Chapter 375 Investigating Public Sentiments
Yang Heshu nodded stiffly, forcing a smile and saying, "Studying the people's sentiments is one of the assignments the teacher assigned to me."
Manbao and Bai Shanbao both nodded attentively to show their understanding, and then said that no matter what he asked, they would definitely tell him everything they knew.
Although it went smoothly, it should be said that it had never been so smooth before, but he still felt that something was wrong. What should he do?
The only normal one should be Bai Jilang.
He listened to them talking with some boredom, crawled to his book box, took out two bags of snacks, opened them, took one for himself, and put it in the middle for everyone to eat.
Yang Heshu asked about last year's harvest. He originally thought that the three children would not know. After all, this was something only adults knew, and even adults mostly only had a rough impression. Judging from the villages he visited, the most people could say was, "The best piece of land was slightly worse than last year. We harvested two bags of rice, and the worst was that we didn't get a single grain."
But Manbao and Bai Shanbao were different. They could actually tell the specific quantities. For example, during the summer harvest last year, the field with the highest wheat yield in Qili Village belonged to Lao Zhou's family, with a total of two and a half stones. The worst one, well, only yielded a bunch of wheat, and they didn't even get the seeds after harvesting it.
Rice was the worst off. The land with the highest yield belonged to the village chief, with two shi (approximately 100 mu) of rice. The worst yielded nothing at all. No one wanted to go to the fields to harvest the rice, but thinking of the possible difficult days next year, they still went to harvest the rice with husks and brought it back, even if it was just to grind it into chaff.
Manbao even had data from the previous year. The two of them rummaged through the bookcase and showed the average yield per mu to Yang Heshu.
Of course, this is just the data collected by Manbao in Qili Village so far, and does not include Mr. Bai's family.
But Bai Erlang has the data of Mr. Bai's family. Of course, Bai Erlang didn't have it originally.
But Bai Shanbao and Manbao forced him to ask his father. Since his father didn't know, he asked the housekeeper, and then he found out.
Of course, he couldn't remember so many numbers, he just remembered the largest number.
Because Manbao and Bai Shanbao said that their goal this year is to surpass this maximum number.
Yang Heshu listened to them in a daze, and after a while he asked, "Aren't you in school? How do you have time to do something like this?"
"When our teacher heard we were going to do this, he gave us time and told us to ask more people, remember more numbers, and then calculate the average."
Bai Shanbao nodded, "This is the Junhe that Master calculated for us. There are too many numbers, and Manbao always gets it wrong."
"You obviously calculated wrong."
Bai Erlang was afraid that the two would start fighting again. If he stopped them, it would go against his will. If he didn't stop them, he would be scolded by his father later. So he quickly put his hand in the middle and said, "Alright, stop arguing. We are slow in math, and such a long number is difficult to calculate."
Manbao said: "It's not difficult at all, it's all caused by carelessness."
Bai Erlang didn't want to pay attention to her. Ever since Mr. Zhuang had calculated the average sum in front of them once, Manbao and Bai Shanbao had learned it, but Bai Erlang was the only one who couldn't learn it. Addition was no big deal, but average sum was so difficult...
Yang Heshu looked down at the numbers, memorized them, and asked, "If that's the case, won't the village be short of food?"
"Yes," Manbao said worriedly, "Many families can only eat porridge even during the busy farming season. Some people in the village have almost started to eat 70% bran and 30% flour. My father said that if we don't save food, we will also be given rice bran before the winter wheat harvest."
Yang Heshu looked at Manbao and said, "Your family can afford to send people to school, so why is it still so difficult?"
Manbao nodded. "That's right. My family is very poor, but it's better off than my classmates. They were taken home by their families before the New Year. I don't know when they can come to school again."
Bai Erlang interrupted, "I miss them. They haven't come to play with me for a long time."
Bai Shanbao: "They also need to go to the fields to work, okay? It's the busy farming season now."
Yang Heshu opened his mouth to ask more, but Bai Erlang asked, "I think our wheat planting is almost finished, it will be almost done in two days. My father said that the weather may get cold in a few days, and the wheat needs to survive a cold wave before it can grow well. So when will we plant our beans?"
"I don't know, let's see what my dad does," Manbao said. "If my family starts planting, we'll start planting too."
Although the three children had read two or three agricultural books, they still had a poor grasp of farming timing, so they could only plant what the villagers planted.
Especially in the Zhou family, Manbao felt that there would be nothing wrong in following his father in doing things like farming.
"Then when should we plant the fruit trees?" This was what Bai Erlang was most concerned about. "I remember someone said that we can plant trees when we plant beans."
"That's what I said." Manbao raised his little hand and said, "Logically, the time should be the same, because the weather was warming up by then, the beans grew quickly, and the fruit trees should also be able to survive easily."
"But I want to plant fruit trees after I finish planting the wheat. Wouldn't it be possible to eat fruit a day earlier if I planted it a day earlier?"
"They'll freeze to death." Bai Shanbao said, "My cousin said he would only give us forty fruit tree seedlings. If they freeze to death, there will be no more."
Bai Erlang immediately stopped talking.
Yang Heshu immediately seized the opportunity to interject, "So, do you want the imperial court to allocate relief grain? Wouldn't that make life easier for the villagers?"
"Of course," Manbao was the first to answer, "We look forward to the imperial court allocating relief grain every day."
Yang Heshu smiled and asked, "Then what do you think the standard should be? Do you think your family needs to receive relief food?"
Manbao thought for a moment and said, "If my family eats bran, then I'll have to take it. I don't like bran. It has no taste and is not delicious."
Bai Shanbao and Bai Erlang, who had eaten steamed buns mixed with bran from their classmates, also nodded and said, "It's not delicious."
Yang Heshu looked at the two of them and asked with a smile, "So do you think your family should get one too?"
Bai Erlang said: "My family doesn't need it. We have money."
Bai Shanbao also said: "Although we suffered a disaster last year, we can still make ends meet, so my family doesn't need it."
Manbao nodded, "Except for these two families, every family in our village should be able to use the relief food."
Yang Heshu, there are more than sixty households, that’s a lot of people.
So he said, "Relief food can only be given to the most needy group of people. Who do you think is the most needy family in your village?"
"Aunt Zhou Wu's family at the end of the village is so poor that they're already eating half their food mixed with bran after the first month of the lunar year. And there's the bald-headed brother next door. Hum, their family is the poorest right now. And then there's Brother Zhou Hu's family. The last time I went to see Erlu, he said they were running out of food. Now all the food is left for Hu's wife and Sanshou. They eat balls made of wild vegetables and rice bran. It's really disgusting."
Seeing that Manbao knew everything about Qili Village like the back of his hand, Yang Heshu knew from their previous conversation that she was the most familiar with it, so he asked her, "Why are these three families the poorest?"
(End of this chapter)
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