Relying on my father's meal ticket and the water spinach leaves I picked up by the pond to satisfy my hunger, we couldn't hold on any longer. The hunger made me lose all other kindness. All I could do was dream of having something to eat.
I couldn't help but think of the corn paste mixed with chaff that I drank when I was guarding the house alone in Physician's Village. Although it was a little choking, it was better than not having any soup or water now. Cough, if only I could drink a bowl of corn paste now.
Oh, and there are willow trees in the doctor's village. Although the vegetables steamed with willow leaves are a little bitter, they become a little sweet after getting used to the bitter taste. Oh right, how could we forget the willow trees? Can't we find willow trees here? There couldn't be no willow trees in this dense forest, right?
Mother wasn't used to the mountainous areas. She was wobbly even when walking on flat ground. On this rugged mountain road, she simply couldn't walk. There were ditches and slopes in front, back, left, and right. When she looked up, she could see dense forests. She couldn't make sense of the north, south, east, and west. She refused to let us brothers leave the shed and go far away, afraid that we wouldn't be able to find them.
I told my mother that I wanted to look around and see if there were any willow trees so that I could pick some willow leaves to eat. At first, Mother stopped us from going, but when she thought that it was not a solution to keep our stomachs flat all day, she reluctantly agreed.
My brother and I followed the path on the hillside and searched all the way. There were all kinds of trees on the hillside, but we almost didn't know any. We had never seen so many kinds of trees before. When we were in Dafutun, we only knew elm trees, locust trees, bitter pear trees, and poplar trees.
Looking at the tender green leaves on the trees around us, we didn't know which ones were edible. Just now, Mother also warned us that the trees in the south weren't like those in the north. Many of them were poisonous.
The hillside was full of tall pine trees, mixed with all kinds of other trees, except for the willow tree. When I walked out of the forest, I suddenly saw a tree that looked like a poplar in the north. I said to my brother,"Is this a poplar? Let's take some leaves back. It's better than going back empty-handed. I don't know how to climb trees, so I barely climbed up the trunk. Fortunately, the tree was not tall. I hugged the trunk with one hand and stretched out the other hand. Just as I broke a branch, a pungent smell rushed up. It turned out that my hand was stained with some glue-like resin." Her brother said that this tree might not be edible, so she did not want to break it.
I was afraid that if I went back empty-handed, it would make mother sad, so I insisted that it was not necessarily impossible to eat. I would first make some to cook. Mother was waiting for us to come back. When she saw some leaves that looked like poplar leaves, she said that they couldn't be eaten. There were so many people who starved to death in the north, but no one ate poplar leaves.
I asked Mother to cook some to try. Mother knew that it wouldn't work, so she still put the leaves into the big pot to cook. The water had just boiled, and the big pot emitted a strange smell that made people feel a little disgusted. It seemed that these leaves really couldn't be eaten.
This tree should be a poplar tree, but due to the difference in soil and water, it grew differently in the north and south. Perhaps the leaves were not poisonous in the north, but it might not be the case in the south.
At that time, there was a tung tree in the woods next to the shed where we lived. Under the wide green leaves were green tung fruits. We didn't know the tung tree. When we first arrived, our whole family noticed this kind of fruit. We thought that this must be the apple of the local people, so we didn't pick it.
However, looking at the surrounding forest, there were such tung trees everywhere. They didn't seem to be man-made. Mother told us that it would be good if these fruits were wild. These fruits looked like apples and definitely weren't poisonous. We could pick these fruits and eat them.
After hearing my mother say this, I saw that there was no one around, so I immediately went to the tree and quickly picked a few tung trees. The tung tree fruit had a bright green and smooth surface. His mother looked at it and said that it looked like an apple, but she was not sure if it was. She cut a petal with a knife and licked it. A green gas entered her nose, but it was not bitter or astringent. She tried to eat it.
Mother didn't let us eat it because she was afraid that something would happen later. Sure enough, not long after, Mother began to have stomachaches and diarrhea. We brothers were scared out of our wits. We were afraid that Mother was poisoned, so we hurried to the workshop to find Father. Father's colleagues heard that she had eaten the tung oil fruit. They said that it was not a big deal. The tung oil fruit was not very poisonous, but it would cause diarrhea. She would be fine in half a day. After that, for a while, we no longer dared to look for food in the forest. We could only endure the torture of hunger.
