Qiangda
Qiangda is the neighbor of my father's house two doors away from our house. He is the same generation as my father, so he can be regarded as a distant relative.
Our village is a small county in the middle of Hexi Province. Here we call our father Dad, our uncles Dad, our uncles Big Dad, our younger uncles Little Dad, our father's brother is called Dada, our father's eldest brother is Dada, the second brother is Erda, and so on. We call the eldest wife mom (pronounced), and we call the uncle's wife aunt. This is no different from other places.
My little dad had been working as a cadre in the village at that time, from the militia company commander to the brigade secretary, from the Cultural Revolution to the reform and opening up.
Qiangda often goes to my little dad's house to discuss things with him. My little dad sometimes goes to his house to sit and smoke. He never comes to our house, probably because my father is a private teacher and has nothing to discuss.
I heard from my father that Qiang Da worked as a Kuomintang policeman in the county town when he was young. After liberation, he returned to his hometown to participate in labor. People said behind his back that he was a fake policeman.
is powerful, tall, and has a bad temper. In the village, apart from being polite to my little dad, I never looked at other members in the village.
The time that impressed me most was when Qiang Da was tired of a thorny haystack in the wheat field of the production team. The masses had strong opinions and wanted to cut off the tail of capitalism . But the powerful bullies the weak and has no regard for the production team leader and members. The two sides got into trouble with my little dad, the branch secretary. My little dad is a selfless person, and he does his job and lets the powerful dismantle the haystacks on his own. Don't do it if you are strong. My little dad got angry. He took out a match and lit a cigarette. He shook the still burning match stem and said, "Do you want to open it or not?" The powerful and big mouth is still very hard. If you don't tear it down, you won't tear it down. Let's see who can do something to me? My little dad threw the match onto the haystack. It was a dry and hot autumn day. Without any hesitation, the haystack burst into flames.
was powerful and cursed her mother loudly, trying to rush into the fire to live and die with the haystack. Others were afraid and pulled him one after another. They didn't give up, and the curses got louder and louder, and they harassed our ancestors over and over again, and they have already affected our ancestors for ten generations. My little dad asked everyone to let him go, saying don't worry and let him jump into the fire. If he doesn't jump, it means he is not a boy or a son of a mother. He was so strong on the outside but was not so strong after being let go. Everyone made fun of him, and he got angry, hooked his waist and thrust his head at my little dad. This headbutt was comparable to the famous headbutt by Italian star Zidane in the World Cup many years later. My little dad, who was over 1.8 meters tall, was knocked to the ground by his head. Fortunately, my little dad reacted quickly and fell towards the fire, otherwise the consequences would be disastrous.
The most difficult thing to understand is that a few days after this incident, Qiangda showed up at my little dad's house again like a normal person, smoking, drinking tea, and occasionally picking up a job.
My father had a few limited interactions with him. First, we bought a sandalwood desk and a Taishi chair from a Shanghai immigrant family who was about to return to the city. My father has long been in love with the immigrant’s desk. Immigrants had to return to the city and furniture had to be disposed of. Although it only cost a few dozen yuan, it was harder for ordinary people in those days to find tens of thousands of yuan than it is now to find tens of thousands of yuan. But Qiang Da did not know what tricks he used, and the Shanghai immigrants actually agreed to reduce the price to a mere dozen yuan, and to move tables and chairs first, and to pay for themselves when the immigrants left in the new year.
The second thing is that at the beginning of the reform and opening up, he took the lead in opening a grocery store in the village. He also encouraged my father to open a store as well. It was that store that saved our family from poverty. Our family is very grateful to him for this. But my little dad doesn’t think so. He said that people are afraid that the rafters that are in the forefront will die first, and they will be unable to support themselves. They asked my father to open a store together because they wanted to find someone to cover up the trouble. If the policy changes, my little dad will deal with him, because his own brother is also there. Doing the same thing and throwing a tantrum.
Da Qiang has never done hard work in a production team in his whole life, nor has he suffered hard in the land contracting field after household quotas were implemented. From young to old and dead, he has enjoyed good food and good food, and has endless money. He lived to be more than seventy years old when he died. He had three wives in his life and had no children. He later adopted his last wife's nephew to provide for his son until he died.
My father said that there are many silver coins in the powerful treasure. I don’t know when and where they came from. But some people have always suspected that in the winter of 1936, on a field road far away from our village, a passerby pulled a tall horse and immediately loaded it with a heavy sack of ox hair. He rested by the ditch. There have been exchanges. After that, that person, horse and that thing disappeared, and people suspected that the powerful had tampered with it. Some said it was a stray soldier, others said it was a businessman.
