What is Brother Sharp’s latest trend?

He is called "Brother Sharp" by tens of thousands of netizens. In fact, he is not sharp at all. He is just a homeless man who has been abandoned by society and even forgotten by the relief mechanism. Because of a strange combination of circumstances, , fate changed inexplicably. In this era of rapid population mobility, perhaps everyone is a potential homeless person. If there is no effective social intervention and rescue mechanism to save one "sharp brother", thousands of "sharp brothers" will emerge.

34-year-old Cheng Guorong was wearing a black windbreaker left by his father, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes wandering as he stood in the yard.

Occasionally, he would suddenly bend down, ponder for a while and then lean back and shout. After shouting, he turned around and walked into his dark room filled with clutter.

Cheng Guorong has a nickname that has become popular all over the world: "Brother Sharp".

Ten years ago, Cheng Guorong embarked on a long-distance bus from his hometown of Poyang, Jiangxi Province, alone to work. Later, he lost contact with his family and had no news at all. It was not until recently that "Sharp Brother" Cheng Guorong was able to return to his hometown after experiencing an incredible adventure. At the exit gate of the bus station in his hometown, a large-character slogan seemed to greet him: "Go out happily and go home safely."

It's just that at this time, "Brother Sharp" is completely different from ordinary people - even in front of close relatives who have been away for many years, he always remains silent. Only when someone offered him a cigarette would he respond with a small "hmm". Otherwise, people seemed like air in his presence.

Except for sleeping and eating, "Brother Sharp" almost always stayed in that room of about ten square meters, watching the programs broadcast on the dusty color TV on the table motionless for a long time. .

He would frequently light a cigarette and smoke it until it almost burned his fingers before throwing it away.

“He now smokes four packs of cigarettes a day,” said her sister Cheng Guozhen. She was very sad to think that her brother had to pick up cigarette butts to smoke when he lived on the streets. When Cheng Guorong left home, he was still a young man who did not smoke or drink. Now, he was as lifeless as a thin, wilted little old man.

This is completely different from his "sharp" image that attracted as much attention as a star in the media and the Internet not long ago. He didn't even understand that the "Brother Sharp" whom everyone knew was referring to him.

The Silent Man

Zheling Village, Sanmiaoqian Township, about an hour's drive from Poyang County, is located at the entrance of the village among a group of buildings that look quite new, sandwiched between An old, low brick building. This is Cheng Guorong's home.

Like most rural children, Cheng Guorong was born in an ordinary farmer's family, with parents who always worked in the fields but were always poor.

In the memories of the few neighbors in the village who still have an impression of Cheng Guorong, Cheng Guorong was as taciturn as his parents since he was a child. During his childhood, herding cattle on the hillside with other children from the same village was almost the only activity he interacted with his peers. But most of the time, he was just a spectator of the activities. When other children were chasing and playing all over the hillside, he often sat far away on the grass alone.

In rural areas, no one pays attention to why a child is reticent. In addition to not talking much, Cheng Guorong is quite popular among the villagers. "He is very diligent and willing to help others. He can cut grass or put cows or whatever. As long as he says something, he rarely refuses others." Cheng Wenmei, a 60-year-old villager, can still remember Cheng Guorong when he was a child.

In the impression of his younger brother Cheng Guosheng, his brother always seems to be rushing to do the heavy work at home. "When it rains, he can plant rice in the fields from morning to night." Guosheng is two years younger than Guorong. , but it seems that the elder brother is much older than the younger brother.

Before finishing the fourth grade of elementary school, Cheng Guorong dropped out of school and returned home. This boy, who is in his early 10s, doesn't like to study. His academic performance is always at the bottom and he has almost no friends in school. He seemed to prefer to go to the mountains alone to kill wood and herd cattle to pass the time, even if it was windy or raining.

New clothes are the most anticipated gift for this rural child. Cheng Guosheng only remembers that his brother lost his temper once - during the Spring Festival one year, when his father gave Cheng Guorong an old piece of clothing given by others as a New Year's gift, "my brother turned around and ran away crying."

Day after day, Cheng Guorong grew up in boring and heavy work. In 1998, his father Cheng Guangnan scraped together 20,000 yuan and asked a matchmaker to arrange a marriage for him from a neighboring village.

Soon after, 23-year-old Hu Qingjiao became Cheng Guorong's wife. This equally silent rural girl only attended elementary school for a few years. Like her husband, she always worked hard from morning to night every day.

