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The Wubang River at the bottom of the mountain can always bring a lot of surprises to our lives.

There is a hydropower station in Wubang Creek, which was built in the sixties and seventies, and the electricity generated can be used to shine in the whole village. By the eighties, however, there was very little normal power generation. However, the reservoir is filled with water all year round, and it has become a paradise for us to "white stripes in the waves" in summer.

Because of the construction of the power station, and in order to take care of the power station conveniently, a road was built from the village to Wubang River. That road has become the happy road of our childhood.

After soaking in the water for an afternoon, I was tired and hungry, but in order to have food to eat when I returned home and not be scolded by my parents, I often had to chop a bundle of firewood and carry it back before the sun went down.

When the weather was fine, on weekends, my father would take the whole family to the stream to catch fish and touch crabs, which was a very happy thing.

When it came to the stream, Xishui became the patent of my brother and sister. The parents rolled up their trouser legs, rolled up their sleeves, turned over the rocks, touched the crab under the stones with their hands, grabbed it, broke its pincers and tied it to its body, and put it in a bamboo basket.

My father would also use a method of crab fishing: tie a grasshopper with a bamboo pole and stretch it into a crack in the stone, and the stupid and greedy crab would crawl out of the crack in the stone, clamp the food with tongs, bite it to death, and lift the bamboo pole with force, and the crab would become our prey.

Or pick up a quick stream rock, go and smash another stream rock, and then turn the stone over, and the small fish hiding under the stream rock will float out, and the whole family will chase and catch it in the water.

Occasionally, I also see three or two people from the village coming to the stream to "make trouble". It is said to be "making trouble", but in fact it is poisonous fish. However, instead of medicine, it is a plant called "Jingangzi" in the mountains. This plant, which is poisonous from the fruit to the vine to the rhizome, is smashed with stones at the water's edge, and the juice flows into the stream, and after a while the fish come to the surface with their stomachs turned over.

However, the toxicity of this plant is limited, and after being diluted all the way by the stream and flowing for a mile or two, the medicinal properties are insufficient. Even if the poisoned fish and crab were lucky not to be caught, they were alive again in the flowing stream an hour or two later.

My father tried all primitive methods to catch fish and crabs, but he never "made trouble". I often work for half a day, and my income is only half a bowl. At that time, wild fish and crabs were fried in oil, mixed with green peppers, and salted, which was really fragrant.

In my childhood, I used green chili peppers to mix fish and crabs, ate hard rice, and often sweated profusely.

In the middle of summer, we are not satisfied with playing in the creek. At this time, the river began to attract us with many interesting things.

As a child, the biggest question in my mind was, "Where did I come from?" ”

I asked the cousin next door a lot of questions. In my eyes, my well-informed uncle often hesitated in the face of this question, and sometimes when he was in a hurry, his cousin replied impatiently, "Pick up the steel loach".

So for a long time, I was very interested in picking steel loaches by the river, and I always wanted to find out.

But to pinch the steel loach, you have to wait for the river to rise to a big water.

If it rains for a few days in a row, the Qingshui River, which is usually pure and gentle like a girl, suddenly becomes a "Yellow River" that is as turbid and rough as a wild man. Looking under the ancient tree at the head of the village, as long as the "general rock" in the river is flooded, there are people in the village carrying nets to the river to "pick up steel loaches".

At this time, we children also followed, in fact, we just wanted to see how the adults brought in the children.

The steel loach is very similar to the loach, the difference is that the loach mostly lives in muddy water, while the steel loach lives in the river. As soon as the water rises, the steel loach appears on the surface of the water, and it is always harvested with a net bag on the shore.

However, we boys, who never saw a steel loach bring children, were often driven home by our father from the river with a slender branch and pulling my ears all the way home.