Although Qi Lao Er was scared of my great-grandfather, he was not a good stubble, his neck was crooked, and he took a sip of wine and shouted: "What will happen after half a year?" ”

Great-grandfather didn't want to conflict with him, so Haosheng persuaded: "It's okay, there are still a few empty houses in the east of the village, I advise you to move there as soon as possible." ”

The second Qi usually felt that he was in the village, but he was afraid of the old Xia family, so he held his breath for a long time, and shouted with a red face: "Just say what's the matter, didn't you say that he would be a corpse after living in it for three days!" Didn't you say I couldn't survive half a year? Let's make a bet, do you dare? If I get through, Old Man Xia, when the time comes, you have to put on the eight meat and eight vegetables, personally invite me to sit down above your house, and call me Qi Ye again! ”

Great-grandfather got up and said with a smile: "Half a year later, I will personally collect your body!" ”

Qi Lao Er is a butcher, and the butchers in the countryside will only be busy before the Chinese New Year, and pigs are very valuable assets for farmers at that time. About half a month before the Chinese New Year, people will kill pigs from house to house, keep the meat for the New Year, and then choose some of them to sell in the town in exchange for some New Year's clothes.

Pig killers have some status in the countryside, in the past, in the countryside to kill pigs to invite guests to dinner, we call it pig killing wine. Whoever kills a pig will invite the next-door neighbor to have a meal with them, provided that others will call you for help, catch pig's trotters, and scald pig's hair. After finishing the work, make a big pot of braised pork and pig in the water in the evening, eat meat and wine.

In the era of material scarcity, pig killing wine was satisfying, and it was relatively rich all year round that day and the New Year. Rural people do manual work, and there is no ambiguity when they eat meat, and the pig killer will sit on the guest table for this wine, which is China's respect for handicraftsmen since ancient times.

After drinking and eating, Qi Lao Er pinned a short knife to his waist, his mouth was full of greasy, and he walked back to the mansion with an extra pound of pork liver and some minced meat given by the master's family and humming a small song with satisfaction, and the children in the family were counting on the little things in his hand.

It's a pity that this scene only appears in the New Year's season, and it is rare to see the first half of the meat in Qi's second family, and it is as fair as the poor are poor at that time.

After that quarrel with his great-grandfather, the hooligans and villains of the Xia family often walked in front of the Qi family's compound with long sticks and short knives, and the arrogance of the second Qi family was also collected a lot, at least in Hongcun, in that era, the Xia family's power was a hegemon. Only the two brothers surnamed Li who came at that time, the eldest was also very strong, and the second was shrewd, but they only didn't provoke the people of the Lao Xia family, and then the boss of the Li family disappeared, and I heard that he was going to be a soldier, and then I heard that the second master Li said that his brother was fighting outside, and he was about dead.

In March and April, when the greens and yellows are at its lowest, the vegetables in the garden are still green, and the grain in the field has only been sown for a short time. At that time, in addition to working in the fields and going home to wash and cook, rural women also had one more job, that is, picking pigweed.

Qi Lao's second family also raises pigs, and there are two heads, one large and one small. The big ones are kept until the autumn and sold for money, and the small ones are kept until the New Year.

After a busy day's work, it is very tiring for the peasant woman to go to the pigweed again, if you want to make it convenient, then choose the nearest one. White radishes are grown in the vegetable garden, and the leaves of white radishes are long and numerous, making them an excellent ingredient for pigs.

However, radish leaves also have a fatal place for pigs, that is, the chlorophyll content is too high, and if it is not cooked thoroughly, pigs eat it, and it is easy to be poisoned and die, which is also the most common way of death for rural pigs.

The young piglets of Qi's second family were bought at the beginning of spring, but twenty or thirty catties, and soon after eating the radish vegetables fed by his daughter-in-law at noon, they foamed at the mouth, their limbs twitched, and they died before they could survive at night.

This pig died of illness, Qi Lao Er was so angry that he gave his daughter-in-law a good meal, and livestock belonged to the fixed assets of farmers in that era, which were very precious. Dead pig, Qi Lao Er is reluctant to bury it, the weather in April is not cold, and it is a little hot. The refrigerator was a rare item that could not be found in the countryside at all, and it was out of season to make bacon. And this sick pig, even if it is bloodletted quickly, the taste cannot catch up with fresh pork.

