Chapter 210

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Protagonist:

Li Xiulan

That night, Wang Zhanggen and Li Xiulan suffered from insomnia.

There was no other reason; it was simply because their eldest son had mentioned to them the matter of starting a business.

They were truly worried that Wang Dashan would fail and end up in debt because of this.

After all, Wang Dashan had only just entered society not long ago.

The undercurrents of society appear calm on the surface, but how treacherous are the depths within? How could a young person who has just entered society possibly see through them?

The next day, early in the morning, Li Xiulan got up with dark circles under her eyes and, same as always, fed the chickens and pigs, washed clothes and cooked, watered the vegetable garden; she had been doing these household chores for over twenty years.

Day after day, year after year.

Ever since getting married, all the housework had been done by her.

Her husband Wang Zhanggen had never done so much as a single chore.

In the past the children would help out a bit, but now both sons had gone to work in the city, and the youngest son was busy with his studies; she couldn't bear to let the youngest son waste time doing chores again, after all studying is the top priority, far more important than housework.

So now, all the household chores had fallen onto her hands once more.

Wang Zhanggen got up in the morning and sat on the sofa watching TV, waiting to eat breakfast.

Just like a grand old master.

Right now in the morning they still had to go to the nearby well to carry water.

This chore is very tiring.

But by next year it probably won't be needed.

Because Shanggou Village is currently undertaking new rural construction; the tap water project has already been planned, the mountain spring source has already been selected; they are just waiting for Wang Zhanggen to finish the cultural room, then the tap water project will begin.

At breakfast time Wang Xiaohua hadn't gotten up.

They also didn't go call Wang Xiaohua.

In the past, when Li Xiulan ate breakfast she would call Wang Xiaohua out to eat together, but later she lost her temper with Wang Xiaohua once, shouting at her: "I study until after one in the morning before sleeping, can't you let me sleep a little longer? You insist on dragging me up to torture me; believe it or not, I'll never come home again!"

Li Xiulan was stunned and heartbroken by this.

All along, her youngest son had been very good to her.

She never expected he would actually yell at her.

Seeing this, Wang Zhanggen immediately flew into a rage and cursed at Wang Xiaohua:

"If you don't come back, don't expect the family to give you living expenses!"

He thought using living expenses would make Wang Xiaohua yield.

Unexpectedly, Wang Xiaohua didn't care at all:

"Don't give it then; I can earn enough living expenses doing part-time work in the county town!"

This made Wang Zhanggen furious.

Father and son nearly came to blows.

It was still Li Xiulan mediating in the middle that prevented the situation from worsening further.

However, ever since that big fight, when Wang Xiaohua came home on weekends, they never again took the initiative to call Wang Xiaohua to get up for breakfast.

They would eat their fill and go to work, leaving a portion on the table.

If Wang Xiaohua wanted to eat he would eat; if not, by noon they would take it to feed the dog or the chickens.

This breakfast was the same as well.

After the couple finished eating, Li Xiulan cleaned up the bowls and chopsticks, left a portion on the table, and then they both went to work.

There was no refrigerator at home; although the weather had already turned cool, there were still flies.

The rice and dishes left on the table, though covered with an upside-down plastic basket, still had flies buzzing around the basket from time to time.

Wang Xiaohua got up when it was already past eight o'clock.

While Li Xiulan and Wang Zhanggen usually ate breakfast around six o'clock.

The breakfast had long gone cold.

Wang Xiaohua casually ate a couple of mouthfuls, then took it to feed the dog.

This morning he wanted to stroll around everywhere to relax; the recent period of high-intensity study had made his body somewhat unable to cope.

He ate breakfast by himself, washed the bowls and chopsticks and put them back in the cupboard, then went alone to stroll around the village.

Today's Shanggou Village was no longer as lively as in the past.

Wang Xiaohua wandered over half the village and didn't see a single child.

Thinking back to his childhood, children gathered in groups; kids who hadn't started school yet would play all over the village from early morning — some playing glass marbles, some playing hide-and-seek, some playing hopscotch, jumping rope.

Wang Xiaohua looked at the silent village scene, and his heart couldn't help but feel a sense of desolate loneliness.

Passing through a stretch of uninhabited old houses, he arrived at the back of the mountain of Shanggou Village; the mountain back had a stretch of over ten acres of dry land. Wang Xiaohua still remembered that when he was very small, his mother had once cleared wasteland here to plant cassava.

