Bitter rice candy

Zeng Ying

Lao Du was a colleague of mine when I worked at the newspaper, and later went into business, and I didn't know many successful business people. He said the first business he did in his life was selling rice candy, when he was just 8 years old and in the third grade of elementary school.

Lao Du's hometown is in Bilongguan Village, Dingshui Township, Southern County, although the place name is both dragon and water, it is an arid hilly area, the property is not rich, and life is quite difficult. God did not pity him for this, but threw a large piece of disaster into his already difficult home—first by taking away his father with illness, and then by selfishness, taking away his brother who had just shared the housework for his mother. The year when his brother escaped from his hometown in the name of part-time work and never returned from this piece of paper, Lao Du was only more than 7 years old, and he began to experience the bitterness and spiciness of the world early, as well as the unprovoked malice and bullying around him.

The village is short of water, and the only well in the village is always lined up. Lao Du, who is more than 7 years old, and his frail mother and sister have become the objects of dislike and even hatred because of the slow water. In order not to hinder everyone from using water, the self-respecting mother always chooses to go to the well platform at night to fetch water, so that it will not hinder everyone from fetching water, nor can she hear the disgusted finger mulberry scolding, and cannot see the contemptuous and vicious eyes. Although the difficulty and pain of fetching water in the dark has increased greatly, Lao Du's mother and son feel a little more at ease because of this.

But this good situation did not last long, and the captain of the well did not like someone to come to fetch water in the middle of the night, so he locked the well pole. Lao Du's mother had no choice but to prepare a long rope, tie countless knots, and tie a flat hook to the well platform to draw water. The rope is not only strangled and slippery, but also easy to unhook, and once unhooked, the barrel falls into the well and cannot be hung up most of the night. Whenever this happened, mother and son could only hug each other and cry on the well platform, and in those years of growing up, there were tears in every bucket of water he drank.

There are two pear trees in the house, which grow outside the yard and bear dozens of pears every autumn. Although the pear is not large, the taste is not particularly sweet, but it is one of the few things in the family that can be exchanged for money, like the passbook that is not large but can occasionally be cashed, the oil and salt at home and the occasional meat, all of which are expected to be plucked from there and taken to the market to exchange for a few cents. Because of this, the old Du family, which has two pear trees, occasionally eats pears, and the family eats them together, and in the folk, it is unlucky to divide pears and separate harmonics. Even this unlucky way of eating is not often available. The most common thing that the young Du and his sisters do is to count the pears under the tree, a pear, a vision; a pear, an imagination. The few sweetness that life gives is in the gaze and counting again and again.

This year, there are fewer pears on the tree every night, and the biggest suspect is the neighbor's child. Once or twice, they had even seen each other fleeing in a hurry. In desperation, he ran to the other party's house to complain, begging him to raise his noble hand and let go of the pears. The result was that all the pears on the tree, even the pear tree itself, were destroyed overnight. Old Du and his sister were also beaten.

Seeing that the day of paying double gold is approaching day by day, oil and salt can be tolerated, but chai rice and imperial grain state taxes cannot be tolerated. 8-year-old Du wiped away his tears and began to plan for a living. His idea was to sell rice candy, the rice candy he had eaten before, a few miles away from the southern county to sell 6 cents a letter, to the countryside to sell 8 cents, each can earn 2 cents.

The reason why Lao Du chose to sell rice candy is related to his experience of following adults into the city to catch the market when he was a child. One day, in the noisy and crowded sea of people on the county street, he suddenly smelled a strange fragrance, which was a mixture of oil and rice and sugar, intertwined. The fragrance was like an invisible hand, tugging at his nose and leading him to a workshop that made rice candy. He saw a chubby master pouring a ball of golden rice and sugar and peanut mixture from the pot into an oiled mold, flattening and compacting, and when it was half cold, he took advantage of the hot softness and used a large knife to cut it into small squares, and he recognized it as his favorite rice candy.

Throughout the morning, he stood in front of the workshop and watched as the master repeatedly put the fried rice or puffed rice into the syrup made of maltose or brown sugar, then added the crispy peanuts, and then stir-fried, molded, compacted, cut into pieces, and wrapped it in oil paper with a pattern printed on it. It was a beautiful and magical process, and his heart was filled with joy and happiness. What makes him even happier is that the rice candy here only sells for 6 cents per box, which is also the salary of an adult man for half a day, but it is 2 cents cheaper than in the township, and the huge profit is separated by only a few kilometers of mountain roads.

