Whenever the birdsong pierces through the dark night and the sunlight squeezes in through the old glass, Li Dafa always asks his eldest sister and second sister to wash his face for him. He used to have thick eyebrows, big eyes and a square face, looking quite handsome when he was young. Now, he is so thin that only his big eyes remain, which is a bit scary. After washing his face, Li Dafa doesn't look much different from before, but he still considers himself a decent person.
In the village, young wives and old women often come to visit Li Dafa. People say, "Li Dafa is attractive to women."
The old woman says, "Poor thing. He doesn't even have a descendant. Who will take care of his funeral?"
The young wife says, "Poor thing. He has never had a woman in his life. When he dies, he won't even be as good as a chicken."
The old woman says, "Li Dafa has had women, and more than one."
The young wife says, "A bachelor had a wife? Why didn't she stay with him?"
Men are natural hunters, while marriage is a cage. A man trapped in the cage, even if he has the heart to hunt all the prey in the world, will eventually be restricted by the cage to some extent. On the contrary, a bachelor, before entering the cage, theoretically has the possibility to have fun freely and may experience more women than a married man. It's just that things didn't work out and he didn't get married in the end.
Thirty years ago, Li Dafa went to the Northeast to seek refuge with his eldest brother. He first worked as a logger in a forest farm in Jiamusi. Later, the forest farm closed down, and he left Jiamusi and went to a coal mine on the edge of Changbai Mountain to work as a miner.
This is the only mining area on the edge of Changbai Mountain. The indigenous residents and the migrant miners are all contributing to the industrialization goal. There is a big slogan written on the white wall painted with fly ash: "Dig more coal, widely dig coal, deeply dig coal. Coal is the light of society."
Coal is indeed the light here. The wealth brought by coal makes the small town like a shining isolated island, surrounded by poor areas. The miners' pockets are also like lights, stimulating the local consumption. The beautiful slogans are also like lights, shining on the restlessness of the male animals at night. Most of the migrant miners are single, so the lights attract the eagerness of the female animals around.
The female animals appear at night and lie in ambush in the woods near the mine. The miners have black faces, and the women's faces are also very dark. Men judge the body shape of women from their outlines and their ages from the texture of their voices. Of course, the voices are either coarse or fine, and most of the bodies are flabby. In the late 1980s, the manufacturing-based economy in the three provinces in Northeast China entered a stage of overall recession. Although there was no large-scale layoff at that time, the economic downturn of enterprises made many people's bowls first without meat and then without vegetables. Carnival became the only form of entertainment. Anyway, when it gets dark and they put on some makeup, no one can tell who is who, whether they are 18 or 58.
In winter, in the ice and snow of Changbai Mountain, women are afraid of freezing hard, and men are also afraid of freezing like popsicles. So everyone hibernates like bears. The affairs between men and women, when the lights are out, it's like Pan An paired with Dong Shi, Yang Guifei falling in love with Wu Dalang. They are essentially the same. The late 1980s was really a wonderful era. At that time, the prices were relatively stable and didn't increase for many years.
Li Dafa was a bit different among the miners. After coming up from the mine, while others went to have fun and gamble, he went to the bank to save money. He wanted to save a lot of money and had a wonderful plan. He wanted to go back to his hometown, marry the girl he loved, end his days of working outside and live a life with a wife, children and a warm kang.
At that time, Li Dapa was on the eve of turning 30. He had thick eyebrows, big eyes and a medium build. He was an outstanding figure among the coal miners. Because he didn't go to the woods, he was ridiculed by his colleagues. They said that a man who is not a rogue is not a normal man. When he was urinating, someone stared at him and said, "Li Dafa can urinate very far. He doesn't seem to have any problems."
At night, the Hong Kong female star on the dormitory wall was smiling at him. The female star had bright red lips, like the strawberries in his hometown in May, growing wildly, making Li Dafa want to bite her charming lips.
The miners' pockets swelled and deflated, the fragrant wheat buns turned from white to black, and the birds in the jungle flew around in their nests. The miners' lives were so wonderful.
If it hadn't been for that gas explosion.
That gas explosion now seems like an old movie in Li Dafa's memory, with a long time ago and a mottled picture. People's memory has a filtering function. It always likes to hold on to some beautiful things, while sadness and hardships are left out like impurities.
The brothers who got along day and night suddenly became something called corpses. And now he himself will soon become something called a corpse. The coming and going of his eldest brother in Jiamusi like a gust of wind lifted the curtain of Li Dafa's life as a miner. There was a play of his prime years being staged there, and a woman came into the play...
The gas explosion made the surviving Li Dafa realize that one should enjoy life in time instead of saving money in the bank. His co-worker was lively and kicking one moment and went to find a girl, but the next day he couldn't spend a penny in the bank. Enjoying life in time, of course, includes women. He needs more than just the women in the pictorials.
He had never had physical contact with a woman. His colleague said, "Mice are born to dig holes."
