Chapter 220: Wiring the Village
When Li Erni heard this, her eyes widened: "What?"
Zhu Gui said, "When I was halfway there, I suddenly thought that instead of throwing the baby girl into the mountains to feed the wolves, it would be better to sell it to a vendor and earn a few cents, right? So I went to find Widow Wang. Widow Wang gave me two yuan and took the baby girl away!"
Li Erni was so shocked that she was speechless.
Zhu Gui continued to explain, "Why should I pursue Sun Chunhua? If that girl was really the daughter of a wealthy family in the city, then if we find Widow Wang and bring the child back to that family, won't they give us a thank-you gift? I think... at least a hundred yuan!"
"One hundred yuan?!" Li Erni was shocked.
Could there really be a hundred dollars? She couldn't even think of that number!
When Sun Chunhua was asked for twenty dollars just now, she got scared as soon as she said it, and almost changed her mind and said five dollars would be fine!
I didn’t expect Sun Chunhua to give twelve yuan directly!
Now...is there still a chance to get a hundred dollars?
"Then...what if the girl is already dead, or can't be found?" Li Erni asked to the bottom of the matter.
Zhu Gui said: "Even if we can't find it, it seems that this matter is a concern of Sun Chunhua. Let's use this to bribe her. Without saying too much, we can get it by giving her three or five yuan at a time!"
When Li Erni heard this, she thought, this isn't the reason.
She is such a blockhead that she just knew it was twenty bucks and a hammer to buy it...
"But...what does this have to do with chasing Sun Chunhua? She said she'll be back in a while!"
Zhu Gui was almost crying because of his wife's stupidity: "What do you think is in your head? Swill? Sun Chunhua said she would come back, and you believed her? She would rather never have anything to do with us forever! In the past 20 years, she came back to try to be your relative, but she never came back once? If I don't catch up with her secretly now, who would know where she works as a maid in the city? If I can't find her, even if we find that family's daughter, who can we ask for a thank-you gift?"
Li Erni finally understood. She quickly let go of Zhu Gui's legs and said, "Oh my god! That child's father, hurry up and chase her! She's almost gone..."
Sun Chunhua was slow on foot, so even though Zhu Gui was delayed at home for a long time, he still caught up with Sun Chunhua quickly.
He followed Sun Chunhua to buy tickets. They asked him for a letter of introduction. He was willing to spend five dollars to get a letter of introduction before he could buy the tickets.
Naturally, he was very careful on the way, trying his best not to let Sun Chunhua discover his whereabouts, and finally found out which house Sun Chunhua entered.
However, when he saw the man standing guard at the gate with a wooden pole on his shoulder, he was so scared that his legs went limp.
But then he thought, he was looking for the long-lost daughter of this family, there was no way they could deal with him, so what was he afraid of?
Therefore, I went home with great excitement.
Living in such a grand courtyard, that family must be rich!
By then, the thank-you gift to them might be more than a hundred dollars!
When she got home, Li Erni immediately went to the home of widow Wang from the same village to inquire about the baby girl.
It was the end of July and the beginning of August in the lunar calendar, the hottest time of the year, and Xia Juanjuan could hardly bear the heat.
The weather is so bad, the temperature is over 30 degrees every day. Forget about the refrigerator and air conditioner. There is no electricity in the village now. You can’t even turn on a fan!
The villagers kept cool by fanning themselves with cattail leaves or chatting under the shade of trees at the entrance of the village.
Xia Juanjuan's space does have solar panels that can collect solar energy to generate electricity. They can be installed on the roof of the tiled house, so at least the fan can be powered.
However, after thinking about it, I decided not to take it out. Such a large solar panel placed on the roof would be too eye-catching.
People of this era may have never seen it, let alone even heard of it. If someone reports it as something suspicious, such as a radio signal board that transmits signals, it will be troublesome.
It's really frustrating to think about it. There are so many good things in my space, but I can't take them out to use...
However, Xia Juanjuan still wanted to push the matter of pulling the wires. However, she did not go to the commune to talk about it directly, but first said a few words to Aunt Wu indirectly.
It was easy to say. After all, she had been to Beijing, and she knew that people in the city had access to electricity a long time ago, with lights and telephones, and even in the summer, they used electric fans to blow cool air!
Aunt Wu's eyes widened. Lizhan's wife was really well-informed. There was a palm-leaf fan that could automatically swing the wind?! I had never heard of it before!
"How come there isn't any? Last time I went to visit my relatives, I saw some for sale in a department store! It seemed to be a 'Hang Sheng' brand. I heard it was made in Hangzhou. It's very famous!"
Xia Juanjuan rarely joined the women in the village who were chatting. She was always either staying at home doing this or that, or going into the mountains with a bamboo basket on her back, or going to cut grass, or tending vegetables in the vegetable garden.
When he met villagers, he would at most smile and say hello. The only families he was close to were Aunt Wu's, Zhou Qiuhe's, and Secretary Zhao's daughter-in-law's.
Therefore, what Aunt Wu heard from Xia Juanjuan could be regarded as first-hand news about the lives of city dwellers. These exclusive news made her position as the number one in the gossip world more secure, and no one could shake her position.
After hearing Aunt Wu's description of the electric fan, the women in the village were all yearning for it, but at the same time they were skeptical.
"Is this true? That palm leaf fan can swing by itself? Like the wind? There is no way such a good thing can happen!"
"How could it be false? Lizhan's wife said that she saw it with her own eyes in Jing City! She said that thing needs to be carried with...what? It spins very fast and the wind is very strong!" Aunt Wu emphasized.
But after all, she had never seen it, and her tone was actually a little guilty.
However, another person who came to chat was Zhu Xiaopeng's mother, Aunt Zhu, whose son got the place Xia Juanjuan gave up and went to Beijing to attend university. She said with some pride:
"Can Sister-in-law Wu be talking nonsense? Our Xiao Peng wrote back and also said that there is such a thing! It is powered by electricity! It turns 'wuwuwu'! It's getting cooler! Our Xiao Peng also said that every household in the city has electricity and turns on the lights at night. It's nothing like here. We have to light a kerosene lamp. It's so dim and we can't see anything clearly!"
Aunt Zhu, whose son was attending university in Beijing, made the promise, and everyone believed it.
Someone asked in confusion: "Sister Zhu, what is that...electricity you are talking about? What is it?"
"Oh, you don't understand this? I heard that the workers in our county also have it in their workshops! I heard that it is the same thing as the lightning that flashes in the sky during thunderstorms..."