11
Yang Qiujin didn't want to pay attention to Tian Chunlian, but Tian Chunlian kept knocking on the door outside and calling out. Yang Qiujin was afraid that she would wake up Chen Shengqing, so she reluctantly opened the gate, stuffed a portion of the gift that had been distributed earlier into Tian Chunlian's hand, and said, "This is from Shengqing for his second brother," and slammed the gate shut.
Tian Chunlian opened the package and saw a can of maltose, some compressed cookies, fruit candies, and two sausages.
These things were rare and precious in that era. Tian Chunlian seldom ate them, but she couldn't help drooling when she saw them. She felt that they were not enough, so she went home and said to Chen Shenggui angrily, "Your third brother is back, but instead of coming to visit your second brother, his wife only gave us these few things. They are treating us like beggars!"
Before Chen Shengqing came back, Tian Chunlian was jealous of the money he mailed to Yang Qiujin every month. Now that he has been promoted to a military officer and brought back so many packages, he only gave such a small amount to their second house. Tian Chunlian was very angry.
"So what do you want?" Chen Shenggui sat under the eaves weaving a backpack, and said without looking up, "Back then you were short-sighted and didn't want to give money to my stepmother for medical treatment. You made a fuss and insisted on dividing the family property with my third brother and his wife, which caused a rift between the two families. Now my third brother doesn't hate me anymore and is willing to give us a gift to maintain the superficial brotherhood. What else do you want? You want to control all the money of the third wife and become her head? Think about it yourself, are you worthy of it?"
"How can you talk like that!" Tian Chunlian choked and said with her neck stiff, "You said I'm unworthy, but who am I doing this for? When I married you, you were penniless, your father only cared about his youngest son, and your stepmother looked kind, but in fact she had her own ideas and held your father's money tightly in her hands. If I hadn't fought for it and separated from them, we would have been driven out by them long ago, and you wouldn't be living in a big house and have that little piece of land!"
"If you hadn't been making trouble, my father would have given me the land and house." Chen Shenggui didn't want to argue with her about these things, and warned her with his eyes: "I tolerated your troubles over the years because you gave birth to the first and second children. It was okay before, but now that my third brother is back, you still want to make trouble in the third room. When the time comes, my third brother and his wife will deal with you. Don't blame me for not caring about you."
"You!" Tian Chunlian was furious and wanted to say something, but she heard a series of knocking sounds outside. She didn't care about being angry and walked out of the yard to see what was going on.
My goodness, the little Red Soldiers who entered the village this morning had arrived near them at some point, and were now ransacking and banging around in the homes of nearby members, just like the scene when the little red soldiers entered the village in the past.
Amid the chaos, a small group of Red Guards came toward Tian Chunlian's home. Tian Chunlian was so scared that she was about to close the gate, but a 17 or 18-year-old Red Guard with a fierce look kicked her in the door and asked ferociously, "You want to hide when you see us? What kind of shameful anti-revolutionary, revolutionary, or old things are hidden in your home?"
"No, no." Tian Chunlian was so frightened by the little red soldier in the lead and the young faces that gradually surrounded him that he broke out in a cold sweat and began to stutter when he spoke.
"Whether there is or not is not up to you." The leading black and strong little red soldier snorted coldly and led his men directly to her house.
"Stop, this is the home of military families, you are not allowed to ransack the house here." Chen Shenggui heard the commotion, put down the backpack in his hand, and said to the group of little red soldiers who rushed in with great momentum.
"Home for Military Families?" The leading little red soldier looked at Chen Shenggui suspiciously, then looked at a short-haired female student from the commune hiding in the crowd to confirm whether what he said was true.
"His family is considered a military family." The female student thought carefully and said, "He is the second brother of Battalion Commander Chen. Battalion Commander Chen is the officer we saw riding a jeep back home earlier. His family lives next door. They are brothers."
No matter how intense the current movement is, these little red soldiers dare not touch the military. The military and the government do not interfere with each other, and those who can join the army have their backgrounds reviewed by the organization and can only join if there are no problems.
Similarly, if they are military dependents, even if some of them have problematic elements, as long as they do not make mistakes in principle, the Little Red Soldiers will not touch them.
After the leading red soldier confirmed that this family was military dependents, he muttered "You are lucky", raised his hand, and waved to the red soldiers to leave.
After they left, Tian Chunlian collapsed to the ground, her lips trembling, and she couldn't utter a word for a long time.
"Look at how frightened you are. You act like a big shot to your family, but you treat outsiders like little red soldiers whose hair hasn't even grown out yet. How scared are you?" Chen Shenggui got angry when he saw her like this, and he felt something was wrong, so he looked suspicious and asked, "Are you hiding something at home that shouldn't be hidden?"
"It's nothing. These are the old things my grandmother left for my mother. I can't bear to throw them away." Tian Chunlian patted her chest in fear. "Luckily, we benefited from my third brother. If they had really dug out those things, our family might have been ruined!"
