Most of the houses in the village were made of mud. They were afraid of water and would collapse once they were soaked in water.
My house is on a low ridge. The ridge behind the house is densely planted with reeds to protect the foundation of the house. The wall is made of adobe and the flat roof is flat. The house is supported on the wall. First, a few layers of reed mats are laid, and then a foot thick grass mud mixed pulp is laid on the mat.
They said they were afraid of water, but the flood really came. It was at noon in the late summer of 1956. The village was in a panic. Someone brought back a letter from the outside saying that the Yellow River had a gap and the flood was about to reach here.
Father was not at home, and Mother had never seen a flood before. She panicked and did not know what to do. Someone said to her,"Your house is low in terrain. Hurry up and move to the high ridge in the west to hide."
His father also found out about the Yellow River breach and rushed home overnight to move the daily necessities to the western ridge.
That night, I still fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, I found myself sleeping in the open air in front of the door of the people's house on the ridge. The ridge was already surrounded by Wang Yang. Only then did I know that the adults had not slept the whole night. Mother said that the waves of the flood came with the sound of the wind. It was very terrifying. I was completely unaware of all this in my dream.
Looking down at his house from the ridge, the foundation of the house had been submerged. If the water reached the adobe wall, the house would collapse. God bless, the flood finally stopped rising.
After the flood receded, all the crops in the fields were drowned, and the food was completely harvested. Famine followed. The farmers rushed to plant the autumn crops, and the locust plague also appeared. It started from some villages in the north. The locusts flew and covered the sun. The crops that were planted after the disaster were eaten by the locusts, not even the grass roots and leaves were left.
The government organized the killing of locusts. Anyone who could carry a duster would go to the fields to spray "Liuliu powder"(traditional toxic pesticide). I followed my mother to the fields.
People lined up in a straight line and pushed forward with their dusters. For a moment, the suffocating smell of Liuliu powder filled the vast wilderness. The sky was gray with Liuliu powder, and densely packed locusts fell from the sky.
The hunger forced the people to pick up the roasted locusts that had been poisoned by Liuliu powder, and many villagers were poisoned.
Mother didn't let me and brother eat locusts, but hunger made us unable to care so much, so we hid it from Mother and secretly roasted the locusts.
The aroma of the roasted locusts made people drool. If they had not been sprayed with pesticide, the roasted locusts could have saved the lives of many starving villagers.
Where did so many locusts come from? People thought that when the flood flooded the land, the fish in the flood would lay a large number of eggs, and when the flood receded, these eggs would hatch into locusts. No one knew if this was true or not.
In the summer of the second year after the flood, young cicadas When it was dark, a large number of young cicadas crawled out of the soil under the tree roots and slowly climbed onto the tree trunk. At this time, the villagers surrounded the tree trunk to catch the young cicadas that had just crawled out of the soil under the tree. My brother and I also went out to catch young cicadas. In one night, we caught more than ten or even dozens of young cicadas and roasted them at home. The roasted young cicadas were golden and delicious. Eating roasted young cicadas was simply the highest level of enjoyment.
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