Chapter 14 Xue Zhengnan

When we were exploring at the foot of Tiantai Mountain, Xue Zhengnan and I lived in the same room.In my impression, he has a weird personality, and he often likes to correct the wrong words in my speech in front of everyone. I was afraid of him at one time, because I didn't like to look up the dictionary. , the result is often that I am wrong, however, I also have the vanity of shaking a little bit of written language.Later, when I lived in the same room with Xue Zhengnan, he reminded me to buy a "Dictionary of Modern Chinese Characters", and I went to Tongshankou Bookstore to buy a copy, published by the Commercial Press, 1567 pages, priced at 5•40 Yuan.Before I moved here, the team leader lived in the same room as Xue Zhengnan. Xue Zhengnan didn't like officials, so he tried to get the team leader to move out. His method was very simple. He asked his wife to come and live often. The geological team has a rule that no matter whose wife Here it is, or the lover is here, the same roommates have to go out to fight guerrillas, and find another place to live, the team leader thinks it is not good to often fight guerrillas, so he moved away, Xue Zhengnan invited me to live there, I was enjoying a room with one person For some reason, as soon as Xue Zhengnan came to talk about it, I moved in. After I moved in, Xue Zhengnan never asked his wife to come.

Xue Zhengnan has a mustache, looks like Lu Xun, and his hair is straight, but his feet are a bit out of character, and he is used to walking with square steps. He also likes to wear faded Chinese tunic suits.Later I learned that his eccentric temper was developed when he was sent to the countryside. He was sent to the countryside for nine years, which was a record among people of his age. Yes, and later the sent-down educated youth also recruited workers and left, and then the sent-down educated youth still recruited and left. He didn't leave. He said he was lonely and desperate enough to commit suicide, I believe it.When a person sees no hope, all kinds of thoughts will arise.

I get along well with Xue Zhengnan, I don’t like officials either, we both like reading, after I moved to Xue Zhengnan’s house, I practiced radio for a year, and made the whole room smell of rosin and wire rubber, he didn’t bother him.After I practiced to be able to install a 6-tube semiconductor radio, I stopped practicing. I originally planned to switch to radio repairing. I dreamed that one day I could travel around the world with a repair box on my back. However, the development of integrated circuits is so fast that I can't keep up.Then, I began to formally practice writing. I guess that writing will have the opportunity to go out to hold pen meetings. I read from newspapers and periodicals that writers can go to scenic spots to hold pen meetings.I think my writing may have something to do with Xue Zhengnan living in the same room. Xue Zhengnan likes to write some ancient poems. He practiced calligraphy. book collection chapter.

I usually have nothing to do. I am in charge of a drilling rig. If it breaks down, I have to repair it. As long as the drilling rig is running normally, I can sleep soundly all day long.Therefore, most of my time is spent on research, cooking and reading.I have two sets of kerosene stoves and two sets of electric stoves. I manage the diesel from the public house. Add a little salt to the diesel, and it doesn’t smoke when it burns.Because I was free, the boss once sent me a meal delivery job. The person who delivered the meal went back to his hometown. If he asked me to pick it up, I would deliver it slowly. It was not until two o'clock in the afternoon that the lunch was delivered up the mountain. The people on the drilling rig were hungry. It’s bad, they want to get angry, I said, I’m not a food delivery person, the food is delivered, I’ve done you a favor by not picking up the meat from your dishes, after that, the boss dared not beat me to deliver the food The idea, I only delivered that one meal.

Xue Zhengnan is a driller. He works harder than me. He goes to work in three shifts, and his eye circles are dark after the zero shift.After he got off work, he took a warm bath, changed into clean clothes, and practiced calligraphy before going to bed. He paid attention to neatness and washed his shirts very white, but I was the opposite. I had eight work clothes, and I wore a clean one when I got dirty. , in this way, change them in turn, there is always one that is the cleanest, and if it is worn out, put it on with rheumatism pain relief ointment, and throw it away until it is completely unwearable.

Obviously, the two of us lived in the same room, which surprised everyone in the team. Both of us are not easy to get along with others, and our styles of life are completely different, including aesthetic tastes.Both of us went to buy Yixing pots for tea making. I bought a bamboo pot. I think it is grand. It is engraved with four big characters "rare and confused" and there is a clump of orchids. He bought a sunflower pot, which is small and round. , I found a plastic medicine bottle lid to cover the spout, and tied the lid to the handle with a piece of rope.I told him, this is false hygiene. It is better to cover the spout with a plastic lid than to expose the spout. At most, you can spit it out after drinking the first sip of tea.He ignores it, he likes his style.

