"My name is Zhang Qing, from Daokou Village, Tongshan County, I am seventeen years old.
My family worked as a sharecropper for Mr. Zhou. This has been the case for generations. When I was a child, I heard my grandfather say that it seemed to have been hundreds of years.
Tenants are people who do not own land and rent land from landlords.
Why my family's land was lost? Grandpa is also unclear. He must be the same as Zhao Laoshi at the east end of the village.
Zhao Laoshi is an honest man. His family used to have four acres of land.
In the spring of the year before last, Zhao Laoshi's daughter-in-law fell ill, so she stuffed four acres of land into medicine jars and mortgaged the land to Mr. Zhou.
Most of the tenant farmers in the village have no land.
The poor cannot afford to get sick or live, and if there is a natural disaster, they will be homeless.
In my mind, in the future, I might be like my father and work honestly for Mr. Zhou.
Three to five years later, I will marry a peasant woman who is strong and round and can run a horse and live a happy life.
There is nothing wrong with this. Living is the most important thing. As long as people are alive, there is hope, right?
Unfortunately, in the late autumn when the leaves fell, all this changed.
This year's harvest is not good. The harvest in the fields is only 70% to 80% of previous years. Daokou Village is a small village without the protection of a scholar. It has been most afraid of natural disasters in the past.
The leaky house happened to be raining all night, and the grain dispatch officer from the county said that there was a severe drought in the north this year, and the south also had to share the worries of the emperor, and the grain delivered was 20% more than in previous years.
Twenty percent is not a small number. We tenant farmers, who rent land from the landlord, have to hand over 30% of the yield per mu and 20% of the imperial grain. We can only keep 50% of the grain for ourselves, and our family can barely survive.
This year is already a disaster year, with grain production reduced, and if we pay 20% more, we will really not be able to survive.
There are six people in my family, and counting the food at home, only three of them can survive until spring.
The night before yesterday, my father went to Master Zhou's house to borrow food. He went there with a torn bag and came back with a torn bag. When he came back, he sat at the door in a daze.
During dinner in the evening, I was called outside.
My father told me that there was not enough food at home to feed me, so he asked me to go east, where there would be a way to survive.
My brothers and sisters looked at me in confusion. I didn't say anything, I just nodded indifferently.
I just left, carrying six pieces of cake, towards the place where there was a way to survive.
Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet, people who have been digging in the soil for generations have their own ways to deal with natural disasters.
I was the first group of people to leave in the village, but my father told me that I would not be the last group. If the situation was not good, he would come to me and we agreed to meet at Jinshan Mansion.
I left with a family of three, a middle-aged man, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, and a village naughty boy.
They are a family of three, an old couple with an elder sister in her thirties.
Among the old couple, the man is called Old Man Xu. He is a farmer. He looks like he is seventy or eighty, but he is actually only fifty-eight. Like my family, he is also a tenant farmer of Mr. Zhou.
The old woman has no name, so everyone calls her Mrs. Xu. Their daughter is sick, wheezes when working, and feels distressed at every turn. She has not married even in her thirties, so she lives with the old couple.
The middle-aged man is a beggar, about the same age as my father.
He came here twenty years ago. No one knew where he came from or why he came. Even if they asked him, he wouldn't tell him. He would just smile and shake his head.
The middle-aged man makes a living by begging all day long. When he has nothing to eat, he goes to the fields to steal. He never steals from our village, so the village can tolerate him.
The middle-aged man has a good heart. When he was a child, his playmates in the village liked to go to the ruined temple where he lived.
He can make traps and occasionally catch hares, pheasants and other things. The village is poor and cannot afford meat, and there is no oil or water. When we go there, he does not chase us away, but happily gives us meat to eat.
He eats more meat there than at home.
A little girl of thirteen or fourteen years old, called Xiu Niang, my father told me that her father was a bad gambler and her mother was a broken shoe.
The embroiderer is very sensible and often helps the family with work. I asked her why she wanted to leave.
She told me that there was not much food at home, and her father was discussing with her mother to marry her to Mr. Zhou's silly son in exchange for three hundred kilograms of food, and then she ran away.
I am speechless. Xiu Niang is very beautiful. I have also imagined that I could marry a woman like her as my wife.
But I know I'm not good at it. Her parents are both snobbish. They can't look down on Master Zhou's stupid son, but they can't look down on me, a normal person.
I don't know why a fool can be born rich.
But I, with my healthy hands and feet, had to wander around and go to Yangzhou to escape famine.
I wanted to ask again, but Xiu Niang didn't want to say anything. She didn't think this was something to be happy about. Instead, she was worried about how her parents would survive the winter after she left.
But she would not go back. The moment her parents were about to sell her to Mr. Zhou, her heart left and she left that small village.