The eldest sister near the woods told him that the girl he was looking for was near the eighth fir tree. The fir tree was tall and thick and was easy to find among the birch forest.
However, Li Dafa made a mistake and went to the eleventh fir tree. There was no girl as expected to pounce on him. His flashlight shone on a lying woman. On a September night in Changbai Mountain, his surging spring heart cooled down immediately. This woman was not a girl looking for fun at all. She was on the verge of death. When Li Dafa helped her up, she could still speak, but Li Dafa couldn't understand. Judging from the pronunciation, she came from another country.
Li Dafa carried her out of the small woods and back to his dormitory. He fed her water and gave her food. The woman was like a frozen snake and gradually recovered.
Li Dafa picked up a woman out of nowhere. He didn't dare to keep her. But because there was food, she didn't want to leave.
She indeed came from the other side of the mountain. Li Dafa heard that the country over there was very poor. He couldn't imagine how poor it was. Later he learned that they were so poor that they couldn't afford salt and used seawater directly to pickle pickles.
He rented a house outside and lived with the stowaway woman. His 30-year-old virginity was also given to this woman. The woman's Chinese improved rapidly. Half a year later, Li Dafa knew her general situation: Her husband died of illness and she had a son who was fostered with her parents. Before starving to death, she escaped alone.
Li Dafa's pocket swelled and deflated, the fragrant wheat buns turned into flower rolls, and the bed was cold and then warm. Li Dafa's life was so wonderful.
Until someone knocked on Li Dafa's door and told him, "Your stowaway woman must be repatriated."
The other party was somewhat merciful. They stepped outside the door and gave them an hour to say goodbye.
The woman clung to Li Dafa like a gecko. Li Dafa felt that the woman was a soft-bodied animal without bones.
Li Dafa took out a stack of ten-yuan bills, twenty in total, two hundred yuan. He wrapped the money in a handkerchief and stuffed it into the woman's pocket. The woman stopped crying. She took out the handkerchief, spread it out, and to Li Dafa's astonishment, she ate the ten-yuan RMB bills one by one into her stomach! These money was life-saving money.
Later, she took out thirty yuan from the money retrieved from the cycle of grains and bribed the driver who escorted her. The front was the direction of home. Going back means starving to death. The woman turned around and ran back into the mountains, heading towards China.
On the eve of Li Dafa's preparation to return the rented house, the wild cats in late spring suddenly meowed pitifully. A strong wind blew at night, and the door of his room rattled irregularly in the wailing wind.
He approached the door, with one hand behind his back, holding a wooden stick. "Who is it?"
A voice came from outside: "It's me."
He opened the door, and a soft-bodied animal fell into his arms. By the light, he saw clearly the face of the stowaway woman.
He was her light.
He hid the stowaway woman for three days. He said, "Come back to Shandong with me. There isn't much money to be made there, but the Dragon King takes good care of that place. The weather is an ideal climate and people never go hungry."
The stowaway woman didn't know who the Dragon King was, but she knew that it was a very powerful heavenly official in charge of people's food.
He left the small town with the stowaway woman. The coal mine still owed him a month's salary, but he couldn't wait to get it.
He used the money he earned in the Northeast to rebuild the dilapidated house left by his parents into four red-brick houses and rebuilt the courtyard wall and gate. Of course, his eldest sister contributed money and his second sister contributed labor.
Li Dafa's pocket swelled and deflated, the fragrant wheat buns were replaced by flower rolls, and the bed was cold and then warm. Li Dafa's life was so wonderful. Liu You's wife next door taught the stowaway woman how to make dumplings, flower rolls, steamed stuffed buns and pancakes. Liu You's wife was warm-hearted. Li Dafa thought she was a good person.
When Li Dafa was not at home, Fatty Wang would sell soy sauce and vinegar to the stowaway woman on credit. Li Dafa thought Fatty Wang was really a good person.
He also met bad people.
In the first year after Li Dafa returned to his hometown, the contracted farmland assigned to him by the village was next to Zhao Youcai's. In autumn, the corn cobs in Li Dafa's field were full and firm, while those in Zhao Youcai's field were dry, flat and small. The experienced old farmers in the village said that the land was good, but Zhao Youcai didn't choose good seeds. The words were passed around and became that Zhao Youcai couldn't grow crops well. Zhao Youcai had a pair of twin daughters at that time. People called them the Twins. The Twins had small heads and faces and were not very good-looking. In the aesthetic view of rural people, a face like a four-happy-meatball is the most pleasing. Zhao Youcai felt that he fit the description and was not even happy when he hiccupped.
When the corn was almost ripe, some of Li Dafa's corn was picked one after another. After losing too much, Li Dafa couldn't keep calm. He got up in the middle of the night to be a detective and raided his cornfield. The moon was bright and the stars were sparse. He saw a small cart at the edge of the field, with half a cart of his big corn in it. He recognized the cart. It belonged to Zhao Youcai. The wind blew through the cornfield, making a rustling sound. Li Dafa raised his voice and shouted, "Thank you, brother, for helping me pick the corn like a bear. I'll take it home first." Then he pushed the small cart away. Zhao Youcai, who was hiding in the cornfield, was like a dumb man eating bitter herbs. He didn't dare to make a sound.
