There were just too many kiwis, and the siblings quickly filled two large cloth bags with them.
"Cousin, should we continue searching?" Pei Yichen asked, looking at the two women's bags, which were filled to the brim.
It was still early, so Pei Yao naturally planned to continue wandering around the mountain to see if there were any other fruits, since it wasn't easy to make the trip up the mountain.
However, carrying these two heavy and large cloth bags is indeed somewhat inconvenient.
Pei Yao looked around and finally found a secluded spot with relatively dense grass.
Hide the heavier cloth bag inside, then cover it with straw. If you can't carry it, just leave it here for now. Put the smaller bag directly in the basket and carry it on your back.
As the saying goes, you can't put all your eggs in one basket. The siblings hid the heavier, harder-to-carry bag in this one, and carried the smaller bag on their backs.
After hiding, the two siblings continued walking into the mountains. After walking for a while, they got a little tired, so they found a large rock on a gentle slope and sat down to rest.
Looking down from this rock, you can see Liangshui Village at the foot of the mountain not far away.
Looking down from above, Liangshui Village appears as tiny as a miniature toy, and the people walking on the village roads look like tiny ants.
The fact that they could see the village at the foot of the mountain meant that they hadn't gone too far yet.
Pei Yao took out the four wild vegetable pancakes she had brought from home before leaving and gave two to Pei Yichen. She also took out the pickled cabbage and stir-fried pork wrapped in banana leaves and spread them on the stone.
They whittled two wooden sticks with a knife to use as chopsticks, and the two siblings ate the pancakes wrapped with sauerkraut.
This pickled cabbage was made by Yunniang using wild celery. It's at its sourest right now, so it's perfect for stir-frying with minced meat and then stuffing into a pancake.
As the saying goes, everyone has to relieve themselves. After finishing his meal, Pei Yichen felt he had something urgent to attend to and needed to go to the bushes some distance away.
I told Pei Yao and went straight there.
Pei Yichen found a spot far from Pei Yao where the grass was still tall. As he was relieving himself, he looked up and saw a large fruit tree not far away, covered with red wild berries.
Although he didn't recognize what kind of wild fruit it was, he was still pleasantly surprised to see the bright red berries. His hand trembled, he pulled up his pants, and shouted Pei Yao's name at the top of his lungs.
"Cousin..."
"Cousin!"
The mountains were vast and open, and Pei Yichen's voice could carry far.
Pei Yao stood up from the rock and replied, "What's wrong?"
From the other side came Pei Yichen's joyful shout: "Cousin, I see a tree over here laden with red fruit, it's full of red berries."
"They're here."
Upon hearing this, a series of question marks flashed through Pei Yao's mind: Red fruit?
Quickly search your memory for red fruits, especially those from the Lingnan region?
Her first thought was... could it be mangosteen?
That shouldn't be the case. If she remembers correctly, mangosteens are not native to the area; they were introduced later.
What else is red? Ripe passion fruit? But that was introduced later...
Pei Yao kept thinking and walking.
Suddenly, a thought flashed through her mind: the red ones...could they be lychees?
Thinking this, Pei Yao quickened her pace and soon arrived at the fruit tree where Pei Yichen was.
Pei Yao's eyes lit up immediately: "Wow! Am I dreaming? It really is a lychee!"
And it wasn't just one, there were several!
"Is this called lychee? Can you eat it?"
Looking at his cousin's expression, Pei Yichen's intuition told him that there was definitely something going for this fruit tree, and judging from his cousin's excited appearance, it was probably more than just something edible.
Of course! This is a lychee, a fruit that even Yang Guifei (a famous concubine of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang) would smile upon eating! It's not something you can just eat!
Looking at the lychees in front of her, Pei Yao suddenly felt that the bananas and kiwis she had picked earlier didn't taste as good anymore.
She loves lychees, especially the fresh and juicy ones, which have a unique fragrance. One bite fills your mouth with that sweet aroma.
She not only loves eating fresh lychees, but she also adores all foods and drinks related to lychees.
Pei Yao used to buy lychees often, but this was the first time she had ever seen a lychee tree.
I simply couldn't contain my excitement.
"Cousin, is it okay for me to eat it?"
Seeing that she was absorbed in her own emotions and hadn't said whether she could eat it or not for a long time, Pei Yichen became a little anxious and asked.
Pei Yao snapped out of her daze and nodded vigorously: "I can eat, I can eat, of course I can eat."
After saying that, she directly pulled up a large handful of drooping, bright red lychees, and pulled Pei Yichen to sit down and peel and eat them.
"Let's try it and see how it tastes." Pei Yao said, having already peeled a lychee. The translucent flesh of the lychee exuded a tempting aroma under the sunlight.
Sure enough, it tasted and smelled just like that. Pei Yao ate several in a row, but she had just finished eating, and after eating more than a dozen, she was already quite full.
Pei Yichen also enjoyed the fruit very much. It was the first time he had ever eaten such delicious fruit, better than any fruit he had ever eaten in Kyoto before.
After finishing eating, they went to the drooping branches and picked some more.
While eating, Pei Yao looked around at the nearby lychee trees. There were more than a dozen large lychee trees, all of which were laden with lychees.
However, most of them are still green and not fully red yet, but the two that received more sunlight have turned almost completely red.
Moreover, there are obvious signs of harvesting at the lower parts of these branches.
It seems that this lychee tree is not a secret. However, there are so many fruits on the tree that even if you eat them every day, you can't finish them all. Moreover, lychees cannot be kept at room temperature for too long and spoil easily. So even if you wanted to pick them all, you couldn't preserve them, and you couldn't carry them all.
So the villagers only pick as many wild lychees as they can eat, at most picking a few baskets to take home and dry into lychee syrups, which can preserve them for a longer time, but lychee trees are everywhere on the mountain.
You can simply spit out the pits after eating the fruit, and as long as there is soil nearby, they will take root, sprout, and grow into a lychee tree.
Therefore, they never lack lychees to eat in the summer.
The two siblings squatted under the tree and ate a huge pile of food until they started burping. Pei Yichen regretted it a little; he should have known better than to eat those two pancakes earlier...
Pei Yao said she did too!
After eating, the two started picking lychees. Lychees can't be kept for too long, but they can probably last for two or three days in the cellar.
She remembered the dried longan she had eaten before, but wondered if lychees could also be made into dried lychees like dried longan.
Pei Yao climbed up the tree to pick the lychees at the top. The lychees at the top of the tree received more sun and were larger and redder than those at the bottom.
Pei Yichen picked the branches hanging down from the lower tree.
Soon the two of them had filled their baskets to the brim, and even Pei Yao's small basket was completely full.
Only then did they reluctantly climb down from the tree.
Pei Yichen's basket was full of lychees and was quite heavy, but fortunately, the boy had been working a lot recently and had developed some strength, so carrying it wasn't too difficult for him.
The two of them had no hands to carry anything and nothing to put in their bags, so they had no choice but to go home.
Anyway, these lychee trees can't escape, so we can pick them again tomorrow.
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