Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

After finally sending away Wang Caimi, the debt collector, Zhang Qiang returned to the yard. Looking at the pile of brooms, his face turned green.

Is it true that he really took a big broom to the market to sell it?

Zhang Qiang felt that he couldn't afford to lose face like that!
At this time, my son, who had not yet gone to school, came over and hugged his legs and said:

"Dad, Dad, I want to eat watermelon. There is a watermelon seller at the entrance of the village. Can you buy me some watermelon?"

"Eat a thief! All you do is eat all day long! Go away! Don't bother me!"

Zhang Qiang was really upset. He had almost no money left, so how could he buy a watermelon?
Besides, even if you sell big brooms, they have to be complete brooms with a handle.

What should I do if the broom in my yard doesn’t have a handle?

The son was so scared by Zhang Qiang's yelling that he ran into the house crying to find his mother. Zhang Qiang squatted at the gate of the yard, took out an iron box from his pocket, took out a stack of cut newspaper strips, and rolled up a cigarette.

In the first two days after he came back, he still smoked Yao Chi and Hong Shan cigarettes, saying that only old farmers smoke Mo He cigarettes.

As a result, not long after that, he also started smoking Mohe cigarettes.

There was a sound of donkey cart. Zhang Qiang looked up and saw the driver coming. He stood up quickly with a smile on his face:
"Hey, Dad, why are you here?"

"I came to see you." The person who came was Zhang Qiang's father-in-law, Wang Tiansheng. His home was in the next village, and he had a good relationship with Carpenter Zhang. A few years ago, it was Carpenter Zhang who went to find him and asked him to marry his daughter to Zhang Qiang.

Carpenter Zhang was a recognized capable person in several nearby villages. He was good at making money and working hard. Wang Tiansheng agreed for the sake of Carpenter Zhang.

After Zhang Qiang and Wang Hongmei got married, they had a child the following year, and they kept running back and forth. He was restless and wanted to make money, but he didn't have the brains of his brother. At first, he worked on the construction site with Zhang the Carpenter.

After Carpenter Zhang had started to work hard, he naturally would not mistreat his younger brother, so he thought of giving Zhang Qiang a job to train him. However, he did not expect that this training would almost ruin the engineering team.

Wang Tiansheng knew that Zhang Qiang had returned. He originally thought that even if Zhang Qiang could not work on projects or be a worker, he could at least work in the team. He did not expect that this time the trouble was so serious that he directly lost all his family assets.

"Grandpa!" The child heard the noise and ran out of the house. When he saw Wang Tiansheng pulling the donkey cart, he rushed over. Of course, he also saw the watermelon on the donkey cart.

It is normal for children to be greedy. Wang Tiansheng held the child and gave the reins of the donkey cart to Zhang Qiang.

Zhang Qiang led the donkey cart to the yard and unloaded a dozen watermelons.

"Later, I'll go to Li Jianguo's house and buy a few dozen poles. I'll bring them back and you can plant this big broom on it. Tomorrow morning, come with me to the market to sell the big broom."

Wang Tiansheng's words were beyond doubt:
"Take advantage of this slack season to quickly return some of the money and pay off the debt..."

"I won't! I can't afford to lose that person!"

"Shame on you? You still feel ashamed?" Wang Tiansheng pointed at Zhang Qiang's nose in dismay, "You've embarrassed me so much! Your brother is so smart, how come he has such a stupid and cowardly brother like you?
You still want to make money from something so obvious, are you obsessed with money? It makes you look obvious, right?

Listen to me, either you come with me to sell brooms tomorrow, or I take Hongmei and the child back to Team Three right now, it's your choice!"

Zhang Qiang originally wanted to hold on, but when he heard that his father-in-law was going to take his wife and children back to his parents' home, he suddenly became like a deflated ball and went limp.

Zhang Qiang was not without self-awareness. He knew that he would not be able to manage the family affairs. Wang Hongmei did not really want to marry him, but Wang Tiansheng was very optimistic about Zhang the Carpenter and thought that he would definitely take care of his younger brother.

But no matter what, he never expected that Zhang Qiang would be unable to help. But at this time, Wang Tiansheng knew it was too late to regret, and he could only save him one step at a time.

Of course, he was not thinking about going to the Ma County Market, where how many brooms could be sold in a day? He wanted to go to the Shicheng Market, which was large and had a large flow of people. With more people coming and going, more people would buy things.

