Chapter 2 Chapter 1 The Age of Famine

This story begins in 1953.Although it had been four years since liberation at that time, the economy was still unsatisfactory.People in the cities save on food and clothing, but in rural areas, they eat when they are hungry and when they are full. At that time, the economy was not good, but the bad economy had its advantages, that is, it was easy to marry a wife.Although parents always want their daughter to marry a good family, but to raise a girl, they have to be given food to eat, and they can't eat enough, so what can they do to raise a girl. The more desolate the time, the more people are competing to marry their daughters. In many places, they take the initiative to propose marriage, and the little girl is married at the age of fifteen or sixteen.However, our family's economic environment was relatively poor at that time, and my grandfather had not yet found a wife when he was 28 years old, and he was always a bachelor.I asked my grandfather why he didn't marry one when the family environment was good. He replied that he didn't expect his family to suddenly fall into poverty. Stepping over the threshold to say goodbye, I regret so much that my intestines are green.

But when it comes to talking about relatives, sometimes what matters is fate, and you can't force it. At that time, during the Chinese New Year, it was popular in the village to give out pork, but not much, two taels per person.There were only three people in our family at the time, great-grandfather, great-grandmother and my grandfather, so our family was allocated six taels of pork.These six taels of pork are really too greedy for the villagers who don't touch meat all year round or even can't get enough to eat, and they want to swallow it in one bite. If it was someone else's house, it would have been stewed a long time ago, but our family can't eat it, and we have to keep it for relatives after the next year.But it seems that these six taels of meat are not enough to entertain relatives.During the Chinese New Year, Grandma Tai, who has always been good at calculating, suddenly became generous. She did not chop the meat finely like other women, but stewed the meat whole and put it on a plate.When relatives came, no one was ashamed to pick up the meat. As a result, this piece of meat was kept until the fourteenth day of the first lunar month.

On the night of the fourteenth day of the first lunar month, there was a knock on the door.Grandpa opened the front door and saw an old man collapsed from hunger in front of his house.Grandpa was an enthusiastic person, so he secretly gave the six taels of meat to the old man.After the old man was full, he didn't leave, but stayed at our house.When grandma and grandpa found out, they didn't blame grandpa, and even added two quilts to the old man. The next day, the old man chatted with his great-grandfather. They first talked about things in the village, saying that the year was not good, and then they talked about our old house, saying that the design was quite unique.Finally, the old man saw my grandpa going to tidy up the vegetable field, and suddenly remembered something, so he asked my great-grandpa about my grandpa, and said, "Brother, you are not young, are you not married yet?"

My great-grandfather said: "The family is too poor, who can look up to my son." The old man patted his thigh and said: "Others don't like it, but I can. I have a girl who is not married yet, and she is pretty. If you don't mind her, let her marry your son." So my grandpa married my grandma. The story about them can be said to be very legendary.My grandma’s family is from Luoyang, Henan Province. My surname is Qiu. It is said that my grandma was very beautiful when she was young. Marrying my grandpa was also a topic of discussion in the village for a long time.Some people said that grandpa was a toad that ate the swan meat; others said that grandpa had the life of a young master;

However, this topic did not last long, because at that time there was still not enough to eat, and people starving to death were often seen in various villages, and no one had the heart to care about other people's affairs.But it seems that since then, our family has become better, and sometimes we can help our neighbors.Judging from the situation at that time, grandma's family was relatively well-off. Since she married into our family, our family has entered the era of cornmeal.At that time, sorghum noodles were life-saving food, and sweet potato white dry noodles were relatively high-yielding, which was household food. As for cornmeal, workers ate well-off food, and white flour was high-dry food.

Because the dowry brought by my grandma was relatively generous, our family was indeed well-off for a while, but this situation only lasted for two years.In the winter of 1955, due to the severe drought, the grain harvest was severely reduced, and the village began to run out of grain before the twelfth lunar month.When Laba arrived, many people began to flee. Those who stayed in the village were the elderly who couldn't walk and the children who didn't know where to go.At this time, many families are almost torn apart, and each flees to his own, unable to take care of the whole family.If you can come back during the Chinese New Year, you can come back. If you can’t, you can only wait for the summer when the wheat is harvested, so as not to drag the family down.As for the elderly and children, it can only depend on their own good luck. If they can get food, they will eat a meal, otherwise they will have nothing to do.

