Once everyone saw they were stable in their wooden tubs, they stopped teasing and began to watch them harvest the water bamboo shoots with great interest.
At this point, the two wooden tubs weren't far from the bank, so everyone could see everything clearly.
When the water bamboo shoots blossom, the flowers emerge from the water's surface beneath the leaves, displaying their delicate colors in a world of floating duckweed. But when they bear fruit, the water bamboo shoots themselves hide underwater, beneath the leaves.
To pick the water bamboo shoots, one had to lift the rosette of leaves floating flat on the water's surface and flip the whole plant over to reveal the shoots growing beneath the dense foliage.
The two of them began to pick nonstop. It wasn't every day they got to come down here, so they picked everything, tender or tough, aside from the ones that were still too small. They tossed them into the empty space in the tubs behind them.
