Chapter 34 Autumn Fruits
The dog has come to idolize Lu An because of a bicycle. Although Zhao Xuan has refused the Yao family's offer to provide meals, the dog has brought them many delicious treats during the days they helped them.
The grapes on the trellis in Xiaxi Village are ripe. Every day when the dog comes to deliver food, it brings some grapes. Yao Yuan hangs a basket on each side of the back seat of the dog's new car. The dog packs the washed fruit in a large lunchbox and brings it to them.
There are so many fruits to eat in autumn. Grapes can be eaten at the beginning of autumn, when the weather is still warm. There are also oranges and pears. The oranges are not yet at their sweetest; some are still green. Many of the still-green oranges were harvested by Zhao Xuan a month ago. He peeled them and dried them, filling an entire oil tank with orange peels. The orange flesh was so sour that even Lu An, who wasn't picky about food, couldn't swallow it. He could only give it to the chickens, but the chickens pecked at it a few times and then walked away in disgust.
Pears are a common fruit in this mountainous coastal province in the south. Zhao Xuan remembers that it was called Huanghuali or Huangli. He often ate it when he was a child. It is quite different from ordinary pears. It is shaped like an apple, round and smooth, with a rough, earthy yellow skin. The flesh inside is hard and crisp with a sandy texture. This kind of pear doesn't look pretty, but it is particularly sweet. Taking a bite is like drinking rock sugar water. It is also big. You won't feel hungry for a long time after eating one. It's like an energy bar.
These pears are truly the chosen fruit of nature. They have no use other than being eaten. Even old pear trees that have been neglected for many years, and which lack water and fertilizer, still produce large and sweet fruit.
However, these pear birds also like to eat them. If the pears are not picked in time when they are just ripe, they will be pecked and riddled with holes.
Zhao Xuan knew nothing about fruit by-products. She didn't know how to make fruit wine, she found jam too troublesome, and she had no idea how to make fruit paste. Therefore, she and Lu An ate seasonal fruits as they were available, and they wouldn't eat anything if there were no fruits available.
Zhang Xiaohe knows how to brew wine and once taught Zhao Xuan. Zhao Xuan listened very carefully, but after returning home, she still did nothing. Firstly, neither she nor Lu An liked the taste of alcohol and were not attached to wine. Secondly, she was afraid that the wine she brewed would not be pure and would kill the two of them.
It's good that the grape vine is growing in the Yao family's village. The Yao family will pick the extra grapes to make wine. In Zhang Xiaohe's opinion, making wine is very simple. All you need is sugar and grapes. If it is made well, it can be stored for several years and drunk to warm the body in winter.
The grapes the dog brought were specially selected; bunches of grapes were a glossy purple, and the juice was incredibly sweet. Grapes and pears are fruits that don't require much care and can grow very sweet on their own. The dog brought several pounds at a time, always having his favorite older brother, Lu'an, bring them home.
"There are a lot of snakes on the grape trellis," the child said casually as he ate grapes while sitting under the shade of the tree at lunchtime. "I've already spotted three. One of them is green. I didn't see it when I was picking grapes. I had already reached my hand over when it hissed and I saw it."
The Yao couple remained unfazed by what the dog said. Yao Yuan said, "Next time, make sure you look carefully before you pick them."
Zhang Xiaohe added, "How about wearing gloves?"
The dog said, "I can't take off the gloves, they're too big."
Zhao Xuan asked in surprise, "Aren't you focusing on the wrong thing? Shouldn't you be stopping him from picking grapes anymore?"
Yao Yuan smiled and said, "If it were five years ago, we wouldn't have let him pick them. Now, there are some things he'll have to do himself sooner or later. It's better to do them sooner rather than later when we're all gone. Let him learn to do them properly then."
In the post-apocalyptic world, human lifespans shortened rapidly. During the six months Zhao Xuan and Lu An wandered after leaving the camp, they rarely saw elderly people. The majority were young adults. Men over fifty, once their strength declined, were relegated to the bottom of small groups, almost like women and children. Some small groups that revered strength roamed the land, treating children and women as commodities to be bought and sold. Zhao Xuan had seen some twelve- or thirteen-year-old children fight with adults to survive, but most of them had already died horribly.
Zhao Xuan and Lu An were outnumbered and outgunned, so they usually avoided groups of men. Sometimes they would see large groups of people, including the elderly, women, and children, all of whom were clean and in good spirits. These were families fleeing famine. Lu An would then exchange some necessities with them. If he encountered a kind person, Lu An would even lead Zhao Xuan to follow them at a distance for a while.
