With the children of the Guandi Temple taken care of, Feng Qingxue, along with her sister, joined the armies digging up wild vegetables and picking tree buds.
With these children to look after, Feng Qingxue finally felt the strain of food scarcity.
She truly saw what a locust invasion looked like.
Wherever the villagers of the Caohu Brigade arrived, the ground was scraped clean. Not to mention wild vegetables, even wild grass was scarce. Any hand-in could earn work points, with five pounds of grass worth one point, same as the rules of the Wanglou Brigade.
However, wild grass was hard to eliminate, sprouting anew with the spring wind.
The vitality of wild vegetables and grass was tenacious. A few days after the ground was cleaned, new growth would appear, quickly turning the landscape green again.
Wild vegetables were unappetizing, and tree buds were even worse.
Feng Qingxue collected half a basket of willow buds with everyone else. After washing them, she blanched them in boiling water and let them dry. She mixed them with oil and salt, and served it. Feng Qingyun wrinkled her face after just one bite.
"It’s so bitter! Big sister!" Feng Qingyun was torn between swallowing and spitting it out, her eyes pleadingly on Feng Qingxue.
Feng Qingxue took a mouthful; it was indeed bitter and astringent.
If it tasted even when she seasoned it with her own condiments, she could only imagine how bitter it would be when other families simply boiled it in water.
Yet she still forced herself to swallow, speaking sternly to Feng Qingyun, "Yunyun, have you forgotten the pain of hunger after just a few days of prosperity? When you were little, didn’t you find wild vegetables and willow buds delicious every time? Sometimes we even didn’t have enough of them! Now, in this lean period, even I find it difficult to find food like I did in late autumn and early winter. We must conserve our food."
With an unswallowed willow bud in her mouth, Feng Qingyun, with her teeth clenched on her lower lip, looked at her stern sister, holding back her tears.
"Big sister..." Feng Qingyun’s voice was choked with emotion.
"Yunyun..." Feng Qingxue’s hand gently rested on her little sister’s head, her voice softened, "Didn’t I tell you about Brother Guan Cheng and Brother Guan Yu? There were far too many orphaned beggars like them. Don’t you remember that after we were driven out of our home, we too had to beg to fill our bellies? People mustn’t forget past hardships once they start living better lives. When we started digging wild vegetables, you were so well-behaved, reminding me to gather and dry as many as I could for storage. Have you forgotten that?"
"I haven’t forgotten, big sister!" Feng Qingyun swallowed the willow bud in her mouth, her hand tugging at her sister’s clothes, "I’ve just been living well with you for too long. I had a hard time swallowing it. I can eat, I can!"
As she spoke, she bowed her head, taking large bites of the willow buds and large mouthfuls of the thin gruel made from dried sweet potatoes in her bowl.
Compared to those with nothing to eat, she was extremely fortunate to have such a wonderful big sister.
Later, Chen Ming and Xu Aiguo brought hundreds of pounds of coarse food to the air-raid shelter on West Mountain. Feng Qingxue, who got the news in advance, specifically took Feng Qingyun to watch the hundreds of pounds of food unloaded - dried soybean dregs, sweet potato residue, chopped soybean cakes. The only thing that could truly be called food was half a bag of dried sweet potatoes and half a bag of sweet potato flour.
"As soon as your younger sister asked me for these things, I knew they were for saving lives!" Chen Ming lit a cigarette, which had been given by Feng Qingxue as a New Year’s gift. Even though it was gifted by a leader, he hadn’t dared to smoke it until now. He seriously said to Jiang He, "My boy, I picked these from the breeding farm for you. They won’t taste good, so don’t feel indebted."
Having served in the army, Chen Ming and Xu Aiguo treasured these homeless orphans even more than other people did.