Now only one person was
worried. Who? The landlord's stooge Guo Rui. I must find some way to
wreck the co-op before these paupers set it on its feet, he told
himself. I shall compete with the co-op and outdo it! My family has a donkey,
three oxen, thirty sheep, four pigs, and over five acres of good land. With all
my livestock and capital, I'm sure I can show these paupers where they get off.
Part of his land lay
next to some of the co-op's fields. He decided to sow the same crop and do
whatever the co-op members did. Like them, he sowed an acre to maize. At first,
both crops did pretty much the same. In summer, when the co-op manured its plot
with sheep droppings, Guo Rui used pig-dung instead. But whereas the co-op's
twenty-three families had plenty of hands to carry manure and spread it, only
three of Guo Rui's family worked on the land. It was a long way, uphill and
down, from his home to the field; and he and his sons were so busy carting
manure that they had no time to spread it. That afternoon Guo Rui noticed that
the co-op had just about finished, while he still had a good deal of dung to
carry. He gritted his teeth and filled basket after basket to the brim. His two
sons sweated under their loads till they felt that their backs would break; the
donkey's legs nearly buckled under the weight; and Guo Rui himself panted as he
staggered along. Though they worked with all their strength, they got only half
their dung to the field by the time the co-op was spreading its last lot. Guo
Rui dumped his load and went back for more without even stopping for breath.
But before he reached the village the co-op members had knocked off and started
home singing and chatting. Fuming inwardly, he decided to make one last trip.
But his back was aching, his two sons were worn out, and however hard they beat
the donkey it would not budge. They had to take lighter loads and stop every
few steps to rest. At the end of this trip it was dark, so they left the dung
piled by the field to spread the next day.
When they reached home
and sat down to supper, it started to thunder. Then for over an hour there was
a downpour of rain. Guo Rui cursed and swore and could not sleep all night.
First thing the next morning he and his sons dashed to the field. Their whole
pile of pig-dung had been washed away -- into the co-op's land, too, which was
lower than theirs. The maize there was green and sturdy after its soaking, thanks
to all the dung, while Guo's by comparison was lank and droopy. In his rage, he
sold two sheep and bought some chemical fertilizer in the town.
When Du Hong saw this
he asked, "Why don't we buy some fertilizer too?"
"We must stick to
our poor man's way," said Wang Guxing.
"Let him fertilize
his fields; we'll hoe ours well. Loosening the soil is as good as a
dressing of dung. Take my word for it, a few extra hoeings will do more for the
crop than his fertilizer."
Guo Rui wasn't worried
when he saw them hoeing. All you paupers can do is work your heads off, he
thought. Just wait till you see what this fertilizer does to my maize! Little
did he know that he applied too much. As the sun blazed down, the leaves of his
maize started wilting. Father and sons made haste to water and weed the field,
but it was too late. And when Guo tried to hire a laborer there were none to be
found. Why not? Because all the paupers had joined the co-op, and the peasants
working on their own had no time to spare.
The co-op's maize grew
tall and strong. By harvest time each cob was about a foot long, as plump as a
pestle, and covered with symmetrical golden kernels the size of horses' teeth.
Guo Rui's cobs were no longer than a fountain-pen, no thicker than a man's
thumb, and only had a few scattered kernels.
Summary: Guo Rui sowed the same
crop -- maize on the same land area as the paupers. When the paupers manured
their crops with sheep droppings, he used pig dung instead. Assisted by his two
sons only, Guo Rui could not finish carrying and manuring his crops as fast as
the twenty-three families could. He left the manure piled at the fields but the
rain washed it away into the co-op's fields at night. He then resorted to
fertilizers, while the paupers started hoeing their land. Guo Rui over used the
fertilizers and his crops wilted. He tried to employ someone to help weed and
water the crops but was unsuccessful as all the paupers had joined the co-op.
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