01
It's a cold April, but the Pioneer Production Team in the southwest is quite warm today.
A fiery red sun hung in the sky, and the red sunlight spread all over the earth, allowing the members who were picking spring bamboo shoots in the Pioneer Bamboo Forest to feel the warmth of spring.
A breeze blew through the bamboo forest, and the leaves rustled in the wind.
Yang Qiujin reached out and broke off a tender bamboo shoot as thick as a child's arm. After the root of the bamboo shoot made a crisp snapping sound, the tender bamboo shoot meat at the bottom was exposed, and the faint bitter fragrance unique to the bamboo shoot wafted in the air.
Yang Qiujin sniffed, smiled with satisfaction, and threw the bamboo shoots into the large backpack behind her.
Now is the season when all kinds of spring bamboo shoots emerge in Zhushan. Most of the members of the brigade get up early in the morning to pick bamboo shoots, put them into backpacks, go down the mountain and return to the collective, and take them to the non-staple food purchasing station to sell.
The area was crowded with people picking bamboo shoots. Each of them carried a bamboo basket that was twice as big as his or her body. They all wanted to fill their baskets and go down the mountain with them. That way, after weighing the bamboo shoots, they could get at least two work points, which could be exchanged for a lot of food at the end of the year.
Because there are many people picking bamboo shoots these days, the brigade has set rules like in previous years: bamboo shoots that are too tender and too small cannot be broken, and bamboo shoots that are more than half a leg high must be kept as bamboos for use elsewhere in the future. If you want to pick a whole basket of bamboo shoots, you have to climb all over the bamboo mountain to look for them.
Yang Qiujin was so tired that she had only broken off most of the bamboo shoots in the basket on her back. She was about to reach the top of the mountain. A group of women nearby were still pulling the thin bamboos on the cliff on the top of the mountain for support and looking for bamboo shoots everywhere without regard for their lives. Yang Qiujin was full of admiration for them.
Under the leadership's words that women hold up half the sky, many women have awakened, have a visionary consciousness, work hard, struggle hard, strive to become iron ladies, and contribute to the construction of the motherland.
Influenced by this environment, many female members of the Pioneer Brigade began to become more aware of their work and worked vigorously and confidently every day, refusing to yield to anyone else and working themselves to the bitter end. As a result, they could harvest nearly ten tons of bamboo shoots in a month, but now they can only harvest less than two tons in a week.
Yang Qiujin reached out and wiped the sweat from her forehead. She felt that she would not be able to collect enough bamboo shoots to fill her back basket today, so she lowered her head and looked around for the naughty boy who had followed her up the mountain to collect bamboo shoots. When she was about to go home, she heard the voices of several women talking not far away:
"Hey, why did the Chen family's wife come up the mountain to pick bamboo shoots again today?"
"Who knows? You said her husband is a soldier and gives her stamps regularly every month. She also has the work of accounting for the brigade, so she has no shortage of stamps and other things every month. Why did she have to come up the mountain to snatch bamboo shoots from us to earn work points? She is so capable!"
"Her husband said he was going to the army, but he was gone for seven years and never came back. Although there are checks and letters sent to her every month, who knows whether they are sent by humans or ghosts. Maybe she is just trying to save face and is suffering by sending letters to herself to save face."
"Don't tell me, it's really possible."
"Right. Even if her husband is not dead, he has not come back for so many years, which means he must have abandoned her and refused to come back to see her. Everyone knows that the person who was engaged to Chen Shengqing as a child was someone else, and she replaced him. Chen Shengqing fell in love with that person, not her..."
Yang Qiujin listened silently and did not rush forward as usual to engage in a verbal battle with those gossiping women and scold them.
She has been strong-willed and aggressive since she was young, and she is the kind of person who will not tolerate any loss. If someone bullies her, she will return the favor twice as much. If someone scolds her or talks about her behind her back, she will scold them back tenfold.
As time went by, she became a famous young prostitute in the Vanguard Brigade. No one dared to provoke her in person, but only dared to gossip about her behind her back.
She was in a complicated mood today and didn't want to argue with those gossipers, so she simply turned a deaf ear to them and pretended not to hear them. She waited for her naughty child to come back with a bunch of bamboo shoots and put them in the backpack, then she quietly took his little hand and went down the mountain.
