Jiang Xiaoman listed what Jiang Cancan's family needed most right now, and then gave them some instructions—
"Don't be silly and carry it up the mountain yourself. There's a zipline from my house to the village, right? Go buy a pack of cigarettes for the guy on duty in the village and ask him to bring them to my house for you. I'll be waiting for you at home tomorrow morning. After you deliver the things, come to my house for lunch!"
"Great!" Fang Xingchen cheered immediately. He was willing to go to Xiaoman's house for a meal or even go hiking.
"Let's buy a few more bags of sorghum candy and corn syrup? I see that everyone in the village loves to eat these," Chu Mengluan chimed in from the side.
"Bring the equipment too. Didn't we promise Can Can's fans to film more of her daily life?" Fang Xingchen suddenly remembered that many people in the comments section had recently expressed interest in seeing where Jiang Can Can lived and studied. It seemed they were quite interested in their place, and they hadn't had any good material lately.
After school at 3 p.m., Fang Xingchen borrowed a three-wheeled electric vehicle from a fellow villager and went to town with Chu Mengluan to do some shopping.
"Old Fang, I never dreamed in my life that I would actually want to buy an electric tricycle like this. This thing is so convenient!" Chu Mengluan sat on a small stool in the back of the tricycle, her voice trembling as the tricycle bounced around.
"Then you'd better not even think about it. Our provincial capital banned these electric tricycles from the roads several years ago. Even if you bought one, you wouldn't be able to drive it out!"
“Then I’ll buy one and put it at the school! Seriously, Lao Fang, I love it here! I love Principal Baichuan, I love Brother Xiaoman, I love the kids here. I plan to apply to come back and teach here again next summer.”
"Then let's continue to work together, haha. I've already talked to Principal Baichuan. Next summer, I'll prepare a teaching syllabus based on the compulsory subjects for the entrance exam to junior high school."
"Okay~ If I hadn't told you today, were you not planning to take me with you?"
"How could that be? I was planning to ask you after my teaching stint ended. By the way, I remember your music and art departments have a good relationship. Our school doesn't even have an art teacher. It would be great if we could bring in another art teacher."
"Leave it to me! No need to look for it from our school, our art department doesn't seem that great." Chu Mengluan looked down on her alma mater's art department, then proudly boasted, "I'll ask my childhood friend, he's a top student at the art academy. With him around, why bother looking elsewhere?"
The two discussed their volunteer teaching plans for next summer vacation along the way, and soon arrived in town.
Langshan Township is extremely deserted outside of market days. Only the shops lining the streets are open, and there are hardly any people. This is already considered the most bustling CBD in the entire township. Further into the mountains, you might walk for half an hour and not find a single house. Some villages have been reduced to just a few scattered households. The young people have gone out to work, and if the children are still boarding at school in town, only a few elderly people remain in the village. It's eerily quiet...
When they first went on home visits with Jiang Baichuan, the two of them were a little scared. It was completely different from the peaceful and tranquil mountain village life they had imagined before they came!
In these lifeless, gloomy villages, the only vibrant thing is the children. No wonder Principal Baichuan has been dedicated to this rural primary school with only thirty-odd students.
If there are no schools, then the few remaining villages and households in the mountains will truly disappear completely.
However, because there were few people, the grocery store owner easily recognized the two college students as teachers who had gone to the mountains to teach during the summer vacation. He received them very warmly, rounded down the bill, and even gave them a bag of newly made rice candy as a gift.
While Chu Mengluan and the others were shopping, Jiang Xiaoman was also busy. He brought his machete and snake medicine to the mountain and planned to buy some rock honey from Laoshan Aozi.
Laoshan Aozi is not the name of a village, but a collective term for a group of scattered villages. They are also related to the ancestors of Shanrong Village Chief in Banligou.
I heard that the mountain people in this area fled to the mountains over the past few hundred years to escape war, plague, and famine, and settled here. I heard that in ancient times, the punishment for people who evaded military service and corvée labor was particularly severe, so people who fled to the mountains would not use their original names anymore, but would give themselves a new alias, such as taking the mountain as their surname or the water as their given name.
