Chapter 155 The Moon Over the Past

Xiao Guo held the light, fluttering spring grass, her heart aching terribly.

"Chuncao, tell me about the situation at home. Where's Grandma? And where are my older brother, sister-in-law, father, and mother?"

Although Xiao Guo knew things were bad when he saw that Chuncao was all alone, he still wanted to hear what Chuncao had to say.

Chuncao was a little sleepy, but she still said, "There was a drought in the spring, and the wheat seedlings all withered and died. The summer harvest was not good, and after the wheat harvest, it didn't rain, so the sorghum also withered and died. Dad and my older brother sighed every day, but we still had sweet potatoes and corn at home, so we could still get by."

But locusts came before the autumn harvest, devouring all the crops in the fields. There was no rain, so we couldn't harvest any grain, and we still had to pay military rations. We wouldn't survive, Second Brother.

Drought burned their wheat, locusts devoured their sorghum, hail killed their buckwheat, and by autumn, their last hope withered away with each dying seedling.

Xiao Guo's eyes reddened.

Chuncao touched the soft cotton quilt, feeling even sleepier. "Dad said, 'A tree dies when it's moved, but a person lives.' So he took us away, saying that we could live in northern Shaanxi, and that my second brother was here."

Grandma was old, and she passed away before we even reached the halfway point. Actually, Grandma was quite healthy, but she gave the sweet potatoes to her sister-in-law because her sister-in-law was pregnant. Grandma then secretly ate wild buckwheat, which caused her stomach pain, and she died the next day.

My older brother got into a fight with those who were stealing our grain and died.

My sister-in-law was heavily pregnant, but she couldn't keep the baby. She asked a doctor who was traveling with her for help, and he exchanged a sweet potato for her medicine. She bled a lot... and both the baby and my sister-in-law died.

Mother sold herself to buy us a bag of millet. Father... Father took me all the way to northern Shaanxi. It was so cold that Father gave me his coat. When I woke up the next day, Father was already hard.

Large tears fell from Chuncao's eyes. This was what her father taught her to say; it wasn't actually like that, but only by saying it this way could her second brother accept it.

Grandma didn't die from secretly eating wild buckwheat. Before she passed away, she hanged herself. She said she was too old to walk and couldn't be a burden.

The eldest brother didn't die in a fight; he went to look for his child and didn't come back. Why didn't he come back? Because the eldest brother was in the pot... along with the child.

The eldest sister-in-law wasn't pregnant; she had already given birth. The eldest brother was gone, the child was gone, and the eldest sister-in-law, holding the cloth strip used to wrap the baby, hanged herself under the tree.

Her father didn't die of cold; he died in the suburbs because too much flesh had been cut off. His body was eaten by wild dogs. She couldn't take it from them, so she just listened to her father and kept running and running to northern Shaanxi, to Yan'an, to find her second brother.

The things in her bundle weren't just elm bark, but also her father's flesh... She didn't like eating meat, but her father said she had to live, she had to live.

Unlike other children, she wasn't buried in the ground by adults, prevented from following them, sold, or eaten. She lived not only for herself.

Xiao Guo cried silently for a while, then stroked Chuncao's head and said, "Don't be afraid, Second Brother is still here. It's good here. Second Brother can make sure we Chuncao have enough to eat."

Chuncao softly hummed in agreement. She was sleepy. If she went to sleep, she would probably dream of her grandmother, parents, and her older brother and sister-in-law, right?

The snow fell thick and fast.

Xie Ning unfolded the newspaper. What was written on it?

Last autumn, the Xinhua Daily reported that "the cause of the severe disaster in Henan Province this year is that floods, droughts, locust plagues, wind disasters and hail disasters have affected the province at the same time. In the locust plague areas, there is no green on the ground and withered branches are everywhere... In the drought-stricken areas, the wheat fields are less than a foot high."

The Ta Kung Pao's "True Account of the Henan Disaster" is simply shocking.

"Along the way, the disaster victims helped the elderly and children, with wheelbarrows carrying pots and pans, fathers pushing and sons pulling, or women pulling and husbands pushing, and even elderly couples in their sixties and seventies panting as they carried their loads forward... Several hungry dogs, tails tucked in, circled around the village entrance but couldn't find food, while these heartless animals ate the corpses of their own owners... Their outstretched hands were covered with veins, and if you looked at their entire bodies, you might mistake them for a physiology chart..."

Thirty million. Xie Ning closed her eyes heavily, her mind filled with scenes of starving people everywhere. She was powerless. She had already submitted a report to her superiors last year, but things were very difficult here as well. There were various blockades, and she also had to support the front lines. She simply couldn't spare any resources for rescue.

While a war was raging in the front and the people in the rear were suffering from disaster, the authorities allocated disaster relief funds. However, students continued to attend classes. Two hundred million yuan in disaster relief funds could buy 20 million jin of grain, but with no harvest in Henan, the authorities still wanted to collect 30 million jin of grain.

Moreover, not a single ounce of the disaster relief funds and grain reached the disaster victims.

Yun Ai'ai was reading aloud Mr. Wang's article in the newspaper, "Looking at Chongqing, Thinking of the Central Plains!"

"In Henan, disaster victims are selling their land and even starving to death, yet they are still being forced to pay taxes. Why can't the government confiscate the assets of wealthy merchants and restrict the 'indifferent' purchasing power of ordinary rich people? Looking at Chongqing and thinking of the Central Plains, it truly evokes a myriad of emotions!"

"Teacher, I don't understand."