Qingshui Village, where the Pioneer Brigade is located, is surrounded by mountains on three sides and faces a large river. The village is located on a small plain at the foot of the mountain. There are various canals around it that were diverted from the river to the ground. The water in them is running water, clear and bright. You can clearly see the fine river sand at the bottom of the water and various pinhole-sized fish swimming around.
Yang Qiujin took her six-year-old son Chen Tianyou to a low ditch at the end of the village and used clean water to wash his hands, feet and face, which were covered with morning dew and mud after climbing all over the mountain.
Her cleaning movements were not gentle, but rather rough and efficient.
"Mom, it hurts." Tianyou's delicate skin was rubbed so hard that it hurt, and he couldn't help but grimace and cry out.
"You deserve it!" Yang Qiujin took out a handkerchief from her azure spring coat and wiped the water off his face and hands while saying, "I told you not to follow me up the mountain and to stay at home to feed your chickens and ducks, but you refused and insisted on following me up the mountain to pick bamboo shoots. Look how many times you fell! You ripped several holes in the clothes, pants and shoes that I just sewed for you two days ago. The hole behind your butt is so big that you can even see your butt. Aren't you ashamed?"
Six years ago, she gave birth to Tianyou. He was fair and clean and looked good, unlike other children who were red and ugly like monkeys when they were born. She was very happy.
Her child has perfectly inherited the good-looking genes of her and her husband. He will definitely be like his father, a good student, obedient and sensible child who is praised by everyone.
Who knew that the boy's behavior since the confinement period was different from what she had imagined. He started crying, and then cried from morning to night. The noise was so loud that several family members nearby were annoyed and kept yelling at her to coax the child.
Then the rascal only drank her milk, which made her nipples cracked and bleeding. He also refused to take milk powder, and was obsessed with her bloody milk, torturing her to death.
Later on, he only recognized her and would not let her mother-in-law or anyone else hold him and feed him. He wanted her to hold him from morning to night, and she was so tired that her back and waist ached every day.
After learning to walk and growing up a little, he started fighting and making trouble, bullying chickens, ducks, cats and dogs, causing trouble everywhere, making the house and the village in chaos, and becoming a real devil.
At that time, she was either on her way to give gifts and apologize to others, or on her way to beat him up, and it was common for her to cry out of anger.
She clearly had a junior high school diploma and was one of the few educated people in the village. She talked to him about the principles of life, manners, etiquette and manners every day, but he just wouldn't listen and continued to do as he pleased.
As time went on, Yang Qiujin lost her patience to teach him, and she used the Hedong Lion's Roar and "force" to suppress him every day, praising and commending him at appropriate times, and using sugar-coated bullets.
It’s true, this method may not be good for other children, but it is just right for a naughty kid like Tianyou.
In the past two years, Tianyou has obviously become much more obedient than before. Although he is still very naughty, at least he doesn't fight with others or bully cats and dogs anymore.
Tianyou listened to Yang Qiujin's resentful mumbling, but he didn't take it to heart at all. He smiled heartlessly with a crooked brow: "Mom, I have already helped feed the ducks, and now I come to help you. This way you can relax a little and come down the mountain earlier to play with me."
Yang Qiujin paused, and when she met her son's bright eyes, she felt a sudden pang of pain in her heart.
Less than a month after her marriage, her husband joined the army and was gone for seven years. He never came back to see her and her son, and he never wrote to her about his recent situation. She had no idea where he was or what he was doing.
Faced with different versions of rumors in the village every day, no one knows how she has been living these years.
Fortunately, her mother-in-law was good to her. Although her son was naughty, he was not a bad person and was willing to help others. Chen Shengqing received her monthly check on time, so her life was not too painful in the past few years.
Yang Qiujin wiped Tianyou's face gently, and her voice became much softer: "Thank you, Tianyou. Mom knew you were a warm-hearted and kind child. You helped mom break off so many bamboo shoots without damaging them, and they are still very big. When you get to the brigade headquarters, the brigade commander will definitely look at you with new eyes and praise you for your ability! You are so amazing! With you around, mom feels much more relaxed."