The people living in Laoshan Aozi are mostly surnamed Shan or Mu. The Shan people are extremely skilled at hunting and rock climbing. In the past, medicine merchants from the foot of the mountain would often hire people to go into the mountains to find some precious medicinal herbs. Later, the forests in this area were designated as a nature reserve, and various precious wild Chinese medicinal herbs were also included in the protection list. If you are caught illegally digging them up, you will go to jail. So in recent years, the people living in Laoshan Aozi have made a living by rock climbing and harvesting rock honey.
Langshan is covered with countless wildflowers and grasses all year round, and is rich in nectar sources. Wild bees build huge hives on the cliffs, and every summer and autumn, people from the Laoshan Aozi area go into the mountains to harvest honey.
This wild rock honey is of high quality and sells for a high price; it costs 100 yuan per kilogram after being harvested.
If it weren't for the huge favors Jiang Xiaoman owed Ma Yuenan and Wei Sheng, he would never have been willing to buy such expensive rock honey, no matter what. In any case, he couldn't tell the difference between rock honey and the local honey harvested from their beehives down the mountain.
Jiang Xiaoman had a high school classmate who came from the old mountain valley. He heard that his cousin was a well-known honey finder in the area. Jiang Xiaoman got his cousin's phone number and followed the location his cousin gave him to find the village.
This village is even smaller than their Langshan Village, and probably because of the inconvenient transportation in the mountains, the houses are not built with red bricks like those at the foot of the mountain. Instead, they all have thick rammed earth walls, and even the windows are very high, probably to prevent wild animals from climbing in through the windows.
"You must be Shan Feng's cousin?" Jiang Xiaoman saw a robust man of about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old sitting at the door and hurriedly went up to ask.
"I am Shan Yan. You must be Jiang Xiaoman? A Feng called me. Why did you have to come all this way if you wanted Yan Mi? I often go down the mountain to attend events." Shan Yan shook his head, seemingly unhappy that waiting for him had taken up half a day.
"It's my fault for not explaining it clearly to Shanfeng. Here's the thing, Brother Shanyan, I've just graduated from university and want to go back to my hometown to start a business. I also want to raise some native bees and sell honey. I need to film some footage of the wild honey from here, like short videos. I heard from Shanfeng that you guys often go into the mountains to harvest honey. Could I go with you to take a look and film some videos?"
"You? Can you even run?" Shan Yan glanced at him.
"I started climbing mountains to go to school by myself when I was five years old." Jiang Xiaoman chuckled, squatted down, took two lollipops out of her bag, and handed one to him. "Brother, have some candy!"
Besides going into the mountains to find honey, Shan Yan is also a forest ranger in the village. People in their line of work are not allowed to smoke, so he often has candy in his mouth to pass the time. Jiang Xiaoman had found out the information in advance and didn't bring anything into the mountains except a backpack full of candies of various flavors.
“Ah Feng tells you everything.” Shan Yan took the lollipop, unwrapped it, and twisted hemp rope while chewing on the candy.
For these honey gatherers who climb mountains to harvest honey, their most important life-saving weapon is this hemp rope. Those in this line of work, not to mention anything else, even the thick hemp rope tied around their waist is something they twist themselves. Because they go up the mountain frequently, the rope wears out quickly, so whenever they have free time, they have to keep twisting the hemp rope.
"Hehe~ I sat next to A-Feng for two years. By the way, brother, I want to buy a few pounds of rock honey as a gift. That person helped my family a lot. Do you have any good quality rock honey at home now?"
Unlike artificial beekeeping, the yield and quality of rock honey depend entirely on the weather. The quality and yield of rock honey each year and season are random. However, Shanfeng told Jiang Xiaoman that people who frequently collect honey usually keep some of the good honey, which can be sold for a good price if they encounter a wealthy person willing to pay.
