Chapter 78 Wei Dai Reading



Chapter 78 Wei Dai Reading

This kind of days continued until the end of March.

In March, spring came back to the earth, and wild vegetables sprouted one after another. The people at the pharmaceutical factory had been waiting for a long time, picking the first batch of tender vegetables not long after they emerged from the ground. People from several factories nearby also went to pick them, and for a while it was like a wild vegetable picking competition, as if locusts had passed through, and the suburban hillside was no longer as peaceful as before.

But there are only so many wild vegetables, and they are afraid that if they pick this one there will be no second one, so they are like fishing by the river.

The people in the nearby villages were so annoyed by the sight. They didn't pick wild vegetables this way. They couldn't pick vegetables that were not even as tall as a thumb. They had to wait for them to grow a little longer.

Sure enough, there were not many wild vegetables left in that field soon, while at this time the wild vegetables in the fields in the village were still lush and green.

Wen Jiajia finally has some free time recently, so she goes to Director Gao to exchange her vacation time and prepare to start her short vacation.

"It's the wild vegetable season now. Shall we go pick some wild vegetables tomorrow?" Sister Bao came to her house that evening and wanted to ask her to bring back a pound of white sugar the next day. Wen Jiajia said that she didn't have to go to work the next day.

Wen Jiajia shook her head and said, "No." She was extremely exhausted during this period and she needed to rest for two days before she could recover.

"The day after tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. It seems like it will rain tomorrow too." Wen Jiajia said again.

Sister Bao said, "How many days do you want to rest?"

Wen Jiajia smiled when she thought about it: "Four days."

"Four days, even longer than the Chinese New Year holiday." Sister Bao exclaimed in amazement, "To be a worker is hard work. The machines in the textile factory run from morning till night, and the people standing next to them have to stand all day long."

Wen Jiajia nodded, working in a textile factory is indeed hard work.

Not long after Sister Bao left, Wei Dai came back with a bag of bones. They were wrapped in dry lotus leaves. Wen Jiajia immediately realized that he had bought these from his friend at the meat processing factory.

"Why are you buying bones for no reason?" Wen Jiajia opened it and saw that it was still ribs and spine. "Do you want to eat sweet and sour spare ribs?"

Wei Dai pinched her cheek and circled her arm with his hands: "You have lost at least 10 pounds. Take advantage of the rest to catch up."

Wen Jiajia tried it on her wrist and found that there were indeed more fingers left. She was surprised and said, "It's true!"

"Don't be happy. You were not fat to begin with, and now you are as thin as a skeleton." Wei Dai said mercilessly. He put the bones in the kitchen cupboard and said, "Stew them tomorrow. Don't put other things in it. Make the soup thicker. This way it will be more nourishing."

Wen Jiajia retorted: "In fact, what is replenished is the meat, not the soup or the bones."

"Nonsense, when I came back from a mission, you were always eager to make soup for me, all kinds of soup."

“…”

This cannot be refuted.

Well, the pork at this time is quite fragrant, all of them are black pigs that have grown up eating grain and grass. It is not an exaggeration, just add salt and rice wine to stew together, and the stewed pork has no pork smell at all.

night.

After Wei Dai finished washing the clothes and entered the room, Wen Jiajia was already dozing off in bed.

It's still cold at night even though it's not summer yet, especially here in Beishan, which is still a windy place. When the windows are not closed, the wind blows hard into the room, which is no different from November.

Seeing Jia Jia curled up in the quilt with her feet not even showing, Wei Dai went to close the window and said, "At this time last year, you were already clamoring to change to a thinner quilt."

The cold wind died down. Wen Jiajia lifted the quilt a little, poked her head out and said, "Yes. Is it this year's abnormal weather or last year's abnormal weather? When I got off work two days ago, I heard from the villagers that the rapeseed harvest in the village might be reduced this year."

Alas! Farmers depend on the weather for their livelihood.

No matter how hard you work, it will all be in vain if God doesn't favor you.

Wei Dai took out a book from the bookcase under her bed, opened the quilt, lay on the bed, turned to the folded part and continued reading: "You can tell that the rapeseed harvest has dropped just after the flowers bloomed?"

"Old farmers all have this ability. The old Party secretary of our village can always predict the harvest of crops in advance." Wen Jiajia came over and saw that he was reading this book. She snorted and laughed, "Didn't you say this is a poisonous weed?"

