Seeing the strange mountain in the distance, I knew very well that I would turn another corner and enter the extremely broken dirt road. In less than an hour's drive, I would reach the small village below the village.
After the van entered the dirt road and started to sway forward, I once again experienced the feeling of being shaken to the point of vomiting.
A few minutes later, Chujiu stopped suddenly and spoke a series of words in dialect to the middle-aged man carrying a bag on the side of the road.
I didn't understand a word of it, but I could tell that Chujiu's words were full of happiness.
"Guo Guo, clean up the back row. This is the uncle from our village."
After the middle-aged uncle got in the car, he chatted with Chujiu in dialect and made driving gestures.
From Chujiu's ecstatic look, I could probably guess that the middle-aged uncle probably told Chujiu that he was even better than his uncle and could actually drive.
Ten minutes later, Chujiu braked suddenly again and asked me to pack the luggage in the back seat again.
There was a middle-aged lady carrying a linen bag on the roadside. This lady seemed familiar to me. If I remember correctly, she was the name of the village in Grandma Jian Shu's village.
After getting in the car, the eldest sister smiled at me and waved, and also communicated with Chujiu in dialect.
Chujiu told me that the middle-aged uncle went to the town to buy seeds for the village, and this elder sister went to the town to buy condiments for the village.
They took a bus from the town to the intersection and had to walk the rest of the way. Unexpectedly, they met us.
I haven't seen a car on this road for a long time. The uncle told Chujiu that he heard from people in the village that there was a green jeep road passing by this road in March.
Chujiu proudly told his uncle that he had also driven the jeep to take a sister to Fengwang Village. The eldest sister sitting in the back row nodded, and it seemed that she knew that Chujiu was talking about Xiaoyu.
I took out two bags of bread and two bottles of drinks from my backpack under the seat and handed them to the uncle and eldest sister.
The two of them were talking in dialect and trying to avoid it. They didn't know what Chujiu said to them in dialect. The two of them happily took it in their hands and put it in their backpacks. They seemed to be ready to take it back to the village for their families to taste.
Chujiu drove the van directly to the first village, the intersection leading to their village mountain.
I was about to remind Chujiu not to forget to store the box of drinks bought for Lanxi and the others in the village.
Chu Jiu had already carried the drinks out of the car and chatted with the uncle. The uncle nodded with a smile and put the drinks on his shoulders.
The eldest sister in Fengwang Village can also speak some Mandarin, although it is not very standard. I can still understand it after repeating it a few times.
The eldest sister told us that with so much luggage going up the mountain, we would have to go down the mountain and borrow two pairs of burdens from the villagers.
Chujiu told us that he had already thought about this problem and told us not to worry.
Our car stopped again outside the yard of the house we visited last time. When we saw Chujiu, the owner of the house greeted us enthusiastically. He happened to have prepared lunch and invited us to have a simple meal together.
On the ninth day of the lunar month, he was not polite and took out a small bundle of candles from the bag in the car and gave them to the host's family.
There are ten candles in this small bundle. If they are saved at night, and combined with the oil lamp at home, it will be enough for them to last for a month.
The host not only lent us two pairs of burdens, but also lent us several bundles of string and two snakeskin bags filled with fertilizer. The string was used to secure our luggage.
Two suitcases were fixed on one shoulder, and two snakeskin pockets were fixed on the other. The snakeskin pockets were full of sundries.
I thought about leaving the remaining box of drinks to my eldest sister, but I didn't expect her to help us carry a burden.
How could we two young men ask the eldest sister to help us? After some shirk, the eldest sister put the drink box on her shoulders.
Because of my height, I had to carry the burden with two suitcases tied to it. If I picked it up on the ninth day of the lunar month, the suitcases would hit the rocks on the roadside.
This was entirely due to me. The suitcase looked big, but in fact it was not too heavy. The two suitcases added up to 80 kilograms at most.
Even though the two snakeskin bags on the Chujiu shoulder bag are just a bunch of sundries, I estimate that the candles alone weigh fifty or sixty kilograms.
I remember this mountain road. After an hour, there will be a long flat road on the mountainside. Then I will switch with Chujiu.
The plan is good, but taking action is another matter.
After half an hour, my legs started to tremble and I couldn't exert any strength at all. The elder sister who was walking at the front smiled and said that the mountain road is not as good as the flat road, and I will definitely not get used to it if I don't walk often.
After resting for about ten minutes, the eldest sister grabbed the carrier from my hands and threw the box of drinks to me to carry.
Looking at the thin eldest sister, I didn’t expect that it would be easier for me to pick up two suitcases and walk.
The ninth day of the Lunar New Year also hit me from time to time. I had to practice hard when I went back. I guess I didn’t have the motivation to carry anything on the mountain except Sister Xiaoyu.
The eldest sister walking in the front actually still had the strength to laugh along with Chujiu.
Xiaoyu and the others all knew that Xiaoyu was a very well-behaved girl, and her medical skills were no worse than those of the village master. The village master told everyone that Xiaoyu was much better than her as a master.
When we got to the mountainside to rest again, the eldest sister just sat down and rubbed her legs, not breathing heavily like me.
I praised the eldest sister a few times, and the eldest sister smiled and told me that the adults in the village have always picked things up from the bottom of the mountain, and that's all they got used to.
These two suitcases are much lighter than carrying seeds back when they are busy farming, and it is not very laborious at all.
Perhaps this is the most difficult problem to solve when living on the mountain. Apart from this problem, the living environment is completely useless, and a paradise is nothing more than this.
Fortunately, there is a lot of land, and the grain output is enough for the entire village. Outside of the busy farming season, there are no large quantities of things to be transported to the mountains.
I took Chujiu's shoulder bag from his hand, and it was indeed much heavier than mine. For me who had never used a shoulder bag, the weight really hurt my shoulders.
Chujiu suggested that I take off my coat and put it on my shoulders, which really made things much better.
"Guo Guo, do you still have a few packs of instant noodles in your backpack?"
Chujiu, who was carrying the drink, signaled that during the next break, I would bring out two packs of instant noodles and give them to my eldest sister, who has two children at home.
When I was packing my backpack, I gave the last bottle of drink in my backpack to my eldest sister.
Since she has two children at home, plus the bottle of drink given to her on the ninth day of the Lunar New Year, there is just one bottle for each of them.
This time, the eldest sister was not polite to me either, maybe because we had become familiar with each other through chatting all the way.
The eldest sister told us that she still had some Sichuan-style sausages that she had processed during the Chinese New Year. When we got back, she would send them to Grandma Jian Shu’s house so that I could taste the authentic Sichuan flavor.