Chapter 13: Tang Xiao has gone crazy, did you know?
In rural villages, there are often rumors and gossip circulating about family scandals or illicit affairs. Nowadays, most young men have left to work in cities, leaving behind only the elderly, children, and middle-aged women who stayed behind for various reasons.
Middle-aged women are also called obasan, these people have no scruples or embarrassment. As long as they gather together, they will soon say some rumors about the villagers to make others ask or laugh. Anyway, on a hot day, it's like raining and hitting children is idle!
Now their topic of conversation has shifted to Tang Xiao's situation, who has been at home for almost a week after returning from the town where he failed the college entrance exam.
"Do you know Tang Xiao Sao, a young man from Tang Guo Xian's family?"
In the only teahouse in the village, a short and stout middle-aged auntie asked with an underground party contact's tone and expression to several other idle aunties beside her.
Who among the older generation in rural areas doesn't know each other? If time were to flow backwards 20 years, people would rather hold kerosene lamps and walk tens of miles across several villages just to watch a movie. It's precisely this kind of thing that made people from earlier years have a very broad social circle, completely unlike young people nowadays who, as soon as they're on holiday, hug the TV and don't recognize anyone in the whole village, at most just feeling familiar with some faces.
So, the short and stout woman asked, and immediately another obasan chimed in: "Nonsense, isn't it that short and thin young man who's said to be useless at studying? What's going on?"
Alright, when rural people evaluate whether a young person who is still studying has development potential or not, they mainly look at their grades. Another important indicator is whether they are filial or not. Xiao Sao has never received any awards or honors from childhood to adulthood, which is also the reason why these women look down on him.
"You don't know, I'm not living in the mountain behind his house?" The short and stout woman shook her head and said in a very serious tone: "It was fine before, but these past few days, every morning when I just wake up, I can hear a dead ghost running to my mountain shouting 'Ahh Ahh' loudly. The voice is so sharp and loud that it's unbearable. On the first day, I was almost scared into falling into the toilet."
As expected, as soon as this was said, a burst of questioning followed: "Huh? Haha, who's shouting nonsense?"
"Could it be that I've encountered something unclean?"
"Isn't it that Tang something causing trouble again?"
…………
There were originally only a few people around, but with the loud calls of several oba-san, several idle uncles also followed and surrounded them. What's wrong with being idle anyway?
That short and stout woman was obviously a bit eccentric, the more people she saw, the more energetic she became. She then shouted loudly: "Everyone be quiet and listen to me!" The surrounding people responded with an "oh" and quickly fell silent. Only then did she continue: "I've been hearing it for three days in a row, every day around 6 o'clock in the morning. The shouting voice was exactly the same, 'ah ah oh oh', sometimes it sounded like thunder, 'humming' loudly, it made my heart feel numb!"
"Your husband has left, and your child hasn't even started summer vacation yet, so of course you're scared." A bystander sympathetically chimed in.
Another ajumma chimed in: "So what did you do? Just endured it?"
"Kidding, can I tolerate it?" The short and stout woman shouted with anger on her face: "So this morning, I got up as soon as the sky was bright, then took two kitchen knives and a flashlight to wait for him in the mountain."
"Great! You're really something!" A loud admiration from a timid woman who usually keeps a low profile.
"Haha, you're indeed Zhang the Big Cannon! Only you can pull it off." The middle-aged and elderly men also couldn't help but express their admiration.
……
"Who the hell calls me Zhang the Big Cannon again, I'll fight you to the death!" The short and stout woman shouted loudly. She obviously didn't like the nickname "Zhang the Big Cannon", because in the village, only those fierce and quarrelsome women would be given a nickname with "Big Cannon". This is a typical personal attack!
"Alright, hurry up and continue, what's with the knife?" Everyone didn't take her seriously, after all, a shrewish woman who really gets angry can cause rumors to spread, no one wants to be the laughing stock. So they could only urge "Zhang Big Cannon" to continue speaking quickly.
"What's the hurry, what's the hurry?" Zhang Dapao said with a displeased pout, and at this moment she finally had a "stars supporting the moon" feeling. With great satisfaction, she hummed and continued: "I just climbed up the mountain, you know the sun hasn't come out yet, it's blowing wind and a bit cool, I'm going to rest for a while before finding that person... But..." At this point, Zhang Dapao's face showed a shocked and frightened expression. She swallowed her saliva: "But you absolutely can't imagine, when I looked up, I saw a young man with his upper body exposed, only wearing a pair of shorts and bare feet, running around the edge of that 5-acre 'sun land' on the mountain, and while running very fast, he was also making 'hmm-ha-ha' sounds..."
"What's the point of cutting me off? They're just exercising!" An old man with white hair snorted and said disdainfully, "When I lived with my son in Chongqing, I saw many young people running around in their neighborhoods and parks with towels on their heads every day. They call this 'losing weight'."
"What a big fuss over nothing!" The others also burst out laughing and several of them walked away at once.
"Hey, old Wang, don't look down on people!" Zhang Dapao was anxious, she had finally managed to show off like this, how could she let an old man ruin it? She hastily said: "Who doesn't know about running? The key is that young man ran and finished his steps without even acknowledging me. He just stood under a big cypress tree on the slope, oh my god, you don't know, he was punching and kicking towards that cypress tree with 'huffing and puffing' sounds... That scene was terrifying! The bark of the cypress tree was all flattened, shaking non-stop. That young man seemed to have gone crazy..." As she spoke, her short and stout body was trembling, as if she had really been scared.
"Is he really crazy?" The surrounding crowd asked the same question. It was like watching a movie, and it was a martial arts film.
"How was I supposed to know? I turned around and ran away." Zhang Dapao reluctantly admitted his cowardice: "Isn't it said that if you're really beaten by a madman, you can only blame your bad luck? I don't want to end up in the hospital taking medicine."
A large crowd of people looked at me, I looked at them, and we all didn't know what to do. Because Zhang's reason was indeed very reasonable, no one wanted to argue with a madman. Even the most shrewish woman would be afraid of a madman.
"Alright, alright, just ask Li Wenjun later and he'll know if his own grandson is crazy or not." The same old man Wang broke the silence again: "Li Wenjun comes here to play 8 blocks (a local card game) every day now, let's just ask him later."
"Alright, let's go ask her together. If she's really crazy, we'll persuade her to get treatment, and make sure she doesn't accidentally hurt anyone." A large crowd of people nodded in agreement, and some also sighed "Poor girl, how could she have gone mad at such a young age?"
There's an exaggerated saying in the countryside, if someone farts at the village entrance, the whole village can smell it. Now, after Zhang Dasao spread the news that Tang Xiaosha had gone crazy, just one hour later, almost everyone in the village knew about it.
"Tang Xiao is crazy, did you know?" This sentence instantly became the hottest phrase in the whole village that day, far surpassing "Have you eaten?" or "Where are you going".