Every time Xue Zhengnan goes to the city and returns to the mountains, he may bring new stickers. He has all kinds of stickers and brushes, as well as two inkstone trays. He likes ancient Chinese poetry, and he also likes the libretto of costume dramas. He said that costume dramas The rhyme of the libretto is both poetic and should be studied more. I agree and disagree with this aspect. I have read the libretto of "Lotus Lantern", and I often go to the ridge of the rice field in the morning and stand and recite Tang poems. The rice is earing. In the morning, there are dewdrops, the sun shines on them, the jewels are shining, there are small frogs jumping on the edge of the field, there is fog from the foot of the mountain to the top of the mountain, and the black tile roofs of the villages are full of scattered cooking smoke.However, I also like Western poetry, generally Shelley, Byron, Yesenin, Baudelaire and Whitman.At that time, a driver surnamed Wang in the team also started to practice writing. He enrolled in a correspondence writing class and often wrote reports to the team secretary. He was quite proud of this because he had been officially recognized.He also recites Tang poetry, and occasionally comes to compete with me. There are a lot of people in our team. There are three drilling rigs, a water pumping station and a cooking team. Speaking of strange people, there are three. I am one, and I take cold water baths all the year round. He also took a cold shower outside when it was snowing heavily. Lao Luo next door was a strange person. He was small, thin, and dark brown. He was in his 50s.His strange thing is that he can eat salt. We eat salty and normal dishes, but he still grabs a handful of salt and puts them in it. He himself claims that he is a strange person.The other one, surnamed Liu, likes Xiangqi and chases people to play Xiangqi every day, but since he borrowed Yang Guanlin's "Yi Lin New Edition" from me, he has been bored in the room and played scores. After they are familiar with the scores, they will no longer form a team to find someone to play Xiangqi. If they are on night shift, go out early in the morning, or go to the town, or to the county town, and find the person who set up a chess stand to play the end game, so as to make money. It is said that he made some money, but not much, because the people who set up the chess stall were no longer willing to play with him after suffering from his losses, and he had to go further afield to find someone to play with.My copy of "Yilin New Edition" by Yang Guanlin was not returned to me, and he said that he would give me 10 catties of fish for the Chinese New Year. His family lives by Daye Lake, and the village is called Yejiaba, so it was easier to get fish. I didn't get any books.Xue Zhengnan didn't like the above three people, and sometimes demoted them face to face. When Xue Zhengnan demoted, he held a Yixing pot in one hand and put the other in his trouser pocket. He had a pair of navy blue military trousers with a long key chain.He started by praising people, aroused people's interest, and then severely demoted.The more he was demoted, the more he laughed, but when he was really angry, he tilted his head and spoke, frowning tightly.

My life is relatively simple, as long as Xue Zhengnan doesn't like people, I don't like them either. Driver Wang was born in the army, and the quilt is folded like tofu. The driver is not very authentic, because he likes to suck up.It’s all about flattering, I found that he never helped me, my drilling rig broke down, he didn’t help, but his car broke down, he always pulled me to help him fix it, and he also helped him crank the engine, crank it The engine is a bit dangerous, and the fire head is not right, and it is easy to reverse the crank handle and the nose. Cooking by yourself doesn’t save food tickets, but the cafeteria makes steamed vegetables every day, which saves trouble and saves quarrels when ordering dishes, because some people’s dishes always have meat in them, and some people’s dishes have meat in them. Few, there are always people who scold the cook who is in charge of the spoon for being inferior. Steaming vegetables is much easier. Steaming rice in a steamer with a lower compartment and steaming vegetables in a steamer with an upper compartment saves effort for the cooks. When zoomed out, the steamed vegetables appear to be larger.I remember that steamed vegetables started with red jujube vermicelli meat slice soup. At that time, the red dates in rural supply and marketing cooperatives could not be sold. Buying a pack of cigarettes and taking half a catty of red dates, red dates flooded for a while.However, I never go to the bazaar to buy vegetables for my dishes, it seems that I have only bought eggs.Once, to scramble eggs, I found that many people in the village planted Chinese toon trees as tall as a person. I took advantage of the noon lunch break to pinch back the tip shoots of the whole village’s Chinese toon trees. The Chinese toon scrambled eggs I pinched that time were very fragrant.

Gradually, as we get along for a long time, we all feel that we are educated people. Once we went out, we would write poems to everything we saw. I only remember that I once had a sentence: There is a little red among the green bushes.Yin pomegranate, I thought it was a wonderful sentence.We each had a shotgun, a blowgun, and a fishing rod.I bring a shotgun for hunting, an air gun for bird hunting, and a fishing rod for fishing, but Xue Zhengnan doesn’t know how to cook, so this heavy responsibility often falls on my shoulders. I only had two awkward moments with Xue Zhengnan, one time when he said that he had seen orioles on the mountain these few days, they sang beautifully and looked good.I said I hadn’t seen it and wanted to see it very much. He listened. When he was on shift zero, he took a shotgun. When he came down from the mountain in the morning, he threw an oriole to me.I said, what a beautiful oriole, how did you shoot it down?He said, don't you want to see it?I said, I want to see you don't hit it!Xue Zhengnan got angry and said he was kind enough to call to show you, but you said me instead.Once again, it was fishing. At that time, Xue Zhengnan and Xiao Du went out to catch relatively small fish, crucian carp one or two inches long. , don't bully Xiao Yuzai.This big talk made Xue Zhengnan a little angry, but he still said with a smile, then go catch a big one and let us see.

