Chapter 3 Hometown in Memory
The swaying bus slowly left Gaoliu Town, where the Sixth Middle School is located, and drove south along the Jiqing Highway.
Liu Dehua's Bingyu was playing on the car TV.
The scenery outside the window is strange yet familiar, and some long-forgotten memories stir up in my heart again.
Seeing the road leading directly to the village again, Xu Liang said quickly.
"Master, stop at the intersection ahead."
Because people got out of the car one after another, there were not many people in the car.
As soon as the car stopped here, Xu Liang couldn't wait to jump out.
Cross the road while there are few cars.
A bumpy gravel road stretches from your feet into the distance.
On both sides there was first a section of wheat fields, and then neatly arranged greenhouses appeared.
Today’s greenhouses are all first generation.
Most are fifty meters long and eight or nine meters wide.
One hundred meters long is already impressive.
Manpower is required to pull thatch every day, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive.
No one can imagine that ten years later, the greenhouse would be 300 meters long; 20 years later, it would be 500 meters long and more than ten meters wide; one greenhouse would cover an area of more than ten acres.
The investment alone is as high as one million.
From a manual family workshop where a couple cooperated, it turned into a small farm with initial mechanization.
Seeing the big from the small.
The rapid development of vegetable greenhouses also reflects China’s economic glory in the past two decades.
Come down the first path from the sandy road to the beginning of the village.
The destination is a series of old and low-rise old houses.
It won’t be long before they are replaced by tall new houses built of cement and bricks.
I never noticed them when I was young, but now I see them.
It is as if an old oil painting is peeling off the dust of history and becoming real and beautiful.
Walk to the third street and turn left. The second door is your home.
Two black wooden doors and a gatehouse made of rammed earth.
The walls of the low rammed earth courtyard are covered with lush grass.
In my memory, it was destroyed by a heavy rain three years later.
This is also an opportunity for my family to build a new house.
Taking a slight breath, with a complicated feeling of being close to home, he tried to push the courtyard door.
Crash, an iron chain came into view, and at the end was the iron general guarding the door.
He turned his eyes and looked at the bricks in the left corner.
"If I remember correctly, it should be placed here."
Going over, bending down to take away the green brick, a key tied with a red knot appeared in his eyes.
He secretly said, "Sure enough."
Picked it up and opened the five-star lock on the door smoothly.
Squeak.
With a harsh friction sound, the courtyard door opened.
The hens that were sleeping in the corner of the gatehouse glared at him angrily and left clucking.
Directly opposite, the rammed earth screen wall has a faded and half-broken word "福" on it.
Going around the gate building, a courtyard of about 100 square meters appears in front of you.
On the left are the chicken cages and dry toilets.
On the right are two wing rooms, which are divided into kitchen and storage room.
A recently purchased red motorcycle tricycle is placed next to the south wall.
In the courtyard paved with loess, a hawthorn tree with dry stems and branches is swaying in the wind.
Sitting north and facing south, one large and one small, the two main rooms built with green bricks and covered with red tiles form the main body of the entire courtyard.
Looking at the place where he has lived for twenty years, Xu Liang was filled with emotions.
The old house that engraved all the beautiful memories of my childhood was once only left in my memory. Now that I see it again, I can't help but feel a sense of illusion in my heart while being happy.
It seemed as if everything in the past seven days was just a beautiful dream, not a real existence.
Jingle bell bell…!
The sound of a bicycle bell came.
Hearing the sound approaching, Xu Liang turned his head.
Soon, a little girl wearing a school uniform, white rubber shoes, and a ponytail arrived at the door.
After parking the car, the little girl was full of excitement when she saw Xu Liang standing in the yard.
"Brother, are you back?"
Xu Meng, his only biological sister, is two years younger than him.
As expected, next year I will be admitted to the innovation class of No. 1 Middle School with the top score in the school.
Three years later, Six Hundred and Eighty Three entered Peking University.
Becoming the first top student at Peking University in the village brought great honor to his parents and him, but it also gave him and his parents a huge headache twenty years later.
My precious sister is a non-marriage person. In my previous life, I was not married before I was reborn.
Her daughter and she were like sisters, which even a father like him envied.
Xu Meng quickly parked the car and ran over.
“Brother, turn around.”
Xu Liang most likely guessed her purpose, but he didn't try to expose it.
Turn around as he was told.
Xu Meng smiled slyly, jumped on Xu Liang's back and hugged his neck.
"Hehe, brother, you are so stupid."
Xu Liang carried his sister on his back, with a happy smile on his face.
No matter in his previous life or in this life, his sister is his closest family member.
"Okay, come down quickly."
"You are just Shen Shen, I only weigh less than a hundred pounds."
Although I say that , Xu Meng still jumped off his brother's generous back.
“Brother, are you on winter vacation?”
"Well, what about you?"
"We will leave tomorrow."
"Then why didn't you study in the evening?"
"The school has a power outage."
Power outages are the norm in this era, and they are also the most anticipated thing for junior high school students.
With that said, Xu Meng jumped towards the main room.
Xu Liang smiled and followed.
Cross the threshold.
In front of you is a portrait of a great man.
There are two chairs and the Eight Immortals table below.
In the corner on the left is a 21-inch Sanyo color TV I bought three years ago, which completely ended the history of not having a TV at home.
Beside the TV is this year's Ande telephone landline.
With the rapid popularity of mobile phones, they will be completely eliminated in four or five years.
There are wing rooms on the left and right sides of the living room.
On the left is my parents’ residence, and on the right is my sister’s boudoir.
His room was a side room next to the main room.
After slowly examining it, I came to my room.
About twenty square meters.
There is a bed on the left hand side by the window, and a desk on the right hand side against the wall. There is a Slam Dunk poster on the wall, which is a memory of my youth.
Throw your schoolbag on the bed, open the drawer, and take out a piggy bank from inside.
The heavy weight made him inexplicably look forward to it.
Here is the money he earned from his summer job.
Rural areas are not cities. The only summer job he can do is with the construction team building houses for people in the village.
When small workers carry bricks and push cement, skilled potters earn 40 per day, while small workers like him earn 20 per day.
He worked for a total of 85 days during the two summer vacations between his freshman and sophomore years of high school and earned 1,700 yuan.
It was the first time in my life to make so much money. It was hard and tiring, and the skin on my body was sunburned three times, so I cherished it very much.
I have never been willing to spend it.
I found a hammer and smashed it on the ground.
The colorful money appears in the eyes.
Start counting with anticipation.
"Ten yuan, fifty, one hundred..."
A quarter of an hour later.
"One thousand, seven hundred and ninety-six yuan and forty-seven cents, a little less."
Not all of the money can be used to purchase goods, some of it must be left as change.
In addition, some auxiliary things should be prepared, such as wooden sticks to press the Spring Festival couplets, plastic sheets spread on the ground, etc.
Put the money away and sweep the debris off the floor.
Find my sister who is still watching TV.
“Xiaomeng, I’m going out for a while.”
“Brother, where are you going?”
“Go buy some sticks and I’ll be back later.”
"Stick? Why did you buy a stick?"
"I'll tell you when I get back."
(End of this chapter)