Peach Orchard Notes—Thoughts on Volume Fifteen and the Final Volume
For the final stretch of this volume, I wrote up in the mountains.
The peach orchard at home had a bumper harvest, the entire mountain covered in fruit.
I stayed in the crude shed for the orchard keeper, writing while keeping an eye on the fruit.
There were lots of mosquitoes, but they weren't nimble. Whenever one landed on me, I'd send it straight to the Sea of Sin with a single slap.
The starry sky was beautiful. At night, there were cicadas chirping, birds calling, and dogs barking—of course, along with the sound of rain these past few days. I slept wonderfully at night; even the dark circles under my eyes had faded.
People came to buy fruit. Personal payments received: 750 yuan.
Others came to steal fruit, cramming four people into a beat-up car. Even after they were caught, they acted perfectly righteous, saying something about "peaches and plums picked by roadside."
That was the first time I'd heard that saying. I'd only ever known "under the melon patch and beneath the plum tree."
It showed that things written in books needed to be more proper, while sayings from everyday life were closer to human nature.
There's a large village dog at home, raised to be big and strong. It stood beside them with an imposing air, blocking those people inside their car so thoroughly that they didn't dare get out.
In the end, though, we didn't make them pay. We gave them a scolding and let them go—
They hadn't stolen much. They'd only picked a few before being stopped. Then they tried to drive away, but the car was stopped too. And when they were being cursed out, they even talked back.
Come to think of