Chinese vlogger Yige Caixiang (衣戈猜想) posted a short film on Bilibili about his disabled uncle living in a poor rural area in China. This portrait of his resilient and resourceful ‘Uncle’ has touched the hearts of many netizens, and went viral overnight.

中国vlog博主衣戈猜想在Bilibili上发布了一部短片，讲述他生活在中国贫困农村地区的残疾二舅。这段关于他坚韧不拔、聪明活络的 "二舅 "的描述触动了许多网民的心，并在一夜之间走红。

“This is my uncle,” the vlogger can be heard saying at the start of the 11:30-minute video, titled “How Uncle Cured My Mental Friction after Being Back in the Village for Three Days”, introducing his old uncle and grandma standing in front of their home “built at a time when the U.S. didn’t even exist yet.”

"这是我的叔叔，"在这段11.30分钟的视频开始时，可以听到这位微博作者说。30分钟的视频，标题为 "回村三天，二舅治好了我的精神内耗"，介绍了他的二舅和奶奶站在家门口，“他们在这个老屋生活，建它的时候还没美国。”

While showing footage of family and village life, Yige Caixiang tells about his uncle through a voice-over, recording his own trip to his family’s village by detailing the life of his mother’s brother.

在展示家庭和村庄生活的片段时，衣戈猜想通过画外音的方式讲述了他的返乡之旅，通过叙述细节的方式展示了他二舅的故事。

His uncle used to be the brightest kid in school, he tells, always getting top grades. One day, as a teenager, he got sick with a high fever. A doctor in a neighboring village ‘treated’ Uncle with various injections in his backside, after which Uncle could no longer use his leg and ended up being permanently disabled. Feeling depressed and hopeless, he did not return to school and spent weeks lying in bed. The village teachers were unable to convince him to come back to class.

他讲道，二舅曾经是学校里最聪明的孩子，成绩总是名列前茅。在他十几岁的时候，有一天生病发了高烧。隔壁村的医生一天在他屁股上打了好多针，之后二舅的腿就无法行动自如了，最后造成了永久性残疾。他感到沮丧和绝望，他不愿回到学校，在床上躺了几个星期。村里的老师没能劝他回去上学。

After three years, Uncle stepped outside of the home courtyard for the first time with his crutches. He was inspired to become a carpenter after seeing one at work in the family courtyard, and so he also started doing the same work, and was able to make a living by going around and doing carpentry jobs for villagers. Never formally diagnosed, he was unable to get a disability certificate.

三年后，叔叔第一次拄着拐杖走出了自家院子。他看到看家里来的一个木匠在干活，受到启发，于是也开始从事同样的工作，并通过四处给村民做木活养活自己。由于从未被正式诊断过，他无法获得残疾证。

Wanting to visit Tiananmen Square’s Mao memorial hall, Uncle traveled to Beijing one time and ended up staying with a cousin who worked in the military, doing carpentry work for the soldiers, with whom he soon became friends. A military chief even rubbed his back in the public bath house (“people in Beijing are good at rubbing backs,” he’d later say).

有一次，为了能亲眼看看天安门广场的毛主席纪念馆，二舅去了趟北京。最后他跟着当兵的堂弟住进了部队，为士兵们做木工活，很快就和士兵们打成一片。一位首长甚至在公共澡堂为他搓背（“北京人搓背搓得很好。”，他后来说）。

But Uncle eventually returned to his village, and was able to attend his sisters’ wedding send-offs and gave them complete furniture sets personally made by him – a rare possession to have for a young rural bride in the 1980s.

二舅最终还是回到了村里，送妹妹们出嫁，给她们送上亲手制作的全套家具作为嫁妆——这在20世纪80年代，对一个年轻的农村新娘来说是难得的财富。

Besides taking care of his sisters, Uncle also took care of an abandoned village girl named Ning Ning, whom he adopted. By the time she got married, he was able to help the young couple with the down-payment for their new family home, for which he invested half of his life savings.

除了照顾自己的妹妹们，二舅还领养了一个村里被遗弃的女孩，名叫宁宁。到她结婚时，为了帮助这对新婚小夫妻支付新房的首付，他投入了半生的积蓄。

When Uncle was in his thirties, he became acquainted with a married lady from a nearby village. Although she had a husband and two daughters, she spent a lot of time with Uncle and even cooked and cleaned for him. Treating her as if she was his own wife, he handed over his weekly pay to her and was happy to have a bowl of rice and a warm house waiting for him after a hard day of work.

二舅三十多岁时，和隔壁村一位已婚女人熟络了起来。虽然有丈夫和两个女儿，她还是花了不少时间和二舅相处，甚至为他做饭和打扫卫生。他像对待妻子一样对待她，把每周的工资交给她，在辛苦劳作一整天之后，有一碗热饭和一间暖屋等着他，他很欣慰。

But as time went on, she never divorced her husband and other family members started seeing her as an intruder who was just out for his money to support her own family. The young Ning Ning even called her an “old fox.”

就这样好多年过去了，她却并没有离婚，二舅家里的其他人开始把她看作是一个入侵者，只是图二舅的钱来供养她自己的家庭。年纪尚小的宁宁甚至喊她 "老狐狸"。

The ending of this peculiar love story remains somewhat of a mystery up to this day, Yige Caixiang says. The woman and her husband passed away in a shed due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Uncle never spoke of it again and also never married another woman.

衣戈猜想说，这段奇特的感情的结局直到今天仍然有些神秘。那个女人和她的丈夫因为一氧化碳中毒而在一个工棚里去世了。二舅再也没有提过这件事，也没有再娶其他人。

As the decades passed, Uncle took care of his aging mother while still doing carpentry work, often taking her with him around the area. Years before, he once encountered the doctor who tried to ‘cure’ him. If this had happened now, the doctor had said, I would’ve been sued and lost lots of money. But that never would have happened at that time, and it never happened later either.

