Coming out of the township government, Wang Haozi thought of Tang Ao asking him to bring something to Tang Ning. Tangning has finished the second year of junior high school, and will immediately enter the third year of junior high school, and this year's summer vacation will be in early August, and Baishi Township Middle School will ask them to return to school to make up classes. In addition to attending classes during the day, students also have to study on their own in the morning and evening. I was woken up by the bell at half past six every morning, and then the school loudspeaker called out, and within 20 minutes I had to wash up and rush to the playground to do exercises. There is no hot water to wash your face, and no matter how cold it is, you can only use cold water. By the time the athletes' march was played on the radio, they had basically already arrived at the playground. Then I did radio gymnastics, went back to the classroom to read early after the exercises, and rushed to breakfast as soon as the bell rang after class. In the evening, I have to study at night.

There are frequent power outages in schools, and occasionally power outages are caused by naughty ghosts who deliberately plug wires into sockets, causing short-circuits in the wiring and causing power outages, and then gloating on the sidelines. When the power goes out, they light candles or kerosene lamps. Kerosene lamps can be made on their own. First, go to the garbage dump and pick up a glass bottle filled with medicine and drill a hole in the cap. I went to pick up a piece of toothpaste skin, squeezed out the remaining toothpaste inside, and then tore the toothpaste skin, wrapped it in a small wooden stick, and wrapped it into a cylinder. Then use a small bundle of thread to thread it into the cylinder as a wick. Pour kerosene into the bottle, and when the wick is full of kerosene, you can light the light. The flickering kerosene lights are a beautiful sight for the school's evening self-study, with honest students studying seriously under the lights, naughty students playing creatively under the lights, and tutors patrolling around the classrooms. Some naughty devils drill a hole in the table, put a scoop on the hole, and burn a fire under the scoop, and the candle melts inside the scoop. When the candle melts, the mischievous ghost sprinkles water into the wax oil, and a column of beautiful sparks emerges, causing the students in the front row to turn heads. The school is built halfway up the mountain, and on the hill is a pile of ancient tombs. It is said to be the place where prisoners were shot before liberation, and later a school was built. Every night, in the classroom halfway up the mountain, the light of kerosene lamps or candles flickered like ghost fires.

Downing only began to learn English in junior high school, and English is his weakness, and now he has to make up for it seriously. At that time, it was popular to annotate English with Chinese pronunciation. The teacher taught them "one", "two", "three", and they wrote the Chinese characters "bowl", "earth", and "water". Could it be that the bowl is filled with soil and water? Can you grow flowers? The teacher taught them to pronounce "Good morning", so they wrote the Chinese character "Gu De Touch Ning", and some annotated "hoop down to touch you", and their dialect "hoop down" means to force, must, and must. The English teacher didn't encourage them to pronounce Chinese characters in English, but everyone did, and he couldn't. Tang Ning learned a Chinese text, which is Wang Zhousheng's "This Is Not a Meteor", in which a child hopes that the black bear will die, and uses its skin to make a pair of bear skin gloves for Grandma, this text praises the child's heart is not a meteor, but a heart that is more sincere and pure than adults.

The first classical Chinese that Downing learned was Confucius's "Analects", the first of which was "to learn and learn from time to time, and not to say ......". At that time, learning the Analects felt very boring, but I didn't expect that later academic stars could tell the Analects very excitingly, like chicken soup for the soul. At that time, they said to the teacher: "'Say' is a typo, not a fake word, we write 'Yue' as 'say', which is a typo, why did Confucius write 'Yue' as 'say', which is a fake word?" The teacher didn't explain and scolded them, saying that they were deliberately making things difficult. It turns out that their typos are typos, and the typos of celebrities are fake words, which varies from person to person. However, an intellectual in the Qing Dynasty wrote "Your Majesty" as "Under the Whip", which is not a fake word, but a very serious typo, he committed the crime of bullying the monarch and was beheaded by the Yongzheng Emperor.

