Chapter 12 Shrimp Fishing
On the second day of cutting grass for pigs, San Ya brought Lin Qi with her again.
Behind the Anliang Brigade is a mountain range that stretches as far as the eye can see. Sanya took Lin Qi to another place today. Along the way, Sanya chattered, "Yesterday, I went to the straw shed with the team leader, but I went home before Old Man Xu woke up. Doctor Ma said that Old Man Xu's physical condition was already very bad, and he was very tired recently, so he fainted. Doctor Ma also said that if Old Man Xu continued to do heavy work, he might not live until September. After the team leader and the two deputy team leaders discussed it, they assigned the work of cleaning the cowshed and herding cattle to Old Man Xu. Now, like us, he can only earn two work points a day."
"Too little." After eating here for a few days, Lin Qi felt more and more the importance of earning work points and earning food.
"That's right, there are not many. That's why the people who cut grass for the pigs are all children under ten years old. Those who are over ten years old have to do other farm work and can earn half an adult's work points." San Ya's tone was full of yearning.
Lin Qi nodded, she also longed for it.
"Two work points a day, only two or three hundred at the end of the year, not much food, not enough for us kids to eat. But we still have parents, brothers and sisters to support us, what can you do alone, Lin Qi?" San Ya looked at Lin Qi worriedly.
Lin Qi: “….”
There is no need to worry too much. After all, you won’t starve to death.
San Ya didn't know what Lin Qi relied on, so she frowned and tried to find a solution for Lin Qi, "Have you planted vegetables in the vegetable garden?"
Lin Qi shook her head, it was too late.
"Then you can pick more wild vegetables and dry them so that you can have vegetables to eat in the winter." San Ya said.
It is indeed necessary to set up a piece of land to grow vegetables. Vegetable land can not only grow green vegetables, but also sweet potatoes, taro, pumpkin and other things that can fill the stomach. Lin Qi thought that she could mention it to the people at the educated youth point when she returned today.
San Ya thought for a moment and said, "After a while, when the fruits in the mountains are ripe, I'll take you into the mountains to pick them."
Lin Qi hesitated. With her walking speed and uncoordinated limbs, it was difficult for her to walk on a flat road, so how could she climb a mountain?
San Ya obviously thought of Lin Qi's own problems, and immediately reminded Lin Qi, "September and October are the best time to go into the mountains. Before that, you have to exercise your body."
If we go into the mountains in September and October, there will be more than a month left. More than a month may not allow the body to become as flexible as it wishes, but it is possible to make the body more coordinated.
Lin Qi agreed again, "Okay."
Considering that they would need to be dried, Lin Qi picked a lot of wild vegetables today, in addition to pig grass. Two large bundles weighed thirty or forty kilograms. The variety of wild vegetables today was richer than yesterday. In addition to wild rapeseed, there were also purslane, chicory, and shepherd's purse.
When the two met, San Ya saw Lin Qi's two bundles of wild vegetables and couldn't help but exclaimed, "So many!"
Lin Qi replied, "Sun-drying vegetables."
If she could only take this much now, she could have "picked" more.
"You walk slowly and talk slowly, but you pick pig grass and wild vegetables quite quickly." San Ya said puzzledly.
Lin Qi: “….”
"Although I didn't pick so many wild vegetables, I found this!" San Ya took out a small cloth bag from her backpack as if she was presenting a treasure.
Lin Qi looked at the color and style of the cloth and felt it was somewhat familiar. Then she looked at Sanya's upper body and saw that she was wearing a small vest. She immediately confirmed her guess that the cloth was Sanya's thin coat.
What is so precious that it is wrapped in cloth?
"Lantern fruit." Sanya's voice was excited, and she carefully showed what was wrapped in her clothes. There were dozens of round or oval yellow-green small fruits, with shiny and transparent skin, and several vertical vascular bundles were clearly visible, looking like lanterns.
Lin Qi had never seen such fruit before.
"It's so sweet, you should try it." San Ya invited Lin Qi.
Lin Qi picked one up at random and put it in her mouth. She bit it open and the sweet juice exploded in her mouth. It was indeed very sweet.
"Is it sweet?" San Ya asked.
Lin Qi nodded.
San Ya smiled proudly and put one into her mouth. "The lantern fruit can be eaten raw, made into jam, and used for wine making. It is very useful. But the quantity is small. There are too many people coming to the foot of the mountain to look for wild fruits. I found these dozens of fruits in the middle of a bush with many thorns. I guess someone didn't finish picking them and dropped them."
Lin Qi blinked and asked, "Where is it?"
"It's gone. I checked three times. Not a single fruit is left. There's nothing dropped on the ground." San Ya said confidently.
Lin Qi looked at San Ya persistently, "I recognize it, it's a fruit tree."
"Oh~" San Ya suddenly realized and pointed in a direction, "Over there, it's a bit far from here. I'm too lazy to walk, I'll point it out to you next time I see it."
Lin Qi felt a little sorry, but still responded, "Okay."
San Ya gave ten lantern fruits to Lin Qi, and Lin Qi gave her two White Rabbit milk candies, which were the two that Xu Hexiao gave her last night.
"What is this?" San Ya asked. She had never seen White Rabbit candy before. She had only eaten fruit candy before. The last time she had candy was when her cousin married her aunt. She was young, so she got one. Her two older sisters were older, so they didn't get any.
"Sugar." Lin Qi said, picked up the backpack and walked back the way she came.