When the movement just started last year, she went to the county with her parents to see the excitement. They saw those who were found to have problems with their backgrounds being tied up by the Little Red Soldiers, having their heads shaved like yin and yang, and having signs with their crimes hung on them. They were paraded through the streets with ropes like animals, and people spat on and threw rotten vegetable leaves all over their bodies. In the end, they were dragged to the square of the Revolutionary Committee, knelt in front of people, accepted all kinds of trials and insults, and then were taken to labor camps for forced labor.
At that time she was just watching for fun, but after watching more, she realized that it was no joke. If the little red soldiers found any problems with her, she might be criticized even more severely.
So when the little red soldiers came to check her house, she remembered that she had not listened to Yang Qiujin's advice some time ago and was unwilling to dispose of her grandmother's old things that were tainted with feudal remnants, and she was so scared that she almost fainted.
Fortunately, Chen Shenggui spoke out to stop it, otherwise the consequences would be disastrous.
"Tell me, woman, what on earth are you thinking about!" Chen Shenggui was so angry that he didn't know what to say, "You want to kill our family! Throw away those things of your grandmother! If it weren't for my identity as the third brother, our family would have been finished. Stay away from the third room in the future, and don't go there to make trouble again!"
Tian Chunlian had an embarrassed look on her face, knowing that she was in the wrong.
No matter how reluctant she was to throw away her grandmother's things, she still wrapped them up, secretly ran to the river behind the village, and threw the things into the river.
The village was in a commotion caused by the Little Red Soldiers, and Chen Shengqing was naturally woken up. He woke up and squatted beside a clay pot filled with water in the corner of the yard, making a mess of his face. Then Li Xiu'e called him to have lunch.
"Where is Qiu Jin?" Chen Shengqing was sitting at the table and didn't see Yang Qiujin.
"She went to give gifts to her mother." Li Xiu'e placed the food on the table in the courtyard. "She should be back by now."
As she was talking, Yang Qiujin came into the yard, carrying a basket in her hand. "Mom, you don't have to cook dinner tonight. She gave me a few big steamed buns and a dozen cooked taro. We can just eat them tonight."
"That's great. We don't need to make staple food tonight. We can just stir-fry two dishes." Li Xiu'e scooped two bowls full of fine rice for her son and daughter-in-law, and ate the leftover coarse rice from yesterday. She picked up the chopsticks and gave Chen Shengqing a piece of fat and lean fried bacon with garlic sprouts. She said with a smile: "Try it. This is the meat from the pigs slaughtered by the brigade at the end of last year. Qiu Jin's smoked bacon is much more delicious than mom's."
Chen Shengqing saw her actions, frowned slightly, stretched out his hand to exchange the white rice in front of him with Li Xiu'e, took a bite of the bacon, smiled and said it was delicious, and scooped a mouthful of the exchanged rice into his mouth, but it was so rough that it was difficult to swallow and it hurt his throat.
Born in a place where rice is the main crop, the people here have a standard supply of rice and flour. Generally, children get one pound of refined rice per month, and adults get five pounds per month. The rest are brown rice and coarse flour, which are more or less sour to eat. Then, they use coarse grains and vegetables such as sweet potatoes, potatoes, radishes, and pumpkins to fill their stomachs instead of grains.
Chen Shengqing was in the army, so the food and treatment there were naturally better than in the countryside. He hadn't eaten harsh grains for many years, so he was still a little uncomfortable for a while.
"Little kid, why are you stealing your mother's food?" Li Xiu'e wanted to get her bowl of rice back.
"Mom, it's just a bowl of rice. He can eat whatever he wants." Yang Qiujin said calmly, "There's no need to push it back and forth. If outsiders see it, they will think I'm abusing you. I, as a daughter-in-law, eat good rice, and you, as a mother-in-law, eat brown rice."
There are many families like this in the brigade. The mother-in-law acts one way in front of her son and another way behind his back.
For example, the mother-in-law of a wealthy family will say in front of her son that it’s okay for her to suffer a little, as long as the two of you live a good life. But in front of her son, she will eat hard-to-swallow black flour buns and other food, making her son feel guilty and eat all the good things before her. She will also pretend, saying that she is doing it for the good of her son and daughter-in-law, and she is unwilling to eat a single good thing. But in the end, she cooks and eats all the good things behind her son and daughter-in-law’s backs, and the daughter-in-law is unreasonably labeled as a mean mother-in-law.
Li Xiu'e knew what she meant by this, and she didn't dare to talk about changing the meal anymore. She just put meat and vegetables into Chen Shengqing and Yang Qiujin's bowls, and said, "Eat more."
This kind of self-sacrifice and self-admiration of parents, who let their children eat well and drink well while they themselves eat leftovers, is a problem shared by most mothers of this era. Yang Qiujin has become accustomed to it because her mother is the same.
Yang Qiujin would not accept this as a matter of course. She picked up all the food in her bowl and put it back into Li Xiu'e's bowl: "Mom, we have hands and feet, we can pick up food by ourselves, you just eat yours, don't worry about us."
Chen Shengqing also put the food back into Li Xiu'e's bowl, "Mom, just take care of yourself. I'm not a three-year-old child anymore. I'm already a grown-up."
Li Xiu'e looked at the bowl full of meat dishes and felt a little disappointed. She sighed in her heart that her son had really grown up and refused to eat the dishes she picked for him.
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