If you pull dozens of brooms over every day, it’s enough if you can sell ten.

Otherwise, when can I pay back the borrowed money?

Seeing that Zhang Qiang stopped talking, Wang Tiansheng glared at him, went to cut a watermelon for his grandson, and then drove the donkey cart to Li Jianguo's home.

There was almost no wood available nearby that could be cut down to make shovel handles or broomsticks, so he had no choice but to shamelessly go to Li Jianguo's house.

These were all inquired before coming.

Li Jianguo was not there, Liang Yuemei was there, and she was a little embarrassed when she saw Wang Tiansheng coming over. Zhang Qiang was not a good person, but Wang Hongmei was a miserable woman. Wang Tiansheng went to the third team quite early, and was familiar with Li Jianguo. They often interacted with each other ten years ago.

"Hongmei's father is here. Come into the yard and sit down." Liang Yuemei invited Wang Tiansheng into the yard.

Wang Tiansheng didn't have the nerve to come in, so he said outside the courtyard:
"Jianguo's wife, I won't bother you anymore. I just have something to do. I have ten dollars here. Can you give me twenty broomsticks..."

Liang Yuemei understood what was going on as soon as she heard it. This was Zhang Qiang's fault. Carpenter Zhang was not around, and Wang Tiansheng felt sorry for his daughter and grandson, so he came to help.

Wang Tiansheng didn't go directly to Li Jianguo to ask Li Long to accept the pile of brooms, which showed that Wang Tiansheng still had some shame. Liang Yuemei wiped her hands quickly and went over to hold an armful of brooms. Wang Tiansheng hurriedly took them and wanted to pay. Liang Yuemei waved her hand:

"Don't worry about the money. The pole is just sitting there anyway. What are you going to do..."

"I'll take that bastard to Shicheng to sell brooms tomorrow morning. I'll take whatever I can get."

"Okay, you guys go ahead and do it. Take these twenty poles first, and sell them before you talk about the money." Although Liang Yuemei is not Li Long's mother, she believes that she can handle these twenty poles. "Shicheng is a long way, you have to prepare early."

"Well, thank you for your help." Wang Tiansheng walked away with the donkey cart, feeling a little ashamed.

After Li Qingxia, Du Chunfang and others left, they came over to ask, and Liang Yuemei told them.

"Hey, it's unlucky for this guy to have a son-in-law like this." Li Qingxia watched the fun and said with a smile, "I just wonder if that jerk can sell brooms honestly."

"Difficult." Du Chunfang said just one word, and then went to help Liang Yuemei make tomato sauce.

Gu Xiaoxia's colleagues got her a few boxes of bottles, each costing five cents. Rubber bottle stoppers cost one cent each - these days they are harder to find than bottles. Bottles can be replaced with beer bottles, but stoppers are irreplaceable.

To do this, you also need a needle. Cut the tomatoes into small pieces and put them into the bottle. After it is full, put a stopper in it and steam it in a pot. During the steaming, insert an injection needle into the stopper. After the steaming is completed, pull out the needle to complete the vacuum seal.

Gu Xiaoxia thought that the bottle and the cork could be reused, so it was a good deal. The colleague also made some extra money and was very happy.

Li Long brought the bottles back two days ago. After they were brought back, Liang Yuemei washed and dried the bottles and started making tomato sauce.

Du Chunfang helped to plug the corks while Chen Lirong went to the front yard to pick tomatoes. When she came over with a large bucket of tomatoes, Liang Yuemei smiled and said:
"When the second brother gets his share of the house, take this with you when you go over. It may not look bad, but it tastes good."

"Okay, sister-in-law." After staying here for more than half a year, Chen Lirong has become obviously more cheerful and talkative.

There is really no discrimination against mothers who give birth to girls here. People make fun of them, but no one gossips about them.

Most people are busy working for their own happy lives. Even some people who sound like bad people are just bad for the sake of making money.

She liked this place so much that she didn't even want to go to the city where Li Anguo was.

I am a country person and I don’t know if I will be looked down upon by others there.

The next day, after breakfast, when Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei were about to go to work in the melon field, the eldest sister-in-law of the Lu family came over with a bowl and said something mysteriously:
"Zhang Qiang ran away!"

"Run away?" Liang Yuemei was a little surprised. "Wang Tiansheng came here yesterday and said he was going to Shicheng with Zhang Qiang to set up a stall to sell brooms. Why did he run away?"