In the post-apocalyptic world, many children have become like little wild animals. Those who have lost their loved ones have already died, and those who are still cared for will, like the dog, learn many survival skills at a young age, such as farming, herding sheep, and cooking. These tasks have given the dog's little hands a thin layer of calluses.
Zhang Xiaohe agreed with Yao Yuan's statement and did not interrupt.
With Zhao Xuan and the others' help, the Yao family quickly finished harvesting their rice. This year, Yao Yuan also planted a lot of beans on the distant slope. Once the beans were dried in the sun in the field, the pods could be harvested. Zhang Xiaohe said that these beans could be used to brew soy sauce. The soy sauce making process is very long, but once it's finished, it can last a long time. She also mentioned that she would invite Zhao Xuan and Lu An to learn how to brew soy sauce together.
For the rest of the days, Zhao Xuan and his family enjoyed another period of slack farming. They still had their daily chores to do, such as feeding the pigs and chickens, patrolling the fields, cooking, and washing clothes, but with plenty of free time. Lu An gradually dried and stored the harvested grain, planning to process some of it into semi-processed foods when winter came and they had more free time. They collected usable machines from the surrounding area, such as rice milling machines, so the Yao family would borrow them from Lu An when needed. If they had extra machines, Lu An would give them one; if they didn't have any, he would carefully teach them how to use them. The Yao family would always politely reciprocate with small gifts, such as dried noodles or pickles.
Zhao Xuan then shouldered his small basket and headed towards the outskirts of the village to see if he could gather some mountain produce. At the edge of the village, beyond the path connecting the village, there was an old grove of trees, with three centuries-old oak trees growing there. The trees had huge canopies and dense foliage, and the three trees together formed a small forest. The fallen leaves inside were already ankle-high, and it felt soft and spongy when you walked in. Before the New Year, Lu An and Zhao Xuan had come here to dig up a lot of fertile soil for their own vegetable garden.
The bitter oak trees are now laden with fruit. These fruits resemble hazelnuts, but are slightly smaller, and taste much worse. The fruits can be boiled, but the flesh inside is hard, dense, and not fragrant, with a slightly bitter taste. Each fruit is small, and opening it is quite difficult. Eating it feels like chewing on damp, low-quality flour. Yet, the bitter oak trees are quite productive. When they came here last year, the three trees were already covered with fruit, a thick carpet spread across the ground. They could easily gather a large basketful, enough to eat for a long time after boiling.
As expected, when Zhao Xuan arrived here this year, the ground was covered with small fruits, and the treetops were teeming with birds, but none of them flew down to eat them.
The birds are very clever; they also like to pick out the plump and sweet fruits to peck at and eat.
Zhao Xuan symbolically picked up half a bagful. Last year, the bitter oak tree had played a crucial role in her and Lu An's survival, and this year she wanted to give these three trees some face and make them feel presentable.
She carried a pair of fire tongs in her basket—she had actually gone out to pick chestnuts.
Chestnuts taste much better than bitter oak. She doesn't care much about the various fruit trees that grow wildly in the village. The last time she saw those chestnut trees was in August, when the chestnuts were still green spiky balls hanging on the branches. Now when she looks at them again, some chestnuts have already fallen to the ground, and the outer spiky shells have cracked open, revealing the shiny and plump chestnuts inside.
The chestnut trees weren't tall, so Zhao Xuan could easily twist them down with fire tongs and a bag of thorns. The ones that fell to the ground were even easier; she could just grab them with the fire tongs and toss them into her basket. Her movements were similar to those of the farmers she had seen as a child who used fire tongs to collect manure for fertilizer.
Sometimes Lu An would come along too. At that time, Lu An would carry a basket on his back and pick up whatever Zhao Xuan pointed to.
Lu An had never lived in the countryside, so many things were unfamiliar to him. For example, he didn't know that the fruit of the oak tree could be used to fill his stomach, and before the apocalypse, he couldn't even distinguish between scallions and shallots. But he learned all of this very diligently.
He loved going out to pick fruit with Zhao Xuan. Even if they just happened to pass by a patch of weeds, Zhao Xuan would point it out: "Look, that's plantain, it can be used as medicine."