Jiang Xiaoman isn't rich, but Wei Sheng gave Jiang Cancan such a great opportunity to leave the mountains and even helped her connect with the group's top agent; Ma Yuenan posted a Weibo post and the school's video account gained a million followers in just one week... These are all huge favors, and he wouldn't feel good if he didn't give her something nice in return.
"I did save some good honey, 150 yuan a pound. If it's not for someone important, you can buy it for 81 yuan a pound and no one will notice." Perhaps because he had eaten Jiang Xiaoman's candy, Shan Yan's tone was better than before, and he even started to save him money.
"I want the best rock honey, it's 150 yuan, right? Give me four jin!" Jiang Xiaoman said, barely suppressing the pain in her eyes.
A pound of rock honey isn't much, but at 150 yuan a pound, that's several yuan for just one spoonful. Rounding it up, it's practically eating money!
Shanyan's family seemed to be one of the wealthier families in the village. I didn't realize it when I first entered the village. I was surprised to find that they actually had two houses, one in front and one in back. However, the row of houses behind theirs was clearly the old ones. Later, a new house was built in front, but the back ones were not demolished. They were used to store firewood and grain. There was a room next to it that was used to store honey and beeswax. High-quality wild beeswax can also be sold for money.
Shan Yan opened the door, took out a bucket of honey, and used a special one-pound ladle to fill four bottles of rock honey for him. This rock honey was all new honey from this year. It looked a bit like refined lard. The temperature in the mountains was low, and the honey was almost solidified. However, it was different from snow-white linden honey. It had a color similar to butter.
Jiang Xiaoman had seen real rock honey before. His father used to have a brother who ran through the mountains, and every year when he passed by their house, he would bring him some of this rock honey. The taste of rock honey harvested in different seasons is different. In early summer, it has the fragrance of hundreds of flowers with a faint medicinal smell. Rock honey harvested in autumn tastes more like a combination of the fragrance of various wild fruits and flowers.
"Brother Shanyan, do you live alone?" Jiang Xiaoman hadn't seen anyone else in the family after being inside for a while. She still had a lot of gifts for different age groups in her backpack that she hadn't given out yet, and she felt a little uneasy.
He didn't give out the gift, nor did he try to please the other members of the Shan Yan family, and he didn't know if Shan Yan would be willing to take him into the mountains to film a video.
"My sworn brother went into the mountains with some people to pick mushrooms," Shan Yan said in a muffled voice.
Jiang Xiaoman silently processed those words in her mind, then her eyes widened in surprise.
Chapter 61
Jiang Xiaoman had heard her father talk about the sworn brotherhood. He heard that her father's brother, who was always running around in the mountains, became sworn brothers with a man from another village because he couldn't find a wife.
According to Jiang Youliang, there used to be quite a lot of marriages in Langshan in the early years. However, as generations of young people went out to work, few girls who left were willing to return to their hometown to get married unless forced by their families.
Actually, it's understandable when you think about it. Langshan is just too poor! Girls start to suffer from birth, and after marriage, it only gets worse. They have to take care of children, serve the whole family, work in the fields, feed pigs, grow vegetables, chop firewood, cook... The worst part is that they have to keep having children until they give birth to a son for their husband's family to carry on the family line!
I've heard that some families feel that having only one son isn't enough and even demand that their daughters-in-law have several sons, which is practically treating them like breeding machines!
What left Jiang Xiaoman speechless was that if you're going to pressure her to have a baby, at least have the grandparents help take care of the child after it's born?
No! The custom here is that once a son marries, the elders in the family are treated like they're disabled, and the daughter-in-law has to do all the cooking, laundry, and cleaning!
There was no one to help take care of the children after they were born, let alone send them to daycare like in the city. When Jiang Xiaoman was a child, she often saw the women in the village holding two children by the hand and carrying one on their backs, while they went to the mountains to chop firewood, gather pig feed, and farm. They were young, but looked as old as women in their fifties or sixties...
