Chapter 14 The Bamboo Shoot Incident
At dawn, the sun rises from the east side of Qingshui Village, which is surrounded by green water. Under the warm red sunlight, the sounds of roosters crowing and dogs barking fill the village as villagers get up one after another to wash and cook.
Cheng Ying was awakened by the rooster's crow. She got dressed, got up, and opened the wooden window. A cool morning breeze blew in, carrying the scent of grass.
Qingshui Village is surrounded by water on three sides and backed by mountains. Its geographical location is both remote and scenic. Even in the hot summer, the village is full of moisture in the morning. A cool breeze carries the fresh scent of earth and grass, which is unique to the countryside. Being in such a beautiful mountain village is a rare enjoyment.
Cheng Ying took a deep breath of fresh air, turned around to comb her hair, pushed open the door and went to the outer shack kitchen. She scooped some spring water from the large water vat in the kitchen, brushed her teeth and washed her face, and then started to cook.
The kitchen in the shack was a three-hole earthen stove, and the firewood used for cooking was collected by Wan Shuhui and Cheng Xuexia from the mountain after they finished their work. The firewood was neatly bundled into bundles and placed in the corner of the shack.
Although the ten-year turmoil had ended, the land collective system had not yet been reformed. As a member of the village, Wan Shuhui worked in the production team to earn work points to exchange for money and food.
Cheng Xue had skipped a grade and entered high school at the age of fifteen. She studied in high school for a year, but the high school was soon suspended due to the turbulent times. She stayed at home with nothing to do, so she went to work in the fields with Wan Shuhui to earn work points.
Wan Shuhui felt sorry for her daughter and was worried that Cheng Xue's skin would get tanned from working in the fields every day, so she often told her not to do farm work and to just stay at home and do housework.
Cheng Xue was not pretentious; she did all the housework, from laundry to cooking, keeping the house spotless inside and out. Wan Shuhui could have a hot meal as soon as she got home from work. On days when Cheng Ying was not home, the mother and daughter took good care of themselves.
Cheng Ying sat on a wooden stool in front of the stove, holding a matchbox in her left hand and taking a match out of the box with her right. She struck the red oval end of the matchbox, and with a soft hiss, the match ignited, illuminating a small, bright flame.
Cheng Ying stared at the cluster of light, her expression somewhat dazed. In her past life, she had always been strong-willed, working her way up in the army with all her might. Her life, while not exceptionally good, was still considered the best by others. Back home, she always cooked with advanced coal or gas stoves. She hadn't done anything as primitive as cooking with firewood for many years.
She sat in front of the old mud stove and lit a match, feeling as if she were in another world.
"Sister, what are you doing? The match is burning your hand, isn't it hot?" Cheng Xue woke up when Cheng Ying got up. She was thinking that her sister was going to build a wall in the courtyard today, so she didn't sleep in. She got dressed and went into the kitchen to wash up. But she saw Cheng Ying lighting a match and staring at the stove, seemingly lost in thought. The match was burning her hand, but she didn't even notice.
"It's nothing, I was just thinking about something, lost in thought." Cheng Ying snapped out of her reverie, feeling the burning pain in her fingertips from the fire. She carelessly tossed the burnt match wick on the ground, took another match from the matchbox, struck it, grabbed a handful of fluffy pine needles from the pile of firewood on her back, lit them, stuffed them into the stove, and then placed a few small sticks on the burning pine needles, quickly igniting the fire.
Cheng Xue didn't ask Cheng Ying what she was thinking. She scooped a cup of cold water from the water tank, washed her face and brushed her teeth, then came back in. Seeing a small pot of water boiling in the pot, she asked, "Sister, what are we having for breakfast this morning?"
Before Cheng Ying joined the army, Wan Shuhui had to work in the fields every day. Cheng Ying felt sorry for her, so she started learning to cook when she was six years old. She used to be the one who cooked all the meals at home. Cheng Xue learned to cook later and was far inferior to her.
Cheng Ying glanced at the old, crippled wooden cupboard next to the water vat and said, "Let's cook some noodles. The porridge we ate last night wasn't very filling. I got up in the middle of the night and drank two cups of water because I was so hungry."
Their family's current situation is neither good nor bad. Ten years ago, Wan Shuhui threatened to commit suicide to force them to separate from the Cheng family. They started cooking and eating on their own. Although their food was still meager, they no longer had to eat with the Cheng family. They could eat whatever they wanted and do whatever they wanted without having to worry about the Cheng family's opinions. Their lives were passable.
Cheng Xue knew that the food in the army was better than that in ordinary rural homes. She heard that there was plenty of white flour steamed buns and meat every now and then. Her sister had been in the army for four years and ate refined food for four years, so it was normal for her not to be used to the simple food at home.
So he nodded: "Then I'll go to the bamboo grove and pick a few summer bamboo shoots to take with me. I'll cut up the cured meat that Mom has been reluctant to eat from the roof beam and make it into a topping for noodles."
"Okay, go ahead." Cheng Ying snapped a thick wooden stick in half and put it into the stove without looking up.
It wasn't that she needed to eat any refined food. From applying for discharge from the army to taking the train, then to the county hospital, and finally back home, she hadn't had a proper meal in almost a week. She just couldn't stand eating only watery sweet potato porridge.
While she was in the army, she was constantly training and on missions, which involved a lot of physical activity. She also had a good appetite, and the amount of food she ate was no different from that of the male soldiers. She was starving and desperately needed some oily food to fill her stomach.
Cheng Xue went out with a small hoe and a small basket. A little while later, she came running back angrily and said, "Sister, all the bamboo shoots that were sprouting in the bamboo forest are gone. I clearly saw more than ten shoots sprouting the day before yesterday. I thought I'd let them grow for a couple more days and pick some to eat this morning. But when I went there, all the bamboo shoots were gone, not even the ones that had just sprouted. The ground was covered with freshly dug marks."
