As the sun slanted toward the west, the waves of heat in the fields finally receded a fraction. Father Yuan, Mother Yuan, and the children shouldered their farming tools and walked home, spotting from afar that the wooden latch on the courtyard gate was left slightly ajar. The moment she pushed the door open, Mother Yuan paused for a moment—the old hens in the chicken coop were pecking at vegetable leaves on the ground, a little feed remained in the trough of the pigpen, and even the kitchen chimney still retained a touch of residual warmth.
“This Fifth Sister, she just recovered from her illness and she’s already exerting herself.” Mother Yuan walked into the kitchen and lifted the pot lid. A faint fragrance of rice blended with the scent of green vegetables drifted out. The vegetable porridge in the pot was still lukewarm; stirring it with a spoon, the grains at the bottom were simmered soft and tender, and the vegetable leaves still retained some of their fresh green color. In this muggy weather, drinking a bowl of lukewarm porridge was the most comforting thing. Her heart softened, and she lifted the mesh food cover nearby. Beneath it sat a bowl of cold tossed cucumbers—crisp and refreshing to look at—alongside a bowl of stir-fried eggplants.
At this moment, Eldest Sister walked out from the inner room and said softly, “Mom, Fifth Sister is asleep. I just went in to check on her; she’s sleeping very deeply, and I don’t even know if she ate anything herself.” Mother Yuan wiped the dust from her hands and made an executive decision on the spot: “Scoop a bowl of porridge from the pot and leave it on the stove to stay warm. If she wakes up hungry tonight, she can go get it herself. Don’t wake her up, let her sleep a bit longer.”
The family gathered around the stove to sit down, scooping porridge to eat along with the stir-fried eggplants and cold tossed cucumbers. Fourth Brother bolted down two mouthfuls of porridge and suddenly spoke up, “If you ask me, Fifth Sister falling sick this time was eighty percent because she was frightened by those leeches.”
Mother Yuan glared at him, her tone turning heavy: “Eat your food, why do you have so much nonsense to say!” Fourth Brother puckered his lips, not daring to speak further. In reality, Mother Yuan agreed with his words in her heart, but such things could not be spoken aloud—some people in the village had long been wagging their tongues, calling their fifth child a “lazy girl” who disliked working in the fields. If rumors spread that she was “scared sick by leeches,” how could they arrange a marriage for her in the future? In this day and age, which family didn’t look for a daughter-in-law who could work the land and manage a household? She could only calculate in her mind that once the busy farming season passed, she would still have to slowly teach Li Xia how to work. Even if she was slow, she had to get her adjusted; otherwise, she would suffer grievances at her husband’s home in the future.
In the blink of an eye, the busy farming season passed, and Li Xia’s days returned to their previous rhythm: getting up before dawn to pick pigweed, feed the chickens, and feed the pig, helping Eldest Sister tend the fire to make breakfast. After breakfast, everyone hoisted their cloth bags to go to school. Returning home after school in the afternoon, they dropped their schoolbags and immediately continued working—either going to the vegetable plot to water the crops or helping with household chores, only resting once the sky turned pitch black.
As summer set in, life became even more difficult. Many households had long since scraped the bottom of last year’s grain reserves, and the chimneys of numerous families in the village rarely emitted smoke anymore. Foraging people carrying baskets to dig for wild vegetables were a common sight on the roads; some even went into the mountains to strip tree bark and dig up roots, boiling them to eat after washing them clean, though they tasted bitter and astringent to chew. The Yuan family was faring somewhat better. With the grain they had hoarded earlier combined with the sweet potatoes subsequently grown in the courtyard, although they couldn’t escape having vegetable porridge every meal, they could at least eat until they were seventy percent full, which was much better than most families in the village.
Today, Mother Yuan returned from the fields. The moment she entered the courtyard gate, she saw Fourth Brother and Li Xia crouching beside the sweet potato patch, each holding a wooden ladle to water the sweet potato vines. Looking at those lush green vines, Mother Yuan breathed a sigh of relief—with the drought this year, let alone yielding sweet potatoes, the vines in the open fields outside had been stolen clean by starving people. Only because their family’s courtyard walls were high and no one dared to come steal could these sweet potatoes grow so beautifully. However, the porridge on the dining table gradually shifted to having more vegetables and less rice. Because it still barely rained this year, even if one wanted to spend money to buy grain outside now, it was impossible to find any.
