Chapter 97 Getting Food
After returning, Chen Youfu turned into a clay figure.
When the other members knew that he had gone to the commune, they were all full of anticipation and asked him questions whenever they saw him.
"Youfu, what's going on with them?"
"Give us some relief food?"
Chen Youfu's eyes were red, and he said nothing. He gathered all the members of the production team to the threshing ground at the east end and began to shout through a loud speaker: "Members, now is the most critical time. We must beat the drum of labor and production even louder. We must attack our greatest enemy, the reactionaries. We must declare war on hunger!"
He roared until his throat was smoking, but the members of the wheat field looked dumbfounded.
The veins on Chen Youfu's forehead bulged out: "Where are your voices?"
Wang Fugui touched his empty stomach. His wife said there might not be enough food at home, so they had to save some. She only gave him half a bowl of porridge. He was starving, so he said dejectedly, "How can we declare war on hunger?"
The old bachelor Chen Youliang wanted to cry because he didn't have much food left. He could only sigh and say, "To declare war on hunger, you have to fill your stomach first. I'm hungry, so how can I declare war?"
Chen Youfu: “…”
Grandma Hu, who was standing nearby, chuckled. "You're so lucky! We all agree that we should beat the drums of labor and production. We have no objection to that. We're even more in favor of attacking the reactionaries, but how can we declare war on hunger? If we have a full stomach, we won't be hungry, so why do we need to declare war?"
Chen Youfu: “…………”
Suddenly I felt that being a production team leader was very difficult, and being a production team leader without any relief food was even more difficult.
How do you live like this?
He took a deep breath and said, "Everyone, save some food. Our goal right now is to quickly clean up the fields and plant a new crop. We'll plant sorghum and corn. The harvest will be there soon, and then we'll have enough food."
When he said this, everyone felt disappointed: "Does this mean there's no more relief food for us?"
We were all looking forward to the relief food, but without it, we'll soon be starving. After all, it takes months for a crop of corn to grow. What will we do in those few months? Will drinking cold water satisfy us?
When Chen Youfu heard this, he suddenly became dispirited.
What slogans is he shouting? It’s still a question how long his old grain can last!
He should save his energy and not waste the little steamed bread he just ate!
When Chen Youfu lost his temper, everyone in the production team lost their temper.
They understood what Chen Youfu meant. There would be no relief food, and they had to find a way to survive these months on their own.
An atmosphere of despair enveloped all the members of the Pingxi Production Brigade. People returned home listlessly and began to discuss with their families what to do next.
Chen Youfu sighed, cheered himself up, and began to look for a few cadres to formulate the next farming plan. Life had to go on, and the new crop had to be planted as soon as possible.
Under the leadership of Chen Youfu, the members of the production team finally cheered up after experiencing helplessness, confusion and despair.
After all, life still has to go on. If you don’t plant the next crop now, there will be nothing to look forward to in a few months.
First, drain the accumulated water, clean up the land, and then plant the crops. I just hope that God will bless us with food, and that autumn will come later and winter will be warmer, so that the crops can grow and we can harvest something.
After the crops were finally planted, everyone's busy work came to an end, and a group of people began to look for ways to get food.
I heard that Liu Zhaodi's family suffered a lot and was almost out of food. They were so hungry that they couldn't bear it anymore. Finally, she dragged her three daughters to Miao Xiujiu to beg for mercy. The two younger daughters were easy to persuade, but Bonnie refused to go.
She said that her mother had done something shameful and she didn't want to be implicated. She would rather starve to death than go. She would go to the mountains and chew tree bark to survive.
There was a lot of fuss about this. Finally, Gu Weijun and Liu Zhaodi ran to kneel in front of Miao Xiuju and begged her to give them a way to live. Miao Xiuju sighed and called her other sons over to discuss the matter.
Everyone gave some food to Gu Laosan's family, but they had to pay it back double in the future, and they had to give money and food coupons.
The conditions were very harsh, almost as harsh as Zhou Baopi. Gu Weijun took a breath of cold air, and Liu Zhaodi opened her mouth in shock.
"What's the matter? You want to eat for free?" Miao Xiujiu looked at the couple and asked in surprise.
“No, no…”
"At this price and with these conditions, you might not be able to find food outside. Food is life-saving. No matter how much money you spend or how good the conditions are, you won't be able to find it. Why don't you give it a try?"
Miao Xiujiu spoke lightly with a few words.
Gu Weijun gritted his teeth, his temples twitching.
He knew his mother's temper.
His mother was angry and annoyed that he had allowed his wife to do this before, so she wanted to teach them a lesson.
Gu Weijun lowered his head: "Mom, you are right. We accept all the conditions you set!"
Liu Zhaodi's eyes widened, heartbroken. "You agree? You agree to all those conditions? This is like cutting human flesh!"
Gu Weijun was furious when he heard his wife say this. He suddenly stiffened his neck and yelled, "What else? What else do you want? Go get me some food! Pay five times the price and get me some food!"
Liu Zhaodi suddenly fell silent.
