Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

Early that morning, after returning from the reservoir with the nets, Li Long was selecting fish while talking to Tao Daqiang:

"Da Qiang, after we sell all the fish today, don't set the nets this afternoon. Wait until we harvest the sunflowers and corn before catching fish."

"Okay." Tao Daqiang nodded. "My family doesn't have much land. I'll come over to help you harvest it after I'm done."

Although the Li family has many people and Li Jianguo and his wife are capable, there are several pigs to feed and two children to go to school. It is impossible for Li Long to just sit there and do nothing.

He really couldn't participate in harvesting wheat since he was just a team worker, but he was still capable of harvesting sunflowers and corn.

During this period, when Li Long went to sell fish, he would take Li Juan and Li Qiang with him. At least on the way to school, they could save a lot of time.

Before leaving, Li Long gave Tao Daqiang five dollars, and the bill for that period was settled.

On the way, Li Long saw people from the team carrying wet urea bags and walking towards the county. He greeted them as he passed by and passed them on his bike.

The old street in Shicheng was still bustling. Li Long found an empty spot to set up his stall and started shouting. But within an hour, all the fish were sold out, so Li Long closed the stall and went to have breakfast.

Recently, we don’t catch as many fish every morning as before. Eight nets can catch as much as six nets did before. The small-mesh nets can catch a lot of small crucian carp that are less than the size of a palm. They should be the crucian carp seedlings that have grown up in the spring.

Although there are many fish in this small lake, it is impossible for them to grow indefinitely, so Li Long will stop fishing for a while. Although other people can catch fish, they have few nets and can only hang around the edges, which will not have much impact on the fish in the small lake.

After breakfast, Li Long went to Shicheng Department Store to buy some snacks. He saw that they were selling moon cakes, but he didn't buy any. There were still ten days before the Mid-Autumn Festival. If he bought some now and waited until the Mid-Autumn Festival to eat them, there would be no sense of ritual.

When it comes to celebrating festivals, what’s important is the sense of ritual.

At noon, while having lunch with Gu Xiaoxia in the yard, Li Long told her about this matter.

"I won't be here in the next few days. I'll come back after my family finishes harvesting the sunflowers and corn. I'll go to your house to help harvest them then. By the way, has your household registration not been moved to the township yet?"

"no."

"Then don't move for now." Li Long said, "Don't worry, your education bureau is still on secondment. If you can confirm that you can stay officially, then we'll talk about it. If you can't stay and return to the middle school in your hometown, then we can move to the township."

Speaking of uncertainty, Li Long actually had some thoughts. If they didn't move now, then when the land was divided in the future, Gu Xiaoxia would get some of her land. In the future, it would be land contracting, and whoever had the ability would be the contractor, basically regardless of population.

If you have land in the countryside, no matter how you do in the city, at least you will have someone to rely on when you return.

Although Li Long finally bought an apartment in the county with the dividends from the cooperative, he knew that he was always a rural person and without land, he would be nothing.

Gu Xiaoxia was very receptive to advice in this regard and understood that Li Long was doing it for her own good.

Before going to work, Gu Xiaoxia took out two bags and placed them on the back seat of Li Long's bicycle:

"These two bags contain fruits and some food that I bought. You can leave the small bags with my dad, and you can take the big bags back."

"Okay." Li Long replied with a smile. Gu Xiaoxia is now trying to adapt to the identity of Li Long's fiancée, which is a good thing.

After returning to the team, Li Long went to Gu's house first, but when he saw that Gu Boyuan was not there, he turned back.

There was no one in the yard. Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei were probably busy in the fields. Li Long saw that the net had been picked up. It should have been Tao Daqiang who came over this morning.

He placed the car against the south wall so it wouldn't be exposed to the sun. Then he deflated the tires used to lower the net and carried them to the vacant house. The principle of tension and relaxation is the same for martial arts, and the same is true for tires. If they are inflated for too long, they will become fatigued, just like that, so they should be deflated appropriately to return to their natural state.

The pigs in the pigsty heard the human voice and hummed. The temperature has not been so high recently, and the pigs are eating a lot and growing fast. Li Long is thinking about whether he should go to the sugar factory to get some sugar residues in the future. Uncle Luo is feeding wild boars, but the feed is not enough.

Li Long did not go to set the net in the afternoon. He first got a large bundle of pig grass, chopped it up, cooked it together with feed to feed the pigs, and then prepared to cook dinner.

Li Juan and Li Qiang came back together. After putting down her schoolbag, Li Juan started to work and clean up the yard. Li Qiang was playing with a pistol made of mud.

The reason why it is said to be carved from mud rather than molded from mud is because there is a unique phenomenon here. In some depressions that have been watered, after the water seeps down and evaporates, when the top layer of soil is not completely dry, the ground will crack into pieces as big as a 32-page book.

