Chapter 35, Nanping Village, Zhuo Zuilan
The two villages Cheng Ying visited next were nothing special; she simply followed the winding mountain roads, stopping at a new village every three hours.
She would usually go directly to the village committee, introduce herself to the village chiefs and party secretaries of both villages, and tell them about Cheng Jiantong's decision to stop working as a postman. Then she would ask the village chiefs to help inform the villagers that they could pick up any letters or packages from her.
However, when they arrived at the first village called Nanping, Dahuang did not lead her directly into the village. Instead, he led her along a path overgrown with weeds on both sides, leading her from the mountaintop to a valley in front of a wooden house.
The house was a typical farmhouse, but it was entirely constructed of wood and must have been very old. The wood was grayish-black and rotten in many places, giving it a dilapidated appearance.
When Da Huang led Cheng Ying to that family's yard, it was only around eight o'clock in the morning.
In the courtyard without a wall, a middle-aged woman in her fifties with gray hair, wearing a dark blue diagonally-buttoned long blouse, her hair combed back into a sideburn, and dull, cloudy eyes sat in the middle of the courtyard, gnawing on a dried biscuit that looked moldy.
A dozen or so tender yellow chicks surrounded her feet, chirping and twittering. Every now and then, she would reach into her hand, break off a piece of the pancake, and throw it on the ground for the chicks to eat.
Big Yellow ran into the yard, barked twice at the woman, wagged its tail, and walked up to her, panting heavily.
"Big Yellow? You're here?" The middle-aged woman heard its voice and put down the pancake in her hand with great surprise. Her eyes looked around aimlessly, and her hands groped in the air.
Big Yellow licked her hand, as if to tell her that it was in the right spot.
She stroked Big Yellow's head with both hands and said with a smile, "Big Yellow, you and your owner haven't come for quite a while. I thought you weren't coming anymore."
After she finished speaking, she called out to the empty space in front of her, "Old Cheng, is this the one who came to deliver the message? I heard from your branch chief that your nephew pushed you off Ayi Mountain and that you were seriously injured. Are you feeling any better? You were so badly injured, why don't you stay home and rest more?"
"Aunt Zhuo, hello. My name is Cheng Ying. I am Cheng Jiantong's eldest daughter. My father fell and became paralyzed on one side, so he can no longer work as a postman. Therefore, I have taken over his job. From now on, I will deliver your letters." Cheng Ying walked up to her and introduced herself.
According to Cheng Jiantong, this middle-aged woman named Zhuo Zuilan was a Miao woman from Pucang Village, and also the first woman from Pucang Village to marry a Han man.
The man she married was a very handsome young man in the village. For love, she disregarded the previous rule of Pucang Village that she could not marry outsiders, which caused a lot of trouble. When the people of Pucang Village came to take her back to the village, she even fought with those Miao people, almost resulting in a death.
Cheng Jiantong heard from others that the reason she ran away to marry that man was because her parents had arranged a marriage for her in the village. She had a fiancé, but she didn't want to marry him. By chance, she met the Han Chinese man she liked, and the two fell in love at first sight and agreed to elope.
Instead of escaping, they alerted most of the village to arrest them. When the people of Pucang Village saw that she was stubborn, they took her lover back to the village. In order to save her lover, she had no choice but to go back.
About three years later, Zhuo Zuilan and her sweetheart returned to the village, but Zhuo Zuilan had become blind, and the person she loved had become somewhat mentally impaired.
Later, the two got married and had a son and a daughter. The two children were quite smart. Unfortunately, when the eldest child was eight years old, Zhuo Zuilan's husband slipped and fell to his death from the top of the mountain while herding sheep.
Her in-laws thought she was a menace. If it weren't for her taking a fancy to their son and insisting on being with him, which angered the Miao people of Pucang Village and led them to Pucang Village, how could their perfectly healthy son have become an idiot?
Her in-laws disliked her, and consequently, her two children did not like her either. Not long after her husband died, her in-laws kicked the three of them out of the house.
Zhuo Zuilan is a woman with a strong personality and temper. Even though she has become blind, been kicked out of her home, and has nowhere to go for herself and her two children, she is not the kind of woman who will let others bully her.
Back then, she took her two children directly to the village committee and cried and made a scene in front of a group of village officials for a long time. Finally, under the guidance of the village officials, she received half of the family property belonging to her and her two children from her parents-in-law.
Using her family property, she went far away from the main residential areas of the village and spent money to hire people to build a house out of wood in this relatively remote mountain valley.
She usually makes a living by selling Miao-style textiles and Miao medicines, while her two children act as her eyes and ears. She cultivates her own land, raises chickens and ducks, and gathers herbs to earn money, struggling to support her two children into old age.
Now her son is a doctor working at the county hospital and rarely comes back, while her daughter is married and lives in the provincial capital and comes back even less often.
Her son and daughter felt that she was getting old and blind, and it was inconvenient and dangerous for her to live alone in this wooden house deep in the mountains. They all wanted to take her to the city to enjoy a better life.
She refused to go, no matter how much her children begged or pressured her.
Her children had no choice but to ask some kind-hearted elders in the village to help take care of her. They would write to her every month or send her a registered letter, and Cheng Jiantong would help collect the money and deliver it to her.
Because of her poor eyesight, it was inconvenient for her to go to the village to pick up letters. Every time, Cheng Jiantong would take a special detour with Dahuang to her house and personally deliver the money and letters to her.
