Eat rice cakes on the Winter Solstice, and you will grow taller every year.
The rice cakes that were just dried today are still very soft and sticky. When you get home, you can easily cut them into thin slices with a knife. After a few days, when they become hard and crack, you have to soak them in water. Change the water every few days and they can be soaked until Qingming Festival.
Liang Shengdi successfully ate the combination she wanted that day, but it was not noodles, but rice cakes.
Each person had a bowl of vegetable and shredded pork soup with rice cakes, a poached egg, and a spoonful of lard. There was no sound of conversation in the main room of the family of seven, only the sound of slurping rice cakes.
Lin Guoqing was the fastest eater. He was really hungry. After finishing a large bowl of rice cakes, he burped loudly and then touched his stomach and said happily,
"Hey, do we want to eat rice cakes dipped in sugar tomorrow morning?"
"want!"
"eat!"
Little Lin Shuchao and his friend Liang Shengdi agreed to the proposal in unison. The other three children, with rice cakes still stuffed in their mouths, could only nod in agreement.
Chen Chunhua rolled her eyes. They were already thinking about breakfast right after finishing dinner. What a glutton in the family.
However, "White sugar rice cakes are fine, but we don't have much sugar left. We'll probably run out of it by tomorrow. Don't we still have a pound and a half of sugar coupons? Mom, tomorrow..."
"I'll buy it tomorrow!" Liang Shengdi raised her hand to indicate that she could do it before she finished speaking, which made Chen Chunhua happy.
It was this rice cake, right? When we first started eating it, everyone was very happy. But after eating it for ten days in a row, even Liang Shengdi came to Chen Chunhua and asked, "Can we not eat rice cake today?"
Chen Chunhua suppressed a laugh. "Didn't you say you liked fried rice cakes? I was planning to make you some fried rice cakes with cabbage today. Don't you want to eat it?"
Liang Shengdi: ... "Didn't we eat stir-fried cabbage and rice cakes the day before yesterday?"
"So how do you want to eat it? You can give me some suggestions and I'll see if I can take them into consideration."
Liang Shengdi: "...I want to eat rice with stir-fried vegetables."
Chen Chunhua blinked, looked at the already cut rice cake on the chopping board, and coaxed like a child, "Tomorrow, I cut it all today..."
Liang Shengdi returned in defeat and went out to tell the four children that they would still eat rice cakes today. The four little kids all howled in pain towards the sky.
***
In December, Lin Guoqing went to the provincial capital every 10 days to fill the gap in November and helped everyone exchange eggs, chickens, ducks, etc. for money.
This time, no one talked about making a profit from the price difference anymore. There were even many people who came to the door from time to time with some things. Some were vegetables grown in their own yards, some might be half a pound of sugar, a few ounces of peanuts... They were not worth much, but they were all kindness.
Chen Chunhua accepted everything she should accept and told them roughly when Lin Guoqing would visit again, so they could save up the things early.
The ducks behind the yard haven't laid any eggs yet, which makes Wu Ni and Liu Ni very anxious.
"Sister, do you think the ducks will grow faster if they eat rice cakes?" Liu Ni started to think of bad ideas, and successfully earned a roll of the eyes from Wu Ni.
"Feeding ducks with rice cakes, you'll be beaten to death by grandma!"
Liu Ni shrank her neck in grievance, and sighed as she watched the group of happy quacking ducks.
"Duck, please give birth soon... Then we'll have money..."
Aren't there only two males here and the rest are females? It's been almost four months and they still won't give birth!
On the morning of New Year's Day, Liu Ni finally found a round duck egg in the corner of the duck shed. She rushed out excitedly holding the egg.
"Fifth sister! Fifth sister! It's born! It's born!"
With a splash, Ma Liuni accidentally stepped into the stream. Although it was the dry season and the ducks in the river could stand up to their ankles, there was still water. The moss on the riverbed made her slip and she almost fell into the water.
Liu Ni was completely unaware of this. She held the egg high and kept shouting for her sister to come and see. Ma Wu Ni was standing there with a bucket of chopped sweet potato vines, her eyes red as she laughed along with her sister.
"It's born! It's finally born!"
The Yuezhou Mallard is one of the three major ducks in China and is known as the "Pearl of Birds". It is characterized by high egg production, low feed consumption, and strong vitality. A well-raised high-yield flock can easily lay one egg per day.
The duck egg that day seemed to have set a good example for the group of ducks. Starting from New Year's Day, a bucket of duck eggs could be taken out of the duck shed every day, with at least 10 eggs and as many as 20 eggs.
Lin Guoqing and Shen Chunhua helped to check the eggs one by one by shining a light on them. They picked out any that could hatch ducklings and stuffed them directly into the chicken coop.
These past two days, the little rascal suddenly started to brood, but the problem was that there were only three or four eggs that could be hatched. Just when Chen Chunhua was worrying about its low efficiency, duck eggs came to take the place of it.
The remaining duck eggs were collected in the corner, so that Lin Guoqing could go to the provincial capital to exchange them for money when the time came.
Ever since the ducks started laying eggs, Wu Ni and Liu Ni have been wishing they could live in the duck shed every day, staring at the ducks' butts and urging them to lay eggs faster.
Lin Guoqing delivered the first batch of duck eggs after accumulating them for ten days. There were about 130 of them, weighing less than 16.5 jin (approximately 70 cents) per jin. He exchanged them for 11.37 yuan, along with food coupons for 3.2 jin (approximately 1.5 jin) of food.
The food coupons had been discussed with Wuni and Liuni early on. They belonged to the Lin family, and they only got the money. 40%, a total of 4.55 yuan.
The two girls' hands were shaking as they collected the money.
"This, this is the money from selling duck eggs? Our 40%? Is that all?"
"Yes, didn't you raise ducks before? The price of duck eggs hasn't changed much." Lin Guoqing sat at the table drinking water, looking at the two children in a daze, feeling a little funny.
"Aren't you two in school? Do you want me to calculate it for you again?"
Ma Wuni looked at the money, then at her uncle and aunt. Tears began to gather in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She wiped them away with her sleeves.
"We used to raise ducks, and it was my grandmother who took them to the supply and marketing cooperative. We didn't know the price, and the money never came to us." As for the arithmetic problem, she grinned.
"We are only in the first grade. This is too complicated. We don't know how to calculate it. Hehe, but we trust our uncle and mom."
"Well, what uncle calculated must be the most accurate!" Ma Liuni also nodded, and pulled Wu Ni's clothes and whispered, "Sister, then can we pay off the tuition of the eldest and second sisters before the New Year?"
Lin Guoqing patted the heads of the two children and directly helped Wu Ni answer this question.
"Of course you can. The tuition is so little. You can earn four dollars and fifty cents every ten days, which means more than thirteen dollars a month. After paying off the debt, you can even have an extra dollar and fifty cents left!"
Liu Ni exclaimed in surprise, "Really? That's more than what my eldest sister and the others earn!" She pulled Wu Ni, "Sis! We can support Qi Ni and Ba Ni to go to school in the future!"
"Yeah! With Jiuni included, we can afford them all!"
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