After straightening the clothes, Mrs. Tian turned to look at Tian Tian and said, "You must be getting impatient!"
"No! I find it quite interesting to see them crowding into the supply and marketing cooperative," said Tian Tian.
Just now some people started fighting because they couldn't squeeze into the supply and marketing cooperative. She watched the excitement for a long time.
"Grandma! What did you buy?" Tian Tian lowered her head and rummaged through Grandma Tian's small basket. The basket was not light, and she was very curious just now.
There was a thick stack of newspapers, needles and thread, matches, a small bottle of kerosene, and a neatly folded piece of blue cloth in the basket.
Tian Tian was a little disappointed that she didn't find anything good. She muttered, "It turns out that it's so heavy just because of that stack of newspapers."
She thought that Old Mrs. Tian bought a lot of things.
Nowadays, people live in earthen houses built with yellow mud, and mud is falling down from the walls and sheds.
Besides, it's cold now, so all the windows are sealed and the house is dark.
So I always paste newspapers on the walls so that the room looks brighter and I don’t have to worry about waking up with mud on my face at night.
But there is one bad thing. They all have heated kangs here, so the newspapers will become brittle and tear after a year, and the yellow mud wall underneath will leak out.
Even if it wasn't torn, the newspaper would have been yellowed by the smoke from the kang, and it wouldn't look nice.
So the newspapers on the walls of my home basically need to be re-pasted every year.
Of course, some families with poor conditions may fail every few years, while some families simply never fail.
Old Mrs. Tian's family is well-off, so they only buy newspapers once a year for any house where people live. Old Mrs. Tian's family needs a lot of newspapers, and the weight of the newspapers accounts for more than half of the weight of the basket.
Old Mrs. Tian leaned against the wall for a while before she said, "What else can we buy? Isn't it just some household items?"
Tian Tian helped Old Lady Tian walk to the place where they had agreed to ride the ox cart, muttering, "Next time if there are so many people, I will go in to buy. It will be dangerous for you to go in."
Old Mrs. Tian laughed when she heard this. "You can't go in to buy. With your small body, you will be squeezed out before you even get in. Besides, you little girls are so shy that you won't be able to compete with those old ladies if you go in."
If you go shopping at this time and you are not thick-skinned and aggressive, you will stand in front of the counter for a whole day and still not be able to buy anything. Either the salesperson doesn't hear you, or the item is snatched away by others before you even get it.
Of course, the most likely scenario is that you won’t be able to squeeze in front of the counter at all.
Tian Tian felt a little disappointed. She lowered her head and supported Old Lady Tian without saying anything.
Old Mrs. Tian also noticed it and asked, "What's wrong with you? Are you cold outside?"
"No!" Tian Tian said gloomily, "I came to the county town and just watched people fighting. I didn't see anything else."
Before she came, she had been thinking about going to the supply and marketing cooperative with Old Lady Tian, but in the end, she couldn't even get close to the door of the cooperative.
"What's so good about going to the supply and marketing cooperative? The things they sell are always the same." said Old Mrs. Tian.
"Okay, let's go quickly and don't let them leave us behind."
Tian Tian's emotions came and went quickly. She soon forgot the little unpleasantness and began to look around.
Although the control is stricter now, with talk of overthrowing monsters and demons and breaking down feudal superstitions, the Spring Festival has been passed down by our ancestors for so many years and is still very important to everyone, so the festive atmosphere is still very strong at this time.
People didn't dare to put up door gods or something like that blatantly, but they did put the word "Fu" and spring couplets with the Chairman's quotations on the doors.
Besides, people in the factory were on holiday at this time, so the streets were bustling with people coming and going, and people were coming in and out of the surrounding houses, and neighbors would chat with each other.
There's actually nothing to see, but Tian Tian watched it with gusto. She hadn't seen such a down-to-earth scene since the apocalypse. If human society had collapsed, there would be nothing but zombies on the streets, not to mention seeing neighbors chatting on the street like now.
Although there are scenes of people chatting together in the village and working hard in the fields, the feeling in the city is different from that in the countryside, and everyone's spirit is also different.
When the two of them arrived at the place as agreed with Sun the Butcher, the ox cart was nowhere to be seen.
"Oh my god! Could it be that they came back early and left in a car?"
Tian Tian looked at the empty place where the ox cart was supposed to be parked and became a little anxious. She looked around but didn't see anyone she knew.
"Grandma! We don't need to walk back, do we?" Tian Tian asked worriedly.
"It's okay! Let's wait here for a while. The ox cart should be able to bring another group of people over soon. Then we can take this ox cart back." Old Mrs. Tian was not in a hurry.
Generally, people from the production team would go to the city to buy New Year's goods during these two days, so the ox carts would run for a whole day. After dropping off the people, they would pick up the previous batch of people. Old Mrs. Tian and her friends would always take the earliest trip, and the following carts would have to run several times.
Old Mrs. Tian and Tian Tian waited there for a while, and the aunts who were on the same bus with them came over one after another.
Tian Tian was happy when she saw them. These aunts looked similar to Old Lady Tian when she came out of the supply and marketing cooperative just now, and even looked a little more embarrassed than Old Lady Tian.
Although Mrs. Tian's clothes were messy when she came out, her hair was still neat at first.
The hair of many of the aunties in front of me was messy. Without a comb or mirror, they just brushed their hair and tied it up randomly, looking shaky.
"Auntie Tian! Have you guys come back from shopping?" The aunts said when they saw Auntie Tian and Tian Tian waiting here.
Tian Tian greeted them one by one, then ran behind Old Lady Tian and watched them share their spoils.
The tickets issued by the brigade are all similar, so everyone buys similar things. It’s just a matter of looking at the color of the cloth you buy and the size.
Tian Tian watched them chatting there for a while, and then the ox cart finally arrived with a group of people sitting on it.
After the aunts who had been waiting to buy things shared with the aunts who had just arrived how many people were in the supply and marketing cooperative and how many things were left, those people hurried to the supply and marketing cooperative. Only then did they go home contentedly on the ox carts.
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