几十年过去了，二舅一边照顾年迈的母亲，一边还在做木工，经常带着她四处转悠。多年前，他曾经遇到过当年试图给他'治病'的医生。医生说，如果现在发生这种情况，我肯定会被告，赔很多钱。但这在当时不会发生，后来也没人追诉。

Grandmother, at 88, is now struggling with her health and does not have the energy to go on living anymore. “In aging and sickness we find a necessary exercise between life and death,” the vlogger reflects, suggesting that the pain of growing old also makes it easier to be at peace when having to part with life.

88岁的姥姥，正与她的病痛缠身的身体作斗争，丧失了继续生活的欲望。"老病是生死之间的必要演习，"这位博客作者反思道，暗示老去的痛苦也使我们能更加平静的面对死亡。

By now, taking care of his old mother has become a full-time job for Uncle, who cooks for her and washes her face in the morning and bathes her feet at night. Besides that, he is also more than just a carpenter; he is the village handyman, repairing electronic devices, door locks, radios, stoves, and even fixing broken toys of the neighborhood children. When it is necessary, he can be an acupuncturist and a painter, too.

到现在，照顾老母亲已经成了二舅的全职工作，他负责了母亲的一日三餐、早晨洗脸、晚上洗脚。除此之外，他在村里不仅仅是个木匠，还承担了各种各样的杂活，修理电子设备、门锁、收音机、炉子，甚至修理附近小孩的坏玩具。必要时，他还可以当针灸师和画工。

Whenever there is a problem, Uncle will find a way to solve it. There’s just three things he can’t repair, Yige Caixang says: smartphones, cars, and computers – because Uncle never owned any. Although the villagers sometimes jokingly call Uncle “crooked” because of his leg and crutches, they all know how much they care for him and how much the entire village depends on him.

只要有问题，二舅就会想方设法去解决。衣戈猜想说，二舅不会修的只有三样：智能手机、汽车和电脑。因为这些东西二舅也没有。虽然村民们有时会因为叔叔的腿和拐杖而开玩笑叫他歪子，但每个人都很清楚，他们爱这个歪子，他们离不开这个歪子。

In the final part of the 11-minute video, Yige Caixiang reflects on what life might have looked like for his Uncle if he had not received those injections in the 1970s. He probably would have taken the national exams, would have gone to study at university, and maybe would have become an engineer with a good income and secure financial future. But Uncle does not want to think like that. Refusing to look back, he is happy with his life in the village.

在这段11分钟的视频的最后部分，衣戈猜想想象了如果他的叔叔在1970年代没有没有被打那几针，他的生活可能会是什么样子。他可能会参加高考，会去读大学，也许会成为一名工程师，拿着不错的薪水，有稳定的收入预期。但叔叔不愿意这样想。他拒绝回头看，对自己在村里的生活很满意。

It is only when they are near the end of their lives that people come to realize that the biggest regret in life is always regretting the past, Yige Caixiang says. The main thing that matters in life is not the cards you were dealt, but how you play them. Uncle was dealt a bad card, but played it beautifully through his continuous self-improvement and perseverance.

衣戈猜想说，人往往都是快死的时候才发现，人生最大的遗憾就是一直在遗憾过去的遗憾。人生最重要的，不是胡一把好牌，而是打好一把烂牌。二舅这把烂牌打得是真好，他在挣扎与困难中表现出来的庄敬自强，令我心生敬意。

In an old notebook underneath Uncle’s bed, a line of text scribbled on the first page shows a Mao Zedong quote: “Be determined, fear no sacrifice, and surmount every difficulty to win victory”.

二舅的床下有一个几十年前的笔记本，笔记本的第一页是他摘抄的毛主席讲过的一句话：下定决心，不怕牺牲，排除万难，去争取胜利。

After the video flooded the internet, Yige Caixiang responded to the hype on Tuesday and posted the following on Weibo:

在该视频走红网络后，衣戈猜想于周二作出回应，并在微博上发布了下面的内容：

“Hi Weibo friends, many of you messaged me after seeing Uncle’s video, suggesting I’d let him go livestream on a big streaming site. Thanks to everyone for caring, but now that Uncle is getting some online attention, you want to persuade him to livestream to do what? Repeating his suffering like Xianglin’s Wife (t/n: this is a reference to an old woman in one of Lu Xun’s famous stories), then playing games with a bunch of people who don’t know anything, kneeling and begging them for support, and then suddenly starting to talk them into buying tissue paper? Uncle seriously lived half of his life already, I shared his story now, you heard it and it touched you, this makes a beautiful little story, and it should have a beautiful ending. Didn’t we see enough beautiful stories with a rotten ending over the past few years? Let Uncle quietly live together with grandma in the small mountain village – that is the most beautiful ending this story could have.”

微博的网友大家好，很多朋友看了二舅的视频私信我，建议我让二舅去各大短视频平台直播。谢谢大家的关心，二舅这点小小的流量，你要劝他直播让他干啥呢？一遍遍的像祥林嫂一样重复自己的苦难，然后跟一帮不知所谓的人打PK，跪求大哥们上上票，再然后突然开始扯着嗓子卖抽纸？二舅认真的活了半生，我分享了二舅的故事，大家听了还有点触动，这三者合起来就是个美好的小故事，美好的故事应该有一个美好的结尾，这些年大家看过的烂尾了的美好故事还少吗？让二舅安安静静的陪姥姥生活在那个小山村吧，那就是这个故事最美好的结尾。