After two years of marriage, his wife gave birth to two sons to Cheng Guorong. While bringing joy, the economic situation of this poor family became even worse. Every Spring Festival, when young people who go out to work return home to visit relatives carrying large and small packages of gifts, Cheng Guorong will become even more silent. Throughout the Spring Festival, he stayed at home all day long, unwilling to visit relatives and friends. Because I often don’t even have the money to buy a pack of cigarettes.

Cheng Guorong’s family has about seven acres of arable land, which can produce four to five thousand kilograms of rice every year. In addition to keeping enough food for rations, the money from selling the remaining grain is barely enough to buy seeds and fertilizer for the coming year. If they don't go out to work, those farmers who die guarding a few acres of thin fields can only maintain food and clothing. "In rural areas, families like this will be looked down upon." Cheng Guosheng said.

In 1997, Cheng Guorong had a brief experience of working in Ningbo. With an introverted personality and an education that has not yet graduated from elementary school, he has nothing to exchange with the city except labor. He found only a small job on a construction site - pulling mortar for others. More than two months later, he returned to his hometown empty-handed, but never mentioned his experience of working outside.

In 2000, the family's financial situation, which could no longer make ends meet, forced Cheng Guorong to go out to work again. At this time, his second son had just been born.

Before leaving home, Cheng Guorong told his wife that he would send money home soon.

Wandering Life

Cheng Guorong came alone to Ningbo City, which is almost 700 kilometers away from Poyang County. This is the only place he is familiar with besides his hometown.

Among the young migrant workers in Poyang County, quite a few of his peers are like him, with only primary school or junior high school education. But they can often become factory workers through the introduction of relatives and friends. After learning a trade, if they are diligent and smart enough, they will have the opportunity to be promoted in terms of position and salary. This is the case for Cheng Guosheng and his wife Hu Meihua, who also only have a primary school education - they both work in a leather shoe factory in Wenling City, Zhejiang Province. Hu Meihua is now a warehouse manager in the factory, earning more than 2,000 yuan a month.

But Cheng Guorong has no friends, so he can only solve the problem of finding a job on his own - wherever he sees a construction site, he goes up to ask others if they are hiring workers. Like last time, he found another construction site and hauled hundreds of kilograms of mortar back and forth across the muddy and pitted construction site.

In the early days of leaving home, Cheng Guorong called home every two or three months. He told his eldest sister that he worked very hard on the construction site. "I guess he felt that he didn't make any money, so he didn't want to talk more," Cheng Guozhen said.

As for his wife, Cheng Guorong is still barely supporting the man's dignity. He once told his wife that he had made money and became the boss. "But he has never sent a penny to his family, nor has he ever returned home." Cheng Guosheng believed that his brother did this to please his wife.

Two years later, Cheng Guorong lost contact with his family. After not receiving a call for several months, his uneasy family worried that something had happened to him outside, and began to anxiously ask every fellow villager working in Ningbo, but no one knew his whereabouts.

His mother and wife have borrowed money to go to Ningbo many times to inquire about information. Every time when the money was almost spent, they had to return to their hometown in disappointment.

It wasn’t until 2008 that a Ningbo citizen named “Lao Greedy Cat” noticed Cheng Guorong’s existence. This young man who works in a local company belongs to the mainstream crowd in the city. He has a stable job, his own house and a car.

An accidental experience made "Old Greedy Cat" pay attention to the almost forgotten group of urban homeless - he witnessed a homeless man and a dog fighting for a discarded lunch box on the street. , the man first reached out to grab the lunch box, and then ran while stuffing meat into his mouth amidst the roar of the dog.

“When these homeless people are thirsty, they find a puddle to drink, and when they are hungry, they look for something to eat in the trash can.” “Old Greedy Cat” said that because they have not communicated with the outside world for a long time, this group of people Gradually losing normal language and even thinking functions, “They can’t even beg and live like animals in the city.

”

These wanderers with dull eyes and ragged clothes stagger around the streets and alleys of the city looking for food during the day, and huddle under overpasses or in pavilions to sleep with their heads covered at night. No one wants to approach them. They are far away from people, and in the government's relief system, these homeless people are usually a blind spot that no one notices.

"Old Greedy Cat" doesn't know how to help Cheng Guorong. What you do is say hello to these homeless people when you see them, or hand them a few dollars.