To put it simply, once you're in the city, even the most ruthless capitalist wouldn't dare to exploit and bully their employees like this.
Therefore, very few women from Langshan who go out to work are willing to remarry. They would rather find a man from a nearby city with a slightly better financial situation while working in the factory. Even if both husband and wife are migrant workers, it is still much better than going back to their hometown to be left-behind women.
And so it went, generation after generation. The girls who left never came back. The men of Langshan couldn't find wives in the mountains, let alone outside. As soon as people heard that you were from Langshan, they would run away faster than rabbits!
There's no way around it, I can't stay single forever, can I?
I heard that in the old days, it was possible for two or three men to share a wife, with each family marrying for a year. The child conceived in one of the families would belong to that family. However, after this illegal act that infringed upon women's legal rights was investigated and punished several times, people no longer dared to share wives. Instead, they would look for suitable sworn brothers in the neighborhood.
This kind of relationship is not protected by law, and there is no need to get a marriage certificate. Anyway, people in the mountains are very poor, and there are no property disputes in their families. If they like each other, the two families can become one family and live together like this. It is a good way to have a warm bed.
However, Jiang Xiaoman did not expect that Shan Yan's family did not seem particularly poor. He was good at hunting, rock climbing and honey harvesting, tall and strong, and good-looking. Yet, he would become sworn brothers with someone because he could not find a wife.
However, the mystery was quickly solved.
The brothers from Shanyan have returned from picking mushrooms.
This season is when several kinds of precious wild mushrooms come out of the mountains. The mountain people spend a lot of time every day going into the mountains to pick mushrooms. After these wild mushrooms are dried, a pound can sell for several hundred yuan, which is much more profitable than growing potatoes. No wonder Shan Yan looked unhappy when Jiang Xiaoman came. It seems that I delayed him and his sworn brother from going into the mountains to pick mushrooms.
"You must be A-Feng's classmate? You're quite good-looking." Shan Yan's sworn brother took off his hat, and Jiang Xiaoman's eyes lit up immediately.
Unlike the mountain men he had imagined, Shan Yan's sworn brother had delicate features, long eyebrows and eyes, and his eyes curved when he smiled, making him look exceptionally kind. His skin was not the dark color commonly seen in mountain people, but rather naturally delicate and fair. Perhaps because he had just climbed the mountain, his fair face was slightly flushed, and even the beads of sweat on his forehead looked as crystal clear and lovely as dew rolling on a lotus leaf.
Shan Yan walked over silently, took the basket off his lover's back, and led him away.
Jiang Xiaoman awkwardly touched her nose.
It wasn't that he was lecherous and staring intently at someone else's sworn brother; it was just that he had never seen such a handsome man before in all his years growing up in Langshan.
It's no exaggeration to say that Shan Yan's sworn brothers are much better looking than many of today's so-called "little fresh meat" (young male celebrities).
When you don't know what to do, helping out with chores is always a good idea.
Jiang Xiaoman very consciously squatted down and helped them clean the mushrooms.
Shan Yan was a man of few words, but his sworn brother was very talkative. Before long, Jiang Xiaoman learned that his name was Jiang Yu, and that he was from the riverside at the foot of the mountain. Jiang Yu and Shan Yan had known each other since childhood and had even gone to school together. Later, for some reason, all the other young people of their age went to the city to work, but Shan Yan and Jiang Yu did not go. This went on and on until their parents could no longer make a decision, as they were too poor to afford to marry off their sons. So they had no choice but to accept that the two of them had moved together.
Jiang Xiaoman had reason to suspect that the two of them must have been attracted to each other since they were young. Otherwise, putting aside their family backgrounds, they wouldn't be unable to find wives just based on their looks.
“Speaking of which, our two families might even have been related as ancestors,” Jiang Yu said happily.
"Haha, your family and my dad's family might be related, but mine definitely isn't." Jiang Xiaoman laughed heartily, showing no sadness about her background. She openly told Jiang Yu and Shan Yan that she was a child Jiang Youliang picked up at the market. Although she shared her father's surname Jiang, strictly speaking, she wasn't a descendant of the Jiang family.
