42.042 Signs
Qiu Fuli watched as the girl suddenly appeared and then disappeared, glanced at Yu Yuan'an, and asked with amusement, "How was it?"
"Who knows?" Yu Yuan'an squatted down and continued to touch the branches. After a while, he pinched a handful of soil in his palm and rubbed it in. He told Qiu Fuli that if it didn't rain in the next few days, they should quickly arrange for someone to water the peach trees.
"Was what that woman said true or false? Are the oranges on that hill really so sour and astringent because of the soil?" Qiu Fuli was quite interested in this. When the orange trees were only two or three years old, the first batch of fruit tasted quite good, but after that, they didn't do well. For two consecutive years, they had been fertilizing and spraying pesticides, wasting a lot of energy on them, and now they were reluctant to cut them down. The fruit was sour, but if you sprinkled a lot of saccharin on it, it wouldn't taste so bad, like canned fruit. But if he could change the cultivation and care, he certainly wouldn't want these tooth-achingly sour orange trees in his orchard.
“What she said makes sense, and it even makes some sense, but I don’t understand the issue of soil acidity causing problems with the transplanting of oranges from the south to the north, mainly because I don’t have the equipment to test it.” Yu Yuan’an patted the soil off his hands. Seeing that Qiu Fuli, this layman, seemed determined to continue his research, he smiled and said, “Why don’t you have someone dig a deep pit and see if the soil at the bottom is really just rocks, as Su Yu said?”
"As for how to change it, just wait patiently. That comrade will come again." After saying that, he went down the mountain towards the vineyard. Such a large orchard was only looked after by him and a young man who only knew the basics. He was exhausted. He was quite interested in this girl who spoke vaguely but confidently.
Qiu Fuli stood alone under the peach tree for a while, pondering that since Technician Yu had even memorized people's names, Su Yu probably wasn't talking nonsense. He also walked down the mountain and called for someone to bring a shovel to dig a hole in the open space. He'd give it a try; after all, he wouldn't have to exert any effort.
Meanwhile, Su Yu took her meat coupons to the supply and marketing cooperative to buy a pound of fatty pork. The chives were from her own garden, and she cracked five eggs. She was busy in the house by herself picking chives, rendering the fatty pork, frying the eggs, and mixing the filling. Spring chives are tender and delicious, and the spiciness is not irritating. After eating them, your mouth won't taste like chives all day.
After Xiao Yuan and Ping An returned, Su Yu kneaded and mixed the dough in front of them, then moved the cutting board to the table in the yard. "Watch carefully, once the dough is smooth and doesn't stick to your hands, you can start rolling out the noodles." She had them roll up their sleeves, and each of them took a piece of dough to roll out. The three of them took turns using one rolling pin, and it wasn't until dark that they had rolled out enough noodles for the three of them.
The table was moved into the main room, and the three of them made dumplings together under the dim light bulb. Su Yu kept a close eye on Ping An, who was greedy and scooped a spoonful of filling onto each dumpling, making them so big that they burst.
"No matter how you knead it, it will break immediately when you put it in water. Then all the dumplings with the filling leaked out will be yours." Seeing that he never learned his lesson, Su Yu simply threatened him, "We'll eat dumplings, and you can drink noodle soup."
“Fine, I’ll drink. There’s flour, eggs, and meat. I’ll drink every day, every meal, and I’ll never get tired of it.” He glanced around furtively, scooped up a spoonful of dumpling filling, and stuffed it into his mouth. Even as Xiao Yuan chased after him and hit him, he didn’t forget to chew and swallow it, shamelessly saying, “Let me taste it for you first, so it’s not too bland or too salty.” Only after he finished chewing did he sit back down.
"You glutton and liar," Xiao Yuan scolded him, but Su Yu noticed that he was also swallowing his saliva.
"The chives are raw, go ahead and eat them, or you'll get diarrhea tonight." Su Yu gave a half-hearted scare, since the meat and eggs were cooked and the chives were raw, she wasn't worried about them getting sick.
"Then I'll have a bite too, so Ping An will have someone to keep him company when he has diarrhea." Xiao Yuan shrank back like he'd been caught stealing, stuffing the dumpling filling into his mouth and smiling shyly with his lips pursed. Especially when Ping An said he was a foodie too, he saw his mother smiling, and his ears turned even redder. After swallowing the food in his mouth, he didn't know what to do after Ping An's nagging. After a moment, he also started to grin, with an embarrassed look on his face.
