Back to 1978

Chapter 7 Yaowang Temple, Martyrs' Cemetery

The one who rushed in breathlessly was Han Hongbing's younger brother Han Hongxing, who was just thirteen years old and still in junior high school. After school, he often followed Xie Hushan and others around as a follower.

"What's going on?" Xie Hushan saw Han Hongxing running in to remind him not to go to work, and asked in confusion, "What important intelligence did Chief of Staff Han overhear while monitoring the enemy agent Ma Laowu?"

Han Hongbing's house is right next to the house of Ma Laowu, the captain of the third production team. The two families are neighbors, so whenever the production team leader Ma Laowu has any new production work arrangements, the Han family living next door will be the first to hear about it. It is a case of those who are close to the water get the moon first.

"Yes!" Han Hongxing nodded vigorously, walked quickly to the water pump and pumped it twice, then leaned over, put his mouth to the water outlet and took a few big gulps, wiped his mouth and ran out again: "My second brother said that Ermianfei, the ambitious man lurking among the people, wants you to take my second brother, Daxi, Ma San and others to the county town to collect manure! He said it's some kind of side job, you must not go! I have to notify Ma San and others to go! Sixth Grandma, I'm leaving!"

After saying that, Han Hongxing ran out of the Xie family's house again, without even giving his grandmother time to respond or invite her to eat something.

"Are you blind? Can't you see I'm here? Why do you call me sister?" When Xie Yuxiu saw that Han Hongxing ran away without saying hello to her, she quickly swallowed the food in her mouth and shouted towards the door in dissatisfaction.

Han Hongxing outside shouted disdainfully: "I am from the Communist Youth League. How can I care about a young pioneer like you calling me sister? You are actually rebelling against me!"

"I will pull out all the valve cores of your teacher's bicycle this afternoon! After that, I will tell him that he saw it was you who pulled it out with his own eyes! Just wait!" Xie Yuxiu stretched her neck and shouted at Han Hongxing who was running away.

Xie Hushan frowned and pulled Xie Yuxiu: "Why don't you do something useful, okay? What fifteen-year-old girl is like you, climbing walls and trees all day, pulling out valve cores and blocking chimneys! The Japanese devils and reactionaries haven't been driven away for long, how come someone like you has come to our village again?"

After being scolded by her brother, Xie Yuxiu stopped talking and continued to eat. Xie Hushan began to digest the news brought by Han Hongxing.

Ermianfei is the nickname given to the production team leader Ma Laowu by the members of Production Team 3.

Ma Laowu has a kind personality and is one of the best farmers in the third team. He is also a smooth talker and has good relationships with people, so the members of the third team are willing to elect him as the team leader. But after he is elected, they always resent him for being too soft-hearted. When the team assigns certain tasks, he dares not speak up for the third team even though he knows that the third team is at a disadvantage, so he is nicknamed "Fat Man with Two Faces".

As for going to the city to collect manure, this is a hard job that young people in the village production team avoid. Rural production teams need fertilizers for farming, but the output of chemical fertilizers is not too high nowadays, and it cannot be supplied in unlimited quantities. If the team does not have the money to buy a large amount of chemical fertilizers, it can only increase the application of farmyard manure. What should they do if the farmyard manure accumulated by the people in their team is not enough? Each production team can only find a way by itself, so generally the production team will use the collective funds they have saved to go to the city to purchase a batch of manure.

Although they could go to the county town openly following the mule cart, after arriving there they did not see the world or stroll the streets. Instead, they mainly dealt with the smelly feces. Not to mention that loading feces was heavy physical work, the most important thing was that this kind of work was dirty and smelly. How could a young man of eighteen or nineteen who was only thinking about getting married and having a girlfriend be willing to do this job? Therefore, in previous years, strong laborers in their thirties and forties were selected to take turns collecting feces.

And even if the work is completed, it can easily be a thankless task. After all, in the end it depends on the quality of the collected manure and how much money the team has spent.

If the quality is high and the price is low, that's as it should be, but it doesn't matter, everyone is happy.

If the manure collected is of high quality but also of high price, people may easily murmur behind the scenes that you are misusing collective property and squandering the production team's wealth.

