This winter, the ground froze and cracked, the north wind blew like a knife, and snow flew all over the sky.

At the beginning of the snowfall, the sun in winter seems to have narrowed the distance between it and people, and it is extraordinarily clear and dazzling. But the temperature of the sun seems to have been cooled by ice and snow, and it can't get hot.

Located in the southwest mountainous area, there is a township named Qilong Town, the villages in the town are all named after the surname, and the fields and mountains of the township are covered by snow.

The leaves are no exception, the cold air paralyzes them, but everything is in place, only the winter wind is owed. A gust of wind blew, and the leaves came alive. Some leaves could not withstand the sting of the cold wind, and they staggered and fell from the trees, sleeping forever.

The alleys between the villages of Zhangjia Village, Qilong Town have long been covered by ice and snow, and there is no footsteps of a person in the fields and mountains, only wisps of burning smoke rising from the chimney, Zhang Youcai's family squatted around the stove and sat beside the stove, the stove is not burning coal but firewood picked up in the forest, so it also burns faster, and when the firewood burns out, only the bones of the firewood are left, which the locals call "fire".

In the cold weather, there was a biting cold wind, constantly whistling, and the cold wind blew in through the cracks in the rotten wooden door of Zhang Youcai's house, making Zhang Youcai's son Zhang Fugui shiver, and from time to time there was a slight trembling sound from his teeth.

After the end of the war, the forty-year-old Zhang Youcai returned to his hometown to live the life of his wife and children on the hot kang, but the good times did not last long, Zhang Youcai got married for a few years, and his daughter-in-law died because of the birth of his son Zhang Fugui in childbirth, and now his son Zhang Fugui is in his early twenties and has grown into a young man.

In the countryside, the parents of ordinary children at the age of sixteen or seventeen began to help their children find a family affair, but Zhang Youcai's son, Zhang Fugui, who was almost twenty-five years old, did not marry.

Seventeen or eighteen-year-old girls in the village can find a good home because they dislike the poor in the village, or marry away from home or marry in the town, and secondly, they can also add some rice and grain to the family, so that the situation of their parents and younger siblings at home is better.

Speaking of the origin of Zhang Youcai's son Zhang Fugui's name, I don't think it's a little funny, Zhang Youcai has been fighting horses for half his life, and he has fought countless battles, but he doesn't know a single word, but he always wants to live a good life and get rich.

Therefore, when Zhang Youcai was pregnant with his daughter-in-law, he pointed to his daughter-in-law's stomach and said with a smile, regardless of whether he was a man or a woman, and said: I am an old person, and I always want to be rich and noble all my life, so it is better to name the child "Dafu" or "Dagui", but he always feels that something is inappropriate.

"Rich... Rich... Rich......... Zhang Youcai looked at the child in his daughter-in-law's belly muttering to himself and said with a smile.

After Zhang Fugui was born, his mother died because of his dystocia, and the people in the village always said that he was hard, and he killed his mother as soon as he was born.

Since the death of Zhang Youcai's daughter-in-law, he will never marry, alone with hard work to pull the child rich and rich, when Fugui was small, he was a father and a mother, a handful of and urine to change the diaper for Fugui, and then clean the diaper with hot water and dry aside, and then change it when his son needs it, although life is very hard and tiring, but after all, it is for his son, so he never complained, and spent so many years happily.

But now that the rich and noble have grown up, Zhang Youcai is also anxious, after all, the villagers always have a deep-rooted thought, that is, "there are three unfilial pieties, and no queen is great".

But over the years, he has worked tirelessly in his family day and night, and the savings he saved are just enough to pull the rich and noble, and when he was young, because the family was poor, he did not receive much education, and when he grew up, he just knew his name completely, so the rich and noble were not as rich and noble as he expected, and he was just an honest and responsible farmer.

Originally, ordinary children's children would always be taken by their parents to work in the fields when they were seven or eight years old, so as to earn some centimeters, but Zhang Youcai didn't want his children to suffer at the age of seven or eight, so he always took on the burden of the family alone, but Fugui was more sensible and capable since he was a child, which should be what the villagers said, "The children of poor families should be in charge early!" ”

At the beginning of the first few times, Fugui didn't know how to make a fire to cook, so he picked up the mattress or shoes and socks around him and put them in the fire, and then filled the pot with a bowl of rice and poured water, and the cooked rice was either too hard or too thin.

Every time Zhang Youcai came back from the field and saw his son Fugui lighting the mattress and shoes and socks for cooking, he was always angry and wanted to laugh, and he couldn't bear to beat Fugui, after all, Fugui was obtained in his old age, so his daughter-in-law died in childbirth, and he scolded Fugui angrily when he was angry, but Fugui stood aside and laughed happily when he saw him scolding himself, so he always scolded a few words and stopped scolding him.