When he first appeared in front of "Old Greedy Cat", Cheng Guorong had been homeless for a long time. Wearing a woman's clothes, "Old Greedy Cat" handed Cheng Guorong 10 yuan, thinking that he would buy a lunch box, but Cheng Guorong turned around and went to the canteen to buy a pack of cigarettes, and then sat on the roadside. He whipped hard and asked why he didn't buy food.

Later, "Old Greedy Cat" figured out that this action meant that he could be in the trash can. Find something to eat. The trash can is Cheng Guorong's only source of material to sustain his life - there are food, clothing, cigarette butts discarded by others...

After encountering Cheng Guorong many times, "Old Greedy Cat" gradually We learned about his whereabouts - he hung around Tianyi Square, the busiest commercial area in Ningbo during the day, and slept under a nearby pedestrian bridge at night.

After that, "Old Greedy Cat" would visit him from time to time. Cheng Guorong bought him a box lunch and chatted with him as much as possible. Cheng Guorong gradually felt the kindness of "Old Greedy Cat", and the latter became his only "acquaintance" in Ningbo who was willing to chat with him in a good mood. Sometimes, Cheng Guorong would even ask "Old Greedy Cat" whether the clothes he picked up were good-looking. When the weather is hot, he likes to wear women's clothing such as dresses. "Old Greedy Cat" guesses that this is Cheng Guorong's subconscious wish to be noticed. Performance.

But when the question of "where is home" comes up, Cheng Guorong always turns around and leaves quickly, "It's like he's running away from something. "

"Old Greedy Cat" thinks there is something wrong with Cheng Guorong's thinking, "When he is in a bad mood, he sometimes bangs his head against the wall or the telephone pole. "Under the "fashionable long hair" on Cheng Guorong's head that once surprised many netizens, there are actually scars of various sizes.

In the next two years, Cheng Guorong and "Old Greedy Cat" were like this Maintaining a distant relationship.

Bizarre Homecoming

One day in late February 2010, the fate of Cheng Guorong, who had been abandoned by society for many years, changed because of a set of photos - he was wearing that Wearing a long windbreaker picked up from the trash heap, which has since been viewed by countless people on the Internet, she was walking on the streets of Ningbo with a stern expression like a model. A local netizen accidentally captured this picture while trying out a newly purchased camera. This image of his was subsequently uploaded to an Internet forum.

Cheng Guorong's "shocking" image quickly attracted the attention of netizens, and the photos were reprinted by many media and websites within a few days. , and was even photoshopped by netizens into the image of a cool model catwalking on the catwalk.

At this time, Cheng Guorong’s family had just passed a sad New Year—more than three months ago, his father and he. When his wife was about to go to the fields to harvest rice, she was hit by a car on the road at the entrance of the village and died together.

On March 3, a neighbor ran over and brought "Cheng Guorong" to this miserable family. "may have been found." The neighbor's son was studying at a university in Ningbo. After seeing the widely circulated photo on the Internet, he thought it might be the Cheng Guorong he had seen when he was a child, and immediately called his father. He quickly informed the latter’s family to watch online to confirm.

After receiving the report, Cheng Guosheng ran all the way into a simple small Internet cafe in the town. He recognized his brother who had been missing for many years on the screen at a glance, " So excited, so happy, so heartbroken. " Mentioning this "meeting", Cheng Guosheng is still choked up by the image of his brother's downfall.

It is worth mentioning that until the media reported heavily on Cheng Guorong's life and life experience, this man The down-and-out man had been wandering on the streets of Ningbo for an unknown number of years before he attracted the attention of the local government. The Ningbo Municipal Government sent staff to look for "Brother Sharp", saying they wanted him to "feel the warmth of this city."

< p>While the whole nation is talking about "Brother Sharp", only Cheng Guorong himself knows nothing about the "Brother Sharp" incident.

The sudden attention from a large number of strangers made him panic - many people began to hand him food and change on their own initiative, but some people squatted beside him with playful smiles and posed for photos in various poses. When he was surrounded by the media and took pictures , Cheng Guorong said "I'm scared" while trembling all over. After this interview, he suddenly fled from his previous activities.

On March 2, staff at the Ningbo Rescue Station did not find Cheng Guorong in his usual haunts. It was raining lightly in Ningbo that day, and the outdoor temperature at night was only two or three degrees Celsius.

The next day, after receiving a call for help from the rescue station, "Old Greedy Cat" also started looking for Cheng Guorong. But after searching all possible locations, Cheng Guorong was nowhere to be found.

