Niu Aihua announced her divorce from Ma Aiguo in front of the whole village, and took Xiao Wu back to her parents' house on the same day.

Niu Aihua's maiden family lives in the middle of Qiantang Town and Liyuan Town, very close to Ma Aiguo's textile factory.

At that time, because of the suspension of classes, Xiao Wu had no one to play with him at her grandmother's house all day, and once Xiao Wu secretly ran back to Sanlitun to find Jiang Sheng, Niu Aihua cried even more sadly, saying that both of them were ungrateful.

After Niu Aihua returned to her parents' house, Ma Aiguo drank all day long at home, or wrote poetry, Xiao Wu didn't pay attention to Ma Aiguo when he came to Jiang Sheng, Ma Aiguo asked Xiao Wu to talk to Niu Aihua and let her go home to cook, Xiao Wu didn't hear it, which couldn't help but make Ma Aiguo feel uncomfortable.

But those days were also uncomfortable with my mother, such a large sum of money this year, even if the Ma Patriotic Association paid it back, I am afraid that it will have to wait until the Year of the Monkey and the month of the Monkey.

Because my father was working for the Japanese gendarmerie, he did not stop working, so he still went out early and returned late every day, and his mother got up to cook for his father before dawn, and only began to clean up the dishes and chopsticks after his father left, at that time there were many mosquitoes, and a kind of grass similar to sorghum stalks would grow in the reeds around Sanlitun, and it was picked off and exposed to the sun for a day, and it was smoked in the house with a little fire at night, and it had the effect of repelling mosquitoes.

Mother hurried to the reeds early to pick up some big poles before the sky was full of dawn and came back to dry, she sometimes saw Jiang Sheng's face and hands bitten out of the red pimples and was very distressed, let Jiang Sheng don't scratch, be bitten with potion to wipe it.

My grandfather Lao Jiang hadn't been home for a few years, and the potions at home had been borrowed by the villagers, so my mother brought some cherries back when she went back to her parents' house last time. Soak the cherries in wine, and after a while, you can use them to rub them on the skin bitten by mosquitoes, although the effect is not as good as the potion prepared by Lao Jiang, but it is quite effective in relieving itching.

My mother would sometimes wake up several times at night, and each time she would quietly get up and light a candle, and then light the mosquito repellent grass in the house, because the old people in the tunzi said that the smell of this grass was not good, and it was okay to burn half of it in the house, so my mother would sit on the bench and stare at the mosquito repellent grass when it was half burned and then extinguish it.

At that time in school, the most eye-catching person was always Jiang Sheng, every time he wore a white shirt to school, both adults and children would look sideways at him, other boys wore short sleeves when their arms were full of red bumps and scars left by scratching the skin, only his skin, like the white shirt on his body, occasionally was bitten by mosquitoes and a bag was someone ran to say with concern, Jiang Sheng Jiang Sheng, how can there be a pimple on your arm, I will bring you the potion at home.

It was September when the school reopened, and at this time of year, some opera troupes who sang and ran the rivers and lakes went to the villages to perform, dancing knives and sticks and walking on stilts, ghost hand tricks, standing on the tip of knives, and swallowing iron nails and spitting fire.

On the day when the troupe came to Sanlitun, Xiao Wu secretly ran back to Sanlitun from the town, and climbed to the roof with Jiang Sheng and Zhao Dahai to watch the play.

When the head of the troupe took a towel and wanted to stop the bleeding for the little boy, the little boy covered his head and knelt down, not daring to cry.

Later, a little girl in the troupe volunteered to perform a rope walk, which won the applause of the villagers, and the class owner asked her to perform the bone shrinking skill, and let her drill through a small steel ring, which seemed impossible to drill through, but the little girl finally got through.

It's just that when he got to the last link, the steel ring was stuck in his arm, and at that time, the class owner stepped forward to help, and a woman grabbed him, and the class owner pushed the woman away, and the woman immediately covered her mouth and cried.

The class owner pinched the little girl's arm and twisted it hard, and a sound of bone staggering came out, the steel ring was drilled through, but the girl's arm drooped down, and the girl walked twice with the class owner after the performance, and then planted her head on the ground.

After that, there are some children to perform a variety of stunts, all successful, even the head of the class also performed in person, after the performance he hugged his fists and said: "At home by parents, outside by friends, today I have the fate to take the apprentices to our Qiantang Town Sanlitun and brothers and friends to get acquainted with a show, perform some skills to open everyone's eyes, you can see that I can also afford to look at me, now it is not easy to eat in a mess, tomorrow morning my apprentices will knock on the door of your congratulations, you food and clothing parents open the door and please reward a three cents and five cents, Give a bowl of food enough for us to hurry! ”

Except for the fainting little girl, all the other members of the troupe hugged their fists with the class owner and thanked the villagers.

