Chapter 027 Getting Ready to Go
New Year's Eve, the 30th day of the lunar year.
Wen Jiajia has to prepare a lot of things on this day as there is a local custom of offering sacrifices to ancestors and gods on New Year's Eve.
Even if she doesn't believe this, she has to fit in.
In fact, the New Year had already started a few days ago. On the day of sending the God of Land to heaven, many families in the village secretly set off firecrackers, and even the firecrackers from the commune could be faintly heard.
The sound of firecrackers made Wen Jiajia feel uneasy. She hadn't expected this, so should she set off the firecrackers?
In the end, Wen Jiajia let him go, but because she was too nervous, she almost fell on the stairs when she ran.
At that time, the supply and marketing cooperatives did not sell firecrackers. After all, setting off firecrackers was a feudal tradition, so you could just set them off secretly. If you wanted to buy firecrackers in the supply and marketing cooperatives, you had to be the director of the cooperative to quit his job.
Even in that local area - where there is so much incense and so many deities and Buddhas, big and small, people dare not set off firecrackers or burn incense and candles openly.
Wen Jiajia bought the firecrackers from someone in Qianshan Village. There was a man who knew how to make firecrackers in Qianshan Village. It was said that he had made his own gunpowder to blow up the Japanese decades ago. Wen Jiajia felt nervous after getting the firecrackers, and was always afraid that his hands would be blown up.
Because one pack was used to send the land god to "speak" good things to the heaven, Wen Jiajia asked someone to buy another pack for her the day before New Year's Eve.
That morning, before dinner, everyone started setting off fireworks one after another. Wen Jiajia saw this and quickly followed suit.
After that, we started eating, which was flat meat.
What does Wen Jiajia like most about the countryside? It must be the abundance of supplies at the end of the year.
Flat meat is a local specialty. Decades later, it can still support the Chinese fast food industry together with mixed noodles, which shows how popular it is.
At the end of the year, Fuyang Brigade opened a flat meat workshop, whose main business is to help make flat meat fillings and flat meat skins.
When villagers come to make flat meat, they need to prepare their own materials and also give a bowl of flour. When outsiders come to make flat meat, they need to give an extra bowl of soybeans compared to villagers.
After hearing this, Wen Jiajia hurriedly bought some leg meat to pound. This stuffing was pounded purely by hand, and she couldn't even imagine how delicious it would be.
The meat was minced last night. Wen Jiajia ate half of it last night and the remaining half this morning.
The main reason is that this thing requires low temperature and is easy to spoil. Otherwise, Wen Jiajia would definitely beat three to five pounds of it and keep it for later consumption.
The flat meat is put into the pot, and after being cooked, it floats up and gradually expands, like a white balloon that is slowly inflating.
After cooking, she scooped it into the skimmed chicken soup, which she also made yesterday. She had cruelly killed the chicken at home that was always jumping up and down and not listening to her orders.
Wen Xuan even took the yellow shell of chicken gizzards to exchange for ding ding candies, and Wen Jiajia only just learned that such a transaction existed.
The chicken soup is slightly yellow and the flat meat is white and plump.
Sprinkle some green onions on it and eat it with the fried pancakes that Fang Mingyan gave me. I feel that my life is complete at that moment.
After eating, they started beating drums to offer sacrifices to their ancestors.
There are bacon, chicken, duck, fish, and rice cakes. In short, it is so rich that it makes people drool.
Wen Jiajia learned from the villagers that he secretly took the things to the temple, then secretly returned home through a small path and placed the things on the table in the main hall as a sacrifice.
Because her house was the first one they came into after entering the village, Wen Jiajia even closed the small door in the yard for fear of a surprise attack.
She was celebrating New Year's Eve here, and Wei Dai was celebrating it too.
Wei Dai's life was even more miserable than hers. On New Year's Eve, he didn't need to train, so he ran to the Beishan house and was building a bathroom.
Recently he encountered a big problem. He wanted to ask a ceramic factory to help him make a squat toilet, but the ceramic factory said it couldn't make one.
In desperation, Wei Dai went to look for another factory.
However, we haven't reached an agreement this time. The team won't allow us to build a septic tank, saying that they are afraid it will affect the water source.
Alas! Wei Dai sighed more in the past few days than in the past year.
In this case, we can only build the simplest bathroom.
It was a small brick room with cement inside, a small platform, and two small wooden barrels. It could be considered a top-notch toilet these days.
That night, New Year's Eve, after Wei Dai had his family reunion dinner in the army cafeteria, he quietly pushed his cart to collect the garbage.
