A small plot of land in a mountain village

The baby held the black longhorn beetle in his hand and kept showing it off in front of his mother.

The village girls weren't afraid of the longhorn beetles at all. Catching loaches in the fields and catching cicadas in the trees were commonplace for them, so the villagers liked to call them wild girls.

This kind of fun can only happen to children in the village. Children born in the city can only dream about it during the day.

"If you come back after your holiday, I'll treat you to stir-fried cicada meat," Zhang Niu said with a smile, looking at the trees by the roadside.

"Cicadas, they're such a delicacy!" The fat man rattled off a list of the best foods in the countryside.

"I know that cicadas are edible, but I'm not so sure which part of the cicada is eaten," Li Guang said with a hint of confusion on his face.

Li Guang's words truly expressed what everyone was thinking: we've all eaten cicadas, but we don't necessarily know which part we're eating.

"You've all seen whole plates of cicada meat in restaurants, right? Don't be fooled by this small plate; it takes thousands of cicadas to make this much." Zhang Niu looked at everyone with a questioning gaze and continued, "The cicada meat is actually inside the shell on the head; it's like the lean meat you find in the market."

Zhang Niu chuckled and revealed the cicada meat.

"You mean that little bit of white flesh inside the skull, right?" the fat man said after a moment's thought.

Clapping, he said, "That's right, it's that little bit of white flesh inside the cicada's head. That's the only edible part of the cicada's body." With the fat man's explanation, everyone should understand.

"I never expected it to be that little bit of flesh in the head," Li Guangcai suddenly realized.

"It seems that the molted shell of this cicada is a medicinal material!" Chairman Zhang said with a smile.

"Yes, cicada shells. When the kids in our village are on holiday, they all take bags and search for them in certain trees on the back hill." I used to go there myself just to get some popsicles.

At this time, there aren't many cicadas on the trees yet. But in summer, the continuous chirping shows just how many cicadas there are.

"Then it's settled. I'll come over here to eat cicada meat during the summer vacation. There aren't enough cicada meats in the restaurants for just me." He smacked his lips as he spoke.

"Uncle Fatty, is cicada meat delicious?" Hearing that the fat man said it was delicious, the baby pulled the fat man along.

"It's delicious, the little girl will definitely love it." Looking at the rosy little face, the fat man couldn't help but reach out and touch it.

Now things are really messed up. The baby blinked, her eyes filled with tears, and said to the fat man, "Uncle is bad, Uncle is bad, I don't like people touching my face."

Anyone who sees a cute little girl can't help but touch her face; does that mean they're some kind of middle-aged man?

The group chatted and laughed as they stepped into the back of the mountain.

As soon as I entered the bamboo forest, I saw Zhang Guomin from the village carrying two baskets of bamboo shoots out.

"Uncle, is the bamboo shoot harvest good this year?" Zhang Niu greeted him with a smile.

Upon hearing the sound, the villagers put down one of their carrying poles and used it to support themselves, so they didn't have to put down their baskets. This was something that villagers carrying goods had to always carry with them.

He wiped the sweat from his brow. "It's no good. There aren't as many bamboo shoots this year as there were last year."

This surprised Zhang Niu. Last year there was a bumper harvest of bamboo shoots, and the weather has been good this year, so why is the bamboo shoot yield low?

He took out a pack of "Xin'anjiang" cigarettes worth ten yuan and handed one to the citizen.

The villagers usually smoke "Red Rose" cigarettes, which cost 3.5 yuan a pack. Zhang Niu's cigarettes were considered quite good. He didn't usually smoke them, but he would offer them to acquaintances when they met him.

The citizen, smoking a cigarette, said, "This is all because of last year's heavy snow. This year's harvest is estimated to be half of what it used to be. The bamboo shoots are all smaller. Look at them."

Zhang Niu and the others looked into the baskets and, just as Guomin had said, the smallest bamboo shoots weighed only about a pound, and the largest only a little over five pounds—they were really small. Guomin was an expert at growing moso bamboo in the village; last year, the heaviest single fresh bamboo shoot weighed over twenty pounds, making him arguably the king of bamboo shoots in the area.

People are saying that their poorly managed bamboo shoots are probably just so-so.

After chatting for a while, the people carried bamboo shoots and disappeared at the end of the path.

The bamboo groves stretch endlessly, and now it's impossible to even tell where the land is. You can see bamboo shoots emerging, either dug up by their own people or by others.

"We've arrived, this is the place."

The entire bamboo forest. There was no thick layer of bamboo leaves underfoot, but thick soil, with only a few scattered bamboo leaves on the ground, and exposed bamboo rhizomes everywhere.

"Ah Niu, this is your bamboo forest." The fat man looked at the entire bamboo forest in front of him.

"Yes, this land has been passed down through generations of my family; otherwise, how could it be so large?" he replied with a smile.

"Since you have such a large bamboo forest, why don't you take better care of it? Look at how sparse the bamboo is," Chairman Zhang asked, frowning.

Bamboo forests are very common in rural areas. Bamboo products such as bamboo mats, bamboo chairs, bamboo beds, and now bamboo fiber clothing have such wide applications that they cannot all be listed.

Zhang Niu knew Old Zhang would ask this question, and replied with a wry smile, "It's not that I don't want to manage this bamboo forest, but you don't understand, if you want bamboo shoots to grow tall, you see the soil right under your feet!"

Everyone nodded.

"The soil from the high mountains below needs to be covered with a layer of pond mud every year, and it has to be a thick layer. It's exhausting to carry pond mud from the foot of the mountain to here. Just these conditions alone make it impossible to complete the task. Everything else depends on these conditions."