Su Yu watched as his cheeks flushed and turned red, but he was still laughing and playing with Ping An, and she knew that he was starting to change. Introverted and sensitive children will feel awkward when embarrassed. If it were the old Xu Yuan, he would probably have kept a straight face and not said anything when he encountered this unintentional ridicule, spat out the dumpling filling and said it didn't taste good, secretly vowed never to touch these things again, and might even have developed other emotions.
He was blushing and his ears were red, but he relieved the embarrassment by laughing, much like a modern person making self-deprecating jokes after death, using self-mockery to divert other people's attention from the matter itself, making people think that you are interesting and funny.
"You two go boil the water, I'll wrap the rest." Su Yu saw that there weren't many dumplings left, so she told the people who weren't good at wrapping dumplings to go light the fire and boil the water, so that they could be cooked directly after she finished wrapping them.
Su Yu kept her word, scooping all the broken dumplings for Ping An to eat, and even scooping the filling that had leaked out of the pot into a bowl for him to drink. He didn't dare to cheat on Su Yu, so he could only move closer to Xiao Yuan, occasionally stealing a whole dumpling from his bowl, pretending to give in: "Sigh, dumplings that don't get wet are still the best, so oily."
Su Yu glanced at him, bit into the dumpling, and the oil dripped into the bowl. She exclaimed, "The meat is chewy and smells so good. Your boiled meat probably isn't as good as mine."
“Mom—” Ping An stamped her foot.
Seeing his conflicted expression, Su Yu, feeling a bit nauseous, relented and said, "Go get some more, and give the rest of what's in your bowl to Xiao Hei."
"So much meat!" He was reluctant to part with it, so he carefully picked out and ate all the eggs and diced meat from the bowl before emptying it to feed Xiao Hei.
The next morning, Su Yu went to the black market and found some rabbits for sale. She bought two, keeping one at home and taking the other to her parents' house. After Ping An and Xiao Yuan went to school, she kneaded dough and rolled out dumpling wrappers. She had leftover dumpling filling from the night before, so she made all the dumplings by herself at home, keeping half at home and steaming the other half to take with her.
When she arrived at her parents' home, her brother and sister-in-law had gone out to chat. "Dad, Mom, are you home?" She handed the still-alive rabbit to her nephew and niece, saying, "This is for you, don't let it run away."
"You silly girl, you came all this way, but why did you bring things again?" Old Su frowned but was happy. He was happy that his daughter was being filial, but his son-in-law wasn't home. Bringing rabbits and dumplings, it didn't seem like she was trying to support her parents.
“I have some that I bought myself. It’s not like I’m losing money by sending things to my parents’ home.” Su Yu put the cold steamed dumplings in the bowl into the kitchen and asked her mother if there was anything that needed washing.
“No, your third sister just arrived yesterday. She soaked and washed all the sheets and blankets, aired out all the quilts, and even put away the thick winter quilts,” Yu Anxiu said, then pulled her little daughter to look at her belly and asked, “Still no news?”
"No, I'm sick, I have a cold uterus, it's hard for me to get pregnant." Every time we meet, the first thing my mother does is stare at my belly. I've finally experienced the pain of being forced to give birth, it's so annoying.
"Nonsense." Yu Anxiu didn't believe it. She had already given birth to a son, how could she suddenly get sick? During the time she lived in town, she noticed that Xiao Yu's period came at a fixed time, and it came on the appointed day. She was definitely not sick. She thought the reason was with her son-in-law.
"You're definitely not sick. You should talk to Xiao Ning and ask her to adjust the delivery schedule. Don't just stick to coming back at the middle or end of the month. If you change it a few times, you'll get pregnant," the old lady suggested quietly.
Wow, the old lady knows quite a lot. Just as Su Yu was about to speak, she heard the old man coughing in the yard, coughing as if he couldn't breathe.
"What's wrong? Did you catch a cold?" she asked her mother, then turned the conversation to leave.
“I don’t have a cold, but I’m getting old, and my husband smokes a lot. In previous years, he would only cough when the seasons changed, but now he coughs when he gets up, when the sun comes out, when the sun sets, and even when he’s in bed at night,” Yu Anxiu complained, also confiding in the girl that no matter how she tried to persuade him, he still smoked his pipe every day without giving it up.
Old Su didn't even lift his eyelids when he heard his wife's nagging. He continued to smoke his pipe, sitting under the eaves, bending over and exhaling white smoke.
"Dad, smoke less. You're coughing like this and you still won't quit. Do you want to stay in the hospital again?" Su Yu walked over and took his pipe, emptying out all the tobacco.
