On a winter afternoon, in the warm sun, Taigong began to talk to Haoyu about the most words in his life, and Haoyu also knew that Taigong's nickname when he was a child was Sigou, his big name was Luo Zhicai, his nickname was Sangou, and his big name was Luo Zhicheng......

In the twenty-third year of the Republic of China (1934), in the summer of that year, Sangou and his classmates Wang Mingcheng and Zheng Shoucheng went home from Xishan School in the county town during the summer vacation.

Every summer vacation is the time of double robbery, Sangou is already seventeen years old, and the little adults are considered laborers, and they have to help adults do farm work together, especially the double robbery of harvesting and grabbing seeds.

In July, the hottest sun of the year appeared at this time, and the rice was yellow, and the handfuls were heavy, so that the rice stalks bent over.

In addition to a few acres of his own land, Sangou's family also rented several acres of land from Wang Mingcheng's family, half of which is a homesteader and half of a tenant, he is the eldest in the family, and a younger brother Sigou is only twelve years old, and his sister Chunhua is ten years old.

Why is it called Sangou, because he has two brothers in front of him, called Big Dog, Ergou, and they all died, to he is Sangou, Sangou's mother is afraid that the child's nickname is Dog, and persuade Sangou Dad to take another nickname, Sangou Dad insisted, it's not three, or Sangou, as a result, Sangou's life is hard, and finally brought it up, and then there are four dogs and Chunhua.

Sangou mom has to cook at home, feed pigs, maintain housework, etc., Sangou's grandparents are relatively old, can only be a helper, these several acres of land, only rely on Sangou's father alone, so as soon as the school holidays, Sangou rushed home to help his father do farm work.

Although Wang Mingcheng's family is a large family, it is half a homesteader and half a landlord, and they also have to work in the fields by themselves, but they don't need to work so hard.

The relationship between the two families of Luo Wang has to start from the grandfather of the three dogs, Wang Mingcheng's grandfather was a man in the former Qing Dynasty, an official in the field, a righteous person, incompatible with officialdom, and could only be pressed in the Qingshui Yamen to do a false job, and spend his days in vain.

Later, he really couldn't get used to the decay of the court, so the grandfather of the Wang family resigned and returned to the city, and lived a worldly life of picking chrysanthemums in the east fence and riding cranes to plough and study.

Their hometown, that is, Guangfeng County under the Xinzhou Prefecture of Jiangxi Province (now Guangfeng District of Shangrao City, Jiangxi), at the junction of Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces, some people stood on the boundary stone of Fengling Pass in the twenty-eight capitals at the junction of the three provinces and turned around to urinate in a circle, laughing and calling one pee and three provinces.

Sangou's house is not in the county seat, there are fifty miles away from the county seat, in Luocheng in the countryside, here is surrounded by high mountains, relying on the northeast section of Wuyi Mountain, forming a basin, only one road along the river out of the basin, because the shape is like a gong, so it is called the Luocheng area, and later called Luocheng.

There are dozens of villages in Luocheng, the place where the Sangou family is located is called Qidu, and the village where it is located is called Wacun, and the hundreds of households are mainly surnamed Wang and Chai, and the surname of the Sangou family is Luo, which belongs to the small surname of the foreigner.

Grandpa Sangou was originally Grandpa Mingcheng's entourage, learned some kung fu, and has been following Grandpa Mingcheng's side, and later returned to his hometown together.

Later, after having a three-dog father and a few uncles, there were more mouths to eat, and there were not enough fields, so they rented land from the Wang family to plant, obviously rented, and secretly half rented and half sent.

In those days, rice was not planted like now, there were the world's best hybrid rice seeds, a large number of reservoirs and canals to ensure sufficient water, industrial fertilizers such as chemical fertilizer urea, and chemical pesticides such as dichlorvos hexahexa herbicide (of course, most of these are now banned).

At that time, most of the rice planting still belonged to the primitive operation of slash-and-burn farming, relying on heaven and manpower; Rice seeds are made of rice from the previous season, and the fertilizer is generally their own people, pigs, cows, and sheep dung, etc., and weeding relies on manpower, that is, the hoe in the "hoeing day at noon".

In an ideal state, under the good wind and rain, the annual output of one mu of paddy field in the south of the Yangtze River (two seasons of early rice and late rice) is about 700 catties, excluding the seeds (one-fifth) of about 35 catties, and the annual output of one mu of paddy field is about 665 catties.

100 catties of rice after the normal is 70 catties, 665 catties of grain can get 465 catties of rice after peeling, the market price at that time is about 10 yuan per stone (200 catties) (silver dollars), the total per catty of rice is 0.05 yuan, 465 catties of rice is almost 23 yuan.