Only then did everyone realize that it is truly difficult to achieve a high yield of bamboo shoots in this bamboo forest.

"Were all those bamboo chairs in the house made from bamboo cut from here?" Li Guang was quite interested in the bamboo.

"Buying it in town is less economical than having someone make it yourself."

Zhang Niu is absolutely right; making it at home saves money and guarantees quality.

"Time to dig bamboo shoots!"

Of the three hoes they brought, one was for Li Guang, one for Fatty, and Chairman Zhang said he didn't need any as he was just walking around.

Li Guang and his wife carried their hoes and headed off to another place.

The fat guy would shovel at any mound of earth he saw, but it was always a wasted effort.

Fatty, seeing that Zhang Niu had dug up a bamboo shoot in just a short while, hurried over to learn from him.

"Fatty didn't find any bamboo shoots, did he?" someone asked, looking at the fat man whose hands were empty.

"That's why I rushed over to ask you. Why is it so hard to dig bamboo shoots? It's a mound of earth, but there's nothing there." He then recounted what had just happened.

Zhang Niu chuckled after hearing this. He figured it was something he'd heard somewhere; people who don't know anything about digging bamboo shoots just look for the mounds of earth and start digging. These are usually nothing; in reality, those mounds are just underground bamboo rhizomes arching up, creating a false impression that there are bamboo shoots there.

Zhang Niu led the fat man to a sloping hillside, pointed to the ground beneath his feet, where there were small cracks, and said, "Look carefully, this place might have bamboo shoots."

The first hoe stroke leaves a gap between the bamboo shoot and the crack, to avoid cutting it in half and ruining it. The soil around the shoot is then cleared away, revealing the tip of the bamboo shoot peeking out.

Hollowing out all around, one shovelful, and the whole bamboo shoot is unearthed. Not much of the lower half is wasted.

The fat man next to him couldn't help but say, "Good job, kid. You're really good at digging bamboo shoots. You can use a little crack in the soil and a slightly raised mound of earth."

Zhang Niu naturally knew that the fat man probably didn't understand: "Digging for bamboo shoots isn't something you can do every time. For example, out of ten places I can find bamboo shoots, I can only find them in four. The older generation in the village can find bamboo shoots in nine out of ten places. I'm just a small fry compared to them."

The fat man had no idea there was such a trick to digging bamboo shoots. He only managed to dig nine out of ten spots; it seemed he needed to learn more, at least to be satisfied with digging two out of ten spots.

"Haha, finally we dug up a bamboo shoot!"

In the distance, from within the bamboo grove, the fat man's voice was truly something else, startling many birds into flight. This was the first time he had dug such a hole, after digging countless holes, and he shouted excitedly.

Zhang Niu had about ten bamboo shoots in his sack. Bamboo shoots are easy to preserve and can last for several days without any problem. Today, Li Guang and his wife, along with Chairman Zhang, were taking the children back to school.

A bamboo forest. Many red bamboo mushrooms sprouted from the piles of bamboo leaves, which the children collected quite a few of.

"Big brother, baby has picked a lot of red mushrooms." For baby and sweetie, all the mushrooms that can be found in the mountains are called mushrooms.

Upon seeing the red mushroom, Zhang Niu knew it was poisonous. "Baby, don't put this mushroom in your mouth, it's poisonous, you know?"

"Why can't we eat mushrooms?" Zhang Niu felt scared when he asked the question.

Fortunately, Li Guang and his wife returned and called their baby back, otherwise he would have had to become a teacher again.

Seeing these mushrooms reminded Zhang Niu of a poignant story from his village. It tells of an ancient woman who arranged a marriage with a man, promising to bring him home in a grand sedan chair after he passed the imperial examinations.

A scholar returned home after passing the imperial examination with top honors to marry his bride. However, upon his return, he discovered that his bride was covered in smallpox and her original beauty had vanished. One night, the scholar ordered his men to carry his bride to a remote village and abandon her to die, so that he could marry the daughter of a local landlord.

The woman who had drugged the drugged the drugged herself only realized she was in the vast mountains when she woke up in the morning. She never imagined her lifelong friend could be so cruel. In the desolate mountains, the woman ate wild fruits when she was hungry and drank mountain water when she was thirsty.

One day, I came to a bamboo forest and found a cave. I stepped into the cave and found a dozen or so large wine jars inside. The strangest thing was that there was a green snake licking the wine from the jars.

Whether it was good luck or something else, the snake, upon seeing the visitors, accidentally slipped into the wine vat and drowned.

The woman was so hungry that she started eating the drowned green snake, and then made the cave her own home.

Spring came and autumn went, and another spring arrived. The woman discovered that all the scars on her face had disappeared, and her appearance had been restored.

The strangest thing is that every midnight, countless snakes of all kinds crawl into the cave, throw the red mushrooms they have brought back from outside into the wine vats, and then retreat in an orderly fashion.

The woman then realized that she would likely only regain her appearance by drinking the water from the wine vat. From that moment on, a large amount of toxins began to accumulate in her body, and soon she was able to summon swarms of snakes.

The woman felt she had the power to seek revenge on the scholar, only to discover upon leaving the mountain that the former scholar was now a powerful local official. The scholar quickly became aware of her beauty and seized her that very night to force her to marry him; ironically, he didn't even recognize her.

Early in the morning, word spread from the government office that the scholar had died overnight, and the woman had been apprehended. After examining the body, the coroner suspected a snake bite, but the officials later discovered a red venomous snake on the roof beam in the courtyard.

After writing about life and death, the woman still returned to the secluded Zhong family in the deep mountains.

P.S.: This story is true, not made up. (To be continued. For more chapters and to support the author, please log in and read the official version!)