Zhao Xiu opened the door. Because of her height, she first saw the boy in white and was somewhat surprised by his arrival. Then she heard Xingxing's soft and sweet voice.
"Aunt Zhao Xiu, we've come to find Qiuqiu, Chunchun, and Dongsheng to play together."
Zhao Xiu looked down and saw the stars. She chuckled.
"Dongsheng is still studying in town. Your village chief uncle went to town today too. Come in quickly. Qiuqiu and Chunchun are at home drying rice." The village chief's yard is very spacious, so there's no need to carry the rice elsewhere to dry; it can all be dried in his own yard.
"Sister Qiuqiu, Sister Chunchun, you're doing embroidery again?" Xingxing tilted her head, her face a little stiff, because she didn't like doing needlework, but every time she went to the village chief's house and saw Qiuqiu and Chunchun learning embroidery, the two girls would be very enthusiastic about teaching Xingxing.
Qiuqiu and Chunchun both put down what they were doing. They hadn't seen Xingxing for so long and missed her terribly, so naturally they wanted to talk to her.
Qiuqiu is twelve years old this year, which is considered a young lady. Zhao Xiu is already inquiring about which family has a good young man and is preparing to arrange a marriage for her.
Logically, Qiuqiu should have avoided Zhu Lin when he came over, but Qiuqiu had her own ideas. She felt that Zhu Lin was just a young boy, even though he was taller than her.
But she looked ethereal and otherworldly, and her identity was clearly extraordinary. No one could possibly have any impure thoughts about her being with her. Besides, her family wasn't wealthy, so why would they have so many rules? Even her mother hadn't said anything.
Zhao Xiu had no other thoughts at all. Yesterday, she heard that Zhu Lin was only eleven years old and was also some kind of young master. Just hearing that made him sound very powerful, and seeing the young man's aloof expression, no one could possibly have any wicked thoughts.
She went into the main room and soon came out with a bamboo sieve filled with fragrant chestnuts. "These chestnuts are fried in lard, they're very fragrant and soft, you can have some."
Xingxing didn't stand on ceremony with her. She took two chestnuts, gave one to Zhu Lin, and ate the other herself. Since she couldn't peel them, she used her little teeth to bite the chestnut shells.
"Don't bite, I'll peel it for you." Zhu Lin gently tapped her forehead and easily cracked the chestnut shell with one hand. The shell was broken, but the flesh inside was intact.
Xingxing's eyes lit up, and she handed the boy a chestnut with a small bite taken out of it. She happily took the peeled chestnut from the boy's hand and ate it.
"Wow, that's amazing!" Qiuqiu and Chunchun exclaimed in unison. At the same time, they tried to crack open the chestnut shells using Zhu Lin's method, but they failed several times. They either couldn't crack them or they just flattened them. They couldn't peel out the flesh as perfectly as the boy.
Forget it, let's give up.
“Brother Phosphorus knows kung fu, and he’s very good at it, so he has a lot of strength,” Xingxing explained.
So that's how it is. That puts Qiuqiu and Chunchun at ease. It's not that they're stupid, it's just that the other person is too strong.
"It tastes good." The boy praised it sincerely after trying one.
“It was Xingxing’s second brother who discovered that these chestnuts were edible. Last year, after his family had eaten them, they came to tell us. We secretly picked them a few times before telling the rest of the village. We had no choice but to tell them, because there was a food shortage back then, and we were just hoping that there would be something on the mountain to supplement our diet.” Zhao Xiu sighed.
Qiuqiu spoke somewhat unhappily about something, "There's Zhou Junjun at the village entrance. His wife is from the neighboring Qiaotou Village. When she went back to her parents' home, she told her family that chestnuts are edible. I don't know what they were thinking, but they spread the word."
Now people in many villages know about it. Knowing wouldn't be a big deal, but those people go up the mountain to pick chestnuts every day. It's not just people from the villages; some people from the town also want to go up the mountain to pick them. After they've finished picking them in their own villages, they want to go to other villages to pick them too.
Just a few days ago, when everyone was busy harvesting rice, a group of about a dozen women from Qiaotou Village wanted to go to the mountains in our Yegou Village to pick chestnuts. The people in our village disagreed, and those women acted aggressively; we almost got into a fight.
"Why do they have to come all the way up the mountain in our village to pick them? We don't even have enough for ourselves!" Xingxing said indignantly, and together with Qiuqiu, they scolded the people from the other village.
"It's for the money, of course. We take chestnuts to town to sell, to the county town to sell, and they sell really well. Those rich families love to eat them and buy them like crazy." Qiuqiu snorted.
Zhao Xiu nodded in agreement, “People from other villages would pick chestnuts to sell, but people from our village wouldn’t. People from our village would rather work hard than sell their food. We have cellars where we store our food.”
No matter what it is, as long as it is dried in the sun and then sealed in a ceramic jar, it can be stored for a long time.
“Yes, we need to stock up for our own consumption. We can’t sell them. Money is not as important as food. If a major disaster strikes, even money won’t be enough to buy food.” Xingxing had heard these words from Zhao Guihua and many other women in the village. She had clearly grasped the essence of the saying and spoke them fluently.
Zhao Xiuqiu and her two daughters, Qiuchun and Chunchun, wholeheartedly agreed. This idea was recognized by the entire village, and they were determined to carry it out to the end.
Zhu Lin listened silently to the four women discussing the importance of food, their conversation shifting from food to the need to raise the thorn wall at the village entrance and assign people to guard the village gate in shifts until the chestnut season was over.
Zhao Xiu paused, then remembered something else, "A while ago, your aunt brought Ruru back for a visit. She gave your village chief some money so he could find someone to help harvest the rice. That day, we happened to have some chestnuts at home, so we treated her to some and even gave her some more. Your aunt is a really nice person."
She told me that chestnuts can be ground into powder and used to make chestnut cakes. She even wrote down the recipe for me, but it requires both sugar and wheat flour, and we've never made anything like that before. Plus, we've been too busy harvesting rice, so we haven't gotten around to it yet. In a couple of days, when your mother has some free time, we'll figure out how to make it together.
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