The Ladder of Love (Part II) Zhang Baotong 2017.10.10

I woke up early the next morning. It rained in the middle of the night and the ground was wet, but not muddy. The tent at the door had not been removed, but it was soaked and no one lived in it. I walked to Uncle Liu's door and saw that the door was not bolted, so I pushed the door and saw that the floor in the house was full of people, both men and women. They were the same people who had been going to spend the night in the tent outside the house last night.

I followed the path towards the vegetable and crop fields by the stream. The grass on the side of the road was covered with rain, and the morning air was very fresh and smelled cool. Walking to the ground, I saw Uncle Liu and Aunt Xu digging potatoes in the field. I asked them, "Why do you get up so early?" Aunt Xu said, "Last night the monkeys came to steal the grain again, and the young man didn't have to sleep all night, so I got up early." ”

I asked Uncle Liu, "Did you lose a lot last night?" He said, "It's not quite big, as soon as I heard the dog barking, I ran out, and when the monkeys saw me coming, they hid." I wanted to wait until I left before stealing it, so I never left. I said, "It's been raining all night." "I couldn't help it, so I put on a plastic poncho and stayed on the ground." When it was almost dawn, the monkeys saw that I was still standing on the edge of the ground, and they left. ”

I said to Uncle Liu, "I'll dig potatoes, you go back to the house and sleep for a while." But Uncle Liu said, "If you don't sleep, you will have to open the box to get honey later." But Aunt Xu said to Uncle Liu, "You better go back to the house and sleep for a while, or your head hurts again." Uncle Liu went back to the house to sleep.

Aunt Xu and I dug up some potatoes and walked back with the basket because Aunt Xu was going to make breakfast. When we got back to the house, the travelers were already up and packing up their tents. When I saw Aunt Xu coming back, I wanted to buy their honey and local chicken. Aunt Xu asked them how much they wanted, and there were seven or eight of them, each of whom asked for a bottle of honey and a local chicken. So, Aunt Xu woke up Uncle Liu and asked him to catch the chicken. Uncle Liu is quite good at catching chickens, and after a while, he caught seven or eight chickens, weighed them with a rod, and sold them to tourists. Tourists picked up honey and local chickens, talked and laughed and went down the mountain.

Seeing off the tourists, we started breakfast. After breakfast, Uncle Liu said that our family finally came to the mountain, and we had to go to catch a rabbit for us to eat. The daughter wants to go with Uncle Liu to set up rabbits. I asked Uncle Liu if it was dangerous to set rabbits, and Uncle Liu said that it was not dangerous. So, I asked my daughter to follow Uncle Liu to set the rabbit. My wife and I followed Aunt Xu to hoe in the cornfield.

At noon, another group of tourists came to the top of the mountain, they talked and laughed, noisy and noisy, making people feel chaotic. We came back from the fields because Aunt Xu was going to sell honey and local chickens to tourists. When tourists go up the mountain, they usually look around in front of the house and behind the house for a while, take some pictures, eat something, and then go down the mountain. Others were to spend the night in the mountains, and they had to bring their own tents. Anyone who doesn't have a tent will have to go down the mountain quickly.

Aunt Xu asked the tourists if they wanted honey and local chickens, and after asking, she asked me to catch four local chickens. My parents' family is in the countryside, and they both raise chickens, so catching chickens is nothing to me. I walked next to the flock of chickens, pounced, caught up a few steps, and caught a chicken. Four chickens were soon caught. Aunt Xu was busy for a while before sending the tourists down the mountain.

I said to Aunt Xu, "You don't have to tell the tourists every time you want to have chicken honey, you just need to hang a billboard in front of the door, just like introducing your honey and local chicken, just like introducing 'Love Hometown', just introduce your honey and local chicken, and when the tourists look at the billboard, they will come to buy your honey and local chicken." When Aunt Xu heard this, she said, "That's really good." Then he asked what to do with the billboard. I said, "Don't worry about it, I'll go down the mountain and let Liu San make a billboard and send it up." ”

After a while, Uncle Liu came back from the woods while talking to my daughter with a rabbit. The rabbit is big and fat, and everyone is very happy to see Uncle Liu's harvest. Then, Uncle Liu began to kill rabbits. Aunt Xu is also killing chickens and preparing to cook dinner.

Dinner was very hearty, with braised rabbit, braised chicken, spicy tofu, stewed potatoes, stir-fried sweet potato leaves, Fuling mustard, caviar and water spinach. I also specially brought two bottles of Luzhou Laojiao to Uncle Liu. We were like a family celebrating the New Year, eating food, drinking wine, and talking and laughing happily.

I poured half a bowl of wine each in a small bowl for Uncle Liu and Aunt Xu, clinked glasses with them, and wished them a long life. Aunt Xu drank some wine, her face was red, but she looked very happy. Uncle Liu can drink some wine himself, so I poured him some more. While drinking and eating, I said to them, "You two elders still have to consider going down the mountain to live." Because you are old, once you get sick and stay on this mountain, you will not be able to heal in time. Uncle Liu said, "I also told Xiugu, but she refused to go down the mountain to live, because she thought that there were many people under the mountain, so it was better to live quietly on the mountain." Aunt Xu said, "I'm used to living in the mountains, and I think it's better to be on the mountains." Now our bodies are fine, we can still move, and when we can't move, we will go down the mountain to live. I said, "Before we went up the mountain, we went to Liu San's house, and Liu San also asked us to advise you to come down the mountain early." Aunt Xu said, "He has told us many times. We still want to stay in this mountain. Now it's almost up and down the mountain. ”

After dinner, the sky was still bright, but because there were no tourists, the mountain was still quite peaceful. Very early, Uncle Liu began to tell us about the scene when he went to Nanjing to participate in the large-scale theatrical evening of the "Qixi Oriental Valentine's Day Love Ceremony" held by Jiangsu TV Station. He said, "Since your report was published in the Chongqing Evening News, more than 100 media outlets, including CCTV and Chongqing TV, have gone up the mountain to interview, and tens of thousands of tourists have come to climb the ladder of love. Soon, our story was selected as one of the 'Top 10 Classic Love Stories in Contemporary China'.

After that, Jiangsu TV invited me and Xiugu to participate in the theatrical evening of the 'Qixi Oriental Valentine's Day Love Festival'. I've never been to Jiangjin before, and I've only been to Zhongshan Town in the farthest place. I'm used to living in the mountains, and I can't figure out the direction of the south, east, west, and west when I go down the mountain. I don't know where Nanjing, Jiangsu is located. Zhou Jilin, director of the Zhongshan Town Tourism Office, and Liu Mingsheng, the third child in my family, accompanied me by plane from Chongqing to Nanjing. Originally, Xiugu wanted to go to Nanjing with us, but she was afraid of taking the car, and as soon as she got in the car, she got motion sickness, so she didn't go.