Chen Dexin made breakfast and shouted into the back room: "Xiaojue, Xiaoyan, get up and eat soon!"
"Here it comes!" A girl's confused voice came from the bedroom.
Ma Yuzao came downstairs wearing a long gown and opened his newspaper box. In addition to the newspapers he usually subscribed to, there were two letters and a thick magazine.
He first read the letters carefully. One was written by his old friend Qian Xuantong, and the recipient of the other was his daughter Ma Jue.
"This is unreasonable, it's really nonsense!" Ma Yuzao was so angry that he directly cursed.
Judging from the sender address of the second letter, it was obviously sent from the campus of Peking University. Then it is easy to guess that this letter must be a love letter sent by a Peking University student to his daughter.
Ma Yuzao's current nickname is "Father-in-law of Peking University", and I don't know how many male students secretly call him this. Even some teachers at the school often use the title "Father-in-law" to joke with Ma Yuzao.
Those little brats, who were annoying enough by messing around in school, now dared to send love letters to his home, which made Ma Yuzao so angry that his lungs almost exploded.
Back in the living room, his wife Chen Dexin had already put breakfast on the table, and the two daughters had also finished washing and were waiting for dinner.
Ma Yuzao still had basic self-cultivation. He would not open his daughter's letters privately, let alone throw them away quietly. He handed the letter over and said, "Xiaojue, it's yours."
"Oh, thank you, Dad." Ma Jue opened the letter smoothly.
Ma Yan quickly came over to watch the fun: "Sister, let me see it quickly!"
Ma Jue unfolded the letter and commented while reading it: "The writing is not bad. It is a lyrical prose, but it is a pity that it is too showy."
Ma Jue has been corresponding with Zhou Hexuan and Lu Xun all year round. She has a frighteningly high literary taste. She naturally looks down on ordinary articles. Moreover, she is no longer the girl who pursued gorgeous writing. Her writing style is gradually influenced by Zhou Hexuan and Lu Xun, and she pursues literary style.
Yi Zaidao likes articles that are interesting, in-depth and thoughtful.
"The writing is very good. This boy is very talented." Ma Yan commented.
Ma Jue smiled and said, "If you like it, take it."
Ma Yan pouted and said, "I don't want your love letters. I've received quite a few myself."
"Ahem," Ma Yuzao coughed, "Eat!"
The two sisters quickly fell silent.
While Ma Yuzao was drinking porridge and eating fried dough sticks, he picked up the newspaper and browsed the news.
Ma Jue picked up the magazine on the table and said curiously: "Hey, this magazine is so thick and the name is very weird."
Ma Yan suddenly pointed to the cover and exclaimed: "Sister, look quickly, there is an introductory title on the cover, Mr. Zhou's new work "Black Soil" is officially serialized!"
Hearing this, Ma Jue quickly turned to the catalog page, and then quickly followed the page number and went straight to "Black Soil". Under the title, it read: "This is a story that takes place in the black soil of Northeast China. The whole story has five parts.
: Breaking into Guandong, the Russo-Japanese War, the Storm of 1911, the May 4th Revolution and September 18th."
Seeing this, Ma Jue thought it was a historical novel. But after reading part of the text, she realized that it was about a folk story.
The magazine "Fei Gong" is a monthly magazine, and each issue has very thick pages, because the serialized "Black Earth" alone has 25,000 words.
Ma Jue even forgot to eat breakfast and was completely immersed in the story. He read the more than 20,000 words of the opening chapter of "Black Soil" in one breath, and then felt extremely heavy in his heart.
Because the tone of the story is too dark, there was a great famine in Shandong at the beginning. The Qing government adopted a very high-profile approach to provide grain relief, but as a result, there was corruption at all levels from the central to the local level, and all the relief grain went into the pockets of corrupt officials and businessmen.
Not only that, the landlords and gentry also teamed up with unscrupulous businessmen to raise the price of rice, forcing the people to sell their children, daughters, houses and land. A tragic natural disaster turned into an even more ugly man-made disaster, and the people's suffering became the result of corrupt officials.
Officials, a gluttonous feast for landlords and merchants.
The people's hard-earned money could only buy a little bit of food. The land that their ancestors had worked hard for generations was seized by the landlords and gentry, and the entire Shandong Province has become a hell on earth.
What further devastated Ma Yusan's outlook was that the underlying people who were the victims also exposed all kinds of ugliness of human nature.
For example, the Zhong family, as the protagonist, actually brutally murdered the two brothers of the Ma family on their way to Guandong for a few dozen copper coins and three pounds of millet.
The subsequent gold mining of the Zhong family was also full of blood and cruelty. They were first bullied by the mine owners and foremen and shed all their bitter blood and tears. However, once they got a chance to resist, they immediately united with the gold mining workers to kill the mine owners.
The exploited turned into exploiters. And they became even more cruel than the previous mine owners, often beating gold miners to death.
The content of this serialization ends with the orphan and widowed mother of the Ma family being rescued by the leader of the horse bandits and becoming his wife and adopted son.
"call!"
Ma Jue breathed a sigh of relief, as if she wanted to spit out all the depression in her heart. She was looking forward to the next plot. Maybe the Ma bandits would do justice for heaven and kill the Zhong family to avenge the Ma family brothers. Or maybe the Ma family survived
The youngest son is the protagonist and becomes a hero when he grows up.
Fortunately, this story is not all dark, and there are also some shining points of humanity. For example, a supporting character chose to commit suicide after falling ill in order to save food for his wife and children; another example is a mining accident, where a worker resolutely sacrificed himself to save his friends;
There were also a few farmers who came to Guandong to support each other, open up wasteland and cultivate land in the poor mountains and rivers, and gradually became rich little by little.
What Ma Jue saw was the state of the world in the late Qing Dynasty, a picture of the blood and tears of the poor at the bottom struggling to survive.
"Dad, please read this novel quickly, Mr. Zhou's new work." Ma Jue handed the magazine to his father.
Ma Yuzao took it and read it carefully. He had much richer life experience than his daughter, so he naturally thought more and more deeply when reading the novel. Many storylines were like sharp knives piercing the heart. After reading the serial content, Ma Yuzao said with emotion: "
Zhou Mingcheng is going to write a masterpiece that will be handed down from generation to generation."
"Black Soil" not only tells the story of three families, but is interspersed with countless historical backgrounds and supporting characters from all walks of life. These events and characters are written vividly, making people feel like they are in Shandong and Northeast China in the 1850s.
It's like those stories really happened.
In fact, the stories of little people written by Zhou Hexuan are all derived from reality. Through many inquiries, inquiries, and records of the exiled people in the Northeast, he wrote two to three hundred thousand words of various real stories. These are all his creations
The material was written into the novel with slight changes.
This time the series only ran 25,000 words. The story has not yet fully unfolded and the Guan family has not even had time to appear. It is already shocking enough.
Hot tears, sweat and blood watered the black soil under people's feet, staged a series of joys and sorrows and entanglements.