Cheng Ying knew without even thinking that this was something the Cheng family had done, and the most likely people to do such a thing were either Huang Cuizhi or Liu Guifen.
Yesterday, she brought so many leaders to Lao Cheng's house to demand justice, asking them to return the money, compensate for medical expenses, and even re-divide the family property, taking away a lot of good things. No wonder they can't swallow their anger.
This small bamboo grove belonging to the Cheng family was planted by their ancestors before the founding of the People's Republic of China. It contains several varieties of bamboo and is privately owned by the Cheng family. Because Qingshui Village is located in the southwest of my country, with a pleasant climate, bamboo shoots grow in this grove all year round, and the Cheng family can dig up a lot of bamboo shoots to eat every year.
However, Huang Cuizhi was quite greedy. In the past, every year when the bamboo shoots sprouted, she would dig them up and sell them on the black market for money, or barter with other villagers who did not grow bamboo and had no bamboo shoots to eat. She rarely dug them up to eat herself.
Wan Shuhui and her daughter Cheng Xue knew her character. They would remember when different varieties of bamboo shoots sprouted each season, and when the bamboo shoots were almost ready, they would quickly dig some up. They would eat some themselves and dry the rest to send to Wan Shuhui's relatives or mail them to the army for Cheng Ying to eat.
In previous years, the mother and daughter had often argued and quarreled with the Cheng family over the issue of harvesting bamboo shoots.
No matter how much they argued, in previous years Huang Cuizhi and her family would not dig up all the bamboo shoots in the bamboo forest. They would still leave some for Wan Shuhui and her daughter. Otherwise, if they dug them all up, and the mother and daughter made a scene in front of Cheng Jiantong, they would be too lazy to make up lies to deceive Cheng Jiantong.
This time, Huang Cuizhi and her companion actually dug up all the bamboo shoots in the middle of the night, which was purely a provocation to Cheng Ying and her group!
Cheng Ying's face darkened: "They really know how to annoy people. Did they calculate that you were going to dig bamboo shoots today and deliberately dug up all the bamboo shoots? Did they think that if they dug up all the bamboo shoots, I wouldn't have any to eat?"
She stood up, strode out of the shack kitchen, and headed straight for Old Cheng's kitchen.
At this moment, the Cheng family members were getting up one after another, squatting in rows against the wall in the Cheng family courtyard to brush their teeth.
Seeing her gloomy face as she strode hurriedly towards Old Cheng's kitchen, Huang Cuizhi's eyelids twitched. She quickly spat out the toothbrush foam in her mouth, stood up, and chased after her: "You good-for-nothing, what are you doing in our kitchen? What do you want to do?"
Cheng Ying ignored her and kicked open the half-open kitchen door of the Cheng family, startling Liu Guifen and Huang Xiaohong, who were peeling bamboo shoots inside.
Upon seeing her enter, Liu Guifen instinctively hid the thirty-odd bamboo shoots on the ground into the cupboard beside her, shouting loudly at Cheng Ying, "You jinx, what are you doing here? We've already separated the family. What right do you, an outsider, have to come into our kitchen? Did you get permission from our family before you walked into our yard!"
Cheng Ying sneered: "Liu Guifen, you're right. We have separated our family, but you two, in the middle of the night, without our permission, trampled on our second branch's yard and dug up our bamboo shoots. You still have the nerve to talk back to me? Get out of my way! Nobody is allowed to touch my bamboo shoots!"
As she spoke, she strode over and reached for the tender bamboo shoots in the bamboo basket.
The bamboo shoots were harvested by Liu Guifen and Huang Cuizhi, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, who couldn't swallow their anger at being targeted by Cheng Ying the day before. So, they got up in the middle of the night and secretly went to the bamboo forest to dig up all the newly grown summer bamboo shoots, including the Ma bamboo, green bamboo, and Ci bamboo, leaving none behind.
Huang Cuizhi was reluctant to dig up the newly sprouted bamboo shoots. After all, bamboo shoots generally need to grow to more than 10 centimeters to be tender and have a lot of flesh, so they can be sold for a good price. Bamboo shoots shorter than 5 centimeters don't have much flesh when dug up, which is a waste of a bamboo shoot.
But when Huang Cuizhi and Liu Guifen thought about how the two women in the second wife's family loved to eat bamboo shoots and how they would dig up a lot of bamboo shoots every year to eat and give away, they were unwilling to let them have them. So they dug up all the bamboo shoots, regardless of their size.
Fresh bamboo shoots, if not sold to others, are usually peeled, cut in half, blanched in a pot, and then soaked in cold water for a while before being used for frying, boiling, steaming, stewing, or braising. This process removes the bitterness and makes the bamboo shoots crisp, tender, and sweet.
The two of them spent half the night digging for bamboo shoots and were covered in mosquito bites, which were itchy and uncomfortable. So they didn't peel the bamboo shoots to cook or sell them. They just thought they would make the bamboo shoots for the family to eat.
The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law got up early in the morning and also woke up Huang Xiaohong, who was lazy and liked to sleep in, and asked the two daughters-in-law to peel bamboo shoots in the kitchen and prepare to boil water to blanch the bamboo shoots.
Liu Guifen and Huang Cuizhi peeled the bamboo shoots for quite a while, until their hands ached, before they had almost finished peeling the bamboo shoots. At this moment, Cheng Ying came up and tried to snatch the peeled bamboo shoots. Liu Guifen and Huang Cuizhi were not going to let that happen and immediately went forward to fight for them.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
