Author: Qiu Qiu Liu Yunqiu.
In the three years of being in the countryside, we female intellectuals have never taken a hot bath. In winter, if it is dirty, I will endure it, at most I will wipe it, and I will be very content to wash my hair. On dog days, people have to sweat when they are inactive, not to mention working under the scorching sun, which is really called "suffering". When I returned to the kiln at the end of the summer, I was still reluctant to open it to wash with water, and everyone's basin was full of water that would overflow the bottom of the basin, barely enough to wet the towel, and then wipe it hastily.
Our female intellectuals often joke that we are about to become what Hou Baolin said in his cross talk, one three ** wash, two four six dry wipe. In summer, people love to sweat, accumulate a few days of mud and dirt, hair like rolled felt, rub it on the body, it is a mud roll, endure to the limit, miss work for half a day, go down to the ditch to wash once.
I've taken a few baths in the ditch. It is really far-fetched to say that it is a bath, because it is wearing underwear**, and it is necessary to choose a section of the riverbed where the stone slab is protruding and easy to hide, in order to hide under the stone slab to wash. When washing, stand in the water under the slate, scrub quickly like a thief, the road above the slate is the road, in order to prevent passers-by from seeing, my girlfriend Gui Fen and I always take turns washing, leaving a person on top to sentry.
The sentry stood on top of the stone slab, and when passers-by passed by, whether they knew it or not, they all stepped forward to talk, and the purpose was twofold: one was to inform the bather: someone passed by, do not make a sound. The second is to distract passers-by. When the bather is signaled, he will immediately stop scrubbing and cling to the side of the riverbed to avoid danger.
Every time we take a shower, we wash up the dirty laundry that we have accumulated for days. Washing clothes in the river in the summer is much more convenient than in the winter. I often choose a large rock that rises slightly above the water, sit on it, roll up my trouser legs high, and put my feet in the water. When washing, you only need to use soap to scrub, no need to rinse, because as soon as the washed clothes enter the water, they will be immediately washed away by the water, and the flowing river water can instantly wash the clothes clean. In terms of rinsing efficiency, it is faster than the washing machine twenty years later.
I don't know how the local mother-in-law bathed and washed her hair. I saw that many of them use grate combs because they not only remove grease but also grate lice. Most of their laundry goes to the waterlogged pond in the village.
When it comes to waterlogging ponds, there is one in almost every village on the plateau. It is dug by hand, in fact, it is a large pit with a diameter of twenty or thirty meters and a circular bottom, which is dedicated to storing rainwater. The villagers often go to the waterlogged pond to drink livestock, and most of the women are willing to go to the waterlogged pond to wash their clothes, so as to avoid the trouble of going up and down the mountain. The waterlogged pond is a pool of stagnant water, often with a layer of green moss floating on it, and it does not rain for several days, which not only lowers the water level, but also emits an unpleasant odor. We educated youths have never washed clothes in a waterlogged pond.
One day, my girlfriend Gui Fen and I went down the mountain to do laundry. When she was washing hard, two mothers-in-law and aunts came down to carry water, one of whom was about fifty years old, and people called her Lian Lian Ma, and after she filled the bucket, she saw the soap foam from my laundry flowing down the washboard into the river, and said infinitely distressedly: "It's a pity!".It's a pity!The white flowers flowed away. So she found a stone slab, pressed it against my washboard, washed my face, took off her apron, rubbed it on the stone slab with the soap foam I had rubbed, and after a while took off the white cloth hat on her head and scrubbed it, and when she saw the soap foam that was constantly flowing, she simply took off her coarse cloth shirt and washed it.
After taking off her top, she was naked, her two tits hung shrively, she didn't feel embarrassed at all, after washing her top, to see that there was really nothing to wash, then she pulled the donkey over and put it on the bucket, put the washed clothes on the two wooden barrels, drove the donkey shirtless, and went back satisfied.
Gui Fen said that the river water looks very clear, but in fact, I don't know how many people are washing clothes upstream, but we drink it correctly. I said, "Isn't the dirt we washed off and the soapy foam that flows away, and the people downstream drink it the same?"Gui Fen said that unless people who live near the springs can drink really clean water.