Green Locust Plateau

The loess plateau in Weibei has a high sky and thick soil. Qinghuai Village lies on this long plateau. The ancient locust tree at the entrance of the village is at least five or six hundred years old. It was so thick that three men holding hands could not get around it, and the branches spread out in all directions, like a big hand that was clenched and then slowly opened. For hundreds of years, the Xu family, the Zhou family, and scattered people of all surnames in the village have surrounded this tree for birth, old age, illness, death, weddings and funerals. Xu Jingru got up before dawn, stood on the steps of the ancestral hall and looked at the fields below. The morning mist flows close to the ground, and the wheat seedlings are just sprouting. He has believed in one sentence all his life: soil can nourish people, virtue can provide peace to the village. But recently, the wind is getting tighter day by day. The world outside is in chaos, and more and more deserters and refugees are coming and going on official roads. The clan rules enshrined in the ancestral hall no longer seem to be able to suppress the fear in people's hearts. Zhou Laogen squatted in front of his cave dwelling, smoking dry smoke. I rent ten acres of sloping land from the Xu family, and the rent has increased again this year. The sparks in the smoke pot were clearly extinguished, reflecting his ravaged face. He doesn't understand the general trend of the world. He only knows that if there is no food in the fields, the whole family will starve to death. Under the ancient locust tree, Yinsheng hugged his knees and sat on the roots of the tree, smiling foolishly. Others say he is stupid, but he is the only one who knows clearly that he has seen more things than anyone else in the village. The wind on the plateau is constant all year round, blowing on the backs of generations after generations. No one can tell how many upheavals this land, which has fed countless people, will experience in the future.