Chapter 18: Becoming a Shrew
In this era of material scarcity, most people needed various tickets for food, clothing, housing and transportation.
Cloth coupons, oil coupons, meat coupons, and grain coupons were even more scarce.
Many working-class families have run out of coupons and cannot buy anything even if they have money.
Unless you buy it on the black market.
But the price on the black market is at least twice as expensive as that in the supply and marketing cooperative.
Even though Chu Hong was favored at home, most of her clothes were patched up, except for one set of half-worn clothes that had not been patched.
That's why she brought back some clothes from the Yao family.
There were a few brand new blue work clothes, and more of them were half-worn.
In fact, she also got a lot of cloth coupons from the Zhong family and the Yao family, but she couldn't be too conspicuous in these years, so old clothes were more suitable.
After she had cleaned up and taken a nap, everyone else went home from work.
While Old Man Song and his colleagues were at work, they praised Chu Hong with great exaggeration, so that everyone would remember her and admire her abilities.
When Chu Hong woke up from a nap, she went to the private plot in front of her house to pick vegetables according to her memory, then cut a few pieces of sweet potatoes, washed the vegetables, and cooked them together with the leftovers from lunch.
There are no high mountains in their area, but only continuous small hills covered with pine trees or miscellaneous trees.
Wild boars are possible, but rabbits and pheasants can often be seen in the mountains, but it is unlikely to catch them.
Anyway, we are not rich, but not too poor either.
Thanks to the good weather in recent years, and the addition of sweet potatoes and corn, we can barely fill our stomachs.
But don’t expect to eat white rice or noodles every day. Sweet potatoes are added to rice, corn flour is added to noodles, and there are seasonal vegetables.
Chu Hong cooked a big pot of vegetable and sweet potato porridge on the earthen stove with some unfamiliarity.
Fortunately, her adoptive mother also liked to cook with an earthen stove, saying that the rice crust was particularly fragrant, so she was not unfamiliar with the earthen stove.
When the fire started to boil in the pot, she heard screams coming from outside. She was very curious, so she left some unburned firewood and went out to watch the fun.
There is no plan for building houses now, and their village is worthy of its name, Lingxia Village, because there is a long ridge in front.
Therefore, every household is built on both sides of the ridge. Their house is at the foot of the mountain at the back, with a large piece of rice leaves behind and a private plot in front.
In front of the private plot is a small pond of about one acre in size, and on the other side of the pond are other people's homes.
So she walked for three or five minutes before she saw many villagers gathered around to watch the fun.
Next to them were seven or eight old people and children with disheveled hair and dirty bodies.
"How pitiful," the old lady murmured, "the old and the young have to suffer like this."
"That's right." Another aunt said with a bad look, "They say things are very chaotic out there right now, but I didn't expect something like this to happen here."
Her man disliked her loud voice and glared at her: "You have a bad mouth, don't bring trouble to me."
Chu Hong was also very scared.
She is just an ordinary person, there is no way to stop it, she can only turn a blind eye.
Just when she was about to go home, she saw her younger sister pointing at and cursing at those embarrassed people.
Chu Hong was so angry that she picked up a stick from the roadside and rushed over to her and beat her up: "You stupid girl, I told you to work at home, but you went out to play."
The young man who was close to Chu Dan was also attacked indiscriminately by her dog-beating stick technique and shouted, "How dare you stop us from doing our business!"
"Bah!" Chu Hong showed her true colors as a shrew: "I have been poor for eight generations. Today, the director of the commune praised me for getting the tractor from Shencheng. What I do is serious business."
Then he said loudly, "I will report to you now, in front of the whole team, that she is dragging down socialism and is lazy because she doesn't like to work! I must teach her that labor is the most glorious."
She didn't want to be a shrew, but who made her step-sister want to be one?
She doesn't have much sisterly love, and I don't want to control her if I can.
Besides, their Lingxia Village is more than ten miles away from the commune, and the mountain roads here are winding, so those people would never come here normally.
If my sister joins their organization, what if the villagers, or people from other villages, envy them for being able to eat public food without having to work, and also try to follow her to take this shortcut?
Therefore, she had to dissuade Chu Dan from his idea.
Chu Dan was in great pain from the beating, and she felt ashamed to be beaten in public. She cried and dodged, but she still cried, "Why did you hit me? You were abandoned by a man yourself."
Chu Hong was almost laughing at her anger. This was really a sister who took advantage of her misfortune. She continued to beat him with the stick: "Just because you don't work and go out to play, I can beat you."
Now is an era that emphasizes hard work and striving to become a model worker. As long as she sticks to her excuse, she will be able to stand firm.
Song Youliang, who was handing over the fight to the newcomer, secretly breathed a sigh of relief and even wanted to applaud and praise his second daughter for her good fighting.
He didn't like dealing with these people in the first place, but his little daughter thought they were very powerful and impressive and wanted to be with them.
The captain who came also told him that his daughter had a high level of ideological awareness and was indeed a good comrade who could join the party.
How could he refuse this?
He had seen a lot when he went to the commune in the past two years. He was really afraid of dealing with these people, fearing that he would offend them unintentionally and be exploited by them.
Now that the elder sister was beating the younger sister, and the excuse she had was legitimate, he could refuse: "Today my second daughter came back from Shencheng with five tractor quotas."
"The director asked her to be a tractor driver, but she refused, determined to stay rooted in the land in the countryside."
"She is a good comrade with high ideological awareness. She hopes to make a difference in the vast countryside. She certainly cannot accept her sister's desire to go to the town."
The team members nearby all exclaimed in their hearts: Everyone knows that the captain’s wife is sickly and his daughters are all lazy, so how can they believe that they love to work?
No, no one would believe this lie.
Fortunately, they knew that Chu Hong had made a contribution and gave them candy. They were too soft-hearted to hold back at this time.
Another thing is that most of the villagers are from the same family. Even if they have conflicts at ordinary times, they are still very united when facing outsiders.
I just watched the captain lie with his eyes open.
The captain who came knew that Captain Song would not lie to him, and that he could find out about such a big thing by just asking at the commune.
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