Chapter 54 Catching Bugs
There are several mountains surrounding Xiaoshi Village. The insects that Lu Xing and his friends want to find grow in bamboo, and bamboo can only be found on the mountain near Xiaoniu Village.
The other mountains all belong to Xiaoshi Village. If there were any bamboos or something like that, they would have been cut down by the villagers and taken home long ago.
Only the mountain near Xiaoniu Village is unclear whether it belongs to Xiaoshi Village or Xiaoniu Village.
Previously, someone secretly opened a piece of land there to grow vegetables. When people from another village found out, they started fighting. The fight got out of hand and many people from both villages were injured.
In the end, the two village chiefs had no choice but to give in and agreed that people from both villages could go up the mountain to find food, but they were not allowed to farm there.
In this way, the wild bamboo forest survived miraculously, and a large number of bamboo shoots grew every summer. It just depended on which village’s sharp eyes discovered it first.
But it is still spring, the bamboo shoots have not grown yet, and no one comes to the bamboo forest.
Lu Xing and the other two carried a small basket with a cup in it to hold the insects they caught.
Liu Hehua had come to wander around with nothing to do. She had no experience catching insects at all. She looked at the bamboo forest and asked Lianhua, who was standing nearby, "How do we catch these insects?"
Lian Hua pointed to a black spot on the bamboo. "See that black spot on top? It's caused by bamboo worms. Split along the black spot and you'll find the worm."
She used her sickle to split the middle section of the bamboo in a few strokes, and found several plump white insects lying inside.
"Here, I caught it."
"So simple?"
Lu Xing imitated Lianhua and looked for black spots in the bamboo forest with a sickle.
This wild bamboo forest was very large. As she walked inside, she soon saw a big black spot on a bamboo.
According to Lianhua, when the bamboo was split open, there was nothing inside.
She looked for a few more bamboos, but they were all empty, without even the shadow of a bug.
"Lianhua? Did you find any bugs? I looked in several bamboos and couldn't find any?"
Lianhua came over from a distance, with a lot of bugs already in the cup. "What do the black spots you found look like? Let me see."
She looked at the bamboos Lu Xing had found and said, "These aren't insect eyes. Insect eyes are rounder than these."
Finding such a tiny black dot on such a big bamboo and paying attention to whether the black dot is round or not is a bit too difficult for the elderly's eyesight.
Lu Xing decided to ask the system for help. "System, can you scan which bamboos in the bamboo forest have insects?"
[Yes, host.]
[There is a bug in the fifth section of the third bamboo on your left]
Following the system's instructions, Lu Xing cut open the fifth section of the bamboo and found that there were indeed several small bamboo worms lying inside.
Then, under the system's instructions, she found several bamboos with insects in them.
The feeling of cutting open the bamboo and seeing a bunch of fat little white bugs is like digging potatoes and seeing a dozen small potatoes coming out from one vine, which gives you a good harvest.
There weren't many bamboo worms to begin with, so with the help of the system, Lu Xing quickly caught all the bamboo worms in the area near her.
Lu Xing didn't eat insects, and cutting bamboo was a very physically demanding job, so after catching this piece, her energy was gone.
It just so happened that Liu Hehua didn't find any and was planning to go somewhere else to look for wild vegetables, so she followed them.
March and April are the seasons for Amaranthus, which grows in large patches on the ground. It is especially delicious when mixed with cold dishes, and even the elderly can enjoy it.
Not only they knew it, but the people in Xiaoniu Village also knew it.
Therefore, the fast-growing Amaranthus have already been plucked away, leaving only some small and tender ones, which require a lot of effort to find.
Since they were not in a hurry to leave, they squatted on the top of the hill and slowly searched.
By the time Lianhua finished catching the insects, they had already picked half the basket.
There is no need for any complicated cooking method for fresh Amaranth.
After Lu Xing returned home, he washed the water spinach, blanched it in boiling water, then took it out, squeezed out the moisture, and chopped it into pieces.
Then add some salt and sugar and mix it simply.
The cold-mixed Amaranthus is made with sugar, and the strong aroma of wild vegetables is accompanied by a hint of sweetness, which is very delicious.
As for the bamboo worms she had caught, Lu Xing had no idea how to eat them, so she put them aside for the time being. She planned to give them to Lian Hua tonight so that she could feed Xing Xing some nutrition.
I don’t know if the chicks smelled the insects, but when she went into the coop to get eggs, they surrounded her and clucked, begging for food.
"Go, go, go and eat your food."
