The village where Tan Shuangxi lives is called "Changwai Village". This straightforward name tells everyone that it is very close to the salt field, but it does not belong to the salt field.
Changwai Village is an administrative village, consisting of ten "Paijia". Each Paijia is equivalent to a natural village. The Yipai where the Tan family lives is the largest one and is also the location of the village office. Because the original village had a relatively large population,
There are relatively few immigrants resettled here, and two-thirds of them are "old households." When walking on the streets, most of what comes to my ears is the Minnan dialect that is most commonly heard in the Ma Niao area.
Tan Shuangxi heard from his ancestors that they and the kitchen households in the salt field were all Fujianese. However, the kitchen households were acquired according to the decree of the imperial court and had land and salt troughs; they were "farmers" who came to "make a living".
They can only make a living by reclaiming wasteland and farming in the surrounding areas.
There is plenty of wasteland in Lingao, but there are no decent rivers. Floods occur during the rainy season, and crops are destroyed in the dry season. The people who come to make a living can only rely on the irrigation of the Ma Niao River to eke out a living.
Tan Shuangxi's life was hard when he was a child, but it was not the hardest because his family could still afford to build canals, which could draw river water to irrigate the fields during the dry season. The hardest part was that he could only use oxcarts or manpower to carry burdens every day.
Go to the river to collect water for irrigation. The labor intensity is so great that people often vomit blood or urinate blood because of the fatigue of carrying water.
After the Australians came, they only benefited from the salt farm at first. They erected big windmills and saw them selling salt and making a fortune. People in the villages outside the farm were also jealous, but without beaches and basins, they couldn't join the cooperative, so they had to
Keep selling
The day laborers worked as coolies and watched as the kitchen households bought new clothes and built new houses. Their wives and children were all decent and respectable. Everyone was envious of them. The women were willing to marry to the salt fields. The young men in the village were all resentful.
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It wasn't until the elders sent people to clarify the taxes and organized the Tiandihui that the life of Changwai Village got better day by day. He didn't know much about how it got better. After the first county meeting, he went
He joined the army, but every time he came back, his hometown always gave him the feeling of "the old appearance has been replaced by a new one".
Most of the houses are newly built, with white walls and black tiles, and black skirts. They look elegant and resistant to dirt. Every household has a yard, surrounded by fences, with vegetables and fruit trees planted in the yard; the village roads are also paved.
Stone - in the past, this was only available in the first-class and wealthy salt farms and villages.
Now that he has returned to the village after a long absence, Tan Shuangxi wants to visit his old acquaintances in the village. There are many childhood playmates and friends in the village. But when he came back this time and asked, these people either went out to work or raised money.
The family moved to the town, but few stayed in the village.
However, he went to several houses and was nowhere to be found. It was also like this: in this beautiful weather, all the young and middle-aged people went to the fields, and no one stayed at home.
He walked and walked until he came to the small river at the entrance of the village. Originally, the public security was not good, and bandits often appeared, so a village gate was built here, which was locked every night. There were dedicated people watching day and night to give warnings.
However, when he came here today, there were no militiamen on lookout. There were only a few old men and women doing odd jobs in front of the door with their children talking about the past. When they saw Tan Shuangxi coming, they all greeted him.
Tan Shuangxi knew that when he came back this time, he had become a "well-known figure" in the village, and the village's "news center" would never let him go.
Fortunately, he is not disgusted with being the "focus figure", or rather, he is a little happy. Tan Shuangxi has been a "person in the crowd" for decades. Even in the army, he has only recently become a platoon member.
focus of attention.
He quietly tugged on the hem of his clothes to make the old military uniform look more crisp. In fact, in Bairen Town, he had already bought himself a new blue cloth "national uniform" and the most popular Dutch fine linen white shirt.
However, he still intentionally wears his old military uniform every time he goes out.
When not fighting, military uniforms are replaced twice a year. After a year of hard training and duty, in fact, they are worn out when they are eliminated. But if anyone can bring home an old military uniform when they are on vacation,
It will immediately become the focus of the whole village. So every time before going home, I will clean it specially, ask female workers at the barracks service center to carefully mend it, and some will have to be re-dyed.
Whether such an old uniform is given as a gift or worn as casual clothes when going home, it looks majestic and makes the voice louder when speaking. As for those veterans, whenever they get the opportunity, they will wear this uniform to symbolize their past.
The honorary old uniform must also be hung with the medals and medals he has received. Even if there are no medals, at least he must hang the "Service Medal for the Senate and the People" and seniority badges that all veterans have to show off.
Tan Shuangxi naturally does not need to "make up the numbers" with such medals. He has two second-class medals and one second-brave medal. As for how many triple-brilliant and triple-brave medals he has, there are also several other medals and medals. You can hang one if you want.
chest. In order to prevent people from thinking that he was too deliberate and deliberately showing off, he just nailed a commemorative armband of "Battle of Chengmai" on all his old uniforms.
