Ordinary world-Lu Yao

1975 February and March, an ordinary day, thin raindrops with little snowflakes fell on the earth. The season is coming, of course, it won't keep snowing. Often disappear without a trace before landing. The cold and long winter on the Loess Plateau seems to be over, but the really warm spring is far from here.

? In this rainy and snowy day, people would rather stay indoors all day if there is nothing urgent. Therefore, the streets and alleys of the county town are much less noisy than usual. In the shady places of the streets and lanes, the snow cones left in winter are constantly eroded under the impact of raindrops, and dirty sewage is flowing everywhere on the slate street. The wind is still cold. In the empty street, sometimes a countryman passes by occasionally, with a broken felt hat protecting his forehead and a basket of potatoes or radishes on his arm, calling weakly to the buyer. Alas, the city has completely lost its vitality and become loveless in such days.

There is a lively scene in the dam of the county high school compound only halfway up the mountain. As soon as the lunch bell rang, groups of men and women ran out of rows of caves. They knocked the bowls and chopsticks to the ground, ran across the courtyard dam, screamed and screamed, and flocked to the wall of the row of caves in the South General Affairs Department. Such a big yard was trampled into a muddy beach by this chaotic crowd in an instant. At the same time, day students living in our city are pouring out of the gate of the East School in twos and threes. They walked with umbrellas, talking and laughing all the way, and walked through a long downhill slope with cross-stones from earlier years. Soon they disappeared into the streets of the city.

? Under the south wall of the campus, more than a dozen pillars have been lined up according to the class. The students on duty in each class are busy distributing meals to everyone. Everyone's meals were registered and paid for yesterday, so the procedure is not complicated. Now the students on duty only pay the reservation fee for each person according to the meal schedule. There are three kinds of dishes: A, B and C. A is mainly potatoes, cabbages and vermicelli, and there are some delicious meat slices, each of which costs 30 cents. The other contents of dish B are the same as those of dish A, except that there is no meat, and each serving costs 15 cents. C dish is far from enough, boiled white radish-it seems just to cover up the excessive lightness, and some pepper flower oil symbolically floats inside. But the price of this dish is also cheap, 50 cents per serving.

The first-class food in each class is only served in a small washbasin. It seems that few students can afford meat dishes. C dish is also served in a small washbasin, which shows that not many people eat this inferior dish. Only the porcelain footbath is used to hold the second course in each class, and the sea is long. Obviously, most people eat this kind of food which is neither extravagant nor shabby. The staple food is also divided into three categories: white flour steamed bread, corn flour steamed bread and sorghum flour steamed bread; White, yellow and black, the colors show differences; The students nicknamed Europe, Asia and Africa.

? Judging from the dark crowd in the queue, most of them came from the countryside, and there were more or less traces of physical labor on their faces and bodies. These people, who have always been regarded as "gentlemen" by their parents, are well dressed except a man who dresses like their peasant parents. Although most farmers in poor mountainous areas are short of clothes and food at present, since children have gone to big places to study, parents should bite their teeth and scrimp, but they should also make some clothes for their children. Of course, there seems to be a farmer's child in this team, and the situation is good. His clothes are no different from those of cadres in the city, and he often wears a shiny watch on his wrist. Some of these "outsiders" stand in the middle of the crowd, like a standout, making no secret of their sense of superiority. They are behind the extraordinary plates. Although the number is small, it is particularly striking.

? In the whole desolate and barren Loess Plateau, a high school in a county, even the highest institution in the county, can't build a restaurant for students anyway. The weather is good and bad, and everyone eats in the open air. Fortunately, these young people are all mountain people. Who hasn't eaten in the wild in Shan Ye? So people don't care about this kind of thing. Usually, when the weather is fine, everyone squats in a circle with their close classmates, talking and laughing, and having dinner.

? Not today. All the cooks covered the bowls with straw hats or elbows, staggered across the mud-pond-like courtyard dam and ran back to their dormitory. After a while, several people were scattered on the rice field. Most of the students on duty in the class have also left.