On the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month, there will be news of people starving to death in the village every day.Because at that time grandma had hidden two bags of dried sweet potatoes under the bed at home in advance, so the family could barely support themselves.According to grandpa, that was the period when grandma was the thinnest. On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, according to the custom, everyone has to visit relatives and pick up their daughters to go home for the New Year.At that time, grandma's father and elder brother came. Since the grandfather's family could only eat a little porridge cooked with dried sweet potatoes, they couldn't get any meat this time. They just put a lot of dried sweet potatoes.

Our village is called Quanji Village. It is a very large village with more than 3,000 people. It is the largest village in the town.In the southeast corner of the village, there is a depression. Since the Republic of China, people have been throwing dead people into this depression. People of the older generation call it a mass grave.Every year, the number of dead people thrown into the mass graves has decreased by thirty or fifty, and there have been hundreds more. Those who had a mat in their homes were still wrapped in mats, and those who had no mats had only a worn and thin piece of clothing on their bodies.In summer, due to the hot weather and the breeding of plague, the "source" of Luan Graves is even more abundant.

Many people died in that year, and the mass graves are forbidden places for people in our village, and they are usually taboo.It is taboo to mention the random graves not only because there are a lot of dead people thrown in the random graves, but also because there are many strange things happening in the random graves, such as seeing will-o’-the-wisps and people singing there at night.Some of these strange things are based on rumors, and some have been witnessed by people with their own eyes, but what they really are like, after so many years, it is impossible to prove it. Luan Grave Mound is a place where children are frightened and old people talk about it. There are countless dead people thrown there every year, so there are the most strange things.It's better during the day, but at night, it's unavoidably frustrating.Later, there was a saying in the village to frighten children: "If you don't obey me again, you will be thrown into a random graveyard."

In the 1950s, productivity was relatively backward. There were no excavators, and the dredging of rivers could only be done by manpower.Due to the hot weather in summer and the rainy season, it is not suitable to start work, so all the work is scheduled after late autumn.Normally no one would like to do this hard work, but one year food subsidies were given to those who dug the river, so there were so many people who went there that year, almost all the laborers in the village who had no escape. At that time, everyone often formed a partnership, and a few people rented a piece of land, and they could rest after completing the tasks of the day.Grandpa is relatively strong, and everyone wants to dig with him.But everyone who worked with grandpa was lazy, and he was the only one who worked hard.Grandpa said, it's not all their fault, the food is not good, no one has strength.

