Chapter 14
Sangton First High School was believed to be the best in Sangton County, Mianyang District. Only eight of Bing’s classmates, Kai and himself included, had scored above the enrolment mark. Among the rest, some would stay in the same school to finish their high school education, where the chance of entering a university was rather slim if not zero, and others would simply quit school due to the lack of support from their parents who needed extra labour in the field.
In the high school, Kai and Bing were not in the same class. Kai was better at math, physics and other science subjects, so he was in the Science class, whereas Bing, whose Chinese and English were better, was allocated to the Art class. Therefore apart from sharing the same trip home during holidays, they seldom met each other on the campus. Compared to their middle school, the campus was indeed a significant upgrade in terms of facility. The dining hall was three times bigger, and a lot more buildings were built for classroom and dormitory. Located about four kilometres from the county town centre, the school had a wide and solid road suitable to cars and tractors, which was established through an area of crop fields and also over a river in its way to the urban district.
More bicycles were running about, as more teachers and students could afford the most modern means of personal transportation of the time. Bing was mostly impressed with some female bicycle-riding students who, in their clean, patch-less clothes or even in the more fashionable skirts, looked so stately and elegant. And the school bag, nice and colourful, clutched on the bicycle’s rear rack, was suggesting anything but soil.
However, his first impression was soon dimmed by the load of study, by the monotonous routine of a student’s life. There were fifty plus students in his class, but Bing was the only one from his town. The non-study activities were limited, and new friendship could hardly be nurtured. The students were no more intimate than merely sitting in the same room, listening to the same teacher, rushing to the same kitchen for their ceramic rice bowl. The sort of fun Bing had experienced with Kai and Xing in the middle school was nowhere to be found. And unlike his middle school, where all the students had shared a similar poor background, here a better social class, whose parents were non-farmers such as workers in the factory or position holders in the government, seemed to be formed and illustrated by better clothes and shoes, by the special County accent, by the dainty bicycles. Although the difference had rarely resulted in a kind of superficial discrimination among the students, the society was divided and Bing had a vague feeling of being placed at the lower rank of the social order. But the perception was again banished by the overwhelming amount of study before it could cast any shade on his adolescent life. Because, no matter where they came from and however different their parents were in terms of social status and wealth, going to the university was the ultimate purpose of all the students.
Bing, like in middle school, was not among the top performers. In most subjects, he was just slightly better than average, except English, for which he could confidently say he was within the top five. His math was never good enough, but he was once praised by the math teacher regarding an assignment. The teacher mentioned in the class that his logic was strong, that in his solution, the cause and the result were clearly stated by the strict pair of using ‘because’ and ‘so’ up to the very end of the problem-solving process. He was even asked by the teacher to re-write his way of expression on the blackboard in front of the class.
In the period he often did masturbation, with shame and flame, to release his youthful pressure. This was especially desired after he had awakened from a belief that had wet his pants during sleep, which, for an unspeakable reason, would tempt him to do it once more. However, after hearing and also reading a little from some books that doing this too often would harm his body and impair his growth, he was scared enough to reduce its frequency. So, later in his years, he had chiefly let the body run its own course without the deliberate intervention from the lustful part of his mind.
Sometimes in the class, while listening to the teacher, he would lapse into a reverie. His dreams were invariably about a Kong-Fu type of hero, which was himself. He would fly through the air of the campus, go back to his village, search over the hills and race the swallows, and then, instantly come back to the classroom, showing off by flexing his muscles as if to conquer something very big and powerful, to receive the admiration and applause from his classmates. And other times when his mind was not on the lesson, he would doodle, on the piece of paper, always two slogans, ‘Long live Mao Tse-tung’s thoughts’ and ‘Long live the victory of great cultural revolution’. He guessed he must have made this habit during his primary school, when he had to write them hundreds if not thousands of times.
He had a mild admiration for a girl in his class. Coming from the town of the County instead of a village like him, she was supposed to belong to a higher ‘social class’. He never talked to her or sat together with her at the same desk, but just the same he was fairly conscious of her existence all the time in the classroom, and just the same, it was a kind of secret a youth had to embrace in his own chest throughout all those years. Because like in his middle school, the communication between two genders was still rare, almost nonexistent.