There was a lot of sand and wood on the ground. After finishing the bathroom, we had to start decorating the house. We had to clear out some of the things in the yard before we could start decorating.
After running back and forth more than ten times, he not only cleared away the sand, wood and bricks, but also pulled out all the weeds in the yard.
The moon rose high in the sky. Wei Dai straightened up, wiped the sweat off his face, and looked up at the moon. Suddenly, he felt that those sad poems that he could not understand when he was young did make some sense.
Seeing the moon really reminds me of home.
I originally wanted to go after work, but now I don’t want to do that anymore. If I finish working on Jia Jia a day earlier, I can come a day earlier.
It's late at night.
The winter nights are very quiet. There are neither frogs croaking in the fields nor cicadas chirping in the woods.
Wen Jiajia had no intention of staying up all night to celebrate the New Year. In her previous life, even the Spring Festival Gala couldn't make her stay up all night, let alone now.
After a busy day today, Wen Jiajia was exhausted. After tidying up her things, she lay down on the bed and fell into a deep sleep.
When I opened my eyes again, it was New Year's Day, the first day of the New Year in 1973.
Wen Chun and Wen Xuan wore new clothes that they had made for them and had only worn twice, and took with them the small bags that Wen Jiajia had sewn for them out of old cloth, and went out to pay New Year's greetings.
They went to pay New Year's greetings, and Wen Jiajia also welcomed wave after wave of children.
When things finally calmed down, Wen Jiajia had to take Wen Chun and Wen Xuan to Hegou Township to pay New Year's greetings.
Even though you don't live with your in-laws, you still have to be polite.
In fact, a few days ago, Wei's parents had mentioned whether they wanted to go to Hegou Township to celebrate the festival. However, Wen's parents had just passed away last year, so they had to stay at home for a year, so Wen Jiajia refused Wei's parents.
Wen Xuan was not very happy about going to Hegou Township.
She held Wen Jiajia's hand and kept asking, "Aunt, will we come home again?"
Wen Jiajia: “Yes.”
"You slept at home, didn't you?"
"yes."
She was worried: "I can't sleep at night without you, and I always wake up in fright."
Wen Jiajia: “…”
She found that Wen Xuan was speaking more and more like an adult, and was very shrewd.
The New Year in Hegou Township is similar to that in Fuyang, with similar customs and food.
What surprised Wen Jiajia was that Wei Chengcai's cooking was delicious. He wrapped the flat meat that Wen Jiajia brought and fried it in a pan, then cooked soup. The taste was completely different from ordinary flat meat and more fragrant than meatball soup.
Wei Wenzhu took her two children to play around the village. Because of the Wei family's relationship, the small bags they had managed to buy were full again. They were filled with melon seeds, peanuts, and a few pieces of sugarcane.
There is not much fruit in winter, so sugarcane is a good thing.
There is a large area of sugarcane planted in Hegou Township, and there is also one in Fuyang. However, most of the sugarcane in Fuyang is sold to sugar factories, and only a portion is kept. Wen Jiajia got two pieces, and ate them all in two days.
Seeing that Wen Chun and Wen Xuan had some in their pockets, aunt Wen Jiajia picked them up without saying a word and started to chew them carefully.
Chew, chew, chew, the sweet juice fills your mouth, as if scraping out all the fat and water that has accumulated in your stomach during this period of time.
Wen Jiajia left the Wei family with a lot of bags. Wei's father and mother were really good people, and they let Wen Chun and Wen Xuan eat and drink as they pleased.
Fortunately, I brought some extra money today. If I hadn't given the old couple 20 yuan, Wen Jiajia would have been embarrassed to go home.
——
Time flies, and not long after the Spring Festival, people everywhere have to plow the land.
The fertilizer for Fuyang Brigade has been prepared. Wen Jiajia contributed to the preparation of this year's fertilizer, which made her afraid that the fertilizer would not be good and would delay production.
Most of the local fertilizer is produced in early winter. Wen Jiajia needs her to remind the villagers that rice husks can also be used as fertilizer. Who knows this? The old farmers already know it.
In rural areas, rice husks are often burned together with rice straw in the fields as fertilizer.
In this case, Wen Jiajia did not need to beat around the bush when reminding him. She seized the opportunity and said to Captain Fang, who was standing by the ridge thinking about how to arrange farm work next year: "Captain, I read in a book that charcoal is better than ash. Do you think it would be better to burn these rice husks into charcoal and use them as fertilizer than to burn them into ash?"