On the 16th day of the first lunar month, everyone just came back from home. It may have been a long time since they had worked, and everyone was relatively lazy. It was dark all the time, and the land they had set up had not yet been dug.A few people said that if you can't finish it, you can't finish it, so they all left.But grandpa is so strong, he was unwilling to lose his work points, so he added an overtime class.When he was digging until almost eleven o'clock, he suddenly wanted to pee. Considering that the moonlight was bright and there were lesbians, he went to the distance. He crossed the weir and walked towards the wheat field. Because of the urgency to urinate, he walked fast and didn't pay attention to the ground. His left foot accidentally fell into a pit.The pit was so deep that he didn't even step on it to the bottom. Fortunately, he reacted quickly and didn't twist his foot.He quickly stretched out his leg, rubbed it, and found that the place he stepped on just now was a very deep hole, but this hole didn't look like it was washed by water, but dug out by people. It is said that although the ancestors avoided mentioning their past as a secret agent, they were still outspoken to the descendants of the family. After all, many things would be lost if they were not passed on.When grandpa saw this hole, he immediately thought of the thing of stealing a hole.It may be that the blood passed down from the ancestors is too strong. Grandpa wanted to go down when he saw this robbery cave. He guessed that there must be a big tomb under the cave. We call the funerary goods in the tomb "parallel imports", which is not the same concept as the current parallel imports. It refers to things buried underground that cannot be seen.There is a basis for such a name. There is relatively abundant groundwater in our area, and water can be dug out from a place two meters below the ground. After these funerary objects are buried in the ground, they will be soaked in water, so after they are dug out, they are called parallel imports in our locality. Grandpa heard in the early years that there were parallel imports of foreign money in the ancient tombs, which were buried by the children of the deceased. Seeing that the tomb was buried so deep, he guessed that it was either old or rich.Although this ancient tomb has been robbed and excavated, as long as he can pick up some parallel imports, it will be enough for a while.But now there is no rope, and it is difficult to get in for a while, so he blocked the hole with a big rock, then found and sprinkled hay on it, and went back to dig the soil left during the day. The next day, just as grandpa was going to work by the river, the captain came.The captain told him that the chef who was cooking had a fever last night and went home to recuperate, and asked his grandfather to cook full-time.After hearing this, Grandpa was overjoyed and agreed quickly.At that time, cooking was a beautiful job.All along, because grandpa was born as a landlord, he was not allowed to do this job, but now he is asked to cook, how can he be unhappy?But those few people who have worked hard with my grandfather can no longer be lazy. At that time, the chef did not have any technical problems. There were no dishes, only corn buns and sweet potatoes.The grandfather who became a chef no longer has to go to the river to work as a coolie. He is only busy for a fixed period of time every day, and his life is very comfortable.Because he has more free time, Grandpa has time to think about the matter of stepping on the robbery hole that night. Ordinarily, others have already entered once, so there is no need for him to enter again.But at that time, the family's economy was really tight, and grandpa really needed money to support the family.Thinking that the family has always been supported by grandma, and I am a big man, I really have not done much, and I feel very guilty.Out of the mentality of showing off, Grandpa decided to go down. He paid attention to the position of the cables on the construction site, and then borrowed a flashlight from a worker. Taking the opportunity of grocery shopping, he bought six more large batteries.On the twenty-ninth day of the first lunar month, at one o'clock in the morning, grandpa took a large kitchen knife for cutting vegetables, a flashlight, and a rope more than 20 meters long, and set out for the cave.In order to avoid being discovered, grandpa did not turn on the flashlight, but walked to the entrance of the cave by feeling.According to the location of several big trees beside the cave, Grandpa quickly found the stone that sealed the entrance of the cave.He removed the stone, took a look into the cave, and found that it was a robbery cave that went down obliquely and deep. He tied the rope to the tree, tied a dead buckle, and tied the other end around his waist.Unexpectedly, just as he stepped out of his left leg, a sudden gust of wind blew over, which made grandpa sneezed.Affected by the gust of wind, he suddenly became a little scared.Although grandpa often carried the dead to the mass graves, it was the first time he went to the grave at night.But after thinking about it, Grandpa went down anyway. After all, it is better to die from fright than from starvation. He wrapped a rope around his waist, and he climbed down along the rope.After crawling four or five meters, Grandpa found himself in a suspended place.This is obviously the top of the tomb and the entrance of the robbery cave.Following him, he took another look down the slope, and found that the tomb under the cave was ten square meters in size, and there seemed to be something painted on the wall of the tomb. Grandpa has never heard of anyone nearby who has the money to build such a good tomb. Considering that our family has been the richest landowner in the surrounding area for a century, Grandpa said that this is an ancient tomb that is more than a century old.At that time, the family passed down a book called "Compendium of Mausoleums of Princes". This book