? Now, only the students on duty in Grade One (1) are left alone in the barren rice fields. This is a short and fat girl. There are no dishes in the three vegetable pots in front of her, and only four burnt sorghum cakes are left in the basket. These black guys don't seem to belong to the students on duty, because she has a white flour bun and a corn flour bun in her hand, and the bowl looks like a dish B. She is standing under the eaves with her own food, obviously waiting for the last person who is late-this must be a poor boy, who not only eats the worst staple food, but also can't afford a dish C with 50 cents!

Snowflakes in the rain suddenly increased, becoming more and more blurred from far and near. The city was silent. Vaguely heard a crow in the distance, adding a little dreamy gloom to this gray world.

? Just then, at the northern end of the empty courtyard dam, a tall and thin young man came. He hobbled in the mud with a bowl in his arm. The young man's face is yellow and thin, and his cheeks are a little sunken, which makes his nose look as tall and straight as a Greek. His face seems to have just faded from the childishness of a teenager-obviously, due to malnutrition, he has not yet glowed with the youthful brilliance unique to his age.

? He webbed his slender legs and stamped his feet on the mud. This may be the owner of those black-faced buns. Seeing his tattered clothes, I think he can only eat this kind of food. You see, although the style of his clothes is barely cut, it is still a student's dress, but it is obviously the old-fashioned coarse cloth woven by himself, and the black pigment is unevenly dyed, giving people a dirty feeling. An old pair of yellow rubber shoes on his feet have no shoelaces, and two white ropes should be tied; There is even a blue cloth patch on the upper. Pants were obviously sewn two years ago, and the longer people grow, the shorter they are, and now they are short enough to hang on the handle of half a leg; Fortunately, the socks are high at the waist, otherwise the meat will be exposed. (but who knows except himself, his two socks have long lost their heels, and it is only because of the shoe cover that people feel that the socks are intact. )

He went straight to the rice field. Now it can be concluded that he has come to get these black-faced buns. Before reaching the basket, the students on duty can't wait to leave with their rice bowls.

? Before he came to the steamed bun basket, he hesitated for a moment, then bent down to pick up two sorghum cakes. There are two left in the basket. I wonder why he didn't take them.

? He straightened up and couldn't help glancing at three empty plates. He saw that there was still a little soup left on the base of dish B. Water dripped from the eaves of the house, and vegetable soup at the bottom of the basin splashed everywhere. He turned his head and saw that there was no one in the dam of the rainy and snowy compound. He quickly squatted down, panicked like a thief, and scooped the leftovers soup mixed with rain at the bottom of the basin into his bowl with a spoon. The hiss of the iron spoon scraping the bottom of the basin is as shocking as a bomb explosion. Blood rushed to his thin yellow face. A big drop of eaves water fell on the bottom of the basin, splashing his face with vegetable soup. He closed his eyes, and then, he saw two tears slowly sliding down his cheeks-well, let's take this as his eyes splashed into Chili soup!

He stood up, wiped his face with his hand, and came to the boiling room in the southwest corner with half a bowl of leftover soup. He mixed some boiling water in the soup on the pipe protruding from the back wall of the room, then broke the sorghum flour buns and soaked them in, squatting under the eaves and wolfing them down.

? He suddenly stopped chewing, and then watched a girl come to the bun basket and took the remaining two black-faced buns away. Yes, she's here, too. He looked at her tired figure and hesitated for a long time.

? This has almost become a routine: from the beginning of school, every time they eat, the two of them are always the last in the class, silently holding their own two black sorghum cakes.

This is not an agreement. They don't really know each other and haven't even said a word. They are all recommended to come to the county for high school after graduating from commune middle school. A few days after the start of school, most students in the class are familiar with it, but there is no communication between strangers.

He squatted under the eaves of the house, pulling rice into his mouth, and guessed in his mind that she often came to get rice at the end for the same reason as him. Yes, it is precisely because they are poor, because they can't afford a good meal, and because of their young and sensitive self-esteem, they avoid the public's eyes and quietly take away their two unseemly black guys to avoid being laughed at in silence!

But he knows nothing about her. Because the class calls once a day, he only knows her name as Hao Hongmei now. She probably only knows his name as Sun Shaoping, right?