Wang Shaodong felt a little sorry that he couldn't contact Ma Lili, but he immediately became happy when he thought that his uncle would take him to touch the crab tomorrow night.

At seven o'clock the next morning, Wang Shaodong slept soundly, and suddenly felt a chill all over his body, and hurriedly opened his eyes to take a look, and found that the blanket covering his body had already been lifted by the uncle next to him.

"Boy, the sun is all on your ass, Emma, so fierce?"

Wang Shaodong rubbed his sleepy eyes and asked vaguely, "Uncle, why are you so fierce?"

When he followed his uncle's eyes, he realized that he had a very golden dream just now, and his Ding Ding was still in a fighting state, and then hurriedly pulled the shorts at the bedside and put them on.

"You kid, if you don't go to school with a good brain, you have to raise some chickens in this ravine. Boy, let me ask you, are you free today?"

Wang Shaodong put on his clothes and said with a whining: "Free and free, uncle, shall we go catch crabs now?"

"Touch the crabs at night, if you are free, come with me to the Longting Town Medicinal Material Market, and come back in the evening to take you to touch the crabs." ”

Now during this time, the chicken farm is basically on the right track, and then the Wang family hired two women from the village to help, with a salary of 15 yuan a day, mainly responsible for filling the cage chicken coop and cleaning up the chicken manure or something. Then Wang Fumin and his family were idle.

Wang Shaodong got dressed, hooked his shoulders and got entangled with his brother-in-law Zhao Shihai.

"Uncle, what are you going to sell in Longting?"

Longting medicinal materials market is a relatively large wholesale distribution center of medicinal materials in Qilu area, what Yimeng scorpion, salvia, Xu Changqing, mugwort, skullcap, turtle and so on, are distributed and sold here.

Zhao Shihai will go to Longting every once in a while, as the saying goes, relying on the mountain to eat the mountain, relying on the sea to eat the sea, Zhao Shihai is the real backer of the mountain and the mountain. Almost all of his family's income comes from the mountains, he is a master of catching scorpions, rabbits, and pheasants, and at the same time he knows many herbs in the mountains.

Every year, the herbs that Zhao Shihai dug up from the mountains can also be sold for a lot of money.

"It's a mess, there's some, mainly scorpions. ”

In 2002, the price of Yimeng Quanscorpion in Longting had reached about 150.

At that time, there were medicinal herb dealers who collected scorpions in many places in the countryside, and they generally collected them from elementary and junior high school students and then sold them at the Longting medicinal herb market.

The scorpions collected in the village are generally only as long as the eldest mother, three cents to five cents each, and this thing depends on the market. A large scorpion can be a pound with almost 120 scorpions, so the scorpion vendors have to earn seven or eight cents for each scorpion they collect. In 2002, it was a good job.

At that time, the friends who went to elementary school and junior high school got out of school early in the afternoon, and there was little homework.

In 2002, if a child could have 1 yuan of pocket money a day, it was already very free.

After Wang Shaodong got up, he did not eat at home, but followed his uncle over Nanshan to Qingquanling Village.

My uncle's house is at the head of the village, but the gate of his house is locked, and my uncle said that Wang Shaodong's aunt has returned to her parents' house.

Zhao Shihai had a firewood tricycle that had been driving for four or five years, and Wang Shaodong saw that the tricycle was full of all kinds of herbs, all of which were dug up from the mountains by his uncle, and the largest amount was mugwort.

Artemisia is everywhere in the surrounding mountains, dried in the sun, and some people want it after arriving in Longting, but this thing is not valuable.

In addition, on top of the bundles of mugwort, there are also more than 30 mosquito ropes.

The weather is getting cooler, and if you don't get rid of the wormwood rope quickly, you will have to wait for next year.

Artemisia mosquito rope is the old method used by the common people in the mountains for generations to deal with mosquitoes, a kind of wild grass called Artemisia mosquito grows in the mountain, and after drying, it is woven into a thick and long rope to touch, and then point to one end, the mosquito rope will emit a special smell, and the mosquito smells such a smell, and then runs away in fright.

In my memory, when Wang Shaodong's grandparents had not yet died, the old couple would put two mosquito ropes at the door every summer evening, and after lighting them, there were no mosquitoes all night.

Zhao Shihai locked the door, drove a tricycle, and pulled his nephew Wang Shaodong along the road from Qingquanling to Waitai City.

Although Tainan City is a county-level city, its population is larger than that of Luzhong City, with 21 townships under its jurisdiction.

To the west of Qingquanling Village, there is a belt of tall and steep mountains, the mountains are full of bluestones, some tenacious locust trees poke their heads out of the cliff, and a few vines that have long died are hanging from the cliff, and other than that, the whole cliff is bare.

Less than 100 meters west along the road from Qingquanling, there is a very narrow pass, commonly known as Qingshi Pass.

Originally, this bluestone pass could only be passed sideways, but it was widened last year because of the construction of the road, and now it is barely allowed to allow a tricycle to pass through.

After the bluestone pass, it is the town of Zhai within the boundaries of southern Thailand.

Then walk about fifty miles south from Zhai Town, and you will arrive at Longting Town.

The medicinal herb market in Longting Town is a long street, just as lively as the Dazhai Township Market, but it is full of herbs for sale.

By the time I arrived at Longting Town, it was already past nine o'clock.

Wang Shaodong and Zhao Shihai were hungry, so they bought a few steamed buns in the town, asked the steamed bun seller for a bowl of boiled water, sat on the side of the road and ate it.

It has to be said that in 2002, most food, especially food made by individuals in the village, was not as problematic as it was later.

Take the steamed buns eaten by Wang Shaodong and Zhao Shihai as an example, the problem of steamed bun stuffing in 2002 was not too serious.

There is not too much fat powder in the noodles, and the filling does not use chicken intestines to flavor it.

Many people who sell lean meat soup dumplings like to use chicken intestines thrown away from the slaughterhouse as steamed buns with meat filling, which is not only cheaper, but also tastes much better than using pure lean meat.

However, Wang Shaodong knew that in 2002, this situation was not much.

The real problem with food was after 2006, and it seemed like overnight that all the people around us started to go bad.

After eating the steamed buns, Zhao Shihai parked his tricycle on the edge of a parking lot next to the medicinal herb market. As soon as the car stopped, many medicinal herbs came to buy them, looking at the types and talking about the price.

Wang Shaodong is not a person who likes to be lively, so many people poured in at once, and he was taken aback.

Talking about trading is not a brisk life, from opening the scales at half past nine in the morning until the medicinal herb market closes at four o'clock in the afternoon, Zhao Shihai finally sold out all the goods brought this time, this time, he sold more than 6,000 yuan.

Zhao Shihai would come to the Longting Medicinal Materials Market once a month, so many of the people here were very familiar with him.

Seeing that the sky was getting dark, Wang Shaodong's mind had already run to the crabs in the Xishan Creek that were drilling in the cracks of the stones.