Chapter 52: Chapter 51: Drying Persimmon Cakes, Good Things Happen, All As Wished

It was an early morning in the first days of winter. The backyard lawn was covered in white frost, and the sky had just begun to lighten.

Li Xiang got up early, washed up, and went to let out the chickens and ducks, who were already waiting impatiently. After tossing them a few handfuls of grain, he grabbed an Iron Pickaxe and began tilling the soil in the backyard.

His two Dahuangs ran back and forth beside their master.

For the past few days, the big rooster with the red comb and colorful feathers had started crowing around 5:30 AM. "COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO~" Its call was as resonant as a great bell, so Li Xiang basically didn’t need an alarm clock. As soon as the rooster crowed, he knew it was about 5:30 and time to get up.

It was incredibly punctual.

What surprised Li Xiang was that just a few days ago, the rooster had been crowing a little after 4:00 AM, back when the sun rose a bit earlier.

It wasn’t that the rooster had gotten lazy with the arrival of winter, as if chickens observed daylight saving time. Rather, roosters are sensitive to light, and their internal biological clocks can adjust the time on their own.

Research shows that a rooster’s brain has a pineal gland that secretes melatonin. When dawn breaks, the melatonin levels drop, causing it to crow.

As for chickens that crow at midnight, that’s just Zhou Bapi in disguise. If not, it’s likely the rooster’s hormones are out of whack.

According to Feng Shui, raising chickens can protect a house and ward off evil. Venomous creatures like centipedes wouldn’t dare come near. In ancient times, a rooster crowing in the middle of the night signified that something inauspicious was nearby, and its crowing would dispel it. However, another belief holds that the rooster has been possessed by something malevolent. In that case, upon discovering a rooster crowing at night, one must immediately chop off its head and sprinkle its blood in a circle around the house to resolve the issue.

Li Xiang circulated his Breathing Technique and Body Techniques, tilling the earth one swing of the Iron Pickaxe at a time. He wanted to get all the unused land in the backyard tilled before the super-snowstorm arrived.

When the heavy snow fell, it would freeze the upturned soil, making it loose and killing any insect eggs within. Come spring, it would be perfect for planting crops.

It wasn’t just about the work; he was primarily using the labor to cultivate his Breathing Technique and Body Techniques.

According to the legacy he had inherited, Cultivation was most effective when performed during manual labor. For him, a man who had returned to the countryside to farm, it was a way to kill two birds with one stone. What was not to love?

In the eyes of the villagers, Li Xiang was simply exceptionally diligent. Even though he had gone to university and worked in a big city, he hadn’t forgotten any of his farming skills. In fact, he was far better than the average farmhand.

Li Xiang worked until about eight o’clock, then went to make breakfast for himself and his grandmother. After they ate, he called for his grandmother to come pick persimmons with him.

As for the rest of the tilling, he would continue tomorrow morning. It was his daily "morning exercise"—integrating his Breathing Technique and Body Techniques into his farm work, persevering day after day.

Everyone knows you can’t just go for a morning run in the countryside. Forging one’s body by working hard first thing in the morning, like Li Xiang, was the proper way to do it.

By this time of year, the persimmon tree had lost almost all its leaves, leaving only a canopy full of bright red fruit, a delightful sight to behold.

But picking persimmons required a special tool. His family’s persimmon tree was very tall and large, and the distant twigs where the persimmons hung were often quite slender.

But country folk have their own methods.

Li Xiang brought out his family’s heirloom persimmon-picking "artifact": a long bamboo pole with a thin iron hook at the tip. Usually, one person would use it to hook a fruit’s stem, give it a gentle twist to make the persimmon fall, while another person waited below, head tilted up, tracking the fruit’s descent to catch it in a cloth bag.

There were more "advanced" fruit-picking gadgets online, but it wasn’t like he’d bought one.

After hooking a few, he noticed it was strenuous for his elderly grandmother to catch them, so Li Xiang paused and decided to "upgrade" the heirloom artifact.

He removed the iron hook and replaced it with a small sickle, lashing the handle securely to the bamboo pole. Then, he attached a large cloth bag below it, propping the bag’s mouth open with two bamboo sticks, each twenty to thirty centimeters long, to form a triangle with the main pole.

Then Li Xiang gave it a try. Sure enough, it was much more convenient. Once the stem was cut, the persimmon fell directly into the cloth bag.

After collecting seven or eight persimmons in the bag, he would pause, slowly lower the pole, and take the fruit out.

However, his grandmother’s help was still needed, because the tree was too tall and the bamboo pole wasn’t long enough.

For the lower branches within reach, Li Xiang could manage by himself from the ground, but for the higher ones, he had to climb the tree.

While the persimmon tree’s outlying twigs were too slender to stand on, the main trunk below was quite thick, with a large fork about two meters off the ground.