After the pear tree was destroyed, Lao Du thought of this livelihood that could be seen in cash. He consulted with his mother, took a few eggs saved by the family to sell, sold more than 1 yuan, and then rushed to the rice flower shop to buy goods, went from village to house, shouted around, and made more than three cents on the first day, which is a full-labor day's income, and it is cash. What this means for the old Du family who does not have a full laborer in the family is simply self-evident.

Since then, the young Old Du has begun to run for his rice candy. Often, as soon as school is over, they rush into the city, buy rice candy at a rapid pace, and sell it all the way home. Good luck, when you get home, the rice candy has become a banknote, if you are unlucky, you may be able to hang out until dark, and the door will be smashed in your hands. In this happy and depressed run, the family's double gold, oil, salt and rice, the new Clothes of the sister and brother for the New Year, as well as the occasional door errand and medical treatment, all have cash support. Although it is as small as a stone wall dripping water, it is a life-saving ganlin for travelers who have been trapped in the desert for a long time.

After maintaining this small sense of happiness for a period of time, Lao Du found that his feet were becoming more and more powerless, and his heels swelled up day by day, it was estimated that he usually came in the wind and rain, sometimes it was too hot and too tired to go cold water, or he had stones or sprained places during running. The feet became more and more swollen and began to lose consciousness, and people also began to have fevers and drowsiness, and went to the township hospital to see, the doctor said saw. They don't want to accept this fact, and more importantly, they can't come up with that much money to saw. So he was driven home again, using the traditional method of dealing with incurable diseases in the countryside at that time--dragging. If you can't drag it too far, it's all fate.

Maybe this time God felt that he had gone too far, just on the third day of Lao Du's sleep at home, his pigsty suddenly collapsed inexplicably, and his mother asked the stonemason uncle from the neighboring village to help repair it. The stonemasons went from village to village, saw a lot of knowledge, and saw Lao Du's swollen legs, so they enthusiastically introduced the herbalists in their village to help see. The herbalist inserted a silver needle into the swelling and said that if it came out with yellow water, it could be cured; if it came out with blood water, it could not be cured. The result was yellow water, and the herbal master then prescribed medicine, a large bag of Chinese medicine, fried out the medicinal soup to drink, and the medicine residue was applied to the wound. A few bowls of potions went down to the stomach, the pain disappeared for the most part, and people also had more spirits, obviously the medicine was on the right path.

Then the problem came again, the price of traditional Chinese medicine was one yuan and eight corners, which was almost an astronomical number for Lao Du's poor home. After two days of eating, the medicine money was cut off. In order to raise money for the medicine, the mother tried her best and dried her tears.

The tears did not touch relatives, friends and neighbors, but touched the herbal master, he offered to lead the child to his home to treat, one to avoid the pain of running, the other can let the child eat a little more nutritious, conducive to recovery, as for the reward... The herbalist scratched his head, looked around at this small courtyard with nothing, and suddenly saw two little pigs chasing and playing, and said to his mother: "You can raise pigs well, and when the pigs grow up and sell money, send me a pennant, help me pass on a name!" ”

That year, the legs of Little Pig and Lao Du were very angry, and around the Spring Festival, Lao Du, who had recovered from his injury, carried a pennant made of money from selling pigs, and spent 10 yuan to invite the film team, and was lively in the courtyard of the herb master's house. The fame of the herbal master has also spread lively in the ten miles and eight townships, and more and more people are looking for him to see a doctor, but I don't know why, there has never been such a magical effect as Lao Du's leg.

Lao Du continued to sell rice candy, with the commercial interest and marketing experience he had aroused, gradually turned around and developed, after more than thirty years, he had a lot of assets and a prosperous career, after leaving his hometown, he did several things: first, bought a façade in the county town and gave it to the herbal master who had a difficult livelihood; second, built the dirt road in the small village of his hometown into a cement road; third, installed a water pipe for the neighbors around his hometown, including the old man who locked the well and the family of the person who beat the pear tree...

He hadn't eaten rice candy for most of his life. In the early years, I did not eat it because I was afraid that I would be greedy and eat all the money; now I don't eat it because every time I see rice candy, a strong bitter taste will come out of my mouth. (Illustration courtesy of the author)