1972, Datunzi Village.
The sun was scorching overhead. Gu Qingqing wiped the sweat from her forehead and hurried to the field carrying a large ceramic pot.
Now is the busy farming season, and the whole village, young and old, is busy with the double-snatching. Although she is a timekeeper, she still has to participate in the work in the fields. Look, she just finished lunch and came to deliver water to her family.
The sun made the ridges of the fields hard. She walked through the rice fields, looking at the golden rice, she was so happy. This year would be another bumper year.
Judging from the output, there should still be a lot left after paying the state’s requisitioned grain!
Since she was weaned at the age of one, she had been eating porridge so thin that no rice grains could be seen. When she was a little older, she started eating steamed buns made of sorghum flour and corn flour. Her mother was very skillful and could make steamed buns in different ways, so her life was not too difficult.
I grew up like this until I was seventeen years old. Now I still cook sweet potatoes and potatoes with rice every day, otherwise it would not be enough. However, my life is getting better day by day.
In the past few years, people would just eat some fried pork with oil on their lips during the Chinese New Year. Now, they can buy some pork belly and some flour to make a big pot of delicious pork and scallion dumplings.
Thinking of this, she couldn't help licking her lips again.
It's not that I'm hungry, it's just that the weather is too dry. She made herself some food.
"Sister Qing, I'm here to bring you some water." A strong young man carrying a basket of wheat came towards her, raised his eyebrows and showed her a mouthful of big white teeth.
He was only wearing a white coarse cloth shirt, and his two strong arms were exposed, holding the bamboo shoulder pole tightly, and the shoulder pole creaked when he walked.
Seeing his face flushed by the sun, Gu Qingqing quickly stepped to the side of the harvested rice field to make way, then picked up the blue and white porcelain bowl on the lid of the pot, poured a glass of water and handed it to him.
"Yes, the sun is too strong. I brought a bottle of water with me when I came out. Brother, drink a bowl first."
The strong young man did not refuse. He stopped and did not put down the bamboo pole. He held the bamboo pole behind him with his right hand, took the bowl with his left hand and drank it down with big gulps. The cool and sweet well water slid down his throat. Gu Xiong wiped his mouth and laughed loudly: "Thank you, sister. You go and bring water to grandma. I have to take the grain to the threshing ground."
"Okay, brother, you hurry up." Gu Qingqing picked up the porcelain pot and looked at her cousin's back as he carried more than 100 kilograms of rice and walked briskly as if he was nothing, and secretly gave him a thumbs up.
As the labor force in her family who can earn the most work points, Gu Xiong is truly beyond reproach.
My second uncle is a carpenter, with a silent and dull personality. My second aunt is straightforward and hot-tempered, and my cousin inherited her cheerful personality.
He has a good personality, is quite strong, and has a muscular body, but his appearance is still as handsome as that of his family members. He is a famous handsome young man in the surrounding area.
In the words of her second aunt, "The matchmakers are almost breaking down the threshold."
Gu Xiong's back disappeared at the end of the field. Gu Qingqing withdrew the thought of "I wonder who will be lucky enough to be my cousin's wife in the future" and walked forward holding the porcelain pot.
The Gu family members gathered together, two of them were threshing the millet, two were carrying the rice stalks, and the rest were bending over to cut the millet.
The Gu family is a large family. Since her grandfather's generation, there has never been a girl, only boys. Her grandfather has five or six brothers, and these five or six brothers have given birth to a group of big fat boys.
Her grandfather Gu Tiezhu had four sons in total. The eldest son was her father, Gu Jin. The second son was her cousin Gu Xiong's father, Gu Yin. The third son was Gu Cai, who worked as a chef in a state-owned hotel. The fourth son was Gu Bao. Look, that's the one who was smiling frivolously and was kicked in the butt by Gu Tiezhu.
"Dad, dear dad, can't you be gentler when you step on me? If I get hurt, our family will lose another laborer. Don't you see what time it is now? Farming is busy, Dad!" Gu Bao rubbed his butt and muttered to himself. When Gu Tiezhu glared at him, he lowered his voice and quickly picked up a handful of freshly cut rice stalks from the side and handed them over.
Gu Tiezhu beat the rice with an expressionless face: "Don't call me dad, you are my dad."
Gu Bao shook his head and said, "Then I wouldn't dare to do that either."
Gu Jin, who was standing side by side with Gu Tiezhu on the thresher board, couldn't help laughing: "I see you really want it."
"Brother, please stop adding fuel to the fire, okay?" Gu Bao looked at his father's face, which was covered in rice ash, and his butt hurt again. He quickly changed the subject: "...Hey? Is that our Qingqing?"
As the only girl in the three generations of the Gu family, she was raised in the palm of the hands of Gu Tiezhu and Zhang Cuifen. When Gu Tiezhu squinted his eyes, he saw that she was the apple of their family's eye.