Old Su immediately turned fierce, muttering "thieving girl" under his breath, glaring at her with bulging eyes, snatched the pipe and said, "If you hadn't gotten married, I would have whipped you with a bullwhip."
"You talk like you're on par with me. You're coughing so badly your lungs are about to come out. I'll buy you a few packs of cigarettes. Smoke them slowly and try to quit gradually." Su Yu wasn't afraid of the old man's angry face and sat down next to him to continue persuading him.
"You might as well let me starve to death. I'm already buried in the yellow earth, and you still want to torment me." Old Su refused, saying that the cigarettes weren't strong enough and he wasn't used to them. He also said there was no need to buy them for him, and he would just resell them anyway.
“I can’t live without smoking, even if I don’t eat. I’ve been smoking longer than your mother has been with me. Don’t worry about me. Your second uncle at the village entrance lived to be over eighty years old and was still smoking a pipe before he died.” He took out some more tobacco from the house and said that if he died one day, it wouldn’t have anything to do with smoking.
Seeing his stubbornness, Su Yu had no choice but to accept it. There was nothing she could do to threaten him now, unless he went back to the hospital and the doctor told him to quit smoking. But given his attitude that cigarettes were more important than his wife, he probably wouldn't listen to the doctor anyway.
"Old woman, get Xiaoyu some fried bread to take home and eat." Old Su told his little girl to hurry up and take the fried bread, without even thinking to ask her why she wasn't at work.
Su Yu refused, telling them to eat it themselves. If she wanted some, she would fry it herself at home.
"Take it if we give it to you. We can afford to give it to you now, but when we can't, you won't be able to get it even if you want it." Yu Anxiu picked up the fried buns from the bowl. If she didn't give them to her daughter, her daughter-in-law would take them back to her parents' home and give them away. She was happy to let her daughter-in-law eat them, but to give them to her daughter-in-law's parents was disgusting.
"Your third sister is having a hard time. She fried some the night before last, and your father took half of it to her in the middle of the night. You brought some rabbit with you, so your sister-in-law can't say anything even if she sees you taking fried buns." The old lady continued to grumble. She had decided to fry the buns for her third son's sake. She lived closest to her parents' home, so they would hear any news about her. Xiao Xing had fallen ill again during the change of seasons, and it had made her third son look terrible, all thin and frail.
“Then I’ll go see her another day,” Su Yu said.
“I’m not telling you this to send her anything. Your family isn’t doing well either. Don’t squander any money you have.” The old lady sighed. “Third son isn’t someone who can get by just because someone gives him a little. It’s tough, but we’re still doing well now. It’s better than when we were fighting for our lives. Just hang in there. As long as we don’t slack off, we won’t go hungry if we get work points.”
Su Yu took the fried buns and left the village. She went to the wheat field and pulled up four clumps of wheat, two of which were from the village's own wheat variety, with thin stalks, small ears, and shriveled seeds.
After having lunch at home, she carried four clumps of wheat to the orchard. She walked until she was sweating before she arrived, and just then she ran into Manager Qiu at the foot of the mountain.
"Manager Qiu, I went back to my parents' house and pulled up some wheat seedlings. You can compare them; the difference is obvious. I'm not making this up." She handed him the wheat seedlings to see.
"I'll take you to see Technician Yu. I don't know much about this stuff either." He did know a little, but not much. Like yesterday when she talked about soil acidity, he couldn't respond. This morning, the pit was dug to a depth of one meter, and there were indeed rubble and stones at the bottom. He wanted to know her purpose, but he didn't want to be led astray by her.
"You're here?" Yu Yuan'an turned around when he heard footsteps and saw that it was her. He wasn't surprised at all.
"Well, I'll show you the wheat to prove I'm not lying. You'll know whether what I said is true or not as long as you dig a hole over the orange tree."
"How did you know that the hillside was rocky? And how did you determine its acidity?" Yu Yuan'an asked seriously, staring at her intently.
Su Yu didn't blink or look away, and said without any guilt, "It's just a guess. When crops and fruit trees get sick, it's nothing more than the soil, climate, and pests. There are orange trees for miles around, the climate is fine, and the lush foliage means it's not a pest problem, so it can only be a soil issue. I went back and looked through some books, and I know that orange trees require acidic soil. As for the stones below, that's just my guess. I saw quite a few small stones at the bottom of that hill over there."
Yu Yuan'an didn't question it further, and asked on Qiu Fuli's behalf, "What are your requirements?"
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