Wei Dai pursed his face, his eyes never leaving the book: "I have to see what the poisonous weeds look like, otherwise how can I persuade you not to look at them."

Wen Jiajia: "You are really tough."

What was he reading? The Count of Monte Cristo, which is actually the well-known revenge story The Count of Monte Cristo.

Decades later, the same routine can still be seen in Long Aotian's exciting novels: the protagonist is framed, meets a noble person, slaps his enemy in the face, then obtains the treasure and successfully takes revenge, reaches the peak of his life, and travels the world in a carefree manner.

No one can refuse novels with this kind of routine, not even Wei Dai, who always claims that all foreign novels except those by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin are poisonous weeds.

At nine o'clock, the power went out and the lights went out.

Wei Dai sighed silently, feeling quite regretful, as he still had a few pages left to read. He couldn't help but ask Wen Jiajia: "Where did you buy this book? Has this person written any other books?"

Wen Jiajia's voice was filled with sleepiness: "Buy? There's nowhere to buy right now. It would be good if I could find a few comic books or Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Dream of the Red Chamber or the like at a scrap recycling station."

In the past, you could occasionally find one or two foreign books that were not too badly damaged. But after what happened at the end of last year, the scrap recycling center conducted a thorough inspection from top to bottom, and all books with foreign characters as the main characters had to be burned.

An incident occurred at the end of last year when someone reported that staff at a scrap recycling station were hiding items.

This staff member is a bit of a backstage person. He is not someone who goes door to door collecting waste, nor is he someone who always stays in a dirty waste collection station. Instead, he is a small leader.

So this matter was suppressed at the beginning because the informant had a bad background, and there was no need to find an excuse to suppress it.

No one took it seriously, but on the 20th of the month, the leader's wife suddenly came forward to report again, saying that his family not only hid the antique gold bars collected, but also many English books. He even kept a mistress outside, and the woman had a lot of jewelry, even gold rings, bracelets, and earrings that could fill a box, not to mention jade and gemstones.

This is a big trouble.

English books are not rare for ordinary people, but antique gold bars and jewelry can make people jealous.

So the scrap collection station had to come up with an explanation and brought people to search the house, and sure enough, they found a lot of stuff.

No matter how tough the leader is, he can hardly make excuses when faced with these things.

Maybe he was the one who had given up everything, and he started to drag in a lot of people.

From small-time leaders to the second-in-command in a certain committee, all of them were implicated.

Countless things were copied from them, and at least a quarter of them were obtained from scrap yards. So of course, scrap yards were targeted, and any book with an English word in it, let alone an English book, would be destroyed.

No wonder the atmosphere seemed a little off at the end of last year. It turned out that the upper class was fighting, which made the people below panic.

By the way, where did this book come from?

I borrowed it from Teacher Feng.

After getting to know Teacher Feng, Wen Jiajia also visited Teacher Feng's home several times. Gradually, she got to know Teacher Feng better.

Teacher Feng’s name is Feng Minghe. He went to a private school when he was young and then went to middle school and university, which shows that his family conditions are pretty good.

Logically, her family background should have made it difficult for her to live in such a time. However, her uncle and father were both martyrs, and her mother had been a military doctor and had fought on the battlefield. With the protection of her family, she was able to live comfortably even in this era.

Sometimes people become a little naive because they have not experienced anything.

Because she was educated, she had a lot of foreign novels at home. Once, Wen Jiajia was chatting with her so enthusiastically that they talked about Mitchell, and they both knew that they were like-minded.

So Teacher Feng showed her the novels in his private collection at home and was even willing to lend her the original version of "Piao".

But Wen Jiajia was too useless and couldn’t understand the original version, so I borrowed a pirated version from her.

At that time, the well-known translated version of Haishi had not yet been published, but Teacher Feng had a collection of the version translated by Master Fu. Wen Jiajia had never read this version, and it was quite fresh when she first read it. Teacher Feng did not allow her to take it home, but Wen Jiajia even used her watch as collateral to persuade Teacher Feng to let her take it home.

They borrowed and repaid, and their relationship became better and better.

That is to say, if it was Wen Jiajia, if it were someone else, Teacher Feng's behavior of borrowing books from the open bookshelf would probably bring disaster to himself.