"I heard that he couldn't afford to lose that guy and didn't want to set up his stall, so he ran away in the middle of the night. This morning, Wang Tiansheng came with a donkey cart to pull the broom, but Wang Hongmei cried and said Zhang Qiang ran away. Wang Tian was so angry that he took Wang Hongmei and the child back."

Hey!
Liang Yuemei turned her head and looked at Du Chunfang.

Du Chunfang acted as if nothing had happened. She just sat at the door, smiling as she watched Li Qiang feeding the chickens.

Is this a coincidence or the wisdom of the elderly?
Zhang Qiang didn't run far. He simply didn't want to set up a stall at night, and the more he thought about it, the angrier he got, so he ran away. However, after walking more than ten kilometers in a rage, he ran to the county, and on the deserted streets, he regretted his decision.

But since he had already escaped, he had a tantrum with his wife when he ran away, saying that his father-in-law looked down on him, and now it would be a bit embarrassing to go back.

But he had nowhere to go late at night, so he stayed outside the bus station for half the night.

When it was almost dawn, I felt my pocket and realized I only had a few cents in change.

I can't afford a ticket to go anywhere.

But I'm hungry!
He went to buy two buns and ate them while wandering around the county for most of the day. Finally, hunger overcame his fear and he staggered back home.

I thought that no matter what, I could sell brooms for two days and earn enough money to buy a ticket to Wucheng, and then go find my brother.

I guess even if my elder brother doesn't like me anymore, it should be no problem for me to find a job, right?
However, when I returned to the yard, I found it was deserted and there was no sound at all.

The door was locked and there were donkey cart tracks in the yard. Zhang Qiang immediately realized that his wife and children had gone back to her parents' home!
He sat down on the ground, and the family fell apart.

He doesn't even know where the key to his house is!

These days are not like the future where you can find out by just making a phone call. Now you have to run and ask!
He was reluctant to break the lock because a lock is not cheap!
Li Long didn't realize that he indirectly caused Zhang Qiang to almost lose his wife and children. At this moment, he was picking things up in the department store.

After going to the mountains, Halimu and his team were almost done with baling hay, so Li Long planned to help transport the hay and bring some things to them. It would be two or three months before they returned from the summer pasture, so they still had to bring some daily necessities.

The things were similar to before, but this time he wanted to buy something extra: a hat and a headscarf.

He found that many Kazakh men, regardless of age, liked to wear hats. Later generations wore national hats, and children liked to wear fashionable hats. Women liked to wear headscarves, which were relatively simple at that time, namely red flannel headscarves.

Li Long bought more than a dozen hats and headscarves and took them over to let them divide among themselves.

You also need to bring shoes, because herding in the mountains is very hard on shoes. Riding a horse is okay, but some places are not suitable for riding a horse, and you have to walk a lot every day. If you are not careful, you may step on a tree stump and your shoes may get a hole.

He bought a lot of things and filled half of the truck. This time, Li Long drove the tractor to the mountains. When he passed Qingshui River, the team cadres came out to greet him. Li Long didn't want to stop, but he had to stop to say hello and talk about his own things, and then drove into the mountains again.

"Comrade Li Long is truly extraordinary, as he is able to make friends with the herdsmen in the mountains."

"He is a model of ethnic unity, so he naturally has many ethnic friends." He Yuqing knew more clearly, "Okay, let's go make brooms first. When Comrade Li Long comes back to collect the brooms in the afternoon, make two more and you can get five yuan!"

This was serious business, and several cadres immediately ran to their homes.

Everyone has tools, and no one will fall behind in making brooms. This is not like farming. Farming requires waiting from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, but this can be paid on the same day after the work is completed, just like many young people in later generations who work as deliverymen. You can see how much money you can get, so it is no wonder that they are flocking to it.

Li Long drove the tractor directly to Halimu's winter den. There was no one here, but there were a lot of hay bales piled nearby.

He unloaded the things and put them into the winter shelter, then drove the tractor towards the pasture.

The road was familiar, so I drove quite fast. After finding three pastures, I found the herdsmen who were tying up hay.

Seeing Li Long coming, the herdsmen put down their straw bundles and ran over. Li Long took a watermelon from the cart and gave it to Halimu to cut, and then took out a hat for everyone to choose.

Yushanjiang was wearing a hat, and to be honest, the hat was almost patinated.

