Chapter 7 Section VII

One year, Mingwa and Mingwa's mother came to Beijing with us to treat Mingwa's illness.It was the first time for both mother and son to take the train, and it was the first time to see Pingyuan. They didn't sleep all day and didn't feel sleepy. "The spirit of the animal must also work here, and it is full of plains."It was early in the morning, the sun gradually spread on the vast plain, and the fog became brilliant.But Mingwa sighed suddenly, and said: "This life is useless, I can't bear to die sooner and be reborn." Mingwa's mother's wrinkles immediately faded away, and she scowled at him, "You're talking nonsense again!" His wrinkles are streaked with white marks, where the sun gets less.We also advised Mingwa not to think about it, because she came to Beijing just to cure her illness.Ming Wa said nothing more.Both mother and son stopped talking, looking out of the window, it seemed that there was nothing outside the window.

Mingwa's disease is congenital heart disease. When we first arrived at Qingping Bay, we didn’t have our own cave dwelling, so we stayed at Mingwa’s house to take a look at the old stone kiln. It was on the high earth cliff at the head of the village, 20 to 30 meters away from the edge of the cliff, and we could hear the sound of the Qingping River all day long. sound of water.Mingwa's eldest is called "Scar", but I don't remember his scientific name.In northern Shaanxi dialect, pockmarks are called scars.Mingwa's mother is also called Aunt Scar, Fengying or Yuying.Mingwa is the boss, and the next six are all boys, and they are called a few yuan.

If Ming Wa had been born in Beijing, at least she would not have died so young.Born in our place, apart from being unable to move, it must be a suffering.The hardships in the mountains are not light, even if you follow the cow's buttocks to fight the dirt, you have to rush to the old man; an adult laborer must be able to keep up with three or four clusters of cows.The transition from seventeen or eight years old to working adulthood requires a lot of effort. Others are unwilling to admit that you have grown up, and they are unwilling to give you ten points.Mingwa is at this age, desperately trying to earn ten minutes.Unless you first overwhelm many adult laborers in terms of body, soul and strength, it will be difficult.Mingwa is not short, but she became thin due to illness.When the work was over, everyone went to Xiangcun one after another. He had to stand on the ground panting for a while, leaning on his handle, his lips were bloodless.The people who left behind persuaded him not to covet his work points and ruin his health, so he forced a smile and said, "It's not so good", panting continuously, his voice was so low that he seemed to be talking to himself.

The book introduces our place like this: the ground is broken, the beams are undulating, and the ravines are vertical and horizontal.Along the Yellow River, the mountain ridges are narrow, the slopes are steep and the gullies are deep, and the bedrock is exposed, forming canyon cliffs... It is said that the wind moved the loess to form the plateau thousands of kilometers in length and width, and the water cut them into pieces over the long years.When I went there in early 1969, dozens of trucks were mighty, kicking up a few miles of billowing yellow dust, "huh...hum..." crawling on the plateau.People curled up in the carport.Soon I saw the cave dwellings, rows of revolutionary ones, and everyone sighed.

After a while, I saw the sheep again. The old man who stopped the sheep was wearing an old sheepskin jacket. Everyone revered him from the bottom of their hearts and waved at the old man, but the old man only cared about his sheep.Then I saw a group of people wearing white goat belly handkerchiefs huddled on the edge of the plateau, looking at our convoy blankly and suspiciously. We waved at them again, but they were still standing blankly and suspiciously.The plateau is flat and open, like a plain, endless. Suddenly, the car seemed to have reached the end of the land, and the flat plateau collapsed into a large deep valley like an ax and a knife, making people dizzy when looking down.There is also a human world in the deep valley, with smoke curling up from the kitchen, dogs barking and chickens crowing, and the animal spirits and the people driving them are as small as ants crawling.The more you go north, the more such deep valleys become, and the bigger they become, gradually disappearing from the flat land, and they are full of undulating mountain ridges.Then arrived in Yan'an.Then it was discovered that Baota Mountain was not "tall", and the Yanhe River could not "roll" in winter.Then we met someone offering us a job, and the county cadre who led the team yelled at us.The poetry in me was thwarted.Li Zhuo groaned between his teeth, tilted his head and thought for a long time.

