Chapter Forty-Six Preparations

  This year is a bumper harvest, so this year's Spring Festival must be celebrated well and more festively. Therefore, a grand preparation for the Spring Festival began before the festival, and Yang Heng specially set up a five-family Spring Festival Preparation Committee.

  Director Yang Heng, Vice Director, all the kids, members, except for Lao Niang, Xiao Shu and Lian Jie.

  The first step in preparation is that during the Spring Festival, there should be some food to eat. This task was left to Lao Die and Feng Bo, letting them go out together to buy things, striving to make these five families have a good time eating and playing throughout the Spring Festival.

  The second step, in order to continue the success of last year's tea party, all the deputy directors unanimously agreed that last year's tea party was a very successful and harmonious one. Therefore, this year they wanted to continue it, and even in the future, whenever they celebrated the New Year, they would do it in the same way. However, since there were more people this year, holding it in a room again wouldn't be suitable. So, they needed a venue. Finally, they decided unanimously that Little Uncle would lead a few people to build a wooden stage in front of Yang Heng's main hall, about five meters by five meters in size. The top of the wooden stage would have an awning, which was retractable, so even if it snowed, it wouldn't affect the activities below. To keep warm, they also needed to place several charcoal braziers in the courtyard and burn charcoal. Naturally, Da Ge would be responsible for this task, with a goal of burning over 1,000 kilograms of charcoal in these few days. With these braziers, although it wouldn't get too hot outside, at least the stage area would be warm like spring. Additionally, between the stage and the house, they would set up a temporary wooden long table. At that time, Uncle, Auntie, Feng Bo, Da Ge, and others could gather around the table to eat snacks, drink tea, and celebrate the New Year together. Meanwhile, Old Mother and Little Aunt would open the window and watch the outside scene from the kang (heated bed).

  Here is the translation:

  It's worth mentioning Yang Heng's design of windows at home. Although they are all wooden lattice windows, Yang Heng still adopted the design approach of glass windows from later generations, which is an open-style window. If something happens, you can completely open the window from the inside, making the room brighter, especially in summer. By opening the window and nailing a piece of hemp cloth on the window frame, it can prevent flies and other things from entering the room. In fact, some coarse hemp cloths from this era have gaps that are not smaller than those of later generations' mosquito nets, which can be used as mosquito nets.

  Maybe someone will ask, isn't it cold to open the window in winter? Not afraid, that Kang and fire wall will make every effort to burn, especially Yang Heng used iron blocks to beat out a relatively thin iron sheet between the fire wall and Kang, in order to prevent the Kang from being too hot, can't sit people, so use this iron sheet to separate the flame entering the Kang, let the flame enter the fire wall with all one's might, and the flame entering the fire Kang is blocked, so the Kang won't be too hot. Similarly, such design was also used in the uncles' home, while in the village, now only the fire Kang has been built, but the fire wall has not been learned yet, it's not that they don't want to build a fire wall, mainly because building a fire wall requires too much change to the room, so unfortunately had to delete this fire wall.

  "The first step in this formation is to stand at attention, which means standing upright and reaching the standard of 'standing like a pine tree'. There are several requirements for standing at attention... From standing at attention to formation, to reporting numbers, to marching in step, to running in step, fortunately Yang Heng's mind works quickly, otherwise he would have had to explain what this strange gait was, as if it were some new kind of step he had invented. What Yang Heng didn't realize was that his father had just returned and was listening with great interest as Yang Heng explained standing at attention to the children. This was a huge inspiration for him in terms of training the troops back at the garrison."

  "Brother Yang, we've decided to perform the boxing techniques you taught us last year collectively. We want you to take a look and see where we're still lacking." Unexpectedly, these kids gave Yang Heng a surprise - six of them had secretly trained together in collective boxing! This was something Yang Heng hadn't even taught them yet. No wonder, for some time now, Niu Zi and Xiao Niang would often come to find Yang Heng to learn boxing techniques. It turned out that this secret had been hidden here all along. The other older kids were afraid that Yang Heng wouldn't teach them, so they pushed Xiao Niang and Niu Zi forward instead.

  "Alright, let me see how you all do this collective fist technique." Collective fist fighting isn't easy. If the positioning is off, especially with kids of different ages and sizes, it's very easy to collide with each other during the fight.

  "Alright, Brother Yang, let's see how we've prepared. Everyone, let's fight!" The organizer was surprisingly Hu Zi. It was really unexpected that the usually quiet Hu Zi had such abilities. "Ha" - this was something Yang Heng had once said unintentionally, that when boxing, one should shout out to show bravery. He didn't think that the kids would remember it too.

  However, things got a bit messy afterwards. The kids just stood wherever they wanted to. "Haha, ah, Brother Yang, I fell down!" This was Little Niang, who was standing at the edge and accidentally fell off the stage. This stage was made by Xiao Shu in just one day after it was mentioned. Usually when he had some free time, Xiao Shu would gather others to make some wooden boards and square wood for future use. You never know when Yang Heng will have a new idea, so he has to be prepared at all times to quickly make what Yang Heng wants.

  "Okay, okay, little girl don't cry, it's not that high." "Haha, Brother Yang, I'm not crying at all. I'm already a grown-up, even if I fell off this short platform, it doesn't hurt." Yang thoughtlessly began to comfort the little girl, but instead, he was ridiculed by her. Because among these children, she had learned some characters and sentences, so now she considered herself an adult, just slightly younger than Brother Yang. The other kids would even come to her to learn things they hadn't mastered yet. So, as a grown-up, she shouldn't cry, although it hurt a lot, and there was even a bruise on her leg.

  "Okay, good, little girl is all grown up now, don't cry. But this bruise on the leg still needs to be taken care of. Lotus sister, come and help little girl deal with this bruise first. We'll wait, next I will explain to you how to properly practice this group fist method."

  "Lotus sister, or else you can just deal with this bruise on my leg here, I still want to listen carefully to Brother Yang's explanation of how to fight in a group." The little girl is now trapped in a kind of madness, once Brother Yang teaches the other kids, she must be present, otherwise if she knows less than the other kids, what would happen? She is after all the only adult among this group of children. And Lotus sister can only look at Brother Yang helplessly, meaning "Young master, what should we do about this?"

  "Alright, alright, Lotus Sister, you handle it on the spot then." These things, Yang Heng wasn't very familiar with, and only Lotus Sister had such experience, which she learned from her previous master.

  "Since you've brought up collective fist fighting, I'll teach you some knowledge about formation ahead of time." Yang Heng said helplessly. Originally, he wanted to let these children grow a bit more before speaking, but now these children were tall and short, and really not suitable for formation training. If there were many children, it would be easy to say, they could be divided into several formations, but with just a few children, there was only one formation.