Out of consideration for Teacher Feng, Wen Jiajia even "destroyed the bridge after crossing it" and told Teacher Feng's husband about the incident. As a result, Teacher Feng did not lend her any new books for the next week.

Up to now, Wen Jiajia has borrowed at least 10 books from Teacher Feng, and she read them after she finished reading Wei Dai's.

Wei Dai would have stopped looking if he hadn't looked at it, but once he did, he was horrified, like a pile of straw on fire, with flames suddenly bursting out and no way to put them out. But he was very stubborn and refused to admit that he was attracted by the "poisonous weeds".

Wei Dai sighed, tossing and turning in sleep, and really wanted to know the ending.

My heart itches. It really itches.

“Pah—”

Wen Jiajia patted him on the back and said, "Are you going to sleep or not? If not, go to the yard outside."

"Don't be angry, go to sleep!" Wei Dai then hugged her and forced himself to close his eyes.

He had no doubt that his wife would throw him out of the room if he moved again.

The next day.

Wen Jiajia didn't know when Wei Dai got up, but when she woke up, Wei Dai was gone and the book was put in a box under the bed.

Wei Dai had made the box specially. He couldn't roll up the borrowed books like his own.

When I left the room, the sun had already covered half of the yard. I went back to the room and picked up the watch on the bedside table. Wow! It was almost ten o'clock. I hadn't gotten up so late in the past six months.

Wen Jiajia stood at the door, stretched her back, and let out a long breath: "It feels so good~"

Spring is back, the birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, and the world is full of vitality. Even the wind carries the fragrance of grass and trees. I sleep until I wake up naturally, so how can I not feel comfortable?

Wash up and have dinner.

Breakfast consisted of steamed buns and pickled vegetables, and Wei Dai also prepared a plate of preserved eggs.

The smell of meat wafted out of the kitchen, and she could hear the sound of "gurgling". Wen Jiajia went in to see that a clay pot was stewing pork bone soup.

The bone soup was just spicing up, and the meat was really delicious. With the smell of the meat, Wen Jiajia ate a steamed bun.

It was almost noon when the bone soup in the clay pot was ready. Wen Jiajia didn't cook, so she was full after two bowls of bone soup.

The sunshine is warm and makes people feel warm.

Wen Jiajia lay in the yard for a while, but the wind blew in gusts and she felt too cold, so she lay down on the sofa again.

Empty your mind and enjoy the rare quiet time.

Then I accidentally fell asleep again. Fortunately, I was wearing thick clothes and covered with a blanket. Wei Dai also put his cotton coat on the sofa, covering it with a blanket, so I didn't feel cold.

After waking up, Wen Jiajia drank another bowl of bone soup.

The sun was shining brightly outside, and Wen Jiajia went out to look for someone. She had to ask if a child as old as Wen Chun could be sent to school.

First, let’s look for logistics. Lao Wang is checking the guardrails along the river with due diligence.

When spring is over, summer comes.

During the flood season, the river water can reach up to the waist. It's okay for adults, but it would be terrible if children accidentally fell in.

Wen Jiajia ran to the logistics office to look for him, but didn't find him. Then she heard that Lao Wang was inspecting the guardrails, so she started looking along the river again.

After searching for a long time, we finally found Lao Wang and his friends by the river not far from our home.

"Uncle Wang, you are here!" Wen Jiajia looked at her home not far away and was so angry that she almost laughed.

It turns out that she was looking for someone from the opposite direction of the river.

Lao Wang shook the guardrail beside him vigorously, but felt it was not stable enough. He patted the guardrail and asked Xiao Wang beside him to take note and reinforce it together tomorrow.

He turned around and said, "Xiao Wen, I haven't seen you for a long time. Isn't today only Wednesday? Don't you need to go to work at the factory?"

Wen Jiajia: "Please take a few days off to rest. I have been too busy recently."

"That's right. I haven't seen you since the third year of junior high school!" Lao Wang counted in his mind. It has been more than a month. The medical glass factory is simply treating people like donkeys.

Xiao Wang added: "On the Lantern Festival, a cultural troupe came to perform in our army, but I didn't see you, sister-in-law. You missed the show. That day, a girl who sang very well fell in love with a soldier in our army. A week later, the two families met and got married!"

Wen Jiajia was so surprised that her mouth opened slightly.