Back then, because of his mother's hardworking reclamation, this ten-plus acres of dry land was cleared very well; the cassava harvest was a bumper one. Later, due to interests, the then Village Committee Secretary Liang Yuanchao pulled strings to take this cassava field back and leased it to someone else.

Because of this cassava field, his mother had even gone to the Village Committee Office to raise a huge ruckus.

But now, this ten-plus acres of dry land before his eyes had long been left fallow.

Looking out, not only was it overgrown with weeds, some places had even grown trees as thick as wrists.

This cassava field had been left fallow for many years.

Actually, not just this one piece of dry land.

Looking out, the majority of the fields around Shanggou Village had already been left fallow.

Only the ten-odd acres of land near the village that were comparatively convenient to cultivate still had people farming them.

The remaining seventy to eighty percent of the farmland had all been abandoned.

The torrent of the era surges forward; no one can stop it.

Farmland that rural people once fought over until their heads were broken and blood flowed, that they regarded as precious treasures, now has no one to cultivate it.

Batch after batch of rural young people ran off to the cities to scrape out a living, and the phenomenon accompanying this was vast tracts of rural land being discarded.

Especially for villages like Shanggou Village, surrounded by mountains on all sides — whether dry fields or paddies, the land around the village was actually all terraced fields. Terraced fields were originally reclaimed halfway up the mountain; if left unfarmed for a year or two, they become overgrown with weeds and thorns; if left unfarmed for three to five years, they turn back into mountain forest.

Wang Xiaohua looked at the large expanse of wasteland before him and couldn't help but feel a pang of sorrow.

Then he thought of the newspaper report he had just seen last week; the report said our country's grain output had hit a new high again.

This newspaper was an extremely authoritative newspaper.

But how could what was reported differ from what Wang Xiaohua saw with his own eyes?

Wang Xiaohua's clever brain really couldn't figure it out; he knew there certainly wasn't just one Shanggou Village in the country, but thousands upon thousands of Shangou Villages, and the decline of thousands upon thousands of Shangou Villages meant the farmland around thousands upon thousands of declining villages had all been abandoned to the tune of seventy or eighty percent.

This also meant that on one hand there was a massive reduction in cultivated land area, while on the other hand grain output repeatedly hit new highs.

There had to be some mistake in all this.

But no matter how much Wang Xiaohua racked his brains, he couldn't figure out where the mistake lay.

He planned to wait until next week when he went to school and ask his Chinese Teacher; his Chinese Teacher was a very wise teacher, who not only gave him a lot of help in his studies but also helped enlighten him quite a bit in his thinking.

As for now, he no longer dwelled on these things.

He turned around and walked out of Shanggou Village, heading for Shanggou Village Primary School.

He wanted to go see if the basketball court inside the primary school was still there.

Because last night his second brother had told him that when the Spring Festival came and he bought a basketball back, they would go play basketball together.

Shanggou Village Primary School had a basketball court; although that court didn't have a cement floor, as long as it was still there, they could still play around on it.

The scene of the three brothers playing basketball in Shanggou Village a few years ago was still vivid in Wang Xiaohua's mind.

But recently he'd heard that Shanggou Village Primary School had already completely ceased operations, and he didn't know if the school's facilities were still there.

So he went to take a look.

When he arrived at Shanggou Village Primary School, he discovered the school's large iron gate had already been dismantled.

Walking inside for a look,

the basketball hoops were still there, but the basketball court had turned into a weed field — there was simply no way to play ball anymore.

The surrounding teaching buildings and teacher dormitories had also become mottled and dilapidated; the anti-theft nets and glass on the windows had all been dismantled, leaving only broken-down empty houses.

The once incomparably imposing flag-raising platform was now also covered over by weeds.

Even the flagpole was already mottled with rust.

Only on the flagpole still hung a tattered, rotten red flag, drooping down.

No one knew who had hung it up there.

Seeing this, Wang Dashan felt even more overwhelmed with emotion.

Thinking about it, from primary school to high school was only six or seven years' time.

He never expected Shanggou Village Primary School would become like this.

One can only say, time is truly cruel.

It can change all things in the world without pain or itch.

By the time you suddenly look back, you discover everything has long since changed beyond recognition — even shockingly so.

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