When there was a need for the bits of his sentimental or emotional discharge, he would take a walk on the hill behind the school. It was a nice little resort, a refuge for the students whose body and soul had been fettered by the homework. Sauntering late in the evening on the hill was an experience of peace and ease, when most of the students were in the classroom engaged in their fierce battle for university entry.
Sometimes when he was alone on the top of the hill and felt safe enough from being heard, he would sing a song. The song was always ‘Ah! Great sea, my hometown.’ He had never seen the sea, but he didn’t think it was the sea itself that had affected him with such a feeling. More likely, he just missed his home, his grandma and sister and parents. But even that he was not sure, for why he should sing about the sea to miss a village with only hills and fields?
But still, his ‘Great sea’ singing was such a vehement moment to him that his eyes seemed to gather some moisture and his body seemed to undergo a sort of liberation, like a bird poised with its wings spreading at their widest. And, overlooking the well-lit classroom from the top of the hill, he had the same expansive vision as when he had been on the top of the hill in his village, looking down at all the tiny people working hard in the fields.
But a girl in his class, one day approached him. Smilingly she told him that she had heard his singing on the hill. Surprised as he was, he didn’t feel as much embarrassed as he could have imagined. Only smiling an uncertain smile, he walked away from her. Since then he sang no more. Yet once or twice, he seemed to have caught her eyes for him, curious and comprehensive, as if missing or wondering about his singing.
The first term was soon flying past. Bing and Kai took the bus home together for the summer holiday. The road home was winding the waists of many hills. Without cement as the foundation, it was very bumpy with numerous dips and pits and gravels. It seemed to him the precarious bus would run off the track or stumble over at any moment.
‘The holidays are finally here, we will have some fun,’ Kai said joyously.
‘What do you have in mind?’ Bing asked, in a capital spirit.
‘Well, work in the field mainly, but a lot of fruit in the hills you can pick. And there are plenty of “bull-testicles”.’
The fruit that Kai referred to had the shape and also the size of a bull’s testicle. It had some small black seeds like watermelon, but the yellow slimy flesh tasted immensely sweet.
‘Really? I could find only a few in my village,’ Bing recalled, wistfully.
‘I will bring some for you when we go back to school.’
‘How about waxberry?’ Bing asked timely as the sour-sweet fruit crossed his mind, and instantly his saliva began to swell.
‘No, that is only for winter,’ Kai corrected.
‘Oh, you are right. We have to wait for another term.’
‘Maybe you could come with me to my house, stay for the night?’ Bing suggested, ‘You can go home tomorrow morning, so you don’t have to rush.’
Kai’s village was almost double the distance of Bing’s from the market place. It would be very late in the evening when he got home. ‘Not this time, I want to go home first. I will join you when we return to school.’
‘Okay, then.’
Two hours later, they got off the bus with their empty bags and things, heading to their respective villages.
As always, the holiday would be a busy period for Bing to help as much he could with the field labour. His mother told him last time that his father had already left the Town to work as a fulltime farmer at home. It was indeed a bad news for the family to lose a steady income, as well as the privilege they had enjoyed for so many years. But his father was not a formal employee in the Council that could secure him with an iron-rice-bowl, even if he had worked in the radio station for more than ten years. Should he have tried hard enough to build a good guanxi with the leaders, he could have long before upgraded his employment to be non-farmer status. But he seemed to have held too much pride with himself to flatter the cadre or ingratiate himself in the workplace. So as a result of a heated quarrel between him and the newly-appointed mayor, he was laid out to go home, becoming a victim in a system predominately driven by favouritism.
When Bing arrived home, it was late afternoon.
‘Dad,’ Bing called, with a delight, as soon as he saw him coming out of the room.
‘Ehm, you come back,’ his dad said shortly, smiling mildly.
His dad, though still in his usual white shirt and blue trousers, impressed him very differently from what had been in his mind, but he couldn’t figure out for the moment what it was.
Bing went straight into the living room and put his little things onto the floor. His dad followed him in, took a seat himself and began to pour a glass of water from the kettle. ‘You came back together with Kai?’
‘Yes.’
‘You should have asked him over to stay for the night,’ said his father, placing the glass onto the dinner table. ‘Drink some water, you must be thirsty.’
Bing took the glass, feeling its warmth, emptying it with one gulp. ‘I did invite him, but he couldn’t wait to go home,’ and sitting down, he added, ‘he said he would come here when we go back to school.’