Well, no matter how many times, she was still surprised by the speed of marriage at this time.

What is a flash marriage? This is a flash marriage.

"What a pity! Next time there's such a commotion, you have to call me, Xiao Wang." She said regretfully.

Xiao Wang laughed: "No, didn't Wei Dai tell you about this exciting thing?"

"No!"

She was so busy during that time that she had to go to sleep right after dinner when she got home and didn't even want to talk.

"Oh, right," Wen Jiajia recalled something important, "Old Wang, how old do we have to be to enter the military elementary school? Can my daughter Wenchun go? She's already six years old, so it should be okay for her to be in the first grade."

Old Wang was shocked: "What do you think? You're sending him to school at the age of six. Aren't you afraid he won't be able to sit still?"

"How could that be? I don't know about other children, but my Wenchun can definitely sit still."

Wen Jiajia trained her for this problem. At first, she asked her to sit still for 10 minutes, then 20 minutes, and gradually advanced to 40 minutes, which is the duration of a class. Wen Chun was able to sit still.

"You can't learn that!"

"He's learning well." Wen Jiajia said proudly, "Chun'er has learned addition and subtraction within 100. Well, you tell me, can he go to primary school at the age of six?"

"No one has ever gone to school at the age of six..."

"Everything has a first example. Once there is a first example, there will be a second one. This shows that as material conditions improve, children at this age are getting better and better nutritiously, their brains are developing faster, and they are naturally smarter."

“…”

gibberish.

Old Wang was speechless after hearing her nonsense. He waved his hand and said, "Go find Comrade Guo. If she wants to take Chun'er in, you can send her there. I can take care of her anywhere."

Then he muttered, "Really? Aren't your two children the same age? They're only a few months apart. Why don't you send them together?"

Wen Jiajia thought to herself that she wanted to do it too, but Wen Xuan was obviously much more restless than Wen Chun.

In fact, at the end of last year, she arranged for Wen Xuan to study with Wen Chun, but this child would be distracted for one minute out of every three minutes of studying, or he would break the eraser and draw on the paper with a pen. In short, he just didn't do anything serious.

Wen Jiajia felt that her temper needed to be tempered. If she could be half as good as her sister before September, Wen Jiajia would be willing to send both children to school at the same time. After all, this would save her a lot of trouble in the future.

After returning home, Wen Jiajia sewed a schoolbag for Wen Chun.

The fabric of the school bag was specially purchased thick cloth, but it was not as thick and strong as the fabric of school bags used decades later.

After thinking about it, I decided to seal the bag.

Wen Jiajia removed the straw cover that was covering the dust on the sewing machine, threaded the needle, stuffed the cloth under the needle, turned the iron wheel next to it, stepped on the pedal below, and simultaneously pushed with one hand and pulled with the other. The cloth was quickly sewn amid the "clang clang" sound of the sewing machine.

The schoolbag is not too big, after all, elementary school textbooks are not big either. It has two layers in total, and the largest layer has an inner pocket with a zipper, which can be used to hold small and easy-to-fall things like erasers.

After finishing sewing, Wen Jiajia started embroidering.

Her embroidery skills were mediocre. She could only sew large, childish flowers, and the stitches were often a little crooked.

Fortunately, this childishness is embroidered on the bag, so it looks much more harmonious than exquisite embroidery.

Due to limited ability, Wen Jiajia only made one.

In the evening, the sunset glow is magnificent, reflected on the lake. When a breeze blows, ripples appear on the lake surface.

The sun set and the temperature dropped. Wen Jiajia put on her coat and started cooking.

The stove was lit again, and the chicken soup in the clay pot began to boil again as the charcoal fire grew stronger.

Wen Jiajia lit the stove and poured the rice that had been soaked for half the afternoon into the pot to cook. Only after the rice was cooked into soup could she scoop it out and pour it into the rice bucket, and then put the rice bucket back into the pot to steam.

The shredded rice is easy to cook. It doesn’t take long before the rice is steamed. I put it aside and start cooking.

In spring, the most common food is naturally wild vegetables.

Wild onions can be found everywhere; Wen Jiajia can pick a pot of them just by her own yard.

I'm just frying some eggs today, so I don't need a whole pot of them. Just two handfuls will be enough.

