When Juhua and her brother returned home, Zheng Changhe and his wife had gone to the market, leaving the house empty. They quickly heated up and ate some corn buns. Afterward, Qingmu went to work in the fields while Juhua got busy preparing the fish and shrimp they had caught. She cooked some for lunch, spreading the rest on a small bamboo tray to dry in the sun. Then came laundry, feeding the pigs, and making dinner—she didn't even have a moment to pick wild chrysanthemums.
In the afternoon, Zheng Changhe and his wife returned from the market. Sure enough, they had brought two little piglets with them.
Juhua was thrilled. 'The day we get to eat pork isn't far off now!' She paid no mind to the filth as she diligently tended to the two piglets. Thinking they were still small, she cooked a pot of feed by mixing rice bran with wild greens. As expected, the piglets devoured it heartily.
Seeing how happy his daughter was and how she diligently thought up ways to feed the pigs, Zheng Changhe decided to take the time to build a simple little pigpen. He separated the piglets from the big sow to keep her from hogging all the food, ensuring the little ones could grow properly.
For the next few days, the family was a whirlwind of activity.
Every morning, Juhua and her brother would go cut pig feed and scoop up shrimp along the way. After breakfast, Qingmu would join his parents in the fields to harvest corn and till the soil for wheat. After dinner, the whole family would light torches and spend an hour clearing wasteland. At that point, even Juhua had to pitch in.
Juhua's days were just as packed. She did the laundry, cooked the meals, fed the pigs and chickens, processed the morning's catch of fish and shrimp, and picked wild chrysanthemums. She was constantly on her feet.
She also finished making three pillows filled with wild chrysanthemums. She threw out the old stuffing, washed the pillowcases, and packed them with the fragrant, fluffy, dried flowers. They felt wonderfully comfortable.
She had her parents and brother try them that night, and by the next day, everyone was praising them. Even the taciturn Qingmu gave her a smiling nod, his admiration evident.
Thanks to their diligent work each morning, their dinner table had grown more plentiful over the past few days. Their diet had improved significantly. Juhua cooked the shrimp in various ways—stir-fried with chives, braised, or in a soup. Occasionally, she could even scrape together enough for a bowl of braised miscellaneous small fish.
In addition to what they ate daily, Juhua also dried a good amount of shrimp, planning to use them later to make sauces or to add flavor to soups.
What frustrated Juhua, however, was that she couldn't eat much of it herself. Whenever she ate even a few too many shrimp, the growth on her face would swell and throb with unbearable pain, showing signs of getting worse.
She mulled it over and concluded that trigger foods like shrimp must be aggravating the toxins in the growth on her face. 'Best to eat less of it!'
Then, an idea struck her. She boiled some of the wild chrysanthemums and used the water to wash her face. It felt cool and soothing. 'Heh! Perfect. From now on, I'll wash my face with this chrysanthemum tea. I guess I'll have to be even more diligent about picking them.'
When Mother Yang heard from Juhua that washing her face with an infusion of wild chrysanthemums made the growth hurt less, she immediately took it to heart. Seeing Juhua was too busy to pick the flowers during the day, she began waking up early to gather them herself. She wanted to collect enough so her daughter could keep washing her face with it until the flowers bloomed again the following year.
When Juhua and her brother came back from cutting pig feed, the sight of the fresh, dew-kissed wild chrysanthemums made her break into a wide grin at Mother Yang. She was even more pleased to see that her mother had separated the bloomed flowers from the buds.
Mother Yang chuckled. "You're always so particular about separating them. The bloomed flowers for the pillows and the buds for tea. It's not like I don't have eyes in my head!"
Juhua smiled at her mother. "The chrysanthemum tea is delicious! Mom, you all should try it. It's so fragrant."
Mother Yang shot her a playful look. "Such a little schemer! But you're right, the flavor isn't bad. It's not just fragrant, it's a little sweet, too."
Qingmu, standing nearby, added, "It's good!"
'This brother of mine,' Juhua thought, 'always so concise!'
After breakfast, washing the dishes, and feeding the pigs with the water used to scrub the pot, Juhua managed to steal a moment of leisure. She carried a small stool to the front door and sat down. She gazed at the lush green vegetables in the garden patch and the piglets prancing happily in their pen. Lifting a bowl of chrysanthemum tea, she took a sip and heaved a sigh of contentment.
She looked down and frowned. 'Serving this pale, clear chrysanthemum tea in a crude ceramic bowl really ruins the aesthetic. But we don't have any proper teacups in the house.'
'We'll have teacups one day,' Juhua thought to herself. 'And we'll have pork, too.'