But these days, nobody cares whose bloodline it is.
After all, even their shamans have gone down the mountain to chase after stars. Who cares about clan bloodlines anymore?
Shan Yan paused for a moment, and Jiang Yu also froze, as if he had suddenly discovered something new. He nudged his wife, leaned close to Shan Yan's ear, and whispered a complaint: "What did I tell you? We should go down the mountain more often. Who knows, we might just pick up a child someday?"
Good heavens! Is this person planning to get a child for free because they can't have one themselves and can't break the law to buy one?
Jiang Xiaoman was speechless for a moment.
Unexpectedly, Shan Yan nodded very seriously: "Then we'll go down the mountain to the market whenever we have free time."
Damn it~ Did you really think you could find a child just by going down the mountain to the market?
Such a bright, healthy, and well-behaved child, with all four limbs intact, is incredibly rare. You'd be lucky to find one like him in decades! If there were, he would have been picked up by human traffickers long ago!
However, he was really lucky. He was abandoned at the market, and by sheer coincidence, his father saw him!
Jiang Xiaoman couldn't imagine what she would be like now if she had really been picked up by human traffickers...
Thinking about this, he actually agreed with the idea of the Shan Yan couple to "go down the mountain to pick up the child"—if they really encountered an abandoned baby, it would be better for the Shan Yan couple to adopt it than for it to be picked up by traffickers.
After this incident, the couple became even more enthusiastic about Jiang Xiaoman, this honest boy. When they heard that he wanted to go into the mountains with Shan Yan and the others to film a video, Jiang Yu slapped his thigh and said, "Go! Let's go together! I'll take you, and we can pick mushrooms along the way. Let me tell you, last time I went into the mountains with your brother Shan Yan and the others, we found a nest of wild Ganoderma lucidum. The biggest one was as big as a washbasin!"
Shan Yan seemed to listen to Jiang Yu very much. When Jiang Yu mentioned bringing Jiang Xiaoman, he didn't even raise his head, as if Jiang Yu was in charge of everything in the family.
Jiang Xiaoman's eyes darted around, and she picked up her backpack, rummaging through it to find some face cream, hand cream, facial cleanser, and the rest of the candy and chocolate. She stuffed them all into Jiang Yu's hands: "Brother Xiaoyu, I came in a hurry, and I don't have much at home. These candies and skincare products were given to me by my classmates. I don't usually need them. You live in the mountains, and it's not easy for you to come down the mountain. You can take these!"
These skincare products were given to him by the dormitory supervisor when he returned to school last time. Graduates left a lot of products in their dorm rooms when they were cleaning. When the supervisor went in to clean, he found that some of them were still unopened and not expired, so he picked them up. He happened to see him going back, so he gave him a big bag of them. The supervisor knew that his family was from the mountains and guessed that he probably wouldn't normally buy these things.
"Oh dear~ I was just thinking of buying hand cream. I always forget to buy it when I go down the mountain to the market." Jiang Yu picked up a few tubes of hand cream with delight, unscrewed one and smelled it. The hand cream used in the boys' dormitory didn't have a strong fragrance. It was either Vaseline or aloe vera, which was just right for Jiang Yu.
Shan Yan stared at the hand cream for a while, then looked at the cracked and broken skin on Jiang Yu's hands, a hint of annoyance flashing in his eyes. Mountain people often work in the fields, go into the mountains to pick mushrooms and chop firewood, and their hands are bound to get scratched or cracked. Over time, calluses form and they heal, so no one buys hand cream.
But Jiang Yu was different; he seemed to have naturally delicate skin. However, since they were all men, they wouldn't usually tell him if he got a small cut on his hand. Shan Yan was also careless and never thought of buying him hand cream...
Jiang Xiaoman was chatting and laughing with Jiang Yu when he suddenly felt a chilling aura emanating from the side. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shan Yan staring at him with deep eyes, and he immediately froze.