His father said no more, refilling the empty glass for him. His hands and face were darker than before, and his demeanour was unusually patient and gentle. Bing didn’t remember his father ever preparing a drink for him like this. And watching him now more closely, the expression on his father’s face touched him afresh. Yes, he was more attentive, affectionate, and even humble, as if having shrunk a bit from his former stature. In Bing’s memory, his father had been supercilious and patronising; the small amount of soil and toil in the field he had infrequently done had scarcely impacted his stance and personality. In the household, an invisible wall seemed to always exist between him and the rest of family. To some extent, he was not unlike his own father, who had assumed a life almost isolated from other family members.
‘Drink more water,’ his father said, interrupting his thought. At the age of fifteen, Bing found himself suddenly capable of observing certain things in the family context.
‘Where is mum, grandma, and Ming?’ Bing asked, in a subtle effort to avert his father’s quiet attention. For some reason, he was somewhat uncomfortable with the intimacy his father had displayed.
‘Your mum is watering the vegetables. Grandma and Ming are around the corner, looking after the ducks. They have been waiting for you since early morning, only left minutes ago.’
‘Oh.’ Bing said, standing up. ‘I go out to them.’
But no sooner had his feet left the doorstep than, Ming, now thirteen, was rustling to him excitedly, like a swallow locating a source of food.
‘Ge, you came back so late,’ she said, her eyes flaring wide.
Bing was about to say something to her, but ‘Aiya-hah, only come back now’ came to him as an intervention.
‘Grandma,’ Bing turned, his steps swift towards her, ‘Grandma.’
He held her two old and roughened hands for a while, before she withdrew one to pat his arm. ‘Aiya-hah, you are so tall, and thin.’
‘Grandma, see, I am much taller than you,’ Bing said, holding her to his side so that her head could reach his shoulder. ‘It is you growing shorter, hehe.’
‘I am old, old bone, of course, growing shorter,’ she said, now with both of her hands patting his arms as if there was much dirt on him she had to dust off. In his memory, dusting off something in his pants or shirts were her invariable gesture whenever he came back to her from any of his worldly adventures. Perhaps, in her wrinkled, often bleared eyes Bing was forever a dirty and troublesome boy. But, similarly, in Bing’s mind, in his childish and boyish and now adolescent eyes, she always affected him with the same impression. She was the same when she bent to fetch the water to water the plants with a long bamboo dipper, while carrying on her back his baby sister Ming. She was the same when she was peeling the taros with her remarkable skills and deft movements. She was the same when she was stitching the socks and pants and shirts and every piece of garment of which usage could be stretched some days longer. She was the same when she was murmuring to herself for the headache or the toothache she had often suffered from. She was the same when she was sobbing quietly over the death of her odd, eccentric hu*****and. She was the same when she watched him eating the precious bun, or the meat-balls, or the oranges, or anything she believed to have a good taste but that she herself didn’t partake.
The growing number of silver hairs on her head or the wrinkles in her sunken face indeed made no difference in his eyes.
As told by his mother on a number of occasions, he knew his grandma had had a hu*****and before she married his grandpa. In her first marriage, she had bred four children, who, one after another, had all been stolen and sold to somewhere nobody seemed to know. Her first hu*****and was believed to be an outlawed bandit, a condemned robber, who only sneaked home at nights or on special occasions such as Chinese festivals, giving her little money to support the family. But she, alone, couldn’t feed and protect her children, no matter how hard she had laboured in the fields. She was a beautiful woman, constantly harassed by some bad men who meant to take advantage of her hu*****and’s absence.
His grandpa made her acquaintance when he was peddling at her village, somewhere in the outskirts of Mianyang, at which time her hu*****and was rumoured to have already been killed and had not come back home for years ever since the rumour began. So perhaps attracted by her beauty, his grandpa married her as his concubine and brought her to the Ancient Village.
‘Aiya-hah, you go play with Ming, I go help cooking,’ his grandma released him and went into the kitchen. He has just come home from the best high school in the County; Something good must be for the dinner.
His sister, her dark hair drawn back into a ponytail, was as if grown into a big girlish figure overnight. With great admiration in her eyes, she kept on asking this and that about his school.
‘How many students in your class?’
‘About fifty?’ he answered, uncertainly.
‘What, you don’t even know yourself?’
