The taste of happiness after poverty
Xinhua News Agency, Lanzhou, February 14 (Reporter Ma Xiping) Before and after the New Year, Zeng Yucheng, a big lily grower in Yuangudui Village, has eaten a lot of meat.
He found the stone mortar for pounding potato from the wing full of household items, and planned to make a bowl of potato mash to relieve the greasiness in his stomach.
The birthplace of the Weihe River is about 30 kilometers west, and among the gullies of one mountain after another, the "two-yin land" fills the slopes.
Yuangudui Village, Tianjiahe Township, Weiyuan County, Dingxi City, Gansu Province, is more than 2,400 meters above sea level. There is a large temperature difference between day and night, there is no shortage of water and products, but there was no "road" to go.
"Does it start at three? It's coming!" Hanging up the village director's phone, Lao Zeng handed the hammer and stone mortar to his wife, jumped on the red electric tricycle, and disappeared at the end of the concrete road in front of his house.
In the old Zeng’s garage, there are neatly lined up with electric tricycles, agricultural tricycles, "gas dead cows" (rotary tillers), motorcycles, walking tractors, and new white cars purchased from the provincial capital in 2020.
At three o'clock in the afternoon, the blue sky made the village extremely clean.
The sound of the big horn ignited this quiet village in winter, villagers flocked to the square from their homes, and the annual dividend meeting in Yuangudui Village began.
"Old Zeng, you have been busy with your 40 acres of lily this year, and you didn't give the morel industrial base any bitterness. They also gave you 600 yuan, which is beautiful!" The village director ordered six hundred yuan and put them in a red envelope. Give it to Old Zeng.
Old Zeng was cheering, but he didn't have time to stay.
"Thank you for drinking at home during the New Year!" He put the dividends into his pocket and drove the electric tricycle through the rows of new houses with red roofs and white walls. The setting sun burned Lao Zeng's smile on the asphalt road.
He wants to go home quickly, and the bowl of sticky, glutinous potatoes is waiting for him.
"Old lady, you save the 60,000 yuan for selling lilies this year, and buy some goats after the New Year. Let's try to breed them." The old Zeng took the new porcelain bowl with the churn from his wife Chen Jine and said: " Put more spicy!"
"In the past few years, the oil road has been repaired to the door of the house, and the vendors are willing to come to collect the lilies. Now that we have money, we must be safe, or we should save it first, and then renovate the house sometime." Chen Jine mentioned the oil pot. Add the local specialty flax oil to Lao Zeng's mixing group.
"It's been a few years since the dilapidated house was renovated, and the house is safe, clean and warm. The money still has to be kept for'digging time' (in dialect, meaning to make money)." Lao Zeng used chopsticks to pick a piece from the oily golden mess and put it into his granddaughter's mouth in.
"Three boards when it rains, and three rails when it's sunny. The medicinal materials can't be pulled away, and three rounds of dry cigarettes are driven." Looking at his granddaughter's little mouth, Lao Zeng smacked his lips and recalled the road in the village before 2013.
Yuan Gudui used to be a famous "mud ditch". In rainy days, three wooden boards were used to make roads for tricycles, and they moved forward one by one. On sunny days, the tricycles slipped down the mud track without a steering wheel.
Most of the arable land in Yuangudui Village belongs to the "two-yin land". The damp and cold conditions are suitable for planting lilies and Chinese medicinal materials. However, the harvest cannot be transported out of the field. The villagers can only sit on the tricycle and smoke cigarettes with a wry smile.
But now, "hardened roads are repaired to the door of the house, wherever they go, they are'Passepartout'."
"In the year of the poor, the potato is just salt." Lao Zeng put down the bowl, and the sweet and spicy aroma of the potato was still tangling on the tip of his tongue.
He couldn't help but sighed: "This year, I dare not think about it then."
As the new year approached, Lao Zeng bought a pig and three chickens for his family early, and his wife and daughter fried a full six basins of buns.
The market in the town more than ten kilometers away is very lively. After eating the group, Zeng touched the dividends in his pocket, and glanced at the new private car parked in the yard. Tickle people like a cat.
He asked his son-in-law to start the car, put his granddaughter in the back seat, and ignoring his wife's nagging of "burning too much money" and disappeared into the village with a kick.
"How much is a pound of strawberries? I'll buy some for Granddaughter Ga." Faced with the "luxury" New Year goods that he didn't even dare to think of, now Lao Zeng is very happy to pay.
"Weigh me ten kilograms of Dabanguazi, there are so many people at home!"
"Fortunately for the new era to get rid of poverty, getting rich depends on good policies." Lao Zeng's family door posted a red couplet.
With the sound of firecrackers in Yuangudui Village, the housewives were busy in the kitchen, and the mountain breeze came with the aroma of delicious food.
"Ham stuffed dumplings, fried octopus, simmered noodles, steamed buns, steamed fish, braised pork dishes... for dinner!" In Lao Zeng's house, the warm yellow light reflected a table of dazzling food.
On the mountain beams, every lighted window is filled with the smell of happiness.
The happy year that our ancestors have dreamed of for generations is really here!