After Xuemei and her three siblings went to bed, Liu's mother and father were still busy. Liu's father went to fetch water, and Liu's mother was making corn cakes in the kitchen. It would be too late to make them tomorrow morning, so she could only make and steam them tonight so that Liu's father could take them to eat tomorrow.
The next day, Liu's mother rose at dawn to pick vegetables from the garden. After breakfast with Xuemei, they headed for the commune. She stacked four baskets in pairs, placing a clay basket inside the top two. The baskets were filled with vegetables and some straw to tie them together, and Liu's mother carried them on a shoulder pole. Xuemei also placed the cloth in a backpack.
Xuemei originally wanted to put all the vegetables and cloth in the space, but Liu's mother said that they would meet many acquaintances on the road, and there would be no hidden place to take them out at the market later. To be on the safe side, it is better not to put them in there.
When Xuemei and Liu's mother reached the market, there were already many stalls. Liu's mother chose a tree near the roadside and set up her stall under it. The stalls were all run by members of the production teams in the villages under the commune. They sold their own agricultural products, including dried mushrooms, vegetables, pickles, and backpacks. There were also people selling grain, and those who sold grain generally required coupons, such as sugar coupons and cloth coupons.
Liu's mother picked eggplants, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and peppers to sell, mainly relying on the workers in the commune, the families of cadres and people who came to the market from the county town to buy.
"Mom, there aren't many people at the stall right now. I'm going to buy some malt sugar," Xuemei said to Liu's mother. The old man selling malt sugar sat two stalls above Xuemei's. He was banging his basket with a small iron rod. Every time he made that sound, the children knew the malt sugar seller was coming. It was still early, so there weren't many people around.
"Okay, go buy it first! Remember to wrap it in oil paper." Mother Liu said as she handed Xuemei two cents.
"Grandpa, please knock out four pieces of malt sugar for me and wrap them in oil paper for me. Thank you." Xuemei came to the old man's stall and said to him.
Wheat is more expensive in the south, and maltose is also more expensive than the fruit candies sold at the supply and marketing cooperatives. Maltose is five cents a piece, about the size of an adult's pinky finger, while regular fruit candies sold at the supply and marketing cooperatives are three for ten cents. White Rabbit milk candies are 2.25 yuan per pound, or ten cents a piece. For ordinary people, these are considered a luxury and difficult to purchase on a daily basis. It wasn't until a few years ago when their eldest uncle sent their grandmother a pound of candy that Xuemei and her four siblings finally got to taste the legendary White Rabbit milk candy.
After buying the maltose, Xuemei walked on. Just as she arrived, she saw someone selling candied haws (tanghulu) in front of her. The vendor usually tied straw around a bamboo stick and stuck the candied haws on top. Xuemei found the vendor and, feeling sorry for herself, paid thirty cents to buy six strings of candied haws, which she also wrapped in oil paper.
Returning to her stall, Xuemei handed an oil-paper bag to Wangmu and asked her to put it away.
"Xuemei, what else did you buy?" asked the Queen Mother, pointing to another oil-paper bag.
"Mom, this is the candied haws I promised to buy for my younger brothers and sisters. I also bought some for you and Dad. Mom, there aren't many people around here right now. Would you like to have one?" Xuemei said as she opened the oil-paper package.
"Why did you buy so much? You could just buy it for your brothers and sisters, but why did you buy it for me and your father? Xuemei, don't spoil your brothers and sisters too much. You should also be frugal and not be too extravagant. I'm not eating it now, so give the candied haws to me and I'll put them in the cloth bag." Liu's mother lectured.
Xuemei wrapped the candies in oil paper and handed them to Liu's mother. "Mom, I get it. I won't waste money recklessly. Qingya and the others have been very well behaved lately, so I bought them because they couldn't come to the market today and we haven't had candied haws in a while. I bought them for you and Dad because you and Dad love to eat these, but you always give them to us, so I wanted you and Dad to try them too."
"You! I can't win the argument with you now. There are many profound truths to say." Mother Liu said in pretended anger.
