Chapter 43: When the rogue cowherd Li Daohua appeared, the crowd automatically...
As soon as Li Daohua appeared, the crowd automatically parted.
"He peeped at your aunt taking a bath!"
In rural areas, people seldom take a bath in winter because it is too cold. Most people will take a bath once before the New Year so that they can spend the New Year cleanly. It is not easy to take a bath once.
My aunt was taking a bath at home. Just as she was about to take off her clothes, she heard someone outside shouting, "What are you doing?"
When I ran out, I saw my neighbor catching Fu Peng, a second-rate guy in the village.
"I came out to use the restroom and saw this kid sneaking around doing something bad. He ran away when I called out to him."
"She is already old, I think that is her blessing!" Fu Peng stuck out his neck, he felt it was not a blessing even if he was stepped on.
"Don't say any more nonsense to him. Send him directly to the police station. Once you're convicted of hooliganism, you'll be shot." Li Daohua said the sentence of execution as soon as he opened his mouth. Not only did Fu Peng get scared, but he also scared the villagers.
"Just shoot him, he didn't do anything, just beat him up, we are from the same village..."
Fu Peng is a well-known second-rate guy in the village. He is in his thirties, does not work and has no wife. He relies on his parents to serve him all day long, and he goes from one house to another all day long.
Basically, he is involved in all the mess in the village.
Li Daohua had once brought a group of boys to beat him up, and he stayed quiet for two days, but soon he was back to his old ways.
"Shoot me! I didn't see anything! Why shoot me? I said it was this old woman who seduced a strong young man like me and wanted to marry me!"
Hearing what he said, the aunt cried even harder. Li Zhuzi took the hoe and dug a hole in the middle of Fu Peng's mouth.
Fu Peng was so scared that he wet his pants, filling up the nest.
After Li Zhuzi retired from the army, he did all the farm work at home and used the hoe to hoe wherever he pointed.
"You just peed yourself right now. Look at your own behavior. You still want to get married. Whoever marries you will have their entire family and ancestors sin for eight lifetimes."
It was night time and there was no way to go to the police station in town, so they just tied Fu Peng up and threw him into the sheep pen, waiting to be sent to the police station the next day.
Li Daohua said she would send it, and no one in the whole village could stop her.
"Daohua! Daohua! Grandma is begging you, your uncle Fu Peng is the only child in our family, you can beat him if you want, but please don't send him to the police station!"
"I haven't even mentioned you two yet. I think it was you two old fools who came up with the idea for Fu Peng to marry a wife in this way. You're abetting a crime. I'm afraid you don't know that you'll get shot for this, too."
Fu Peng's parents are not good people either. They look pitiful, but that's their own fault.
The only son mentioned here refers to Fu Peng. Fu Peng has two older sisters. They never went to school since childhood and stayed at home to take care of the family. They had to wash Fu Peng's diapers when they were seven or eight years old.
Later, Fu Peng became seriously ill. In order to raise money for his treatment, the eldest daughter was sold to someone deeper in the mountains to be a wife, and there has been no news of her since then.
Fu Peng spied on the second child while she was taking a bath. After she told them, they accused the second child of seducing Fu Peng and sold her to a widower.
It was precisely because of their behavior that Fu Peng developed the character of having everything done for him since he was a child, thinking that the whole world should revolve around him and that he was absolutely not wrong and that others were always wrong.
In fact, as long as the circumstances of instigating a crime are not particularly serious, one will basically not be shot.
But they didn't know that as Li Daohua was the most educated person in the village, the villagers actually believed what she said.
"You are making it impossible for us to live." The old woman said in a drawn-out tone, sitting on the ground and crying in such a cold day.
The old man stood nearby, staring at Li Daohua, as if he could kill her by staring her to death.
"What are you looking at? Your son must have learned this from you."
When Li Daohua returned home, the villagers had not yet dispersed. It was New Year's Day and there was such a big melon. Everyone had to discuss it carefully. When visiting relatives during the New Year, they were counting on the melon to go with the meal.
"Hey, can this really be sent to the police station?"
"Of course she can. You're a new bride, so you don't know that Li Daohua used to be the one who had the final say in the village.
They said they would block your door and curse you from the first day to the fifteenth day of the lunar month. Even if they missed one day, it wouldn't work. People are educated now and they don't block the door and curse you. But he offended Li Daohua, so he hit a wall."
The new bride was surprised and asked, "Then why does he dare to provoke others?"
"What else can it be? If you don't fight for three days, the roof will fall off." The old man looked as if he understood.
The next day, the villagers did not visit their relatives and just waited to see what would happen next.
Li Daohua asked Ouyang Yuan to go to the town to call the police. It was New Year's Day and there were people on duty at the town police station.
When I heard that something happened in Lijiazhuang, I immediately rode my bike here.
Recently, because a factory has been set up in the town, this public security issue has become particularly important.
