Chapter 416: Chapter 414: The Water Is Rising
Lin Lan smiled at her without speaking. She took a spring roll wrapper, added some of the mixed shredded vegetables, a few strips of shiitake mushroom, and some green onion. Holding one end of the wrapper, she rolled it up in a few deft movements.
Beaming, she held the spring roll to Wu Shufen’s lips. "Mom, have a taste. See if it’s good."
’The foodie they doted on is gone now. I’ve taken her body, so I’ll be a good daughter to them both...’
"I can get it myself!" Wu Shufen said, looking at her with a loving expression. She took the small spring roll and ate it, her eyes crinkling with a smile as she praised, "Delicious! You could sell these and people would buy them."
Lin Lan laughed. "When we go back, we can make some to sell in front of the shop."
"Mhm!"
The mother and daughter brought the finished spring roll wrappers and fillings to the main hall, then went to check on the ducks the children had cleaned. Sure enough, they were spotless, without a single bit of down left.
Wu Shufen nodded in satisfaction. "Good. Now go wash your hands and eat some spring rolls."
"Yay, spring rolls!" the children cheered, dropping the ducks and heading for the washbasin.
Seeing her grandmother carry the ducks toward the kitchen, Lin Hong asked, "Grandma, aren’t you eating?"
Wu Shufen smiled. "You all eat first. I’m going to clean the giblets."
"Oh!" Lin Hong wiped her hands and followed Lin Jun and the others to the main hall.
Lin Lan took a wrapper, made a roll for Little Douzi, and handed it to him. "Do it like I just showed you. If you like green onions, add a few."
The children picked up their chopsticks and wrappers and got to work.
Lin Lan quickly reminded them, "Don’t put too much filling in. It doesn’t taste as good when it’s overstuffed."
Lin Gang took a bite of his spring roll and said with distaste, "The green onion is too pungent. I don’t like it."
Little Douzi took a bite. "I like it. I think it’s delicious."
Lin Hong said, "I like the bean sprouts, but not the celtuce!"
Lin Jun added, "It would be even better with more crushed peanuts."
Lin Lan shook her head, watching them bicker while eating their spring rolls. "Chirping away like a nest of sparrows. How do your teachers even put up with you?"
Lin Qing said with a grin, "When the teacher’s around, we’re all well-behaved and don’t dare make a peep. Our language arts teacher has ’chalk bombs,’ and the math teacher is the meanest. Getting hit with his thin bamboo switch stings like fire."
Lin Jun pouted. "You think that’s bad? Let me tell you, one time our math teacher got so mad he smashed a blackboard eraser over the head of a student talking in the back. It even drew blood."
"And the worst part was, when he went home and told his dad, he got a ’mixed doubles’ beating from his parents! His arms and legs were covered in welts from a switch!"
’In this day and age, teachers use corporal punishment, and parents fully support it. They believe in ’a good person is raised under the birch rod’ and ’spare the rod, spoil the child’.’
’Then again, kids back then were tough. They’d get a beating, have a good cry, feel sad for a bit, and then they’d be fine.’
Wu Shufen cut open the ducks, cleaned the giblets, and grabbed a bamboo hat. She walked to the entrance of the main hall and said to Lin Lan, "I’m going to the river to have a look. You stay here and watch the kids. Don’t let them run off."
Lin Jun and the others pouted. "We’re not going to run off."
Wu Shufen shot them a glare. "I made all this good food for you. If you don’t behave, tonight you’ll get ’bamboo shoots stir-fried with pork’ for dinner."
"We got it," they all replied in unison.
Lin Lan knew that since she was just getting over a cold, Wu Shufen wouldn’t let her go to the river. She could only nod. "Okay, be careful."
"I know." Wu Shufen went out the door and headed toward the river.
Lin Lan checked the time, then went to the kitchen to start cooking.
****
At the river, the banks that were once covered in wild grass and flowers were now submerged by the flood. If the water rose another three or four meters, it would breach the dikes.
The mountain path Lin Lan’s family usually took up the slope was now flooded at its entrance. To get down from the dike, one would have to wade through the water on the hillside.
The dike and the hillside were crowded with people. Everyone stared at the muddy floodwaters. Some were discussing how many years it had been since the last flood.
Others wondered how the river could have risen so much when last night’s rain hadn’t lasted very long.
An elderly man suggested that for a flood to appear for no reason, a ’jiao’ dragon must have emerged from the mountains. He explained that when a ’jiao’ travels, it doesn’t fly, but rather rides the waterways to reach the East Sea...
Someone nearby quickly stopped him, saying it was just feudal superstition and that there were no such things as gods or ’jiao’ dragons in the world...
"Ignorant child, what the hell do you know!" the old man snapped angrily. He clasped his hands behind his back, turned, and walked away.
On the dike over there, Li Xiangyang and his two companions were talking with Accountant Zhang and the production team captain. A fishing net lay next to a bucket already full of fish and shrimp.
It turned out that when the three of them had arrived at the river, they had discovered the water was already high.
Lin Changyou cast the net a few times near a large rock, and soon the bucket was filled with fish and shrimp of all sizes.
Seeing the water level rise steadily, the three of them carried the bucket and net up to the dike, where they saw Accountant Zhang and the team captain, who were also watching the water while wearing straw rain capes.
The team captain looked at the three men and said, "Accountant Lin, how long have you been here? The fishermen who came down early this morning said they pulled a dead pig out of the water by that big rock, along with some other household items that washed down. A family upstream must have been washed away."
Lin Changyou shook his head. "We just got here. We haven’t seen any household items in the river. We just cast the net a few times, and when we saw the water getting higher, we came up here."
Accountant Zhang said, "Upstream is Pengjia Dam. The terrain there isn’t high. Every time there’s a major flood, some families get washed away."
"Ai!" Old Li sighed. "Let’s just hope the flood didn’t start until daybreak. If it happened in the middle of the night, that would be terrible."
Lin Changyou replied, "Don’t worry, in-law. Whenever there’s heavy rain, the brigade cadres notify the commune members to watch out for floods."
Old Li nodded. "That’s good to hear."
Accountant Zhang smiled at Lin Changyou. "Looks like you’ll be staying for a few extra days this trip! The ferry is suspended today. Who knows if it’ll run tomorrow?"
A young man nearby chimed in, "My dad’s the ferryman. He said if the water level goes down, it should run tomorrow. But if it keeps rising, don’t even think about crossing for the next couple of days."
Old Li looked at the sky. "A bright horizon means rain, a bright sky overhead means none. With dark clouds right above us, it’s definitely going to rain again."
Li Xiangyang felt that this kind of wisdom, passed down through generations, was remarkably accurate. ’When an experienced elder looks at the sky and says it’s going to rain, it always does.’
"Yeah, the dark clouds over the mountaintop still haven’t broken up. There’ll be more rain today," the team captain said, looking at the sugarcane, peanuts, and tobacco planted east of the dike. "Let’s hope it doesn’t. If the flood breaches the embankment, the crops will be ruined."
The area east of the dike was originally a buffer zone, but since there hadn’t been a major flood in twenty or thirty years, people on both sides of the river had reclaimed the floodplain to plant crops.
The men said in unison, "Let’s hope so." Floods and fires are merciless; all they could do was pray that heaven would be merciful and spare everyone from disaster.
Just then, Wu Shufen arrived at the slope. When she reached the bend, she discovered the path at the bottom of the hill was already underwater. She had to retreat back up the hill and search around before she finally spotted the men standing on the dike across the way.
