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Story 22: Dengcao Girl

Dengcao Girl

Author: Anonymous

During the Ming Dynasty, a client who moved to Huize after Mu Ying conquered Yunnan was a woman named Mu Ding who lived in Luji Village, Huize County. She was a descendant of Mu Guogong. Her surname was Li, and she was a strong official. of farmers.

Although the couple is hard-working, the rent and taxes are too high and life is not easy. Occasionally, the situation is slightly better, but then the grain prices are low, which hurts the farmers, who are still poor.

Miss Mu Ding is smart by nature, extremely intelligent, upright, and careful in her work. She is really a clever wife. She is very clever and always turns things over and over no matter what she picks up. Do it horizontally, do it straight, think about it carefully.

To handle something, you always have to think of several ways to do it. She can sweep the floor with a broom, holding it in her left hand or right hand, or holding it upright or upside down. As long as it comes into her hand, the floor that others cannot clean will be swept clean in the blink of an eye.

Everyone said: “Sister Mu Ding sweeps the floor. If you roll around in bed and get up, there won’t be any dust on your body.”

Girl Mu Ding usually likes to go to the corners of the fields and riverside ditches to pick some foxtail grass, mosquito grass, small ivy, etc., and then go home and spread them out, and spin some flowers, bags, small lanterns, etc. for the children to play with.

One day, she picked some perennial aquatic weeds with round stems and slender stems and made a small hydrangea. After spreading the water weeds, she found a soft and white grass core inside. She thought, this white and soft thing, It must be good for filling pillows. In her deft hands, she actually pulled out thin and snow-white grass cores from the round and straight wild flowers and water plants.

This thing is the easiest to burn. It can be used as a wick in a lamp. It is much better than using cotton thread to light a lamp. It is light, fuel-saving, has bright light and small smoke. It is more appropriate to call it lamp grass. So, Miss Mu Ding named this unknown grass “Lamp Grass” according to its use, and the core that came out was called “Lamp Wick”.

After discussing with her husband, she cleared out a hill in the rice field at home to transplant this wild aquatic plant. After her diligent cultivation, this kind of waterweed grew fatter, with longer shoots, and the wick hanging out was long, white and thick.

The remaining straw husks can also be used to weave small handicrafts such as straw hats, steamer lids, pot lids, baskets, baskets, pots and pots. Later, she used lamp grass as raw material to weave lamp grass mats, which were used as mattress pads for sleeping. They were very soft and could also be used for packaging and drying grain. These handmade fabrics were sold in the market. They were cheap, high-quality, light and durable, and were welcomed by people.

The couple calculated that the income from planting one acre of lamp grass was much greater than planting ten acres of millet. As a result, they turned this wild aquatic plant into a domestic species. Year by year, they planted more and more, and their lives became easier and easier.

When the neighbors in the same village saw the changes in Mu Ding’s family, everyone envied them and coveted them. They also secretly learned to grow rushes, but they could never find the secret to growing rushes and weaving mats.

The number of people who came to Mu Ding for advice was increasing day by day, but Mu Ding The couple is very conservative and does not want to teach.

One year, all the men, women, and children in Mu Ding’s family fell ill due to overwork. There was an Aunt Yao in her fifties who was kind-hearted and helpful. Seeing the plight of Mu Ding’s family, she invited 10 to 20 women in the village to send food and medicine to help her manage her life.

Mu Ding and his wife were deeply moved by this scene and said very guiltily: “The folks are so kind, I feel sorry for you all.” After Miss Mu Ding recovered from her illness, she passed on the skills of covering lamp grass and weaving slippery mats to all the women in the village.

Later, the sliding mats and wicks of Huize Luji Village were sold well in northeastern Yunnan, and then spread to western and southern Yunnan, throughout the province, as far as Sichuan and Guizhou, and even introduced to the capital.