When they were still two or three miles away from their grandmother's house, their uncle Wei Hua came to pick them up with two baskets of grain.

"Sister!

Seeing their mother, the old man shouted happily.

"Huazi! Why are you here! Oops! I'm tired to death!"

It was only at this time that my mother's originally tight strings were loosened at once, and the whole person became weak, and she didn't want to walk half a step.

"Chengzi, my uncle is here to pick us up, call my uncle!"

Mother Wei Lan comfortably put down the basket, unloaded the basket containing the child, and whispered to the eldest child.

In front of her mother's younger brother, she seemed to be ten years younger all of a sudden.

As he spoke, the old man had already arrived, put down his pick, and hugged his eldest nephew affectionately.

"Da Chengzi, are you tired of walking? Look at this little thin leg and big belly! Sister, your family can eat enough now, right? How can the child be fed like this?"

My uncle is still in high school, and Xiao Wang's full moon wine didn't come to Wang Da Zhuangzi.

The last time their uncle and nephew and brother got together was in the first month, and it has been more than half a year.

"What family still lacks a bite to eat now! Children are like this, it's good to grow up!"

Mom didn't care, and handed the back basket containing Xiao Wang to her younger brother.

At that time, many of the rural babies were thin-legged and big-bellied, like an adult toad, I don't know why.

Later, when he saw a TV film about African children, Wang Jiacheng suddenly realized.

There are two common causes of this in children, malnutrition or roundworms in the stomach.

has parents who are experts in labor, and in Dachengzi's childhood memories, he has never had the concept of being hungry.

There is no big fish and big meat, and the coarse tea and light rice can be enough.

Although in the countryside at that time, it was still a relatively common phenomenon to not have enough to eat all year round.

"There may be roundworms in the belly of the adult, so you'd better give him worms before winter. ”

After all, Uncle Wei Hua is a high school student and has more knowledge than his mother.

"Okay, I'll ask Tang Zheng when I go back and see if she has any insect medicine over there!"

Tang Zheng is the head of the educated youth of the oil mill production team, and the barefoot doctor of the team.

Since the vegetable garden incident, she has now become a good sister with her mother Wei Lan, and she will come to the house at both ends of three days.

Two baskets, Dachengzi and his infant brother Xiaowang are on one side.

Sitting inside, it feels like entering the basket of the old man's treasure chest.

It's so comfortable.

"Uncle, I want to eat red pomegranate (wild hawthorn)! I want to eat hairy chestnuts!"

The most attractive thing about my grandmother's house is the wild melons and wild fruits that are ubiquitous all year round.

In late autumn, all kinds of wild fruits on the mountain are ripe.

Hairy chestnuts, wild hawthorns, tangtang pears, red raspberries, all over the mountains are filled with fruity flavors.

"Grandpa and grandma have already prepared it for you! I'm afraid that your little belly won't have a place to put it!"

Uncle Wei Hua changed his shoulders and happily teased his nephew.

"This little stinky boy must have been a starving ghost in his last life! The old lady's face has been lost to you!" the mother scolded Chengzi with a strange laugh.

"Sister, you are so blessed!

"They are all ancestors who spend money! Your sister and I have to die of exhaustion in this life! It's good that Wangzi is a girl!"

"The boy is only worried about life and not about raising! A baby has a dew drop on his head! You and your brother-in-law don't be too tired!"

The long-lost sister and brother greeted each other all the way, and there were endless homely words.

And Dachengzi fell asleep in a daze under the swaying of the basket and the blowing of the river breeze.

My grandmother's house was in a mountain col, and a tributary of the Xiwei River flowed through the village.

The surrounding rolling hills and mountains are collectively called "Daqing Mountain", which belongs to a residual vein on the southeastern edge of Dabie Mountain.

At that time, the mountainous area was still very closed and sparsely populated, and there were only four or five families in the entire Weizhuang, including my grandmother's house.

In the mid-to-late 60s, when preparing for war and famine and the construction of the third line, an arsenal settled in the hinterland of Daqingshan.

Later, material warehouses, troops, and field hospitals were also stationed in the area, and a war road leading to the mountains was built.

Since then, this mountainous village has become lively, and my mother and uncle have a much broader vision than the little babies of the wild mountain people when they were children.

Grandpa and grandpa are already standing at the entrance of the village to greet them, although they have only met for a few days, grandma still holds Dachengzi in her arms, and the "eldest grandson, eldest grandson" kisses non-stop.

"Lanzi, has it been arranged at home? ”

Grandpa picked up Xiaowang, took the bamboo basket in his mother's hand, and shouted her milk name, and his love for his daughter was overflowing.

"How can it, Dad! Mother-in-law Lao Zhuang still has Aunt Chengzi and Dad to take care of, and I can't stay in my house for a long time!"

Dachengzi found that only by his grandmother's grandfather's side did his mother look like a coquettish child.

and the adult mother who usually does not smile and is in a hurry, it is like two people.

"Oh! my girl is a toiler!"

"It's not! I knew that I wouldn't get married, and it would be convenient to find a family in the mountains and go back to my parents' house!

There is a large stone mill in the yard of my grandmother's house, and the burnt hairy chestnuts have already been fried and placed in a bamboo basket next to the millstone.

Even the hard shell of the hairy chestnut has been peeled off, and she is waiting for her baby to come back and enjoy it.

Dacheng Zihao was not polite, and when he entered the yard, he went straight to the grinding plate.

Opened the bow left and right, gobbled up, and quickly rolled his eyes in choking.

"Stinky boy! You might eat slowly!