With agile movements, Li Xiang climbed the tree, more nimble than a monkey. Once he had gathered seven or eight persimmons, he would lower the pole to the ground for his grandmother to empty the bag. After she was done, he would continue.

The tree was heavy with fruit, an almost overwhelming amount. Picking them all would take some effort, but Li Xiang and his grandmother didn’t feel tired at all. Instead, they were overjoyed. This was the joy of a bountiful harvest.

As the saying goes, "With jujubes and persimmons for half the year, there’s no need to fear a famine." Persimmon trees are extremely productive and highly adaptable. Basically, if a family had a persimmon tree, they could rely on its fruit to survive a bad harvest or famine.

Persimmons are also known as "Marquis Ling Shuang," a title bestowed by Zhu Yuanzhang!

Legend has it that when Zhu Yuanzhang was begging for food in Fuping County, Shan Province, he was saved from starvation and cold by persimmons. Later, after Old Zhu ascended the throne, with a flourish of his brush, he ennobled the persimmons of Fuping as "Marquis Ling Shuang."

One had to admit, the name Old Zhu bestowed was quite brilliant. It not only honored the persimmon for saving the emperor’s life but also praised its nature of defying the frost and snow when all other life withers.

Li Xiang didn’t pick all the persimmons. It was a time-honored custom to leave some on the tree, a practice known as "leaving persimmons."

It wasn’t because they were unreachable—even the highest ones could be brought down with a tool. Was it because they looked pretty on the tree?

They certainly did look pretty, but more importantly, they were left as food for the birds.

A poem attests to this: "Heavy frost settles on the farmhouse’s dark-tiled roof, / Three branches of red persimmons hang over the wall. / Perhaps the owner intentionally left them unpicked, / As winter provisions for the birds."

In the bitter cold of winter, with no grain or insects on the ground, many birds would starve before spring. The persimmons left on the tree allow passing birds to eat and survive, and in the coming year, they help the farmers by catching pests.

This is a philosophy of harmonious coexistence between humans and Nature, and it is a form of ancient romance.

The romance of the Chinese people is everywhere, woven into daily life. It isn’t the Western kind of romance that’s all about giving roses and having candlelit dinners.

This winter, a super-snowstorm was coming, which would make it even harder for the birds. So, Li Xiang left a few more than usual, about thirty or forty on the highest branches.

When the birds come to eat amidst the cold winter, it will be a beautiful sight to see.

The picked persimmons filled five large baskets. After weighing them all, he was astonished by the total. Whoa, a full 283 jin! A truly high yield!

A small or medium-sized persimmon tree producing 40 to 120 jin would be considered high-yield. Li Xiang’s was a large, flourishing tree that stood alone, with no other tall plants nearby to compete for sunlight and nutrients, which was why it yielded a full 283 jin.

In previous years, his grandmother hadn’t been able to pick them. Now that Li Xiang had harvested them, he planned to turn them all into dried persimmon cakes. Some would be for themselves, some for relatives, and the rest would be given as small gifts to fans who purchased high-value mountain delicacies from him.

How could their family possibly eat so many persimmon cakes? Especially since eating too many persimmons isn’t good for you.

But dried persimmon cakes were truly delicious, and Li Xiang had loved them since he was a child.

Li Xiang and his grandmother got to work, washing the persimmons with mountain spring water, removing the calyxes but leaving the stems, and then peeling them.

The skin of a persimmon is tough and unpleasant to eat. Besides, leaving the skin on hinders moisture evaporation, resulting in poor drying and preventing the natural sugar bloom from forming.

The sugar bloom on the surface of a dried persimmon is crystallized glucose and fructose from within the fruit. Its sweetness, of course, can’t compare to that of sucrose.

After peeling, they blanched the persimmons in boiling water to prevent mold, then set both the fruit and the peels out to dry.

After a few days of drying, they would tie strings to the persimmon stems and hang them up to continue drying. Typically, many could be "strung" on a single rope, hanging from a tree or a porch like curtains made of persimmons.

Once dried, even without the sugar bloom, they were ready to eat—soft and chewy, sweet as honey, with golden, translucent flesh and a fragrant aroma.

The dried persimmons and their peels could be placed in a clean, breathable flour sack, which was then put inside a plastic bag or a cardboard box. Stored in a cool, ventilated place, this would encourage the bloom to form.

If you want a thicker, faster bloom, it’s best not to over-dry them.

Just as Li Xiang and his grandmother were making the persimmon cakes, He Zhixiang drove up for another visit.

He unloaded more than ten bags of coffee beans from his trunk, along with a brand-new coffee machine, all as a gift for Li Xiang.

"Brother He, you’re being far too generous," Li Xiang said.

He Zhixiang laughed heartily. "Not at all, not at all! This is for you to sample. If you like it and approve of the coffee beans from my farm, how about we partner up for a live stream to sell them?"