This girl is the king of the children in the mountains
Tang Baifu
My aunt is a native of Miaozhu Mountain, Hebering, and I remember when I was very young, every time she returned to her mother's house, she would bring some mountain goods out. Wild boar meat chamois pheasant hare, these things, can arouse my extreme curiosity, and what really makes me salivate is those wild fruits, sour pears, walnuts, wool chestnuts and so on. For some reason, I especially like to eat woolly chestnuts, biting open the brown skin with my teeth, revealing the yellow-orange-orange flesh, which is crisp and raw, fragrant and sweet, which makes me taste endlessly.
In our hometown, there is a difference between chestnuts and woolly chestnuts, which are wild chestnuts, which are no different from chestnuts in appearance, but the trees are small, small in size, but the taste is sweeter. The chestnuts brought back by my aunt were to be given away in many parts, so it wasn't a lot, and I didn't think I had enough of them each time.
So I asked my aunt, "Are there many chestnuts in the mountains?"
My cousin said: "They grow on the slope, bush after bush, who finds who picks, until it is fully mature, crack the opening, the children scatter to the ground, even pick up the belt, a day can get more than ten pounds or even dozens of pounds."
So I longed for the mountains of Heboling very much, and many times imagined that I was in the chestnut bushes, picking at will, eating in quantities, how pleasant.
Finally one day, I heard that my grandfather went to the mountains to run errands, I cried loudly to follow, but he couldn't help me, he promised to take me with him, but there was a condition, I didn't need to carry it when I was tired. I was very happy, jumped and ran to the village, solemnly told my friends about my upcoming trip, and made the three dogs who usually like to show their faces envy fiercely.
Grandpa was a carpenter who went to make furniture for the girl in the mountains who was about to marry, so he stayed longer. That's exactly what I wanted. In order not to cause trouble for others, he sent me to the miaozhushantang aunt near the place where he made furniture.
Miaozhu Mountain Village sits on a mountainside deep in the jungle. The houses where the people lived were all wooden frame structures, made of bamboo sandwiched with fir bark as a wall, and covered with a thick layer of thatch instead of tiles. For me, who has never seen the world, this really makes me feel unimaginable.
I got to know all the kids here. Whether it is full of dogs, magnolias, jisi, or Aoba, huashi, their interest in me is stronger than my interest in the mountains, as if I am not from outside the mountains, but from outside the sky. Early every morning, they surrounded me and asked me to say something that seemed to me to be extremely ordinary.
For example, my brother and I took the washbasin and cut off the flowing water of the canal to catch loach. As I spoke, they gathered more and more around, shoulder to shoulder, head to head, for fear of missing a word or not hearing clearly. When I said that a yellow eel suddenly turned out of the mud, it was too slippery, grabbed it in my hand, and ran away again. They were extremely nervous, especially the girl named Aoba, who seemed to be on the scene at the moment, loudly urging me to hurry up and chase. I said I wanted to chase it, but the mud was so deep that I couldn't get my legs in it, and I fell down as soon as I leaned forward, making my body muddy and even my hair sticking together. At this time, they looked up and laughed, unabashedly revealing their frank personalities.
I told them that in addition to loach yellow eels, sometimes they could catch crucian carp, carp, crabs, shrimps, and small fish that I didn't know the title of the book, such as Ma Grain Po, Long Baro, and Bitter Flat Silk. Their faces were full of surprise, and their mouths were open and closed for a long time.
Even on the asphalt road in front of my house, they showed great interest. Cars, tricycles, tractors, jeeps, none of this has ever been seen. I said that the Dongfeng truck driven by my uncle was taller and bigger than the house they lived in, and no one could catch up with the speed of running, and one by one showed a blank look. Finally, Aoba asked me: Are you also sitting on it? I said I sat in the cab and my uncle let me learn to drive with the steering wheel in hand. In fact, once I quietly went to play with the steering wheel, was found by my uncle, slapped my ass a few times, and cried for half a day. Somehow, I involuntarily blew the bull, but this attracted another kind of gaze from them: worship.
I spoke dryly, but I couldn't satisfy their curiosity, and often when my cousin's mother (I temporarily called my grandmother) came to call me to dinner, everyone reluctantly dispersed.
I also asked them for stories from the mountains to hear. Aoba, who was sharp-tongued, suddenly rushed to sit on a large chair, and I thought she was very good at creating atmosphere, and immediately restored her usual queen's aura. She put her hand in the air, and the group immediately and involuntarily surrounded her. In a commanding tone, she ordered the dog to lean against her with another bamboo chair, which was probably a VIP seat, and motioned for me to sit down, and I actually felt flattered.
Ah, there is a difference between the children in the mountains and the children outside the mountains, they have their own kings. I think so.
The story of the mountain is truly extraordinary. Aoba said that when the grain was filled, the wild boar came out, and the adults took turns to keep vigil. They carried a gong, beat as they walked, and shouted in their mouths, making the wild boar afraid to come out.
There are also special cases, perhaps the wild boar is really hungry, it is desperate, rushed into the bao valley, sweet potato field, with its mouth crazy bite, not long after a mess, the night watchman found out immediately knocked the gong to the sky, and lit a fire, hysterically shouted that the wild boar came out, beat the wild boar.
Except for the old and the young, the sleeping people quickly dressed up after waking up, holding a hoe and flat burden, knocking on the lid of the basin, playing with a fire and flashlights, and gathering in all directions. The sound of people is boiling, the hounds are barking wildly, and the noise is so loud that the wild boar will be frightened and desperately run.
