Chapter 132 Chapter 132
Although the Marriage Law was promulgated after the founding of New China, which explicitly stipulates freedom of marriage for men and women, in relatively conservative rural areas, even if the relationship between couples breaks down, very few couples actually go to the step of divorce.
At least in Kaoshantun, I haven't heard of such a precedent yet.
Especially for middle-aged and elderly women like Wu's mother, who received relatively traditional education in the past, the husband is the pillar of the family after the woman gets married. Unlike men, they are not able to engage in high-intensity labor, and cannot earn enough work points, so they can only rely on their husbands to live.
In addition, public opinion is particularly harsh on women. If she gets divorced, her reputation will definitely be ruined. She may even become a laughing stock in the neighborhood. Whenever she goes out, people will point fingers at her and she won't be able to raise her head.
So even though she and Wu Yongbing had already fallen out and were living apart, Wu's mother had never thought about divorce.
For example, during the last family separation, Wu's mother was so tough when she first proposed to live alone, but when Wu Yongbing proposed to go to town to go through the divorce procedures, she immediately frightened and was too scared to respond to her husband.
But in the past month, her relationship with her two sons and daughters-in-law has reached freezing point. Except for the eldest son who brought her meat and vegetables a few times and the youngest son who occasionally came to fetch her water, no one else has ever visited her. Wu Yongbing even treated her as a stranger. Her life after the separation is actually no different from that of a divorced person.
She was also marginalized in Kaoshantun and no longer had any sense of existence. The wives who used to come to her house to flatter her and show her courtesy whenever she called, no longer paid any attention to her after they found out that she had broken up with Wu Yongbing.
After feeling the reality and snobbish faces of these people, Wu's mother became disheartened and had already begun to consider quitting.
Coincidentally, at this time, Wu Yueying expressed her opinion. Not only did she support her divorce from Wu Yongbing, she also drew a big cake for her, saying that she would support her in her old age, and that if she found an opportunity to return to the city with Xia Hangyi in the future, she would definitely bring Wu's mother to Jicheng.
Mother Wu was immediately overwhelmed by this sugar-coated bullet and almost forgot her own name. Whenever she thought that she might become a city dweller and live at the foot of the imperial city in the future, she couldn't help but get excited for a while and didn't care how much water there was in Wu Yueying's words.
Wu's mother was not a very smart person. She had a weak will and was easily influenced by others. So when Wu Yueying instigated her, she immediately felt that she had a backer and a way out. She no longer hesitated and decided to divorce Wu Yongbing immediately and move to the military compound with her daughter.
Because of the site selection of the feed factory and the recruitment of workers in Kaoshantun, Kaoshantun is now about to become the object of envy and hatred of the entire Hongqi Commune. After Majiatun where the kiln factory was built, another production brigade was hit by a bomb falling from the sky. How can the other production brigades not be jealous?
But there is no point in being jealous. Who said that there is no talented person like Ye Qing in their production team?
The captains of those production teams were not stupid either. Knowing that Wu Yongbing was good friends with Ye Qing, they reacted very quickly and rushed to curry favor with Wu Yongbing. They kept pouring out compliments without asking for money, and they all hoped that the next time they encountered such a good thing in Kaoshantun, they would be able to take him to drink soup and eat meat together.
As a result, Wu Yongbing has become the hot commodity of the entire Hongqi Commune. Not to mention several production team leaders, even those commune cadres who used to be arrogant would now greet him with a smile when they see him.
Wu Yongbing was full of pride. He smiled from ear to ear every day and walked with a breeze. He had long forgotten the incident of being kicked out of the house.
Under this circumstance, Wu's mother suddenly proposed to divorce him. Wu Yongbing was stunned for a moment and then immediately nodded in agreement.
He did not care why Wu's mother suddenly changed her mind and agreed to divorce him. After all, going to the town to handle the divorce procedures would not have any impact on his mood except that it would delay him for a few hours.
Wu's mother did not explain, but took the opportunity to propose that she should exchange the main house she was assigned and the things inside for money. Wu Yongbing had to compensate her with this money, and it had to be cashed before completing all the procedures.
For the main house, plus the things inside, Wu's mother wanted three hundred yuan, which could be said to be a very high price.
