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the harvest in rural areas of eastern henan was poor this autumn. due to the strong winds and heavy rains in july, a lot of corn fell to the ground.

when i returned home, the sesame seeds were ripe. people in rural henan worship small-milled sesame oil. every time i go back home, my mother asks me to bring two kilograms of sesame oil. however, harvesting sesame seeds is very troublesome, and there is no machine that can harvest sesame seeds. you have to bend down and cut the sesame seeds from the roots with a sickle, collect them in bundles, dry them for a few days, and then shake the sesame seeds upside down so that the sesame seeds fall back.

a large grain grower (my nephew from the neighboring family) paid villagers to help harvest sesame seeds, 60 yuan a day.

my mother said she had never participated in it. there was a hint of regret in her words that she could not earn 60 yuan a day. i asked her who did this work, and she mentioned several people's names.

they were all elderly people of about her age, women, around 75. one of them had suffered a stroke like her, but more serious than hers, and was still in the hospital.

i feel sad. just imagine, a group of elderly people in their seventies, crawling in the fields, it is difficult for them to even bend down, and after bending down, it is difficult for them to stand up, and sometimes they have to bring a small stool to assist them.

however, these are the "village laborers" and the last generation of farmers.

school starts in late august or early september, and some children from the village are admitted to universities. their parents come back from the city, bringing back tuition and expectations, but these children have never participated in farm work. their parents who work in the city, who were born in the late 1970s or 1980s, rarely engage in agriculture.

my neighbor's nephew currently has over 500 mu of land under contract. these lands were rented to him by his blind dates, and the rent is 500 yuan per mu. the wheat harvest was good this year, but the autumn is destined to be bleak due to heavy rains.

most farm work has been mechanized, and sometimes we need to hire someone to help. the only people who can be hired are old people like my mother.

the most important reason is, of course, that there are only old people and children in the village. the second reason is that only such old people can do farm work and are willing to earn the 60 yuan.

in fact, i found another reason: they are the only ones who have real feelings for the land, crops, and food, and they still live in the "agricultural age."

once when wheat was drying in the sun, the weather suddenly turned cloudy and a rainstorm was approaching. the old folks spontaneously helped the “landlords” (their nickname for large grain growers) to collect the wheat, pack it into bags and move it indoors, without asking for a penny - because they really loved the wheat.

their "lives" are being destroyed. besides having no money, no pensions, and this heartless thing called "progress".

a rag collector came to the village, and the things automatically played on the loudspeaker were no different from those in the city: "old tvs, washing machines, old computers..." even these "old rags" were ahead of them and beyond their comprehension.

after electricity and tap water, natural gas was also connected to the village. in order to please us in the city, my father was one of the first to spend thousands of yuan to "install natural gas", but they hardly used it, and my mother piled up a lot of firewood in the yard.

this time my mother was sick and my sister came home. she was very unhappy with the firewood. it was under the power lines, which was a safety hazard; there might be rats hiding there... she said: i want to throw all the firewood into the river.

my mother was very angry: when your brother was first born, there was not even firewood at home, and she even burned several of your father's books while cooking.

those firewoods seemed meaningless to us, but they gave her a sense of security. that was the world she wanted to defend.