Chapter 21: Doesn’t work regulate people?
The notification was started the day before yesterday, but Yan Xue still doesn’t know about it until today.
However, she was not at home 24 hours a day. After making sure that she had heard correctly, she went back to ask Aunt Guo next door if anyone had come to see her in the past few days.
It’s not that I think Aunt Guo would deliberately hide it, but I just want to be prepared for the worst, in case Aunt Guo is old and accidentally forgets it.
As expected, no one came to see her in the past few days.
The next day, still no one came to look for her, but the forest farm's shuttle bus started transporting people up the mountain.
Yan Xue remained calm and waited until the evening commuter bus came back. She was sure that most of the people on the bus were women, with a few very young men occasionally, who looked like educated youth who had come to the mountains in the past two years. Only then did she look for an opportunity to go to Captain Lin's house.
The educated youth in the forest farm are also temporary workers. They are currently assigned to the family team and are divided into agricultural team and seasonal workers like the family team.
Before reaching Captain Lin's house, Yan Xue heard Captain Lin coughing. It had been more than ten days, and his cough had not healed yet.
Yan Xue knocked on the door and it was Captain Lin's wife who came out to answer. She probably just came back, with her sleeves rolled up, preparing to cook.
As soon as she came out, she apologized to Yan Xue, "My husband, Lao Lin, is sick again. He just took some medicine. If you have anything to say, just tell me here."
The moment the door opened, a medicinal smell indeed wafted out. Captain Lin's wife also had the same smell. Yan Xue paused, "Is Captain Lin okay? Can I go in and see him?"
"It's an old problem. I got hurt while logging in the mountains before. It's a root cause of the problem. It starts to flare up when the weather gets cold in winter."
Captain Lin's wife smiled bitterly. "How else could he be so thin at his age? He's even been transferred to the family team. He can't talk like this. You should talk to me."
Yan Xue looked at her, then at the inner room, and didn't insist. "That's fine. I just saw that other family members and workers had started to go up the mountain, so I came to ask why I didn't receive any notice."
"This..." Captain Lin's wife hesitated, looking very embarrassed.
"Did they miss me when they notified me?" Yan Xue asked, her eyes clear enough to see people's reflections.
Captain Lin's wife sighed, "Not really. It's mainly because you signed up too late. The family team doesn't need so many people at the moment, so they didn't notify you."
This time, Yan Xue lowered her eyes and didn't speak for a long time, seeming very disappointed.
Captain Lin's wife had no choice but to comfort her, "It's not like they won't be used forever. Maybe they'll be used in a couple of days. I'll definitely let you know then. Don't worry."
Then he said softly, "If it really doesn't work, don't we still have the agricultural team? They'll also start having work next month."
"You really don't need anyone anymore?" Yan Xue confirmed without giving up.
Captain Lin's wife nodded. "If we were short of people, we would have notified you long ago. Haven't you registered with Old Lin?"
"Okay then." Yan Xue forced a smile and left unhappily.
Captain Lin's wife watched her walk away before closing the door and returning to her room. She didn't notice that once Yan Xue turned around, the unhappy look on her face turned into calmness.
It was just too peaceful. When Auntie Guo from next door saw her come back, she looked at her face carefully for a long time but couldn't tell. "What's wrong?"
Ever since Yan Xue came to her and asked about it, she has been concerned about it. She saw the matter of the commuter bus and told Yan Xue about it this morning.
Yan Xue smiled and said, "Captain Lin's wife said that they don't need so many people right now, so she didn't notify me and told me to wait for news."
"That's possible. Don't worry. If it doesn't work, don't we still have the agricultural team?"
Aunt Guo also comforted Yan Xue with a few words. Yan Xue listened with a smile, and when she returned to the house, she took the dried meat she had made earlier and went to Liu's house.
Several children of the Liu family were doing their homework beside the kang. To be exact, only Liu Chunni, the second daughter of the Liu family, was doing her homework.
Liu Chuncai was instructing her, "The answer is 15, definitely 15, just listen to me."
Liu Chunni bit her pencil, frowned, and whispered, "But I think it's 1.5."
"I'm in junior high school now, how could I make mistakes in elementary school math problems? 15, write it down quickly so we can go out and play." Liu Chuncai insisted.
