Chapter 98 Section five

The development of things is often beyond people's expectations.Liu Xu didn't expect that her established life, which she had struggled for a long time in Shahu Village, would change so easily.When she, who once refused to study, graduated from a certain college training class, took a shuttle bus back to Sand City, and passed the landmark building at the entrance of Sand City, her heart was filled with emotion.The landmark building of Shacheng stands on the wide cultural square, with a gold-plated sculpture in the center of the building.From the car window, Liu Xu glanced at the "golden doll" on the top of the sculpture who urinated on the people of the city endlessly. For a moment, she was full of enthusiasm for the village chief she had secretly hated for many years and the commune cadre who later offered her a chance. Sincere respect.

Perhaps, luck or favor is the pissing of authority figures on ordinary people, depending on who is bathed in the steaming excrement. At the end of summer, Liuxu’s last year in Shahu Village, when the wheat was harvesting, the Shahu Commune suddenly wanted to hold a half-month training course on “Promotion of Mushroom Planting Techniques”. Each village had one or two participants. , reported by the village chief.The reason for saying "one to two" is that one of the quotas is fixed and you must go, and the other is a mobile quota. Whether you can go or not depends on whether the village chief wants to apply for the "second one".When the village announced the matter just after the meeting, Liu Xu thought that the only fixed quota was hers.However, when the list was announced two days later, it was Lu Xia, not Liu Xu, who the village chief reported. This surprised and shocked her.

In fact, participating in a training course is neither recruitment nor admission to college, and there is nothing to argue about.But the commune is in the town, farmers who haven't been out for a long time, especially young women, can take this opportunity to go shopping and buy some necessary daily necessities or things they like.More importantly, those fifteen days coincided with the wheat harvest, and they could escape heavy field work.Since Liu Xu underwent labor induction that year, she had to go to the field to harvest wheat in order to avoid people's eyes and ears. She suffered from severe rubella, which would break out whenever she was caught by the wind in summer. Except for her face, which remained smooth, her whole body was covered with redness and swelling. The pimple was so painful and itchy, so I scratched it with my hands, leaving red and purple scars all over my body.Especially when harvesting wheat, she was terrified of every ear of wheat in the field, as if those wheat awns would pierce her body one by one, and even penetrate into every pore of her, making her rubella worse.The village chief was well aware of this situation, he left her to harvest wheat in the village, probably on purpose, it was his revenge for her past disobedience and non-cooperation!Thinking of this, Liu Xu couldn't help gasping, and then became angry.

Tormented by anger, Liu Xu covered up her anger in the middle of the night, and she quietly walked towards the yard that once made her creepy. The village head heard the knock on the door and opened the courtyard door.Seeing that it was Liu Xu, he didn't let her into the house, and kept a high degree of vigilance against her sudden visit in the dark. The village chief asked with a dark face: "What's the matter with you?" Liu Xu said, "Why are you nervous? I'll leave after a few words. I won't dare to bother you from now on." The village chief said, "If you have anything to say, say it quickly!"

Liu Xu said, "I know how your wife died!" The village chief was frightened at first, then angry, it was a mixture of fright and anger!He asked tremblingly, "What do you know?" Liu Xu said, "That day your wife walked out of the house carrying a bundle, and I quietly followed her out of the village." The village chief took a few steps back in horror, almost falling over: "What the hell are you trying to do?!" "I don't want to do anything. Of course I don't want to harvest wheat." After Liu Xu finished speaking, she turned and left the village chief's yard.

The next day, the village committee announced the official list of participants in the "Promotion of Mushroom Planting Technology" training class. In addition to Lu Xia, catkins were on the list. Liu Xu and Lu Xia went to the commune together, and they were very happy to have a companion. When the training class was divided into dormitories, the two naturally lived in the same dormitory. Mushroom cultivation was a new thing in Northwest China at that time, and the participants in the training class were full of curiosity.On top of a thick layer of moist wheat husks sterilized with lime water, sprinkle a layer of brown-black substance mixed with white mycelium, which is unclear whether it is soil or sawdust, and then cover with a layer of moist wheat husks. Sprinkle water on the wheat husks every day, and test the temperature and humidity. After a few days, mushrooms will grow out of the wheat husks. Small flowers will grow into large flowers the next day, and finally grow on the wheat husks Together, it is a miracle.In fact, there is no particularly high technical content in mushroom cultivation, the main thing is disinfection, maintaining proper temperature and humidity, and the most critical issue is the strain of bacteria.The strains are purchased and transported from other provinces by the commune seed station.Therefore, there is not much content to talk about in the training course.The trainees listen to the lectures of agricultural technicians every morning, sometimes visit the newly established mushroom planting base in the afternoon, sometimes have free activities, and watch movies in the evening, and there are two movies every night.