San Ya didn't expect that she could get two candies by sharing a few small fruits. She kept the candies in surprise and gave Lin Qi ten fruits.
"Thank you for the candy. Can you give me another one? I have two sisters and I want to give one to each of them. I won't take advantage of you. I will give you all the lantern fruit." San Ya felt a little distressed after handing over all the lantern fruit, but in order to let her sister eat the candy, she decided not to eat the lantern fruit.
Lin Qi shook her head, "No more."
"Okay." San Ya felt a little regretful.
The process of handing over the pig grass went smoothly. When Lin Qi returned to the educated youth point, Ming Kangjian and others had just finished their meal. Lunch was mixed grain porridge and stir-fried wild vegetables. Although they were called stir-fried, they were actually almost boiled, without a trace of oil.
"So many wild vegetables?" Ma Guizhi saw the two large bundles of wild vegetables in Lin Qi's hand. "Didn't those aunties say that the wild vegetables on the mountain were either old or had been picked?"
Aren’t you going to work? Why do you know about what’s happening in the mountain?
Lin Qi was numb, ".........Good luck."
"So many wild vegetables can last for two or three days. We don't need to pick wild vegetables these two days." Zhao Yi said.
"Dry the vegetables and eat them in the winter." Lin Qi reminded them that there were no wild vegetables in winter. Even if she could induce labor, she couldn't explain where they came from.
Therefore, wild vegetables still need to be dried in the sun.
Her words reminded the people present, and they all thought, "It is indeed necessary to dry the vegetables."
"We have to open a vegetable garden. We can't always eat wild vegetables. We can also grow sweet potatoes and taro in the vegetable garden." Mo Mingyang thought of the taro he ate yesterday and his mouth was watering.
"We need to open a vegetable garden. How about this, we work during the day and open the vegetable garden at night." Jane Tongyi suggested.
Ming Kangjian nodded, "Okay. But I have to ask the captain first."
Lin Qi cooked dinner again. She was slow and didn't have time to cook breakfast. She came back late at noon and didn't have time to cook lunch either. So while others cooked for one day, it was her turn to cook dinner for three consecutive days.
After lunch, Lin Qi wanted to take a nap in the afternoon, but just as she lay down, San Ya came to find her.
"Lin Qi, come and catch shrimps with us." San Ya held a winnowing basket in her hand.
Lin Qi shook her head, "I don't have any tools."
"I can lend you mine for a while." San Ya said.
Lin Qi still didn't want to move. One reason was that she was tired, and another reason was that she didn't think a dustpan could catch shrimps.
Sanya also saw that Lin Qi didn't want to go, but as Lin Qi's only friend now, Sanya felt that she had to take her along. She dragged Lin Qi out of the door and said, "If we're lucky, we can catch a bowl of small shrimps in an afternoon. The small shrimps are delicious and fragrant."
As she said this, San Ya swallowed loudly.
Lin Qi: It sounds good.
There were more than just San Ya catching shrimps, but a group of little kids, all of them with bare upper bodies and shorts, some of them were even naked, with bare buttocks, holding a winnowing basket that was bigger than themselves.
Seeing San Ya bringing Lin Qi over, they all cast curious glances at them.
"Saya, why are you playing with a fool?"
"She's not stupid. If you don't believe me, ask Sister Hongmei and Luo Jun."
"She's not stupid." Luo Jun answered himself, "She's mentally retarded."
Now, San Ya couldn't refute it. She snorted at Luo Jun, grabbed Lin Qi's hand, and walked to the other side. "Let's go over there. There are more aquatic plants over there. Black shrimps and green shrimps like aquatic plants the most."
Lin Qi looked up. This was a branch of the river. The water was clear and she could see the water plants in the water. These plants either grew on the bottom of the river or floated on the surface. There were a lot of them, and they were lush green and looked a bit creepy.
Is there nothing else in these water plants besides shrimps?
Lin Qi wanted to ask San Ya, but San Ya had already rushed into the river with a dustpan in her hand, "Lin Qi, you just watch from the shore first, it will be your turn soon."
What San Ya meant by catching shrimps was actually that she quickly used a dustpan to scoop up the water plants before the shrimps discovered her. The water plants and shrimps went into her dustpan together. After she picked up the shrimps, she threw the water plants back into the water.
Lin Qi was more than ten meters away from San Ya, but that did not prevent her from seeing clearly what was in San Ya's winnowing basket. Every time she scooped up some water plants, she might find two or three small shrimps.
The shrimp was really small, only one to two centimeters long, not even half the size of her little finger.
Is it that this species of shrimp is just this big, or have they been eaten too hard by these kids, causing the shrimp to not even have a chance to grow?
Sanya's performance made Lin Qi wait for more than an hour. She didn't fish any more until she could no longer fish. She came ashore, panting, and threw the dustpan to Lin Qi. "Do you understand? Then learn how to fish like me."
Lin Qi nodded and understood, but she didn't have anything to hold the shrimp.
Lin Qi pointed at the small cloth bag on Sanya's waist and said, "This."
"This is mine," San Ya said. It still contained her spoils and couldn't be given to Lin Qi. If Lin Qi fell down inside, all her efforts would be in vain.
San Ya didn't have a bag, so she asked Lin Qi to take off her coat, tie a knot at one end of the sleeve, and then put the coat around Lin Qi's neck, letting the knotted sleeve hang in front of Lin Qi's chest. "Okay, let's do it this way. Just put the shrimp in the sleeve."
Lin Qi: “….”
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