After all, these days, the cost of building a house in the countryside is not very high. Some families in the village use stones to build three houses and add a thatched roof, and the cost is less than 100 yuan. Their house is the first in the village to use green bricks and black tiles. Wu Yongbing bought the materials from someone outside. This aspect of the expenditure is the biggest part, but the three houses together cost less than 500 yuan.
Now, these three rooms and the east and west rooms have been divided among the two sons, leaving only the main house, which is still the common property of the couple. However, for just this one house, Wu's mother actually asked him to make up 300 yuan, which almost made Wu Yongbing laugh.
Wu Yongbing also reacted at this time. This was about divorce and compensation. How could he not understand what Wu's mother was planning? Selling the house meant that she would definitely not live in Kaoshantun in the future. Where could she go? Wouldn't it count as going to live with a concubine? But was Wu Yueying really worthy of her trust and reliance? Wu Yongbing was deeply skeptical and could even predict what would happen to his wife if she really followed Wu Yueying.
After all, they had been married for decades, so Wu Yongbing thought about it for a moment and decided not to bargain with Wu's mother when she asked for 300 yuan.
He certainly didn't have that much money on hand, but after all, he was the captain of the production team, and his credit was unquestionable. He could borrow from various households in the village and pool his money together, and he could still come up with the three hundred yuan.
But he felt that he should warn this foolish woman who had been carried away by her own thoughts not to be so open-hearted to his daughter without any caution, and to especially hold on to the money in his hands tightly, so as not to let that ungrateful man cheat him out of it all and lead him into a trap with no way out.
Wu Yongbing meant well, but his earnest words sounded like an attempt to sow discord and to deliberately provoke her in order to destroy the mother-son relationship between her and Wu Yueying, so she turned a deaf ear to his words and did not take them to heart.
Since Wu's mother insisted on getting a divorce, Wu Yongbing would not delay it deliberately. He immediately went to the old branch secretary and several production team cadres to borrow money. He scraped together a bunch of change, and in the end he was still short of twenty or so yuan, which he got from Ye Qing.
As soon as they received the 300 yuan, Wu's mother went to the commune with Wu Yongbing to formally go through the divorce procedures.
At this time, the marriage certificate was a certificate of honor, and the divorce certificate was a piece of yellow paper with a form printed on the front. Both parties needed to fill in their respective names, dates of birth and other information to indicate their intention to request registration for divorce. After verification that it was consistent with the provisions on divorce in the Marriage Law, the certificate could be issued only after the relevant officials of the commune signed and stamped their approval.
On the back of this yellow divorce certificate, a classic and familiar quote is printed in red: "Women have entered the labor front": True equality between men and women can only be achieved in the process of socialist transformation of the entire society.
Maybe no one had ever divorced in Hongqi Commune before, so although the divorce form was available in the commune, it was collected in some corner and the clerk had to search for it for a long time before he could find it.
During the time it took to find the divorce certificate, the news that Wu Yongbing and his wife were seeking a divorce had spread throughout the commune, and even Lai Guochang was alarmed. When the commune secretary first heard the news, he was also quite shocked and rushed over to persuade them.
But both Wu Yongbing and his mother were determined to leave. Lai Guochang tried to persuade them for more than half an hour, his mouth was dry and his throat was almost smoking, but he failed to make them waver in the slightest. In the end, he had no choice but to let the clerk handle the divorce for Wu Yongbing and his wife.
So, when Wu Yongbing returned to the village and moved his temporary residence near the warehouse back to the main house of the old house, Wu Cong and Wu Min found out that their parents had actually gone to the commune to divorce without even saying hello!
The explosiveness of this news not only stunned the two brothers of the Wu family, but also shocked the other residents of Kaoshantun.
Although the fact that Wu Yongbing and his mother were having a quarrel was no longer a secret in Kaoshantun, everyone thought that they were an old married couple and that even if they were making trouble it would only be temporary. Soon after Wu's mother calmed down, the couple would live together again.
But who could have expected that instead of waiting for the captain and his wife to reconcile, everyone got the breaking news of their divorce!
Wu's mother had anticipated that the divorce would cause discussion in the village, so she packed up her things early in the morning and moved them all out of the village, handing them over to Wu Yueying who had been waiting outside the village.
If it weren't for the need to ask for support for her two sons, she wouldn't even have planned to return to Kaoshantun.
