The next morning, Zhang Xudong woke up early. He checked himself and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw nothing unusual about his body. Fortunately, the tap water was available for free use.
After cleaning the yard and washing up briefly, I started cooking. I was going to make millet porridge in the morning, and for the side dish, I'd have my grandma's pickled radish.
I added some wood to the stove and lit the fire. There was a bit too much water in the pot from last night's warming, so I took out half a basin of water and put it in the main room for Grandma and my younger sister to wash their faces. When I returned to the kitchen, the water was already boiling. I washed half a spoonful of millet and added it to the pot. I added a fire-resistant stick to the stove and left it alone, letting it simmer.
I used chopsticks to pick up a few dried salted radishes from the pickle jar, rinsed them with water, and then took some MSG and sesame oil from the kitchen in the space and put some of them in the pickles before putting them all back in. I'll take them out again when I get back from the market.
Seeing that the water in the water tank was running low, I filled it up with tap water. After thinking about it, I drew another bowl of water from the well and added half a bowl to the water tank, and put less in the rice pot, just to see if it would work.
After finishing his work, he went to the yard and started boxing.
"Xiaodong, when did you learn boxing?" As I was doing this, my grandmother and my younger sister had already washed up and were standing at the doorway of the main hall. They both looked much better than yesterday.
"Grandma, I learned this from a teacher at school after I started junior high school. I didn't feel like practicing it for the past two months, so I put it aside. Now I want to pick it up and continue practicing."
"Grandma, I have cooked millet porridge in the pot. Please take a look and see if it is ready. If it is, put the eggs in it. We will each have a poached egg this morning." In order to divert the old lady's attention, I found something for her to do.
"Ah, look at how many chimneys in the village are smoking now? Most of them lie down until noon and then get up to drink porridge, just to save energy and food. Do you still have the energy to fight?..." The old lady muttered and went to the kitchen.
The old lady was frightened by the scene before her and didn't know what the future would be like.
"Brother, you look so awesome when you box!" The little girl stuck out her tongue and made a face at her grandmother's back, then clapped her hands and shouted.
Zhang Xudong put away his fists and feet, walked over to the little sister, squatted down and said, "Little sister, do you want to learn boxing? If you want to learn, I will teach you."
"Brother, I want to learn. Once I learn, I can protect grandma and brother from being bullied by bad women."
The grandmother, who had just walked to the kitchen door, heard what the little girl said, shook her head and walked into the kitchen, leaving nothing behind.
"Practicing martial arts is very hard work. You have to persist every day. Do you still want to learn?"
"Brother, I will learn. I am not afraid of hardship, but I am afraid of hunger. I will persist."
"Then you have to get up early every day and can't sleep in."
"From now on, I will get up as early as my brother and won't sleep in."
"Well, I'll start teaching you tomorrow, so you have to get up early!
Now, let's see if grandma has prepared the meal. It's time to eat."
After dinner, Zhang Xudong told his grandmother that he wanted to go to the market, and his little sister wanted to go with him.
That won’t do. I still want to take some things out of the space and bring them home. What should I do if you follow me?
After much persuasion and the promise to bring candy back, the little girl agreed to stay at home with her grandmother. He hurriedly took a cloth bag and threw it into the backpack, then left the house with the backpack on his back, under the little girl's dissatisfied eyes.
Walking on the street, smoke from cooking fires was already rising sparsely in the village.
The village is now called Xiangyang Production Team, part of Shengli Commune. It's a name steeped in the spirit of the times. The brigade has over a hundred households and about eight or nine hundred people. It's divided into three production teams based on proximity.
There is a small river not far in front of the village, and the houses in the village are built along the river.
Behind the village are mountains, but the hilltops closest to the village are completely bare. This is probably because the nationwide iron smelting campaign in the past two years has chopped down all the trees on the mountain. Now the villagers have to go to the mountains farther away to collect firewood.
I didn't meet anyone along the way; most people were staying home. It was the hottest time of the summer, and most people were hungry and had no energy, so even those who went to work were working without putting in any effort.
The team leader simply stopped forcing people to work. If you wanted to earn work points, you could go to the river to fetch water to water the crops; if you didn't want to earn work points, you could just rest at home. You just had to work when it was time to harvest.
These were all dug out bit by bit from the original owner's memory.
Leaving the village and stepping onto the small stone bridge, I saw that the river had narrowed considerably, leaving only a less than two-meter gap in the middle. Sparse reeds grew in the dry riverbed. At this point, fetching water from the river meant walking a long, steep downhill slope. Fetching water for the crops was a thankless task, a waste of time and effort.
On the other side of the river are the village fields, planted with corn.
The corn has been planted for over a month now, and the seedlings are so densely packed together that even mice can't get in.
So, there was no need to pull weeds in the fields. Even if there were weeds, it would be impossible to step into them, so how could they be pulled? This meant that apart from carrying water to irrigate the crops, there was nothing else to do.
In the past two years, the old farmers have been a little confused and don’t know how to farm. They can’t farm by themselves, so they have to follow the methods of foreign experts. It is said that the yield is very high.
We should listen to the experts, because they are experts, right? Well, they're foreign experts. Let's practice deep plowing and dense planting. Go ahead, we farmers have plenty of energy.
Deep plowing requires three feet. What to do? One word: dig. As a result, the cultivated soil was turned over, and the rocks and dead soil beneath were dug up to the surface.
For dense planting, you need to sow more seeds—five times as much if not three. As a result, the seedlings are crowded together, competing for fertilizer, water, and sunlight. They all grow tall and thin, but they don't produce any grain.
Even so, the reported yield is extremely high, rising from 1,000 catties per mu to 100,000 catties per mu.
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