On this day, we set off to go fishing. Along the way, I bragged to them that fishing means catching big fish, one after another, and catching small fish is meaningless.Xue Zhengnan said, okay, let's see you catch a big fish today, what if you can't catch a big fish?I said, impossible, I can definitely catch a big fish.Well, it's up to you to catch big fish.Along the way, we said that before, we had a tacit division of labor, Xue Zhengnan was in charge of fishing, and I was in charge of making fish.Walking to the pond at the entrance of Guojiashan Village, the deep pond should have fish, the water color is yellowish green, and there are willows on the bank. I fished under an old willow tree.

I first caught a sand loach. This guy was long and thin, with many thorns and no flesh. Xue Zhengnan sneered three times, meaning you catch it too?I took off the sand loach, put a big earthworm head on the hook, and fished again. After a while, the float pulled four times diagonally, and the fourth float was out of water. I lifted the rod suddenly, it was heavy and powerful, and the rod suddenly The arc of the crescent moon has caught a big guy, I thought.Pulling it up, the fishing line was stretched with a chirping sound. A big soft-shelled turtle weighed three catties! After fishing for a while, a farmer came and forbade us to fish, so we had to go away.If you want to catch a big fish, I said as I walked, now Xue Zhengnan had nothing to say, and his face turned black with anger.I went around the reservoir, and everyone caught some small fish. When I returned to the station, it was my turn to make fish again. I braised the soft-shelled turtle, and the small crucian carp was still stewed in soup. Sprinkled with chopped green onion, it was ready , I got a drink and went to Xue Zhengnan to come back to eat, but he was so angry that he didn't eat, which made me very sad. It's winter, fishing is no longer possible, and Xue Zhengnan is going hunting again. This time he wants to be a big hunter, and he is unwilling to join me in hunting small gadgets. We hunt together, and the mood is quite happy. Once he misfired with his shotgun tilted. It hit me about 30 centimeters from my heel, smashed a small pebble and made a hole about 15 centimeters deep, and scared him to death.This winter, Xue Zhengnan suddenly had a whim, he wanted to go hunting tigers with others!He prepared for this for half a month, and first bought white cloth to make a pair of leggings, as if all hunters had leggings.After the leggings were finished, he began to sharpen the dagger again, imagining that the unkilled tiger would pounce on it and fight it with the dagger, so he also practiced fighting in the room, practicing the posture of a bandit soldier.Xue Zhengnan worked at four o'clock, came back in the middle of the night, and sharpened the dagger (the scraper for scraping the crankshaft) with the oil stone I used to sharpen the scraper. He sharpened it every night, waking me up from sleep.I told him, I will eat the deer or something, but I will not eat the tiger, give me a bone, and I will make tiger bone wine.I'm not going to hunt tigers, I guess it's difficult to beat cats with my bird gun.Back then, we were all equally reactionary and would have pissed off today's environmentalists.Finally, when it was his day off, Xue Zhengnan set off alone to the primeval forest in Dongjiakou. He set off on the road very tragically, because at this time the snow was falling heavily, it had been snowing for many days, and the snow on the road was quite thick. The earth is white.However... Xue Zhengnan came back the next evening, and I asked him if he had a tiger?He said no, he had seen a string of tiger footprints in the snow on the edge of the primeval forest, the size of a cow's hoof, and the snow in the forest was thicker than outside.I asked again, how did you feel after watching it?He said that his legs were weak, he couldn't walk well at all, and he always felt like he needed to pee.Because each side guarded the mountain, after seeing the tiger's footprints, he quickly climbed up a big tree, squatted on the branch of the tree and stayed there all night. At dawn, he hurried down the mountain without looking back. Then came back. I haven't been to that distant mountain for many years. I think back then, after every dish was cooked, I waited for Xue Zhengnan's evaluation. He was actually quite tricky about eating. If he frowned and smiled, it would be over. , if he lifts his neck up, hums, and then chews left and right with his mouth shut, then the dish is well done.His hometown is from the area of ​​Huai'an, he made a set of seasonings for Huai cuisine, and made it according to the recipe of Huai cuisine, but he was no match for my Yeluzi.