

Standing on such a scarred land, Zhang Yunqi had an indescribable feeling in his heart.

At this time, several students dressed in trendy clothes passed by him. One of them, who was holding a camera, said to him, "Hey, buddy, do you have time? Could you take a picture for us?"

Zhang Yunqi was stunned for a moment, nodded, and took the camera.

The boy called the others to a large black rock. Zhang Yunqi waited for them to pose, put his hand on the shutter, and looked into the viewfinder.

The background of the picture in the viewfinder is a mine, a mine with no grass and black gray waste rocks all over the ground. Not far away there is a withered tree trunk with a skinny crow standing on it, its black diamond-like eyes looking at the gray sky. Several students are arm in arm, grinning and showing their teeth. Their smiles are very heartless, but perhaps they are the only bit of color in the picture.

Zhang Yunqi pressed the shutter.

******
(End of this chapter)