If you move carefully, you can peel off the top layer of soil and form a neat clay slab. It is about the same size as a 32-page Chinese textbook from the 1980s (the soon-to-be-published "Guardians of Montmaral" is also about the same size).

After the children with strong martial spirit removed the clay tablet, they would use a pencil sharpener to draw a simple design on the tablet and then slowly cut it.

If you have good skills and the clay tablet is well moist, it is easy to carve out a pistol.

Usually the children's favorite is the Mauser pistol, which they call the second box. The most difficult part of cutting is to cut the entire gun and finally dig out the trigger hole. Usually, it is easy to crack the clay plate at this time, and finally all the previous work will be wasted.

So after school, if the children came across a suitable place, they would sit down in the depression and carve a gun out of one or two clay slabs. However, if they were not so good, they might need seven or eight clay slabs to barely make a clay gun similar to the Type 54 pistol.

Of course, if you have the patience and can fold a Mauser pistol out of paper and use chopsticks or a straight wooden stick as the gun barrel, your status among the children will rise sharply.

Chain guns and gunpowder guns had not yet appeared in those days - after all, bicycles were not yet popular, and bicycle chains were still relatively rare things.

When Li Long saw the clay gun, he thought that next time he went to Wucheng, he would see if there was a small toy gun that could smash the cannon. If there was, he would bring one for Li Qiang.

When Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei came back in the evening, Li Long asked:
"Brother, are we going to pick sunflowers tomorrow?"

"Well, we'll pick sunflowers tomorrow. You just go about your business and don't worry about this. Your sister-in-law and I can finish those in a few days." Li Jianguo drank the porridge and waved his hands, not caring at all.

"It's okay. I told Daqiang that we won't go fishing these two days. Let's finish the work in the fields first." Li Long said, "I don't really want to harvest wheat, but I can still do this."

"That's fine." It's naturally a good thing to have one more person working. The sooner it's done, the easier it will be.

After dinner, Li Long went to Gu's house and delivered the things. Gu Boyuan was eating a steamed bun, and on the table was a bowl of cold boiled water and a plate of chili peppers mixed with vinegar and salt.

Li Long felt a little sad. Since Gu Xiaoxia was not around, his future father-in-law's food was a bit simple.

"Don't look at me like that." Gu Boyuan glared at him. "I'm just too lazy to cook. I have the meat you brought, rice and flour at home, and vegetables in the garden. I'm just a little lazy."

"Then you should eat something good." Li Long opened the small package and took out the egg cake and sesame cake. "You eat steamed buns and drink water, and you are as thin as a ghost. If you say this every day, Xiaoxia will not be in the mood to go to work."

"You're the only one who has too many problems." Gu Boyuan complained, "Why don't you just not tell him... How about offline?"

"I won't cast the nets today. It's time to harvest the sunflowers and corn in the fields. I'll stay at home for a few days and harvest these before leaving." "That's right. You have to make money, but you also have to harvest the crops in the fields - you don't have to worry about me..."

"How can you just ignore it? We collect them quickly, so you don't have to worry about it. We'll collect them for you when the time comes, and you can just take your time to clean up in the yard."

"That's fine." Gu Boyuan said, not treating Li Long as an outsider.

The next day, they woke up normally, had breakfast, and Li Juan took Li Qiang to school. Li Long gave them a dollar so that they could buy popsicles at noon. It was not allowed to sell food in the elementary school, unlike in the middle school, so they brought steamed buns and water for lunch.

Li Long remembered that in his previous life, in order to make students' drinking water taste sweet, parents basically put saccharin in the water - at that time, they didn't care whether it was harmful to the body, after all, this was how they made popcorn. This was the earliest homemade food additive.

This year, Li Long did not allow that. Li Juan and Li Qiang no longer used wine bottles, but water bottles that Li Long bought for them. He did not add saccharin to the water, but directly added sugar cubes.

Li Jianguo and two other people wore straw hats and took a horse-drawn carriage to their own fields.

On the road, I saw many people carrying bags to the fields. It was the season, and everything that needed to be harvested had to be harvested. The advantage of being in northern Xinjiang at this time was that when autumn came, most of the time it was as the saying goes, "the weather was clear and crisp in autumn", with few rainy days, and even if it rained, it usually only lasted for a while.

I got up early, and the air was still a little cool. The sun had risen, but it was not hot. There were still some dew on the grass at the edge of the field.

Li Jianguo unloaded the carriage, and Li Long led the horse to find a place with more grass near the canal at the end of the field and parked the horse.

This is considered a local dialect. The end of the rope used to tie the horse is tied with an iron spike, which is sharp and directly stuck into the ground. The horse can only graze in this area, which is called "Mixia".

Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei have already started to plant sunflowers - two rows each, which is the space left by the seeder when sowing. The two rows are relatively close, and the interval between the two rows and the other two rows is relatively wide, about sixty to seventy centimeters wide, just enough for one person to walk through.