The worst thing is that you spend the little money that the team has worked so hard to save, and you are exhausted, but in the end all you get in return at a high price is a watery yellow manure soup. The members will simply blame the manure collector for all the poor grain harvests in the team in the next few years. Every year you will be used as a negative example to be ridiculed and mocked. Until the next fool is born in the team who deserves everyone's collective praise, you will always enjoy the glorious title of "a fool who can't even collect manure."

"Brother, Han Laosan said that the team will send you to the county town? Can I go with you?" Xie Yuxiu was chewing a steamed bun and was silent for a while, then she couldn't help but speak again.

Grandma looked at Xie Yuxiu with disdain on her face and frowned, "This child doesn't look like his father at all. I don't know who he inherited this stupid personality from. Hurry up and eat, then go to school. You are so arrogant every day."

"I follow my grandfather Xie Laoliu, who else can I follow?" Although her grandmother despised her, Xie Yuxiu didn't take it to heart at all. She spoke vaguely while chewing on a steamed bun.

When Xie Hushan heard his sister and grandma bickering, he immediately turned to Xie Yuxiu and said, "Hurry up and eat! Eating won't stop you from talking! If you dare to talk back to grandma again, I'll show you how I'll deal with you."

Seeing her brother glaring at her, Xie Yuxiu shrank her neck and kept silent. After all, her brother was really ruthless when he hit her.

After seeing that the other party had calmed down, Xie Hushan picked up the porridge bowl and said to his grandmother, "Grandma, eat."

After dinner, Xie Yuxiu cleared the dishes and went home reluctantly to get her schoolbag to go to school, scolded by Xie Hushan. When Xie Hushan sent his sister out of the hospital, he saw that no one else was rushing to work on the street outside, so he turned back and took out his grandmother's needle and thread basket, and helped his grandmother thread the needle with the threads in the basket, so that his grandmother wouldn't have to wait for him to leave because her eyesight was poor and it would be inconvenient to recognize the needle.

Grandma was fanning her grandson with a palm-leaf fan and said softly:
"Hushan, why don't you go to the team and ask for leave, and tell the captain that we need to clean up the small vegetable garden in our yard today. Your grandma is too old to do it, so you have to do it. I don't know what the captain Laowu is thinking, letting a group of young boys do this kind of work."

My grandson hasn't gotten married yet. If he doesn't collect the manure well and some gossipy country woman spreads the story, saying that my grandson is not smart enough and was cheated by city people when collecting manure, and that he is a fool, then his blind dates and marriages may be affected!
This is why unmarried young men are unwilling to do this job, and why grandma asked Xie Hushan to take a leave. Xie Hushan probably told Ma Laowu about his statement last night at the daily meeting of the brigade and the leaders of each production team. But he didn't expect that Er Mianfei really treated him as a beast and sent him to the county town to collect manure. Although he said he wanted to take the initiative to do a side job, how could he arrange for him to deal with manure right away?

Even if you treat yourself as an animal, you still have to consider the enthusiasm of the animals. The newly bought animals in the team have to be fed with fine bran for two days and then gradually increase their burdens. When it comes to you, you have to arrange for manure first?
Good man, he just raised the difficulty to the maximum for himself and dealt a collectivist iron fist to this speculator who was waiting for an opportunity to escape.

Aren't you active and enthusiastic? Aren't you willing to take on heavy responsibilities? Go collect manure! Let's use manure to verify whether you, Xie Hushan, really want to add burdens to yourself or are just talking empty words and pretending to be active.

He had to go, because if he didn't go, Xie Hushan's plans of setting up a team and running a business based on his side jobs wouldn't be able to unfold.

***, in the previous life, he was a talented young entrepreneur, how come in this life he ended up helping the production team collect manure...

Xie Hushan cursed himself in his heart, helped grandma thread a few threads, and then smiled and comforted grandma:
"Grandma, it's okay. What's so dirty? What 18 or 19-year-old boy hasn't helped to clean out the toilet and collect manure at home? Haven't I been cleaning out the manure in our toilet for the past two years? Besides, no matter how honest your grandson is, it's impossible that he doesn't know how to collect manure."