She drove the chickens towards the feeding bowl, and the chickens flew around, holding their necks high and refusing to move.
"Aunt Lu Xing, are you home?"
Lu Jiayuan, whom I had never been to before, suddenly showed up.
Since Huang Liye went to work in another place, the couple's life has become much better.
Lu Jiayuan's clothes also looked much cleaner and tidier than before, and she was holding some vegetables grown at home.
Because it was his first time visiting, he had never spoken much to Lu Xing before, so he felt a little restrained when standing at the door and was embarrassed to sit down.
"What's wrong, Jiayuan? What happened? I was just feeding the chickens here." Lu Xing came out of the chicken coop with some chicken manure on his pants, and handed him a stool.
He wore an embarrassed smile on his dark face. "Auntie, I heard you went up the mountain to look for bamboo worms today?"
Lu Xing washed his hands and poured him a glass of water.
"How did you know? We went up the mountain to look for insects today, but we didn't find many. They're not easy to find either."
Lu Jiayuan held the cup in his hand, unsure how to start. "I just ran into Xingxing at the village entrance. I saw him eating fried insects, so I asked him about it."
"Lianhua is quite quick. He blew it up right after he got down the mountain."
"Auntie Lianhua has always been very good at work. When she was paid a centimeter, many men couldn't do as much work as her."
Seeing that he was almost at a loss for words to respond, Lu Xing turned the topic back to his family, "Isn't your daughter Li Ye also very capable? She manages the house and the outside world very well."
She asked again, "Is there something going on at home that made you come to see me today?"
This time, Lu Jiayuan finally explained her purpose. "My eldest sister went back home a few days ago to take care of her baby. Bamboo worms are nutritious and good for pregnant women, so I wanted to ask if you have any extra."
"Why should I be embarrassed to ask for this? I don't know how to cook this anyway, so just take it all if you want."
After saying that, she went to the kitchen to get the cup for the bugs.
Lu Jiayuan was too embarrassed to take it all, so he quickly waved his hands and said, "No, no, just take some back to taste."
"It's okay, take them all and use them as supplements for the pregnant woman. If you don't have enough, go look for more in the mountains near Xiaoniu Village."
"But why did your sister go back to the countryside to take care of her baby when she was pregnant? Didn't she marry in the city? It's so convenient to take care of the baby in the city, why did she come to us?"
Speaking of this, Lu Jiayuan was also worried. "There's this family planning thing going on in the city right now. The people from the birth control office are trying to get people to have abortions everywhere. If you have a child, even if it's seven or eight months pregnant, you have to get it aborted."
"My sister is pregnant with her second child. She gave birth to a girl first, and now she's hoping to have a boy. But the arrests outside are strict, so she had no choice but to hide in our place. Luckily, no one here cares about us."
"She'll probably go back after she gives birth."
His words reminded Lu Xing of his long-lost memories of his previous life. It was only 1992, and the family planning policy in the village was not very strict yet.
But it was not until the end of the 1990s when the law was strictly enforced that slogans such as "Insert an IUD for the first pregnancy and sterilize for the second" were painted on the walls of the village.
The people in the fertility office were arresting people like crazy. Not only pregnant women who had given birth to more children than allowed, but also women who had given birth. It was okay for those elderly people in their seventies and eighties, but women in their thirties and forties had to be taken away to have IUDs inserted.
It’s no use for people in the city to hide in the countryside to give birth secretly, because people from the birth control office will chase them to the village and arrest them in the middle of the night to force abortions.
Think about the time when the crackdown was strict in the previous life, and then look at how Xiaoshi Village has not been affected yet.
Lu Xing suddenly thought of a question, "What will happen to the child after your sister gives birth? There is a fine for having a second child."
"What? I have to pay a fine for this? What should I do? I have to go back and ask my sister."
Lu Jiayuan had never heard of this kind of thing before. He only found out about the issue of catching people who had more children than allowed after his sister came.
Now after hearing that he would be fined, he didn't even have time to pick up his things and ran home in a hurry.
【Author has something to say】
Dried tofu and amaranth salad is delicious! I recommend everyone to try it
I got hungry while writing late at night.
In the 1990s, family planning was very strict to crack down on excessive births. At that time, there was a skit on the Spring Festival Gala called "The Guerrillas of Excessive Births."
Interested sisters can take a look, Song Dandan plays
At that time, it was mandatory to put on a ring to avoid Yun, but the ring would rust and become infected, which had many subsequent consequences.
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