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My family has a paddy field with a well next to it, and when the restless fish in the paddy field slip into the well, I often jump into waist-deep water to touch the fish, stirring up a pool of clear water. As a result, the fish was not touched, but when I went home, I was inevitably reprimanded.

In autumn, the rice in the field is yellow, and the yellow patch is very beautiful.

It's time to "open the field to catch fish", and our sisters and brothers are often so excited that they can't sleep. My father flipped through the emperor's calendar for a long time, chose an auspicious day, we took bamboo baskets, and the buckets set off.

When they arrived at the edge of the field, their parents went down to the field and dug a ditch by hand, and then opened a gap in the ridge to "release water". This process needs to be done quietly, because according to the parents, if it is publicized, it will attract only cats, white cranes and other animals to take the fish away. My father also made two "grass marks" out of miscanthus grass and inserted them in the gap, intending to warn the fish thieves: This fish has an owner, don't think about it again.

While our parents were doing all this, my siblings and I were free. Go into the vegetable field to steal your own cucumbers, wipe the thorns on the tender cucumbers with your clothes, and you can chew them, crisp and raw, which is very useful. Then take refuge in the cowshed and watch the cows leisurely use their tails to drive away mosquitoes and enjoy the cool mountain breeze. After a while, the sisters and brothers fell asleep lying on the cowshed, and the mosquitoes bit out a few large bags on their bodies, and they were completely unaware.

When the water in the field dried up, my father woke us up. As soon as we heard about catching fish, we fell asleep. Jumping off the cowshed and running all the way to the edge of the field with cheers.

But often because I was the youngest, my parents didn't give me permission to go down to the field to catch fish. Despite my frustration, I was still excited at the thought of fish.

When the water in the field dries up, the fish all converge into the ditch that their parents had dug beforehand. My parents and older siblings were chasing around in the fields to catch fish and touch fish, and I was also busy on the ridges. One moment help them deliver bamboo baskets, and another help them carry fish to put in buckets. If I catch a big red fish from the field, they will happily raise it above their heads and show it off to me, and it will make my heart itch and I want to go down to the field. Red fish is a kind of fish, generally will not eat, catch the red fish to put it in the perennial water storage paddy field, raise a winter, the next year, the water will be able to add a lot of bright red and beautiful small red fish.

The task of transporting redfish alone to the paddy fields for stocking naturally fell on my shoulders. When I stretched out a pair of small hands and took the red fish from their hands, they would repeatedly tell me to squeeze it tightly and not to fall it off. I almost ran to the paddy field with the red fish in my arms, and my heart trembled with joy. Even though the fish struggled to flick their tails, often leaving my face covered in mud and water, they didn't care.

I don't know where the red fish that was caught got so much strength, once jumped out of my arms, fell into the bitter cauliflower bushes outside the ridge, scared me to cry, the eldest sister hurriedly came to help me find, and when we found the red fish, the red fish was already covered with scaly wounds, miserable. There is no hope of survival, and the fate of the red fish is only to become a meal on the plate. In my young heart, I always couldn't understand why I was holding it to release it, and why it struggled to escape with all its might, "killing itself". Maybe it's the animal's instinct to survive! But I didn't understand this truth at the time, and I made myself angry for a long time.

Catching fish is a pleasure, let alone eating fish. My parents each carried a bamboo basket, my sister carried a bucket of fish, and we went home happily. My father "broke my stomach" of one fish after another, and several of us sisters and brothers surrounded him, watching the knife in my father's hand rise and fall, turning and turning, watching the death of each life, and looking at the sadness of the fish's eyes on the board, I thought: Why is my father so ruthless? Looking at this bloody scene, I had the most real and primitive idea at that time, which was to snatch the knife from my father and release the fish. But when we ate the fish in the evening, we didn't have that thought anymore.

After the fish is killed, a part of the fish is cleaned of internal organs, stuffed into glutinous rice balls, put into a jar made of ceramics, and added with chili peppers, salt, and spices to make pickled fish. Put the rest into an iron pot, fry it on the fire until it is yellow, put green peppers, green onions, ginger and mint, and boil it with water, and the house will be fragrant.

The four of us can't wait and salivate......

The father sent his brother to the village commissary to get a few catties of rice wine, and the family began to eat fish.

This meal of fish can be eaten to a full's content. A family of six gathered around a large pot of fish and ate fiercely. My father was afraid that we would choke on the fish bones in a hurry, so he warned us while eating: "Eat slowly, don't be in a hurry, don't be in a hurry, some are, some are."

It's a pity that my mother doesn't eat field fish. She grew up by the river, and she was used to eating river fish that grew up on the sand and rocks, and thought that the field fish that grew up on the soil had an unpleasant fishy smell, so she only picked some fish skin that had been fried in oil until it was yellow and crispy. My father was also worried that the four of us siblings would not be able to eat, so he let us eat violently, and he only cared about drinking his rice wine, and when we were full, he cleaned up the mess, swept away all the fish heads and fish bones with relish, and finally wiped out the fish soup and bibimbap.

How I wish I had fish every day, but such a good thing is only once or twice a year.

I never understood why my mother didn't eat field fish, and I never felt any difference between field fish and river fish. In the mountains of Wendou, fish is a rare delicacy!