The next day, when there was a knock on the door of my house, my mother scooped a large teapot of rice and sent it to the door, and I followed my mother out of the door, and saw that it was the little girl who was knocking on the door last night.

The girl is about the same age as me, and her eyebrows and eyes are a little like mine, but they are much thinner than me.

The girl kept saying happy words, and when her mother poured the white rice into the rice bag in her hand, she found that there was only half a bag of rice in it, and my family lived in the back of Sanlitun, and they asked for it from the head of the village to the back of the village.

The girl picked up the rice and was about to leave, Jiang Sheng also came out of the hall and called his mother over, the mother asked the little girl to wait at the door, the little girl nodded obediently, I looked at her arm and asked, "Aren't you in pain?" ”

The girl said, "It doesn't hurt." ”

I thought about it, took off the flower band from my hair, handed it to the little girl, and said, "I'll give it to you." ”

"Thank you." The girl thanked shyly and squeezed the flower band in her hand.

"Why don't I bring it for you?" As I spoke, I picked up a rubber band from her hand to help her tie up her messy hair, and when my arm accidentally touched her shoulder joint, the girl suddenly frowned and let out a soft sigh.

"It still hurts, how can it not hurt when my arm has fallen off?" I whispered.

The girl nodded, and suddenly burst into tears, but she cried without making a sound, and at this time her mother came out of the yard and saw the girl crying, so she asked, "What are you crying about, Jiangrong, are you bullying?" ”

"Nope." The girl said.

The mother took the girl's hand, put a piece of silver in her palm, and said, "My son Jiang Sheng gave it to you, so don't give it to the class master, and keep it for yourself to buy something delicious." ”

In the palm of the girl's hand was a silver piece of Yuan Datou, she was startled, and hurriedly wiped her tears to return Yuan Datou to her mother, saying, "You can't ask for this." ”

When the girl had finished speaking, she seemed to notice that her companion in the distance was watching this, so she ran to another house with a bag of rice and knocked on the door, she wiped away her tears, and begged for food with the same happy words in her mouth.

At that time, not only did I not understand why a child who ran the rivers and lakes would not want to see Yuan Datou, but even Jiang Sheng and his mother did not understand, many years later, when I encountered such a thing again, I remembered the events of that year, the reason why the girl did not want it was perhaps out of the protection of our family.

The programs performed by such a small-scale troupe are called village operas, and they eat hard food, and the ancestral shrine festivals and New Year's dramas held in various towns and villages every year are social dramas, and they are not allowed to appear on the stage. In Beiping, only those who sing Peking Opera can become masters.

Since Jiang Sheng went to the pear orchard with Mr. Zhang on March 18 to listen to the opera, he has not been there since.

Because of the war in Beiping, so Uncle Qin's hall is not at peace all day long, some people say that there was a shootout in the hall, Uncle Qin was shot, and since then it has been branded with the root of the disease, and some forces in Beiping City are secretly eyeing each other, and grab Uncle Qin's seat at any time.

Qin Changqing is versatile, and is often taken by Uncle Qin to meet celebrities from all walks of life, once when Qin Changqing visited Mr. Zhang at school, he also went to the door of the classroom to take a look at Jiang Sheng, and Jiang Sheng did not go out when he was in class.

Later, Jiang Sheng received a letter, and the words on the envelope were still written with a brush, neat and small, with beautiful handwriting, and the signature was Qin Changqing.

After Jiang Sheng finished reading the letter, he put the envelope in his textbook, and I quietly opened his textbook while he was playing football with Xiao Wu after class, but the letter inside was missing.

Every year on September 9 is the Nine Emperor Meeting of the Pear Garden, all the people who eat this line of food in the Pear Garden have to participate, by a boy dressed as the supreme Nine Emperor God, the band accompaniment, travel all over the city, all the children of the Pear Garden have to follow behind, along the way to worship the five families, worship Guanyin Bodhisattva, worship the ancestors.

At that time, there were still a few days before the Nine Emperor Society, and two old men suddenly came to the school, one of these two old men was the master of Liyuan, and the other was Mr. Zhang's long-time friend Wu Qingyun, and this Wu Qingyun was a well-known fortune teller in Qiantang Town.

At that time, a delicate-looking apprentice in the pear orchard suddenly became seriously ill, and the high fever did not go away for several days, and seeing that the Nine Emperor Meetings were about to arrive, he could only think of changing people and pretending to be the Nine Emperor Gods. The master of Liyuan found children from several villages in the town and did not find one, and Xiao Baylor in Beiping City would not deign to put on a costume, so he went to ask Mr. Wu, who was very accurate in fortune telling, to tell a hexagram.

Mr. Wu took the master of Liyuan to Qiantang Town Primary School to find Mr. Zhang, saying that this trip would not only find the person he was looking for, but also most likely find an embryo with horns.