Wild onions are really delicious. How should I put it? They smell like onions. Even red-headed onions, which are twice as expensive as ordinary onions after a few decades, do not have this smell.

Cut into small pieces, stir-fry with golden fried eggs, pour in soy sauce and rice wine, simmer for a while so that the aroma of soy sauce and rice wine can be fully absorbed by the eggs before serving.

Wei Dai would probably come back for dinner. Two dishes were not enough, so Wen Jiajia fried another plate of fresh spring bamboo shoots.

The bamboo shoots are most delicious at this time. After being blanched in water, they are not too astringent. Add a few slices of bacon as a garnish and a few garlic sprouts as a garnish, and the bamboo shoots will become even more tempting.

After cooking two dishes and rinsing the pot, Wen Chun and Wen Xuan returned home dejectedly.

"What's wrong with you? Why do you look so listless?" When Wen Jiajia saw the two sisters coming back, she brought the bamboo shoots with bacon and wild onion eggs that had been kept warm in the pot to the table.

The weather is cold, so if you leave it outside for a while it will freeze.

Wen Chun pouted and said, "There's a new guy in the Yuhong class. He said we don't have a mom or a dad, so Xuanxuan and I had a fight with him, but we lost."

Wen Jiajia: …

So are you depressed because he said you don't have a father or a mother, or are you depressed because you lost the fight?

"Who is it? Which kid is so wicked!" Wen Jiajia raised her eyebrows and asked angrily, "Newcomer? Is there a newcomer in your class? Did you tell the teacher after you lost the fight? Also, how old is he? How come you two beat one person and still lost?"

Wen Xuan threw her bag and said angrily, "We didn't lose at the beginning. We lost because he spit and opened his mouth to bite people."

I understand. It's disgusting.

"What's his name? I'll go find his parents tomorrow."

Wen Chun immediately said, "Call him Li Anbao. Auntie, you'd better not go looking for him. Xie Yi, Xiaopang and I have made an appointment to beat him up after school tomorrow. Don't worry, we will stuff his mouth with leaves first, and then beat him."

Wen Jiajia was stunned: "Who came up with this idea?"

Wen Chun held his head high and said, "We thought of this together and even prepared the rope."

"You are engaging in a mob fight," Wen Jiajia patted her head and said, "You can't do this. Although I want to beat him up, violence can't solve the problem. If you have four of you beating up one of him, what if you beat him up and he gets hurt?"

Wen Xuan whispered, "We also prepared a sack and put it over his head so we can't tell who beat him. Auntie, he's really annoying. He even pulled my sister's hair, lifted Feifei's clothes, and said Xiaopang was a wild boar."

Wen Jiajia: "I will go to see his parents tomorrow, so you don't have to go to school."

Children don't know their limits, so don't beat them up, or else even if you're right, you won't be right.

"We've made an appointment..."

"What did you agree on? Let's eat!" Wen Jiajia pushed the two children out to wash their hands. "Today we have bone soup and bacon. Do you want to eat?"

As soon as we mentioned meat, the incident of beating people was immediately forgotten. We haven't eaten meat in our family for a long time.

While we were eating, Wei Dai came back.

Wen Jiajia told him about this, "That child's surname is Li. Is he a new family member? The building hasn't been built yet, so why is there someone here?" The family compound had already been full, and there was not a single empty room.

Wei Dai thought for a moment and said, "I don't know about this. I have to go ask."

After taking two bites of rice, he frowned again: "It seems to be true. I remember that Li Fang said that his wife and child would be born next month. Could it be that it happened earlier?"

Wen Jiajia: "Where are you staying when you get here?"

Wei Dai: "Some people have been transferred away. Several people have been transferred away, so there will probably be more people coming in the next two months."

Wen Jiajia slammed the table and said, "I'll go to Li Fang's house tomorrow."

Parents of any naughty child have a great responsibility, and they have to teach their own children themselves.

"Oh, by the way, there aren't any old ladies or grandmas in his family, right? I'm really worried about those old people who could collapse at any time. Even if they mess around with ten of them, I'm no match for them."

"...No, he said his wife and children were coming, but he didn't say his father and mother were coming too." Wei Dai said helplessly, "Don't be impulsive, I'll go with you tomorrow."

"Look at what you said, do I look like an impulsive person?"

However, they were unable to go because the naughty kid was so powerful that a commotion broke out in the family building before they arrived.

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