"Oh, I see." Zhuo Zuilan nodded knowingly. "I've heard your dad talk about you a lot before. He said you're very opinionated, have a fiery temper, and are quite stubborn, just like me. I've always wanted to meet you, and I finally have today. It's a pity that I can't see you. Come here, my dear, come closer and let me touch your face. If I touch your face, I'll be able to guess what you look like."
"Okay." Cheng Ying brought her face close to hers, not minding that she had just touched Da Huang, and let her touch her.
Zhuo Zuilan stroked her cheeks with both hands, touching her long eyebrows, large double eyelids, high nose bridge, and rosy lips one by one, and finally came to a conclusion: "She is a great beauty with a heroic spirit."
Zhuo Zuilan released Cheng Ying's face, and with a gentle smile on her face, which was now lined with fine lines, she asked, "Cheng Ying, right? Have you had breakfast? If not, I'll make you a bowl of noodles."
"No need, Aunt Zhuo, I already had breakfast at the house where I stayed last night," Cheng Ying quickly refused, then kindly reminded her, "Aunt Zhuo, your pancakes are moldy, why are you still eating them? Aren't you afraid of getting a stomachache?"
Zhuo Zuilan paused in her attempt to stand up. She picked up the flatbread from the hem of her dress, smelled it, and sighed softly, "Since I lost my sight, I can't tell if food is moldy or spoiled. I can only rely on smell. If it smells bad or has gone bad, I won't eat it, but that's rare. Before, when things were tough, my two children and I were always starving. We ate whatever grain we cooked, leaving nothing behind. Now, I'm all alone, and I'm too lazy to cook every meal, so I cooked extra, thinking that putting it on a plate and chilling it in spring water would prevent it from spoiling so quickly. I didn't expect it to be moldy, and I didn't even smell it spoiling. I'm really getting old..."
Cheng Ying looked at the few strands of silver hair that could be vaguely seen on her head, and couldn't quite describe the feeling in her heart.
She could guess why Zhuo Zuilan was unwilling to move to the city with her children. Besides being like many older people in the mountains who were not used to city life, she also couldn't bear to leave everything in the mountains and their memories of living in the countryside.
Zhuo Zuilan was willing to break with Pu Cangzhai to elope with her husband, which shows how much she loved him.
But in the end, it all turned out she was blind and her husband was mentally impaired. Was it really worth it?
"Aunt Zhuo, it's hot, so please try to cook as little food as possible, just enough for you to eat all day. If you cook too much food and it goes bad, not only will your body not be able to handle it, but you'll also have to throw it away, which is a waste of food. If you have difficulty seeing and cooking, I can cook for you when I pass by your house on my mail delivery."
Cheng Ying gently persuaded Zhuo Zuilan, put down the nearly empty mailbag on her back, took out two letters from the bag, and handed them to Zhuo Zuilan. "Do you need me to read the letters to you?"
"No need." Zhuo Zuilan shook her head. "These two kids, every time they write, they try to persuade me to go to the city and live with them, or they tell me to be careful and not to do this or that. Your dad reads the same thing to me every time, and I'm tired of hearing it. I don't want to hear them nagging anymore."
As she spoke, she touched the two letters with both hands, tore open the envelopes one by one, and took out a 100-yuan note from each letter.
She tucked a ten-yuan note into her inner pocket and placed another in Cheng Ying's hand. "Good girl, next time you come, remember to buy me some lamp wicks in town. The wicks in our oil lamp have burned out. Also, buy me half a jin of peach shortbread, half a jin of glutinous rice strips, and a jin of liquor. Buy two braised pig's trotters from the state-run restaurant in town... My husband's death anniversary is coming soon, and these are all his favorite foods. I want to put them at his grave as offerings. After you buy these things, keep the rest of the money as my travel expenses. You're a good girl, still thinking of cooking for me. I can still cook for myself now, but when I'm too old to cook, you can cook for me then. I won't trouble you now and delay your mail delivery."
Cheng Ying was about to refuse when Zhuo Zuilan pressed the money into her hand without saying a word and told her to wait.
Zhuo Zuilan stood up, stretched out her arms, and groped her way into her room.
Not long after, she came out of the house, holding a silver sachet embroidered with intricate patterns. She placed it in Cheng Ying's hand, saying, "Take this. There are many snakes, insects, and rodents in Pucang Village at the foot of Ayi Mountain. This will help you avoid them. Your father used to have one, but he lost it, which is why..."
She paused here, her expression serious as she instructed Cheng Ying, "Remember, you can't lose this. You should know who I am. This might save your life in a critical moment. This is something I've painstakingly developed over the past thirty years to deal with Pucang Village! I wouldn't give it to anyone else even if they asked. It takes a lot of time and effort to make this. I'm only giving it to you because you're Cheng Jiantong's daughter and because you're kind-hearted."
Holding the sachet, which was about the size of a baby's fist, Cheng Ying felt that Zhuo Zuilan's words were strange. It was as if she was saying that Pucang Village was very dangerous.
But Cheng Jiantong said that the scenery of Pucang Village is actually quite beautiful, as long as you don't have too much contact with the people of Pucang Village.
Cheng Ying recalled the rumors about Sheng Miao using Gu poison, clutched the sachet in her hand tightly, and thought, "Forget it, don't think too much about it. Let's just take it one step at a time."
She's just a mail carrier. No matter how dangerous the people of Pucang Village are, they wouldn't bother with a mail carrier like her.
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