‘Well, not exactly, but the count was similar in all classes.’ Bing explained in a light tone, a little amazed by her keen eyes, thick eyebrows, and glowing cheeks. She was a beautiful girl, admitted Bing, for the first time with a realization. Should she wear a set of nicer clothes or even skirts, like how those County-girls had dressed themselves, she would be even better looking.
‘Ge, I want to take the test, try to go to the same school as yours,’ she said.
‘Study harder, you must.’
‘But you must help me with my work.’
‘Of course, I will help you,’ Bing challenged. ‘So long as you are not as slow as Dan.’
‘How can you compare me to him? I do much better than him. He is about the bottom in the class; I am at least in the first ten,’ she protested, puckering her lips.
‘Well, let’s see what we can do,’ Bing promised, the first time in a sort of commitment to do something he could be proud of for his sister.
There seemed endless things to talk about between the pair. In a while, his mother came home, her shoulder carrying two big buckets by a bamboo pole. Bing turned to her and called, ‘Mum,’ and she replied, ‘Ai, come back. So late.’ And then smiling, she put away the buckets in the corner and went into the kitchen. Unlike others who had not seem him for almost half year and had to welcome him very much like a fresh person, his mother saw him every month as she went to the County delivering him the rice and money.
Ming and Bing continued to laugh and brag, until Dan, who had just come back from tree-cutting, joined them. From then on, their topics were naturally changed from the study to things like loach catching, fishing, fruits picking, among many things Bing had to miss because of study.
The two families had dinner together, as well as another grandma – his grandpa’s first wife, who usually ate alone. His dad and his uncle were drinking the rice-wine. The main dish was a duck, the best cooking of his dad, with ginger and spring onions. Its entrails, after cleaned, were cooked separately with tofu as a soup. Plus a dish of cabbage, another of taro, a plate of fried peanuts, the dinner table was laid with the best assortment Bing had not seen for many months.
His father kept calling him to take more duck: ‘There is not much you can eat at school, eat more.’ But he didn’t pick it out for him, it was his mother and his grandma who continuously picked the duck pieces and put them into his bowl. They also picked some for his sister, but she always put it back to the plate, as if the food was prepared solely for his honour.
Feeling somewhat embarrassed, Bing managed to pick one or two pieces from his bowl for Ming and his grandmas. But again they were returned to the dish. All of them must have thought Bing had been starving in the school. But Bing was not. He had had enough rice to fill his bowl, to be cooked in the massive steam-frames like those of the middle school. And through the windows like those of a store, the school sold a range of vegetables and other farm produce such as beans, taros, melons etc. But they were correct in believing that Bing had never eaten any duck at the school. There was some pork for a price double to that of the vegetables. He would buy a share of that once a week. Sometimes, he would go outside the school to buy from the private shop a bowl of tofu soup, which, apart from one piece of fried tofu and one or two visible stalks of spring onion, had no other edible substance. But it still tasted good enough with some salt, as well as some streaks of pig-oil floating on its surface. After all, it was soup, not pure water as it might look like, and more important, it was affordable, one cup for only one Jiao.
His uncle said: ‘Bing, get a glass of the rice-wine. You are grown up.’
Bing couldn’t remember when he last time drank the special liquor made from fermented rice, but he knew it was sweet, and at the moment really wished to have a taste. Yet before he said anything, his mum had already got up and held the flagon that had been standing on the table very much like a proud rooster, and began to pour it for him. With a colour of light yellow and steaming hot, the flow had never failed to heighten the spirits around the table in his memory.
‘Dan, you drink some as well,’ Bing said, noticing Dan quietly focusing on his rice bowl.
‘Well, everyone drink a bit,’ his dad said, merrily.
So, it ended up a total eight glasses on the table, turning the dinner into a family banquet. The food, except the duck and its soup, seemed to go quickly with a liberated appetite.
‘Bing, study hard, and get to university,’ his uncle toasted, ‘you are the first prospect for many years in our village. Dan is out of the question.’ He threw a quick glance to his son, who, on this type of study conversation, always buried his head into his chest.
The glasses clanged, but before the two took their drinking, his dad joined in, ‘Yes, Bing, study hard, I know you will.’
Bing drank it all, heartily. ‘Hehe, I will try my best.’
