The Lucky Farmgirl

Is bamboo rat delicious?

Definitely, even Junior Ms. Qian, who is afraid of them, thinks they taste better than chicken, not to mention the other villagers.

But these creatures are not easy to catch, especially in the bamboo forest, where they can disappear in a flash, darting into bamboo burrows or holes in the ground, and they’re very fast.

Unless they’re as lucky as Zhou SiLang and his company, to corner them in a shallow or single-exit hole.

The day after Zhou Wulang brought back two bamboo rats, the villagers headed to the mountain’s bamboo forest to search for them, but despite a morning’s effort, didn’t even catch a glimpse of their shadows.

So, they had no choice but to head back down, where they saw Zhou Liulang playing with his friends, and they called him over for a chat to learn how they had managed to catch the bamboo rats.

Zhou Liulang, at just thirteen, was at the age where exaggeration knows no bounds, yet nobody believed him. In his frustration, he let slip that Manbao had caught a bamboo rat herself.

The villagers were even more skeptical; how old was Manbao, and could her little short legs even keep up running around the mountainside?

With that question, Zhou Liulang told them the whole story: how they chased the bamboo rats, how they found Manbao on the way back, and how Manbao had a bamboo rat tethered in her hands.

Old Zhou had been standing at the back of the crowd. At first, he was quite entertained listening to his son’s tall tales, but his mood quickly changed for the worse.

Now, not only do Zhou SiLang and Zhou Wulang blame him for running his mouth, Old Zhou blames him, too.