Her words silenced many in the village.

There are hardly any elderly people left in the village now, because they all froze to death last winter.

Grandpa Jiang and the others are all tough and survived, but now they are all in poor health. If they don't keep warm this winter, they may not make it through.

These past few years have been plagued by drought, and winters have been colder than usual. Dingshui Village is poor, and every family's clothes are patched upon patched. In winter, it's even harder for the whole family to scrape together a decent winter coat.

In previous years, they wouldn't have dared to think about fabric, but although this year has been tough, they now have something they can exchange for money.

“Ah Zheng’s wife is right,” Grandpa Jiang suddenly said. “We not only need to buy fabric, but also the cotton that came from the south a few years ago. It’s said that it’s warm.”

“Yes,” another old man said, “we old folks can die and that’s it, but the children can’t be left to freeze.”

“Village chief, how about you take some of the meat from my house to sell in the prefectural city? We’ll get whatever silver we can. Although it’s still harvest season, we need to prepare for winter,” someone immediately said.

The others figured it out and quickly echoed his sentiments.

In the end, the meat-sharing ceremony turned into everyone wanting to exchange their share of meat for money.

Village Chief Li was a bit bald and didn't know whether he should agree or not. He habitually looked at Jiang Qinyu for help again.

Jiang Qinyu pursed her lips and pondered for a long time, but when she spoke again, she did not mention going to the prefectural city to sell things.

She looked at Village Chief Li, then glanced at everyone, and asked, "Uncle Village Chief, do you think our current way of working together and sharing resources can last?"

"Huh?" Village Chief Li was still confused. "What do you mean, niece?"

Jiang Qinyu patiently said, "I want to ask everyone, in such a year of famine, is it better for each of us to take care of our own lives, or for us to act together as a whole?"

"Of course it's better for everyone to work together!" someone shouted.

The others nodded in agreement.

"I think it's great this way. I feel full of energy when we work together!"

"And this is much better than us just blindly trying to hunt. We never dared to imagine that we could hunt so many prey before!"

"That's right! If you ask me, we should just work together from now on!"

"..."

Everyone was talking at once, their spittle flying everywhere, but the main point was the same: they wanted to live in a communal setting.

Seeing this, Village Chief Li looked at Jiang Qinyu and said, "Niece, is there something you want to tell us?"

“Yes,” Jiang Qinyu nodded. “Many hands make light work, and it’s certainly good for everyone to work together. But that creates a problem of distribution. After all, in every operation, there are always people who contribute more and people who contribute less. In the short term, this is fine, but in the long run, those who contribute more will start to be dissatisfied. I don’t need to say more about the consequences, do I?”

Village Chief Li nodded, "That makes sense. So, niece, what do you think we should do?"

"The work is recorded in work points. In our village, work points are recorded by the day. Everything that the collective receives belongs to the village first. Then, each month or at a fixed time, people collect supplies from the village according to their work points."

As Jiang Qinyu thought for a moment, she said, "Of course, in order to prevent people from shirking their duties and not putting in any effort, we also need the city's inspection team to check everyone's work every day, with rewards and punishments."

When she paused, Village Chief Li interjected, "Well, niece, how are these work points calculated and recorded?"

"First, we need to determine the base number of work points for each person per day. For example, Uncle Da Chui and Brother Meng are the strongest laborers in our village, and everyone can see that they work hard. So they can be counted as ten work points per day. Each month, we can count how many days they work."

Jiang Qinyu explained in more detail: "Let me give you an example. Like this time we brought back so much game from the mountains. Let's say it's a total of 1,000 catties of meat. Our village currently has 1,000 work points, so each work point is equivalent to one catty of meat."

“I understand what Sister-in-law Lu means,” Chen Shao said thoughtfully. “Work points can be used as money in our village. For example, if everyone has earned a total of one hundred taels of silver these past few days, and we have a thousand points, then one point is equivalent to one qian of silver, right?”

Jiang Qinyu smiled and gave him a thumbs up, "Yes, that's how it's calculated."

The easiest way is to calculate the value of one work point and then distribute the goods according to the market price, so that no one loses out.

“I understand too. My niece’s method is feasible,” Village Chief Li pondered, then looked at the others and asked, “What do you think?”

"I agree too!" Chen Shao was the first to raise his hand.

Liu Yazi followed closely behind, "Sister-in-law Lu, this is fairer!"

“I agree, but I have a question,” Grandpa Jiang raised his hand as well, “who decides the work points?”

The person keeping the scores only needs to be fair, but the person setting the scores cannot be careless.

Jiang Qinyu said to Grandpa Jiang, "Grandpa, we can't just let one person decide the work points. We can choose a few people in the village who are the most influential and fair to do things together. At the same time, these people can also form an inspection team. If we find that someone is not worthy of the work points initially assigned, we can lower their base points at any time."

"This is good, this is good, then I have no problem with it." Grandpa Jiang said with a happy smile.

Village Chief Li also said, "The allocation is fair, and there are people supervising at all times. This method is good. Moreover, the supervision is not done by one person, which can also prevent people from using connections or anything like that."

My dear reader, there's more to this chapter! Please click the next page to continue reading—even more exciting content awaits!