Throwing down the bare rice stalks in his hand, Gu Tiezhu patted the dust off his body and said, "Okay, little guys, drink some water first."
Gu Bao was unhappy to hear this address: "Dad, we are already in our teens, can you please stop calling us brats?"
Gu Tiezhu squinted at him and said, "You're the only one who talks too much nonsense. Your brothers and the others are not unhappy about it."
"They've all got married," Gu Bao stiffened his neck to save his face, "Your youngest son is planning to get married, it's so rude to call him a brat."
"Which girl is so unlucky that you have chosen her?" Gu Tiezhutou did not reply: "Go back and tell your mother to give her a bigger betrothal gift, don't let the girl down."
Gu Bao followed closely behind Gu Tiezhu, grinning: "Thank you for thinking so much about your son, Dad." Accustomed to the old man's eccentricities, he was thick-skinned and accepted it all.
In fact, he is quite confident. He thinks that besides Qingqing, his beloved baby, he, as an old man, is the second most precious baby in the Gu family.
Actually, he is only two or three years older than his nephew Gu Xiong, but judging from his nephew's situation, it's hard to say who will get married first between the uncle and nephew.
"Grandpa~" Gu Qingqing smiled and saw Gu Tiezhu coming over. She held the blue and white porcelain bowl in both hands and handed it to him: "You have worked hard."
"It's not hard," Gu Tiezhu said after drinking the cool and sweet well water. He felt relaxed and at ease. "Your grandma is harvesting rice over there. Please bring her a bowl of water, my dear grandson."
"Oh, okay."
Listening to his granddaughter's clear voice, Gu Tiezhu turned around and patted Gu Jin's shoulder——
"It's the eldest family that's so useful. Not only did they give our Gu family a pair of twin grandsons, but they also gave your father a granddaughter during his lifetime. You uncles and aunts can only see your granddaughter in your dreams."
Gu Bao glanced at his taciturn second brother and wisely chose to remain silent.
He was thinking that if he got married in the future and had a few plump and fair daughters, he would never let the old man hold them and would be so jealous of him.
At midnight, after saying hello to the neighbors in the fields nearby, the Gu family carried their farm tools to the production team to return them and counted the work points. Gu Jin sat on the stone block at the door and waited for his daughter to finish counting the work points and go home.
The moon was high in the sky. All the dogs in Datunzi Village were asleep, so no barking could be heard. During the busy farming season, they would go to the fields at daybreak and would not be back home until 12:00 at night.
Get up earlier than the chicken and sleep later than the dog.
"Aunt Zhao, you got seven work points today. Uncle Zhao and Brother Zhao Yu each got ten work points, which counts as one work. Little brother Ge cut fifty kilograms of grass to feed the pigs today, which counts as half a work." Gu Qingqing couldn't help but praise: "Little brother Ge is only eight or nine years old, he can count as half a young man."
"Our children are all healthy and strong," Qian Guihua pricked up her ears to compare the numbers she heard with those in her little notebook. When she found that they were correct, she smiled and said, "Qingqing, Auntie has to go back to cook. You should come back early too."
Gu Qingqing closed her notebook and stood up, "Okay."
"Oh, that's right." Qian Guihua glanced at Gu Jin at the door, then took two steps back and whispered to Gu Qingqing, "The leader of our production team is going to be replaced. I heard that the higher-ups have decided on your father. Looking at your father's silly look, I guess he doesn't know yet. Please give your father a tip."
"No way." Gu Qingqing was really surprised: "How can my father, who is so stupid, be the production team leader?"
After returning to the Gu family, Zhang Cuifen and her two daughters-in-law prepared a meal. Now that the family had not yet divided up, the whole family sat around the stone table in the yard to eat.
Gu Tiezhu took a bite of sweet potato with soup and almost spit out the soup after hearing what his granddaughter said.
"What? Your father is going to be the production team leader?" This is more unbelievable than the old Gu family's ancestral tomb being struck by lightning.
Facing a dozen pairs of scorching eyes, Gu Jin rubbed his hands and scratched his head. He was also confused. "Is it because the higher-ups saw that I have two sons in the army and thought that my political background is spotless, so they let me in?"
Gu Qingqing's two twin brothers can be considered the pride of the Gu family. One is an air force pilot in the Southern Military Region, and the other is in the Construction Corps. If Gu Jin really says that he has no stains, then it is true.
Three generations of his ancestors were all poor peasants of good family background, and Gu Tiezhu once worked as a cattle herder for a wealthy landlord.
"Not necessarily." Gu Qingqing took a bite of corn cob: "After all, Aunt Zhao's news is half true and half false."
As the gossip girl of Datunzi Village, Qian Guihua's business ability is still not as good as Wang Dahua from the next village. The other person is 80% successful, while she is 90% ineffective.
"Oh," Gu Tiezhu thought for a while, drank another sip of soup, and said incoherently, "It's okay if it's not appropriate. The production team leader has a lot of troubles. Look at this one, he has offended many people."
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