Note: Stone (dan fourth tone), a stone is ten buckets, a bucket is ten liters, a liter of water is about 1 kilogram of 2 pounds, millet is light, 1.25 pounds of millet, a bucket of ten liters is 12.5 pounds, a stone and ten buckets are 125 pounds, but in the Republic of China is 16 two scales, a liter of 1.25 pounds is converted into 2 catties, a bucket of ten liters is 20 catties, a stone and ten buckets are 200 catties.

The annual rent of one mu of paddy field is about 10 yuan (divided according to the quality of the soil), but the land mainly pays taxes to the state, including the positive tax per mu of land, the provincial and county tax, the additional tax, the dredging fund, the road construction fund, the public security fee, the donation per mu of general education, the donation per mu of local assistance, the funds of the defense regiment and the donation per mu of agricultural improvement, and the monetary burden per mu is about 6 yuan per mu. That is, the landlord earns about 4 yuan per mu of land.

What Grandpa Mingcheng said to Grandpa Sangou is that the field will be rented to you to plant, and you will be responsible for paying taxes. That is, it is enough to pay about 6 yuan per mu tax, so that you can earn about 16 yuan if you don't eat grain per mu.

Of course, these are all calculated under the ideal state of wind and rain, but at that time, how can there be smooth wind and rain every year? Those who are unable to move from floods, droughts, and insect disasters will basically earn nothing after a year of hard work, except for eating with their mouths, leaving seeds, and household subsidies.

Other tenants are even more difficult, when the green and yellow are not harvested, they have to find some coarse grains, sweet potatoes and so on to make supplementary food, encountering a natural and man-made disaster, less harvest, can only owe rent, sell houses, sell land, and even sell children and daughters.

It's okay to rent the fields in the clan, they are all from the villagers, and it is really difficult, and some landlords will appropriately reduce or reduce some rents to survive the unfavorable years together.

Those foreign tenants are not so good, there is really no way, they can only resist not paying rent, but the landlord can't resist the government rent and not pay taxes, and in the end there is no choice but to be rude.

Therefore, the landlords, rich families and the clansmen in the village will spend money to organize the militia to do these public security things, and later when the bandits and soldiers are serious, the greater role of the militia is to protect the security of the clan, and the large organizations buy their own guns and recruit soldiers and horses, and make high-walled watchtowers.

The Three Dogs House and the Ming Cheng House are two next door, the Ming Cheng House is a brick wall house, similar to a courtyard house surrounded by a high wall, turning the gable outside the gate, and after crossing the high stone threshold, there is an entrance wall (carved stone screen).

There is a large patio after going around the left and right, the patio of the square plays the role of lighting and dredging the water, there are water outlets at the four corners of the patio, no matter how heavy the rain has not heard of flooding out of the water, there is a tall stone carved fish tank in the middle of the patio, which stores water all the year round, in order to take water to put out the fire when the house is on fire.

Across the patio is the hall, in the center of the table is placed the table of eight immortals, a long wooden stool is placed around the table, behind the table is a half-height long incense table (also called the incense table), in the middle of the position is placed incense burner, important festivals or sacrifice days to worship the ancestral shrine on the wall of the central hall behind the incense.

There is an offering card on the wall of the middle hall, and three lines of words are written vertically from left to right: "Wangmen Shoushi Zongqin, Zhonggong Fude Land, Qingtang Lu Position Gaozhen", the first word is the family name, if the surname is Chen in another family, it is "Chenmen Shoushi Zongqin", the last two lines of words remain unchanged.

Past the doors on both sides of the high wall of the nave, you will arrive at the back wing, which is usually the kitchen. The wings on the left and right sides of the patio live in Mingcheng's uncles' house, Mingcheng's father is the eldest son, so he lives in the right-hand side of the middle hall, and the left-hand side is the big side, so the left-hand side of the wing room is Mingcheng's grandparents live.

When Grandpa Sangou came back with Grandpa Mingcheng, there was no ancestral house, so Grandpa Mingcheng assigned the open space on the right hand side outside the brick wall house of his ancestral house to Grandpa Sangou, and also helped build a small three-frame house (three rooms, two bedrooms on the left and right, the middle hall and the kitchen behind the hall), and a straw shed was built behind the house, which was divided into pigsty, sheepfold, and thatched house (toilet).

In this way, Grandpa Sangou has a house and a field, and he has a place to settle down, and the Sangou family has multiplied in this way. It's just a foreigner with a foreign surname, and it's quite difficult to survive in the village, but fortunately, with Mingcheng's grandfather's family protecting him, it can be regarded as safe and sound for decades.

In this way, the two families are very close, it is normal for children to go to the house to play, Sangou and Mingcheng were born in the same year, one year older than Mingcheng's sister Mingyue, so the three children are inseparable every day.