Hunger for a hundred years

Chapter 1 (1)
Father He Da often said to me: "If it weren't for the big hailstorm"
The hailstorm occurred in the yellow season of the valley. Great-grandfather Li Yiwu held a soft green-skinned yellow vitex with his hands behind his back, and walked happily in the golden autumn of 1914.Weeds were overgrown on the ridge of the field, and the afternoon sun made his bald head look like a piece of red tile just out of the oven.The orange-yellow paddy field is next to the canal. The canal has stopped flowing, and most of the field soil has been cracked. It is a good season for grains to dry out.Li Yiwu carefully brushed aside the waves of rice and walked to the depths.In the middle of the field, there are more than a dozen crucian carp active in a basin as large as a foot basin.The crucian carp floats on the surface of the water with its dark back arched, its head facing the sun, its mouth sometimes flat and sometimes round, playing silent music like a suona.

Li Yiwu wanted to carry the fish skewers back on the yellow vitex to reward the second boy who was rewarded by his husband.

He smiled and looked at the lovely creatures breathing hard, and couldn't bear it for a while, so he stirred the water gently with the yellow vitex.

In front of his eyes, a terrible scene immediately appeared: there was not a single fish left, but three short twisted water snakes emerged.He took a step back, stepped on a nest of ears of rice, and made a "screaming" sound, trying to drive away the uninvited guests.

The water snake suddenly disappeared, and the clear water became turbid.He stepped forward and stirred the water again, suddenly six or seven twisted water snakes of the same size appeared on the surface of the water.In the blink of an eye, the pit was densely packed with ugly, sticky, sticky monsters!
There was a dull sound in Li Yiwu's throat.

He knew that this was a sign of a catastrophic year, which had appeared during the Xianfeng period.

However, he did not expect to come so steeply.Before the dull sound in his throat fell through, a pungent stench pierced his nose.It was hot, moldy air dripping with pus and blood.Immediately afterwards, all the snakes in the pit disappeared, the sun rolled excitedly into the bed of dark clouds, and the blue sky suddenly turned black like a witch's face.Not far ahead, the dust condensed into an air mass, which accumulated thicker and turned higher and higher, forming a cloud cliff like a mountain.The birds that steal the rice in the fields, with terror on their wings, scurry like whipping across the fickle sky.

A purple light popped out of Li Yiwu's eyes, looking at the shaking field.This is the best year for rice growth, and the long tassels are strewn with plump grains.These plump grains are the good days that Li Yiwu is looking forward to, and his good days have just begun!
He was a homeless vagabond. When he was 20 years old, he stopped his wandering with a pestle and a pair of back pods. "Brother" (use simple tools to carry salt and other things to the coolie for a long distance).Walking on this path means giving up one's love, youth and even life. Li Yiwu thought that even if he didn't die alone like his predecessors, he would never be able to taste the taste of a woman. He didn't expect a good thing It soon fell on his head.It was a snowy night in 1898. He dragged his sick body into a widow's hut in Wanyuan Mountain at the junction of Sichuan and Shaanxi.The widow's surname was Gao, formerly known as Qiu Gao's family. On their wedding night, her husband went mad and had sex, got out of bed and gulped two ladles of cold water.Li Yiwu originally wanted to avoid the wind and cold and save his life, but he threw himself into Qiu Gaoshi's tender embrace and fiery lust.

After that night, he was no longer the second elder brother, and Qiu Gao became Li Gao.She is my great-grandmother.From then on, the two worked diligently and thriftily to manage the family, and worked hard, finally bought two acres of Susukida, and rented thirty picks of grain fields (at that time, "ticks" were used as the unit of land measurement in the entire Sichuan-Shanxi area, and five picks of grains were one. mu).Although Li Gaoshi has a pair of small feet, the ambition in her head is as developed as her chest. She not only wants to expand the land, but also sends her son to study.She did not hold out hope for her eldest son, Li Tian, ​​who was like a sick cat when he was born, and his intelligence did not increase with age as the years passed; the second son, Li Di, was completely different. He had a gentle appearance, and when he was eight years old, he was sent to Quxi to study under the ruler of an old man surnamed Zeng.Li Gao put all his hopes in life on Li Di, who later became my grandfather.But what she didn't expect was that from her generation onwards, our tribe has always been strong in women and weak in husbands.
"God, you need to have eyes!" Li Yiwu prayed, his toes clung to the cracks in the field, his buttocks stuck in the sky, and he stretched out his arms, instinctively wanting to protect the family's lifeblood.

Before he finished speaking, he felt as if a stone had been hit on his bald head.Then it hit again.Two blows brought him sharply awake: hail!The largest hailstorm in decades!He heard the rustling of grains.

