Zhou Dezhong, the head of the Zhou family, has his wife Wei, and the Zhou family has only three acres of dry land. There is an old lady in the Zhou family who is over 60 years old this year. Zhou Dezhong and his wife have two sons and one daughter. The eldest son Zhou Yougen is eighteen years old this year; the second son Zhou Youfu is fourteen years old this year, and his younger daughter Youlian is ten years old this year.

The Zhou family looked like they were honest and had no channels to make money. The family didn't have much land, and the Zhou family rented 20 acres of land for growing grain every year. The family had a large population of people to eat, and the youngest son and daughter were not laborers now, and they had no other skills. Zhou Dezhong and Zhou Yougen followed Li Wanquan during the slack season. Li Wanxiang worked as craftsmen and maikes in the wealthy family. After earning a little grain subsidy, the family would not be hungry.

The marshal and the maike are very special names in this area.

During the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, a large number of young farmers' working teams flowed all year round in the mountainous areas of southwestern Henan. Every winter slack season, these people were recruited to repair and maintain farmland irrigation projects such as terraces and ditches. There were also a group of experienced old merchants who helped large farmers turn raw land into high-yield mature land through fertilization and sorting of half-life land. These people were called "waiting craftsmen" locally.

There is also a group of people called "Maike". In northern China, due to the differences in the maturity time of wheat in various places, some people who work as a profession to harvest wheat in exchange for income. Most of these people are physically strong, skilled, diligent and willing to work hard, and these people are called Maike. The existence of Maike alleviates the difficulties of tight time, heavy tasks and insufficient manpower faced by rural areas during the summer harvest season. These problems often cause a bumper year in the harvest year, but due to untimely harvesting, resulting in reduced yield and quality reduction. Due to the maturity differences in wheat production areas, it is generally ripe from east to west, so some of the maikes are located in the late-ripening area, from the north Go south, return to north, migrate and wander like migratory birds, harvesting all the way, and when the wheat tourists come to their homes, the wheat in their homes is ripe; the other part is that farmers in early-mature areas will go to the relatively late-mature areas to harvest after their harvest. Their commonalities are groups of brothers, fathers and sons, and even couples who follow them to the wheat production area, find people to hire, and harvest wheat for others, and use sweat to exchange for meager income to make up for family shortages or find a way to live. People in wheat production areas call them "mixed". Maikes usually bring a dry food bag, a sickle to the road, and there are bedding that is indispensable.

After paying New Year's greetings to the Zhou family, my mother took Li Qinglin to her uncle Li Wanxiang's house to pay New Year's greetings.

After leaving the Zhou family's door, Li Qinglin's mother pointed to the family locked at the gate of the yard and said to Li Qinglin: "Qinglin, that's your uncle's house, but unfortunately no one lives there now!"

My mother said this was the house of Li Qinglin's uncle Li Wanneng. The yard door was locked, the wall was a little dilapidated and collapsed, but the house looked quite solid. In the 18th year of the Republic of China, the strong men were arrested and the soldiers went to wipe out the Red Army on the border of Hubei and Henan, and they were already dead on the battlefield. This house was built by Li Wanquan in the 18th year of the Republic of China. It was originally used for the uncle Li Wanneng to marry, but he did not expect that Li Wanneng was arrested and the bride was not married, and the man was gone. Although no one had lived in these years, if Li Wanquan was more relaxed, he would try to flip the cover and repair it. It was not easy to preserve it until now.

The reason why Li Wanquan was anxious to marry Li Qinglin was also because Li Wanneng was arrested for the strong man. "There are three unfilial things, and no descendants are the greatest." After Li Wanneng's death, Li Qinglin was the only male left in Li Wanquan's family. If Li Qinglin had any more accidents, no one would pass on the descendants of Li Wanquan's family.

The cousin saw Li Qinglin and his mother walking towards his house from a distance, and the old couple was waiting in front of the yard early.

The family of cousin Li Wanxiang has eight acres of dry land, and rents ten acres of dry land from the landlord every year to grow grain. Li Wanxiang is fifty years old this year and used to be a carpenter. Since his eldest son disappeared, his family has not had enough labor and has not gone out to work as a carpenter, and he specializes in staying at home to do farm work. The aunt Liu is two years younger than Li Wanxiang. Because the old couple worked hard all year round, their faces look much older than their actual age.

