Morning market in small town

The car hitched for a long night, and when the world was still in chaos, we arrived at our county station, which only stayed for two minutes.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is in two days, and it is already early autumn in my hometown in July and a half. When I was awakened by the conductor, I was still in chaos. There was a little light in the carriage, so I packed my luggage and got off the train in a hurry.

The platform is a bit deserted, and one or two people who speak Mandarin and wear uniforms patrol the platform. Only a few people got off several cars, and they all shrank their necks and walked to the only exit of the station.

It was still early, so I didn't ask my father to pick me up. There are several early buses and some coaches parked in the railway station square, and the lights are hidden in the hazy drizzle before dawn. I wrapped my clothes tightly, but I couldn't help shivering. My hometown is really colder than Chengdu.

It's only six o'clock in town and it's still raining. There is no point in stopping. Shops selling breakfast in the town have started to open one after another, and occasionally one or two pedestrians wear rain boots to walk on the road with stagnant water. Seeing someone wearing a thin woolen coat in the Spring and Autumn Period, my clothes are only enough to adapt to the weather in Chengdu.

The market in my hometown opened very early. At this point, some people have been burdened one after another. These people are villagers a few kilometers away and walked here early in the morning.

In the past, many people carried the burden to sell vegetables there, but now there are very few people, only those who are older in their hometown all the year round are still selling.

A few hundred meters away from my home, there is a neighbor who is also a distant relative of my mother's family. She's been doing this. There is an acre of land in front of her house, divided into eight or nine small pieces. When the solar terms are good, plant more than 20 kinds of vegetables. The child is away all the year round, and there are only two people at home, she and her wife. They can't finish their meals and have to take them to the street to sell.

At four or five o'clock in the summer morning, she gets up and goes to the vegetable garden to pull vegetables. The night is heavy and the ground is still wet. Pick the dishes, tie them up with straw, tie them into small bundles, put them in the basket, pick them at both ends and walk two or three miles to the town.

One year during the Spring Festival, I met her at my uncle's house. I saw that several of her fingers were hunched together and there was no way to straighten them. The veins of the palm are like open claws, gathering in the dark brown spots on the back of the hand.

On her gully-covered face, I remembered Danxia landform more than 200 million years ago. That layer of rock was washed away by time, blurring its original appearance, streaking across the plateau, letting it be northwest wind and southeast wind.

There is a street in the town that sells vegetables. At first, there were only these scattered crop households, and later there were some permanent vegetable shops. The dishes there are all imported from other places, and piles of land are piled up there in a circle, leaving only one hole for easy access.

Compared with these food lines, people in the crops get very little food. A family only chooses a basket, or carries a basket with some seasonal vegetables. Several families sell similar styles. However, people in the street still like vegetables grown from the land in their hometown. Basically, when these people go to the street, they will not pick them up as they are.

I walked into a breakfast shop with my bag on my back, and the proprietress was urging the children to have breakfast. After drinking a bowl of Hu spicy soup and chewing a fluffy fried dough stick, my body warmed up instantly, which made me want to walk into the rain again.

The market was full, although it was still raining, the people who got up early came. Going to the supermarket to buy good things, I hid in an unopened shop in Old Street with my big bags and small bags, and stretched out under the eaves to shelter from the rain.

This street has been like this since childhood. The dense black wires wound around the eaves of every household, passed through the billboards on the roadside, passed through one street after another, and finally returned to the telephone poles.

There are many sparrows parked on the high wire. Without looking carefully, I thought it was just some black spots. They are not afraid of rain. A few flew in and a few flew away, and there was still no sign of more or less between the ups and downs.

In such a small town, people are familiar with each other. Seeing them nod or shake hands, I have obviously become a stranger. Since childhood, people there have to shake hands when they meet. I used to think it was a common thing, but when I went out, I found that this kind of greeting was really rare in a place like the country.

Mr. Wang said that people there climb mountains and wear leather shoes. I didn't pay much attention to this point, but even those who walked for miles on the mountain road, you couldn't see mud on his heels, but it really surprised me.

The house in this old street has been around for more than twenty years, as long as I can remember. Many commercial houses have been built in the north of the town, several large supermarkets have been opened in the south and several villas have been built in the west. There are rows of shops in the east, only in the middle of the town. The old house in this old street stands in the drizzle, which is the only place I can remember.

The morning market closes quickly, and there is nothing to buy when you go shopping at 90 o'clock. Farmers get up early and get greedy for the dark, and whoever carries the burden in the sun will be laughed at.

I saw my father's car coming from the flooded road in the south. The rain continues, the sparrows on the wire don't know where they have gone, and my shop hiding from the rain has begun to prepare for business.

The first important thing to do in a strange city is probably to visit their morning market.

On my first weekend in Zigong, I accidentally broke into a market here, and several streets were occupied. We walked in and moved slowly with the locals. I didn't know what I wanted to buy, but I was pushed forward.

Southwestern people like to eat rapeseed oil, but whenever there is such a large-scale market, there must be several small oil presses across the road. Amber oil overflows from the machine and flows into the transparent plastic bucket. The whole street is filled with the smell of rapeseed oil.

There are usually three or five people queuing around the machine. They carry vegetables in their left hand and make room for such a big barrel of oil in their right hand. Some even carry two barrels at a time and go home happily.

The morning market here will open later. I looked around, only to see my head moving in a roundabout way, and the recorded shouts of "so sweet, so sweet" were playing in the speaker of the fruit stand. Because it is Sichuan dialect, it is not as frank as Mandarin, and it sounds melodious.

The morning market is crowded with people, men and women, old people and children, and people who buy and sell vegetables. Booth after booth, street after street, city after city.

It's already morning, and the farmers selling vegetables straddle the small bench on the edge of the vegetable basket and begin to return. They will also bring something on their way home, and there may be only a handful of children at home who can't forget the snacks they cooked the night before.

The food market is closed and there are fewer and fewer people in the market. I got in my father's car, slowly drove away from the old street and headed home. I looked sideways at the old street farther and farther away from the back window, and my memory seemed to jump from one to another.