Fang Baoguo puffed on his cigarette, not really paying attention: "Aren't the ash and charcoal you're talking about the same thing?"
Wen Jiajia explains: "Of course not! Charcoal absorbs more water than ash, and it can purify and retain moisture."
Fang Baoguo is an old farmer and doesn't quite understand the high-sounding terms such as moisturizing and purification.
However, he naturally had an inexplicable respect for intellectuals. When Wen Jiajia spoke like this, he couldn't help but listen carefully.
Fang Baoguo pondered for a moment, turned around, and tapped the ground with the butt of his cigarette: "Is it mentioned in the book? Please tell me in detail."
Wen Jiajia then explained that charcoal can absorb moisture from the air and also has the property of ventilation.
"Compared to burning rice husks into ash, the fertilizer made by mixing rice husks with livestock feces and rotten leaves is much better than fertilizer without charcoal," Wen Jiajia explained. "It's like the black soil in the northeast, and it can retain moisture, keep heat and allow air to pass through. It can be said to kill two birds with one stone."
Even though Fang Baoguo was uneducated, he had been farming for half his life. He felt that this method was feasible, but being cautious, he still sought out some old farmers in the village to discuss it.
After saying this, Wen Jiajia didn't care anymore.
It would be wrong to say more. She just hoped that she would not need to be involved in this matter anymore and it would be best if it could just pass quietly.
Fang Baoguo is indeed quite capable.
Not long after, Wen Jiajia heard that Captain Fang and a few others were collecting rice husks and piling them into small piles, preparing to burn them as charcoal in a field far away from the residential area.
Never underestimate the skills of the farmers of this era. Even a half-baked person like Wen Jiajia only needs to give them a little bit of the tricks and they will be able to master everything.
Burnt rice husks are mixed with feces, leaves and other things, and fermented to fertilize the land and increase nutrition.
In addition, the village began to discuss the production of green manure.
Wen Jiajia was really enlightened. Hybridization was not something that would only be available in a few decades. People were already doing it very well.
For example, planting mung beans in the gaps between sugarcane fields, planting soybeans in the gaps between corn fields, and planting astragalus in the gaps between rice and rapeseed... These have been repeatedly mentioned in team meetings, and it is said that a piece of land will be cleared for experiments this year.
When spring comes, the spring rain is as precious as oil.
After the Rain Water solar term, it rains continuously and it is impossible to dry clothes.
Wen Jiajia had to move the drying oven that had already been put away from the room out and prepare a charcoal fire every day to dry clothes.
Since she no longer needed to raise pigs, Wen Jiajia cleaned up the pig pen before the New Year and installed a few wooden boards to use as a bathroom. And since she didn't need much firewood in the future, Wen Jiajia didn't save on it.
So she bathed more frequently, and now she bathes almost every day.
There is no other way. This is the south where the humidity is serious. Besides, once the habit is formed, it will be very uncomfortable if you don’t take a shower for a day. You will always feel itchy if you don’t wash for a day.
It is still raining outside today. The rain is not heavy, but it feels like it is lingering and very annoying.
However, the villagers like this kind of rain the most. The spring rain falls gently, soaking the dry land. The tender green buds emerge from the ground in the wetness, stretching their branches and leaves, absorbing nutrients and water from the soil to grow better.
The rape flowers in the fields bloom rapidly during this period, turning green and beautiful.
Wen Jiajia sat at the door, looking through the courtyard gate at the rapeseed swaying in the wind in the fields, thinking that she might not be able to catch up with the flowering season of this crop of rapeseed.
Wei Dai wrote to me last time, saying that the house had been completed and the application would be approved soon.
She turned over her clothes and counted on her fingers.
A month has passed since Wei Dai's last letter.
Now, it's time to come.
The clothes emit a burnt hair smell during the baking process, which Wen Jiajia finds unpleasant. In addition, she has to turn the clothes over from time to time to prevent them from being burned, so baking clothes is really a tedious job.
At this moment, the familiar sound of bicycle rings came from not far away.
Wen Jiajia immediately stuck her head out, and it was indeed the postman Xiao Tang.
"Wen Jia, there's a letter for you!" Xiao Tang parked the car at the door and shouted inside, "It's from your lover again."
"Okay."
Wen Jiajia walked out with excitement, took the letter and went back to the main room to open it, while taking out the clothes from the drying basket.
[Jia Jia, I'm glad to hear from you. I have good news for you. Please pack your luggage as soon as possible. Your application to join the army has been approved. I plan to be home on the 14th. After the Lantern Festival, I will take you back to the army...]