The villagers of Lijiazhuang watched helplessly as the police comrades came to the village, but Li Daohua insisted that they take him away for hooliganism.
With Li Daohua's support, several people in the village stood up and said that Fu Peng peeped at them taking a bath. All of them were married women, which does not rule out the possibility that there were unmarried women who were too embarrassed to say anything.
"This isn't the first or second time he's committed this. He's a repeat offender. If he's not arrested and reformed, who knows what he'll do next."
The police also know that such people are indeed an unstable factor in the village.
In the past, officials would not investigate unless citizens filed a complaint. But now that someone has filed a complaint, the matter must be dealt with.
“However, his case is not serious. He will only be imprisoned for about a year.” The police officer whispered to Li Daohua nearby.
"Okay, just lock him up anyway."
In this era, it was not so easy to go to jail. It was not like later when people were required to work in a civilized manner. At that time, labor reform was real labor reform.
"By the way, are there any criminals in the county detention center who...are they the type who like men?"
The public security officer looked at Li Daohua in shock: "How...how should I know this?"
This matter was not handled by them, so they would not know about it. Besides, unless he committed a hooliganism crime, who would know whether the criminal liked men or women.
"You...why are you asking this?" The public security comrade was still young, in his early twenties. In his more than twenty years of life, he had never encountered such a person or such a thing.
"Hahahaha..." Li Daohua smiled awkwardly. She would never say that she wanted Fu Peng to be locked up with criminals who liked men, preferably with those ferocious and vicious ones.
Fu Peng was taken away, but the discussion in the village was not over yet.
Not everyone supports Li Daohua. Many people still think that it was wrong for Li Daohua to let the police station handle this matter. This is not the way to do it. How should Fu Peng live his life in the future?
Li Daohua doesn't care what they say. If she really cared about what these people said, she would stop doing anything.
After this incident, Li Daohua went home with a burst of inspiration and wrote a short story that same day, which was the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.
There are many versions of the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. One of them is that the old cow instigated the cowherd to steal the Weaver Girl's clothes. In the end, the Weaver Girl was forced to stay and gave birth to a child, and thus their love was magically transformed.
During a previous exchange meeting, she proposed an anti-traditional idea, and many people published their own anti-traditional novels.
Some are based on the story she told about the princess and the dragon, while others are based on domestic anti-traditional stories.
This time she plans to combine this incident to write a new anti-traditional story.
"The Story of Redress - Cowherd and Weaver Girl"
The old cow's crime of instigation and the cowherd's crime of hooliganism, what kind of love is this? This is hooliganism and trafficking in women.
"This is too much... We have all been hearing the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl since we were little. How come it has suddenly become a crime?"
Li Zhuzi thought that it was better to send Fu Peng in. Why would he offend the gods? Why would he have anything to do with the gods?
"Okay, then Dad, let me put it this way. One day, there was a man who couldn't find a wife. His life was hard, so he wanted to find a wife. His father picked and chose and decided that I was pretty.
Let him peek at me while I'm bathing and steal my clothes. If I don't marry him, then let others watch me bathing. Are you willing?"
Li Daohua wrote and talked at the same time, and Ouyang Yuan became anxious as he listened, fearing that his father-in-law would agree.
"Let's see who dares! I'll break his legs!"
"Look, you also think it's not right, right? So it's right to pass it down by word of mouth? The original story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl is like this, so why not pass it down according to the original story? Isn't it just that some hooligans are interfering and making up a story they like?"
Li Sanzhu hadn't thought about this yet: "What? No? I heard this from my grandma, you are too grandpa!"
"When was my grandmother born?"
"You're so milky... Oh, maybe around 1900."
Li Sanzhu didn't know either. In fact, Li Sanzhu's grandmother herself didn't know her exact date of birth. She didn't have an ID card, and there was no educated person in the village. Time passed in the mountains without a trace.
"The story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl first appeared in the Book of Songs, where the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl were simply mentioned. It was not until the Southern Dynasties that it was turned into a novel.
The story from the Southern Dynasties is that the Weaver Girl worked every day and had no time to take care of herself. The Emperor of Heaven took pity on her being alone and allowed her to marry the Cowherd. After the Weaver Girl got married, she abandoned her work, so they were separated and could only see each other once a year. Does this have anything to do with the story you heard?"
Li Sanzhu and the others looked at each other. They had indeed never heard of this version of the story. This story was certainly not as melodramatic or attractive as the story about peeping at someone taking a bath.
It seems... someone really changed the content secretly.
When Li Daohua published this story of redress, he also explained the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.
"What? Is this true?"
Li Daohua's novel had just been published and received a very enthusiastic response. However, they were not very familiar with other stories, such as those about the princess and the dragon.
But the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl is one that even if you are illiterate, you have heard of from the older generation.
How could it be passed down from generation to generation but got it wrong? How could the cowherd become a hooligan?
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