to our county.After getting off the truck in the small town, the county cadre who led the team asked, should we rest for a night and then walk the mountain road for dozens of miles, or go now?Men and women are all competing for heroes, and when they come, they don’t have to be afraid of anything, just go now.Several cadres led us to go, over the mountain and then over the ditch, and over the ditch and over the mountain, saying they were looking for a shortcut.Dozens of fellow villagers carried our luggage and climbed up the mountain like camels; each piece of luggage weighed seventy to eighty catties.The mountains are high and steep, and they are equally bare, with trails winding on them.It took a long time to walk down a mountain ridge, and a long time to climb up another mountain ridge. Looking around, there are still endless mountain ridges, mountain ridges, deep gullies and big ravines, which are connected to the sky.

The top of the mountain is full of flat loose soil.Zhong Wei gasped and asked me, "Crops are still growing here?" "Impossible," Jin Tao said, panting.Some of the girls also asked: "Is there still something to grow in such a high place?" "Is it the wind, so it's so flat?" The villagers laughed: "Where is the cheap wind? I still have to send dung here. !" "How to send it?" "People bear it." "What to grow?" "Wheat." "How much does the yield per mu?" "Two or three buckets." "How many catties?" "Seven to eighty catties together ""One mu?" "Oh." "One mu is only seven or eighty catties?!"

"Hey! That's top-notch, and you have to catch up with the good years." Okay, now I understand what "dumbfounded" is They all bowed their heads silently and walked away. I don't know if these fellow villagers are lying to us, or the school's work propaganda team is lying to us.Then the legs became heavy.Wheat seedlings did grow on the plowed soil, and the mountain winds made them tremble. Scar pouted his buttocks and walked "snacking", and what he was carrying was my box containing books. I know how heavy the box is, and there are many hardcover Marxist-Leninist classics and literary and philosophical masterpieces in it.I thought that since I entered the society, I must think about some serious business in the future, and I can no longer think about fishing.Scar didn't know that he was carrying so many thoughts and ideas, and seemed to wonder why this small box was so heavy.Seeing the sweat dripping from his forehead, I never had the guts to say "Let me carry it for a while", I just asked in shame, "Is it heavy?" There were smile lines immediately on the corners of Scar's eyes and forehead, "Cough!" ——!" He said, and then kept the smile lines on his face, carrying the box and walking more and more happily.It took him a long time to find another sentence and asked me: "Beijing is up?"

I said it was from Beijing. "Cough—!" he said, with the smile lines on his face and he kept trying, but he couldn't find anything else to say. "How long will it be?" another fellow asked.I can't go back, I will be in Qingping Bay from now on. "Cough!!" All the villagers shouted, laughing non-stop, as if they had heard some nonsense. This "cough—!" has many meanings, similar to the Beijing dialect "no cure". Whether it is good or bad, whether it is surprise, ridicule, admiration, or envy depends on the specific situation.On the second day at Qingping Bay, when I opened my eyes in the morning, there was already a row of people standing in front of the kang, old men, dolls, and young people.People there are used to entering the kiln to make skewers without knocking.A row of heads stared at a row of eyes, sighing softly "cough cough".Squeezing the thick bedding, "Cough—!"

Touching the box where the figure can be seen: "Cough!" He poked Li Zhuo's semiconductor, not knowing what it could be used for, and said "Cough!" Zhong Wei put his dentures on the window sill and rinsed his mouth. In the cup, a row of people looked at it in turn, without saying anything.An old man whispered, "What is it?" A younger student replied: "I don't know about Qiu." Scar squeezed to the front, looked at it and said, "Qiu——, Gouya." We all woke up laughing, knowing that we couldn't sleep anymore.Scar is still arguing: "People say that Secretary Yao's mother-in-law and aunt in the commune had a stomachache so bad that they went to Xi'an to change their intestines.

Oh, two feet long! He tilted his head and gestured, looking at the people around him to see if anyone dared to doubt it, and the pockmarks on his face turned red. "I know about it," an old man testified. The old man looked like He has some prestige among the crowd. Li Zhuo turned on the semiconductor, and as soon as the music rang, the kiln was full of exclamations of "cough cough".The mothers-in-law and women were standing and watching from a distance, but now they didn't care, they went into the kiln and stood against the wall, and the little girls pushed each other quietly.That was the first time people in Qingping Bay saw semiconductors—such a small thing could sing so well.