area51novel Chapter 274 Settled in 5 Gou Village
Chapter 274 Settled in 5 Gou Village
The carriage suddenly jolted, and Banggeng's luggage rolled down and scattered in the snow. Lao Ma stopped the carriage with a "whoosh" and shouted impatiently: "Pick it up yourself! Do you want me to serve you?"
Banggeng gritted his teeth and climbed out of the car, kneeling in the snow to pick up his luggage piece by piece. His fingers were frozen stiff, and his cotton shoes sank into the snow, icy water seeping in, freezing cold.
There were wolf howls in the distance, and Lao Ma urged nervously: "Hurry up! There are wolves in this place at night!"
Banggeng suddenly discovered that a yellowed photo had fallen out of the snow-soaked notebook. It was taken by Qin Huairu with him and his two sisters at a photo studio before the Spring Festival last year. In the photo, Qin Huairu was smiling reluctantly, Xiaodang and Huaihua were timid, and only he had his neck stiffened, looking unconvinced.
"Mom..." Banggeng's tears fell on the photo and immediately froze. At this moment, he finally realized that in this icy and snowy land of Northeast China, no one would protect him anymore. He missed home...
Old Ma was cursing in front, Banggeng wiped his face and stuffed the photo into his pocket. When the carriage creaked forward again, he looked at the dark forest in the distance and suddenly grinned - that smile was as cold as a hungry wolf on the snowy plain.
"What? We're assigned to Yelanggou?" Old Ma exclaimed, "Secretary Liu, two old farmers froze to death there last year!"
Secretary Liu knocked on his pipe and said, "What else? Which production team would want him?" He glanced at Bang Geng, who was shrinking his neck outside the door, and lowered his voice, "Besides, if we don't let this restless educated youth go to Yelanggou, will he be a bad example for other young people?"
Bang Geng stood outside the door and heard all these words clearly. He stared at the slogan on the wall: "There is a vast world, and great things to do", and suddenly kicked the door open.
"Yelanggou is Yelanggou!" he shouted hoarsely, "I'm not afraid of anything!"
Banggeng sat on the old horse's cart again. The cart creaked through the snow and finally stopped in front of a row of low adobe houses. Banggeng jumped off the cart. As soon as his feet touched the ground, the snow was above his ankles, and the biting cold climbed up his legs.
"We're here. This is Wugoutun." Lao Ma pointed to the room at the far end. "That's where you are staying. Six people live on one kang."
Just then, the production team leader also arrived.
The captain's surname was Zhang. He was an old farmer in his fifties, with wrinkles on his face so deep that they could kill mosquitoes. He held his pipe in his mouth, looked up and down at the stem, and spoke after a long while:
"Jia Geng, right? I've read your materials, your background is okay, but you..." He shook his head, "I won't say much else. Wugou Village doesn't keep idle people. If you can do it, work. If you can't, starve."
Bang Geng sneered: "Why, do you still like people to starve to death here?"
Captain Zhang narrowed his eyes and tapped his pipe against the sole of his shoe. "We won't starve to death, but we won't live comfortably either." He pointed at a tall and thin educated youth who came out of the house and said, "Chen Weidong, take him to get to know the land. He will start working tomorrow."
Banggeng said nothing and walked over there with his luggage. Lao Ma shouted from behind: "Hey! Your rations!" Then he threw a coarse cloth bag over, which contained half a bag of cornmeal, a few frozen potatoes, and a small bag of salt.
Bang Geng caught it and cursed in his heart: "This is just a little bit, how can I feed it to the dog?"
When I pushed the door open and entered the room, a stuffy air mixed with the smell of mold, sweat and cigarettes hit me in the face.
There were four male educated youth sitting on the kang. When they saw him come in, no one moved, but just looked at him coldly.
"Your name is Jia Geng?" Chen Weidong spoke as he walked in, his voice hoarse.
Banggeng grumbled, threw his luggage onto the kang, and started looking for a place to spread his bedding.