Liu Weibin, the youngest son of the Liu family, had already put on his newly made roller skates and was skating back and forth in the house. "Yes, second sister, hurry up and write. We have been waiting for you here for a long time."
Liu Chunni still felt something was wrong. The tinplate covering the eraser on the top of the pencil was almost deformed by her biting it.
"Mom told you not to bite the pencil, it's dirty!" Liu Chuncai reminded her.
Liu Chunni hurriedly let go, but the child was different from her other brothers and sisters. She was shy, introverted, and stubborn. She would not write anything she thought was wrong no matter what others said.
Finally, she could only look at Yan Xue who had just entered the room, "Sister Yan Xue, can you solve this problem?"
"Let me see." Yan Xue took it and figured out the answer with a quick calculation, "1.5."
"How can it be 1.5?" Liu Chuncai didn't believe it.
Yan Xue didn't say anything. She took Liu Chunni's calculation paper and wrote down the calculation process. It was clear and concise, and it was indeed 1.5.
This time Liu Chuncai was a little confused, but Liu Chunni was completely relieved and wrote the answer to the last question in her homework book.
Liu Weibin, a fence-sitter, immediately turned around and said to his elder sister, "Sister, aren't you in junior high school? How come you can't even do elementary school math problems?"
Liu Chuncai wasn't like Liu Chunni. She glared at him and said, "So what if I can't do it? I won't be the top scholar, so I'll still be sent to the countryside in the future."
This was the general thinking of that era. Whether you were a good student or not, you had to go to the countryside. Why bother?
Not to mention that the college entrance examination has been suspended for several years. Even if it hadn't been suspended, most of the people in the forest farm are rough and unrefined, and few of them know that they can go to college. It's already very good to graduate from high school.
Yan Xue couldn't say much to them, so she just asked Liu Chuncai, "If you don't study, will you be able to do the math when you go out to buy and sell things?"
"Isn't it enough to learn something simple?" Liu Chuncai still muttered.
"But if you want to be an accountant, you have to learn more. To be a doctor, a nurse, or an engineer at the town's machine repair shop, which one of them didn't learn?"
Seeing that the little girl was silent, Yan Xue played a joke, "If you don't read more and gain more knowledge, be careful that someone will sell you health supplements when you are old."
"What are health supplements?" Liu Chuncai was obviously hearing this term for the first time.
Yan Xue narrowed her eyes and smiled, "It's something to maintain your health."
"For example, ginseng?"
"Yes, what if someone deceives you and sells you codonopsis as ginseng?"
"It's not like I don't know ginseng." Liu Chuncai curled her lips.
Liu Weibin, who had been craning his head to listen, suddenly said, "Aren't Codonopsis and Ginseng both ginseng?"
Mobile phones and hens are both ji, so you can sell him health products now.
Only Liu Chunni didn't interrupt, but she listened most attentively and carefully packed her pen and notebook and put them into her schoolbag.
"Don't leave yet," Yan Xue opened the bag of dried meat she brought with her, "I brought you some delicious food. Eat it before you go out and play."
Seeing something delicious, the children were naturally excited, but Huang Fengying couldn't help but say to Yan Xue, "You didn't make this with roe deer meat? How much is it and you're sending it here?"
"I just figured it out, and I want to show it off. Next time I won't give it to you. I'll just tell you how to do it yourself."
Yan Xue blinked, and saw that Huang Fengying didn't know whether she was the one or not.
But the food was really delicious, and several children said they liked it very much. Huang Fengying also asked about it and planned to try making it next time.
After the little ones went out to play with the dried meat in their mouths, Yan Xue straightened her expression and said, "Auntie, I have something to ask of you."
"Just tell me what you want, no matter if you ask for anything or not."
"Could you please tell me how many seasonal workers the family team has hired this year? Are there any people who applied but weren't hired? Does the family team have enough staff now?"
Yan Xue was very suspicious that the reason she didn't receive the notice was not because the family team had recruited enough people as Captain Lin's wife said, but because of other reasons.
But she had no evidence and it was difficult to draw a conclusion now, so she had to ask Huang Fengying to help find out.
Huang Fengying agreed immediately, "Okay, I'll write you back tomorrow." Seeing that she didn't say much, she didn't even ask any more questions.
