Most of the children who grew up in the city have never seen sour dates. It is a finger-sized wild fruit with a sweet and sour taste, which is very common in the mountains, and my hometown is rich in sour dates.

After the white dew season, that is, when the dates become sweet, we must not wait for them to grow red. After school, a few of our friends will be like monkeys out of the cage, a few steps up the mountain. Yes, not out of the cage birds, we are not so elegant...... Why is there such urgency? It's like a snack shop is open, and the snacks inside are free, do you think it's in a hurry?

According to my careful observation and research, the quality of the sour jujube in this mountain can be roughly divided into several grades, one is a small green skin, oval shape, the epidermis is dull and green, the core is large and the flesh is thin, the flesh is sticky, and the taste is very bad.

There is also a kind of big wood jujube that is slightly better, with slightly more flesh and a slightly sweet taste, which can be said to be better than nothing!

If you're lucky, you might find an abacus bead, which is oblate and round, as if it were the shape of an abacus bead. The core is thick and the meat is crisp, the taste is very sweet, similar to the taste of winter dates, and there is a slight sour taste, which is already very rare.

And the treasure in the jujube is the small white jade, its skin is bright, the skin color is white, slightly smaller than the abacus beads, in addition to having all the advantages of the abacus beads, its ratio of sweetness and sour is the best, the sweet and sour taste is full, the white fruit in the cluster of green leaves is translucent by the sun, such as pearls like jade. Any rare species will be very difficult to find, and small white jade is no exception, every time you go up the mountain, if you can pick a few grains, it seems to be the greatest glory of the gatherer.

Since the little white jade is hard to find, then the abacus beads have naturally become the main target of our competition, sometimes it happens to grow on the grave, desire will also overcome fear, we do not hesitate to climb the grave to fight, at that time the bear child, it can be said that the bear has to cry ghosts!

When picking dates, be careful not to be pricked by dense jujube thorns, and at the same time be wary of those fleshy tiger insects dressed in green protective color, as well as caterpillars with black and orange stripes, as well as those busy bees and wasps, if accidentally stung by the long hair of the caterpillar, the severe pain will last for several days, and the pain will be doubled when it comes to cold water!

Sometimes we are unfortunate enough to be stung, and we will retaliate against those tiger bugs and caterpillars by inflicting capital punishment on them. Buried alive, beheaded, flooded, burned, focused with a magnifying glass, and so on. If we were to make a video of what we were doing at the time, I think we would definitely need to add this sentence at the beginning of the film: The following may cause discomfort, please be careful! In the words of today's self-media, it can really be described as "the distortion of human nature and the degradation of morality"!

Finally escaped the enemies on the mountain, picked dates and went down the mountain, and there was a group of bandits waiting to rob under the mountain. How can we give up the fruits of our labor, unwilling to give up their labor, waiting for our army of gatherers to rob us when they pass by? When I was in the mountains, I had already thought of a countermeasure, stuffed my vest into my pants to form a large pocket, and threw all the good dates I picked into this big one, and then went down the mountain to pick a few handfuls of small green skins with the worst taste but the highest yield, and put them in my coat pocket. When I came back and met the bandits, I needed to do a full set of acts, covered my pockets and resisted desperately, and finally silently sent them home with a contemptuous look in their cheers.

In recent years, when I returned to my hometown, I also went to the mountains to revisit my hometown, and found that no one picked the sour dates all over the mountain. Those abacus beads that we fought for also seemed to have lost their pride back then, and grew alone with the little green skins. Perhaps compared to the video games and delicious snacks at home, the sour dates on the mountain are really lacking in attractiveness now, and no parents dare to let their children run up the mountain on their own. It seems that every good memory in life is always indispensable to a special time and place.