I don’t know why, although it is a single bed, Liu Ni felt that it was a bit too spacious when she lay on it. There was empty space on both sides, and she couldn’t fall asleep no matter how much she tossed and turned.
"What's wrong? Are there mosquitoes?" Chen Chunhua asked.
Liu Ni knew that she might have disturbed her aunt's sleep, so she quickly stood still.
“No…I didn’t feel…”
"Then why haven't you slept yet? Are you too excited about your first time out? Can't sleep?"
In fact, Chen Chunhua felt that she might still be a little excited. Without Liu Ni, she couldn't fall asleep even with her eyes closed.
Liu Ni hesitated for a long time, her voice smaller than a mosquito's. "...I've never slept alone before...I'm not used to it."
As far as she could remember, she had been squeezed together with her sisters since she was very young. When she was very young, she seemed to sleep with her fourth sister. Later, when she was older, her fourth sister had to take Bani to sleep, so she shared a quilt with her fifth sister.
There is more than one quilt on a bed. Their room is a big bunk bed where everyone sleeps together. It is warm in winter and hot in summer. But she has been used to sleeping on it since she was a child. Suddenly she is alone and can stretch her arms and legs. She is a little uncomfortable.
Chen Chunhua burst out laughing. "You're just like Shumei. When that girl moved into a new house, she looked incredibly excited during the day, but at night, she would hold a pillow and knock on her sister's door in the middle of the night, saying she was afraid of living alone in her own room."
In fact, little Lin Shumei has never slept properly alone until now. She has to do everything in her room during the day, but not at night.
When her sister came back, she slept with her eldest sister. When her sister went to school, she ran to the first floor to sleep with her grandmother. Liang Shengdi disliked her for wasting the room, but still made room for her on the bed.
Chen Chunhua lifted her quilt and patted the bed, "Do you want to come and sleep with me?"
Liu Ni blinked. In her impression, she seemed to have never slept with her mother. Not really, she might have slept with her mother when she was a baby, but she really had no memory of it.
After hesitating for about three seconds, Liu Ni threw back her quilt and rushed to Chen Chunhua's bed. As expected! Squeezing together made her feel very calm!
"Go to sleep quickly," Chen Chunhua patted her back and said softly with her eyes closed, "You have to get up early tomorrow!"
Strangely enough, squeezed into the same bed, Liu Ni fell asleep very quickly. Half asleep, she heard herself mumbling, "I just wasted 10 shengjian (stuffed dumplings)..."
Early in the morning, Lin Guoqing came and knocked on the door, saying that since there were few people around, he should hurry up and brush his teeth and wash his face.
Chen Chunhua closed her eyes last night but her mind was very clear. She was rehearsing what would happen, how to speak, and how to do things when she went to the breeding chicken farm the next day... She didn't even know when she woke up. Lin Guoqing called her to get up, and Liu Ni jumped up. She lay in bed in a daze for a long time.
After washing up, they carried their bags and went to the cafeteria together. They would check out after dinner and it was impossible for them to leave their things here.
Liu Ni stood on tiptoe in line, looking through the glass window, whispering to Chen Chunhua and Lin Guoqing,
"Aunt, do people in Shanghai eat that much in the morning?"
Pancakes, fried dough sticks, rice cakes, soy milk, millet porridge, wontons...wasn't that a bit too much? She thought everyone had rice soaked in water and fermented tofu for breakfast!
"This is a canteen, open for business, so of course there should be more variety. How can you have so many options when you eat at home?"
As he was talking, the man in front of him finished his purchase and left. Lin Guoqing quickly blocked the window, isolating a man who was about to take the opportunity to cut in line. As if he couldn't see his expression, Lin Guoqing waved at Chen Chunhua and Liu Ni and said,
"Come on, look at what you two want to eat!"
Liu Ni picked a fried dough stick and millet porridge, Chen Chunhua ordered wontons and fried dough sticks, and Lin Guoqing had a bowl of salty soy milk and a big pancake.
A fried dough stick cost half a liang of food coupons, a bowl of wontons also cost half a liang of food coupons, a large pancake cost one liang of food coupons, and the millet porridge was quite thin, so people didn't ask for any food coupons at all.
There were very few food coupons worth half a liang in the country, and Lin Guoqing didn't want anyone to ask him for food coupons from Shanghai, so he just asked for another fried dough stick.
Breakfast for three people cost a total of thirty-five cents plus three ounces of food coupons.
Liu Ni made another mental note to herself, fortunately, with the food coupons, she wouldn’t be able to buy even one shengjian (a fried dumpling) for this meal.
She spent a long time calculating in her little notebook before turning off the lights last night. She found out that yesterday, including the train tickets, she spent a total of eight dollars and ninety-six cents!
In fact, Liu Ni made a lot of money working with Chen Chunhua. Even if Chen Chunhua paid for the construction of the chicken coop and redistributed the dividends, she only asked for 10% of the profit. That was still much more than what her sisters made working in the factory. She still made 100 yuan a month.
But spending almost three days' income in one day really distressed her as she was used to being frugal.
Goddess of the Blue Sky, Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, please make the cost of each meal in the future about the same!
Chen Chunhua had originally been thinking about the small wontons that could be ordered in Shanghai without meat coupons. It turned out that this kind of crepe wontons had remained the same for decades. There was not much meat in them, but they were still very fresh.
The canteen of the guesthouse was not small. When the three of them arrived, there were already many people eating breakfast. Not long after they sat down, even more people came.
Chen Chunhua was eating breakfast while listening to the conversations of the people at the next table. Some of them seemed to be local residents who came here to buy breakfast in the morning for convenience and then rode their bikes to work after breakfast.
"Are you full? If not, there's another fried dough stick here."
Lin Guoqing waved the extra fried dough stick in his hand from Chen Chunhua to Liu Ni, swinging it back and forth. Seeing that neither of them wanted to eat it anymore, he folded it in half, dipped it in salty soy milk, and stuffed it into his mouth in big mouthfuls.
"The breeding farm isn't far from here, about ten minutes' walk away. You contacted them the day before yesterday, right? Should we go straight there?"
Chen Chunhua nodded. "Didn't I just use your factory phone? I made an appointment to arrive today. The person on the phone told me to go to the door and tell the guard to ask for Comrade Qin Jiefang."
"Okay, let's go now! If they're not at work, just wait outside and walk around."
I heard from my buddy who shared the same bunk bed with me that the farms here are basically reclaimed land. It is actually a complete small town with everything. There are even many more factories than where they are.
Additives factories, pharmaceutical factories, reagent factories, mineral feed factories, agricultural machinery repair factories, chemical factories, plastic factories, box factories, printing factories, nail factories, daily chemicals factories, trademark factories, towel factories, hardware factories, electronic equipment factories...
Although the sparrow is small, it has all the organs.
If the talks with Chen Chunhua go smoothly later, Lin Guoqing plans to visit the hardware factory. Anyway, the excuse he used to talk business with the factory is that they can't reach an agreement, but he can't miss the opportunity.
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