Each member of the Yan family had to kowtow three times. Xuemei was a little at a loss, feeling awkward about her identity. If she kowtowed, she wasn't a real member of the Yan family yet; if she didn't, she was already Dongnan's betrothed. Grandma Yan didn't care and pushed her, telling her to go and kowtow after Dongnan.
The last one was Yan Xiaonan. Cuihua stepped forward, wanting to kneel down and kowtow while holding her daughter, but Yan Xiaoqiang took her away. He knelt down with his daughter in his arms and kowtowed three times.
This action shocked the villagers so much that their eyes almost popped out. The elderly in the village usually lived with their youngest son. When the youngest son was still a child, the head of the family would hold him and kowtow. Yan Xiaoqiang's action meant that he would live with his youngest daughter from now on.
Everyone's eyes were on Grandma Yan. If Grandma Yan disagreed, they would have to step forward and hit Yan Xiaoqiang on the head three times. If she agreed, they would pick up Yan Xiaonan and hit her on the head three times.
Grandma Yan went up, picked up Yan Xiaonan, and gently patted her head three times. She then told Xinan and Beinan to take Xiaonan back to the house to sleep, as it was too noisy here and the little girl hadn't woken up yet; she had frowned earlier.
The whole village was shaken. The Yan family was the first to say that they would take care of their youngest daughter in their old age. There has never been a daughter taking care of her parents in old age. What is the Yan family trying to do? Are they trying to kill their own daughter?
Everyone started whispering and discussing: "Has the Yan family gone mad from building such a house? They only have one daughter, don't they want her to get married? If she's their daughter, which young man would dare to marry her?"
"That's not necessarily true. Look at that little girl, she's already so beautiful at such a young age. When she grows up, she'll definitely be more beautiful than a fairy."
"You talk as if you've seen a celestial being. Your son is the right age, though. Why don't you arrange a marriage between him and the Yan family?"
“My family is too poor. We can’t even feed ourselves. How can we support their whole family? No way.”
"Hehe, the Yan family just finished building their house, and Old Tang still has a whole house full of furniture. They expect you to support them, how can you be so shameless?"
Old Tang, oh dear, Old Tang and his daughter were picking up candy. How could they forget about picking up candy? Hurry, hurry, there are so many candies on the ground that everyone can pick them up! So, all the adults and children in the village rushed over and started picking up candy, forgetting all about their daughter taking care of them in their old age.
Today was the busiest day for Sister Ma. Yan Xiaoqiang took out cornmeal and wheat bran and asked Sister Ma to help find people to make cornbread, two for each person, which would amount to more than 240.
The village chief and the others had already decided yesterday to have a feast of wild boar stew on the day the Yan family raised their roof beam. They cooked two large pots of the wild boar, and for dinner, they would have steamed buns with the wild boar meat and eat to their heart's content.
After the roof beam was raised, the house was basically finished. Yan Xiaoqiang and his childhood friend spent a whole week to completely get the new house done. Now that the weather is getting warmer, the new house can be furnished after airing out for a few days.
Tang Jianjun worked as a carpenter for a whole month, filling his own yard, main room, and even the thatched hut where he stored farm tools with finished furniture. He even wanted his wife to have a set of such furniture, but unfortunately, the village stipulated that trees could not be cut down before land was approved for building a house, so he had to give up.
Today is a good day to move furniture. Yan Xiaoqiang, along with Dongnan and several childhood friends, went to Tang Jianjun's house to move the furniture. Cuihua and Xuemei put up couplets on the door of the new house. Once the furniture is in, everything can be put to rest.
Xuemei felt a sense of peace as she watched her room being filled with furniture piece by piece. She carefully examined each piece, opening the wardrobe to look inside and touching the drawers. These were things that would accompany her for a lifetime.
The more she looked at him, the more she liked him, and the more she wanted to get married. She glanced shyly at Yan Dongnan, who looked back at her with a smile. Yan Xiaonan saw their interaction. Goodness, Dongnan is only sixteen this year, and Xuemei is only thirteen, how come they are so mature?
North and Southwest were also very excited to see the furniture, but they were still young and at the most mischievous age. They didn't care about these things yet; they just knew that these things were for them to use when they got married in the future.
Yan Xiaonan also carefully examined the furniture, becoming more and more astonished and amazed. Each piece of furniture was simple and elegant, made with thick materials, and contained no nails; it was all assembled with wooden pegs.
Based on this alone, Tang Jianjun's carpentry skills are truly outstanding. He is a veteran craftsman, and with the progress of the times, there are fewer and fewer of these veteran craftsmen.
This person needs to be kept in mind. Perhaps there will be an opportunity to open a furniture factory in the future. A small goal has already formed in Yan Xiaonan's mind, and she is just waiting for herself to grow up.
The construction of the Yan family's house is now complete. Yan Xiaoqiang will definitely not treat his childhood friends unfairly. He gave each of them two catties of cornmeal and ten catties of wheat bran, but the friends resolutely refused. For more than a month, the Yan family has been making pancakes for them every day with three catties of cornmeal mixed with five catties of wheat bran. The Yan family has almost no food left.
Yan Xiaoqiang shook his head. He said that he had taken some time to go to town to exchange the wild boar he had hunted last time for some grain. He said that he still had some grain stored at home. He told them to stock up on grain as soon as possible, as there was not enough rain this year and he was worried about a drought.
The childhood friends and Tang Jianjun felt a chill run down their spines. They looked up at the sky and saw that it was indeed a clear blue sky with white clouds. They withdrew their hands, which were originally about to refuse the grain, and nodded to Yan Xiaoqiang, thanking him as a brother.
The weather is getting hotter and hotter. It's already September, but the heat hasn't subsided at all. Bei Nan and Xin Nan go fishing by the river every day with their fishing rods and have been tanned to a crisp. Strangely, as long as Zhong Nan doesn't go, the two of them always return empty-handed.
The water in the stream is getting shallower and shallower, and you can see the mud at the bottom. The crops in the fields depend on this stream. If the stream dries up, this year's spring planting will be a complete failure.
The town's grain station received grain once in July, rationed according to the amount each person could buy, with each person only allowed to buy ten jin of coarse grain and one jin of fine grain. Grain arrived again in August, rationed according to the amount each person could buy, with each person only allowed to buy five jin of coarse grain, and no fine grain was available.
The grain for September had not yet arrived, but people kept coming to the grain station to inquire, which annoyed the staff so much that they simply closed the gate. In fact, they themselves were also extremely anxious.
Yan Xiaonan still has nearly two thousand catties of white rice in his space. If he were to exchange it for coarse grains, he could get at least six thousand catties. However, the difficulty is not in exchanging the grain, but in how to take the grain out with a legitimate reason.
The wild boar they traded last time yielded nearly 300 jin of cornmeal and about 1,000 jin of wheat bran, as well as white rice that they would occasionally sneak out of their spatial storage. Xue Mei had once wondered if there was an endless supply of white rice at home. Dong Nan told Xue Mei with a smile that her grandmother was very good at hiding things, especially rice, which was Nan Nan's staple food. She would hide it every time she got it in the trade.
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