"You just remembered to ask about pork? I thought you didn't care about the hundred dollars."
Qiao Baozhu puffed up her face and was still angry.
Shen Xiao pinched her face amusedly, "All the money in the family is given to you, I have no objection to how you want to spend it."
"Aren't you afraid that I will take all the money from our family to my parents' home without your knowledge?" Qiao Baozhu asked tentatively.
"It is our responsibility as children to improve our parents' living conditions. I don't mind how much you spend on them."
Shen Xiao looked helpless, how could he not hear the temptation in Qiao Baozhu's words. After getting married, he gave his passbook to his wife and handed it in as soon as he got his salary every month.
His wife can buy whatever she wants and spend it however she wants, and he never asks any questions. Shen Xiao didn't understand why Qiao Baozhu was always so uneasy.
"Hmph, you can talk."
Qiao Baozhu curled her lips and her eyes were shining with smiles.
Shen Xiao felt relieved when he saw that his young wife was finally made to laugh. He reached out and rubbed her hair, then reluctantly went to the kitchen to cook noodles.
After a while, Shen Xiao brought up two bowls of noodles. The noodles were covered with a thick layer of meat sauce. Fearing that the sauce would be too greasy, he also served a plate of pickles.
After taking a bite of noodles, Qiao Baozhu squinted her eyes in satisfaction: "Hmm, Aunt Meilan's meat sauce is really delicious."
"When you deliver pork to my dad tomorrow, give them half of it."
Today, Qiao Baozhu bought a lot of pork. Taking the opportunity that Liu Meilan was making meat sauce for Zhang Cuilian, she asked Liu Meilan to help her make a whole pot of meat sauce.
Shen Xiao nodded. Since marrying Qiao Baozhu, he has developed anorexia.
There's no way, the food at home is much richer than that in the cafeteria. Other comrades in the family compound were reluctant to use too much animal oil when cooking.
Even the pickled cabbage shreds in his family are stir-fried with animal oil, not to mention that the meals are usually filled with oil.
The reason he can have such good conditions is because his wife is capable!
Last month, Qiao Baozhu bought back an industrial ticket from a member of the brigade below, and then exchanged it for 20 kilograms of pork fat from an employee of the meat processing factory. I asked my mother-in-law to help me refine the cooking oil, and then I put it in a can and brought it home in a very low-key manner.
"If I had known that we would have so much pork at home, I wouldn't have wasted that industrial ticket. Stay, and I'll buy you an all-steel watch by the end of the year."
The watch on Qiao Baozhu's hand is assembled with scrap parts. Because the parts were replaced, the quality is questionable. The watch became unusable when it came into contact with water, was bumped, or even for some unknown reason, so Qiao Baozhu simply threw it into a drawer, out of sight.
"I just check the time at work, so there's no need to buy something so good. I've already told my dad to buy a suitable second-hand watch if there's one in the store."
Shen Xiao's face darkened, he put down his chopsticks and stared at Qiao Baozhu dissatisfiedly: "Why buy second-hand, it's not like we don't have money at home."
Speaking of money, Shen Xiao thought of Qiao Baozhu's probing words just now. With a serious face, he said, "Baozhu, do you have no money? If you don't have enough money, you can use the money in my passbook. You don't need to ask for my opinion, and you don't need to worry about whether I will be angry. I give you the money so that you can be the boss."
Qiao Baozhu had finished her bowl of noodles by this time. She put down her chopsticks, drank a sip of water, and wiped her mouth with a handkerchief.
After doing all this, he found a comfortable position leaning against the kang cabinet, and then explained to Shen Xiao slowly.
"The money in the passbook is our family's backup plan. I won't use it unless it's absolutely necessary. I still have plenty of money. I don't want to buy a second-hand watch just to save money."
Shen Xiao nodded. He never asked about the family's expenses, and he could feel that the family was not short of money. In addition to having delicious meals every day, Qiao Baozhu also made a lot of money by earning commissions from collecting shoe soles and reselling coal.
Qiao Baozhu had received a large amount of coal tickets from Wu Meili before, and asked Shen Xiao to keep an eye out for any comrades around him who wanted to sell coal tickets.
There is a barren mountain 200 kilometers away from Qingyanshan Farm, and the Zhuozi Farm is located on the mountain. Zhuozi Farm was responsible for supplying timber to all farms and companies in the entire farm. Because local timber conditions are relatively good, local people do not have to worry about having no firewood in winter even if they exchange coal coupons for money.
Qiao Baozhu asked Shen Xiao to keep an eye out for coal tickets, and he actually brought back coal tickets with a total face value of nearly two tons.
She collected some more coal coupons from the various brigades below, and together with the ones she had saved before, she had a total of nine tons of coal coupons with a face value.
That day, Qiao Baozhu found out that Bai Hongmei had secretly rented out her house in the city, so she thought of renting a warm and spacious house for her adoptive parents.
After much selection, Qiao Baozhu rented a house with a back seat and two-meter-high walls, which provided excellent privacy.
I rented it for two years at an extremely cheap price of five dollars a month.
She knew that with Qiao Changhai and his wife's stubborn personalities, they would definitely not agree to live in the house rented for them by their daughter.
She told the two elders that she had received coal coupons with a face value of nine tons and planned to buy all the coal and hide it in the yard. Wait until the extremely cold winter and then secretly sell it at a high price.
So much coal could not be stored in the staff quarters, and could not be piled up openly in the city, so they had to rent a small yard to hide it. In order to cover up her tracks, she rented a yard and let Qiao Changhai and his wife live in it.
They told others that their daughter and son-in-law rented the house specifically for the two elderly people, which would not only improve their living conditions but also allow them to look after the pile of coal.
"Pork and coal again. My mother-in-law will not be able to sleep starting tomorrow."
Thinking of the scene when the two elders first saw the pile of coal, Shen Xiao couldn't help but start a joke.
Qiao Baozhu did not buy the 9 tons of coal from the market.
Shen Xiao bought it when he went to Coal City to buy coal under the pretext of the army.
The comrades from the Logistics Department who went to purchase coal counted the amount of coal needed by each household in the housing estate before setting off. After returning, they are distributed to each household according to the number on the statistical list.
Shen Xiao had a good relationship with his colleagues in the logistics department. Although he only had coal tickets with a face value of nine tons, he paid an extra 20 yuan as "ticket supplement fee" and purchased a total of 15 tons of coal.
No one can tell for sure whether the so-called ticket supplement fee was collected by individuals or the policy was relaxed by higher authorities. Helping to buy some coal for parents and relatives was not something Shen Xiao did alone. In the era of planned economy, nothing was enough.
After the coal arrived, Shen Xiao kept three tons in his yard. After all, the couple had bought coal coupons from everywhere before, and they couldn't just leave no coal at all.
Of the remaining twelve tons of coal, two tons were left for the two elders to use, and the remaining ten tons were all sold.
Don’t underestimate these ten tons of coal. Before the coldest days of winter, the price of coal on the black market has soared tenfold.
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