It was indeed a memorable dinner. His father and his uncle stayed at the table long after others had gone to bed. They discussed about what kind of business could make money. Bing didn’t capture the specifics of their conversation, for he was very tired, falling asleep within minutes after going to bed.
The summer holiday was in the time for crop harvesting. The ripened rice couldn’t be left in the field too long, otherwise it would turn bad or start sprouting. Therefore, during the season, all hands, including children’s, were needed to help in one way or another. When he was younger, Bing used to pass the crop bunch to the adults who operated the threshing machine, to save them from bending their backs all the time.
This time Bing decided to do the threshing like an adult. The two families worked together in the fields. He and Dan worked as a pair, pedalling and threshing while their fathers passed the bundles to them. To drive the teethed cylinder fast enough, a great muscle power in their legs was required. Their hands were also very busy, turning the bunch over and over again until the stalks shed all the grains.
In about five minutes, Bing was sweating all over his body, and his leg started feeling sore, which was the time to swap the position with Dan so as to employ the other foot for pedalling. And working for five more minutes, they had to change roles with their parents who could keep on threshing for at least half an hour.
His mother and his aunt and Ming were in the field reaping the crops. They bent their back to cut the crops with the sickle, and unbent to place the crops into the baskets. When the baskets were full, one of them would stop reaping to carry them over for threshing.
Approaching the lunch break, his grandma came to the field with the baskets containing rice, taros and other vegetables. In his experience, this was the best time during a day’s hard work. They all stopped and went to the place shaded by the most ancient pine tree in the village. It was said that the tree had been there for hundreds of years, since the Wang ancestor had first set their foot on the place. Its roots, like dragon paws crawling and arching on the surface, were tough and aged enough to speak the truth of the legend. The sun, cruel and cooking all the morning, had now encountered the defence of a wide umbrella of the pine needles. The shade was delicious, the draught brushing his cheeks. Perspiration stole into his eye sockets, tickling his eyes and causing his constant rubbing until tears came out to help dilute the salty elements. The rice was plenty, the taro soft and tender. He felt never so hungry, as if every cell in his system was crying like baby swallows for the food from their mother’s beak.
After lunch and a brief rest and chattering, they set to work again. They couldn’t afford to have a lengthy rest or nap, which would inevitably dull the body into a state of languidness, bringing forward the utmost tiredness and soreness they ought to only feel at the end of day.
As the evening came, so did the most tiring task of harvesting. They had to carry the grain home, at a time when they were already exhausted.
Bing insisted on doing his bit as a young adult, in spite of repeated dissuasion by his mum and dad. In the end, they yielded and agreed to let Bing carry a little more than half of the fill, in two large baskets that weighed about 65kg in full.
One by one, they set off along the small ridge between the fields. His father leading the way, Bing followed, and then his mother. The bamboo pole on their shoulders was bounding up and down, creaking in time with their steps. It was not long before Bing had a sore shoulder to do the swapping. He paused and managed to rotate the pole, and felt relieved as soon as the pressure point had moved from one to the other.
Then suddenly, his father tripped over a lump of soil, stumbling forward until both baskets banged onto the field and overturned.
Bing laid his baskets down, hurriedly going to his father.
‘Dad, are you all right?’ Bing asked, helping him stand up.
His father didn’t answer him, and strangely, he walked away to a field ridge, without even looking back, where he found a place to sit down.
Confused, Bing stood looking at him. Then seeing his mother beginning to fetch the spilled grain back to the basket, he went and did the same.
His mother didn’t say anything, which discouraged him to raise any questions. After the rice was restored, his dad still sat there smoking.
‘We go first,’ his mum said at last, with a sigh.
They resumed their trip, and arriving home, poured the grain onto the concrete surface. His grandma came out from the kitchen and asked him to just stay at home, but Bing followed his mum for the second round.
The sky had already faded into dusk. The afterglow was casting a colour of orange on the edge of the mountains. Crickets and frogs started their evening chorus. But in the air, he saw no swallows. He knew they had already retired from their day of labour to their nest inside the house, where they must be at the time trilling incessantly, discussing the matters of a day’s life.
His father was back on the path, carrying the baskets forward, followed by his uncle and aunt. Bing and his mum gave way to them. His mother said: ‘Take care, the road is slippery.’
In the field, Ming was packing up things, sweeping the scattered grains onto a sheet made of bamboo strips.