Before the first frost, Juhua's family finished planting their winter wheat. The patch of wasteland next to the outhouse was also fully cleared. They scattered a layer of wood ash over it and planted some white radishes, yellow-hearted greens, and Big Cabbage for now. They'd had no choice—all the manure from the compost pit went to the wheat fields. If they wanted to fertilize this new plot, they would have to start slowly collecting more.
With the wheat planted, a major task was complete. Though miscellaneous chores like filling in seedlings and weeding still lay ahead, the frantic rush was over.
The two little piglets were starting to give Juhua a headache—they were voracious eaters! If she couldn't figure out a solution soon, the family's three pigs would practically be in revolt by winter.
A glance at the pig feed and corn stalks stored in the cellar confirmed it was nowhere near enough to last the winter. And while they had planted plenty of vegetables, that wasn't a solution. Not only was it uneconomical to feed the vegetables to the pigs, but even if they did, the pigs would get diarrhea. It had to be mixed with some kind of solid fodder.
"Brother," Juhua said to Qingmu, who was busy working on the cleared wasteland, "let's go up the mountain and see if we can find something to feed the pigs."
Qingmu heard her, set down his hoe without a second thought, and took his sister's hand to get ready. He had seen how worried Juhua was about the pigs these last few days and had been fretting himself, though he hadn't come up with any good ideas either.
They each slipped a pair of straw sandals over their shoes to keep the soles from wearing out, tied their pant legs securely, grabbed two burlap sacks, and headed for the mountain behind their house.
Once they entered the woods, it was cool and shady, sunlight speckling the ground through the canopy. The path up the mountain was nearly overgrown with weeds and shrubs. Qingmu kept glancing back every few steps to check on Juhua, and finally, he just took her hand to help her climb.
Juhua was indeed finding it difficult. She climbed, panting, while her eyes darted left and right, scanning their surroundings like a little hen foraging for food.
They weren't even halfway up the mountain when Juhua's attention was caught by small, earth-yellow fruits scattered all over the ground. The forest floor was carpeted with them, along with the little cup-like caps they had fallen from. 'Aren't these acorns?' No wonder the mountain had looked like a tapestry of red, yellow, and green from below—it was covered in oak trees!
'Backed by the mountain, facing the water... what a great place this is!' Juhua grinned and stopped in her tracks.
Qingmu turned, surprised. "What is it?"
Juhua pointed to the acorns on the ground. "We'll feed the pigs with this."
Qingmu frowned. "These are really bitter. Pigs won't eat them." 'If they did, people would have gathered them all by now.'
Juhua just smiled. "Don't worry, I just need to boil them." Seeing his skeptical look, she quickly explained, "Some things that taste bitter can be fixed by scalding them in hot water. Let's give it a try. We'll boil them once and see if we can get rid of the bitterness. Brother, just imagine... if it works, our pigs..."
Qingmu's eyes lit up, and he grew excited. If it worked, wouldn't this whole mountain of oak trees be a ready-made supply of pig feed? They wouldn't just be able to feed three pigs—they could handle three more without any problem!
Juhua simply smiled.
'Why would we even need to test it?' she thought. 'In my past life, my family fed these to the pigs all the time. Forget the pigs, the starch leached from them is perfectly good for people to eat, too!'
The two siblings exchanged a glance, then simultaneously pulled out their burlap sacks and bent over to gather the acorns.
'The grass is too thick,' Juhua thought. 'Next time, we should bring a sickle. This is getting in the way.'
Qingmu had also noticed there were plenty of acorns hidden in the thick grass, making them difficult to collect. So, he found a tree with a clearer patch of ground beneath it, climbed up, and gave the branches a vigorous shake. Acorns rained down like hail while Juhua scurried around below, gathering them up.
Working together like this, the two of them nearly filled their burlap sacks in no time.
Qingmu stopped, hesitating. "Let's just gather this much for now. We still don't know if your idea will even work."
Juhua replied with complete confidence, "I'm sure it'll work. Don't worry, Brother!" With that, she popped an acorn into her mouth, bit down with a CRUNCH, and tasted it. "It's just a little bitter, that's all. Otherwise, it's not that different from a chestnut."
Qingmu bit one open to try as well, but he didn't share Juhua's sentiment. He had actually tried them as a child and knew they were inedible. He wondered if his sister's method would really work.
Once both burlap sacks were filled with acorns, Qingmu tied them shut. He hoisted one onto his shoulder, tucked the other under his arm, and started down the mountain path, with Juhua following empty-handed behind him.
As they entered the courtyard, they saw an old woman with salt-and-pepper hair sitting by the door, shucking corn kernels and chatting with Mother Yang. In the yard, a flock of fluffy chicks was clustered around a bowl, pecking nonstop at a meal of crushed corn mixed with finely chopped greens.