Li Long first unfolded the urea bag against the wind and placed it on the ground. He cut off a sunflower head with a sickle and put it in. Then he cut down the pole and began to go deeper into the ground.

The length of this kind of strip field is generally several hundred meters, and this piece of land is about four hundred meters long.

Li Long's technique was still a bit clumsy. When he had pulled half of the bag, Li Jianguo had already returned to get another bag. When Li Long still didn't see Liang Yuemei taking the bag, he looked up and saw that his sister-in-law had already prepared two bags. One bag had been pulled and the second bag was also half full.

After they had harvested the sunflowers and beaten the poles, they also cut some of the extra grass in the field and put it aside, intending to use it as horse fodder.

Li Long is not that competitive. When it comes to work, he is far inferior to his elder brother and his wife.

The sun rose, and it was almost twelve o'clock, which meant that half of the morning's work was done. Li Long had three bags, and Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei had five or six bags each, so half of the sunflowers had been harvested.

If we work harder, we can finish harvesting all the sunflowers in this morning.

Faster than Li Long imagined.

But it was also uncomfortable. As I walked further in, the tall grass and the sunflower leaves that had not yet dried completely would scratch my neck, arms and other exposed skin, leaving white marks.

It looked like just marks, not injuries. But when sweat dripped down my neck, the white marks would sting and hurt.

"Xiaolong, take a rest and drink some water." Li Jianguo was walking back with a bag of sunflowers on his shoulder and greeted Li Long when he passed by.

"Okay." Li Long agreed. His bag was still a little full, and he planned to go back after it was full.

Liang Yuemei also walked back with two bags in her hand. Seeing Li Long working there, she smiled and said:
"Xiaolong, you're not slow."

"It's too far to catch up with you two."

"We have been doing this for so many years." Liang Yuemei said with a smile, "There is no rush."

Finally, Li Long also walked back carrying two bags of sunflowers. At this time, he felt the power of the sun and was sunburned.

Some of the people in the other fields were resting under the shade of the trees, while others were still working in the fields.

When Li Long arrived at the field, he found five or six pear melons in front of Li Jianguo. He put down the bag and asked in surprise:

"Brother, where did you get the pear melon?"

"I planted them in the cornfield. When I was seedling the corn, I saw some places that were short of seedlings, so I planted some watermelons, cantaloupes, and melons. The watermelons haven't grown yet, and the cantaloupes are a little late. They can't get any sunlight, so they're not ripe yet. This melon is ready to eat. Here, this one is ripe. It fell off when I dug it just now. It must be sweet!"

Li Long took it with a smile, wiped the dust off the surface without washing it, smashed it with his fist and started to chew it.

So sweet!

It's not just because I'm thirsty, it's really sweet.

The phrase "melons fall off the vine when ripe" refers to melons such as muskmelons and pear melons. In the early 1980s and 1990s, when you went to the fields to pick melons to eat, the melons had to be really ripe and in rows. What does it mean to be really ripe? If you touch the melon and it falls directly off the vine, it is called "melons fall off the vine when ripe", which means it is really ripe.

Nowadays, melons are picked when they are half-ripe and then left to ripen. Although they are sweet, some are not sweet enough and some have been treated with additives.

Only this kind of naturally ripened melon is truly delicious.

Of course, by the end of the 20th century, it was no longer possible to eat such melons.

You have to cherish it. When you have land in the future, grow your own melons and eat the ripe ones.

After eating the melon and drinking some water, Li Long rested for a while under the shade of a tree at the edge of the field. He really wanted to go to sleep at this time, but he decided to continue working because the work was not finished yet.

The three of them went into the field again with bags in hand, and their efficiency was obviously not as high as before. Fortunately, there was not much work left in the field, and at around 2:00 p.m., they finally finished harvesting the last bit of sunflowers.

Li Long felt relaxed when he was carrying the bags back. He put twenty or thirty bags of sunflowers onto the cart one by one. Li Long and Liang Yuemei threw them up from below, and Li Jianguo arranged them on top. This is a technical job. The roads are not easy to walk on now, with potholes and potholes. If you don't arrange them properly, they will fall down halfway.

After it was laid out, it had to be secured with ropes, so people could not sit in it. Fortunately, this place was not far from the wheat field, so Li Long and Liang Yuemei followed the carriage all the way to the wheat field to unload the goods.

The wheat field is shared by several households. When it was the first time to unload their own goods, they were cunning like farmers. Whoever unloaded first would get a better spot. After occupying this spot, it basically became a convention and it would be the same spot from now on.

At this time, the wheat harvest was finished, but the straw had not yet been pulled out. The Li family occupied the area directly west of the wheat field.

It is convenient to winnow the grain here. (End of this chapter)