Chapter 29 Forgot the big thing! Li Qiang came over and called the two of them to eat, and then Li Long and Tao Daqiang put on their clothes and went to the west room. Li Long was delighted to see the plate of grass carp on the table. As expected, Li Qiang would not hesitate to take revenge, so he brought the grass carp back and stewed it in the evening. In addition to grass carp, there is also fish soup made with small crucian carp, added with cornmeal cakes, which is steaming hot and tastes very fragrant. Li Juan was cleaning up her thigh stones on the kang. She must have just finished playing. Everyone sat at the table, Li Jianguo picked up his chopsticks, and everyone started eating. Tao Daqiang still lowered his head and ate slowly. If Li Long hadn't reminded him from time to time, he wouldn't even pick up the fish, but just soak the corn cakes in the fish soup. "You should eat more fish." Li Long said to him with a smile, "This is a powerful enemy. Let's destroy it together." "Yeah." Tao Daqiang responded. Li Qiang said he wanted revenge, but in fact he only ate one chopstick of grass carp before turning to the crucian carp next to him. Grass carp has thick meat, and although Liang Yuemei cut the spine when stewing it, most of the fish meat still tasted a bit bland. And there is a lack of oil.
Li Long was thinking, after selling the fish tomorrow, he would go to the black market to see if there was anyone selling cooking oil. These days, everything needs a ticket. The family has some food tickets, but not many other tickets. "Brother, give me some food coupons tomorrow so I can sell the fish and buy some food." Li Long said as he watched Li Juan and Li Qiang struggling with the cornmeal cakes. "We still have a lot of cornmeal at home," said Liang Yuemei. "Buy some fine grains," Li Long said. "Juan and Qiangqiang are not growing well if they only eat coarse grains." Liang Yuemei stopped talking. Didn't she want her children to eat more fine grains? But the rations distributed by the team were not much, and Li Long was given more fine grains at that time. Fortunately, my brother-in-law has changed and is capable now. "Okay." Li Jianguo chewed the cornmeal cake and found it particularly sweet. In fact, Li Long knew that he just needed to get through the next six months. When the land was distributed next year, even if everyone only had two mu of food-grain land, if they really planted it, the grain they harvested would be enough for everyone to eat after paying the public grain tax. Good days are coming! After dinner, Li Long gave Tao Daqiang some instructions and asked him to come early tomorrow morning. Tao Daqiang responded and left. "Daqiang is a very honest child." Liang Yuemei said as she cleaned up the dishes, "We can't let him down." "Yeah." Li Jianguo rolled up a Mohe cigarette and began to tell stories to the two children while rolling it. Under the kerosene lamp, the two children listened attentively. "...More than a hundred years ago, this place was known as 'Gold Plate Jade Bottom'. Why was that? Because at that time, there were gold mines at the bottom of the Ma River and jade mines at the source of the river. Many wealthy families at that time lived in the broken city now..." Li Long, who was originally planning to go to bed, heard this and slapped his thigh, saying in annoyance: "How could I be so stupid as to forget this?" "What?" His slap was so loud that Liang Yuemei in the kitchen heard it and hurried over to ask, "What did you remember?" "Jade!" Li Long slapped his head again, "We have jade mines in Nanshan! There are seed jades in the upper reaches of the Nama River! The herdsman even asked me what to look out for, and I forgot about this!" Mahe Jasper is a national treasure. Jade mines were opened here during the Qing Dynasty. Although the quality of the jade is not as good as that of Hetian Jasper and most of it has black spots like fly poop, high-quality seed jade is also very rare.
Li Long remembered that when his eldest brother was still alive in his previous life, Li Juan told him a story after coming home from school. Her classmate's father once bought a piece of jade seed material weighing more than ten kilograms from a herdsman for more than ten yuan in the 1970s, and sold it for more than two thousand yuan in 1985. Two thousand yuan was a huge sum of money in those days! Halimu and his people have lived in the mountains for generations, so they must know where to find jasper. In his previous life, when Li Long was in his thirties, Mahe jasper was just famous, so he went into the mountains to collect jade. At that time, many herdsmen no longer had seed jade, but instead secretly used explosives to blast out mountain jade in the Jade Mountain. Li Long was an amateur, and what he received was a piece of rock. The surface looked like stone, and it was indeed jade after being polished. Unfortunately, the rock was blasted so hard that the inside was full of cracks and was useless. In his previous life, from 1985 until Li Long's death, whenever the riverbed dried up after a flood, many people would pick up jade in the riverbed with mineral water bottles every day. When you see a stone that looks like jade, use a mineral water bottle with holes drilled in the cap to pour some water on the stone and you will know whether it is jade or not. At the beginning of the century, every year people discovered very heavy pieces of jade in the upper reaches of the river, weighing from tens of kilograms to several tons. "Then you can go and ask when you have time and you will know." Li Jianguo smiled, "It's not like that thing will run away. Jade is not necessarily more expensive than grain nowadays." When he said this, he meant that it was important. Li Long thought about it and agreed. "Uncle, you are not stupid!" Li Qiang said loudly, "Uncle is the smartest! He can catch the quacking chicken and exchange it for thigh stones - no one else has this ability!" "Haha, Qiangqiang is the best." Li Long laughed. Back in the east room, Li Long was thinking about the quacking chicken that Li Qiang had just mentioned. Since we are selling fish tomorrow, why not go see if there are any quacking chickens? It would be fine to catch a few quacking chickens and sell them. He did it as soon as he thought of it. He pressed the stove, picked up the flashlight, put on gloves and a hat, went out to get the scoop net and urea bag, and walked east. After walking a few hundred meters, Li Long knew that this trip might be in vain. There were footprints following his steps. Obviously, he was not the only one who wanted to catch the quacking chicken or knew the location of the quacking chicken. Fortunately, Li Long knew that there was more than one place where the quacking chickens could hide. He walked with a flashlight to the place where he caught the quacking chickens last time, and sure enough, there was not a single one. Then let’s change places. Turning south and wading forward in the snow, Li Long was panting heavily. He felt a little regretful. It was too difficult to walk. But now that we're here and have walked so far, the remaining few hundred meters won't matter. Suddenly, a black thing rushed out from the side. Li Long was startled and turned on the flashlight to look around. He saw a gray shadow with half a white butt. Wild rabbit! There are so many good things in the wild! Li Long watched the wild rabbit run away in the snow before turning off the flashlight. To be honest, the rabbit didn't run very fast, but because it hadn't just started snowing, the snow had accumulated for a while and was quite solid, so the rabbit was able to run. He planned to come and chase rabbits and set some rabbit traps when it snowed next time. This thing has more meat than the quack chicken. Soon, Li Long approached the place where the second quacking chicken was hiding. He slowed down his pace and moved forward cautiously.
Thanks to book friends Baifowoweishoudouzhan and 20220308131935841 for their monthly tickets. Thank you all for your recommendations and support! (End of this chapter)
