Back to 1978

Chapter 62 Beware of the Sack
"Then let's all start picking corn!" Daxiu said, then turned around and went into the cornfield, skillfully picking the two rows of corn he was responsible for and rushing forward.

Han Laosan, Ma Saner's younger brother Cao Ma and other children from the three teams also advanced forward with two ridges each.

Once he started, Yang Liming realized that it was going to break. He was only responsible for one ridge, and he was not as fast as the children in breaking two ridges.

Soon he was pulled away by several children. His face was burning from being cut by the corn leaves, his hair and neck were itchy from the corn pollen, and there were flying insects flying in front of his eyes. These problems made him want to stop and scratch.

An unknown amount of time had passed since he had been in the cornfield. Yang Liming could no longer hear any sound except the sound of himself cracking corn cobs.

This meant that he was completely left behind by the other kids, who left him a very long distance away. Moreover, he was stuck in the cornfield, with corn stalks more than two meters high blocking his way. He could not see the end, and he did not know how long he would have to endure the corn leaves cutting his face and the mosquito bites before he could reach the end.

This almost claustrophobic space made him very uncomfortable, and in the end he simply walked horizontally for more than ten ridges to reach the cleared driveway to take a breath.

He had just lit a cigarette and was about to greet Xie Hushan and his two companions who were harvesting corn stalks like harvesters not far ahead, when he suddenly froze.

His speed in digging one row of corn was actually not as fast as that of three young men digging four rows of corn at the same time. The speed at which these three young men dug the driveway was even faster than his speed in digging corn cobs!
What kind of animal speed is this?

"How far is it to the end?" Yang Liming wiped the sweat from the wound on his face and shouted to Xie Hushan who seemed to be paying no attention to him.

Xie Hushan, with a head full of corn pollen, said without even raising his head:
"This ridge is about 860 steps long from one end to the other, and I've only walked about 200 steps now."

While he was talking, he kept moving, and seven or eight more corn stalks were knocked down, further widening the distance between him and Yang Liming.

"How long will you finish digging?" Yang Liming took a puff of cigarette. He felt bad watching others working while he was being lazy, but he still wanted to delay for a while before drilling back in. The feeling inside was too uncomfortable.

Han Hongbing looked back at him and smiled at him: "Dig up all the corn stalks you can see now, bundle them up, and transport them back to the team. This is the first autumn harvest mission for our silly boy commando team."

"Would you like a cigarette?" Yang Liming shook the cigarette box at him, wanting to ask him to smoke one with him.

After Han Hongbing finished speaking, he continued to chase Xie Hushan's speed and plowed forward:

"I smoked one cigarette in the field before starting work, and I had to go to another field to smoke the second cigarette. I couldn't let out this anger, or I would be laughed to death by those monster old women."

Yang Liming hesitated for a moment, then put out his cigarette. He realized that his awareness and quality could not be inferior to those three rural youths!

He went back to the ridge he was responsible for and continued to pick corns. He didn't know how much time had passed before he finally saw the faint light in front of him. This cheered him up, as he had been tortured and ravaged by the cornfield to numbness. He gathered all his strength and forced himself to pick the last few corns. He rushed out of the cornfield, threw himself on the edge of the field, and enjoyed the morning sunshine.

There was still no other movement, as if he was the only one participating in such an important autumn harvest activity.

There were tiny blood marks on his face and hands caused by the corn leaves, and his clothes were stained with the corpses of many tiny flying insects.

He had just taken a breath when he heard a rustling sound in the distance. Xie Hushan and his two companions had already dug through a driveway of more than 800 meters. Xie Hushan straightened up with his pickaxe, while Han Hongbing went into a cornfield not far away, pulled out an iron bucket of cold water as he knew the place well, and scooped up water with the ladle floating in the bucket and drank it in big gulps.

After he finished drinking, it was Chen Daxixi's turn, and finally Xie Hushan's turn.

