Chapter 74: First Love, Do You Understand?
Xu Erchun put his arm around his neck and whispered, "Widow Ye opened a consignment store and even set up two gambling tables in the backyard."
"Gambling?" Zhou Huaian looked at him, "You said that Cai Ermei was gambling at Widow Ye's house?"
"Gambling and helping to look after the place. Before Cai Ermei got married, she liked Widow Ye. His mother would never agree, so she had no choice but to marry Wang Chunhua."
"How do you know that?"
"You forgot, my mother, Cai Ermei's mother and his wife, Ye Xiaoshuang, are all from the Fangtian Brigade!"
"I only know that Wang Chunhua is from Fangtian." Zhou Huaian shook his head. "Tsk tsk, this Cai Ermei is too unrefined. Not only does she cheat on people, but she also gambles. If she continues like this, her life will be over."
"That was my first love, first love, do you understand?"
"Bah! You're a greenhorn who hasn't even tasted meat yet, you know nothing!"
"You're the only one who understands..."
The two of them went to He's house while playing and joking, and after whistling, they waited on the small ridge outside He's house for him to come out.
A broad-skinned, big-faced woman came out, pointed at the two men with her hands on her hips, "You two are second-rate bastards who don't do their jobs properly. I don't care about you but you're still bragging. Your face is thicker than a city wall! Don't come to my Da Kuan to fool around anymore!"
Zhou Huaian touched his nose, turned around and left. Xu Erchun turned his head and glanced at the second sister of the He family. "These women are more vicious than each other!"
"Forget it, let's go together!" Zhou Huaian pulled him home, picked up the backpack at the door and left.
Xu Erchun took the medicine hoe out of the basket and said, "This is good. I can use it to dig beehives!"
Zhou Huaian looked at him proudly, "My wife bought it to dig herbs."
"No wonder I haven't seen you these past two days." Xu Erchun took two steps forward, "Youngest, introduce your sister-in-law to me!"
"My younger cousin is more educated than you, and she's also very aggressive. You definitely can't handle it!"
"It's good to be well-educated, but the main thing is whether you look good or not. As long as you look good, I'm not afraid of being a bit fierce!"
"Compared to my Chunyan, she's just a little bit behind!"
Xu Erchun's eyes lit up, "How long have you been to your mother-in-law's house?"
Zhou Huaian smiled and said, "I just went there during the Dragon Boat Festival, and it will be Mid-Autumn Festival if I go again." He didn't like going to his mother-in-law's house. His eldest brother-in-law disliked him, and he also disliked his eldest brother-in-law.
The two talked as they walked, and unknowingly reached the top of the first hill. On the way, Zhou Huaian saw motherwort and chicken shit vine. When he saw a large patch of Polygonum multiflorum vine in the bush, he secretly noted the location.
"Look, youngest brother," Xu Erchun pointed to a large patch of gardenias in front of him, "there are so many small wasps on the gardenias."
"Good little bee, so docile!" Zhou Huaian looked in the direction he pointed, "Let's go over and take a look!"
As they approached, they saw swarms of bees collecting pollen on the gardenia flowers. They followed the bees coming and going and found a slope under a cliff covered with vines. They discovered that the bees had crawled into the vines and disappeared.
Zhou Huaian used a medicine hoe to pull away the vines and saw the large and small rocks on the slope. "Erchun, their nest must be inside."
Xu Erchun took a look and said, "You can't get in from here!"
Zhou Huaian looked around and saw that the vines in front of the cliff were tangled together and it was impossible to get through. He pointed upwards and said, "Let's go in from the top."
"good!"
The two men went around the cliff, used a medicine hoe to push aside the vines and crawled through.
After walking a dozen steps downhill, I saw swarms of bees flying in and out of the cliff.
"The beehive is right here!"
After Zhou Huaian finished speaking, he took out the mugwort from his backpack, rubbed it a few times like Yang Chunyan, and rolled it into long strips. He took out a match, pulled out a stick, and lit it with a "click". The mugwort was lit, and a fresh fragrance of mugwort emanated.
