Chapter 331 - 269: Big Tongue Zhang
When he’d run into him on the road that morning, Zhao Jun had simply assumed Zhang Yuanmin’s swollen cheek was from a slap by his wife, Yang Yufeng, during a fight.
At the time, he’d even silently cheered. ’That old rascal is always up to no good. A beating or two wouldn’t hurt him.’
But from what Yang Yufeng had just said, Zhao Jun gathered that she hadn’t been the one to hit him.
It made sense, when he thought about it. No matter how angry a couple got during a fight, they wouldn’t go around smacking each other in the face.
If for no other reason, they had to think about saving face.
At Zhao Jun’s question, a wave of indignation washed over Zhang Yuanmin. But just as he opened his mouth to speak, he heard the door to the outer room slide open.
"Dad, Mom, I’m home!"
Little Lingdang was home.
Zhang Yuanmin instantly swallowed the complaint that was on the tip of his tongue, shouting to the outer room instead, "Lingdang, come in! Your Uncle Zhao is here."
Hearing his voice, Little Lingdang hurried into the inner room and greeted Zhao Jun, "Uncle Zhao!"
"Hey there," Zhao Jun replied. He started to turn to talk to Little Lingdang, but his eyes immediately fell on a hunting rifle hanging on the wall.
Zhao Jun froze for a second, but seeing Little Lingdang come in, he quickly forced a smile and asked, "Where were you off playing, Lingdang?"
Little Lingdang lifted her hand, showing off two comic books. "I went to my classmate’s house to borrow a couple of books for my dad," she said with a smile.
"Did you get them?" Zhang Yuanmin climbed down from the kang, walked over to Little Lingdang, and took the books from her. He then whispered, "Your Uncle Zhao and I have something to talk about. Go stay in the other room for a bit."
’No matter who hit me, I can’t talk about it in front of my own daughter.’
Little Lingdang immediately agreed. She grabbed her schoolbag from the kang and, hugging it, went into the room across the hall.
Zhang Yuanmin tossed the books onto the table. Just as he was about to launch into his tale of woe, he heard Zhao Jun ask, "Yuanmin, where’d you get that rifle?"
"Huh?" Zhang Yuanmin looked up at the rifle on the wall and grinned. "It was a gift."
"A gift, huh..." Since Zhang Yuanmin put it that way, Zhao Jun couldn’t very well press him on who it was from.
But even though he didn’t ask, Zhang Yuanmin brought it up himself. "Brother," he said, "if it wasn’t for you, I never would’ve gotten my hands on this rifle."
"What’s that supposed to mean?" For some reason, his words made Zhao Jun feel uneasy.
Zhang Yuanmin continued, "Brother, you remember, right? That time we were chasing that Black Bear that had just come out of its den, and we ran into those guys who had cornered that big bull."
"Yeah, what about it?" Zhao Jun definitely remembered that. If Zhang Yuanmin hadn’t ditched his chainsaw on the mountain, they never would have had to make that trip right before the New Year. He just couldn’t figure out why Zhang Yuanmin was bringing it up now.
Zhang Yuanmin explained, "Well, didn’t those guys leave you that Meng Danzi? I took its pizzle home, steeped it in medicinal wine, and gave it to someone as a gift after the New Year. A couple of days ago, the guy sent word that the wine worked wonders and insisted on having me, your sister-in-law, and Lingdang over for dinner.
"He’d had a bit too much to drink before dinner, and one thing led to another, and he ended up giving me this rifle."
"So, what have you been hunting with it, Yuanmin?" Zhao Jun wasn’t really concerned with where the rifle came from; he was concerned with what Zhang Yuanmin was planning to hunt with it.
"Haven’t shot much of anything," Zhang Yuanmin said, sounding quite indignant. "Your sister-in-law won’t give me any money, so I can’t buy lead pellets or gunpowder. I can only load it with iron scraps to hunt little critters."
"Little critters are fine," Zhao Jun said, somewhat relieved to hear this. "As long as you can put some meat on the table for your kid now and then, that’s good enough."
At this, his gaze fell back on the handprint on Zhang Yuanmin’s cheek. Zhao Jun asked again, "So, Yuanmin, who did you get into a fight with?"
"Yeah," Zhang Yuanmin said. "I saw people selling wild boar and roe deer meat at the market, so I figured I’d hunt a couple of roe deer to sell myself."