The hailstorm only lasted for half an hour, the wind stopped, and the sun's strong beam of light pierced through the dark clouds, illuminating the verdant Lijiagou tender and bright.Li Gao didn't care about the rubble of the yard crushed by the hail, and ran directly to the field.She stepped over a dozen ridges with her little feet, and saw that ten thousand dogs had just mated in her rice field.The ice cubes the size of a finger shone round after round of cutting cold light among the green and yellow rice leaves.Most of the rice stalks were broken, and [-]% of the grains that were separated from the mother body and could not be dried in the future leaked into the cracks in the ground.Li Gao walked from one end of the field to the other, and then from the other end to this end, going back and forth several times before going to the field.She tied up the long skirt to make a pocket, and put the grains that hadn't leaked into the crack into the pocket.While picking up, she counted the number of nests: if there was no hail, she should have hit dozens of catties of grain, but she only had two or three catties in her pocket, not to mention that these grains have no dry pulp, and they will turn into water when they are ground.Only at this time did she feel empty, her internal organs and six lungs plummeted, and finally she couldn't stand up and squatted down.She didn't know where her husband had gone, and she only felt that she needed his support; usually, she was the absolute authority in the family, and what her husband did or didn't do, was ordered by her. At this moment, she suddenly felt that she was actually like this. weak.

After a long time, her husband didn't come to pick her up. She struggled to get up and looked around again.The Popoling Ridge in Lijiagou resounded with the cry of mourning.The dog also barked, but it didn't sound like a dog barking, but like a woman's wailing.My great-grandmother Li Gaoshi also wanted to cry, and she waved her hands indiscriminately, trying to grab something; surrounded by fallen rice stalks, there was nothing for her to grab, so she had to grab her tall breasts and shout loudly. Howling dryly responds to the collective grief brought to Lijiagou by natural disasters.

Li Gaoshi only howled a few times, and immediately became dumb.

She saw Tian Zhong's two buttocks opened up to the sky!
The two pig lung-shaped scars on her buttocks were sewed on by her for her husband.

Li Gao rushed over and found that her husband's feet and head had been inserted into the cracks in the field, and there was a puddle of black blood on his head.

When she pushed, Li Yiwu fell down like a waste plow.

he died.

In the place he was guarding, there was a nest of grain ears that was the only one that was not knocked off by the hail.

Li Gao threw the grains out of his clothes angrily, and ran home madly.Li Tian sat blankly on the threshold at half a person's height, Li Di had already returned from Mr. Zeng's private school.Li Gao took his two sons to the rice field.The two sons were already frightened when they heard the crying and barking of dogs all over the mountains at home. When they saw the blood on their father's head, they burst into tears.Li Gao knelt down first, followed by his two sons.The three of them fell on Li Yiwu's bowed body, crying until dark.

Li Gao did not disturb anyone in the ditch and buried her husband.

At this time of year, the family had run out of food reserves, and hailstorms spread across dozens of villages. It was impossible to find someone to borrow food. Li Gao took his two sons and embarked on the road of fleeing famine.

More than half of the people in Lijiagou went out to flee famine. The tragic scene of the old dying in the gully and the young abandoned on the road can be seen everywhere.Seven to eight adult horses go up along the Qingxi River; [-] miles away from the upstream, there is a flat dam surrounded by thousands of mountains.Li Di said to his mother: Let's go down, there are too many people going up, no matter how big the plate is, it's not enough to lick.Li Gaoshi obeyed the son she was proud of and had high hopes for.

Three months later, on a cold and windy evening, they arrived at Xinglang Beach in the lower reaches of the Qingxi River.It is under the jurisdiction of Dongbachang, Yongle County.Li Gao's clothes are not enough to cover his body, and the two children have already been swarmed with lice.Hunger makes them completely indifferent to these.Li Gao was digging in the open space.Except for the increasingly wet and heavy soil, there is no food to eat.She chose a cave by the river that was covered by a stone eaves, hugged the child tightly, and made the final preparations before dying of cold and hunger.The river is flooded with the green and sorrow of late autumn, and the faint and close copper rhyme echoes on the tips of yellow and green grass.Li Gaoshi smelled a hint of sweetness.There is indescribable happiness in this sweetness.This is the last nostalgia and gratitude for the world when people are in despair, and it is also the last gift from this devastated land to people.

The moment Li Gaoshi closed his eyes, he saw a small boat flickering towards him.The rower was an old bachelor who lived alone on a small platform made of loess across the river.As soon as the boat docked, Li Gaoshi's feeling of happiness turned into a desire to survive again. She let go of the child and threw herself in front of the old bachelor, begging for his mercy.The old bachelor looked at the woman whose tits and thighs were almost exposed, asked her to get up, then jumped off the boat, leaned close to Li Gaoshi's ear, and whispered a few words to her.When Li Gao heard what he said, he didn't understand what it meant, so he just responded with a "huh", and the old bachelor said hello, and let the three of them board the boat.