After Xu Erchun used a machete to cut open the stems of the vines that were entangled on the cliff, Zhou Huaian had already smoked the wild bees out of the hole.
Putting the mugwort on a stone, Zhou Huaian used a pickaxe to pry out the stone, and Xu Erchun scraped off the mud. The two divided the work and after more than half an hour, they saw the beehive hanging in the hive.
"Youngest, are there too many beehives?"
"There are eight or nine pieces. Take out the knife, gloves and urea bag from the backpack."
Xu Erchun took out the things and saw the plastic gloves. He smiled and said, "Trading a shotgun for a cannon! Why not get a bee hat?"
“My wife sews at home.”
Zhou Huaian proudly put on his gloves, took the knife, leaned over to cut a piece of the hive, and saw a small queen cell at the bottom of the hive. "It looks like this hive is preparing to split up."
Xu Erchun took it and looked at it, then broke off a piece of honeycomb with a lot of honey and put it in his mouth. "It's not much honey, put it back and come back to harvest it next year!"
"Hmm!" Zhou Huaian cut out two more honey combs. One was full of capped honey, and the other contained a lot of colorful pollen and many little bees.
He cut off some pollen and said, "Cut some pollen and bring it back to my wife to mix with water to drink!"
Xu Erchun held the urea bag and glanced at him, "Tsk tsk, some people used to brag every day that they would be henpecked after marriage, but now they are thinking about their wives even when they are cutting some pollen!"
"Being good to your wife and being a henpecked husband are two different concepts."
Zhou Huaian put another piece of capping honey into the urea bag and said, "Listen to me. As long as your wife is reasonable and treats her husband well, you should treat her well. Don't listen to the nonsense said by those incompetent men!"
"Like Cai Ermei and her husband, who are living in chaos every day, I would rather be single than get married."
"Find an opportunity to persuade Cai Ermei. The couple fights every day, and the two children are suffering!"
"Yes, let's get together when Yiding comes back!"
"Well! Leave two pieces of food for the little bees!" Zhou Huaian took the beehive with little bees and queen cells handed to him by Xu Erchun and put it back into the hive.
Xu Erchun looked at the honey comb in the urea bag and said, "Not bad, I harvested five or six kilograms of honey right after the opening. I'll go find another nest and then go down the mountain."
Zhou Huaian nodded, "Let's go upstairs and take a look."
After the two men restored the entrance of the cave, they crawled out carrying the backpack and urea bag, and continued to climb up with the backpack on their backs.
****
Zhao Huifang and two other people went to the back mountain to fetch water to water the corn and bean stalks. Yang Chunyan hung up the washed clothes and went back to the house to take out the work cloth from the backpack, and also took out two pieces of fine cloth, then carried the basket to the main room.
Mother Zhou dozed off with a needle in one hand and a shoe sole in the other. When she heard footsteps, she opened her eyes and saw Yang Chunyan, "The clothes are done!"
"They're done." Yang Chunyan looked at her and smiled, "Huai'an said your rubber shoes and boots can no longer be worn. I didn't know what size you wear, so I bought them for grandpa and the old man first. I'll buy them for you next time I go to Ning'an."
She took out the cloth and said, "These pieces of cloth are khaki. Make a new set of clothes for Grandpa and old man. These pieces of fine cloth are for you to make summer clothes."
"Why did you buy so much?" Zhou's mother looked at the things on the small square table with distress, and then looked at Yang Chunyan lovingly, "Mom knows you have earned some money these days, but you shouldn't spend it like this!"
Yang Chunyan smiled and said, "You can earn more money after you spend it. These are our gifts to you as a filial piety."
Mother Zhou gently touched the khaki cloth, then the fine cloth, fearing that the calluses on her hands would hook the fabric. "You child, the youngest spends money lavishly, and you didn't stop him but he still bought so much!"
"Huaian is much better now than before. He gave me all the money from selling honey, leaving only a few dollars for cigarettes!"
Yang Chunyan felt a little sad when she saw her expression. The ones who suffered the most were the old man and their generation. They didn’t have enough food or clothing and had been frugal all their lives. Even if their lives became better in the future, they were reluctant to waste anything.
(End of this chapter)
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