When I Was a Teenager

In the vast West Dongting Lake Wetland, during the summer vacation of 1975, 13-year-old Liu Anzao followed Liu Daxing, the duck master of the production team, to herd ducks in Mingtang Lake, ten miles away from home. The two of them got along very happily. But the good times didn't last long. Something happened at the house of Yaya Lao, and his hall guest stole someone. The man who called the duck committed suicide and drank pesticide. Fortunately, he survived, but he refused to go out to let the ducks go out and stayed away from the guests. The production team's ducks were sold to Hubei guys at low prices, and Liu Anzao's career as a duck-caller came to an end as soon as it had just begun. Liu Anzao's classmate, Biting Egg Cui, whose scientific name is Li Dajun, is the best at maze-breaking in the team. He can sneak under the water for more than a hundred meters in one breath. The mother has four younger siblings and a mother who fled famine in Henan. Her family of seven has a difficult life. They have to go out to beg for rice every year and are bullied by their neighbors, Li Fugen and his family. On New Year's Eve, the egg-biting father went to Zhao's farm to dig lotus roots. He fainted from hunger and cold in the lotus root pond and drowned in the muddy water. It was already 1977, and earth-shaking changes were coming, and Liu Anzao's ignorant boyhood was coming to an end.