A basket full of steaming hot dumplings was brought to the table, followed by the fragrant wild vegetable and egg soup. At this time, the door of the educated youth site was pushed open from the outside. Yi Huoyang led the way, and a group of five people walked in, each holding a bundle of firewood.
Seeing this, Du Jiang and Qian Meili hurried out of the yard and scooped a few basins of water from the basin under the window of the east wing.
"Thank you," Huo Yang was as dull as ever, and the others also looked powerless. Their faces looked gloomy. Du Jiang and Qian Meili were shocked at the same time. If the fields were exhausting just now, then now they were like frost-bitten eggplants without any strength at all.
"Well, let's eat after we finish washing up." Seeing the fatigue on their faces, Qian Meili softened her tone and immediately pulled Du Jiang back to the house.
After the two of them sat down, Huo Yang and his group, who had just finished washing up, came in. They all had crew cuts, but they were of different heights, weights, and bodies. This inexplicably reminded Du Jiang of a musical instrument called a panpipe.
In just a moment, Du Jiang shook his head, shaking off this unreliable idea.
At this time, Huo Yang and his group of five had already taken their seats opposite. As Huo Yang served the food, everyone finally started eating.
Even though it was just two grams of noodles with wild vegetable and egg soup, everyone ate it with gusto. There was no way around it, this kind of food was already considered very good in the village. You know, most people in the village mixed wild vegetables or other dishes into their steamed buns. Some families even only ate sweet potatoes or yam eggs for every meal, and paired it with a bowl of clear porridge in which you could count the rice grains. Like the thick wild vegetable and egg soup made by Qian Meili and Du Jiang, although there was only one egg, it was still considered a delicacy.
The food supply relationship of the educated youth who went to the countryside also changed. They could receive 28 kilograms of food every month. This amount was not much, especially for the male educated youth who had a big appetite. It was basically just enough to make them 60% to 70% full. If they wanted to eat until they were full, that was just a dream.
Although Qian Meili and Du Jiang cooked the meal together, they did not have to wash the dishes together. Instead, they each washed their own lunch boxes. Yes, you read that right, lunch boxes. They were the ones they each brought with them when they went to the countryside, which saved everyone the trouble of buying bowls.
Huo Yang finished washing first, then returned to the house and scooped out his share of food into a wooden basin. He then placed the basin on the table, looked up at Du Jiang and Qian Meili who were sitting opposite him, and said calmly, "Food for dinner."
Qian Meili, who was in charge of cooking, nodded immediately, "Okay, I understand."
As for Du Jiang, who was in charge of assisting, he nodded as if he understood.
Huo Yang glanced at her without saying a word and just turned back to the house. Seeing this, the others also scooped out food. Then, only Qian Meili and Du Jiang were left in the main house.
Du Jiang wiped the sweat from his forehead and stood up and walked into the house.
Du Jiang's bed was at the innermost part of the dormitory, close to the wall, and the window was near the door, so the light inside was not very good. In addition, dirt occasionally fell from the rough wall, making it look a bit gray.
Du Jiang took off his shoes and climbed onto the bed, "Sister Qian, I'm going to sleep first."
"Go to sleep, I want to sleep for a while too," Qian Meili also had a tired look on her face.
As the two of them lay down, the whole room fell silent again.
Covered with a thin quilt, Du Jiang's thoughts were a little dazed, and he suddenly remembered what happened half a month ago.
At that time, she was tossing and turning in pain in her rental house because of the torture of cancer. She was so weak that she didn't even have the strength to get up and drink water.
There was only a single bed in the empty rental house. Du Jiang curled up on the blue checkered sheets like a ball, with sweat all over his pale cheeks.
As an orphan, she had no extra savings. After two consecutive treatments, Du Jiang gave up. There was no other way. The cost of each chemotherapy was very high, which she could not afford as a recent graduate. She also did not have much hope for cancer. She just felt that the machine of fate was unfair, as if all the suffering was poured on her. The bitterness made Du Jiang exude a bitter taste from the bones.
In that small room that could only fit a single bed, Du Jiang spent her last days. She was tortured by illness every day and became thinner day by day. In just half a month, she became skin and bones. You should know that although Du Jiang was not tall, she was about 1.65 meters tall, but at that time she weighed only 40 to 50 kilograms, and was a skeleton.
Cangzhou experienced heavy rain for several consecutive days in June, and the small rental house was damp. Du Jiang didn't know what he was thinking at the time. Perhaps it was to prevent the food piled on the floor from getting damp or the textbooks brought from school from getting damp, so Du Jiang ordered a five-layer iron bookshelf and then waited.
However, the rain that day was really heavy, and there were lightning and thunder outside. Looking at the golden lightning flashing from time to time outside the window and the deafening thunder, Du Jiang curled up in bed. She didn't know whether it was the pain of the illness or the fear of thunder and lightning. She stared blankly at the pots and pans on the narrow space under the bed, the noodles and eggs on the plastic stool, and the instant noodles in the cardboard box, a little absent-minded.
Later, Du Jiang felt numbness all over her body, from her chest to her limbs, mixed with excruciating pain. The pain made her eyes go black, and then she fainted.
When he opened his eyes again, he was still in a room, but it was not Du Jiang's narrow rental house. Instead, it was a room with white walls and a sense of age. The room was not very big but not very small either. At least it was much bigger than Du Jiang's rental house.
Looking up and around, a stream of memories that did not belong to Du Jiang came gushing out, rushing into her aching head, and Du Jiang fainted instantly.
When she woke up, it was already night, a night of torrential rain. Du Jiang returned to the 1960s, an era she had only heard about from the orphanage director. It was an era she had never experienced, but she knew from the stories told by the director's mothers that it was a difficult time.
She spent half a month in the Du family in a daze. When the news came that the educated youth were going to the countryside, Du Jiang stood up to her reluctant sister Du Ke and her brother Du Liangcai who was still in school. She stared at the guilty eyes of her family and fled from the home that was unfamiliar to her.
After four days and three nights of rattling on the train, she and others finally arrived in Hualin City, a thousand miles away. Then they changed trains for another day before arriving at their assigned destination - Dujia Village, a small village surrounded by mountains on three sides with only a hundred or so households. The first time Du Jiang entered the village, she was shocked by the poor and dilapidated village in front of her. The unfinished houses in front of her kept her in shock for a long time.
"Click"
A sudden flash of light outside the window interrupted Du Jiang's memories. She quickly stood up and looked towards the window. The flashes of light and the darkness in her eyes made her realize that it must be raining outside.
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