In the thirties and forties of the last century, the peasants in Lunan lived realistically, eating two fine grains, and the girls were called Nizi

Sun Min, a native of Shanjialou Village, Zhouying, Yicheng, was born in 1927, participated in the revolution on the same day as her husband Chen Ming in August 1944, and joined the party in October 1945.

Around 1995, one day, after returning from a trip to the park, the 4-year-old granddaughter asked Sun Min: "Grandma, can your mother take you to the park when you are a child?" Sun Min said: "My mother took me to the vegetable garden. Sun Min didn't tease her little granddaughter, she was telling the truth, she could remember growing vegetables with her parents in the vegetable garden.

Due to the thrift of the grandfather's generation, when Sun Min's father split up, their family had been allocated 12 acres of land, and when Sun Min remembered, the family seemed to have added a little land, how much she was too small, I don't know, but it seems that in order to live, she also rented some landlord land, mainly growing vegetables.

She has two older brothers above her and a very small sister below. The eldest brother is studying outside, and Sun Min and the second brother are mainly helping the adults work.

The whole family lives on farming, and his father is the pillar of the family, and he is also the spiritual sustenance and strength support of the whole family. Her mother was always frugal, trying to feed her father and her siblings. Although my mother was only in her forties, she was so tired that she was hunched over and skinny. At that time, Sun Min was still young, and her mother always took her with her when she was working. Although the family worked hard, they still lacked food and clothing, ate bran vegetables in winter, and lived a life of bran vegetables for half a year.

About eating:

Sun Min's family mainly grows sorghum, but also wheat and corn, and the vegetables are mainly cabbage and radish. Her father used to say, "Don't be strong, old man, the dung heap is what you are." "Due to the extremely low productivity, the yield of wheat and corn is extremely low, and the yield of wheat per mu is only more than 100 catties from now, and only a few dozen catties in many places. After the winter wheat is sown, it all depends on natural growth, and weeding and harvesting all rely on hand pulling, which is extremely labor-intensive. Although the family revolves around the fields all day long, and has a little land of their own, most of the time they still do not have enough to eat.

In a year of good weather and good weather, the harvest is better, and life is a little better, but if there is a disaster year such as drought, waterlogging, and insect plague, the whole family can only tighten their belts to live.

Most of the time the family eats poorly, but it is okay for some people. Her family also grows wheat, but she is never willing to eat it, and this fine grain is usually used by her father to steam steamed buns and sell them in the market town in exchange for necessities, and the rest is left for the family to eat during the spring ploughing work.

The family mainly eats two fine grains, the so-called two fine grains are potato leaves, radish tassels (leaves on the top of the radish), sorghum, bran, etc., crushed, plus green onions and salt steamed out of the nest, it is a good grain. Her mother often taught her children: "Food is enough to satisfy hunger, clothing is to keep out the cold, wine and meat are through the intestines, what if you don't eat." "During the Chinese New Year, the whole family buys a pound of meat, wraps a meal of dumplings with radish, vermicelli and cabbage, and eats it on the first day of the New Year, which is the best food of the year.

Non-staple food is even poorer, when the festival is made with yams, corn, etc., boil some soil sugar, the color is very black, the block is very large, very hard and sticky, it is not boiled well, and it is a little bitter, even if it is such a thing, it can only be eaten during the New Year.

About wearing:

In Yixian County, everyone wears basically shabby clothes, and the cloth has to be bought by themselves, which is often called the old coarse cloth (commonly known as homespun cloth), and usually only when they get married can they wear new clothes.

Sun Min's brother and sister have only one set of clothes, and in winter, they sew some cotton in their clothes to keep out the cold, and take out the cotton in summer. All the cloth and cotton had to be bought in the market town, because they didn't grow cotton at home. The quilt is made of coarse cloth on both sides, covered with large and small patches, and it is a thin quilt with only a cover, and in winter it is covered with wheat straw, and a fire can be made in the house. The shoes are worn all year round, and the front and back are exposed to the outside, which is commonly known locally as "fresh ginger in front and duck eggs in the back". To heat the house, you often put your feet in the stove where there is residual heat. Everyone is desperately trying to earn money to buy land, and land is the root of life.

If winter is hard to endure because of the cold, then the biggest problem in summer is mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are especially abundant in the summer in the north, especially in the countryside, and it is impossible to sleep because there are no mosquito nets. The usual solution is to smoke the leaves in the room first, and then open the doors and windows after a while to drive the mosquitoes away, and the family quickly goes in, closes the doors and windows to sleep in the stuffy room, and also resists the interference of mosquitoes, the taste can be imagined.