By around 1 p.m., Xuemei and Liu's mother had exchanged all the homespun cloth. Cotton cloth was now 28 cents per foot, requiring money and tickets. Liu's mother's homespun cloth was 35 cents per foot, about one and a half feet, which together they could exchange for 3.5 yuan. This was the cloth that Liu's mother had saved up for half a year.
He traded two baskets, each for sixty cents, and ended up with a fish weighing over two kilograms and a kilogram of tofu. Liu's father bought the bamboo for the baskets from the production team, each five centimeters long. A family was limited to 20 pieces of bamboo a year.
When it rains or when there is no farming work, Liu's father would weave baskets at home and take them to the market to exchange for other things. However, not everyone would buy them. Most rural people weave their own baskets, and only some families without men or people from the city would buy them to store things.
Liu's mother picked a total of 50 kilograms of vegetables. These included 5 kilograms of tomatoes, 5 kilograms of cucumbers, 10 kilograms of eggplant, 10 kilograms of beans, and 20 kilograms of peppers. Tomatoes and cucumbers can be eaten as fruit, and are generally sold at the market for 3 cents per kilogram. Other vegetables are generally sold for 2 cents per kilogram in season. After selling all the tomatoes and cucumbers, she still had about 10 kilograms of peppers left, which she had already exchanged for 1 yuan.
Mother Liu took out the corn cakes she had put in this morning from the bag and handed them to Xuemei, saying, "Xuemei, let's finish the corn cakes first, clean up the things, and then go! No one's coming now, and we still have to go home to harvest sweet potatoes from our private plot. We can sell the remaining vegetables to the purchasing station."
When there was no market, the members of the commune would sell the vegetables they couldn't eat at home to the commune's purchasing station, which would buy them all for one cent per pound, regardless of type.
Just as Liu's mother and Xuemei finished packing their things, Liu's father came over.
"It seems that you delivered the grain smoothly today, otherwise it wouldn't be so early." Liu's mother said to Liu's father.
Father Liu took over the burden from Mother Liu and said, "Our village is close to the commune and we arrived early. When we arrived, there was only one village ahead of us in line. However, this time, it was mainly thanks to my third brother-in-law working at the grain station that our village was able to pay the grain smoothly."
Xuemei's grandfather, Wang Jiadong, is 58, and her grandmother, 55, has four sons and one daughter. Their eldest son, Wang Weiguo, joined the army as a teenager and is now a battalion commander. The family lives with him in Heilongjiang Province. Wang Weiguo is 39, and his wife, Yang Wanru, is 36, a nurse he met during the war. They were rarely together, so they have only one son, Wang Zhiqian, who is 15 and in his first year of high school.
The second son, Wang Weimin, 37, is a renowned carpenter in the village. His wife, Zhang Zhaodi, 36, has three sons and two daughters: Wang Zhiqing, 18, learning carpentry from their father; Wang Zhiwen, 15, a freshman in high school in the county seat; Wang Xinyan, 13, in fourth grade; Wang Sitong, 10, in second grade; and Wang Zhiping, 7, in first grade.
The third child is Liu's mother, Wang Li. The next two younger brothers are Wang Weidong and Wang Weixi, both 21 years old. Wang Weidong passed the exam when the commune grain station was hiring at the beginning of last year, but was officially hired after this year's summer harvest. Wang Weixi disliked studying and refused to continue after junior high school. He enlisted in the army when the recruitment began earlier this year.
Before paying the public grain tax this year, Liu's father followed his third brother-in-law's instructions and went to the supply and marketing cooperative to buy five packs of Daqianmen and five bottles of white wine, and asked his third brother-in-law to secretly give them to the person in charge of collecting the grain.
After the villagers had just paid their grain bills, Liu's father quietly handed his third brother-in-law three yuan. The brother-in-law initially refused to accept it, but finally accepted it after being persuaded by Liu's father. Liu's father told him that this was a village agreement and that there would be many other places in the village that would need his help. If he didn't accept it, other people who would ask him for help would also have objections.
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