On the drive into the mountains today, Lü Dehai was not as reserved as he had been yesterday. He struck up a conversation with Li Long.
"I heard my dad talk about the mountains when I was little, but I've never actually been in them myself. You know how far Liuhudi is from the mountains. I've been to Sand Hollow a few times, but this is my first trip into the mountains. I never thought my first trip would be to bring my dad back."
Perhaps because so much time had passed, Lü Dehai was not particularly grief-stricken. Instead, he was curious about some of the things around him and commented now and then:
"The plants along the mountains here look about the same as what we have back home. Red willow, saxaul, all that-it all looks the same. But we have sand dunes to the north. You don't see any here."
"Every place has its own features," Li Long said as he drove. "Your area is actually pretty good. You've got North Wucha between you and the desert, the soil isn't so saline, and you can make money growing cotton."
"It's all right." Lü Dehai looked at the farmland around Qingshui River and the nearly barren stretches near the mountains. "This land's too dry. Nothing grows."
Li Long thought that if anything grew here, Meng Hai from Qingshui River Village would not have to keep coming to him looking for work to earn money.
There was little good farmland around Qingshui River Village. Close to the mountains and cut by numerous gullies, the area did not offer much land for each household to receive.
Once they entered the mountains, Lü Dehai marveled again:
"Looking at Heavenly Mountain from far away, I thought it would be trees as soon as