In fact, there are many edible things on the mountain. There are a lot of acorns, bitter chestnuts, and vines beside the shed we live in. Further up the mountain, there are hairy chestnuts, sharp chestnuts, hawthorn, and so on. It's just that we just came and didn't know that there were these things to eat.
There was an oil tea tree in front of the shed. The tree was covered with oil tea seeds. No one picked up the ripe oil tea seeds when they fell into the grass. Of course, these things couldn't be eaten simply by cooking them, but if one knew how to cook them, they could become very precious food.
In Zhou Tiankou, there were local farmers selling acorn tofu. They ground acorns into powder, repeatedly used water to remove the bitter taste in the acorns, then boiled the starch pulp, cooled it, and condensed it into tofu shape for sale.
My father didn't know how to do this, and my mother didn't know either. She just thought of simply cooking acorns and eating them. Once she ate them, she felt that they were as bitter as the moldy sweet potato flour bread that the doctor had sold. They must not be eaten, or they would kill people. It was no wonder. His parents were northerners, and neither of them were farmers. They did not have the ability of farmers to survive in the natural world.
Guarding the dense forest in front of me, I was always unwilling to find food. I slipped out alone and went down to the river through the water channel from the pool where I collected the leaves. I sat on a smooth boulder and stared at the bushes beside me in a daze, hoping to find something to eat. Every time I stared at the branches, I almost always found snakes hiding under the leaves, ready to hunt. Could snakes be as hungry as me? When I found it, its eyes were also staring at me without moving. Could it be that it wants to prey on me? I shuddered and goosebumps appeared all over my body. I restrained myself and refused to leave. I was afraid to go back to the shed and see my mother worrying about food for everyone. I would rather stay here alone. I even thought of being bitten to death by a snake. I didn't have to starve all day.
The snake was still staring at me silently. It was close at hand. I was no longer afraid of it and stared at it closely. It seemed to know that I was staring at it. It tilted its head to the side and no longer looked at me, as if it was afraid of me.
I looked at it carefully. Its body was almost the same color as the twigs around it. The twigs were gray, so the snakes climbing on them must be gray. If the twigs were green, the snakes climbing on them must be green too. Sometimes, you would find spotted butterflies flying over and landing on the chessboard snake. If people were not careful and reached out to catch the butterflies, they would be in fatal danger. This was known as the Five-Step Nervous System Venomous Snake.(I would like to add that this chessboard snake would be worth a lot of money in 2011, but at that time, people would not associate snakes with money. They would not even associate snakes with human food if they starved to death.)
I was no longer afraid of these poisonous snakes. They were the same as me, hunting for food in order to survive. However, they did not have the ability to devour me. Even if I starved to death, I would not think of eating them. We all endure hunger and need patience to find sacrifices that are suitable for us to eat. Snake, just wait there quietly. Good luck.
I still have to find something to eat, but I can't sit on the stone and wait. I have to boldly try the plants or wild fruits next to me.
The smell of mothballs by the river came from the lush and airtight green canopy of the Camphor tree. I had never seen Camphor tree before, but when I was in Dafutun, my mother put mothballs in her suitcase. I once tasted it as mint candy. That taste was not delicious, but it made me remember the smell of mothballs forever.
In front of me, among all the plants, the only one that I was familiar with was the tree that emitted the smell of mothballs. Then, could this tree that emitted the smell of mothballs become something I could eat? When he thought of the smell of mothballs, he didn't have the confidence to eat them. But if he didn't eat it, what would he eat? " The other trees might be poisonous and will take my life. Although living is just like this, it's all suffering. But now that I'm dead, it will still make my mother sad. So, I don't want to die. I don't want to taste the things on those trees that might die.
Looking at the bottom of the river, there were a few small black fruits. Where did they come from? Picking up a few, they looked like small black grapes.
Grape was a good thing. There was a family in Physician's Village who had grown grapes in their courtyard. Although they had never eaten them before, they had heard that they were very delicious fruits.
How could there be grapes in the water? Were there grapevines in these bushes? Looking around, he didn't see any grapevines.
These small black fruits must have fallen into the water from some tree. Who cares? I'll taste them first. As soon as I put them into my mouth and took a bite, a familiar taste rushed straight to my head. It turns out that these small fruits really have the same taste that I haven't forgotten.
This book comes from：m.funovel.com。