My mother didn't treat herself as a guest, so she put down her salute and helped my grandmother set up the dishes and chopsticks.

Seeing that Chengzi choked, he hurriedly stepped forward and rubbed his son's back.

"Dacheng, Mao Li eats too much of this thing and hurts your stomach, don't eat it! If you eat the Karma meat cooked by grandma, you won't be able to eat it!"

Grandpa put away the bamboo basket with a smile, and the old uncle Wei Hua was walking around outside with Xiao Wang's child, taking him to familiarize himself with the place where his mother Wei Lan once lived in advance.

Today he is the protagonist, the first time he came to his grandmother's house.

After a short effort, the fragrant grandmother's home-cooked food was put on the table.

Smoked bacon, river fish tofu, chestnut chicken, mountain mushroom broth, and braised vermicelli are the most authentic mountain delicacies.

Grandpa is right, more than a dozen hairy chestnuts are belly, this table full of karma, the greedy Dachengzi really can't eat it.

Especially the aged smoked bacon pork, which goes down with a crispy pot, has always been his favorite.

The folk customs and dishes in the Dabie Mountains in western Anhui, until today, can still find the shadow of the great immigrants in the Ming and Qing dynasties, among which this smoked bacon is the most.

When the older generation talks about the origin of their ancestors, they will mention a common place name, the Wayao Dam on the edge of Poyang Lake in Jiangxi.

According to historical records, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Xianzhong's peasant uprising, on the way into Sichuan, once passed through western Anhui, after the righteous army left, the local aborigines did not survive. Another time was during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which was also the main battlefield, and the Jianghuai natives were once again robbed.

Therefore, from the early years of the Qing Dynasty, immigrants from Jiangxi, Hunan and other places met at Wayaoba, crossed the entire ancient Huizhou, and went north along the Yangtze River, and came to the Jianghuai area of today's western Anhui.

It also brought the folk customs and food of Hunan and Jiangxi provinces here.

For example, this smoked bacon is very similar to the old bacon in Xiangxi and southern Jiangxi.

There are also place names, the countryside of western Anhui, Wang Yingzi, Zhang Yingzi, Tie Chong, Liu Chong, Wang Chong, etc., everywhere.

The place names of "Chong" and "Ying" are also a characteristic of Hunan and Chu culture.

At that time, Jiangling, the first capital of the Chu State, was called "Ying", and Chairman Mao's hometown was "Shaoshan Chong".

Dachengzi's family is in the oil mill production team, and there are also trough mills, farm mills, flour mills, incubation mills, and bad mill production teams around.

It is said that these place names were all evolved from the manor of the landlord of the Tian family during the Qing Dynasty.

In the sixth year of Xianfeng, the Tian family brothers, who were born as farmers, came here from Wayaoba, planted grass as the land of the standard tun circle, and became a local generation of heroes in a few years, and built more than a dozen farms.

Moreover, each manor also has its own division of labor, such as an oil mill specializing in oil extraction, a flour mill specializing in grinding rice flour and wheat flour, a trough mill specializing in raising pigs and horses, and a dregs workshop specializing in brewing.

These Tian's farms are the predecessors of today's oil mill and trough mill production team.

In addition to the bamboo and chestnut trees in Daqingshan, there are countless oak trees mixed in, and it is now the golden season of the year to pick acorns.

After lunch, my mother didn't rest, and Xiaoer Wangzi was handed over to her grandmother to take care of, so she took her uncle Wei Hua and Dachengzi and went into the mountains to pick up acorns.

Grandpa is now a member of the team's bamboo side group, and he also has an ancestral craft of making acorn vermicelli.

In the past few years, the government has not taken care of the family sideline business, and every autumn and winter, my grandfather picks up this craft again.

Although she married into the grain production brigade of the oil mill, her mother, who is good at calculation, has not forgotten this old business.

Every time she goes back to her parents' house, she will pick up fruits by herself, grind the powder by herself, and make hundreds of pounds of acorn vermicelli to bring back, so that her father Wang Shichuan can pick them up and sell them in the market.

With such a trip to her mother's house, the cost of buying two piglets in the middle of the year will be earned in your pocket.

Grandpa would often laugh at her: "Lanzi, you can't live a good life in this life!

"Aren't you afraid of being poor! Now you don't cut the tail of capitalism, how can you feed this big family if you don't work harder!"

Mom replied that the diligence and calculation in her bones were also learned from her grandfather.

Chengzi's father is really a blessed man, and he married a good daughter-in-law like Chengzi's mother.

The shape of the acorn resembles a chestnut, and it is also wrapped in a layer of spiny shell.

However, the thorns on the outer layer of the acorn are not very prickly, and the shell of the chestnut is the real hedgehog.

When a layman goes to the mountains to pick chestnuts, he will have the feeling that a dog bites a hedgehog and has nowhere to get his teeth.

The old man climbed up to the oak tree and shook it, and the acorn shell fell like hail.

My mother was a master at picking acorns when she was a child, and she went up and down like picking cotton, and in a short time she filled a large basket.

Dachengzi followed behind his mother with a bamboo basket, secretly picking out one or two from time to time, peeling off the second layer of hard shell, and putting the innermost layer of hairy chestnut-like flesh into his mouth.

This habit of trying everything has not been changed even after I am five or six years old.

As soon as he bit it, he couldn't help but shiver a few times.

"Son, is it delicious?"

Chengzi's actions couldn't escape her mother's eyes, and she asked with a gloating smile.

"It's not delicious!

Chengzi spit out several mouthfuls of foam in succession before cleaning up the bitter taste in his mouth.