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Chapter 33 Your uncle will always be your uncle

Xie Hushan agreed and walked in.

Inside the house, Chen Chunxiang had swiftly set up the table on the kang and sat down next to her grandmother, helping her to serve a bowl of porridge. Uncle Xie Qimao was sitting cross-legged on the kang, pouring wine into two wine cups of different sizes and shapes. Both of these wine cups were brought by him, one for himself and the other for Uncle Six.

This is because his family is well-off. Otherwise, rural people rarely have special utensils for drinking. They usually use a bowl to hold the wine, and whoever's turn it is, picks it up and takes a sip.

The hot dishes were two dishes that the aunt brought back from the glass factory canteen at noon at her own expense, one meat and one vegetable. The vegetarian one was fried bean slices with chili, and the meat one was stewed pork blood with garlic, tofu, and there was also homemade soybean paste with a handful of green onions and two cucumbers as a cold dish.

"The workers are treated really well. I heard that the commune glass factory is about to go bankrupt, but it can still afford to provide one meat and one vegetable stir-fry." Xie Hushan said with a smile when he saw the two dishes. In peasant families, most of the dishes are stewed or boiled, and rarely stir-fried because it wastes too much oil.

Chen Chunxiang added a piece of tofu to grandma and said:
"The food is not as good as before. The meat used to be first-class meat, but now there is not enough third-class meat. They use bones, pig blood, and offal to fool people. Ma Da Nao always complains that the food company looks down on him and doesn't send him good meat, so he always makes excuses for it. The food company is not stupid. Why should they send you first-class meat if they can't get paid?"

"Hu San'er, you are a good boy. I am not good at talking, but I know you are filial. Let's have a drink together!" Xie Qimao laughed and raised the wine cup, saying to Xie Hushan.

Xie Hushan raised the wine cup with both hands and clinked it with the other party's. Then he took a sip and put it down. He smiled and said, "Uncle, I was just about to report a problem to the commune veterinary station. Can I ask you, the station chief, for help?"

"What's the matter? If the livestock are sick and even I can't help, then there will be no one in all the veterinary stations in our county who can cure them." Xie Qimao said after taking a sip of alcohol.

This is definitely not bragging on his part, but the entire county's veterinary system recognizes Xie Qimao as the most experienced veterinarian, undoubtedly the best in the county.

Uncle Xie Qimao, director of the Zhongping Commune Veterinary Station, was the first deputy director of the Zhongping Veterinary Station as early as 1953. After the director was promoted, he was transferred to become the director and served for 20 years.

During this period, he promoted his style and gave two promotion opportunities to two deputy station chiefs under him, who were transferred back to the County Animal Husbandry Bureau, while he himself remained in Zhongping Commune.

In addition to the fact that he is a native of Zhongping Village, the more important reason is that Xie Qimao has always believed that he, a humble peasant, could become the director of a veterinary station and receive a monthly salary, all because it was arranged by the state through the back door. He has already gotten a great deal, so how could he be greedy and think about promotion?

He is the eldest son of his grandmother and sixth uncle, born in 1926. Influenced by his father since he was young, he likes large livestock. At the age of eight, his father sent him to be an apprentice to his friend, Chen Wang, a veterinarian at the Bingyang County Animal Epidemic Prevention and Control Institute.

After that, he has been dealing with livestock. In 1948, Yaoshan was liberated and the Bingyang Animal Epidemic Prevention and Control Center was taken over. He was still an apprentice with no status or salary in the center. He usually farmed, and occasionally his master would call him to go out to various villages to treat livestock and earn some hard-earned money.

He fell in love with his master's daughter, Chen Chunxiang, but his master thought he was dull and looked down on him. His grandmother arranged a matchmaking arrangement for him, but he was unwilling and was determined to marry his master's daughter, Chen Chunxiang.

Until the outbreak of the Korean War, large vehicle teams were formed in the border areas of Pyeongju Province to support the Korean War. Local farmers drove or pulled the carts to the front line to transport supplies to the soldiers. There was no shortage of manpower, but there was a lack of large animals to pull the carts.

The army's Horse Administration Bureau gathered in the Yaoshan area and purchased a batch of mules and horses. These animals needed to undergo basic inspections at local prevention and control centers before being transported to the northeast by train. Veterinarians were also required to accompany them throughout the journey to ensure that the animals were comforted and would not be frightened, and that they could be treated at any time in case of sudden illness.

Originally, it was his master Chen Wang who should have followed the car to the north, but Chen Wang was accidentally kicked while trimming the hooves of an animal and was injured. The non-regular apprentice Xie Qimao followed the car to transport the animals to the northeast for his master. He thought it would be a simple but hard task, but it unexpectedly changed his destiny.

Originally they were to be sent to Hengren County Railway Station. Once the mules and horses got off the train, the mission would be completed and Xie Qimao could go home with the return train ticket and receipt. However, when he arrived at the destination, he found that most of the people in the support team of more than 3,000 people did not know how to train animals.

The drivers who knew how to drive and train carts had already gone to Goryeo. This group of people were mostly young men of about his age, with high morale, high awareness, willingness to endure hardships, and fearlessness of death. The only thing they didn't know how to train animals or drive carts.

Driving a cart is an art. It's not just about knowing how to say "jia" and "yu" and whipping the animals if they don't move. These guys can't even harness the animals, let alone drive a cart to transport supplies across the Yalu River.