Li Dafa's corn grew safely until the harvest season.
The stowaway woman advised Li Dafa to return the small cart to Zhao Youcai. The stowaway woman said, "We should seek peace, not war."
Li Dafa listened to her and threw the small cart back to the edge of Zhao Youcai's field one night. But the cart was not returned intact. The old man who got up early to pick up dung saw that the small cart was shining more brightly than a pile of cow dung, so he put his dung basket on the cart and pushed it away humming the song "A Sunny Day in September"!
Since then, the enmity between the owners of the cornfields has deepened.
Li Dafa lived a peaceful life in his hometown. Maybe the stowaway woman was the girl he wanted to marry. With a wife, children and a warm kang, he only lacked children.
After the stowaway woman didn't have her period for three months, Li Dafa brought the woman to Doctor Wok Lid. After taking the pulse, Doctor Wok Lid announced to Li Dafa, "You're going to be a father."
When his eldest sister and second sister came back to their parents' home, he told them the good news. The eldest sister said, "Now I can rest assured. You have a wife and a child and can live a good life. It doesn't matter if you're poor. In this day and age, as long as you have the strength to work hard, you can live a good life."
The second sister said, "You two should try to get a marriage certificate. Without a marriage certificate, the child will be a black household in the future and can't go to school or get land. But to get a marriage certificate, you need the household registrations of both of you. Your wife is already a black household. What can we do? Let's save some money first and look for an opportunity to get it through the back door."
The second sister's words reminded him. He couldn't save enough money to get it through the back door just by the harvest from the fields. His strength was his capital. The village's water channel needed to be renovated. This water channel, built in the 1950s, ran from a reservoir 30 miles south all the way to the county town and was a key water conservancy project for water supply and irrigation. The slopes on both sides of the water channel needed to be paved with stones again.
The reservoir at the source had stopped discharging water. The section passing through Li Dafa's village had also been drained. At that time, being a construction laborer was a job that farmers flocked to. Li Dafa was strong and was naturally chosen.
Also chosen was Zhao Youcai, who used to be in the same trench as him. Theoretically, they were apprentices of Master Lu Ban.
Under the scorching sun, Li Dafa, with his shirt off and a full shovel of concrete, strode up the slope in a few steps. The mason quickly smoothed the concrete and flattened the stones. Zhao Youcai was responsible for mixing cement at the bottom of the channel. The shovel made a creaking sound when mixing the slurry. The three people working together didn't speak, like performing a pantomime.
During the break, a row of black men like loaches sat in the shade of the tree. Some were smoking, some were drinking water, some were fanning themselves with straw hats. Someone asked, "Li Dafa, I heard you're going to be a father soon?"
Li Dafa grinned.
Someone said, "No wonder you're working so hard. It turns out you're saving money for your son's wife."
Li Dafa grinned again.
Zhao Youcai was drinking water with his head up, gulping down half a stomach of water. He seemed to be choked by the water and had a hard time hiccupping twice. He glanced at Li Dafa briefly.
After working as a construction laborer for thirteen days, with a salary of 18 yuan a day, Li Dafa calculated secretly that he could earn 234 yuan. The salary was paid every ten days. On the eleventh day, he could get 180 yuan first.
He excitedly said to the stowaway woman, "When I get the money, I'll take you to the market. You can choose whatever you want to eat. At noon, we'll go to my eldest sister's home to eat."
The stowaway woman, haggard from the pregnancy reaction, had slender eyes shining with a touching light.
When Li Dafa got his ten-day salary, he put it in his chest pocket. He touched it several times on his way home. He felt a warm current of happiness passing through his heart and flowing all over his body. From then on, his back was even straighter.
That day, when Li Dafa walked straight to his door, he touched his chest pocket again.
Looking up, there was a jeep parked at his door. Two people got out of the jeep. Li Dafa recognized that they were the same as the last group of people.
The taller one said, "Your wife is illegal. She is a person who defected from her country. You are conniving at her."
Li Dafa didn't understand what "conniving at her" meant. He wondered how his woman could be found since she was hidden so well. A thought popped up in Li Dafa's mind: Run!
This time, the other party was somewhat merciful and gave them a week to say goodbye. But the tall man warned, "If she runs away, we'll come to arrest you. If both of you run away, your eldest sister and second sister won't escape either."
Every night, the woman clung to him like a gecko. After a week, her tears still hadn't dried. Li Dafa touched her slightly bulging belly. He knows that this time, she couldn't run back to him like last time. She also knows what two defections mean.
Li Dafa went to the construction site to ask for the remaining money. Because it wasn't the next ten-day cycle, he returned empty-handed.
Li Dafa took out