They filled up their pairs of baskets again; there was still some remaining.
‘It will need two more pairs,’ his mother estimated. ‘Leave it to your uncle and aunt.’
Later, while two families having the supper, his father was again talkative and reasonably happy. The incident seemed to have passed, only that his father, as he noticed, had drunk several more glasses of wine than the day before.
Next morning, on their way to the field, Bing and his mother walked together, with some distance behind others. Bing asked her: ‘Mum, has dad been drinking a lot, since he came back home? He was not so much fond of alcohol before.’
‘Well, yes,’ she replied, hesitating.
‘Why did dad come back home?’
‘I already mentioned to you last time, did you forget?’
‘Well…’
‘As I said before, he was never a formal employee of the council. Half a year ago, a new mayor came to the town. Your dad had a dispute with him, and was asked to go home because of that,’ she paused and continued, ‘if your dad had had a better temper, and managed to apologise to him or even treated him a meal to better the relationship, he could have kept his job. Well, it is no use now.’
‘I heard of his talking about making money with uncle. What is he trying to do?’
‘I don’t know. He had not been happy staying at home, labouring like the others. He never got used to working in the fields. He has some idea of opening a shop, repairing transistor radios or watches, or something.’
‘Really? Where does he want to open the shop? How can we get the money to open it?’
‘Not sure, we have to see what we can do. The fact is that he has been very low in spirit, and easily gets angry. But you don’t need to worry, focus on your study.’
‘How about uncle? Does he still hunt a lot?’
‘Not as often as before. There are not as many boars, squirrels and animals left on the hills.’
‘What will he do?’
‘He is also thinking of doing a business, pedalling like your grandpa, maybe. Anyway, they are just talking, have not done anything yet.’
Later in the evening, at the dinner table, he heard his father and his uncle discussing the business again. They drank the wine, chewing the peanuts for a long time, relaxing. The concerns and worries were not shown in their faces.
However, on some evenings, when Bing was helping Ming with her study upstairs, he heard his parents quarrelling, accompanied by the faint sobs of his mother. And when they later came down to supper, the air around the dinner table was always saturated with a sombreness that couldn’t be diluted by the assumed merriment of their mother, nor by his father’s frequent asking them to eat more. The gloominess of the family would linger late in the night, until the dawn of next day played its magic to lighten them up again.
But Bing was old enough to understand that his parents were under enormous pressure in supporting the study of two children. Now that his dad had lost his salary, it would prove to be much harder for them to keep up with the expenditure. Few families in the village could afford to let their children pursue further study, when they were strong enough to give hands in the fields.
On the last day of the two months holiday, Kai, as promised, came to Bing’s house, carrying with him a month’s rice quota that filled a quarter of a sack. Bing spent the rest of the afternoon with him wandering about the fields, telling him about the places he went swimming, fishing, tree-cutting, fruit picking, and of course, loach-needling.
‘You seemed to have much more fun than me,’ Kai said, his eyes expressing a level of admiration. ‘All I have done, mainly, was swimming, for my own fun. Most of the time, I had to help my father cut and collect resin from the pine tree.’
‘Well, you could always find some spare time for some fun, couldn’t you?’
‘Apart from working in the field, I had virtually no spare time, because I had to help deal with the resin business. My father had a hill of pine trees to look after.’
‘But, cutting for resin, can be fun?’
‘Haha, only if you say so. It might be fun at the beginning, but it’s a hard work. You have to set up a structure around the tree to keep up the height of work, because the resin is depleted with lower cuts, and we need the higher fresh ones to induce the desired level of resin flow,’ Kai spoke in a tone of an expert, ‘And then, we need to carry the buckets of resin downhill, and whisk them into a good mixture, before carrying them to be sold at the resin station.’
‘Did you hurt your shoulders much?’ Bing was curious. ‘It was so painful.’
‘It is okay now. It only needs some time to get used to the chafing.’
Kai had a much larger family for his parents to support. He had two younger brothers and one sister, all of whom were attending school. Like Bing’s parents, they didn’t let any of the children quit study to use them as extra labour. The good study performance of their first child gave the family hope that one day, their children would have a life promise outside the line of countryside poverty.
It was this hope, installed as the core foundation of the family, that had sustained them in their perseverance and tenacity as they toiled through the fields and hills day and night.