The embroiderer told me that the three members of their family are actually the same, they are all selfish people.
I don’t understand. Isn’t it selfish to just resign yourself to fate and marry a fool in exchange for food for your parents?
Over the years, Mr. Zhou has found four wives for his silly son, two of whom are pregnant.
People in the village said that the child was Mr. Zhou's, and that a fool couldn't even do the wedding. My mother told me that it was a fire pit, and anyone who married their daughter into it was a beast.
The last one is a rogue. He is five years older than me and idles around all day. I heard that he even recognized a boss in the town.
However, Pipi is very timid. One time, the boss went out for a fight and saw blood. Pipi was scared away and was driven back.
After being driven back, he still did not change his nature and did nothing. He would help anyone who had something to do, and after he was done helping, he would stay and eat. This was how he lived.
But I think Pipi is a smart man. He has a lot of clever ideas, and he secretly told me that he actually wanted to leave a long time ago, but he just couldn't bear to leave everyone.
This time we encountered a natural disaster and had to leave. We just happened to go outside to pursue a career.
I asked him what his career was, but he didn't say anything, he just smiled at me, looking very confident.
Just like that, I, a family of three, a middle-aged man, an embroiderer, and a rogue, headed for Yangzhou.
After three days of walking, we walked a total of 200 miles. We walked very fast because old man Xu said that the first batch of people who rushed to Yangzhou had food to eat, but the people behind him could not be sure.
In fact, I can walk faster, but Xiu Niang and Mrs. Xu can't walk fast, and I can't let Xiu Niang go.
On the fifth day, we arrived at a town. The damage here was not serious, but the people in the town were very vicious.
At the entrance of the town, there was a group of men wielding swords and sticks. They drove us away from us and refused to let us enter the town.
The rogue was not afraid this time and went up to argue with them, but was beaten with a stick by the leader on his left leg.
We fled in a hurry, not daring to stay in the town.
That night, Popi's leg became swollen. The middle-aged man looked at it with Old Man Xu and said that he might have broken a bone.
The ruffian smiled and said it was okay. He had never been injured more seriously than this when he was involved in gangs in the town.
I knew he was lying. The ruffian never fought. The only time he was scared away was that he came back.
We stayed in the woods for a night. It was very cold at night, so we gathered together and hugged each other to keep warm.
The next morning, old man Xu made a crutch for Popi, and the middle-aged man found a stick and tied it to Popi's leg so that he could use less force on his leg.
So we set out on the road. This day was the sixth day since we left the village, and we had all eaten up the food we had brought with us.
Next, we not only have to hurry, but we also have to find something to eat.
There are wild fruit trees in the woods, and if you are lucky, you can find dried wild fruits on the ground.
Old man Xu said, this is our luck. If we were not the first ones to come out, we would never have found these good things.
We ate dried wild fruits together, daydreaming about the prosperity of Yangzhou, and each other was very happy.
That night, before going to bed, I mustered up the courage to tell Xiu Niang: "If you have no place to go, you can follow me when you get to Yangzhou, and I will work to support you."
The embroiderer didn't say anything, but instead squeezed closer to Mrs. Xu, which made Mrs. Xu's daughter very dissatisfied.
I can't describe my feelings. This is the boldest thing I have ever done in my life.
Lost, unwilling, self-deprecating, maybe it’s all there.
On the eighth day, our pace slowed down and we could only walk fifty miles a day.
Popi's injuries are getting worse, and his left leg is swollen and several times thicker than his right leg.
But he was very optimistic and told me that we had already walked five hundred miles, and we would reach the border of Yangzhou a thousand miles further.
I asked him if he could hold on, and he said he could. He was going to Yangzhou to do a big job, so why couldn't he hold on?
The middle-aged man caught a hare in his trap last night, and everyone decided to eat the hare before going on the road.
While cooking, the middle-aged man seemed gloomy. I thought the middle-aged man thought he had caught the hare and didn't want to give it to everyone.
But the middle-aged man told me that Popi might not be able to hold on any longer. His wounds were getting worse and his legs were full of pus. In a few days, he wouldn't be able to walk anymore and he would have to stay.
The hare is very fragrant and mixed with wild vegetables. Even without condiments, everyone's mouths are full of oil.
But the food I ate was very unpleasant. If Popi stayed, would he be able to survive this winter alone?
Can he face the victims behind him?
I didn't know, and I didn't dare to think about it, so I just silently stuffed my own rabbit meat into the rogue's hand.
Popi looked at me, smiled, and gave the meat to Mrs. Xu, who then gave the meat to her daughter.
A girl in her thirties pursed her lips, muttered something under her breath, and happily ate the rabbit meat. I vaguely heard her say something like sb again.
Am I stupid?
I'm not stupid, I just hate separation. My father said that some people break up as they walk.