There is an open-air cinema in the commune, on the edge of the town, surrounded by apricot and apple trees, and connected to a wild sycamore grove.In fact, the open-air cinema and those fruit trees are just like the mushroom experiment base at this time. It is another achievement project of the commune, which was developed after cutting down a piece of Elderberry grove under the plan of the previous secretary of the commune. At this time, it was wheat harvesting, and it should be the season for apricots to mature, but the apricots on the apricot tree were still as big as fingers.I don’t know if it’s because the introduced tree species are faulty or the grafting technique of the agricultural technician is not good enough, maybe there are also reasons for the soil and water quality. The fruits on those apricot and apple trees don’t grow very big, and they are still hanging green when it’s harvest time. On the branches, the fruit will wither and fall off like the leaves in late autumn, and become the winter food for a group of wild pigeons and sparrows.The piece of uncut wild Jujube grove next to the fruit trees is so lush and lush, and the flowers of Jujube are blooming vigorously. The branches tremble in the breeze of summer night, and the fragrance bursts out, which is refreshing.

Many years later, Liu Xu still remembers that on that summer night, "Third Sister Liu" was shown in the open-air cinema of the commune, which was a very good movie.Sanjie Liu's beautiful and sweet singing attracted residents from the town and several villages near the commune, and the huge open-air cinema was immediately full.But that night, Lu Xia, who originally liked to watch movies, didn't go.She said she had a headache and wanted to go to bed earlier.When Liu Xu went out, she had already finished brushing her teeth and got into bed. "There are only vines entangled with trees in the world. Where have I seen trees entangled with vines..." With the beautiful melody lingering in the clear night sky, "Liu Sanjie" came to an end unconsciously.The next screening was "Landmine Warfare," with a voice-over telling how the Eighth Route Army used guerrilla and sparrow warfare to drive the Japanese out of China.Liu Xu almost grew up with that black-and-white film in her childhood. She felt that watching it was not very interesting, so she squeezed out the crowd who were still craning their necks to wait and see, and prepared to go back to the dormitory to see how Lu Xia, who was suffering from a headache, was doing. up.

Liu Xu exited the open-air cinema alone, and walked to the dormitory of the training class students.When passing through the orchard and the sandy date forest, she was confused by the shadows of the trees under the clear moonlight, and all kinds of uneasiness grew in her heart, as if something was hidden in the forest and would suddenly jump out and strangle her.The more cautiously she walked, the more the branches rustling in the breeze looked like a ghostly dance. This anxiety gradually took root in her heart, and she couldn't help standing there.Liu Xu was hesitating whether to go on or return to the open-air cinema, but there were whispers in the woods, which were so clear in the silent night.Are there really such things as ghosts in the world?Liu Xu panicked and held her breath.After standing there for a while, no ghost came out of the woods. She collected herself and heard that it was indeed a woman talking in a low voice, and walking out while talking, the voice sounded familiar.At this time, Liu Xu's curiosity overcame her timidity, and she hid behind a big tree with dense branches, wanting to see who the woman in the woods was.

The woman who spoke walked out of the woods, and there was a man beside her with an arm around her waist from behind. The two walked slowly under the moonlight, looking very close. "I want to get out of here right now," the woman said. The man said, "I'll arrange for you to work as a barefoot doctor in the commune health center first." The woman said: "I don't know anything, how can I practice medicine?" The man said: "There are full-time doctors there, you don't need to know anything." He paused for a while and then said, "The dormitory of the health center is very close to my dormitory. You live there."

