(Continued from previous episode)
Two
The locust flowers in the village are full of trees, and the fragrance soaks the whole village. Green vines wrapped around the bamboo fence, and wild butterflies chased them in pairs to the door of the house. After a new rain, the diffuse earthy smell made Mrs. Guo hot and uneasy, she did not alarm the fourth child in the city, and invited her nephew and daughter-in-law Lao Liu to go to the street to buy vegetable seeds together.
Lao Liu's son is in Shenzhen, with an annual salary of more than one million, but he still lives a life of farming. The difference is that Lao Liu's son has to send Lao Liu to travel abroad every year, or pick her up to live for a few months. Mrs. Guo refused to leave the countryside under her feet for a moment, and refused to leave the village.
They haven't been in the city for a long time, and they are not in a hurry, so they meet to see the scenery by the way. They walked through the hills of the tea fields and up the streets along the wide concrete avenues.
On the street, they looked at this store, walked around that store, touched the goods, asked about the price, sighed, saw the novelty, and then stepped out of the store, not intending to buy anything.
After buying a few seeds at a seed store, they walked home from the asphalt road on the other side of the city, watching the world change. This trip is tantamount to going around the mountains of the tea field and making a big circle.
The asphalt road on the outskirts of the city is still being repaired almost every year, and there are still potholes, and there are still workers working on it.
For larger-scale construction, large areas of fields along the road have been dug into piles of loess mountains. These fields are vegetable bases on the outskirts of the city. Mrs. Guo and Mrs. Liu both stood on the small loess mountain to see the strangeness.
Lao Liu asked the construction workers, what are these fields dug out?
The construction worker said that the building is sold and the market is towned.
Mrs. Guo just sighed vigorously, such a good field has built a house, and her children and grandchildren will have no food in the future.
The construction worker said, "There is no food to eat?" There is a lot of rice, wheat, and corn in foreign countries, but you see how many people we have here who are farming, and the rice we eat is even better than before.
Mrs. Guo looked up into the distance, she couldn't think of what a foreign country looked like, so she asked, is there more land in foreign countries than in China?
The construction workers are still talking nonsense, and now they can buy anything with money.
They continued to go up, the terrain continued to increase, walked through Jiangcun, walked through Lijiazhuang, walked through Weijiayuan, walked through Hongcun, walked ten miles of road, along the way is still the construction team digging fields and building foundations.
Mrs. Guo saw it and said a little worriedly, will she dig up Guo Jiayuan's field and sell it as a building?
Lao Liu said, no, Guo Jiayuan can be regarded as the queen of the mountain.
When I passed by the adjacent Liujiawan, I saw someone planting early seedlings in the field.
Mrs. Guo breathed a sigh of relief and said with a smile that the grain still has to be planted.
She looked at the paddy fields and saw that the peasants were not planting seedlings one by one, but pinching the rice handles and throwing them into the fields like sand.
Mrs. Guo couldn't see it. She said that she didn't know how much field would be wasted by throwing seedlings like this.
Lao Liu said: There is a method of planting.
As he spoke, he turned right for two miles and arrived at Guojiawan.
When she got home, Mrs. Guo and her wife nagged that the current fertile land had become buildings, and rice planting had become rice throwing, and she was all confused.
My wife said, don't worry about it, when there is no grain, there will naturally be people who plant grain, this is called market regulation, do you understand?
My wife said again, come and watch TV, the boss bought this 55-inch LCD TV for almost a year, and you haven't watched it for 30 minutes.
Mrs. Guo has always been disgusted with her wife soaking in TV. He woke up at three o'clock in the morning, turned on the TV, and smoked and drank tea. If I didn't go to play mahjong, I stayed until twelve o'clock in the evening.
Mrs. Guo said, "What's the point of watching TV?" As she spoke, she picked up her hoe and walked out.
She was still willing to walk in the fields.
