October in golden autumn is the season of rice harvest.
It was supposed to be a busy time for harvesting, but because of this incident, Taoxi Village lost half of the joy of a bumper rice harvest.
Every household has children who are away from home, and no one is in the mood to go to the fields until they get confirmed news.
After sending several injured youths back to their respective homes to recuperate, the old village chief squatted under the eaves of his house and started smoking.
"Dad, what are you thinking about?" Luo Yuqiong sighed, knowing that the old man was worried about the villagers again.
The old village chief took two puffs of his cigarette and then asked, "Has our third son not been in contact with the family for more than a year?"
Luo Yuqiong was collecting the clothes on the clothes drying pole. When she heard this, her hands shook and all the clothes fell to the ground.
…
When Song Yueliang and Qiqi returned to the village, the sky was already filled with colorful clouds.
Qiqi couldn't wait to run home after getting off the car. After turning two corners, she just saw the corner of the small fenced courtyard and already shouted, "Mother-in-law, Qiqi is back!"
The thin figure of the old woman appeared at the door of the main room almost immediately, followed by Xiao Jiaojiao who quickly walked out of the yard to welcome home.
"Hey, it's Qiqi who's home!" Zhang Xifeng narrowed her eyes with joy, and hugged the little kid who rushed towards her at the door of the yard, "I guess you guys will be home around this time. In the kitchen
Dinner is already cooked, go wash your hands and eat."
Song Yueliang followed behind, looking at this scene with a smile on his lips.
But when his eyes passed over the main room, something strange flashed through him.
There were many villagers sitting in the Zhangjiatang room at this time, the TV was turned off, and the atmosphere was solemn.
Not the same as usual.
"Mother-in-law, what's going on in the hall?" Song Yueliang asked.
Zhang Xifeng sighed and took her mother and daughter directly to the kitchen. When the rice was served, she whispered in a low voice, "Something happened in the village."
She explained the matter simply, "Now there are people working outside the home, and they all feel uneasy, so they gathered at our house and thought about calling their children and asking about the situation, so that they can feel at ease."
The one who felt relieved has left.
The people sitting in the hall now are all people who have called and received no reply. They just stick to the phone, holding on to the slightest hope of waiting for a call back.
"Who would have thought that something like this would happen to me when I go out to work." At the end, Zhang Xifeng sighed.
Song Yueliang disagreed with this. Such things happen everywhere, and there are many darknesses that only you can imagine.
After all, it's all about the weak and the strong.
After dinner, the sky was completely dark, some people were still waiting in the main room, and some people had already left worriedly.
This is the first time that no one comes to watch TV at night since the Zhang Family Courtyard has a TV.
Qiqi didn't know why, but she felt depressed inside.
"Mom, are there many people in our village who can't come back?" After taking a bath, she lay on the bed, thinking about what she heard from her mother-in-law. Qiqi tossed and turned and couldn't sleep, "Brother Hua Zi, Brother Tiejun and their parents are all here.
They work outside. How sad they would be if they knew that their parents couldn't come back."
Song Yueliang thought for a while and said, "That kind of situation is very rare. Many people are either unable to come back, or they are unwilling to come back because their families are too poor and they can't find a way out when they come back."
"Then how can we find a way out?"
"When the family is rich, a way out will come."
…
The crops in the fields are waiting for no one. No matter how depressed the villagers are, they still have to cheer up and harvest the rice first.
Zhang Xifeng's family doesn't grow rice, so they are the least busy family during the busy farming season.
But Qi Qi was not idle. She carried small backpacks with her friends and went to the fields to help glean rice ears.
Huazi and Goudan's school issued a farm task. When they returned to school after farming, each of them had to hand over two kilograms of rice ears they picked up.
On both sides of the road at the entrance of the village, the golden rice fields were harvested one by one, leaving only short stubbles in the fields.
Qiqi was very serious about picking up rice ears. She wore a small straw hat and bent down in the bright sun, carefully not missing any corner of the field.
Compared to her seriousness and meticulousness, Hua Zi and Gou Dan looked gloomy and lacked the energy they used to have when they were making trouble.
"Goudan, have you called your parents at home?" Huazi asked.
Goudan nodded dully, "Hit me. My parents said they worked in the factory and made ends meet with their monthly salary, so nothing happened."
"I still don't know where my parents work. They never tell me when they come back." Hua Zi lowered his head and couldn't see clearly, "It's not that good outside. Several people who came back from outside yesterday were still in trouble.
Got beaten."
"I also think it's not good outside. It's better to grow watermelons at home. Aren't the watermelons in our village always valuable? Why don't they come back?"
At this time, Xi Ya interjected, "My father said that we only have so much land at home, and it would be a waste of labor for the whole family to come back to plant the land that two people can plant. They can also earn more for the family by working outside."
money."
The rice ears in Qiqi's small basket on his back were already half full, and they began to fall down on his back.
She raised her hand to wipe the sweat from her cheeks, walked over to several friends, and stuffed the rice ears from her basket into their baskets respectively.
"Sister Xi Ya, but our village has a lot of land, and so many mountains have not been cleared. If it is cleared, we can grow more things." Qiqi thinks so.
Taoxi Village is surrounded by mountains.
There are so many mountains and so much land. If we plant them all, wouldn't we be able to make more money?
Several little carrot heads looked at each other, "Are we going to plant all those mountains with watermelons? When the watermelons are ripe, then we have to climb up and down to transport them down? Wouldn't that be exhausting?"
"It's not necessarily necessary to grow watermelons for all of them. You can grow other things. Maybe there are some valuable things that are easy to get?"
"Then tell me, what is valuable and easy to get?"
Qiqi scratched her head, "I have to go back and ask my mother. My mother is so smart, she must know."
The energy and energy that the little carrot heads had not been able to gather in the first place suddenly scattered again.
There's no point in asking.
It’s not that their village has no land, it’s that their parents don’t want to come back.
When the mountains behind the village were being reclaimed, didn't they also ask people working outside to come back and plant watermelons?
As a result, who came back? No one came back.
Qiqi looked at her friends who were depressed and didn't know how to comfort them.
If one day, my mother has to go far away and can only see her once a year, she will definitely be more sad than her friends.
"Edan, how much money do you need to earn to be able to spend time with your family?" Qiqi was a little confused.
The little eggman couldn't answer.
Some people can live happily with their families even if they only have one dollar in their pocket.
Some people, worth millions, don't have time to stop and have dinner with their families.
Who knows?
This is not something that can be measured with a ruler.