Qi Lao Er was originally a pig killer, and he took the guy to divide it by two, shaved off the internal organs and got a small hundred catties of white meat. In the evening, I went to the commissary to get a pound of liquor, and let my daughter-in-law fry the meat, and ate it while hurting my heart. After three rounds of drinking, I came up with a way to break some pine branches and come back, and set them up in the yard to make bacon.

After the meat is smoked on pine branches, the fat is forced out and the moisture is dried, which can be used as a way to retain it for a long time.

The place to smoke meat is to choose the yard, there is a hexagonal ancient well in the middle of the courtyard of this mansion, which was originally sealed when Qi Lao Er moved in. The seal is made of a pile of brown clay, which is somewhat similar to the yellow clay of the wine jar.

At that time, the water source in the village mainly relied on manpower to carry water from the river, which was time-consuming and laborious. The water in the well is very sweet, but since then, Qi Lao's family has always felt that the temperature of their house is a few degrees lower than that of others.

The bacon was on the edge of the well, and the meat was divided into pounds and put on a shelf, and the pine resin was lit underneath. When the smell of meat gradually replaced the smoky taste, the moon had climbed half up the mountain.

Qi Lao Er looked at the pile of charcoal that was still burning, and thought to himself, just let it go, and when Ming'er got up early in the morning, the meat would be ready, so he picked up the wine jug on the ground and poured it and staggered back to the house.

It's a pity that after Qi Lao Er walked in, he never came out again.

In the second half of the night, the yard was blazing, and the cries of women and children could not stop the fire from raging. The house with a high horse-head wall was left with only half of the collapsed wall overnight.

At that time, the best tool for putting out fires was only buckets, and the men, women, and children of a village were added together, and the fire was finally completely extinguished at dawn. A few bold men went in to take a look, Qi Lao's daughter-in-law and three children were huddled in the four corners of the room, their bodies were burned, and the big guys couldn't take care of resting, so they turned the room back and forth, but Qi Lao Er was nowhere to be seen.

Some people say that Qi Lao Er was burned to ashes in that fire and disappeared directly. No matter how much people burn, there is always a little bit of bones left, and then the house was demolished, and then the place was built into a school, and a lot of things happened, of course, that's a story for later.

When my father wanted to build a house, the most difficult thing was bricks, and the mountains in the village were rich in loess and were extremely sticky. Mixing straw into it, making molds out of wood, drying it and then putting it in a cave to bake is the main way to get bricks.

This is a chore, he has to work in the field during the day, and he has to burn bricks at night, and his father has been busy alone for more than half a month, but he has only burned a cart, and some people suggested why he didn't go and move back the green bricks that were burned down in Qi's house.

When my father thought about it, this was also an idea, in fact, there were many people who wanted to beat those bricks, but they were all suffering from taboos that the house was destroyed by fire, and there were so many lives in it, so no one dared to move. My father was born unbelieving in evil, especially my grandfather, who always liked to talk to the gods, so he especially wanted to do the opposite. The young man was young and vigorous, and the cart came back with a clatter, and the masons were hired, and a few large houses were really built.

This house, which I also lived in when I was a child, was made of green bricks, and many places were blackened, and my father smeared a layer of lime on the outside. No matter how hot it is in summer, the house will feel cold. Grandpa almost never came here, until I was born, he would come occasionally, but he never came in the door, he always said that the house was not clean.

The conflict between my father and my grandfather also came from that room, since the house was up, my grandfather always came around with incense and candles, he said that the house was uninhabitable, and the bricks of the dead house were the same as the tomb bricks, and it was too yin. My father was obviously reluctant to buy my grandfather's account, and the father and son quarreled all the time, and then they were almost incompatible.

When the civil war was about to end, my father went out to serve as a soldier and followed the army to witness the establishment of New China. Later, his unit was sent to North Korea, where he was wounded by a shot in the thigh, and was sent back to China shortly after being sent to the hospital. That year, through my little aunt's matchmaking, my father married my mother, and then I was born.

I was born in 1960, during the famous three-year natural disaster, and in the year I was born, something even more sensational happened in the village......