was compiled by ancestor Li Chengfeng when he was a secret agent, and it recorded in detail the locations of tombs of princes and princes across the country in ancient times.Grandpa didn't read all of this book at the time, but only looked at the tombs around a hundred miles away, but according to the map handed down by the family, there was no such tomb.Li Chengfeng's records at that time were all about large tombs. If there were no records, then this one should be regarded as a small tomb. Speaking of which, that was also Grandpa's first time to rob a tomb.At that time, my grandfather didn't know much about the specifications of the tomb, and my grandfather had always set restrictions on this industry, preventing my grandfather from entering the industry, so my grandfather could only have a general understanding of tomb robbery. At this time, Grandpa was going to go down from the hole to do a further inspection, but when he shone the flashlight on his feet, he couldn't help gasping.It turned out that there were two dead people under my feet. These people were none other than Liu Laoba and Lai Pihan from this village. When Grandpa told this point, he said that he wanted to rush back to the ground at that time.But the more nervous he was, the more accident-prone he was. When he was about to climb up, he was afraid and didn't hold on to the rope, so he slipped down and sat on Lai Pihan. Grandpa stood up quickly in fright. He looked around and stabilized his mind before turning back to look at the two corpses on the ground.The two people didn't have any injuries, but bloodstains were everywhere on the ground, which looked horrific, and the corpses couldn't be moved.Grandpa felt that he had come in anyway, so he couldn't return it, at least he had to carry a can of foreign money before leaving, otherwise it would be a pity to be buried in the ground.He first took a flashlight to take a picture of the tomb, and found that although the tomb had a foul smell, he could barely breathe.But even so, Grandpa still felt that it was not suitable to stay here for a long time, and he should leave as soon as possible. After walking around the tomb, Grandpa found that it was a rectangular tomb. It was about four meters long and three meters wide, and it was a relatively large tomb.The coffin is located at the back of the tomb, but judging from the material of this coffin, it should be made of marble. The coffin lid alone is estimated to weigh 800 jin. What made Grandpa feel horrified was that there were many sharp knives erected at the four corners of the wall.These sharp knives are distributed in the four corners of the tomb, four in each corner, two by two in a row.Grandpa suddenly felt that if it wasn't for Lai Pihan and Liu Laoba lying there just now, he might have been pierced by the knife. Seeing that there is no foreign money pot here, grandpa feels very disappointed.When he was about to go home, he found many murals on the wall.All these murals are painted with Buddha statues. The expressions of those Buddha statues are extremely strange. Grandpa always feels that the people in these paintings are looking at him.The more he looked at it, the more creepy he felt, as if these people were going to take him away, so he couldn't help but take a few steps back.Suddenly, he felt something hard pressed against his back shoulder. Grandpa didn't dare to move for a long time. After a while, he mustered up the courage to turn around. When he turned around, he realized that it was him who had touched it. To the coffin. At this time, he heard a hissing sound in the tomb, and he felt even more nervous.Grandpa didn't want to stay here anymore this time, so he hurried towards the exit.When he ran to the exit, he realized that the hissing sound did not come from anywhere else, but from the coffin. "Is there really a ghost?" The first thing Grandpa felt was that there was a ghost here.He grabbed the rope and climbed up, but the tomb was so high that he couldn't go up in a hurry.Hearing the hissing sound as if he had left the coffin and approached him, Grandpa became even more anxious.At the critical moment, Grandpa thought of Lai Pihan and Liu Laoba on the ground, so he stepped on their corpses and climbed up. Sure enough, with the steps, the two-meter-high tomb was easily climbed. While I was secretly rejoicing, my grandfather's leg seemed to be pulled by something.Grandpa thought, he was afraid that the old thing in the coffin would come out to pick up the guests, so he was reluctant to leave by himself.I don't know where the courage came from. Grandpa took a photo of the bottom. It was incredible. When he saw it, he was startled. It turned out that it was a big blue snake wrapped around his calf.The snake was blue all over, about three meters long, and as thick as a child's arm. Grandpa realized that the hissing sound just now was made by this big green snake. Knowing that it wasn't a ghost, grandpa became more courageous. With the help of the snake's own strength, grandpa began to swing his legs down, but the big green snake was also very powerful, and he couldn't shake it off no matter what.Seeing that he couldn't get rid of the big green snake, grandpa smashed his leg against the wall with all his might.It may be because the wall is made of earth, and after being smashed for a long time, the big green snake was unscathed.But yes, Grandpa himself doesn't feel pain, let alone such a big snake.Grandpa heard that big green snakes are afraid of light when he was a child, so he used a flashlight to shine on the snake's eyes.But the big green snake didn't seem to be afraid of light, so it just crawled over on its own back. Fortunately, the snake didn't bite Grandpa, but went up the hole and left. Grandpa let out a sigh of relief, thinking that he had finally saved his life.Thinking that the big green snake didn't come to bite him, Grandpa felt relieved for a while.In view of the current dangerous situation, Grandpa decided to evacuate early and never do such a desperate thing next time.