The same goes for Talihar. I don’t know who the hat was inherited from, but it has two holes in it. He simply sewed it up and still wears it.

At this time, one person's eyes lit up when looking at the new hat. He didn't even bother to eat the melon and started to grab it.

Actually, there is nothing to grab. The styles are relatively simple, with only two types: peaked caps and ordinary cloth caps imitating military caps. At that time, military caps were still soft cloth caps, and they were not as stylish as the camouflage caps of later generations.

But no matter which one, it was better than the ones worn by Talihar and the others, and everyone had one or more, so everyone put on a new hat.

Yushanjiang put on the new hat, then took it off and put it in his pocket, and still wore his old hat. It was not known whether he wanted to leave the new hat to his son.

After the hats were distributed, the headscarves were next. Those who had wives chose for their wives, those who had mothers chose for their mothers, and after they were done, the rest was given to Halim, who took it to the summer pasture to distribute to the others.

Li Long would pull grass to each winter hut after eating watermelon and packing grass. With a tractor, pulling grass was much faster than using a horse with a rope to pull it.

We had yellow sheep meat for lunch. Yesterday, on the way back to winter den, Halimu saw a group of yellow sheep running into the mountains. He followed them on horseback for more than ten kilometers and shot two of them.

More than ten kilometers, you really have perseverance!
Li Long felt that if it were him, he would probably give up after running two or three kilometers.

The yellow goat horn and the leather naturally belonged to Li Long, and he was quite happy to have them.

After pulling a few trips in the afternoon, Li Long went out of the mountain. He still had to go to Qingshui River to pull brooms.

They did this for two days, and in the middle, Halimu and his team caught a half-grown female elk, still alive, and Li Long took it back to the team.

Then I heard about Zhang Qiang.

Zhang Qiang returned home. After his wife and children were taken away by his father-in-law, he stayed at home for two days and then went to the third team to pick them up.

There was no other way. The family couldn’t survive without his wife. He couldn’t even have a hot meal!

Not to mention the work in the fields, he could not beat Wang Hongmei.

Women at that time were very capable. For example, Liang Yuemei was a member of the Iron Lady production team of the production team during the collective era. She could harvest 39 acres of wheat in one wheat season, an average of more than 3 acres a day, and at most 3.7 acres a day. She was better than many men!

I heard that Zhang Qiang was scolded by his father-in-law and made many promises before he took his wife and children home. Then the next day he followed his father-in-law to Shicheng to sell brooms.

"Your sister-in-law gave Wang Tiansheng twenty poles in the yard, and then sold them to him for fifty cents each, so you can buy 100 poles from him. If he wants more in the future, you can pay this price." Li Jianguo said to Li Long in the yard.

Li Long pulled the half-grown female deer to Laomahao. Uncle Luo was very happy to see it, because only with both male and female deer can the deer herd develop, otherwise it will not form a herd.

The roe deer industry has developed very well and has reached a certain scale.

Zhang Qiang's matter was just a joke. Li Long didn't care about it anymore. Who can argue with a clown every day?
"There are thieves in the fields." Li Jianguo was a little worried. "For several days in a row, 20 to 30 melons have had triangular holes cut into them. The seeds inside these melons are not ripe. What a pity! In a few days, at least a few kilograms of melon seeds will be found!"

Li Long had anticipated something like this, but he didn't expect it to come so early.

He thought that when the melons were ripe, someone would pick them and eat them.

Although zucchini is not as sweet as watermelon, it has its own fragrance. Some people just eat one or two for the sake of novelty.

But if it causes harm like this, then there will be a problem.

Making a triangular incision is a way to check whether the watermelon is ripe at this time. Usually, people go to the watermelon stall to pick watermelons. They use a knife to make a triangular incision on the watermelon, pry off the watermelon rind, and look at the flesh inside. If it is ripe, they buy the watermelon. If it is not ripe, the watermelon seller will be responsible.

This was a common practice at the time, and it was also the practice of people who were not good at picking melons. The person who used the method of beating watermelons on melons was most likely a young person, or even a teenager.

"Brother, do you want us to wait and see who it is?" Li Long said, "We have to find the leader, otherwise, if we continue like this, how long will the trouble last?"

Ten acres of land is not that big, and it is easy to catch someone if you watch both ends.

Li Jianguo asked him:
"You okay tonight?"

"It's nothing."

"OK!" (End of this chapter)