Seeing this, Wen Jiajia couldn't help but exclaimed "Yeah".
Although the countryside is good, that is only during the idle time of the year. It is only good at the end of the year when there are sufficient supplies.
The rest of the time, no matter how tired you are, you can be very tired! Wen Jiajia was so happy that she could fly away before work started.
She started counting on her fingers again. There were still four days until the Lantern Festival, which meant that Wei Dai would be home in three days.
Wen Jiajia scratched her head and decided that she must pack her luggage before he came back.
But she was in a dilemma... there was too much luggage, how should she organize it?
For example, rice.
There were still several bags of unhusked rice in the family’s granary, and it was impossible to take them away, so we had to find a way to exchange them for food coupons.
Who to change?
Wen Jiajia thought about it and decided to find Lao Bai. Lao Bai was from a state-owned hotel, so he must have some connections.
Just do it.
The next day, the rain stopped.
Wen Jiajia borrowed a car from the village party secretary and drove along the muddy road to the county town.
Lao Bai was a little surprised to see Wen Jiajia, and couldn't help but look behind her: "Wei Dai is back again?"
"I'll be back in two days." Wen Jiajia parked the car and looked around. "Brother Bai, I need your help with something."
Lao Bai understood immediately that this matter had to be discussed in private.
It was not yet mealtime, so there were not many people in the state-owned hotel. There were only the waiter and two middle-aged ladies chatting.
Lao Bai brought Wen Jiajia to a corner and asked her, "What's the matter?"
Wen Jiajia whispered, "Wei Dai came back this time to take me to the army. My family received a lot of food last year. It's hard to carry this food. I want to ask you if you can help me exchange this food for food coupons."
This matter made Lao Bai's eyes light up.
"What kind of help is that? You don't know, sister-in-law, the city is nothing like your countryside. We rely on the food supplies in the ration book every month to eat. It's OK if everyone in the family is not an agricultural household, but if one or two are not, it will be difficult to supply."
This is the case for many families in county towns today.
Like his neighbor, he married a woman from a nearby commune, and he still hasn’t found a job, but he has two children.
The child's household registration follows the mother. If the mother has no fixed number, the child will also have no fixed number, and the burden on the family will be heavy.
His neighbors all said that they would not dare to have any more children until they found a job for their wife.
Wen Jiajia said: "I know. But I..."
She looked embarrassed and said, "It's just that I don't have any channels, and I'm afraid I'll be caught if I act rashly."
Wen Jiajia actually thought about asking the original owner's classmates and friends for help, but those classmates and friends were not particularly close, so Wen Jiajia did not dare to take the risk.
As for transporting it to the ration bureau to exchange it herself...she had no such plan.
The food bureau gave out more local tickets than national tickets. If you wanted to exchange for national tickets, you would have to pay more for them.
Lao Bai said without hesitation: "Okay, then you prepare the food, and I will take a leave in the afternoon to go to your house to deliver the food."
Wen Jiajia pondered: "I can probably sell 600 kilograms of unhusked rice, 50 kilograms of dried corn kernels, and 80 kilograms of dried sweet potatoes. If there are green vegetables..."
Lao Bai: "We want some vegetables, too." It's not easy to get some vegetables in the city, and they cost money.
Wen Jiajia: "Okay, I'll trouble you, Brother Bai."
"Hey, why are you being so polite to me? I'll be there around 6pm today, just get your things ready."
Wen Jiajia: "Be careful when the time comes. If you meet a patrolman, just tell him you are here to see me."
There are still militiamen patrolling the village from time to time, and it is said that the ancient tomb has not been fully excavated yet.
After saying this, Wen Jiajia left.
These things were not all the food reserves in her family, Wen Jiajia would take some of them away.
For example, soybeans and mung beans are hard to buy, but no matter how much Wen Jiajia loves them, she will take them away.
But Wen Jiajia still underestimated their weight.
After returning home and returning the car, Wen Jiajia went to the granary on the second floor and started sorting the food.
Thanks to the frequent creation of hunting traps recently, almost all the mice on the second floor were caught by Wen Jiajia.
It only took her three days to change from covering her eyes and running away when she saw a dead mouse to using pliers to pick up the mouse without changing her expression.
You have to clamp it, otherwise the rats will stink.
These rats died in batches, from two or three a day to one a day, and then to one every few days. Until now, the rats probably know that there are traps everywhere here, and they dare not show up anymore.