The woman said: "Don't think about your good things, I can't stay in this sandy nest forever." The man said, "You can stay there with peace of mind, and I will send you back to the city when there is a recruitment target." The woman said, "Can you guarantee that you will be the first one to give me the recruitment quota?" The man said, "Of course, I will try my best." ... The two of them were already very close to the big tree where Liu Xu was hiding, and Liu Xu realized that the woman was Lu Xia.The man next to Lu Xia didn't realize until they were far away that Liu Xu realized that he was a commune cadre who gave lectures to the students at the opening ceremony of the training class. He also had dinner with the students two days ago. He could be Lu Xia's father at his age. Liu Xu watched Lu Xia and the commune officials walking towards another denser forest before she came out from behind the big tree.After thinking about it, she felt that it was inconvenient for her to go back to the dormitory so early, so she turned back and went back to the open-air cinema, and patiently finished watching the movie "Landmine Warfare", which she had watched many times.After everyone had dispersed, Liu Xu walked slowly back to the dormitory behind the crowd. All the student dormitories live in four people, and they are Datong bunks with four sets of quilts placed side by side on a large kang.Liu Xu pushed open the door of her dormitory, and the other two female commune members who lived with her had already come back one step ahead, and they were sitting on the edge of the kang chatting endlessly.Lu Xia was lying on her bed, snoring loudly.Liu Xu thought, for a young woman like Lu Xia to make such an earth-shattering snoring sound in a noisy environment, she just pretended to be sleeping. On the day the training class ended, the commune hosted another dinner for the trainees in the cafeteria, and many commune officials came.Several large round tables were full of people, and in the center of the table was a large white porcelain pot, which contained stewed vegetables made of potatoes, vermicelli, tofu and pork, and there were also anchovy mushrooms produced in the experimental base. , so that the stew tastes very delicious.There are several plates around the porcelain basin, which are freshly picked cucumbers, beans, spinach, and gourds, which are freshly picked from the field, and they are made of cold salad, with a thick layer of sesame oil poured on top.That dinner was the most sumptuous in half a month of training, and there was enough stew. After eating, you can take a porcelain basin to serve in the big iron pot in the kitchen. While eating, the commune cadres who had been walking with Lu Xia in the woods were still sitting beside Lu Xia.The cadres of the commune didn't eat much, and occasionally brought food to Lu Xia, and then looked at her with a smile, with a very bright light shining in his eyes, which was bright enough to burn his twilight years. After the training class, Lu Xia did not go back to Shahu Village, but went directly to the commune health center.The clothes and luggage she left in the village were sent to the hospital by the village head in a donkey cart. At the end of the year, the commune forwarded to the villages the quota for the last batch of educated youths to return to the city. The quota was limited, and only two of them, Lu Xia and Liu Xu, were women.From then on, the educated youth who did not return to the city stayed in the countryside forever, and really became one with the poor and lower-middle peasants, and merged into one. Lu Xia's affairs were handled very mysteriously, and no one knew how there was any relationship with her in the commune.And Liu Xu was not an educated youth in the first place, but she took the opportunity to return to the city, which caused the villagers to discuss for a long time.Only Liu Xu understood that her return to the city was entirely due to the village head, because her late-night visit really frightened the village head.The village chief didn't want Liu Xu to stay in the village until one day she told him that she knew something, or went out and told others that she knew something. The mother and stepfather neither rejected Liu Xu's return to the city nor had any enthusiasm.Because they have their own jobs and their common children, they don't have time to show too much attention to Liu Xu.But suddenly there is a big girl who has nothing to do in the family, which is always a headache, especially Deputy Director Liu, who has to solve the employment problem for her daughter.Soon, Deputy Director Liu entrusted Liu Xu with a place to participate in the training of an ordinary college in the province, and after graduation, he would have a way to recruit workers.It was a two-year crash course for adults. At this time, Liu Xu, who was sitting in the car, had just graduated from the crash course, and she was directly assigned from the school to work in the unit where her mother worked.She also heard that Luo Yang had also graduated from law school and had already returned to Sand City before her. As the car drove into Sand City, an emerging industrial city that has been developing rapidly in recent years, Liu catkin observed the landmark buildings at the entrance of the city and the buildings standing on top of them from different angles. sculptures until they were completely out of her view. The sculpture made her ponder for a long time. After the car entered the urban area, several large chimneys from the factory could be seen pointing straight into the sky, and thick smoke from the chimneys filled the sky above the city.The slightly pungent breath rushed into the car window, and the continuous coughing in the car woke up the catkin who was thinking.Liu Xu subconsciously covered her mouth and nose with her hands, and she suddenly thought, after entering this city that was still hazy and unfamiliar to her, would she still be blessed with blessings of luck, or would she continue to be surrounded by the gray dust? shrouded?She didn't know anything about it.But Liu Xu knew that the original golden sculpture had turned into a mottled gray-green under the erosion of industrial waste gas.