The old man was reluctant to let Xie Hushan do this job. First, he was afraid that Xie Hushan would be schemed against by the city people, be cheated out of money, and be called a fool by the members of the cooperative, which would affect his blind dates. Second, he was afraid that his grandson would be tired.

Hearing that Xie Hushan was determined to go, grandma didn't try to persuade him anymore. She just stroked the ball of thread in the basket and said, "Then I'll go to the animal house of the team to find your sixth uncle and ask you to follow his car. The villagers know that old man is eccentric, but the people in the city don't. His appearance can scare people and make them dare not fool you."

"No need, grandma, just stay at home and rest. Don't worry, you don't have to tell anyone. Ermianfei will definitely let me follow Liu Ye's car. Besides, I don't necessarily have to collect manure." Xie Hushan saw that some members were already walking on the road outside the courtyard gate to gather at the team headquarters, so he stood up, put on the vest with the edges washed, and walked out, refusing his grandmother's kindness to help him find someone.

Who is Sixth Master? He is my grandmother's husband, Xie Yuxiu's grandfather, Xie Laoliu, whose full name is Xie Kefu. He is the old head of the livestock group of the third production team of Zhongping Village and the most ruthless person in Zhongping Village who was almost shot twice.

The brigade secretary Han Chengsong said in person that although he was called Han Laogou, it was just a nickname and he was still a human being after all. But Xie Laoliu, who hid in the animal house, secretly cut a small wound on the buttocks of the animals, and dipped his fingers in the blood of the animals to eat as meat and drink, was really a living animal.

Not to mention that Han Laogou was troubled by Xie Laoliu, even his own son wanted to avoid him when he saw him. At present, there was only one person in the entire Xie family who could discipline Xie Laoliu, and that was Xie Laoliu's wife, the grandmother Wei Guijin in front of him.

Xie Hushan felt that he could not learn his grandmother's skills in training animals, so he chose to stay away from her.

After leaving the courtyard, we walked along the dirt road in the village to the entrance of the production team's headquarters. It was called the team headquarters, but it was actually the original Medicine King Temple in the village. The Medicine King Temple collapsed in the earthquake two years ago, and later the production team helped to rebuild it. After the reconstruction, the team discussed with the only Taoist priest in the temple, and built two more rooms on the left and right in front. The rooms were used as the headquarters of the production team. The open space in front of the temple was used as the place where the members of the third team gathered to work and hold meetings every day.

As for why, when the F4 incident occurred, temples in other places were closed down, and Taoists and monks turned to farming, but the Taoist priests and temples were still there in Zhongping Village, and the team contributed money and manpower to help rebuild the temple, and after it was built, they had to politely discuss with the young Taoist priest who did not participate in the production team's work to borrow two rooms?

Xie Hushan was also curious about these questions when he first traveled through time, but after a trip he understood them.

When he arrived at the open space in front of the Medicine King Temple, all the members had not yet arrived. The older men were smoking and chatting, the women were gathered together talking about family matters, and the unmarried girls and boys were divided into two groups, standing a little further away and talking to each other. From time to time, someone would steal a glance at the young people of the opposite sex opposite.

Team leader Ma Laowu was sitting on the stone steps at the entrance of the temple, smoking a pipe and analyzing this year's harvest with a member next to him.

The Yaowang Temple behind him does not look like a temple at all. It is just a typical rural bungalow with three main rooms, front and back yards, and two side rooms at the entrance. Maybe because there are not enough bricks, blue bricks and red bricks are mixed, which does not look solemn at all.

At this time, on the door frame at the main entrance, there was a couplet with no rhythm or tone, in black words on red paper:
First couplet: Offer incense with your left hand to worship the Three Pure Ones.

Second line: Hold the gun in your right hand and accomplish new achievements.

There was no horizontal scroll, but above the gate, where the horizontal scroll should have been, there was a small wooden plaque with the paint peeling off. However, the words engraved on the plaque were carefully and carefully painted with red paint, and they were vigorous and powerful:

A model stronghold in the anti-Japanese war.

This is not a Medicine King Temple, it is clearly a martyrs' tomb.

(End of this chapter)