As soon as the old bachelor opened the door, Li Gao saw seven or eight catties of sweet potatoes piled up in the corner of the room, and stepped in.The old bachelor also followed, and immediately closed the door, blocking the two children outside.The old bachelor pressed Li Gaoshi on the bed, and handed her a muddy sweet potato.Li Gao took two bites first.When the old bachelor came to untie her clothes, she resolutely refused. The old bachelor understood what she meant, and threw two sweet potatoes out of the window.Only then did Li Gao let go of eating, without taking a mouthful, the red sweet potato quickly lost weight in his hand.The old bachelor's movements were as fast as Li Gaoshi's. He first stripped himself naked, then hurriedly stripped off Li Gaoshi's upper body, staring at her big tits and gasping.When Li Gaoshi finished eating the sweet potato and regained consciousness from her drowsiness, she realized that her upper body had been stripped off, and the trouser belt made of strips of cloth had also been untied.She let out an "ah" and kicked the old bachelor's exposed penis with her pointed feet. The old bachelor squatted down with a scream of "huh".Li Gao quickly turned his trouser belt twice, put on the clothes thrown on the ground without fastening the cloth buttons, just tied up the front of the clothes, put four or five sweet potatoes into the tied pockets, and rushed out the door Go, pull up your son and run down the river.

The boat has been fastened firmly to the wooden pier.The old bachelor chased them out, grabbed Li Tian and Li Di's legs with both hands, lifted them upside down, and yelled that he wanted to throw them into the river.At this time, Li Gao knew that this man with a bald head had such brute strength, so he knelt down and kowtowed.The old bachelor threw the two children on the sand and dragged Li Gao up the slope.

Li Gao gnawed another sweet potato under the belly of the old bachelor with a "human" scar.

Afterwards, the old bachelor cried and said: "Big sister, I wanted to keep you, but all my rations are the little raw sweet potatoes in the corner of the room, and I can't support you three. You and the child rest here overnight Just go, take those sweet potatoes away."
Li Gao was moved, so he took two sweet potatoes and gave them to the two children by the river.These two guys, curled up on the sand, were frightened like plucked birds.The old bachelor came out to pull them back, but Li Gao refused, and walked downstream with his son on his arm.The old bachelor stopped them, let them board the boat, and sent them to the opposite river.As soon as Mrs. Li Gao came ashore, the old bachelor said: "My sister, go up the mountain from here. On the 800-meter-high mountain, there is a place called Hejiapo. There are two rich men there, one is barren, and the other has five children." If smallpox dies, they will reward you with food. This road is a piece of shit, keep climbing until you reach the place where there are houses, which is Hejiapo."
Hejiapo is in the middle of a big mountain named "Laojun". Looking up from the foot of the mountain, there are towering cliffs. "The danger.However, my great-grandmother Li Gaoshi had no choice but to lead the children, stop and go, and finally climbed up Hejiapo at dawn.

How did she climb up?Standing on the ancient village on the west side of Hejiapo, looking back at the road, the result is that you can't see the road at all. The majestic mountain has a slope in front and a slope in the back. On the slopes and ridges, there are sandstones, strange trees and rocks. Much more lush than crops.The barren loess, like the yellow mounting paper covering the face of the dead, silently shows the hardships of life; the dark moss on the stone quietly tells the desolation of the years, with long, thick beards hanging like a dragon's head and a cane The ancient wood shows a savagery that disdains everything and rejects everything. In short, all the scumbags mentioned by teahouse storytellers should be born in such a place.

There was indeed a big "troublemaker" here: Luo Siju, the governor of Sichuan in the early years of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty.Both Luo Siju's parents were beggars. He was born in a cave with a total area of ​​[-] square meters on the Baiyan slope of the back mountain of Hejiapo.His father said: "Don't be a nobleman." His mother said: "Don't be a thief and a robber when you grow up." Luo Siju's life corresponds to the blessings of his parents. He first became a thief, then a robber, and finally became an admiral. .The entire Qingxi River Basin affectionately calls this military general who has been dead for many years "Lord Luo".Mr. Luo, Mr. Why is the folk customs on the slope and even the whole river dyed with a hard and slightly ambiguous color.

The ancient village where Li Gao's mother and son stood was a fortress made of huge stones. For the sake of strength, countless hemp coins were embedded in the cracks of the stones.Legend has it that this ancient village was built by Luo Siju, with the purpose of fighting another big family.However, according to the records of Yongle County, this village existed in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties.At that time, Sichuan experienced frequent wars, plagues, and famines. The bones are lofty." Those bones are covered with emerald green grass roots.Later Wu Sangui dispatched Wang Fan to spread chaos in Sichuan, and trampled on it for six years, and the skin of the people in Sichuan was exhausted.Humans are already infested, and snakes, insects and ferocious beasts do their part. The common people plow the fields and travel, but are eaten by tigers during the day;In this way, the aborigines of Sichuan people in various places are almost cut off.

(End of this chapter)