Bamu Yubumu holds her daughter while carrying a huge package stuffed with items on her back touched the hearts of millions in this photo taken on Jan 30, 2010. [Photo/Xinhua]
During the Spring Festival travel rush in 2010, a photo taken at a railway station in the eastern city of Nanchang that portrayed a young migrant worker on her way home holding her baby while carrying a huge bag stuffed with items on her back deeply touched the hearts of millions of people.
The photo, Baby, Mom Take You Home, made headlines in a lot of media outlets as a symbol of a mother's love.
Eleven years on, the photographer who shot the photo found the mother, who is now a 32-year-old living in Taoyuan Village in Yuexi County of Sichuan's Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Southwest China. The rendezvous revealed the tremendous changes that have taken place in the small village.
Having moved into her new concrete house not long ago, Bamu is still occasionally haunted by a nightmare, in which her kids are awakened by the cold and the house collapses.
For most of her life, Bamu dwelled in adobe houses. Living in a house that is waterproof and windproof was her dream.
Bamu Yubumu smiles during an interview, on January 22, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]
In the past, there was no electricity in her house. When it rained, she recalled, the bed and quilt would get wet and she and her husband would feel around in the pitch black room for leaky spots to know where to place buckets and basins to hold the rain water.
Arable land is so scarce and infertile in the village that residents find it hard to eke out a living by farming.
"In a bad year, the harvests of the whole year would be ruined," said Liu Jian, the first Party secretary of the village.
Bamu's family has 0.4 hectare of dry land, on which they used to plant corn, potatoes and buckwheat. The harvests were barely enough to feed the family. Rice was a luxury that they could not afford to buy.
When her second daughter was born in 2009, Bamu was gripped by the fear that her girl would never be able to leave the mountain, just like her.
She then made a bold decision: To go outside to work.
The photo above shows the old village where Bamu Yubumu lived as a child, and the photo below shows Taoyuan Village, where Bamu Yubumu resides now. [Photos/Xinhua]
The photo that made a splash in the media in 2010 captured the moment when she had just finished a five-month stint working in Nanchang, East China's Jiangxi Province, and was on her way back home for the Spring Festival family reunion.
She clearly remembers the journey from Nanchang to her home on Daliangshan Mountain. Carrying bags, big and small, and her daughter, she first took a train from Nanchang to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, which lasted for two days and a night, from where she spent another 14 hours on a train to Yuexi County.
By the time she finally arrived at her home, it was already midnight. The whole journey took three days and two nights.
Now, the travel time between Nanchang and Chengdu has been shortened to eight hours, thanks to the opening of a high-speed railway, and the journey from Chengdu to Yuexi cut to six hours.
Bamu's first job in Nanchang was moving bricks in a brick factory, for which she earned some 500 yuan a month, "not a large number, but better than farming back at home", she said.
The photo above shows Bamu's eldest daughter, Wuqi Labumu, gesturing toward her family's old house, and the photo beolow shows Wuqi arranging her clothes in her new room. [Photos/Xinhua]
As a member of the Yi ethnic group, she couldn't speak Mandarin — the standard national language. Even the train tickets were purchased with the help from fellow villagers.
Bamu spent her childhood on a high mountain. Though a school was down the mountain, it took two hours to walk down. So, like many other local girls, Bamu has never been to school.
While working in the factory, she practiced speaking Mandarin and tried to integrate into an unfamiliar society.
During her working days in Nanchang, the biggest headache for Bamu was her second daughter's illness. Back at home, she would take the girl to a hospital in the nearby town. But in the new city, she did not know how to go to the hospital. And she was forced to go home to seek treatment for the girl.
The famous photo taken at the Nanchang railway station in 2010 recorded the moment when Bamu went back home with her second daughter.
Bamu and three of her children walk on a street in town, on January 22, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]
Unfortunately, the little girl died of disease in less than six months. Since then, Bamu has never left her hometown to work.
Her third baby also died a few days after birth in 2011.
"In that time, there was only one dirt road leading to the outside. People travelled by horse carriage. Poor health care conditions caused the deaths of many newborns who were delivered at home," Bamu said.
The fortunes of her family began to change after a targeted poverty relief project was introduced to the village.
Following in the steps of many fellow villagers, the couple started growing cash crops, such as tobacco leaf and fruit trees, in their fields.
After the first year of trial planting, they earned less than 6,000 yuan due to a lack of expertise and experience. Nevertheless, they saw the hope of a prosperous life. The next year, her family was registered as an impoverished household by local government and they received help, such as skills training and tobacco seedlings from a cadre who was paired up with the family to help them rise up out of poverty.
A bird's-eye view in Southwest China's Sichuan Province shows a rural road leading to the home of Bamu Yubumu. [Photo/Xinhua]
After learning new farming skills, Bamu's tobacco leaf yields multiplied and so did their incomes.
Last year, the family's earnings reached 100,000 yuan, and they shook off poverty successfully.
In 2018, the family had a new concrete and cement house built thanks to a subsidy of 40,000 yuan from the government and 70,000 yuan from their own pockets. The new house is bright and clean, decorated with floor tiles and equipped with home appliances, such as a refrigerator and washing machine.
In addition, the family has enjoyed financial support in medical care and education. Since 2013, she's given birth to another three children, all in hospitals in the county free of charge.
The couple still goes out to work in the slack farming season to earn extra money, but life has improved markedly, with rice, vegetables and meat a daily routine.
Looking toward the future, Bamu expressed her wish.
"I hope my children study hard and are safe. We should go forward no matter what happens, be it poverty or other adversities," she said.