Wen Jiajia spent nearly an hour dragging bags of food from the second floor to the first floor. After deducting the food that needed to be exchanged for food coupons, she still had 380 kilograms of food to take away.
Among them, there are 16 kilograms of soybeans, 8 kilograms of mung beans, 12 kilograms of red beans, and 36 kilograms of glutinous rice.
The rest are all rice grains, rice grains that have not been husked. If we work hard to husk them in the next two days, we will still have more than 200 kilograms of rice.
It was obviously impossible to take it away, after all, she also had bedding and clothes to take with her.
Supplies are in short supply now. It is easier to buy one or two kilograms of cotton, but it is difficult to buy bedspreads.
Wen Jiajia plans to take two quilts from home with her. The winter in the army must be colder, so they will be needed sooner or later.
After much thought, I decided to send it.
After Wen Jiajia thought it over, she stopped worrying and used a cart to transport the two bags of grain to the husking shop next to the brigade headquarters in two trips. There was a place in the village that specialized in helping the villagers husk rice.
Were there rice husking machines in those days? Yes, at least in the relatively wealthy progressive communes.
Later, the Fuyang Brigade also tightened its belt and bought a semi-automatic rice husking machine. From then on, the villagers no longer needed to grind rice manually.
However, if you ask the brigade to husk the rice, the remaining broken rice will have to belong to the brigade, which leads to some people still willing to grind it themselves.
Wen Jiajia didn't care about all that now. She spent more than an hour removing the husks and brought 240 kilograms of rice home.
After returning home, I started packing without stopping.
By the time she had packed her things, it was dark and evening had arrived.
"Is it six o'clock?" Wen Jiajia muttered as she looked at the sky.
She was waiting at the door, and a few minutes later she saw Old White driving a donkey cart appear at her door.
"Jia Jia, this comrade said he was looking for you?" the militiaman asked. Fearing that Lao Bai was a bad guy, he followed Lao Bai to the Wen family.
Wen Jiajia said, "Uncle Zheng, he is Wei Dai's comrade-in-arms. He helped me transport the things to the county town and mail them to Wei Dai."
Uncle Zheng said hurriedly: "That's fine."
He asked again: "Are you leaving now?"
Wen Jiajia nodded.
Uncle Zheng rolled up his sleeves and said, "Then I'll help you move. It's said that even a vegetable leaf costs money in the city, and I don't know what the situation is in the army. A broken house is worth a thousand guan, so take as much as you can."
With his help, several large bags of food were quickly loaded into the car.
Uncle Zheng had no doubts. Food was a necessity. In his mind, who would be willing to sell food? If they wanted to exchange food coupons, they could just take them to the food bureau to exchange them.
Uncle Zheng didn't stay long, he loaded the car and left.
After he left, Lao Bai lifted the oilcloth and Wen Jiajia started moving vegetables in again.
She has a lot of vegetables at home, most of which are planted in winter, and they haven’t been eaten up yet.
Especially the cabbage, two big baskets were full. There were also peppers, garlic sprouts and other things, and the donkey cart could hardly fit them all.
Finally, when Lao Bai drove away, the wheel tracks were deep and Wen Jiajia said sorry three times to the donkey in her heart.
After sending away some supplies, Wen Jiajia received a large stack of bills.
All the tickets are national tickets, and the expiration date of the grain tickets is still far away.
In addition, there were oil coupons, non-staple food coupons, and even four industrial coupons.
After moving to a new home, many things need to be purchased, and industrial tickets are indispensable.
As for the money, there was a full twenty-eight dollars, enough at least for the train tickets for her and her two children.
After solving some of the problems, Wen Jiajia went to cook while humming a little tune.
Wen Chun and Wen Xuan came back from the game sweating all over. Fortunately, the two girls knew their limits and did not get covered in dirt, otherwise Wen Jiajia would have definitely given them a good beating to teach them a lesson.
Several large packages were placed in the main room. Wen Chun saw them and ran over to ask Wen Jiajia, "Aunt, are we leaving?"
Wen Jiajia was surprised: "How did you know to leave?"
Wen Chun: "Aunt Yanyan said that we will be moving to the city soon."
Wen Jiajia patted her head and said, "You're dreaming. It's in the city, maybe it's even more remote than where we are."
Then he asked her, "Do you want to live in the city?"
Wen Chun bit her lip, feeling entangled for quite some time.
When she served the meal to the two girls, Wen Chun hugged her legs and said, "I just want to follow my aunt. Wherever my aunt goes, I will go."
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