It was almost noon the next day when Huang Fengying came to her house. She didn't even drink a sip of water when she entered. "I asked, and there are no family members who haven't been recruited for this year's team. We are still short of people. The main reason is that our forest farm exceeded its target this year, and we cut a lot of wood, so there is naturally a lot of forest clearing work. I didn't see that the family members went up the mountain early this year. Because of the early arrival, a few people didn't make it back."
Yan Xue, who was unable to make it back, knew two people: one was the daughter-in-law of the aunt she met that day, and the other was the wife of Guo Changping next door.
I don’t know whether the Guo family knew that Guo Changping’s wife was in the hospital and couldn’t come back for the time being, or whether they took advantage of her, but they didn’t receive any notification.
Huang Fengying told Yan Xue everything she knew in one breath, then asked, "Did something go wrong with your family worker?"
"Yeah." Yan Xue nodded helplessly and told the story of how she didn't receive the notice and what Captain Lin's wife said.
Huang Fengying stood up suddenly and said, "Isn't this a way to treat people? I'll go talk to her!"
"Don't worry." Yan Xue grabbed her arm and pulled her back. "We don't know if Captain Lin knows about this. If it's Captain Lin's idea, even if we go and look for him, it probably won't be of any use."
"Xiao Lin shouldn't know, right? You didn't say his wife didn't let you in and told you outside?"
That's not necessarily true. The compensation given by Wangjia Village and the introduction of a date to her were all done by her aunt Bai Xiuzhen.
But didn't Yan Songshan know? Not necessarily, he just preferred to hide behind his wife and pretend to be a good guy.
Yan Xue comforted Huang Fengying, "I'll think of a way to deal with this matter. Talking to them isn't the goal, finding a job is."
Huang Fengying thought about it and said, "If you need me, just let me know. If not, I'll ask you, Uncle Liu, to talk to the higher-ups. How can you do things this way?"
"When have you ever seen me being polite to you? If you really need me, I can lend you those three dogs to give you courage."
Yan Xue's words finally made Huang Fengying laugh. "If you really want it, I'll also bring you the two geese in the backyard."
Of course, Yan Xue was just joking. As she said, the most important thing was how to solve this problem. The next day, she found an opportunity to hitchhike up the mountain again.
This time she was not here to look for Qi Fang. She got off the car and didn't even enter the camp. She was going to find someone to ask where the family team was clearing the forest.
Unexpectedly, she hadn't walked far when someone approached her first, "Why are you here again? Looking for Qi Fang?"
Yan Xue took a look and found that it was Liang Qimao, the brother who had taken him up the mountain to look for someone last time.
It was not known whether this man was pretending to be stupid or he thought Yan Xue didn't know that he had instigated his brother-in-law to cause trouble at her wedding. His tone when greeting Yan Xue was surprisingly warm.
Yan Xue looked at the smile on his face and asked, "Brother Liang, aren't you going to work today?"
"The tractor broke down again. It's sitting there waiting for someone to fix it." Liang Qimao waved his hand. "The logging team is deep down right now. Do you want me to help you find them?"
She even forgot that the last time he took her to see Qi Fang, something almost happened and he left her there alone.
Yan Xue simply didn't bother asking, "Do you know where the family members' team is working now?"
If she wants to get an explanation, she has to catch the culprit in the act.
Liang Qimao was a little surprised. "Family team? Why are you asking that?"
"Something." Yan Xue still gave the same universal answer.
Liang Qimao smacked his lips and said, "Alright, I'll go look for it for you. It's just you, I wouldn't bother with anyone else."
After a while, he came back and told Yan Xue the current location of the family team.
Yan Xue thanked him and was about to leave when he followed her again, "Let me take you there, don't wander around."
Then he asked Yan Xue in a familiar tone, "How are you? Are you adapting well in the forest farm? I didn't even know you were getting married, and I didn't even go to give you a wedding gift."
Isn't this a bit too enthusiastic?
Yan Xue glanced at the other person.
The other party continued, "I live behind your house. If anything happens and Qi Fang is not here, you can come to me. I drive a tractor and I spend more time at home."
Yan Xue did not respond, and rarely responded to the other party in the second half of the conversation. She even deliberately quickened her pace.