Yang Liming was shocked by the way the three people drank water. It didn't look like they were drinking water, but more like animals drinking water. They tilted their necks back and drank a bucket of water, then another bucket... After the three of them finished drinking, almost half of the water in the bucket was gone!
Chen Daxi burped and asked Yang Limin who was sitting and resting, "Leader Yang, it must be unpleasant to experience the feeling of being an educated youth in the countryside? Educated youth can't do the rough work we do."

"They are all fucking human beings, why can the peasants do it but they can't? The peasants have been doing this work for thousands of years, but when they are asked to do something else, they feel it is too hard, like being tortured. What's the matter? Do the educated youth have more Der than the peasants, or do they not get to eat the food they grow?" Xie Hushan wiped the water stains from his mouth and scolded Chen Daxi in dissatisfaction:

"He can't even speak. Don't compare Leader Yang with those educated youths who cried and begged for mercy when they started working during the autumn harvest. Old Yang never complained about the hardship."

If it was the educated youth who volunteered to work in the remote mountainous areas of Guanxi Province and southern Yunnan Province, Xie Hushan would definitely admire them.

But his original owner's memory showed that they looked down upon the city youths who came to Zhongping Brigade to work in the countryside, because Zhongping Brigade did not need city people to help with labor production, and those who came here all came through the back door.

Everyone knows that Zhongping Village is not a poor mountain village, so when some young people from the city had to go to the countryside, some parents used their connections to arrange for their children to come to Zhongping to join the team.

Everyone thought that they wouldn't have to suffer if they came to the Harvest Brigade. They wanted to make them suffer when they went to work in the fields. They couldn't do any farm work and were arrogant. They ate more than pigs, stole the villagers' food and eggs, and slept with the girls after saying sweet words to them, but the girls refused to admit their mistakes when they returned to the city. It was all done by these idiots. Since they returned to the city, there have been no more bad things in Zhongping Brigade.

Therefore, almost all the people in Zhongping have a bad impression of this group.

Han Hongbing pulled Yang Limin's hand over and took a look at it, then looked at his face, smiled and patted him on the shoulder:

"Okay, I won't call you Leader Yang anymore. I'll call you Old Yang instead. Even though it's just a ridge, it's your first time doing farm work and you didn't run away in the middle of it. That's a good attitude!"

"Changing your name to Lao Yang means that they like you and you will have a better life in the team." Xie Hushan stood up straight and smiled:
"See those three monster old women?"

Ever since Xie Hushan coined the term "monster old women", Chen Daxi, Han Hongbing and others also began to use this term to refer to the iron girls of their team.

"No." Yang Liming said to Xie Hushan while panting.

"These women must be unmarried and holding back, they are so hot-tempered! They start again without even drinking a sip of water?" Upon hearing Yang Limin's words, Xie Hushan quickly walked to a cornfield to take a look, and said speechlessly:
"Stop smoking and get to work. The three women have already gone at least 50 meters in. If we delay any longer, they will laugh at us!"

He lit a cigarette and put it between his lips, then picked up his pickaxe and started another round of digging the driveway.

There was no shortcut in the autumn harvest for production teams in that era.

There are no machines, only manpower. If the members want to earn more work points, now is the best opportunity to show their ability. Even if children and the elderly work in the fields, the team will give them work points.

During this important period of production within the team, if a group of young men are outdone by a group of young girls, then when the team awards work points for the autumn harvest, they will only be laughed at by others. Therefore, if you want to feel at ease with the work points, you have to convince everyone and do the work beautifully without any faults.

Seeing Xie Hushan start to fight, Han Hongbing and Chen Daxi followed him, cigarettes in their mouths. Han Hongbing said to Yang Limin as he walked:

"Old Yang, stop breaking the corn and help load it. It doesn't require any skills. Otherwise, your speed in breaking the corn will definitely hinder us. Daxiu will get angry with you. Be careful that she will bring her men to put you in a sack in the middle of the night."

(End of this chapter)