Small supermarket welcomes visitors from all directions

Chapter 107 What is Food?

"Sister Liu, Sister Liu, come and see what this is?" I hope it's really ginseng! That way, Biao and his friends will have food.

"Let me see!" Liu Xuehua picked one up and observed it carefully.

"This is ginseng." said Liu Xuehua.

"No! It's like the radishes were pulled up before they grew up, and then left there for a while." Wang Yue said.

"You usually see a lot of commercial ginseng, which is always cleaned up and the shape of the plate is also beautiful. Take a look at this, do you think it looks like it?"

As he spoke, he pulled it a few times with his hands and it did look a bit like it.

"It looks like it. Sister Liu, is this really ginseng? If you hadn't said that I would have a nosebleed after eating it, I wouldn't have thought of it as ginseng at all. Where did the whiskers go?" Wang Yue said. It was really just a small shriveled white radish.

"I guess I didn't pay attention when I was digging it. This must be ginseng, and it's quite old, about three or four hundred years old."

"Really? Then it's worth a lot of money, and you have a source of food." Wang Yue said to Biao.

"Really? Are these little hammers really valuable?" Biao was very excited.

"Not really, because there are signs of gnawing on your ginseng. The top stem has been bitten off a bit. Let's talk about the bottom. This ginseng still has a lot of roots, but you have removed them all. Only a few big roots are left. This price may not be able to be sold for even half of the commercial ginseng." Liu Xuehua felt a little sorry when looking at these ginsengs.

"That's valuable too! Biao, how many people are there in your tribe?" As long as there are not tens of thousands of people, they should be able to be supported.

"There are 103 people in our tribe. There is another small tribe near us with 30 or 40 people. They have always wanted to join us, but we couldn't even support ourselves at the time, so we didn't agree."

"If there is something to eat that can last until the snow melts, I would like to agree to them. In our place, one more person in the tribe means one more hope of survival." Biao said after thinking for a while.

"That means there are at most 150 people. It's not snowing yet. How long will it take for the snow to melt?" Wang Yue asked.

"About a hundred days, or maybe ten more. But we still have these little mallets. How many do you want? I'll go buy them for you."

This little mallet can't fill you up, but it's such a good deal to exchange it for something that can fill you up.

What? The man who dug the ginseng actually used the word "dig" to describe it. No wonder the ginseng was dug like this. As a doctor, Liu Xuehua couldn't bear to see someone waste good medicinal materials like this.

"How did you dig out this ginseng today?" Liu Xuehua still wanted to ask clearly.

"I'll dig with a stick first, and then use my hands if the soil below is softer." Biao saw the clean, beautiful, round fingers of Wang Yue and Liu Xuehua, and then looked at his own rough big hands covered with mud. He shrank back embarrassedly.

"Don't you have tools?" This is a primitive man, but we don't know how primitive he is?
"Yes, our tribe has bone knives for cutting meat, as well as big sticks and bows and arrows for hunting. Our tribe is the only one around here that has bows and arrows, so we have more people." Biao was proud.

It sounds pretty good. At least we still have bows and arrows, and we can hunt without crowds or stones.

"Next time you go to dig, we will give you some tools. Dig carefully. There is nothing we can do if the top is bitten by locusts. The roots underneath cannot be removed. If the roots are removed, the medicinal properties will be lost and they will be worthless." Liu Xuehua then carefully told Biao how to dig ginseng and how to preserve it.

"Then I'll dig some for you when I get back." Digging ginseng, what a simple thing.

"Don't be in a hurry! I still have to find the seller for these few roots you gave me today. It would be best to use them now. I'm afraid that the medicinal effects will be lost more if they are processed. So you can wait until I have processed them before digging them!" Liu Xuehua said.

"Biao, how long will it snow there?" Wang Yue thought of an important question. If it snowed, it would be even harder to find the ginseng. She had been looking for it based on her memory because the leaves of the ginseng had been eaten by locusts. If it snowed, it would be hard to say.

"About ten to twenty days." Biao could only give a rough estimate.

"Then let's wait a few more days before digging! It would be a shame if these ginsengs are not handled properly and wasted. I can bring you some food and tools today." Wang Yue wondered in her heart what would be appropriate to bring to Biao.

"What is food?" Biao didn't understand.

How to answer this? Wang Yue was a little confused. You can ask what kind of food is there? But what is food? Is this a language barrier?
"So what do you usually eat? Before the insect plague?" Wang Yue asked.

"Leaves, flowers, fruits, and prey, such as four-legged animals and those with wings. You can also look for snakes on snowy days." Biao thought for a while and said.

"Don't you eat the seeds of plants?" Wang Yue asked him, trying her best to use words that Biao could understand.

"Is it growing on the grass, one small grain at a time?" That should be considered a seed. If it falls to the ground, it will become a large patch the next year.

"That's it, don't you want to eat it?"

"No, there's too little. We can't be full even after trying for a long time. Only when the tribe has no food left, the women and the elderly will go to find food. But this year, all the grass has been eaten by the damn bugs. Now the grass is gone, and there are no grass seeds." Biao said angrily.

"Actually, our main food here is plant seeds. I can provide enough food for your tribe for a winter. I don't know which one you like to eat." Wang Yue planned to take some of each and try them all. He would come back for more if they were delicious.

"Don't you have any prey here?" In contrast, Biao must want to eat prey. The people here are all dressed neatly, but they are very thin. Is it because they have no prey to eat? Biao guessed.

"Yes! But they are almost extinct because of our eating. Hunting is not allowed now and those wild animals have to be protected." Wang Yue explained to Biao.

"How could that be? There are so many animals, and they only have one litter in their lifetime. They grow up from one snowy day to the next. How do you eat them? Do you just eat all the animals to death?" Biao seemed to have heard some Arabian Nights fairy tale.

"Because there are so many of us! Lots and lots of us, if we just eat them all up, there are billions of people on this planet!"

"What is one hundred?" Biao was able to figure out tens and hundreds because he was the leader and there were more than a hundred people in the tribe.

"There are just so many, so many, too many to count." Wang Yue couldn't explain it to him clearly, and even if she did, he wouldn't need it, so why bother?
"Does that mean you have no meat to eat?" Biao felt that if people couldn't eat meat, they would definitely have no strength.

"Yes! We raise them ourselves, and we can kill one whenever we want to eat it. It's very convenient."