At that time, the students used to steam their rice, grabbed a few handfuls of rice in an aluminum lunch box, scooped it under running water, filled it with water, covered it with a lid, and some even put a few red roots in the lunch box. In a group of several people, the lunch box was neatly put into a large iron basket, and then the iron basket was put into a large cement urn, and the master used a big shovel to add coal to the stove hole in full swing, and burned the roaring fire to steam the rice. The rice is still quite fragrant, but what about the dishes? It's usually pickles brought from home. Wealthy students can also go to eat vegetables, which is the soup cooked by the school teacher from home, a few cents a piece, two spoons each, each spoon is half a dish, half soup, and a few diced meat floating here and there. Only those who have money can afford this tooth sacrifice, and those who have no money can only eat pickled radishes brought by home, and it would be very good if there were kohlrabi. Downing only saw tap water when he was in junior high school. In their village, they had to fetch water from the well, pour it into the tank, and scoop it up with a scoop of water to drink, and then the village installed a pumping machine to pump water from the well, but there was still no running water. When he was in junior high school, he saw the tap water thing, and when he twisted the faucet with his hand, the water actually flowed out, which was amazing!

When Wang Haozi found Tang Ning, he was having dinner. Tang Ning took a few mouthfuls of rice from the lunch box, spit it out, and said, "This is raw rice, I can't eat it!" ”

The work intensity of the school's room master is high, and occasionally there are some mistakes, and it is common for the rice to be not steamed. Students have long been accustomed to this situation, and when they encounter this situation, they either finish their sandwich meals, or they don't eat hungry, or they go out to eat in restaurants. Wang Haozi handed the things to Tang Ning and said, "Nephew, let's go out for dinner!" Eat your favorite braised beef noodles! ”

They came to a beef noodle restaurant, and the smell of beef made Downing's mouth water. At that time, the ingredients were still very clean, and the boss would not use water oil and gutter oil. A large bowl of golden noodles, a few squares of beef, floating butter red soup, chopped coriander, the three of them ate sweating profusely and relishing.

There was no wind outside the noodle shop, and no one was touching the bowls, when suddenly there was a noise of the bowls on the racks. Wang Haozi was shocked and screamed. In rural areas, it is said that before a person dies, he must collect his footprints, that is, the footprints left on the roads he walked before his death should be recovered. When collecting footprints, often the pots and pans at home have to ring non-stop for no reason. The owner of the noodle shop also heard the noise and was very frightened.

After a while, a tricycle came from outside the restaurant, and the middle-aged man driving the car was tired and sweaty, walked into the noodle restaurant and said to the boss: "Boss, we have a banquet there, and there are not enough chopsticks, so let's borrow some from you." ”

"No problem, it's all from the villagers, you can borrow as much as you want!" The boss opened the cupboard and said to the middle-aged man.

The middle-aged man borrowed about 100 pairs of dishes and chopsticks, moved them into the tricycle, and said to the boss: "I'll write you an IOU." ”

"No, no!" The boss said.

The middle-aged man drove a tricycle and disappeared into the night. After they finished eating the beef noodles, Hu Kehao went to pay the bill. The boss seemed to wake up from his sleep and said, "Did someone borrow dishes and chopsticks just now?" ”

"Yes, you agreed, and lent it to him personally!" Hu Kehao thought that the boss knew the man, and he was sighing at the boss's boldness, but he didn't know that the boss asked such a strange question.

"But I don't know him, why did I lend him the dishes and chopsticks?" The boss said.

"Then hurry up and get the dishes and chopsticks back!" Wang Haozi saw the boss's reluctance to the dishes and chopsticks, or his slamming the door.

"The chopsticks themselves are not valuable, I just feel that this thing is weird!" The boss said.

"That middle-aged man seems to be heading in the direction of Swallow Kouya, we are going home and are about to pass by there, let's go and help you investigate!" Hu Kehao said. Now there is no shuttle, and Hu Kehao and Wang Haozi have to walk home. They took the path and walked for more than half an hour until they came to Tunkouya.