Seeing that the third wife was getting angry, Old Lady Guan concluded that she must have been beaten at her parents' home, so she left without saying anything.
After returning to the main house and telling the old man the whole story, Old Man Guan narrowed his eyes and thought for a while: "He must have known that everyone in our village was making money, so he wanted his sons to do the same. His daughter-in-law disagreed, so her father beat her."
You know what, this old man’s guess was almost right.
"Old man, what do you think we should do? All four of the Zhang family's kids are here, planning to live in our house. We can't afford to support them!"
"Let the third family solve the problem first. If it's too difficult to fix, we'll intervene."
"middle"
Mrs. Guan knew that her husband was not an easy person to deal with, so she was not in a hurry.
When Zhang Cuihua and her four brothers entered the third room and saw their eldest sister lying on the kang, they were immediately furious. They complained one after another and asked Zhang Cuihua to cook for them quickly, saying that they must be starving after walking such a long distance so early in the morning.
What did Zhang Cuihua use to cook? The family's food was locked in a cupboard in her mother-in-law's room, and she would go to her mother-in-law's room to get it when she was ready to cook. Who was she guarding against? She was the one guarding her! When she first came into the Guan family, they didn't lock up the food. Later, she secretly took food from her parents' home a few times, and the third brother caught her and beat her several times. Then, her mother-in-law found out, and they started locking it up.
Zhang Cuihua had no choice. She had been brainwashed by her parents since she was a child, and the idea of being unconditionally kind to her brothers and fulfilling their every request was deeply ingrained in her.
Zhang Cuihua forced herself to rise from the kang, her entire body aching. The injuries from four young men beating her up wouldn't heal overnight. With her head bowed, she slowly walked to the main room and told her mother-in-law she wanted to make breakfast. Then, she added that her brothers from her mother's family were coming over to eat, and she wanted some extra food.
Old Lady Guan agreed without any hesitation and gave her three more bowls of sweet potato flour and corn flour (flour made from crushed corn sacs left after threshing corn) and asked her to steam steamed buns this morning.
Because it was the third day of the Lunar New Year, it was still within the New Year, and the brothers from the third wife's family came to visit, so the dinner table at Lao Guan's house was still relatively rich this morning.
A large plate of pickles mixed with sesame oil, a plate of scrambled eggs, a plate of half a pig's liver fried with chili peppers that was half eaten on New Year's Eve, and a plate of salted duck eggs.
The salted duck eggs were exchanged for work points earned from burning charcoal before the New Year. I ate 10 of them on the morning of the first day of the New Year. On the second day of the New Year, the daughters-in-law gave 10 to each room when they returned to their parents' home. The rest were cut today.
Slightly thin millet porridge mixed with steamed buns.
This was a very, very sumptuous meal during the three-year famine.
Before Old Man Guan could even settle down at the table, the Zhang brothers' hands shot out like arrows, swooping down to the bowl of steamed bread. Each hand grabbed two steamed breads, and with the other, they reached for the scrambled eggs with chopsticks. The Guan family's dining system was separate, and Old Lady Guan would serve each person their food before eating. Seeing that the four brothers looked like they hadn't eaten in 800 years, she didn't say anything. She quickly distributed steamed bread to each of them. When everyone got their steamed bread and picked up their chopsticks to eat, they looked up and saw that there was very little left of the scrambled eggs and pork liver. Before they could even focus, the plate of salted duck eggs was almost empty.
The brothers' mouths seemed to be equipped with motors, and they devoured two steamed buns in a few bites. These young boys are eating their father out of money, especially since they are all twenty-year-old men! They are really big eaters.
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