About Staying:

In the past, the houses in rural Shandong were very simple, and the houses and courtyard walls were also made of earthen walls, and wheat straw was plastered inside and out. Using the bricks of the earthen fortress as the foundation of the wall, and the roof is covered with sorghum stalks as tiles, it can be waterproof, snowproof, and windproof, and is commonly known as a thatched house in the local area. The doors and windows are all wooden, and in winter the north wind blows and the doors creak, leaving one window in each room, which is dark and damp inside. In winter, in order to protect against the cold, the windows are sealed with mud, and in the summer, the mud is peeled open for ventilation. Even with such a house, Sun Min's family is rented from the landlord's family.

His family lived in the east, with his uncle's house in the middle and his uncle's house in the west, and the three families were closely connected, separated by a wall, and each family had a yard, and everything was piled up in the yard, including the collected fertilizer. The stove room at home is built in the corridor outside the house, so that it will not smoke people when cooking, and the stove of his uncle's house is built in the house, and if it is not ventilated in time, the smoke in the house will be very choking.

At that time, the living conditions of the peasants were very simple, and everyone was constantly trying to survive.

About use and others:

In the past, there were very few things available in the rural areas of Shandong, and the main task of each family was to buy land with the money they earned, and land was a symbol of wealth.

There were no cupboards except for the necessary clothes and pots, and the so-called table was a wooden plank that rested on a mound of earth. There are still coarse porcelain bowls, which need to be bought in the town, and the gourd is often used as a bowl with two petals. Matches are called foreign fires, and they are bought as treasures, and they usually use fire from other people's homes.

Lighting the lamp with vegetable oil, pouring the vegetable oil into a bowl, twisting it into a core with cotton, exposing a head, it is the lighting at night. Most of the countryside is fine at night, and they go to bed as soon as it gets dark. When the farm is busy, you need to get up early to cook, and you do it in the dark. In the morning, when I was in charge of the time, I listened to the rooster's crow.

Because his family is in a remote rural area, there are no doctors at all. If you are sick, the usual solution is to rest, or to use local local methods for treatment. People's vitality is very tenacious, basically they can resist major and minor diseases, and if they can't resist it, they can only wait for death.

All water is well water. The well is shared by the whole village, when she was a child, Sun Min often fetched water, because the well is very deep, she is on the edge of the well, dare not get too close, afraid that the bucket will bring her into the well.

The situation of the Sun family should be considered good in the local area, the uncle and uncle's family each raised a cow, Sun Min's family raised a donkey, mainly pushing and grinding, and Sun Min also had a task every day to cut the grass and feed the donkey.

There are many family rules in Shandong, and Sun Min's family is the same, and the parents' words are the most obvious signs. At home, her father alone has the final say in everything, and no one else has any right to speak. If the father wants to hit the child, no one in the family dares to pull it.

Once, Sun Min's second brother, who was in his teens at the time, was playing cards with other children in the village and was discovered by her father. Her father became angry all of a sudden, and chased and beat him with a stick, so frightened that the second brother finally hid under the bed at home, and did not dare to come out at night, but he was afraid alone, so her mother stuffed Sun Min under the bed and accompanied the second brother to spend the night. It wasn't until the next day that the father was angry and they came out from under the bed, and the second brother never dared to play cards again.

About the status of women:

The status of women in the old society, especially in the hometown of Confucius in Shandong, is very pitiful, and people in modern society cannot imagine this.

"Three-inch golden lotus" is considered the first standard of a woman's beauty. Shandong women attach the most importance to foot binding, girls begin to bind their feet when they reach a certain age, Sun Min did not bind her feet, but her mother did.

She heard her mother say that the process of binding her feet is very painful, wrapping her feet with cloth layer by layer every night, the whole foot bones, especially the toes, are seriously deformed, and she has to wake up with pain when she sleeps at night, but the next day she has to walk on the ground, and the whole foot is like stepping on the tip of a knife, and finally the foot is as small as two zongzi, commonly known as "three-inch golden lotus", because of the unsteady standing, commonly known as "willow swinging wind".

When the new daughter-in-law gets off the sedan chair, the first thing that is noticed or admired is a pair of feet, if the feet are small, there will be a sound of praise; if the feet are big, some people will immediately scoff at them, and tell each other jokes, saying: This year's harvest of beans - big horn (feet).

In Shandong, women do not have official names, most of them are "Xiao Nizi" and the like, and after marriage, they are called a certain family, with the husband's surname in front and the mother's surname in the back. The daughter who marries out is like water spilled out, she is an outsider, and she can't enter the ancestral hall of the clan. This tradition has been stubbornly maintained. Many years later, Sun Min returned to her hometown and wanted to burn some paper on the ancestral grave, but according to local rules, she couldn't go to the cemetery, and her family would burn it all on her behalf, so she could only watch from afar.