The only thing that makes Zhao Xiang feel relieved is that the pump unit has a lot of pumping power, and the reservoir under the river embankment is quickly full, and the irrigation channel continuously delivers water to every paddy field.

After two days of soaking in the field, the transplanting began. This is an extremely important task, for which all work has to be stopped to make way for rice planting.

In the two adjacent paddy fields, on one side are 20 rice transplanters from Wutian Village and Liushui North Branch, and on the other side are 13-year-old Li Qijin and a rice transplanter, and he is equipped with two young men.

The seedlings grown in the rice fields are transported to the edge of the paddy fields by groups of women and children.

Zhao Xiang stood on the ridge and shouted: "This is the first Xiaozhishan Cooperative Rice Transplanting Competition, you can see that the team on my left is a manual team composed of 20 rice transplanting elites of the cooperative, and on my right is a mechanical team composed of three villagers and rice transplanters...... Both sides prepare ...... Begin! After speaking, he took a long whistle and blew it, and the sound pierced the crowd standing next to him to cover their ears.

As soon as the whistle sounded, the artificial team rushed to the ridge en masse, and twenty people kept throwing the one-foot-high seedlings on the shore into the field. On the other side, Li Qijin of the mechanical team sat on the rice transplanting machine and did not move, the two assistants walked to the shore slowly, and the two of them lifted a large board of seedlings together and walked slowly behind the machine. Twenty people lined up in a row, which exactly divided the paddy field into twenty "operation areas". They retreated steadily, and with each step back, their hands followed with a rhythmic upward movement, and one by one the seedlings were inserted into the mud.

Two assistants of the mechanical team are still loading the seedling boards.

Zhang Wen was very anxious, because Li Qijin was his little friend. He shouted: "Seven catties, you came down to help, you are embarrassed to sit on it and not move!" ”

Zhao Di looked at Zhao Xiang, Zhao Xiang was watching the game intently, so as soon as she stretched out her hand, she knocked hard on her younger brother's head, so painful that Zhang Wen wanted to open his mouth to scold, turned his head to look, and saw that it was his sister who gestured her fist to herself, and quickly covered her head and ran to the other side.

"Black Bull, do you think this machine can win?" Xu Sande looked at the black bull worriedly.

Hei Niu smiled and said, "Why can't you win?" If Mr. Zhao can take it out and compare, he must have a chance of winning. ”

"Although the iron ox ploughs the ground well, I have calculated that it can only be worth the speed of ten oxen, and the rice transplanter can be faster than twenty people? You see it's a foot wide behind its butt * thighs, and it has to go back and forth at least four or five times to fill the ground, and twenty people over there will be it all over again, I think it's quite hanging. ”

Hei Niu glanced at Xu Sande: "What do you know, just look at it." ”

Next to them was He Defang, who didn't say a word, because of nervousness, the corners of the clothes he was holding in his hands were already soaked.

If you want to say who is more nervous in this game, there is no one but him. Zhao Xiang is a staunch mechanic, and after seeing modern technologies such as the iron ox ploughing the land, the strange hand demolishing the house, the chainsaw sawing stone, the chainsaw sawing wood, and the pumping machine pumping water, he did not feel that the future would be better, but he was worried - he did not know what the machine would do if the machine did all the work that people had to do.

In the past, he had always been very glad that although he only had one son, the black bull could work alone to support three strong laborers, but now? A small machine can hold more than 20 people.

He knew the result, but deep down he wanted the team to win...... There are many people who think the same way as him, in fact, the twenty rice transplanters firmly believe that no matter how good the machine is, it can't compare to manpower, and Chen Hanlin is among them.

The assistant of the mechanical team finally installed the seedling board, and Li Qijin started the machine.

Zhao Xiang didn't look any further, turned around and left. Zhao Di followed behind and asked, "Sir, why don't you look at it?" ”

Zhao Xiang said with a smile: "What's so good about a game where the outcome has been decided, why don't you watch it?" ”

"I'll go with my husband and see what he needs me to do."

Seeing that Zhao Di was barefoot, her trousers were rolled up in half, and a pair of cloth shoes were in her hands, she asked, "Why did you take off your shoes again?" ”

"I just saw that everyone was barefoot, and I thought I was going to go down to the field to help and take it off, so I put it on......"

"Forget it, let's wait until the village walks that stone road. It's hard for you to force you to wear shoes every day. ”

"No, Aunt He said, rich and noble people can wear shoes every day, and I know that Mr. is good to me."

Zhao Xiang shook his head with a smile, walked in front with his hands behind his back, and entered Wutian Village all the way.

Wutian Village is built under a huge forest, the trees are too tall and dense, and there are some vines and plants growing on them, so even if the sun is scorching outside, the light inside the village is not very good.

I have never carefully observed this village before, because there are always people in the village, and when I see Zhao Xiang, I will always treat him as a monster, and the hospitable women always come up to chat a few words, such as whether the baby in the family can also go to school, for example, whether the men in the family can also go to work, and whether a woman like herself can also find a job......

The house is very simple, the walls made of adobe bricks, the soil used should be the most ordinary soil outside the village, and the straw is added to the mold to shoot and dry, and after a few years of use, it peels off one by one, revealing the straw inside.

The straw roof is similar to the cowshed that Zhao Xiang saw when he was a child. As soon as the rainy season arrives, it will start to leak after being soaked in water for a long time. So in order to prevent the rain from penetrating, each house would constantly add new straw to it, so that every year, the roof became surprisingly large.

If there is anything good about this village, it is that it is under a big tree, and no matter how hot the wind blows in on a hot day, it is all cool.

Now the whole village is empty, because everyone has come to see the rice planting.

"Zhao Di, which one is your house, I haven't asked you so many times."

Zhao Di pointed to a very unremarkable house not far away.

Zhao Xiang nodded, walked to the front of the room, and found a stone to sit down. He wasn't going to go in - a village where the whole village was dressed in rags and barefoot, and you could hope for anything different in the house? Zhao Xiang has seen too many different families since he was a child, so poor that he has to adapt to a house that takes a long time to see things when he enters the house, and he dug a swimming pool in the living room when he is rich, and the house in front of him does not have any attraction to him.

The houses in the whole village are scattered and scattered, not too close or far apart, but not a single family is fenced.

There was a time when the naïve and wasteful Zhao Xiang couldn't figure out why those people with dilapidated houses and poor lives refused to spend some effort to fix them, such as nailing a few wooden boards and painting some paint, which actually didn't cost much, but it could greatly improve the living environment.

It was only later that he realized that survival and life were two different things. Many people can proudly post their snail house renovation on the Internet, which can only show that their survival is not threatened.

The villagers of Wutian focus most of their energy on the farmland every year, but as a result, they harvest very little grain each year, and they cannot even eat the next harvest. So they put what little energy they had left into collecting wild animals, hunting, fishing, and gathering fruit and food...... Can you expect them to build a fairytale cabin for themselves and their families with the wood that can be found everywhere?

He Defang walked from afar, with a little loss on his face, he bowed down to greet Zhao Xiang, and sat down in front of Zhao Xiang.

"Mr. Zhao, the old man has a sentence that he has been holding back for a long time, and he has always wanted to ask Mr."