Chapter 11 Who is that?

The little girl still has a baby voice when she speaks, which is very endearing.

Zhixia smiled and nodded: "Okay, sister will go with you to take a look."

Children from poor families have to grow up early. If it is true, when I was this age, I would probably still be nagging my parents for good food and good clothes.

A little boy of about six or seven was sitting on a rock, and next to him was a little girl of about two or three years old, who was holding a sweet potato and chewing it obediently. She took a bite herself and insisted that the little brother take a bite. She was not happy when the bite was too small, and said angrily, "I didn't get it."

The little brother reluctantly took another bite, and the little girl smiled and took a bite herself, savoring it carefully. Her pair of dark and watery eyes like grapes were narrowed together, which was also very adorable.

There were several kinds of dried wild vegetables placed on the burlap bag. Walnuts, pine nuts, melon seeds, and dried mushrooms were also cleaned and placed in piles respectively. There were also more than twenty small frozen fish weighing eight kilograms!

"Sister, now only cabbage and potatoes are edible, the rest are dried vegetables. The wild dried vegetables in our family are picked when they are the most tender and then dried in the sun. You can go home and soak them in hot water, chop them up and cook them into porridge, then sprinkle some salt on them and they will taste delicious. These small fish were caught by my brother after breaking the ice in the river early in the morning. Look, they are so fresh..." The little girl who brought Zhixia over talked a lot.

The little boy stood up, rubbed his hands and nodded shyly: "Sister, these are all picked by us in the mountains. If you want them, they only cost two dollars."

"Sister, you can take all these for the two dollars. A fish doesn't cost a penny, and the rest are free. We will also deliver it to your doorstep, saving you the ten cents for taking a ox cart." The little girl quickly interrupted him and added with a smile in a different way.

"Yes, these are free, a whole sack of them!" The little girl who was eating sweet potatoes also stood up, tilted her neck and said in a baby voice.

Faced with the three little ghosts, Zhixia could not refuse their kindness, and two dollars was indeed very cheap, so he took out a deposit of fifty cents, and when he sent them to their doorstep, he gave them the remaining one dollar and fifty cents.

"Hey," just as he took out the money, an aunt pushed it back, "You three are really cheating us, aren't you? These are things you picked up for free in the fields and rivers, yet you dare to ask for two yuan? Pah, an egg is only four cents. It turns out that the black five categories are really evil-minded. You just exploit us!"

The three children stood together, holding hands tightly, with their heads hung, not as smart as they were just now.

"In spring, there are wild vegetables everywhere in the fields. We carry mountain products home in sacks. There is always a lot of fishing in the river. There is no need to buy fish. It only takes a little effort and it costs two dollars. Tsk tsk, you just take advantage of the city kids who don't know how to make a living and ask for it right away..."

The people around also nodded in disapproval, saying, "These three children are not very old. They must have been taught by adults. They are too cunning."

"No, my father went to the mountains to hunt and didn't teach us at all..."

"How old are you? Hasn't anyone taught you who to sell yourself to and how to sell yourself? The people living in the cowshed are full of evil intentions, and the babies they give birth to are all crooked. I said that your village chief is kind and doesn't want to fight them. But living in a cowshed and carrying manure is not considered reform?"

Everyone was talking at once. The two girls had already started wiping their tears, and the little boy clenched his fists and looked at everyone fiercely with red eyes.

"Hey, you guys are brave enough to do this, why don't you let us say a few words? Look at the look in your eyes, like a wolf cub..."

An Zhixia took a deep breath and stepped forward, stuffed fifty cents into the little girl's hand, smiled and rubbed her hair and said, "Sister agreed to buy it, why are you still crying?"

"Sister, I'm sorry, we, we shouldn't have asked you for money," the little girl cried breathlessly.

People around him began to say that An Zhixia was stupid and had a lot of money, and that he didn't draw a line between himself and these little guys, which meant that he had a low level of ideological awareness and was too noisy.

But An Zhixia pretended not to hear him. Instead, she raised her voice slightly and said word by word, "Why shouldn't we take it? You picked these dried goods one by one, cleaned them and dried them in the sun. You also risked your lives to break the ice and catch the fish.

The supply and marketing cooperatives are recycling these, so why can’t I take them?”

"Hey, Xiao An, the educated youth," the auntie pulled her clothes and said anxiously, "If you need these, tell me. I have plenty of them at home, such as eggplant, beans, radish, fern, and bamboo shoots. They are only 80 cents a sack for you to eat! If you want to eat fish, I'll ask your uncle to catch them. Two fish are 10 cents, which is very cheap!"

An Zhixia was stunned for a moment, then turned her head to look over, and suddenly sneered, "Aunt Guihua is using her child's identity to compete with him for business. Isn't that too unkind?"

"I," Aunt Guihua said quickly when she saw the strange looks from the people around her, "I was trying to persuade you out of good will because I was afraid you would get cheated. Why don't you appreciate my kindness? And my price is much cheaper than theirs.

You city kids don’t live a refined life and spend money lavishly. Don’t be too lazy to eat coarse food after the New Year.”

"Don't worry about that, Aunt Guihua," Zhixia said unceremoniously, then patted the little boy on the shoulder and softened her tone: "Next time, don't go fishing by yourself. You have to let your parents accompany you. You can help me send it to the door later. Don't worry, I still have a lot of things to buy."

The little boy nodded vigorously, tears squeezed out of his eyes.

He quickly wiped it twice, squatted down and put the things into the bag with his two sisters.

"You, you," Aunt Guihua pointed at An Zhixia unwillingly and said angrily, "Do you know who they are? How dare you stand up for them! The organization made them live in the cowshed, which means they made a mistake and have to live a hard life to reflect on themselves. If you buy their things, you will be in cahoots with them and have to live in the cowshed with them!"

"Aunt Guihua, you are wrong. I support the organization's decision. They go up the mountain to pick mountain products and go down to the river to fish. They earn their income through hard work. They are undergoing transformation. I buy their things as an affirmation of their labor." An Zhixia crossed her arms and said with a half-smile, "We can't let them do dirty and tiring work and not let them get some money to fill their stomachs, right? Look at how skinny these kids are. We can't exploit people even if we let them run."

Everyone followed her words and looked at the three children. It was already the middle of the twelfth lunar month, and the children's cotton-padded clothes were thin and not warm. Their faces were chapped and black from the cold, and their hands were red and swollen, even worse than those of adults. If they were their own children, they would be so distressed. Then they looked at their eyes, which looked particularly big because of their thinness, and then they all closed their mouths and left in embarrassment.

"Who is that?" Qi Yunlan and Chen Sike stood far away and asked with twinkling eyes, "Why do I hear something like the kid from the Black Five Category?"

(End of this chapter)