Fortunately, the clearing work started from the end near the camp, and the two arrived quickly. Yan Xue looked up and saw someone sitting on a fallen log at the edge of the forest, warming himself by the fire.
Moreover, one of them looked familiar to her, like Captain Lin's beautiful wife.
"Are you taking a rest?" Yan Xue was still looking around when Liang Qimao walked up and greeted her.
The other person looked up and asked, "Xiao Liang, why are you here?" He still smiled when he saw people, and it was obvious that he was very familiar with Liang Qimao.
"Xiao Yan is coming to the family team, I will help show her the way." Brother Liang did not say that the two met on the road, and pointed behind him.
Captain Lin's wife looked over, her face looking a little awkward for a moment, but then she quickly smiled and said, "Why are you here? What's going on?"
"I'm here to see Captain Lin." Yan Xue smiled at her and before she could say anything else, she shouted, "Captain Lin! Captain Lin is here, right?"
Almost everyone subconsciously looked in one direction, including Captain Lin's wife.
Yan Xue took a few steps over there, but she didn't stop shouting, "Captain Lin! I heard that our family team is not short of people this year, so they didn't notify me to come to work. Is that true?"
She seemed anxious, and before Captain Lin could reply, she added, "But I also heard that the family corps has a heavy workload this year and isn't staffed enough. Which one is true?"
Captain Lin seemed to want to say something, but he couldn't help coughing when he opened his mouth. His wife quickly pulled Yan Xue aside and said, "Don't worry, tell me what you want to say slowly."
"It's been several days since we started work. How can I not be anxious?" Yan Xue wanted to talk about this matter in public, so she couldn't bear to be stopped.
She spoke even louder. "I was going to ask Secretary Lang, but when I heard you were here, Captain Lin, I came to see you first. What's going on?"
She spoke very quickly, perfectly portraying the role of an anxious and impatient young wife.
Even Liang Qimao couldn't help but ask Captain Lin's wife, "What's going on?"
Captain Lin's wife never thought that Yan Xue was so fierce. She thought Yan Xue was a person with no temper and always smiled. She was young and thin-skinned. Even if she was not sent away by her words, she could only sulk in her heart.
Yan Xue brought up the matter in front of so many people, so she had to be given an explanation even if she didn't want to. Moreover, she mentioned Secretary Lang in her words...
Captain Lin's wife believed that if this matter was not resolved, she would really dare to make a fuss to Secretary Lang, and Captain Lin also believed it.
He walked over quickly, not caring about the coughing. "What's going on? Didn't I... cough cough... ask someone to notify you? You... cough... didn't come by yourself."
"How did they notify me? I didn't receive any notification at all. I even asked someone, and they said the team didn't need me and that they didn't need me. They told me to go home and wait."
Although Yan Xue didn't say who she was asking, she glanced at Captain Lin's wife while she spoke.
Captain Lin also looked at his wife, and saw that the smile on her face was very stiff.
But he didn't say anything. Instead, he turned to Yan Xue and said, "Maybe I forgot. You... ahem... come to work tomorrow."
He actually took the responsibility on himself instead of taking action against his wife. It seems that he really didn't know about this.
The reason why Yan Xue did not go directly to Secretary Lang was because of this consideration. She planned to resolve matters within the family team within the family team.
In case Captain Lin is unaware of the situation, the matter will end with him. Yan Xue not making a big deal out of it will help him save face. How to deal with the matter afterwards is their business.
If Captain Lin also knew that Yan Xue had such a scene in public and even brought Secretary Lang out, he would have to give Yan Xue an explanation.
Regardless of whether he knew it or not, now that the matter was out in the open, Yan Xue's place in the family team could be resolved.
After all, if the other party didn't help her solve the problem, she would really dare to make a fuss to Secretary Lang.
Sure enough, Captain Lin immediately asked her to come to work tomorrow. Yan Xue also showed a relieved expression, "It's a good thing I came here to ask, otherwise this matter would have been messed up."
He makes a fuss when he should, and backs off when he should. He is completely unlike other young people who hold on to their anger.
It seemed that her previous performance was mostly acting. Captain Lin looked at Yan Xue again.
Yan Xue let him watch, and said jokingly, "If I hadn't made this trip, I would have thought I had offended your family in some way."