"My name is Chen Weidong. You heard it just now." The tall and thin man pointed at the others and said, "This is Zhao Tiezhu, Wang Yuanchao, Liu Jianshe, and Sun Guoqing."
Bang Geng glanced at them and didn't say anything.
Chen Weidong frowned, but didn't say much. He just took out a broken enamel pot from under the table, poured half a cup of hot water and handed it to him: "Drink something hot, slowly."
He didn't take the stick, but took out a military water bottle from his bag, unscrewed it and took a sip - it was filled with white wine he got from the Corps, and it was so spicy that he frowned.
Several people in the room looked at each other with sarcasm in their eyes.
In the afternoon, Banggeng followed Chen Weidong out, and only then did Banggeng see the whole picture of Wugoutun.
Five deep trenches surrounded the village like the claws of a giant beast. The Wild Wolf Ditch was at the northernmost end, and the bottom of the ditch was pitch black, and you could faintly hear the howling of wolves.
"Our work mainly involves clearing wasteland, farming, and chopping wood," Chen Weidong said as he walked. "There is less work in the winter, but we have to go to the forest to chop wood, otherwise the kang won't heat up and we'll freeze to death at night."
Bang Geng sneered: "How can someone freeze to death in such a shabby place?"
Chen Weidong glanced at him and didn't respond. He just pointed to a piece of wasteland in the distance and said, "That's the land we're going to open up this year. The snow is thick now, so we'll have to dig up the tree roots when the weather warms up."
Banggeng was too lazy to listen. He squatted down and grabbed a handful of snow to rub his face. It was so cold that he grimaced.
When we returned to the educated youth point, several other people were gathering around the stove roasting potatoes.
Zhao Tiezhu, a burly educated youth, took out a potato and threw it to Banggeng: "Eat it. It's your first day. We'll treat you."
He caught it, took a bite, and found it hard and astringent, so he almost spit it out.
"Why, you think it's not tasty?" Wang Yuanchao sneered, "If you think it's not tasty, earn your work points and exchange them for fine grains tomorrow."
Banggeng threw the potato to the ground and said, "Who cares?"
The room suddenly became quiet, and several people stared at him with gloomy eyes.
Chen Weidong sighed, bent down to pick up the potato, dusted it off, broke it into two halves, handed one half to Banggeng, and ate the other half himself.
"Here, food is more valuable than life." He whispered, "You fell once, we endured it, but if you fell a second time ..."
He didn't finish, but Banggeng understood - no one would pamper him here.
Bang Geng took half a potato, came to the fire and started roasting it. On the train from Beijing to Harbin, he had already eaten the pancake Qin Huairu had baked for him, which was a little raw. He had no appetite when he was sick in the Corps Hospital, and there was no arrangement for him when he arrived at the county. He ate the last bit of pancake, and has been eating since then. Smelling the smell of potatoes being roasted, Bang Geng's taste buds began to secrete saliva non-stop.
Banggeng squatted by the fire, staring at the half potato. The flames in the furnace flickered, and the potato skin gradually wrinkled, emitting a sweet and burnt smell. His stomach felt like a hand was scratching, and he was so hungry that it hurt.
"Eat slowly, don't choke." Chen Weidong added a piece of firewood to the furnace, and the sparks crackled. "Our village's food rations are calculated based on work points. Tomorrow you will go with us to chop firewood. Only when you earn work points can you exchange them for food."
Banggeng didn't say anything, but used a branch to dig out the roasted potatoes. They were too hot, so he had to toss them back and forth between his hands. Finally, he couldn't help it and just broke them apart and stuffed them into his mouth.
"Hiss—" The scalding hot potato made the tip of his tongue numb, but he couldn't bear to spit it out, so he could only open his mouth and breathe out. Zhao Tiezhu and the others all laughed when they saw this, but there was not much malice in their laughter.
"Here." Wang Yuanchao threw over a chipped enamel pot filled with cooled boiled water. "The way you eat looks like a starving ghost."
Banggeng swallowed the potato in his mouth with a sip of water. He wiped his mouth and suddenly asked, "How long have you been here?"