Chapter 153: Chapter 153: New atmosphere
Feng Jiachong now has a new atmosphere. The old man sitting under the big soapberry tree doing needlework no longer talks about how much grain was harvested in the fields or which family's child is working somewhere, but about which family went to which city, called back to tell their parents the good news, and how much they earned in a month.
Feng Yiping doesn't know this yet, but if he did, he would laugh out loud.
If this atmosphere really takes hold, it would be very gratifying to see the Feng family members who have rushed out of the house prefer to do small businesses that don't count, such as running a shoe repair stall, riding a rickshaw, or going from door to door collecting recyclables, rather than thinking only about working in factories and construction sites.
If they really wake up to this kind of awareness, the future of Fengjiachong will definitely be very promising! The Wenzhou people, known as the 'Jews of the East,' have embraced this kind of philosophy and have finally taken root and grown strong all over the world.
After the great wave washes the sand away, among those people in Fengjiachong who have put down their hoes and gone out, who says that there won't be a few real gems revealed!
Of course, the old folks are still very concerned about one harvest in their gossip, and that is the harvest of chestnuts, which is now a big deal.
For chestnuts, a fruit tree that has allowed many families in the village to gain a foothold outside, no one is careless anymore, as they used to be, and let it grow freely.
After the chestnuts have been harvested, the people at home are busy pruning the branches along the way, then fetching water from the village well or the pond in the mountains to irrigate each tree, before clearing the weeds under the trees and spreading a few loads of farm manure, and after the New Year, they are busy grafting, and they have to spend money to buy borax and apply some to each tree. They are also busy during the flowering period, having to spray a borax solution again and remove male flowers...
Anyway, the elderly people in the village laughed and said that this is the crop they have taken the most care of, and this care is comparable to that of filial sons taking care of their parents.
But there were also times of comfort. Not to mention those villagers who went to the city to make money from this. When the chestnuts were harvested, they watched as chestnut vendors carrying scales went around the village, smiling and saying kind words to each household, asking them to sell more.
You have to know that a few years ago, they were the ones following these vendors around, offering them cigarettes, making them good tea, and smiling and saying kind words, hoping that the price per catty would go up a few fen, that the scale would be a bit flatter when weighing, that it wouldn't be too high, and that the grade would be raised a notch. Now, it's completely the other way around!
Feng Yiping's three aunts are now the central figures under the big Chinese honey locust tree. Whenever they have time to go there and sit, a crowd of people will gather around them.
But these days of leisure are much fewer than before. Apart from the household chores and farm work that need doing, they spend most of their time on the mountain they have leased.
The mountain is not high, just covered in low shrubs and thatch, with a few sparse pine trees. The brothers' families have leased the mountain from the village together, surrounded it with a net, and let some local breeds of chicken roam freely inside. There are just over 300 of them, and each chicken has a very large average range of movement.
It is really free-range farming. Apart from scattering grain once in the morning, afternoon and evening, the chickens are left to forage for food on their own at other times. When it gets dark, they go back to the chicken coop made of bamboo and thatch on the mountain.
Their main task is to go to the mountain every day to clean up the chicken manure, and then look everywhere for the eggs that the disobedient hens have 'hidden' everywhere. Their grandchildren love doing this kind of thing, and after school they run to the mountain to search for them in the grass and under the shrubs.
These eggs don't worry about finding a market, either. Some are sent to the province, and the rest are all taken by the brothers and sisters-in-law of the third oldest son, who buy them to make egg noodles.
Zhenchang, the third oldest son, said that this was just the beginning. In the future, when demand increases, they will either contract more mountain areas or build chicken coops and run a chicken farm.
Today, second aunt is free for a rare occasion. After finishing lunch and tidying up the house, she takes a small bench and a sewing basket and goes to sit under the big soapberry tree.
As soon as she sits down, everyone immediately starts asking, 'How many eggs did you collect yesterday?'
'I didn't count them, but there were more than a hundred!'
'Gee,' an old man exclaimed, 'back in the old days, this was a rare treat. No one would waste it, except for a few boiled eggs for guests and on family birthdays. They were either bartered for oil, salt or thread. At the end of the year, it was hard to fill a small jar. Sometimes, when they wanted to hatch a clutch of chicks, they had to borrow a few from other families. Look now, I'm afraid your family won't be able to fill a large basket with the eggs they collect in one day.'
Isn't that right? When Feng Yiping was young, he could only eat a bowl of egg noodles with two hard-boiled eggs on his birthday. The rest of the time, when there were guests, they would fry an egg or make egg soup, but most of the time they didn't get any.
'Yes, there have been big changes in recent years!' Auntie Ermu also felt a little sentimental.
'I heard that Uncle Zhenchang told you to grow more glutinous rice next year?' another elderly person asked.
'Yes, the third son wants to make sticky rice chicken, which uses a lot of sticky rice a year. Apart from the family's ration, we were told to grow glutinous rice in the fields.'
'Uncle Zhenchang is really something now. My second daughter-in-law said that they bought another shop in the provincial capital this year, which cost a lot of money.' The person speaking has a daughter-in-law who helps out in the shop in the provincial capital.
'The third son doesn't have that much money either. Doesn't he have a brother-in-law who runs a company in the provincial capital? He helped him out a bit, and for the rest, they took out a loan on the house they just bought last year. We helped put together a bit of money too, and that was just barely enough.'
This is what Mei Qiuping told them when she called back. Although the money they are now earning sometimes makes Mei Qiuping feel a bit unreal, she is still very cautious, for fear that the villagers will say that their family is rich. frёewebηovel.cѳm
'That's amazing. If they weren't sure they could earn it back, they wouldn't have invested so much. A shop in the provincial capital is very expensive!'
...
Zhang Yan's family lives in the neighbouring county. After school, Zhang Yan, with a thick plait at the back of her head, carries a basket with freshly picked vegetables from the vegetable garden. From time to time, she greets the people on the road obediently.
Her younger brother Zhang Hong follows behind her, mischievously pressing on the basket from time to time. Zhang Yan turns around to chase after him, and he runs away with a smile.
Zhang Yan scolds him, 'Wait until tonight, I'll show you!'
When the two siblings returned home, they found that their second and third uncles had come. The second uncle was fine, but the third uncle, who worked as an accountant in the village, never visited casually. What was the wind blowing today?
Not only did he come, he also brought a gift. When he saw them enter the house, the third uncle, dressed in a Zhongshan suit, greeted Zhang Hong, 'Come, I bought you a big Shandong apple!'