Let alone five times, even if it is ten times, it will be useless at this juncture!
Liu Zhaodi's heart ached so much that her liver was trembling, but thinking of the food and her hungry stomach, she nodded while crying: "Mom, we are willing, we are willing..."
Gu Weijun and Liu Zhaodi finally got food from Miao Xiujiu, but the conditions were too harsh, so harsh that it almost made people want to die. Perhaps for the next six or seven years, they would have to live frugally to repay Miao Xiujiu's food coupons and money.
Liu Zhaodi was devastated. After returning home, she looked at her rayon clothes and slapped herself in anger.
She later told her parents about this matter. They were very angry and said that the mother-in-law was too cruel and would not take advantage of the situation to attack her own son and daughter-in-law.
Liu Zhaodi thought about it and it seemed to be true. After she came back, she complained to her neighbors about it: "My mother-in-law only gave us food if we had to eat it. Well, I have a hard life too."
Who knew that when the neighbors heard this, they would say, "Your mother-in-law is so nice! What a good person!"
Liu Zhaodi: “Ah?”
Neighbor: "This is life-saving food. If someone is willing to sell it to you or lend it to you, they are really kind. They are my dear mother. Otherwise, you would risk your life and people would hold on to the food and not sell it to you!"
Liu Zhaodi: “???”
Neighbor: "You don't know yet? I heard the county grain depot is out of food. Some people even showed up with a stack of cash and food coupons to buy food, but they couldn't buy anything!"
In this kind of world, food is life and money is nothing.
Liu Zhaodi: "...It turns out my mother-in-law is so good to me..."
The neighbor secretly despised you in his heart, thinking, "Silly daughter-in-law, your mother-in-law has a really hard life!"
——
Because of the heavy rain, the entrance examination from primary school to junior high school in the commune was postponed to August, which gave Fubao and other children enough time to review.
In fact, Fubao is not in a hurry to review this. She has a solid grasp of basic knowledge and there is no problem for her to be admitted to junior high school with excellent grades.
As for who is first or not...
Before, Fubao might have cared about first place, but now, after experiencing this storm and looking at the desperate and confused expressions on the faces of these familiar members, she suddenly became indifferent to grades.
She was only twelve years old, just an ordinary girl from a mountain village.
But she is not ordinary. She is born with some ability to predict the future. She cannot control this ability, and it only appears occasionally.
Since she was not born ordinary, why couldn't she change the lives of the people around her? Why couldn't she make the faces of those familiar people no longer look confused, painful, or desperate?
This question was buried in Fubao's heart, making her unable to sleep well at night sometimes.
Before she witnessed all this with her own eyes, the so-called famine and starvation was just an idea. She felt that she was not Hailibu and did not have the ability to save a member of the production brigade, so she could tell herself with peace of mind that her ability was limited and she could not do it.
But now, when she saw Chen Youfu putting down everything at home and running to the commune for relief food, she realized that her thinking was too narrow.
Too comfortable and self-absorbed.
Why not try more?
There are indeed selfish people like Liu Zhaodi and Nie Laosan's wife in this mountain village, but there are also enthusiastic people like Chen Youfu and Wang Fugui, and there are also villagers who you can't say are very good, but definitely not bad. They can quarrel with you and argue with you over trivial matters, but if someone's child is lost, they will help find the child more than anyone else.
Why can't we do more for them?
With this idea in mind, Fubao stopped doing homework after school.
Instead, she dragged Gu Shengtian across the mountains, thinking about how to find something to eat.
She could easily find bird nests and bird eggs, and even dig up large wild potatoes to fill her stomach. If she was lucky, she could easily catch wild pheasants and ducks, and catch fish, so that she and her family could eat well and well.
But this is not enough. How can we ensure that other people in the production team do not go hungry?
Gu Shengtian recently went up the mountain with Fubao and was also puzzled: "Fubao, what's wrong with you? You are always absent-minded?"
Fubao hung his head and sighed after a long time: "Brother Shengtian, how can we get more food?"
Gu Shengtian: "Don't we have enough food at home?"
Fubao sat on a wooden stool, supporting his chin, and suddenly said something elegant: "I wish I had thousands of mansions to shelter all the poor people in the world and make them happy."
Gu Shengtian: "What???"
Fubao glanced at Gu Shengtian with some disdain: "Brother Shengtian, isn't this a sentence from an article in our brother Yuejin's Chinese textbook? We even read it together."
Gu Shengtian: “…”
Yes, he and Fubao read the Chinese textbooks of his two older brothers, but he just treated them as storybooks at the time, and only read the interesting stories in them, such as Guangsha, poems, and ancient sayings. Why did he read them?
Fu Bao looked at Gu Shengtian, who was bewildered, and sighed softly again: "Forget it, I won't talk to you anymore. You won't understand even if I tell you!"
She felt that she should talk to Brother Dingkun about it. Maybe Brother Dingkun had a solution?
But why didn’t Brother Dingkun reply to the letter she wrote to him before?
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