Before, when the two daughters-in-law had a quarrel at home, they had threatened to let her go and live with Wu Yueying. Now that they knew that Wu's mother had really decided to go find Wu Yueying, the joy in the eyes of the two daughters-in-law was beyond words, and they almost set off firecrackers to say farewell.
However, before the two sisters-in-law could smile, they were stunned by the shameless request made by Wu's mother the next second.
Mother Wu asked her two sons to exchange the food they provided for her in her old age for cash, and asked them to pay her ten years' worth of money in one lump sum. In this way, unless she became seriously ill and needed a large amount of medical expenses, she would not bother her two sons and daughters-in-law for the next ten years.
But Wu's mother said this easily. Ten years of old-age food would require two thousand kilograms. Even if calculated based on the current purchase price of coarse grains at the grain station, one kilogram of corn and sorghum would cost at least eight or nine cents. Two thousand kilograms of coarse grain would cost one hundred and seventy or eighty yuan in cash, and this was the cheapest calculation. If the 10% distribution ratio of fine grains was taken into account, the money would be estimated to be more than two hundred yuan.
The two families had just separated, and now it was a time of scarcity. The food they had stored was not enough to eat, and their savings were almost gone. Where could they get the two hundred yuan for the support? Even if they sold their entire family, it would not be worth that much money!
The two daughters-in-law could no longer laugh and glared at Wu's mother tacitly. Wu Cong and Wu Min also looked helpless and felt exhausted by this unreasonable request made by their mother.
"Mom, your request is too sudden. My brother and I just separated. You know how much money we divided. Our sons still have a large family to support. How can we afford ten years of support?"
The two sons were kind people and they did not want to contradict their mother, so they could only explain to Wu's mother in a gentle tone.
But Wu's mother simply wouldn't listen, and didn't care how much her two daughters-in-law hated her. She just kept pestering her two sons for money:
"If you can't pay, go borrow some. There are so many families in this village. I don't believe you can't get enough money!"
Wu's mother was adamant and there was no room for negotiation. Wu Cong and Wu Min could not persuade her, so they had to go to the accountant of the brigade and get an advance payment. Together with their own savings, they managed to make up the maintenance fee.
The two daughters-in-law finally understood that Mother Wu had already made up her mind to disown her two sons, so she treated their two families as enemies and wanted to fleece them all at once.
The two sisters-in-law immediately became cautious, fearing that after the money was given out, Wu's mother would not acknowledge the debt and would blame them at home to make trouble. Then they would have to continue to be supported by this confused mother-in-law. So the two sisters-in-law quickly said that they could give the money, but they had to find a cadre from the production team to do the justice. After writing the agreement, they would have Wu's mother sign and seal it and keep it on file. With this evidence in black and white with red handprints, they would not have to worry about Wu's mother refutating them in the future.
After Wu's mother successfully got the money, she didn't care what her son and daughter-in-law thought of her, and left Kaoshantun without looking back.
At this point, the farce that had plagued the Wu family during this period had finally come to an end.
Although the two daughters-in-law of the Wu family were furious that their family had to give out so much money at once, they could do nothing but swallow the loss secretly and think about whether they could do something during their free time to earn money to supplement the family income and save money as soon as possible to pay off the debt owed to the brigade.
Wu Yongbing breathed a sigh of relief, and without caring about the passing of time, he continued to devote himself to the construction work of Kaoshantun.
No one took Wu's mother's going to the army farm to heart. As for Wu Yongbing's divorce, many people in the village talked about it in the first two days, but Wu's family members acted very calm, as if nothing had happened. This made those who were whispering behind their backs very surprised. So slowly, the matter died down and no one talked about it anymore.
At the health station, there were quite a few people from other villages who came to see a doctor. After hearing the rumor that Wu Yongbing was getting divorced, they couldn't help but ask Ye Qing for some gossip out of curiosity.
But how could Ye Qing discuss such things with a stranger? He simply pretended to know nothing about it.
Ye Qing was playing dumb again that day when two old acquaintances came to the health station.
These two people were none other than Xu Xianzhen and her cousin, Song Hongying, who had come to Ye Qing for medical treatment a few months ago.
As soon as he saw this girl, Ye Qing's eyes suddenly lit up, and his gossip DNA, which had been dormant for a long time, started beating rapidly.
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