Chapter 166: Generosity
Zhou Daliang gave him a resentful look. "Don't you know how to be more humble?" He didn't follow the rules at all.
Zhou Silang rubbed his hands together, his eyes moving nervously and carefully back and forth on the two bamboo sticks, and kept praying in his heart: Master Daozun, please bless me to draw the number one lot!
Zhou Silang made his choice, closed his eyes, opened them again, and quickly drew one. Seeing the red color at the bottom of the stick, Zhou Silang was stunned, then burst into laughter, "I won, I won!"
The head of the village glanced at him and extended the bamboo tube to Zhou Daliang.
Zhou Daliang pulled out another stick with regret, and there was no red on the bottom.
But this is also luck, no one's fault.
Old Zhou heaved a sigh of relief, took out the pipe from his waist and took a puff, then said, "Alright, Lao Si, go with the head of the village to sign the document later."
When Manbao and Bai Shanbao arrived, they happened to see them choosing lots, so they joined in the fun. Now they were shouting and yelling with the children who were watching.
The village head just held down his hand, and the adults in each family quickly held down their children and asked them to be quiet.
The village head then said, "This year, your village has two adults. You don't need to worry about the land allocated to you, but you need to open up the permanent land. Each family must provide a laborer. In three days, we will gather to cultivate the land and open up the wasteland. Village head Zhou, this matter is now in your hands."
The village chief quickly agreed and said it was no problem.
This is also a customary rule. Except for families with widows and orphans, every family must provide a laborer.
So in the village, the family with more male children actually has the upper hand.
For example, Zhou Dayuan's family has only one son, so the permanent land is divided once, and Mr. Zhou only needs to provide the labor of one son to him.
But Old Zhou has six sons, and they can divide the land six times. His family will have to provide six times of labor. Do you think he is losing out?
But there is no way to avoid it. This is not only the rule of one village, but the rule of the entire county, and even other places are calculated this way. Now it is organized by the village, and it is relatively relaxed. The villagers are basically responsible for the newly divided permanent fields in the village. It is said that earlier, in order to prevent the laborers from being lazy, the villagers of this village were transferred to another village. Not only did they have to eat, drink and live outside, but they were also forced to do a lot more work.
So no one dared to complain about this kind of thing outside.
But it was different at home. Zhou Dayuan's wife was very angry. As soon as she got home, she started banging and banging in the yard, pointing at the hen at home and cursing it, saying that it could only lay eggs and had no other skills, and she still had to raise chicks for it.
Bai Shanbao, who was picking up pebbles with Manbao on the ground floor, heard this and asked Manbao curiously, "I think your neighbor's words are strange. What else does a hen do besides laying eggs?"
Manbao certainly didn't understand Zhang's sarcasm. After thinking about it, he felt that what she said was a bit unreasonable, so he felt sorry for their hen: "Ignore her, Dayuan's wife is a little weird. I don't understand a lot of what she says. My mother said that if you don't understand, then don't listen. What she said is not a profound truth."
Bai Shanbao nodded, but still said, "Their chicken is really pitiful. Why don't we pick some grass for it to eat later?"
"There's no tender grass now, so they won't eat it," Manbao said. "They only like to eat insects and vegetables now. Why don't we go pick some vegetables for them?"
"OK."
Manbao took him to Zhou Dayuan's vegetable garden and pointed at the cabbages that had not yet been confiscated and said as a matter of course: "Look, this is their cabbage."
Bai Shanbao walked forward and pulled one out without hesitation. This scene happened to be seen by a young wife next to him. She opened her mouth wide and was about to speak when Manbao came forward to help him pull it out. Then the two of them walked to the wall of Zhou Dayuan's house with the cabbage in their arms, moved a stone together, and stepped on it to climb up the earth wall.
The walls of farmyards are not too high, and most of them are earth walls or fences.
Zhou Dayuan's house had an earthen wall. The two children pushed and pulled each other and quickly climbed up the wall. Then they tore up some vegetable leaves and threw them to the hens below, clucking in their mouths and coaxing them, "Eat quickly. If you're full, you won't be sad if you get scolded."
The young wife watching this scene couldn't help but walked forward curiously. Manbao even greeted her when she saw her, "Hello, sister-in-law. You're back from the vegetable garden."
"Yeah," the other person said with a strange look on his face, and couldn't help asking, "Manbao, what are you doing?"
"Feeding the chickens?"
The young wife: "Isn't this the chicken from the donkey's family? Why are you helping him feed the chicken?"
"Dayuan's wife was scolding the chicken, saying she wasn't giving it food. I felt sorry for it, so I fed it."
The young wife couldn't help laughing and asked, "Where did this dish come from?"
"Here, right there."
"Isn't that the vegetable garden of Big Donkey's family?"
"Yes, of course we have to use his vegetables to feed his chickens."
The young wife actually thought she was right.
She didn't leave either, but leaned against the wall to watch them feed the chickens inside. Zhang, who was inside, heard some noise in the yard. She looked up and saw the two children sitting on the wall. She was so angry that she fell backwards, her eyes wide open, and asked, "What are you doing?"
The young wife immediately said, "Sister-in-law, Manbao and Young Master Bai are feeding your chickens. They heard you scolding the chickens for not feeding them, and the two children took pity on them, so they went out to pick some vegetables to feed them."
Dayuan's wife then saw that the two children were indeed holding cabbage in their hands, tearing it into pieces and throwing it down from the wall. Her expression brightened a little, and she said, "If you want to feed the chickens, come in and feed them. Why are you sitting on the wall?"
Manbao tore up the vegetables in his hand and threw them down, clapping his hands and saying, "We're afraid you'll hit us."
Bai Shanbao nodded as a matter of course, and also felt that this woman was very fierce.
Manbao turned to climb down the wall, and the young wife standing below immediately reached out and lifted her down, and then lifted Bai Shanbao down as well. After they walked hand in hand for a long distance, she smiled at Zhang inside the wall and said, "Sister-in-law, these vegetables were picked by the two children from your vegetable garden. I thought you were going to blame them for feeding your chickens, so I stayed a little longer. Seeing that you didn't blame them, I felt relieved. Sister-in-law is really understanding."
Zhang's face immediately turned as black as ink, and she was very angry.
The young wife covered her mouth and laughed. Her family was also a neighbor of Zhou Dayuan's. Coincidentally, even their vegetable gardens were connected, so they often quarreled.
You weeded my field, and you weeded the aisle more when you were weeding the field. There were so many trivial things like this. She stayed just to see Zhang get angry. Now that she saw that she was angry, she turned around and left happily, intending to take this matter back and share it with her family.
Zhang was very angry and ran to the vegetable garden to check. She found that a new cabbage had indeed been pulled out, and it was not pulled out completely, with two old leaves left there.
Zhang was about to curse, but suddenly remembered that she couldn't afford to offend Manbao, otherwise Qian would tear her apart. She turned to curse Young Master Bai, but found that she couldn't afford to offend him even more. For a moment, she was so angry that she couldn't vent it.
I feel sleepy after taking the medicine, so let me go to sleep.
(End of this chapter)
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