As we watched, the hot weather persisted without rain. The highest temperature rose from the original thirty-eight degrees to forty-one.
At dinner, Chen Lin and Uncle Chen also talked about how the weather had not been good recently, with no rain from the heavenly lord, making things difficult for the farmers.
They could only roll up cables and water pipes to fetch water from the river, sometimes having to fetch water in the middle of the night too.
Since the couple were both at home, they planted a little more rice at home.
However, looking at how things were this year, the harvest would not amount to much.
Auntie also said that this summer was hot, so winter could be very cold.
The idioms about weather and solar terms that she uttered casually reminded Wen Qian of her own grandmother.
When Wen Qian was little, she would hear her grandfather and grandmother talk about phenomena related to the three fu solar terms and the three jiu days.
Wen Qian asked her, “If it gets cold, Auntie, will you burn coal at home?”
Uncle Chen replied, “Of course we’ll burn it. In winter when it’s warmer we’ll burn less, but in winter when it’s colder we’ll burn more. We can even sell it when it’s colder since the price will be higher.”
“I told your Uncle Chen this year that we need to burn more, since our son may come back to celebrate New Year this year.”
“When it’s time to burn, call me over and I’ll come learn how to burn some too.” Wen Qian made an appointment with them.
The place for burning coal was at the small Chen Wa Dyke by the pond. There was a two to three meter high ridge, with the water's edge on a sloping bank below, very suitable for firing an earthen kiln.
At that time, people nearby had dug an earthen kiln there for firing bricks, green tiles and charcoal. Later, after a long time when no one fired at that place anymore, it was abandoned.
Until nearly two years ago, Auntie Chen said her family planned to burn charcoal themselves, so they cleared out the stuff again. Burning it once last year, it looked not bad, so they prepared to burn more charcoal twice this year.
Wen Qian asked them what kind of timber they needed to prepare. Auntie Chen told her what trees were best, how thick and long, and asked her to prepare before winter came, and bring her along to burn when the time came.
Wen Qian said she had never seen burning done before, so she could film the process at that time.
Auntie Chen still felt it was quite novel but also somewhat embarrassed. Young people nowadays were so creative, Wen Qian called this sharing life.
Previously online Wen Qian had often seen some people’s recordings of rural life experiences and some outdoor survival. At that time she thought that if she returned home, apart from stocking up on supplies she would have nothing else to do, so she wanted to try filming videos, taking advantage of still having internet access now to upload them online.
Wen Qian was the kind of person who acted as soon as she spoke. Taking her phone, she filmed some footage like going up the mountain to gather pine needles and oak leaves and coming back, as well as the process of gathering small branches and kindling in the hills. She edited them into short videos to upload online.
She even bought another phone and tablet online to use and store videos.
At the same time she bought a cheap audio recorder. Although she did not have much money left she still wanted to spend this bit, so she bought affordable but functional devices as much as possible.
Her main reason for buying the audio recorder was that initially online she often listened to white noise to sleep, like sounds of strong wind, the babbling of a brook, and croaking frogs on a summer night.
There were bird calls in a mountain valley, but what she liked most was white noise with thunder in heavy rain.
For her this was very reassuring. Now she was back at her rural hometown, yet there was not a drop of rain let alone thunder. So all she could do was record sounds like the evening wind in the woods, cicada calls, cricket chirps and frog croaking to make do.
She did not know if anyone online could watch the videos or if they could bring in income, but she just wanted to record them anyway, since she had to be doing something everyday.
One day when she was bored, she recorded a two hour long video of gathering kindling.
It only had the picture of her scrabbling about in the yard gathering kindling with her hands and feet, with the crackling sounds, and commentary in the bullet screen saying it was very soothing and soporific.
So afterwards Wen Qian’s videos featured sounds of climbing mountains and walking, the tuk-tuk-tuk of drawing well water, the sounds of gathering pine needles on the hills, as well as sounds of stacking firewood and boiling water in the yard and recordings from the earthen stove door of burning brushwood.
Apart from sounds, there were also videos identifying plants. Wen Qian would often grab some grasses she did not recognize on the hills and identify them with her phone camera. Some she recognized herself and could name in the local dialect, while some had no names whatsoever.
Some people watched Wen Qian’s white noise and hillside firewood beating videos identifying plants.
Occasionally they would leave comments, missing the rural childhood they had spent in villages themselves.
After all, many people had spent childhoods in the countryside before moving to cities as adults, so seeing Wen Qian use an earthen stove, gather firewood, identify various plants in the hills, they would feel nostalgic.
In mid August, temperatures remained high without falling, mostly sunny days with some cloudy days, but still completely without rain.
Wen Qian noticed from watching the news everyday that not only the local countryside and An City, but even the whole An Province and surrounding provinces were experiencing varying degrees of drought and high temperatures.
In previous years even with high temperatures there would also be heavy rain. Sometimes there would be annual flood prevention measures taken in some river basins. But this year the rivers were dried up from upstream to midstream and downstream without heavy rain or flooding anywhere.
Auntie Chen said it was strange how if things carried on like this even the grain harvest would be bad and grain prices could even rise. Her family was not planning to sell any grain but to keep it stored up instead.
Wen Qian greatly admired that elderly people in the countryside would always store up grain no matter how good or bad the harvest was. And there would always be a stockpile of rice in the family granary, kept in case of running out of food someday, since they had truly experienced periods of starvation before.
After all her elders at home often quoted old sayings like “Fine streams flow long, full granaries combat famine” teaching people to prepare for adversity in advance.
Because of the heat there was no air-conditioning in Wen Qian’s home and she did not plan on buying any. At night she would sleep on the flat house roof, while resting inside a shaded room during the day.
In various novels and videos Wen Qian came across the traditional method of making ice with niter. So she started searching online for relevant videos and methods.
She finally discovered that most people were just recounting ancient stories and methods, with very few attempts at applying them in modern society, and those were failures.
She searched online again. The niter for sale was mainly medical grade nitre for use in traditional Chinese medicine, not the traditional niter that could be used to make ice.
However some people also said that ancient methods of producing this substance were extremely rare. Now even with mastered production techniques its channels of sale were also regulated. Without qualifications like entering a chemistry competition, pharmaceutical production or being a chemicals enterprise it was basically impossible to obtain large quantities of raw materials.
So Wen Qian looked up prices online, and found pharmacies selling them for hundreds of yuan per jin (0.5kg). Many individuals buying them for medical use would only purchase 50-100g.
Unable to meet the criteria, Wen Qian gave up on the idea. She decided to store more ice herself in winter instead.
There was no way she could make ice with niter after all.
