The power of examples is infinite. In the past three to five years, the plains above Bailuyuan and the rivers below Bailuyuan have become the kingdom of poppies. The magistrate of Zishui County has banned the cultivation of poppies for three consecutive terms, but the cultivation and reproduction of poppies continue.
In the spring of this year, when the first buds of poppies were blooming, Mr. Zhu from White Deer Academy stood under the newly built gatehouse of his wife and brother, admiring the tall and elegant white crane and the simple and honest white deer, as well as the inscription "Farming and Reading Heirloom" written by himself.
" in the handwriting of Bai Jiaxuan. He walked out of the door and pleasantly asked his brother-in-law to sit in the room. But Mr. Zhu said, "Please dig out the four words I wrote." Bai Jiaxuan was stunned for no reason. Mr. Zhu said again.
Once. Bai Jiaxuan said quickly: "Brother, what's going on?" Mr. Zhu still didn't explain, and repeated "dig it out" for the third time. Bai Jiaxuan rubbed his hands in embarrassment: "Brother, you are digging this thing today."
"Four words." Mr. Zhu nodded. Bai Jiaxuan suddenly became suspicious. Mr. Zhu said again: "You can either go and cover it with a piece of cloth." Bai Jiaxuan had a premonition of an ominous sign, so he took the black cloth and let it go.
Lu San moved a ladder and covered the words "Gongdu Heirloom" tightly. Mr. Zhu still refused to enter the house and said to Jiaxuan: "Lend me your cows and horses for a while."
Xuan said: "This is nothing, just pull it away. What are you doing with animals?" Mr. Zhu said: "You first hitch the plow and hitch two plows." Bai Jiaxuan did not dare to neglect and led Mr. Zhu in
After getting the horse's number, he and Lu Santou hit the plow sticks on both the red horse and the yellow ox. Mr. Zhu himself took a whip off the wall, took the plow handle from Lu San's hand, and shouted to the oxen to get out.
Let Jiaxuan shout at the plow stick drawn by the red horse and go together. Lu San wanted to take the plow stick from Mr. Zhu’s hand. It would be too unseemly to let Mr. Zhu hold the plow stick and walk through the village. Mr. Zhu insisted not to do so.
Rang said that he had mastered the skill of driving oxen to plow the land since he was a child. His hands were itchy after not holding the plow handle for many years. Lu San had to replace Jiaxuan. Jiaxuan followed him empty-handed and asked: "Brother, what are you doing?"
You go in which direction when you hitch the plow." Mr. Zhu said, "You just follow and walk." Some people in the village alley found Mr. Zhu in a long robe and wondered why he was holding the handle of the plow. They all ran over to see the talented scholar.
Mr. Zhu plowed the fields. Mr. Zhu didn't talk to anyone. He kept asking the oxen to hold the plow and walked out of the streets and alleys. He went down to the river beach and stopped by the sky-shaped water land where Bai Jiaxuan first planted opium poppies. Bai Jiaxuan and Lu
San was shocked when he saw seven or eight people in black official uniforms standing at the edge of the field. Without saying anything, Mr. Zhu ordered the oxen to enter the poppy field. The plowshare was inserted into the field, and the flowering poppy seedlings were uprooted.
, buried in the soil. Bai Jiaxuan ran forward and pulled the reins: "Brother, what are you doing?" Mr. Zhu grabbed the plow handle with one hand and took out a piece of cardboard from his arms and showed it to Yu Jiaxuan: "Brother, what are you doing?"
I came here to check the anti-smoking seedlings under the instructions of the county magistrate." Bai Jiaxuan was stunned. He squatted on the edge of the ground, held his head with his hands and couldn't speak anymore. Mr. Zhu waved his whip to encourage the scalpers and held on to the plow stick.
The poppy field was being plowed, and the edge of the field was already crowded with surprised people. There were people running in the distance. Mr. Zhu ordered the ox to plow back and forth, and said to Bai Jiaxuan: "You put the ox on the plow.
Come into the ground." Bai Jiaxuan stood up from the ground, took the plow handle pulled by the red horse from Lu San and entered the ground. Mr. Zhu turned around and nodded approvingly: "Brother, you are okay." The two of them went one after the other.
, an ox and a horse pulled two plow sticks, and destroyed the poppy in a short time. Mr. Zhu stopped the plow and said, "Brother, move the plow to another tobacco field."
All the men and women of Bailu Village had gathered on the field road and in the plowed poppy field. Lu Zilin and his father Lu Taiheng were also crowded in the crowd. Lu Taiheng walked up to Mr. Zhu, bowed with his fists and said, "Okay
"Mr. Zhu, wow!" Then he turned around and called his son Zilin and long-term worker Liu Mouer: "Go back and harness the animals to the plow, and go into the ground to plow up the smoke seedlings." Mr. Zhu dropped the plow stick and held Lu Taiheng's hand with both hands: "
Please accept my obeisance." Mr. Zhu then stood up, faced everyone, and read out the county government's 20 anti-smoking laws. Finally, he said to Jiaxuan in front of everyone: "This time you understand that I asked you to wear a black cloth.
Is that the meaning of those four words "live upstairs"?
What Mr. Zhu did shocked Bailuyuan in an instant. Within ten days, all the poppies that were blooming in Kawahara were plowed up. This feat that shocked the ancient plains soon became lifeless with Mr. Zhu's long sigh. The new arrival
The Zishui County Magistrate did not hire him again, but gave the job to another person. The beautiful red, white, pink, yellow, and purple poppy flowers bloomed in Bailuyuan again, and they were never banned again.
Many years later, many years after Bai Jiaxuan successfully introduced poppy in his Tianzihao water field, Mr. Snow, the most famous American adventurer journalist in China, came to the ancient Weihe River Basin not far from Bailuyuan.
In the Guanzhong Agricultural Development Zone, he saw the endless colorful and beautiful poppies. In his book "Journey to the West", he lamented the poppies in this ancient land that made Americans shy about talking about history:
“Every mile he walked on this road from Xi’an to the north would evoke his memories of the rich and colorful history of his nation… In this fertile Weihe River Basin, Confucius’s ancestors were barbaric people with dark skin.
People developed their rice culture, forming folklore that is still a force in folk mythology in rural China today. …
"On that newly built car road, the poppies along the way swayed their swollen heads, waiting to be harvested... Shaanxi has long been famous for being rich in opium. A few years ago, an incident occurred in the northwest, and three million people died. The American Red Cross
Investigators attributed most of the cause of the tragedy to the cultivation of opium. At that time, greedy warlords forced farmers to plant opium, and the best land was planted with opium. When there was a drought, millet, the main staple food in the northwest,
There will be a serious shortage of wheat and corn."
Poppies have once again occupied this ancient land, but wheat has become an embellishment among the large swaths of poppies. People have long disdained to call them poppies, and they don’t bother to call them opium anymore. These names are too elegant and convoluted, and farmers are more accustomed to them.
Call it big smoke or foreign smoke. Big smoke is relative to the dry tobacco of the past, and foreign smoke is relative to the indigenous smokers of the country. The rich Chinese language has also rapidly changed its combinations with the poppy craze, and finally created
The most dazzling words came out: People used to call the opium imported from abroad and banned by Grandpa Lin as foreign cigarettes, but now they call the opium collected from their own land and boiled in their own iron pots as local cigarettes. Finally, it is simplified into a
A concise single-syllable word - "soil". The standard for measuring the wealth of a farmer is no longer how many hoards of grain and how many ten-jin bundles of cotton are stored, but how much "soil" Bailu Town has two lines on one street every market day.
The overcrowded tobacco market replaced the former grain market and became the center of the town's trading.