Everyone greeted him, and he sat down on the bench next to the village gate. He smiled and blocked the large yellow shell that the old man offered him:
"I am a junior, so I can smoke your cigarettes instead of mine!" As he said this, he took out a pack of White Holy Boat and spread it around.
Unlike women who just work to talk and relieve their boredom, the old men who hang out at the "News Center" at the entrance of the village can be regarded as the "top figures" in the village. Most of them are "highly respected" and their families are relatively well-off, so that they can support them every day.
Get together to "drink Dad's tea".
As for the old man who took the initiative to offer cigarettes, everyone called him Father Chen. Father Chen's family was originally a small landowner in the village, with fifty or sixty acres of land. Thanks to the fact that he had three sons in the family who worked a lot, he was considered the "first household". But.
At first, he was tortured a lot by the government and bandits. After the Australians came, he became prosperous by being a "demonstration household" of the local local association. People in the village who hated his family said that the Chen family "eat shit and chase the heat."
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Of course, what he eats is not "shit", but "dividends" for daring to be the first. Because he gets more food and earns more money, the Chen family has become very prosperous in recent years. He first served as a model household and became a
The village chief; his second son, who had some literacy skills, took a C diploma and was recommended by the Tiandi Society to enter the Ma Niao Agricultural Lecture Center. After graduation, he worked as an administrator at Nanbao Farm;
Now Father Chen was trembling. His son had become a "cadre", and he was considered an "old man." Although he was no longer the village chief, except for the stationed police, almost all village cadres were
Rely on his breath and seek his opinion on all matters big and small.
"It's the White Holy Ship, Shuangxi, you've got a lot of patience." The old man in charge said with a smile, took out a pack of matches from his pocket, lit them and took a deep breath, as if he was savoring the contents of this "high-end product"
"The smell of money".
"What are your talents?" Tan Shuangxi said with a smile, "I went out to fight for a few years, but when I came back, my work was unfamiliar."
"Farm work is nothing," said Mr. Chen. "You can work so hard for a year, but you can't catch up with working for three months! People in the village are thinking of transferring their fields to work in the city. Another example is
Like you, you have bought so many properties in the past few years since you went out to serve as a soldier. If you have to rely on your parents and brothers to dig for food, you will not be able to earn it in a few lifetimes."
"Isn't it all dependent on the Senate?" Tan Shuangxi said, "If it hadn't been for the Senate, we wouldn't have been able to dig in the soil for food or carry water from the saltworks!"
"In the early days, it was said that a good man should not be a soldier if he has no nails in the iron. But now that the Australians have come, being a soldier has become a good job!" said another old man.
"If you go to serve as a soldier in the Ming Dynasty, you won't even be able to put on a full-fledged uniform." Father Chen sighed. "The sergeants in the county guard station are dressed like beggars and they don't have enough to eat. This soldier is
Wow, it’s really useless. It’s not like now. When I went out, I was a mud monkey, but when I came back, I really had to work hard to become a man!" He looked at Tan Shuangxi, with envy and jealousy in his eyes.
Tan Shuangxi has seen this kind of look many times. This village is no more composed of immigrants from various places than other villages. Most of them are people from the older generation who know the basics. Some people are angry and others are laughing. This is normal. In a sense, Tan Shuangxi
The existence of Mr. Chen has greatly affected the prestige of Mr. Chen in the village.
But Mr. Chen definitely did not dare to fight against the "authority of the Senate", and Tan Shuangxi was the concrete manifestation of this authority in the village. Tan Shuangxi was not an ordinary soldier, but came back with the job of platoon leader. According to
If you are a police officer, you will become an officer in a blink of an eye.
Although he was envious and jealous, he had to please more or less. In order to express his concern, he asked: "Double Happiness! Are you twenty-five years old? You are also the eldest man, and the family still doesn't tell you about your marriage? Your brothers are almost there."
It’s ready!”
"I've said it, but now I have to listen to my team when I get married." Tan Shuangxi shied away, "Besides, I only have a few days off, and it's not too late to fall in love..."
"Being in love or not is also a new thing," said the woman working next to her. "When my father asked me to find an in-law for me, he didn't even look at each other, and we were married within three days! Before taking off the hijab, I didn't even get married.
I don’t even know if my face is long or my face is short!”
"It's originally the order of the parents and the words of the matchmaker." The old boy in the village laughed and said, "This love affair is all a new trick created by the chief. Although it is a change of customs, it can be considered a good thing. Marriage in the future
If you are not happy, you can't blame your parents and matchmaker."
"If you are not happy, you can get a divorce now. If two people go to the town office, they are divorced." Someone said, "Caiwang's wife got divorced less than a year after she got married. Someone from her mother's family came to persuade her.
No!"
"Cai Wang is usually honest and never does anything sneaky. His family's conditions are pretty decent..." Tan Shuangxi said curiously.
Cai Wang is one of the few of his childhood friends who still stays in the village. When he came back this time, his parents said that he was still working as a farmer in the village and had not married yet. I didn’t expect such a thing to happen!