During Grain Rain in 1973, when Shi Wa, a young boy on the Loess Plateau in the northwest, woke up from hunger, his ribs were pressed against the kang mat and his stomach was as empty as a plateau blown by the loess wind. His father, Lao Shi, took him on a salesman's load, and in name he walked through villages and alleys to exchange needles and threads, but in reality it was a fringe livelihood of "begging for food + secretly selling goods" - he taught Shi Wa how to use the trick of "the landlord has moved the land" to get dry food, hide the wrinkled woolen receipts with the corners of his clothes, and use the bamboo handle of the salesman's load to sweep away the dew on the road and sweep away the thorns that stand in the way of survival.
