The Millet Is Yellow

On the Loess Plateau, a grain of millet hides the love letters of two generations. In the spring of 1983, Zhang Qinglin, a master of agriculture, returned to Shige Festival with improved rice seeds. However, he bumped into a girl blocking the road with an abacus at the entrance of the village. She was a college student of the old party secretary, and she was fighting against the developers to protect the old mill that was about to be bulldozed. This unexpected reunion brought to light the secrets that had been sealed in Mizi Field for two generations: Thirty years ago, Xiulian's mother buried an iron box in the experimental field for educated youth. Inside the box was a breeding diary from 1975 filled with unsent love poems; twenty years ago, Qinglin's father died young from the rain while protecting rice seeds. He clutched half a blue handkerchief embroidered with rice ears before his death. Now, when the live broadcast of e-commerce focuses on century-old mills, and when genetically modified labels are affixed to bags of ancestral rice seeds, in the loess ravines of Shimao Village, the collision between traditional wedding customs and modern agriculture is about to begin. Love poems roll out from the abacus beads, and the rusty spots on the millet grow into concentric knots. Xiulian hid functional formulas in the intangible cultural heritage tamping song, and Qinglin used a grafting knife to carve oaths on the millet stalks. The old party secretary locked the account books from 1975 and refused to hand over the power, but the developer dug up the yellowed marriage certificate from the bottom of the educated youth well. When the heavy rain washed away the protective embankment of the experimental field, and two generations of people hugged and cried in the muddy water while guarding the millet seeds, they realized that the softest human hearts were wrapped in the hardest millet shells on the Loess Plateau.