"The warehouse is full of people who work hard. They sweat after working for a while. Once soaked in sweat and the ropes are sharpened, the clothes will be worn out in less than a day. How can poor people get so many clothes?"
Zheng Fang, who happened to be passing by, explained: "The woman following behind is usually the wife of a certain tracker. After seeing her a lot, she is no longer shy."
"The tracker's wife doesn't pull weight, so why should she follow her?" Mancang asked again.
"Stretching is a hard job. You can't miss out on food. Otherwise, they won't have the strength. They have to carry the food on their backs. We can't let the men go hungry."
Zheng Fang said: "Sometimes when a tracker is too tired to bear it, they can take over for a while and let the man take a breather."
"Then do they wear clothes when they are doing slimming?" Mancang asked curiously.
"Of course they won't wear it either." Zheng Fang said, "But these women are more masculine than men, and no one will laugh at them."
Clothes are very expensive these days. Many people only have one piece of clothing, which they wear from spring to winter and mend when it is torn.
Before Guan Xiaorou married Jin Feng, she had only one piece of clothing. She made it when she was ten years old and patched it up as she grew taller. When she married Jin Feng, the dress was divided into several layers and had patches on top of each other.
This is not bad. Some poor families only have one or two pieces of clothing for a large family. Whoever goes out wears it, and those who don't go out just lie in bed.
You have to get up early and work in the dark when working in the fields, not because you are diligent, but because you have no clothes and others cannot see you when it is dark.
The trackers' clothes deteriorated too quickly, so they had to keep them naked, otherwise the coolie money they earned would not be enough to buy clothes.
"How much money can they make from a day of slimming?" Jin Feng asked.
"It's hard to say. Where the roads are good, the price is seven to eight cents a day. On some difficult roads, the price is higher. At the highest, you can get thirty or forty cents."
"So high?" Mancang asked in surprise.
Even Jin Feng was a little surprised.
Do trackers make so much money?
You should know that he gave Zhang Liang a monthly salary of 500 yuan, which even Zhang Liang found too hot.
"Thirty or forty cents is the hardest part of the road to walk."
Zheng Fang said: "That section is full of cliffs, and the current is so strong that most people can't climb it with bare hands, let alone the trackers who have to pull the boat. The number of trackers who die there every year is uncountable."
"In this case, people are working hard and they should be given more wages."
Jin Feng nodded in agreement.
"Forty coins a day, I'm willing to work hard."
Zhang Mancang's eyes were full of envy.
But soon, he was no longer envious.
The wooden boat walked forward for a few miles and reached a valley.
The peaks on both sides shrink inward, like the thin waist in the middle of a gourd. The nearly 100-meter-wide Jialing River is narrowed by half here, and the water flow becomes extremely fast.
Moreover, the cliffs on both sides are extremely steep and almost vertical.
Although this section of the cliff is only over a hundred meters wide, there is no place to stand on the cliff. How could the trackers pull such a large ship across?
"How is this going to go?"
Mancang asked the question in Jin Feng's mind.
"Don't you know it just by looking at it?"
Zheng Fang started the lawsuit: "After reading this, you will know why they can earn thirty or forty cash a day."
Seeing that Zheng Fang didn't say anything, Mancang didn't bother to ask. He lay on the deck railing and watched curiously.
When they arrived a few hundred meters away from the valley, the trackers found a place where the water flow was not too fast and stopped, tying the tow ropes to the trees.
The two women who had been following him immediately came forward carrying baskets on their backs.
The trackers took out the hard millet cakes from the baskets, scooped out bowls of water from the Jialing River, and ate the cakes in the river water.
While the trackers were eating and resting, the two women took out two coils of hemp rope from the basket and put them around their necks, and walked towards the cliff.
One of the women rubbed her hands and started climbing.
The cliff is extremely steep, and the woman is as nimble as an ape, using the cracks in the rocks and some protruding stones to advance diagonally upward.
Jin Feng, who was on the boat, couldn't help but sweat for her.
In his previous life, he had seen many videos taken by rock climbing enthusiasts on the Internet, but he had never seen it with his own eyes.
The rocks on the cliff were wet by the water splashing from the Jialing River, and many of them were covered with moss, making them look very slippery.
The woman did not take any protective measures and just climbed up with bare hands and feet.
The difficulty level is countless times higher than the cliffs arranged in the training room.
The woman was very fast. After the trackers finished one pancake, she had already climbed to the middle of the cliff, more than twenty meters above the water.
Here, there is a quick rock protruding out about one meter, forming a small platform of less than two square meters, which can be regarded as a good resting point.
The woman took a few deep breaths on the small platform, then took off the rope she was carrying, tied one end to a stone, threw the rest into the water, and floated downstream along the current.
The woman waiting below fished out the rope from the water and tied it to the tree.
After pulling the rope to make sure it was secure, the second woman grabbed the rope with her right hand and started climbing too.
With the help of the rope, the second woman climbed faster than the first.
"What are they doing?"
Jin Feng pointed to the cliff and asked.
Zheng Fang ignored Mancang, but he did not dare not answer Jin Feng, and explained with a smile:
"The trackers are strong but not dexterous. The women's hands and feet are nimble and their bodies are light. They climb the cliff to make a cable, so that the trackers can pull the rope over this most difficult part of the road.
Without this rope, at least half of these men would have died here."
"So that's it."
Jin Feng looked at the shiny stones on the cliff and asked: "It seems that there are a lot of ships passing by here every year. Why don't the government dig a few piles and leave a length of rope? In this case, there is no need to go every time."
They found two women to climb the cliff at the risk of falling to their death."
"The government has done it before, but the rope left here will be stolen within a few days," Zheng Fang sighed: "The government changed it a few times and just ignored it."
That's right, hemp rope is also a valuable item these days.
More than a hundred meters of thick hemp rope, if stolen and sold, would be enough to feed a family of four for a month.
While Jin Feng and Zheng Fang were chatting, the two women had already met on the platform.
The two said a few words, and the first woman took off the rope from the second woman's neck, tied one end to the stone, and tied the other end to her waist, and started the second half of the journey.
In the second half of the climb, you need to go diagonally downwards, and your view is blocked, making it more troublesome than when you went up. The woman did not pursue speed this time and climbed cautiously.
Fortunately, women should often climb this cliff and know very well where to put their feet. Although she slipped twice in the middle, she finally landed safely.
Untie the rope tied around your waist and tie it to the tree. The simple safety rope is ready.
The second woman did not follow her, but returned to the place where the trackers were resting.