Li Wanxiang has two sons and one daughter. The eldest daughter has already married into a village and is married to a farmer family. She has a son and a daughter. She is also very close in life. The eldest son Li Qingguang, who followed Henan fellow villager Ji Hongchang in 1933 to join the Second Army of the Chahar Anti-Japanese People's Anti-Japanese Allied Army in Zhangjiakou. In July 1933, he was killed in the battle of recapturing the Japanese occupied Duolun. The youngest son Li Qingqi was fifteen years old this year and was found to suffer from dwarfism since he was a child. Li Qingqi stopped growing and developing since he was ten years old, and his body remained in the state of ten years old.

In his early years, Li Wanxiang was afraid that Li Qingqi would not be able to marry his wife in the future, so when Li Qingqi was five years old, he spent a few bangs to buy him a child bride, a child bride, Wei Sanya. Wei Sanya is the niece of Zhou Dezhong's wife Wei family, and he has lost his mother since he was a child. Her father was afraid that he could not raise her three daughters alone, so he sold her to the Li family as a child bride. Wei Sanya is the same age as Li Qinglin, and is also sixteen years old. Li Wanxiang knew that Li Qingqi's disease could not be cured, and he did not expect Li Qingqi to pass on the family line. He only asked Wei Sanya to raise him since he was a child, and wait for the old couple Li Wanxiang and his wife to continue to take care of Li Qingqi after a hundred years.

So from the perspective of the Li family, the only seedlings that descendants can count on are Li Qinglin.

Li Qinglin and his mother had just entered the house to sit down, and Li Qingqi and Wei Sanya also came back after paying New Year's greetings.

Li Qingqi's intellectual development was not affected, but his body looked like a ten-year-old boy, and his voice was also a childish voice. Wei Sanya's facial features were elegant and handsome, not short, about 1.6 meters tall, probably because of insufficient nutrition, and her body had not grown yet, she looked a little yellow-skinned and thin.

Perhaps due to physical reasons, he is afraid of others' jokes. Li Qingqi usually doesn't go out too much and rarely communicates with outsiders. After all, Li Qinglin is a family member and will not discriminate against him. Li Qingqi was next to Li Qinglin and pestered him to talk to him.

It was already lunch time, and Li Wanxiang sent Wei Sanya to invite Li Wanquan over to have a meal together.

Li Wanxiang's family had noodles at noon. There was a plate of beef, tofu, fried eggs, shredded radish and other side dishes on the table. Li Wanxiang took out a bottle of wine and a few wine cups and invited Li Wanquan to drink. His father knew that Li Wanxiang's family was not well off and it was not easy to buy a bottle of wine during the Chinese New Year, so he said that he drank too much last night and ended up eating only noodles but not drinking.

The first month is the free time in the countryside. It is snowy outside and there is no farm work to do. After lunch, Li Wanquan invited his cousin and sister-in-law to play cards at home.

The sunlight on the winter afternoon shines on your body very warm. Li Wanquan sets up tables and stools in his yard, and the four adults start playing cards.

There were few rural cultural and entertainment activities during the Republic of China period. Farmers occasionally played cards and relaxed during the slack season. The cards played here were mahjong cards. Rural people could not afford mahjong dominoes, so some people on the market printed mahjong patterns on kraft paper soaked with tung oil. The patterns were arranged, four pieces of cakes, ten thousand (1-9), four pieces of east, south, west, north, middle, hair, and north, one piece of plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and four pieces of ace cards, a total of 148 pieces, replacing real dominoes.

Lin Qinglin in his previous life was not interested in playing cards, and he stood beside him and looked at it for a while and was a little interested. It just so happened that Li Qingqi was also bored, so he suggested that Li Qinglin take him to Houshanwa to pick up tung seeds.

Tung seeds usually start picking after frost every year. You can still pick tung seeds in the first month of the year. Li Qinglin felt a little strange and asked his father: "Didn't all tung seeds collected last winter? How can you pick them up now?"
Chapter completed!