Captain Lin paused, obviously understanding.
Yan Xue smiled and said goodbye, "Then I won't disturb you from working. Let's gather at 6:20 tomorrow, right?"
Even this is clear, it is obvious that he came prepared.
Captain Lin coughed and nodded, "I'll send you the helmet and tools tonight."
The safety helmet in the forest farm is actually a wicker hat, commonly known as a "rattan hat" by the forest farm people. Yan Xue had seen many people wearing it before. The tools for clearing the forest are mainly axes and hand saws.
The so-called forest clearing refers to the treatment of logging residues after logging.
After all, after the trees are cut down and the timber harvesting is completed, there are still tree stumps and branches left on the mountain. If they are not cleaned up, subsequent afforestation work cannot be carried out.
Some forest farms have special forest clearing workers. Jinchuan Forest Farm has been striving to be advanced every year, and its logging tasks have always been heavy, so it simply outsourced this work to the family team and calculated the wages on a daily basis.
The next day, Yan Xue arrived at the meeting place five minutes early. After waiting for a while, the commuter bus arrived.
After reaching the mountain, everyone continued to clean up along the direction they had cleared yesterday. Captain Lin called over a young woman in her early twenties and pointed at Yan Xue, "Xiao Lang, take her with you."
Yan Xue looked over and found that she had seen this person before. It was Yue'e who helped help Aunt Guo return home.
It turns out that her surname is Lang, but I don’t know what her relationship is with Secretary Lang. After all, this is a rare surname, which originated from the big Manchu surname Niuhulu.
The other person obviously recognized her and nodded, "Okay." He took her aside and started teaching her how to use an axe and a hand saw. Lang Yue'e was not a talkative person and did not ask Yan Xue about what happened yesterday. But others were not necessarily so. After a while, someone came over and whispered to Yan Xue, "You said yesterday that someone told you that the family team had recruited enough people. Who told you that? Was it Captain Lin's wife?"
Yan Xue just lowered her head and smiled, as if she was a little shy. There was no trace of how she shouted those words in public yesterday.
The man just thought she was embarrassed to say it out loud, "Okay, okay, I know you're in a difficult situation, just don't say it."
Then he couldn't help but whisper, "How did you offend Cheng Yuzhen? She's not a good fighter and is especially good at coaxing men. Didn't you see that you made such a fuss yesterday? How can she be fine today? You better be careful in the future, or she will make things difficult for you."
At work today, Captain Lin and his wife were indeed doing fine as usual, but not everyone is like Liang Qimao and his wife, whose quarrels are known throughout several blocks.
Yan Xue continued to work with her head down, and asked, "Is this how it's done?"
"Yes, leave these thick ones out, over there in the pile of thin branches." The man pointed and lowered his voice, "I think she's targeting you, or is it because of your Qi Fang."
This time Yan Xue looked at her with a puzzled look in her eyes.
"Doesn't your Qi Fang have a grudge against Yu Yongzhi? She's as close to Yu Yongzhi's sister Yu Cuiyun as anyone can be. It must be Yu Cuiyun who asked her to treat you like this."
Somehow, word of this reached the logging team on the mountain, and Liu Weiguo shared the same view. "Tell me what you did to Yu Yongzhi. He, his brother-in-law, and his sister are all picking on your family."
Qi Fang frowned at first, but he still cleared the snow around the roots of the trees to be felled to make it easier for the sawyers to enter and cut them down. This was called "rubbing the roots" in the jargon. "Not necessarily."
"What do you mean by not necessarily?" Liu Weiguo didn't understand at all. He asked again, but Qi Fang remained silent.
He simply brought back the previous topic, "You're almost done, right? Do you want to go to the family team later? At least you can support your wife and prevent her from being bullied."
Qi Fang didn't even raise his head. "You didn't say she's even harder to mess with than me?"
"I did say that, but no matter how difficult she is, she is still a woman, right? Are you so confident?"
After Liu Weiguo finished speaking, he lowered his voice and chuckled, "Besides, how many days have you two not seen each other? Don't miss me at all? Don't be embarrassed. I'll go with you. Just say we got off work early today and passed by there."
This time Qi Fang finally looked at him, his eyes deep, with a hint of inquiry and confusion, "Do I want to go or do you want to go?"
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