Show the sword, start from the guerrillas

The people are looking forward to living a good life, a life where they can have enough food and warm clothes, and don't have to worry about shells falling on their heads or the Japanese invaders invading the village while they are sleeping!
And such expectations seem to have been realized in Pingdong District, at least this year.

Just before the New Year, the people counted the granaries and looked at the Ji'nan Banknotes in their pockets (the currency issued by the Anti-Japanese Base Area Ji'nan Bank in October 1939, circulated in the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region) and found that they had quite a bit of surplus. So they called their friends and went to the market with their wives and children to buy supplies for the New Year.

There are many big markets in Pingdong District, but there are several around Liangjia Village. For example, there is a big market in Baijing Town on the fifth and tenth day of the lunar month, a small market in Huidong Village on the third and eighth day of the lunar month, a small market in Yinjiulang Village on the first and sixth day of the lunar month, and a market in Weijia Village on the second and seventh day of the lunar month. In addition, there are temple fairs and other markets in places with mountain god temples. In short, the commercial atmosphere in the base is still very strong.

Although the war was raging outside and the Japanese invaders were rampant, the big fair in the base area was indeed lively as before! There were popcorn, acrobatics and juggling, all of which were to liven up the atmosphere during the New Year. The most important thing was the abundance of supplies. For example, in Yushe, there was a newly opened textile factory, which was a reopening of the textile factory before the Anti-Japanese War.

These textile factories mainly provide cotton cloth to the printing and dyeing factories under the headquarters, and then these cotton cloths will be dyed into camouflage and gray to make two different military uniforms. Now, as the New Year is approaching, the cloths dyed in various colors have been transported to Pingdong District and appeared in the big market to provide some cloth for the people.

Of course, this is only a small part. There are also a large number of people who spin their own yarn and weave coarse cloth on their looms at home. The products that are dyed in dyeing workshops also appear in the market.

Food, clothing, housing and transportation, the most common thing in the market is this kind of cotton cloth! Of course, there are also clothes, not new, but various old clothes, which are also sold in the market. No one cares whether these clothes are stripped from the dead. After all, many clothes of the Eighth Route Army were stripped from the dead Japanese puppet soldiers, and the people don't care even more.

It's just that this year, people have more money, and the old clothes that used to sell well are not as good as new cloth! Many wealthy people will buy the right cloth from the market, and then ask the tailors to tailor their clothes, so that they can get a new set of clothes at the next market.

However, most of the clothes-making stalls are for children, and there are very few for adults! Although children often wear one set of clothes for several children, the older ones are outgrown and the younger ones are worn, and when the older ones grow up, the younger ones come up... However, when parents have some extra money, they love their children from the bottom of their hearts. Who doesn't want their children to have new clothes for the New Year?

Well, for those who are poorer and can’t afford new clothes, there are also red hairbands for sale, hair flowers for sale, and various hairpins of military quality produced by the arsenal for sale…

In addition to clothes and fabrics, there are also many kinds of food in the market! The most common ones are all kinds of sesame cakes, fire cakes and other things that can be eaten with wine. There are also stalls selling tofu pudding, and occasionally fried dough sticks, which is really luxurious! After all, oil is too precious!

In addition to these cooked foods, there are all kinds of vegetables and meats! Winter melon, pumpkin, hanging melon, square melon, incense burner melon, golden melon, white radish, carrot, Chinese cabbage, potato, sweet potato, the market has a long line of stalls! Then there are stalls selling all kinds of poultry eggs. Chickens, ducks, geese, etc., are put into baskets one by one, occasionally making a few calls, attracting people's attention.

Well, these stalls have a lot of people, but there are really few people who stay here. They just buy and leave or no one cares. After all, everyone has a vegetable garden, and few people buy from outside. In the end, the cheapest ones are probably the purchasing staff of the detachment. Anyway, the leftovers from the people will be collected for the comrades to eat. Well, the stalls with the most people are probably the meat stalls in the market! There are butchers selling pork, wearing an apron, with a pig's head hanging on the wooden rack behind him, and then all kinds of cut pork, such as streaky pork, front trough, back seat, ribs, are hanging like this.

Opposite the stall were people crowded together, one wanted one catty, another wanted half a catty, some wanted as little as two ounces... the butcher was so busy that he sweated in the middle of winter.

Tofu? With the promotion of intercropping beans in corn fields, which family doesn’t have a hundred pounds of beans? Then several families get together, find a big pot and a stone mill, and work hard for a few days, and then dozens of pounds of tofu are made! Of course, there are many people buying tofu at the market, and there are also many people who buy tofu, including farmers with small families or military families (who are given special allowances during the Chinese New Year!) who buy it there.

What? There are fish sellers in the market, and they are selling them in the queue? This made the people very curious, so after buying meat, they gathered in front of the fish stalls again and bought those frozen carps, black carps, silver carps, grass carps and other fish one by one.

Year after year, there is plenty of food. How can we live without fish during the New Year? Last year? We were poor last year. Isn’t this year a good year?

Pingdong District is rich in supplies, the people are wealthy, and the New Year atmosphere is very strong! Although the base consumes a lot of gunpowder because of the need to make weapons such as grenades and mines, it is not difficult to make black powder, and there are materials around, which means that there are many firecracker workshops in the base.

Well, since small firecrackers are also needed for fighting sparrows, people were not prohibited from producing fireworks. Therefore, in a good year, people would go to a specially designated area in the market and buy a few firecrackers and fireworks to add some festive atmosphere to the New Year.

Therefore, on the night of New Year's Eve, under the strict vigilance of the detachment, the people in the base area celebrated a happy New Year! That night, firecrackers rang and fireworks bloomed in the base area, just like peacetime, which made the Japanese puppet soldiers in the artillery towers and bunkers around the base area worried all night, fearing that the Eighth Route Army would attack.

In the cafeterias of the various brigades, the soldiers who were not on guard also celebrated the New Year with a festive atmosphere! To celebrate, each soldier was given a five-pointed star-shaped steamed bun with a red date embedded in each corner. That was not all. The dumplings stuffed with pork and green onions were made by everyone themselves and were served in large plates.

Of course, it has to be paired with aged vinegar... (End of this chapter)