Having finally looked forward to the autumn harvest, even though the rice had many empty husks, it remained the hope of the common people. Mother Yuan personally brought Li Xia into the fields to reap the rice. She squatted down, bundling a cluster of rice ears with her left hand while gripping the sickle with her right. With a swift “shua,” the rice ears were severed cleanly in an agile display. “Watch carefully. Your left hand must hold the rice steady, and the sickle should be close to the root. Use a clever knack of technique, not brute force.” As Mother Yuan spoke, she handed the sickle to Li Xia.
Seeing how easily Mother Yuan cut the rice, Li Xia also felt it shouldn’t be difficult. Taking the sickle, she imitated Mother Yuan and squatted down. But the moment she exerted force, she froze—the rice stalks looked thin, yet they were incredibly sturdy. She bit her lip and pressed the sickle down, but only a few rice ears broke off, leaving the vast majority still hanging on. “Why is it so hard?” Refusing to accept defeat, Li Xia gripped the sickle tightly, took a deep breath, and prepared to use every ounce of her strength to cut again.
Standing nearby, Mother Yuan’s heart leaped into her throat. Seeing that Li Xia’s posture was wrong and her arms were completely rigid—clearly intending to use brute force—she quickly reached out to pull her back: “Hold on! You’re using your strength incorrectly—” Before she could finish her sentence, a loud “shua” echoed as Li Xia had already swung the sickle down. The rice was severed, but the momentum of the sickle couldn’t be checked, slicing directly toward Li Xia’s leg.
Quick of eye and deft of hand, Mother Yuan grabbed Li Xia’s arm in a vice grip, but the sickle still grazed her pant leg, tearing a slit through it. Li Xia looked down to see that the skin on her leg had been cut in several places; the shallow parts were seeping with beads of blood, while the deeper parts had already begun to bleed heavily, causing her to gasp sharply from the pain. Mother Yuan squatted down, looking at the wounds on her daughter’s leg and then at Li Xia’s small face, which had turned pale from pain. She couldn’t help but let out a sigh—this girl had such delicate skin and tender flesh, she truly shouldn’t have been born in the countryside. If she had been born into a wealthy family in the city, why would she have to suffer this kind of misery?
Taking the towel used for wiping sweat from around her neck, she pressed it against Li Xia’s wounds to stop the bleeding, then took the sickle out of Li Xia’s hands: “Don’t cut anymore. Hurry home and apply wood ash to it.” Li Xia nodded, and forgetting about the pain, she clutched her leg and ran back home. The moment she entered the door, she headed straight for her bedroom, retrieving the family medicine box from her system. First, she poured out some povidone-iodine, dipping a cotton swab into it to disinfect the wounds. The moment the povidone-iodine touched the cuts, the pain almost brought her tears out. She bit her lip to endure it, then took out gauze to wrap around the wounds layer after layer. Once the bleeding stopped, she threw the used gauze into the kitchen hearth, only breathing a sigh of relief when she watched the flames reduce it to ash.
As she stowed the medicine box back into the system, Li Xia leaned against the doorframe and couldn’t help but let out a heavy sigh. This life was truly too bitter—getting up to work before dawn every day and not being able to rest even after dark, eating porridge that was mostly vegetables and barely any grain, wearing patched clothes, and now adding the pain of a wound. If she didn’t have the lucky draw system to keep her belly full, she felt she wouldn’t even be able to survive.
She suddenly understood why the women of this era didn’t suffer from depression; they simply had absolutely no time for it. They were busy on their feet all day, and so exhausted at night that they fell asleep the moment they hit the bed. They didn’t even have time for sorrow or melancholic reflections, so where would they get the headspace for depression?
After resting for a brief moment, Li Xia walked back toward the fields. This time she didn’t cut the rice, switching to transporting it instead—gathering the rice ears that Mother Yuan, Eldest Sister, and the others had reaped, she carried them in her arms toward the ridge of the field. Trip after trip, her arms, neck, and face grew intensely itchy from being scratched by the leaves of the rice ears, yet she didn’t stop. When Father Yuan arrived pushing the handcart, she helped lift the rice ears onto the cart. Father Yuan tied the rice tightly with ropes; otherwise, it would fall off along the way. Watching the handcart fill with rice ears as Father Yuan pushed it toward the drying ground, Li Xia wiped the sweat from her forehead. The sun beat down blindingly hot, her clothes drying only to get soaked again, getting soaked only to dry once more…