As a convention, when everyone gathers around, leave an opening to tempt the wild boar to flee to the cliff, so that it has no way to go, so that it has to take a risk and jump into the abyss.
The next day, the work area sent people to look for, once fell to the death of the wild boar foot more than 300 pounds, a few men carried back, every household got meat, can not eat the end of the stove also hung on the stove, baked into yellow orange bacon.
Aoba is very able to tell, and there are many stories in the mountains, which makes me impressed with her. She said that in the spring, the bamboo shoots were unearthed in the bamboo forest, and they carried baskets to break home to cook, and fried with fat meat, which tasted great. The best bamboo shoots are buried in the ground, see a small dirt bag with a crack, adults use a hoe to dig, there must be a white and tender bamboo shoot, the large one weighs more than a dozen pounds.
I just found out that I knew too little about the things in the mountains. Camellia can also produce edible tea ears, mushrooms everywhere after the rain, all kinds of strange mountain fruits, I was fascinated to hear it, the sense of superiority deposited in front of me, after listening to Aoba's story, almost disappeared.
What worries me the most is the hairy chestnut, I asked where there is. All the people smiled dismissively, as if I didn't even know this, very much shouldn't have done it. Aoba said, "Didn't you see it when you came, there are many places on the side of the road."
It's not that I didn't pay attention, in fact, the roadside is sometimes bushy with chestnut trees, but I don't know, plus it's easy to pick, and there is no fruit on it.
Chestnut trees with fruit should be found in a slightly remote place. Everyone decided to gather at the mouth of the village early the next morning and take me to the mountains to pick chestnuts. This made me very excited, I couldn't sleep on the bamboo bed in the middle of the night, and the creaking and twisting sound woke up my cousin's mother, who lit a pine oil lamp to touch my forehead, asked me where I was uncomfortable, and I told me about going to pick up chestnuts. She said a few words and went to rest.
As soon as it was dark, we came to the front of the village. For safety reasons, some people called for older brothers and sisters, or carried baskets, or carried bamboo baskets, and some people carried snakeskin bags. We counted the number of people and set off.
The morning air was very nice, walking down the winding path, the dew wetting the cuffs of his pants. When the sun rises, we have passed through the bamboo forest, the fir forest, to a shrub mountain, and the green chestnut leaves flutter in the wind, endless.
I finally found the chestnuts, and it was in the thick bushes of trees that the thorn balls cracked their mouths, and the fruits inside were purple and red, which was very cute. I screamed involuntarily.
I approached carefully, broke the branches with fruit, and put them on the ground, and Aoba taught me to use my feet to step on the thorn balls to rotate, and when I lifted my feet again, the chestnuts separated from the thorn balls, and we picked them up one by one in the basket.
Every time we found a place, we screamed. The whole mountain has become a stage of joy.
Suddenly, I saw a clump of chestnut trees, densely packed with fruit, and their mouths were cracked to reveal their full-grained seeds. I couldn't be happier, and ran over desperately, breaking branch by branch.
"Don't move, squat with your hands over your head!" Aoba, who was not far away, shouted loudly and rushed towards me. I thought she saw me find an unexpected amount of chestnuts, learning the Eighth Route Army in the movie to shout at the Japanese devils, and folded even more vigorously. Just then, swarms of wasps emerged from nowhere, buzzing and flying like a black cloud pressing down on me. It turned out that there was a honeycomb here, and no one dared to pick the chestnuts, so there were many fruits, and I didn't know what the honeycomb looked like, and I didn't care when I saw something with a bee eye in a pellet.
At this moment, I panicked, and with a cry of my mother, I threw away the basket and turned around and ran. The top of my head hurt fiercely a few times, it must have been stung, and I felt many wasps fall on my head. Someone pounced on me from behind and pushed me down, covering me with my whole body, making me unable to move.
After a while, the person pressing down on me moved away, and it was Aoba. I felt unbearable pain in the back of my head, touched it with my hand, picked up a few large bags, and couldn't help but cry. Aoba also held his head with both hands, his face swollen like a person, and his eyes narrowed into a slit. It turned out that Aoba was running wildly all the way to protect me, and her face was stung, and she fell on top of me, and was stung by swarms of horse bees behind her.
But with a smile on her lips, she knelt on the ground, her hands slowly propped up to the ground, her face facing me, and slowly fell down.
At this time, several older people rushed over to carry her and me on their backs, and ran down the hill without saying a word.
I fell asleep for a day and woke up with my eyes open. I felt very weak, my head and face swollen like bread, and I still felt unbearable pain. Only to hear Grandpa sitting in front of the bed sighing, probably seeing me moving, immediately shouting my breast name, you can imagine the grandfather at this moment, the old tears flowed.
Later, I heard that if you accidentally alarm the wasp, don't run, crouch down with your head covered with clothes, it's basically fine, wait for the bee to return to the nest and then quietly leave. Aoba was much more serious than I was, and was sent to the forest farm hospital for rescue, and it took three days to relax. I was ashamed that I didn't understand and disobeyed her.
After recovering, Grandpa forcibly sent me home and never saw Aoba again. Decades have passed, but the past has always come to mind, I now feel that Aoba is good, she is very strong, the horse bee stings, there is a kind of pain and discomfort in the heart, she actually did not cry. For the sake of friends, he will fight for himself and be worthy of being the king of children. I wish I could still meet her and tell her story.