Zhao Xuan knew so many things that he had never even seen before. When he first came to the deserted village, he ate bitter oak nuts for so long that he always thought he was eating some kind of unpalatable hazelnut. Zhao Xuan didn't laugh at him after explaining.
To be honest, he was only able to live here because of Zhao Xuan.
Sometimes they would encounter the dog herding sheep. As the weather got cooler, the dog's herding time changed from early morning to mid-morning. His herding route was also unpredictable; once the grass on one path was gone, he would move to another spot.
After meeting him, the three of them would walk together for a while, chatting idly.
Zhao Xuan would give him a few freshly picked chestnuts. The chestnuts, freshly turned out of the thorny burr, could be eaten raw after biting open the brown skin and tearing off the fuzz in the middle. Compared to cooked chestnuts, raw chestnuts had a slightly starchy sweetness and tasted somewhat like raw lotus seeds.
Sometimes 460 would follow, taking small steps and circling around Zhao Xuan and Lu An irregularly. It was selective in following its owner when going out. It usually didn't move when patrolling the fields, but it always liked to follow when Zhao Xuan went out to pick fruit.
It likes to venture into various weeds to find wild eggs, but as the weather gets colder, it finds eggs less often.
During the summer, Zhao Xuan sewed a small cloth bag for 460, somewhat resembling the satchels carried by people in ancient times. It had two large pockets on the left and right sides, resting on 460's back in the middle, which served a balancing function. Zhao Xuan also specially sewed a strip of cloth onto the bag. When the small cloth bag was placed on 460's body, the strip on the bag would loop around 460's body like a belt and tie a bow, which would secure the small cloth bag in place.
Normally, 460 is used as a hunting dog by Lu An. Over the course of the year, the two of them brought back several pheasants and ducks for the family. By Zhao Xuan's side, it's a pack dog. Once the small bag is tied to it, 460 knows it has a mission to perform. Unless the bag is removed, it has to stay by its owner's side at all times. It can't wander into the bushes or let the branches snag the small cloth bag.
Zhao Xuan wouldn't put anything too heavy on 460; sometimes he'd put a few wild fruits, sometimes a handful of herbs.
460 has sacrificed so much for this family.
The only osmanthus tree in the village had also bloomed. Before the buds had fully opened, Zhao Xuan had taken 460 there once.
As soon as 460, carrying its small cloth bag, approached the osmanthus tree, it sneezed several times and then stood far away from the tree. Zhao Xuan was helpless, so she untied 460's cloth bag and let it run wild.
The osmanthus trees in the village were ordinary osmanthus trees, with golden-yellow flower clusters the size of rice grains. They were very fragrant even before they were fully open. Zhao Xuan first swept the area under the tree clean, then laid out a clean cloth. Next, he stood under the tree, bent one leg forward, and held onto the trunk with both hands—and began to shake it vigorously.
Achoo!
Golden yellow flowers fell one after another, raising invisible pollen that landed on her hair and clothes, making her sneeze.
It smells so good! Zhao Xuan really likes the scent of osmanthus. The strong fragrance can create a taste illusion in the brain. For example, when you smell jasmine tea, you will subconsciously feel that the tea is sweet. Osmanthus is the same. When the flowers fall, it gives her a sudden illusion that the air is sweet.
At that moment, Zhao Xuan felt a special peace and emptiness in his heart.
She recalled the scene when her grandmother took her to pick osmanthus flowers when she was a child. Her grandmother would have her sit on a wooden stump not far away, while she would hunch over and shake the trunk. The whole world smelled sweet. Her grandmother said, "Honey, sit still. After Grandma picks the osmanthus flowers, I'll make osmanthus honey for you to drink."
"Mi'er" is an affectionate term used by elders in Zhao Xuan's hometown to address younger generations, similar to "baby" in Mandarin.
Then Zhao Xuan thought of his father and mother, as well as many other familiar people from his memories.
Sometimes I really miss them. The feelings for one's closest relatives cannot be diluted by time. The moment Zhao Xuan thinks of them, she feels particularly lonely, and then her eyes instantly well up with tears.
But life must go on.
Zhao Xuan squatted down. The osmanthus blossoms she shook down were mixed with many withered leaves and small twigs. She carefully removed these things, then gathered them in a cloth and took the osmanthus blossoms home.
Fresh osmanthus flowers also need to be dried before they can be stored. Zhao Xuan has a lot of airtight jars. When the time comes, he can pour the dried osmanthus flowers into the jars and use them to make osmanthus sugar or cakes. They are all delicious.
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