That night, "Old Greedy Cat" parked his car next to the entrance of an underground passage where Cheng Guorong used to sleep. He thought that Cheng Guorong "must find a place to sleep at night to hide from the rain." It was already 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, and the cold wind and cold rain were drifting continuously on the streets of Ningbo.

An hour later, Cheng Guorong staggered towards the underground passage. Cheng Guorong shivered and refused the suggestion from "Old Greedy Cat" to send him to a rescue station. Finally, "I told him that if he didn't go to the rescue station, I would never see him again." Cheng Guorong finally compromised.

"Old Greedy Cat" said that Cheng Guorong also put forward a condition, "He insisted on walking for a while, but as soon as he left, he walked from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m." In the early morning of March 4, they We walked into the Ningbo Rescue Station together.

At 10 o'clock that night, Cheng Guosheng and his mother took a long-distance bus and arrived in Ningbo. At this time, Cheng Guorong had been admitted to a local psychiatric hospital for a physical examination. Here, he wrote his name crookedly on the paper.

At noon the next day, Cheng Guorong was finally reunited with his relatives whom he had not seen for ten years. "The doctor said he was fine, so I didn't care about anything. I just wanted to take him home immediately." Like all traditional Chinese farmers, Cheng Guosheng believed that "home" was the best destination for his brother who had been wandering away for many years.

Two days later, Cheng Guorong returned to his hometown where everything had changed.

Returning to society

“Maybe it’s because his life has been so miserable these years that he moved the gods.” Cheng Guozhen still feels that his brother’s return home is like doing something. An incredible dream. She planned to find a way to help him find a wife after his brother recovered his consciousness. But she didn't know how long it would take.

Abandoned by society for many years, Cheng Guorong has closed himself off and has lost his social and communicative functions. Resocialization will be a long process.

Cheng Guorong, who cut off his long hair, put on clean clothes, and returned to his family, no longer had the "sharp" aura. The only thing that makes him look different is that he wears a woolen hat with an eye-catching "PUMA" logo on his head. His family does not want the scar on his head to be seen by outsiders.

During lunch, Cheng Guorong’s eldest son shyly picked up a piece of meat and threw it into his father’s bowl at the reporter’s suggestion. However, Cheng Guorong didn’t seem to notice and just immersed himself in eating. This makes the son embarrassed. The 11-year-old boy recently dyed part of his hair yellow because he thought the hairstyle looked good. But when talking to strangers, he almost never looked up.

For Cheng Guosheng, the return of his brother is both joy and worry. "If my brother cannot take care of himself in life, it will be a big burden to the family. I hope that the public can provide financial assistance." However, a few days after Cheng Guorong returned home, leaders of the local county and township governments came to express their condolences and send messages to the society. Nearly 30,000 yuan in donations from all walks of life. Ye Wenhua, secretary of the Party Committee of Sanmiaoqian Township, said that the township government has provided local minimum living security for Cheng Guorong and his two sons, and that after Cheng Guorong recovers, the township government will arrange a job for him in a nearby industrial park. "After returning to society, he has to support himself. This is the long-term solution."

A "being photographed" with divine help, an abnormal "being watched" on the Internet and in the media, And the subsequent rescue, the "sharp" Cheng Guorong's original bleak fate was changed through a combination of circumstances.

But not all wanderers are as "lucky" as he is. Ye Wenhua frankly said that whether in cities or rural areas, there are still many homeless people like Cheng Guorong who need help. For example, he said that some rural migrant workers "would rather pick up rags outside than go home because they have not earned any money. These people can easily become the next 'sharp brother'."

Jiang Fuyan, chairman of the non-profit organization Jiangxi Shangrao Psychological Counselors Association, is planning to provide free treatment for Cheng Guorong. On March 14, he invited two colleagues to drive to Cheng Guorong's home to learn about the situation.

“Everyone has the potential to become a sharp brother, and those with low education and introverted personality often close themselves off after being frustrated and hurt. If the outside world does not intervene, they are prone to serious problems. "Psychological disorders." Jiang Fuyan is worried that "if there is no rational and normal social mentality and an effective social intervention and rescue mechanism, if one 'Sharp Brother' is cured, there will be thousands of 'Sharp Brother' 'Come out'.

When Jiang Fuyan said goodbye, Cheng Guorong unexpectedly reached out and shook his hand. Jiang Fuyan said that at this moment, Cheng Guorong was like a normal person.