Xie Qimao and a dozen veterinarians from various places who were escorting livestock were retained by the local civilian workers aiding Korea detachment and the cadres of the Pingzhou Provincial War Service Command. They asked them to accompany the large convoy to Shuozhou, Goryeo, and use the few days on the road to teach everyone how to train livestock as much as possible, and then send someone to send them back after arriving in Shuozhou. The officers and cadres asked them to ask for help, which made Xie Qimao and the veterinarians flattered. How could they refuse?

So Xie Qimao followed the convoy on the road, but because he was a young man in his twenties, the members of the convoy were all arrogant young men, the backbone of the militia. When he gave instructions to those people, they were often not convinced. What qualifications do you, a young boy, have to teach me?
Xie Qimao reported the matter to the comrades in the combat support headquarters. The comrades suddenly had an idea and gave him a military uniform to change into. They also told him that when he taught those troublesome militiamen, he should say that he was a military veterinarian from the combat support headquarters.

After putting on the military uniforms, there were no more people who were dissatisfied. But problems also arose. Before they arrived in Shuozhou, the comrades from the combat support command who sent them here received a temporary task and turned around to pick up another group of people.

Xie Qimao was wearing a military uniform and was mistaken for a real soldier by the local troops in Shuozhou. There were more than a thousand animals in the support convoy, and the animals would come to him first if they had any problems. After all, among so many animals and so many veterinarians, he was the only one with a military identity.

Xie Qimao was a man of few words and honest, he would do whatever he was told to do. By some strange coincidence he ended up wearing a military uniform and working in the rear of Goryeo, treating livestock and rescuing people. He stayed there for nearly a year. The migrant workers and livestock were rotated several times, but he, who was wearing a military uniform, was never replaced.

In his words, there was chaos and war, and so many people were on the front line, so they had no time to care about me, a herder. When they saw me in military uniform, the soldiers treated me as a soldier too, and shouted their demands, and then left without waiting for me to indicate if I had any difficulties. They thought that I was a soldier, and that I had to overcome any difficulties and get the job done.

His skills in treating livestock also improved rapidly during this time. He had basically seen all the illnesses of large livestock, and had treated both internal and external injuries. He even had some basic knowledge of the techniques for treating and bandaging human injuries.

Later, when the civilian labor brigade withdrew to the country, he was arranged to return to work in the country. He was still responsible for organizing and deploying livestock and transporting building materials to build refugee resettlement houses and foreign embassies in Goryeo at the border of Hengren County.

The US military launched an airstrike on the refugee camp, and Xie Qimao was injured by the bomb and fell into a coma for several days. When he woke up, he was completely deaf in his left ear.

It was also during the time when he was injured and hospitalized that the military hospital was investigating which unit he was from and helping to create a file for him. It was then that they discovered that Xie Qimao, who had always obeyed orders and followed commands, was not a soldier, but a veterinary apprentice who had come to Yaoshan to deliver livestock. His real identity was a farmer, and his military uniform was temporarily found for him by comrades from the combat support command so that he could subdue the militia.

After the combat command found out about this, the leader at the time immediately decided that such a good comrade, who had worn a military uniform and worked in Goryeo for a year under fire, and almost lost his life here, who dared to say that he was not a soldier! He should be treated as a soldier who was discharged due to injury! We cannot let him be disabled physically and feel disappointed!
In this way, the combat support command specially issued a letter of certification for him, proving that Xie Qimao was temporarily recruited by the Pingzhou combat support command when transporting mules and horses and joined the Horse Administration Bureau of the combat support command. During his service, he organized vehicles and horses to transport supplies to the front line many times to ensure smooth supply of the front-line troops. He was awarded the third-class individual merit. He is now demobilized due to injury and enjoys the third-class disability allowance. He requests Yaoshan area to resettle him.

Xie Qimao carried out the simple task of delivering livestock for more than a year. After one of his ears was deafened by an explosion, he took the train back to Yaoshan.

His grandmother was worried that he might have gotten lost, but unexpectedly, more than a year later, her son Xie Qimao came back wearing a military uniform and a big red flower, and was directly assigned to be the deputy director of the newly established Zhongping Commune veterinary station. When Chen Wang saw that his apprentice had made great progress, he immediately took the initiative to visit him and urge him to get married. The master became his father-in-law.

A war allowed Uncle Xie Qimao to start a family and reach the peak of his life, and also made the Xie family more confident in Zhongping.

The Xie family is an isolated family in Zhongping. Xie Hushan's great-grandfather settled here and started a family in the late Qing Dynasty, and it has been less than 80 years since then.

The Xie family was able to gain a foothold in Zhongping in the first thirty years thanks to Xie Laosan, who was nicknamed "Hen San'er" and died of illness in Shuzhou Province a few years ago and was never able to return to his hometown until his death; and Daxiu's grandfather, "Old Zamao" Xie Laoliu.

Because of these two ruthless people, Zhongping Village did not dare to bully the Xie family, an outsider family.

For the next thirty years, it was the old man in front of us, Xie Qimao, the director of the veterinary station, who allowed the Xie family to integrate into Zhongping Village and become natural residents of Zhongping Village.

Xie Qimao is an "official" in the eyes of rural people. He can decide the life and death of livestock, which they consider to be more valuable than human lives. This kind of person must be a native of Zhongping Village, because asking him to treat livestock can build a good relationship with them.

Every time Xie Hushan thought of Xie Qimao's experience, a line from the skit vaguely rang in his ears:
Your uncle will always be your uncle.

I am convinced.

(End of this chapter)