Sure enough, these notebooks are all blank. Although there are a few stains on them, they can still be used.
"Aren't you planning to send your younger brothers to school next year? These notebooks can be used by them. You can go back and teach them to learn some words." said Old Mrs. Tian.
It is normal for children nowadays to pick up toothpaste tubes and sell them, not to mention going to the scrap yard to buy things.
There is nothing shameful about Old Mrs. Tian being able to save money. If their home wasn't too far from the county town, she would have wanted to ask Tian Baobao and Tian Zhuo to come to the scrap yard to look for things.
"I thought so too. These notebooks were left to me by Grandpa Sun from the scrap yard, otherwise they might not be preserved so well. The ones I looked through at the scrap yard before were not so new. Many of them had several pages written on them, and it took a long time to find one like this." Tian Tian said.
"Did you find the notebooks you used in school at a scrap yard?" Old Mrs. Tian asked with a frown.
Tian Tian was a junior high school student at the time. She was already so tired from studying, so why did she go to the scrap yard to look for things? Didn't she have time to rest?
Now that you are not in school and there is nothing to do at home, you can go to the scrap yard to look through some things and save some money. But why did the kid save that money?
"Neither!" Tian Tian shook her head.
People lived very carefully at that time. No one was willing to throw away used notebooks as they might cause fire, let alone unused notebooks. How could you just pick them up? So everyone just went to the scrap yard to pick up notebooks.
In the past, unused notebooks were hard to come by, and Tian Tian had to look through them several times before she could find one.
The reason why she was able to get so many notebooks from Old Man Sun this time might be because so many houses had been searched over the years that everything was thrown into the scrap yard without any distinction, which is why there were so many blank notebooks.
"There weren't so many blank notebooks in the scrap yard before. These notebooks were collected for me by Grandpa Sun," said Tian Tian.
Old Mrs. Tian also thought about the state of the world in recent years, nodded and stopped asking questions.
"Are you hungry? Let's go have a meal before going home?" said Old Mrs. Tian.
Tian Tian's eyes lit up, "Are we going to the state-owned restaurant for dinner?"
The next second, Tian Tian's eyes dimmed again, and she asked worriedly, "Grandma! Did you bring your food coupons?"
"Oh! Don't worry, since grandma asked you to go for dinner, I will definitely bring it!" Old Mrs. Tian said confidently, and pulled Tian Tian up and walked towards the state-owned restaurant.
Seeing that Old Lady Tian was confident, Tian Tian followed her without any worries.
Old Mrs. Tian is her biological grandmother, she will definitely not bully her.
When they arrived at the state-owned restaurant, it was different from what Tian Tian had imagined, deserted and empty. Instead, it was bustling with people.
Although people's consumption level is not high nowadays, there are always some people who are willing to spend money to have a meal in a state-owned restaurant at noon.
At least the state-owned restaurants that Tian Tian sees now have quite a few people in them, and basically all the seats are full.
It just so happened that Tian Tian and Old Lady Tian went there at the right time. A table of people had just finished their meal and left. Tian Tian was very smart and put her backpack there, thus occupying the spot.
Then I went to the window with Old Mrs. Tian to order food.
At that time, the way of ordering food in a state-owned restaurant was different from that in a modern restaurant.
It's not like you are given a menu and the waiter just stands by and writes down your order.
There is a small table next to the window with what dishes are served today and the prices clearly marked on it. People then go to the window to place their order.
Tian Tian couldn't stop drooling as she looked at the braised pork on the small blackboard.
This is pork! Fresh pork!
Including her previous life, she hasn't eaten fresh pork for almost two years. She's going crazy from craving it, okay?
Mrs. Tian looked at Tian Tian's expression and went to the window to ask the waiter, "Do you have any more braised pork?"
The waiter was knitting there. Hearing this, she looked up at Old Lady Tian and said, "What time is it now? The braised pork is long gone! Order something else!"
Tian Tian immediately lowered her head in disappointment.
"Let's order something else. What do you want to eat from the rest?" asked Old Mrs. Tian.
Tian Tian glanced at the remaining dishes on the small blackboard. The remaining dishes were all home-cooked dishes and noodles. Tian Tian had no interest in them.
"How about we order two bowls of noodles?" Tian Tian said.
She had already eaten fresh rice, and the only thing missing was noodles.
"It just so happens that today's shredded pork noodles don't require meat tickets, and there are only three bowls left." The waiter at the window suddenly said.
Tian Tian and Old Lady Tian's eyes lit up and they looked at each other.
No meat tickets? There is such a good thing?
"Then give us two bowls of shredded pork noodles!" Although she didn't know why they didn't charge a ticket, Mrs. Tian immediately made the final decision and ordered two bowls of shredded pork noodles.
A bowl of noodles cost eight cents, plus two taels of food coupons, a total of 16 cents, plus four taels of food coupons.
Old Mrs. Tian took out a small cloth bag from the pocket of her clothes and opened it layer by layer. Inside was small one-cent bills. Old Mrs. Tian counted out sixteen and handed them to the waiter, then wrapped the money up layer by layer and put it back in her pocket.
Just when Tian Tian wanted to remind Old Lady Tian to give the food coupons, Old Lady Tian took out another handkerchief from her other pocket, opened it layer by layer, counted out four taels of food coupons and handed them to the waiter.
After the waiter checked that the money and food coupons were correct, he shouted to the kitchen, "Two bowls of green vegetable and shredded pork noodles!"
Then he turned to Tian Tian and Old Lady Tian and said, "You two go wait at the empty table. I'll call you when the noodles are ready. You two can come and get them later."
Nowadays, there is no such thing as who serves whom, nor is there the idea that customers are God. Everyone is equal. It is impossible for a waiter to serve you food. There are so many people in the room, and she cannot handle it all by herself.
Tian Tian pulled Old Lady Tian to sit on a chair, leaned over to Old Lady Tian's ear and whispered, "Grandma! Where did you get your food coupons?"
Unlike people in the city, they in the countryside did not have a fixed food ration every month and earned food by work points, so the brigade did not give them food coupons at all.
"I took a pound of grain to the grain station to exchange it a few days ago!" said Old Mrs. Tian.
You can go to the grain station to exchange grain coupons for grain. Grain below three kilograms can be exchanged for grain coupons directly, but grain above three kilograms requires a letter of introduction from the brigade.
Old Mrs. Tian only exchanged one kilogram of food coupons, so there was no need to go through so much trouble.
Tian Tian nodded in understanding. So that's how it is. It's the first time she knew that grain can be exchanged for food coupons.
Tian Tian silently took note of this matter, thinking it might be useful in the future.
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