One. I am 60 years old this year, and my hometown is in a small mountain village in northern Anhui, where my hometown is divided into four parts of paddy fields, three parts of land, and three parts of barren mountains, which is not much different from the small mountain village in Northeast Township written by Mo Yan.
Both parents are farmers, and the family has a large population, from the last century.
In the 6th and 7th years, collective labor was still recorded, and the more labor in the family, the more work was shared, and the more grain and oil were divided.
Labor refers to the male labor force in rural areas, about 20 to 55 years old, who are strong and able, and they do 10 duties a day. Women are divided into seven divisions.
Although my family has a large population, my brothers and sisters are still young, and my father is the only laborer, and my mother is a woman, and there are only 7 jobs a day.
10 people eat, only 2 people work, and my family is almost overpaid in the production team every year. The so-called over-funding means that the head ration is disproportionate to the labor share, and the ration is more and the labor is less.
Two. Households with excess capital are often inferior in the village, and they are the last in line to distribute grain and oil, and farmers with more labor and surplus labor at home are given priority, and they only take the turn of a super-funded household like my family to receive grain and oil.
Sometimes the captain and accountant don't have a good face, it seems that my family has taken a lot of advantage in the team, and my parents have to endure it because they feel that they are at a loss. In fact, it is also taking advantage of others, because although my family does less work, everyone still has to be given basic rations. I feel that this is the biggest difference between the old and new society, which guarantees that everyone has something to eat.
Maybe it was because there was no oil or water in the food, and I felt like my stomach was never full when I was a child. At that time, I was looking forward to the New Year, and some people said that when I was a child, I looked forward to the New Year because I had new clothes to wear, and I was looking forward to the New Year at that time: I wanted to eat meat.
I remember that in the winter when I was 12 years old, a little black pig raised by the family fell ill and died. This little pig weighed more than a dozen pounds, and he didn't eat much a few days ago, and the village veterinarian came to give several injections, and finally died.
The dead piglet was skinny and lying pitifully in the corner.
Mom said to Dad, "Peel the skin and burn it for the children?" ”
Dad said: "The veterinarian said hello when he left, this little pig is sick and dead, and he has received many injections and cannot eat it. ”
Three. Dad threw the dead pig into the creek behind the house.
I followed my mother, who was holding a long bamboo pole in one hand and a sack in the other. It is only now that I understand why my mother did not carry a basket and a sack at that time, because she was worried that she would be seen and laughed at.
The little pig has been swollen after a night of blisters, and its belly is bulging, and it is no longer as thin and ugly as before, as if it has gained a lot of weight overnight.
My mother rowed the dead pig to the shore with a bamboo pole, and while the sky was not yet bright, I quickly put the dead pig into the sack with my hands and feet, and walked back with the bag tightly, I quickly picked up the bamboo pole on the ground and trotted to keep up with my mother.
Four. The mother put the dead pig under the bush behind the house and went home to boil the water. After the water boiled, she poured the piglet out of the bag and put it in the wooden basin used for bathing at home, and kept pouring boiling water on the pig.
At first, she wanted to shave off the pig's hair, but she couldn't scrape it clean after scraping it with a kitchen knife for a long time, so she hung the piglet on a rope to the branch and peeled off the pig's skin and hair from top to bottom with a knife.
My younger siblings and I were already standing at the table with chopsticks, and when we heard my father say this, we stepped forward to grab our own piece.
The elder brothers and sisters were not to be outdone, and even gnawed and swallowed, a pot of red-burned pork was wiped out cleanly, and when the mother sat down at the table, there was only a little soup left in the basin.
My parents passed away a few years ago, and now every time I think about it, my heart is sour and I want to cry.
Five. Mo Yan described the hardships of rural life, with no food or clothing, and it is entirely possible for adults and children to gnaw tree bark, swallow chaff, and eat wild vegetables when they are hungry. He wrote in his work "Grain":
Yi came home, found a clay basin, poured a few scoops of water into the basin, found another chopstick, lowered his head, bent down, stretched the chopsticks deep into his throat, and dialed a few hard, a group of pea grains, accompanied by Yi's gastric juice, trembled and fell into the clay basin ......”
It seems absurd and bizarre to see this plot today, but in that famine era, people could do anything when they were hungry. Just like my mother, a kind woman in the countryside, if it weren't for the fact that life was too hard, how could she get the rotten dead pigs in the river back to eat?!