Time is more than 20 years, Zhang Youcai is also old, his sideburns have grown a little gray hair, he is already a person who is half buried in the loess, and there is nothing to think about for himself, but thinking about his son Fugui is almost twenty-five years old but has never been able to find a daughter-in-law, he feels anxious for the child day and night.

After the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the common people were also in charge of their own affairs, and the days were prosperous at the beginning, but since the communization movement, Zhang Youcai could only earn six or seven centimeters by working in the fields all day and night, which just pulled the wealth and wealth.

I thought that as long as I was willing to work hard and work hard, I would definitely let Fugui live a good life, but I always worked hard day and night, and I could only solve Fugui and my own rations, and I had no savings at all.

Although Fugui had learned to skillfully understand the care and planting of crops by the time he was thirteen or fourteen years old, and he could also rely on his physical strength to "work" in the fields to earn some centimeters, no matter how hard he worked, he could earn rations and no savings.

Several years of drought in Qilong Town have made the crops even worse, so Zhangjia Village is getting poorer and poorer, and the poor can't even afford a decent piece of clothing.

If it is cold, the cotton in the quilt will be taken out and stuffed into Zhang Fugui's clothes, and then sewn and mend, and when it is hot, the cotton in the clothes will be taken out and then sewn and mended.

In this way, there is a saying in the township: sewing for three years, mending for three years, and sewing for another three years.

It is because the village is poor, the girls in the village are not willing to live such a hard life anymore, they all want to find a good family, and they do not seek to be rich and expensive, as long as they can eat enough, and the girls outside the village will not marry into the village because they hear that the village is poor, and say some exaggerated, even the stray wild dogs pass by the village without looking at it and go to other villages with their tails between their legs.

This winter was particularly cold, so cold that the family either lay on the bed and shivered to keep each other warm, or burned firewood around the stove, not because there was no coal, but because the village was so poor that they could not afford even the most basic coal, and there was no meal to eat.

As soon as the croppers in the fields saw the deep snow in the fields, they knew that there should be a good harvest this year, even if they were cold, they were happy, and they only hoped that there would be a good harvest and their centimeters would be more.

The spring breeze in March, fluttering, the snow in the fields has already turned into water and soaked into the land, moistening the dry earth, a gust of spring breeze blows, peach blossoms are all over the mountains, red and white, competing to open, all kinds of, pulling the long voice is called extraordinarily beautiful.

Spring is coming! What greeted the girl in this spring was a few bursts of drizzle, and the comfortable spring breeze blew the thousands of willow silks that bloomed with green leaves.

Delicate grasses, fresh leaves, and colorful flowers all gather like a market to form a dazzling spring. The little swallow is no exception, panting and flying from the north, adding a lot of life to the brilliance of spring.

As the saying goes: the plan of the year lies in the spring. Zhang Youcai led his son Zhang Fugui to follow the production team and hurriedly came to the field to plow, so as not to delay the sowing season.

For the croppers, everyone knows that this is a good season for sowing, it stands to reason that this year's autumn harvest will definitely have a bumper harvest, but after all, it is to earn centimeters to eat, so it is inevitable that some people in the production team will steal and play tricks, deliberately pretending to be very busy, anyway, no matter how to do the centimeters are the same, and there is no one more and who is less, so there is no enthusiasm, and the sowing that can be completed in three days is dragged to seven or eight days, the purpose is to earn a few more centimeters.

Zhang Youcai is older, and the crop work is not as capable as that of young people, but he is not cheating and cheating, he is still diligent, his son Zhang Fugui has been influenced by his father Zhang Youcai's diligence since he was a child, and he is also an honest young man, but unfortunately he has not found a daughter-in-law who knows cold and hot, which is also Zhang Youcai's heart disease.

Of course, it is not unreasonable for those croppers who rely on "going to work" to earn centimeters to eat, because they always see the cadres and militia of the major units, the accountants, safekeepers, Red Five, military martyrs, and workers' families. They generally do not participate in the labour force.

At the end of the year, when the team counts the work centimeters, the team accountant adds the work points earned by the members to the actual work, divides them according to the number of laborers to find the average score, and then supplements the above-mentioned personnel according to the score of the high average work score, which was called "subsidy work points" at that time. The number of people in individual teams who eat subsidized work is more than the number of members who actually work, so they can't improve their enthusiasm for production, and they can drag on for a day, a bit like being a monk for a day and hitting the clock for a day.

Labor is the lifeblood of the members, condensing everyone's sweat and even tears. When the family is in a large collective, there are as few as three or four people, and as many as seven or eight or even a dozen people, relying on the little work earned in the production team to support the family. Children's schooling, clothing and shopping, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar and other expenses are all included, so the task completed in three days can be delayed for a few more days.