This year, Liujia Village distributed grain early, on the 20th day of the 12th lunar month. Xuemei delivered the chestnut cakes she had made the previous afternoon to the supply and marketing cooperative, then returned home, parked her bicycle, and headed to the threshing ground to visit her family.
Liu's mother and Feifei were queuing together. As soon as Xuemei arrived, she asked Feifei to go aside and play with Qingya and the others. The two of them were chatting with the little girls and boys in the village, and no one knew what they were talking about.
Feifei was queuing for Xuemei and Han Chen. Although Xuemei and her family's work points were far behind their family's, it didn't matter if they lined up behind Liu's mother first. After all, people were queued according to their work points.
Han Chen was called by Liu's father to help distribute the food. Han Chen was good at math. Liu's father and others said that he helped count and calculate the total weight.
Although Han Chen and Xuemei now ate with Liu's father and his family, they were still nominally two households, two accounts. Like many families in the village with multiple sons, they split up the household but not the kitchen. Many families did this because they wanted to raise more chickens. As long as there were two people in a household, they could raise two chickens, but only families of five or more could raise three.
Xuemei and Hanchen planned to have Liu's mother catch three chicks for them in the spring to raise alongside their chickens, so they would have at least five chickens at home. (Some chicks are lost during the raising process, so the village allows for an extra chick to be caught when raising chickens.)
The second name called this year was Liu Guanghui's family. This year, their family had a new member, He Wenting, and a tractor driver, Mingwu. In the future, there will be two people with full work points.
This year, Liu Guanghui's family received one work point, which alone amounted to 173 yuan, 68 cents. This is over a thousand points less than the first family. Remember, the first family is from another branch of the Liu family, with five able-bodied laborers and a total of eight people. They have four sons. The eldest is 21 years old and just got married after the autumn harvest. The youngest is 14 years old and didn't make it to junior high school. He's also working in the village this year. Only one elderly woman, a grandmother, remains in the family. She also works light chores and feeds a pig. It's safe to say that no one in this family works to earn a living.
Father Liu's name is near the front in the middle. Although Xuemei's work points are less than 200 this year compared to last year, Qingya and her two siblings earned a lot during the summer and autumn harvests this year. With these added together, the Liu family's work points are almost the same as last year.
Xuemei didn't hear Han Chen's name until Liu's mother and others started transporting food home.
Han Chen officially took up his post as the village tractor driver on the first day of March this year, so the first fifty-nine days' wages had to be deducted. However, he also worked in the village for a period of two months, earning thirty-six work points. Adding the 3,010 work points he earned as a tractor driver, he earned a total of 3,046 work points, or 304.6 work days. His work points were worth thirty-nine yuan, fifty-nine cents, and eight cents. Adding the three yuan subsidy from the village, he earned a total of forty-two yuan, fifty-nine cents, and eight cents.
The village only distributed food to Han Chen, not Xuemei. Han Chen alone was given 480 kilograms of food, and the proportion of fine grains could not exceed 240 kilograms.
This year, the commune also distributed some millet seeds to Liujia Village, and the village also planted dozens of acres of millet, also known as millet.
This is more filling than other coarse grains such as corn. The villagers have left some seeds, and each household can order up to 20 kilograms of shelled millet this time. Millet is also a coarse grain, and the price of shelled millet is the same as other coarse grains, all six cents.
Xuemei asked for 160 kilograms of wheat, 60 kilograms of rice, and 20 kilograms of glutinous rice. Why was there more wheat than rice among the fine grains? Because Xuemei had calculated the price the previous night and realized that wheat was expensive, so she would save a lot of money by relying on people to do the hard work of buying wheat when the grain was distributed. When Xuemei excitedly told Liu's mother about this, she said that this was how she had done it in previous years and that most people in the village knew it.
Rice can be bought after the grain is distributed in the village. As for coarse grains, Xuemei asked for 20 kilograms of millet, 160 kilograms of corn kernels, 40 kilograms of potatoes (potatoes) and 20 kilograms of sweet potatoes.
The total cost of fine grains and coarse grains, based on the principle of seven parts labor and three parts work, is twelve yuan and sixty cents, and Xuemei can still get twenty-six yuan, ninety-nine cents and eight cents.
Behind Xuemei were several young couples who had just gotten married and moved out of their homes this year. Most of their children were only one or two years old or still in their bellies.
The last few people were Liu Laizi. Liu Laizi still had more than a thousand work points from Grandma Li. In addition, since Li Hua and her daughter settled in Liujia Village, Liu Laizi had never looked for them and ignored them when he met them on the road.
But Liu Laizi started working in the fields to earn work points, actively completing his punishment of carrying manure. Later, when the village organized a winter bamboo shoot digging spree, he never took a day off. He also never hung out with the idlers in the village.
Every day he either goes to work, goes up the mountain or stays at home. He still looks a little gloomy and silent, and hardly talks to the villagers.
Everyone said that Liu Laizi's habits of more than a decade had suddenly changed, and they were suddenly a little uncomfortable. It seemed that with Liu Laizi, the sun really would rise in the west. However, the villagers were more relieved to see Liu Laizi gather his strength, for his father had died early, because except for a few families, everyone in the village had the surname Liu.
Some of the village elders recalled that before Li Hua was sold by her mother-in-law, Liu Laizi, though a bit spoiled in some ways, was also a relatively hardworking child, willing to work even when Li Hua called him. Now it seemed that Li Hua had corrupted him, and now she had left him with the status of a member of the "five black categories."
Liu Laizi's own work points plus those of Grandma Li totaled 2,580. However, after deducting the fifty work points he paid to each of the He Wenting sisters, he still had 2,480 work points left. However, with so many work points, he had both food and money. He also took over the pig that Grandma Li had previously raised at home. As long as it could reach 120 kilograms, he would get another sum of money.
And although Liu Laizi is one of the five black categories, this is Liujia Village, and almost all the villagers have the surname Liu. Everyone will just avoid contact with him and will not deliberately target him. Of course, if the village organizes people to carry manure in the future, he will definitely be one of them.
Therefore, as long as Liu Laizi continued to behave like this, stayed out of trouble in the village, and worked hard, he would have no problem supporting himself. It was just that getting married would be more difficult than before, as most families would not marry their daughters to him.
Behind Liu Laizi are two educated youths from the educated youth institute. Dai Dongfeng has 1,723 work points and He Jing has 1,560 work points.
Finally, there were Li Hua and her daughter. They came to Liujia Village in the middle of the autumn harvest. Li Hua and her daughter didn't have many work points, only more than 400 points, and they had to buy most of their food with their own money.
Li Hua thought to herself that she had earned over eight yuan digging winter bamboo shoots for a while, and with that, she would have enough food for next year. She and her daughter would work hard for a year next year, and the year after that, she would try to send her daughter to school. Her daughter would be twelve years old the year after that, so she had to work even harder next year; she couldn't put off sending her daughter Xiaoya to school any longer.
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