Layer upon layer of crops, for her, there is a sense of closeness, and a sense of return. The crop field is also a place for her to relax and dispel her sorrows, and a pimple is formed in her heart, so she stands at the edge of the grain field, looks into the distance, and walks for a while, and the pimple is loosened.
Unconsciously she came to the side of Qidan, where she had relied on her for more than 20 years to farm, and now it has become the fat family. The fat man did not use it as a field to grow rice, but planted beans.
It made her a little sad.
The bean field is about to be harvested. She squatted down, pinched the yellowed bean leaves and bunches of fluffy beans, watched a long green grasshopper in pink underwear fly by in front of her legs, and heard a long rooster cry from the village deep in the ravine.
She stood by Qidan for a long time, and suddenly she was in a trance, not knowing what she should do. She looked left and right and saw Lao Jiu digging something in the small slope forest over there.
She was a little embarrassed and said, Lao Jiu, can I open a small field along the edge of Qidan to Xiaopo Forest?
Lao Jiu looked at the small slope forest, which is actually a ninety-degree rise of the soil slope outside the seven dans, the village did not have a clear distribution to which family, the small forest on the soil slope is also naturally grown, so he said, you can't open a big field, dig too much, the slope will collapse as soon as it rains, and then the trouble will be big.
Mrs. Guo said, I know.
Xiao Polin stretched out a horn to Qidan, and she dug out this horn and opened up a field.
One day, the fat man came to hoe the weeds, and when she saw that she was digging so hard, she said: "Granny, don't dig it, I'll give you two furrows of seven loads."
Mrs. Guo was overjoyed and said, "I will share half of the harvest."
The fat man said, no need, you have to plant it.
After Mrs. Guo got the field, she prepared it, visually saw the appearance of three fields, and picked stones to make a small stone bank under the small slope forest. Groundwater trickles from the shore, sunlight falls through the leaves, and the water trembles.
Since then, this field has become her dearest partner.
The apricot blossoms bloomed, she fertilized and loosened the soil. When the cotton opens, she cuts the sesame seeds and cuts the beans. Tired of work, she sat in the field and rested for a while, silently communicating with the sweet potatoes with the sound of insects.
Fortunately, there are not many fields, and Mrs. Guo is not too troublesome to do. My wife has long been accustomed to her being busy going in and out every day, thinking that the field is gone, and she doesn't bother to ask her what she is busy with. Mrs. Guo obtained this small three-point field, but her wife didn't know it.
(To be continued)
About author:Xu Songhua is a member of Hubei Writers Association. He is the author of the novella "Promotion Next Year", the biographical literature "Those Poets of the Tang Dynasty", the short stories "The Straw Hat in 1972" and "No Story Tonight", etc., and "The Twelve Months of the Staggered Years" won the second prize of the first Chinese Novel Competition. Many of his works have been selected into "Selected Small Novels", "Selected Micro Novels", "Selected Folk Tales", "Reader", etc.
Huainan Bagong Mountain has a rich history and humanities, and it is also the place where the book "Huainanzi" was written, and the place name brand is well-known, which has a great influence on the works of propaganda writers. "Bagongshan Literature" (yearbook) is an internal publication supervised by the Propaganda Department of the Bagongshan District Party Committee and the Federation of Literary and Art Circles, guided by the Huainan Writers Association, and sponsored by the Bagongshan Writers Association. The journal is committed to the development and prosperity of literature, and provides a platform for writers, poets and literature lovers in Bagongshan District, other counties and districts of Huainan City, as well as all over the country to exchange and display their works. As of this year, seven issues of Bagongshan Literature have been published (2016-2022 volumes). It has had a great impact on the literary world.
Today's headlines "Eight Public Angles" cooperated to select the outstanding works among them. Xu Songhua's novel released in this issue of "Bagong Angle" is selected from the 2022 volume of "Bagongshan Literature" "Langji Qingqing" novel column.
(Editorial Department of "Bagongshan Literature" of Huainan Bagongshan Writers Association)
On April 22, 2024, today's headlines "Hachiko Angle" was released