When Ma Xiaoyan got into the vehicle, she had a camera case slung over her shoulder and carried a cloth bag. The bag looked homemade, with very obvious hand stitching.
Li Long did not ask what she had brought. He drove west out of the county town, heading toward the mountains.
In the fields on either side of the road, Dongfanghong 75 tractors were plowing. Their rumbling, the black smoke rising from them, and the patches of green along the fields created a scene of everything reviving and flourishing.
"How lovely. Spring's here, and it's warming up. Even the sound of that tractor doesn't seem noisy-that tractor driver is really working hard!" Ma Xiaoyan gazed out the window and sighed appreciatively.
Li Long chuckled inwardly but said nothing. He could clearly hear that the tractor was straining. It was belching black smoke because it could not pull the plow-the person sitting on the five-furrow plow behind it had pushed the blades too deep. The ground was too hard to plow, so the tractor smoked and could not move forward.
Plowing now was not like in later years, when one person could operate a high-horsepower tractor from the cab. At this time, plowing, sowing, and harrowing all required two people working together: one drove the tractor in front, while the other rode on the attached implement behind it-such as a five-furrow plow or a seed drill-to make adjustments, mainly to the plowing depth, sowing density, and so on.
Both the tractor driver and the person adjusting the plow behind him were probably half-trained amateurs.
Li Long drove the Jeep to the southbound turnoff from Wuyi Highway. As he turned onto it, he warned Ma Xiaoyan:
"Officer Ma, the road ahead is a little bumpy. Hold on."
"All right." Ma Xiaoyan often