One Hundred and Four: Withered Pear Branch Blight

Time spent in ease always seems to vanish in a flash. It is like staying home for the weekend, determined to indulge yourself to the fullest for one whole day, only to look up and find the day already gone, as if nothing at all had been done.

Zhong Di and the others were fishing happily. Not only the father, but even the mother had fully let herself go and was enjoying the moment.

When one is willing to set down the burden on one’s shoulders, one discovers that the world is beautiful, and that living itself is joy.

Before long, noon arrived.

Since they had not used chicken meat as bait, there were no more big fish after the one silver carp the mother had caught at the beginning. There were hardly any medium-sized ones either, only a few small fish.

Just as they were about to bring out the landing net, Qian Weining came over.

“Zhong Di, your meal is ready. You can eat now. Do you want to eat now, or later?”

Qian Weining looked at Zhong Di, and the meaning was clear enough: the food was ready, but if they wanted to play a little longer, that was fine too.

The meal was ready already. How fast.

Zhong Di set down the landing net in his hand and said after a pause, “All right, let’s stop here for today. We’ll eat first. Thanks for the trouble, Uncle Qian.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Besides, you paid for this, so you’re the customer,” Qian Weining said with a shy laugh.

“By the way, Uncle Qian, I dug a small fish pond at home. You probably saw it last time. I want to stock it with fry and shrimp and the like. Do you have any connections for that?”

As they chatted, Zhong Di suddenly thought of the fish pond at his home. The last time he had seen how many fish Qian Weining stocked into the reservoir, it was clear he must have channels for this sort of thing.

“Sure, I’ll handle it for you. When do you need them, and how many?”

“How about the day after tomorrow?”

After that, Zhong Di discussed the exact quantity with Qian Weining. As for the price, it was very fair, so Zhong Di did not fuss over it. There wasn’t much money involved to begin with; there was no need to nitpick over such details.

After a few more words, Zhong Di and the others went to eat.

Lunch was lavish. Aside from the fish already in the reservoir, there were also various seafood items shipped in from the mainland.

Hairy crabs, lobsters, all kinds of shellfish—it was an entire seafood feast.

After lunch, Zhong Di and the others went home. They had agreed to meet the distant relative at five in the afternoon, so going back now would leave some time to rest.

“Zhong Di, how much did this lunch cost?”

On the way, Di Chunhua leaned over the front passenger seat and asked quietly.

“Mom, not much. Just over four thousand,” Zhong Hui said with a smile, then whispered into Di Chunhua’s ear.

The bill had been settled by him, and the charge had been taken from Zhong Di’s share. All of these accounts were recorded, to be cleared at the end of the month.

“What?” Di Chunhua sat up abruptly. She had guessed the meal had cost a fair amount, but she had never expected it to be this much.

More than four thousand yuan—that was almost her entire monthly salary.

“Mom, you have to get used to it slowly. And this is the price after the discount. Before the discount, this table would have cost more than ten thousand.”

Zhong Hui explained patiently. Just as she said, they would have to learn to accept these things little by little.

“What do you mean, more than ten thousand? Was it made of gold? If I had known, I wouldn’t have eaten so much.”

After learning the actual price, Di Chunhua was filled with regret.

“This is nothing. Do you know how much the most expensive table your son had cost?”

“More than sixty thousand.”

Along the way, it was mostly Di Chunhua and Zhong Hui talking, trying to help her gradually accept all this.

Only at five in the afternoon did that distant relative finally arrive, perfectly on time.

After a long round of polite pleasantries, Zhong Di got into the car and set off for the Fragrant Pear Orchard.

The distant relative’s surname was Gao, and there were two father and son, Gao Song and Gao Lin.

What a truly distant branch of the family this was. If their surname had been Zhong or Di, there might still have been some real connection.

As for who was whose who and whose what, Zhong Di had not really followed any of it. Roughly speaking, it was something like: I am the father of the son of your father’s third aunt’s son-in-law’s who knows who. More or less that kind of feeling.

When they arrived at the orchard, Zhong Di was stunned by the scene before him. No wonder they had asked him to come and take a look.

This was practically the last desperate attempt of a drowning man grasping at straw.

For a Fragrant Pear Orchard that had been planted for so many years, it was impossible not to know one or two technical experts. Yet they had still come to him, clearly because they had truly run out of options and wanted to make one final struggle.

The entire orchard covered more than eighty mu, and it was the lifeblood of the whole family. In the earlier years, when the trees were still healthy, they could harvest more than two hundred tons at most, and at the very least earn three to four hundred thousand yuan a year. The family lived comfortably.

But ever since the Fragrant Pear trees began to be afflicted by this disease, they had been dying year after year. And even the deaths were not the worst of it. They had tried every possible method, but nothing could stop it. They failed to make money, and instead poured in a great deal of what they had earned in previous years.

Thus, when they had truly exhausted all options, after hearing of Zhong Di from who knew where, they thought of giving it a try.

Zhong Di was familiar with this disease as well: Fragrant Pear twig blight, a problem that had plagued the entire Fragrant Pear industry for years. Many solutions had been proposed, yet effective control had still not been achieved.

It was a bacterial disease, and once infected, it was very difficult to bring under control.

Zhong Di did not immediately inspect the plant behavior information. Instead, he first made a simple judgment with his own eyes.

The trees in the orchard had not all died yet. The thickest ones, Zhong Di estimated, were more than ten years old. Most of the trees were newly planted saplings, and those had been planted after earlier ones died and were replaced.

But in Zhong Di’s view, if the root problem was not solved, replanting would not make much difference.

In the entire orchard, the trees were already mostly dead. Among the remaining fruit trees, many of the larger branches had been pruned away, leaving the place in utter disarray.

He had seen some orchards with disease before, but never one this severe.

A few scattered Fragrant Pears still hung on the branches, already close to ripening. Normally, the harvesting period for Fragrant Pears runs from early September to the end of September.

Zhong Di casually picked one, took a bite, and found it astringent, lacking sweetness, with tiny gritty particles that greatly affected the texture.

That should not have been the case. Even though it was not the harvest season, a Fragrant Pear should not have tasted like this.

In Zhong Di’s memory, when he ate Fragrant Pears as a child, it was like eating candy. One bite and the juice would burst everywhere, running over his hands, sticky all over, wonderfully delicious, with an explosive texture.

In recent years, the taste and quality of Fragrant Pears had declined year after year. Zhong Di could no longer find the feeling he had when he ate them as a child.

“How is it? Have you seen anything?”

Gao Song asked. His son stood by the side, looking at Zhong Di with faint disdain. Zhong Di understood what that meant.

So many older, more experienced agricultural technicians had been unable to solve this problem. What could a young man like him possibly know?

If his father had not told him to come and try, he would not have made this trip at all.

Still, Zhong Di did not care. That reaction was normal enough; nothing unusual about it.

He crouched down and looked more closely, and at that point he began to examine the behavioral information.

Just looking at the surface alone, it was truly hard to make any judgment. The fact that a young man lacked experience was simply a fact, not a slight against the young.

If Zhong Di had not had the ability to see behavioral information, he would really have had a hard time diagnosing the problem with these trees. Even if he studied for a few more years, he might still not have had a solution.

Even if he vaguely knew where the root of the problem lay, there was no practical way to solve it.

What made agriculture different from other industries was precisely this: it had to be built up through a great deal of experience.

“Do you have a shovel?” Zhong Di quickly spotted one issue and asked.