Everyone likes to hear others praise them, men, women, and children even more so.
"Really? Then mom, let's go." Tianyou straightened his chest, with a proud look on his face, and followed Yang Qiujin to the brigade headquarters.
These days are not the particularly busy farming season, and Team Leader T allows members to get up early and pick bamboo shoots before going to work in the fields, so he is usually at the team headquarters, waiting for members who are picking bamboo shoots to come over for weighing.
The bamboo shoots were weighed at the team leader's place. After the scorer recorded the weight, he waited for other members who were picking bamboo shoots to come down the mountain to be weighed and put into bamboo baskets prepared in advance. The team's tractor operator then transported them to the commune's non-staple food purchasing station for unified purchase.
Yang Qiujin picked most of the bamboo shoots in the basket today and after weighing them she did not leave them at the brigade headquarters, but instead said hello to the brigade commander and said she would take them home to eat.
There are many bamboo shoots in the southwest. A large number of bamboo shoots are unearthed at this time of year. Bamboo shoots are divided into different types and can be sold for 2 to 5 cents per pound.
For example, the unified purchase price of bamboo shoots in grocery stores is only 1.5 cents per catty, but after the purchase, they are resold to people in the market and the price becomes 0.2 cents per catty.
If people living in bamboo shoot producing areas want to eat fresh bamboo shoots, they can buy them directly from the brigade collective at a preferential price, which is the same as the purchase price at the grocery store. The brigade will divide the money from the purchase of bamboo shoots equally among the members at the end of the year, so it is not considered cutting off the socialist tail.
As the accountant of the production brigade, Yang Qiujin recorded 100 kilograms of fresh bamboo shoots in the shell under her own name in the accounting book.
The money for buying bamboo shoots will be deducted from your work points at the end of the year. The whole brigade calculates it this way, so there is no need to pay cash.
She kept the accounts, locked them up, hunched over, carried Tianyou, and went home carrying a bamboo basket.
Her house is a four-room adobe house with a yard. A thin middle-aged woman in her forties was chopping chicken on the left side of the yard.
She had delicate features, a few wrinkles on her face, dark skin, and a head wrapped in something that looked like a hat, but was actually a hat made of white linen, and looked a bit like she was wearing mourning clothes.
Seeing her coming back, the middle-aged woman stood up quickly and helped her put down the basket. "Qiu Jin, you brought back so many bamboo shoots again. Are you going to dry them and mail them to Lao San?"
This middle-aged woman was Yang Qiujin’s mother-in-law, Li Xiu’e.
Yang Qiujin hummed, put the basket in the corner of the yard, and without even drinking a sip of water, turned around to find a kitchen knife to peel the bamboo shoots.
The sky has been clear and the weather has been great these few days, which is perfect for drying bamboo shoots. She has to dry them early while the sun is shining, otherwise the weather might change and it might rain in spring, and the bamboo shoots won't dry out and will have a moldy smell, wasting the good bamboo shoots.
Every year, Yang Qiujin would dry some dried bamboo shoots, dried vegetables, dried mushrooms, etc. and mail them to one of the few mailing addresses of Chen Shengqing, and this year was no exception.
Li Xiu'e looked at Yang Qiujin who was peeling bamboo shoots deftly. She had an oval face, a pair of big, round eyes, which were particularly pretty, a high nose bridge, rosy lips, shiny black hair, a slender figure, and healthy honey-colored skin, which was the result of years of working in the fields and being exposed to the wind and sun. She had the standard appearance of a working beauty of that era, and she looked very energetic.
However, her black hair was soaked by the morning dew, the cloth on her body and legs was covered with yellow mud, and her hands were full of old wrinkles and cracks from years of working in the fields. She looked much more haggard and darker than when she first got married.
Li Xiu'e couldn't help but sigh, and walked over to help peel the bamboo shoots. "Qiu Jin, the third brother hasn't sent any letters in two years. People in the brigade said he was dead. The money for the mailing may have been contributed by his comrades. If he doesn't send any letters and doesn't come home by the end of this year, why don't you apply for a divorce from the brigade, and I will decide whether to let you get a divorce or find a good man to marry."
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