Seizing the pause, Zhao Jun jumped in. "To buy gunpowder with the money?"
"Yeah—huh? No." Zhang Yuanmin quickly waved his hands in denial.
"What do you mean, ’no’?" Zhao Jun said sternly. "Yuanmin, don’t tell me now that you have a rifle, you’re getting ideas about going after a Black Bear."
"No way!" Zhang Yuanmin said loudly, before craning his neck to glance out the door. He then lowered his voice and told Zhao Jun, "Your sister-in-law said that if I go after a Black Bear again, she’ll divorce me—even if I manage to kill it."
"Good for her!"
"What’s that supposed to mean, brother?" Zhang Yuanmin said, sounding hurt. "You’re supposed to be on my side!"
"Oh, give me a break," Zhao Jun said with a wave of his hand. "Keep talking. Who hit you?"
"Zhang Mengliu."
"Who?" Not far west of Yong’an Village was a place called Mangliu Village. It was inhabited by people who had migrated to the Northeast around 1960.
In those years, food was scarce for those Inside the Pass. These people couldn’t survive in their hometowns anymore, and having heard that the Northeast was a land of plenty—where you could kill a roe deer with a stick and scoop fish up with a ladle—they moved their entire families over.
But once they arrived, they had no official residency papers, which meant they couldn’t receive grain rations. Their only option was to forage for food in the mountains.
They would clear a couple of acres for a private plot, or gather mountain products and take on side work. While they didn’t starve, their lives were much harder than those of the local residents.
The locals called these people *mengliu*.
The word wasn’t an insult.
*Meng* meant to be without a house, and *liu* meant to be without land. And when these people first arrived, weren’t they homeless and landless?
In those days, there were many such *mengliu*, and they even gathered to live in clusters. That was how Mangliu Village came to be.
There were so many *mengliu*. When Zhang Yuanmin just said "Zhang Mengliu" without giving a full name, how was Zhao Jun supposed to know who he meant?
"It’s Big Tongue Zhang!"
"Big Tongue Zhang?" Zhao Jun was stunned for a moment, then frowned. "Yuanmin, how on earth did you get into a fight with *him*?"
This Big Tongue Zhang’s given name was Zhang Lifu. He was older than Zhang Yuanmin, already forty this year, and his speech—a combination of a Shandong accent and a thick lisp—was quite distinctive.
The crucial thing was, Zhang Lifu was on good terms with Zhao Youcai. Years ago, when Zhang Lifu had arrived with his uncle’s family, they had no food or drink. He didn’t know how to hunt, so he could only eat whatever he managed to scrape together in the mountains.
Needless to say, eating like that, you could never get full.
During their hardest time, it was Zhao Youcai who got Zhang Lifu a job helping out in the mess hall. They didn’t pay him, but they gave him a full meal every day at noon.
It was called a "full meal," but it was simple fare: four cornbread buns, a bowl of watery cornmeal porridge, and two strips of pickled vegetables.
But those four cornbread buns each day were what allowed Zhang Lifu to survive.
Later, when times got tough and there was a push to drive the *mengliu* back Inside the Pass, it was Zhao Youcai who told Zhang Lifu about an abandoned, broken-down shack in the mountains he knew of from his hunting days, and he told Zhang Lifu to move into it.
Zhao Youcai, afraid he would starve, also taught him how to snare roe deer, lynx, and pheasants. That was how he helped Zhang Lifu survive those most difficult years.
It just went to show, Zhao Youcai wasn’t a bad person; in fact, he was quite kind-hearted. The key was not to cross him. If you did, well, you’d just have to pray for the best.
And Zhang Lifu was the kind of man who repaid kindness.
Zhao Jun remembered from his childhood that Zhang Lifu would often visit their home, and he never came empty-handed. Even though he only ever brought things he’d foraged from the mountains, that kind of gratitude was a rare thing.
Because of his hardships, Zhang Lifu married late. He was twenty-eight when he married a woman who had a crippled hand.
Despite marrying late, Zhang Lifu was a hard worker. He and his wife had a new child every other year, and now with five kids at home, they were only getting poorer.
His eldest was already twelve but had never been to school for a single day, instead staying home to help out. In the spring, the boy would go with Zhang Lifu into the mountains to dig for wild vegetables; in the fall, they’d gather wood ear fungus, Yuan Mushrooms, and harvest magnolia-vine berries.
’A family like that... you shouldn’t bully them!’