At the Lin family home, Aunt Lin hadn't slept well all morning because it was too cold inside.
Xiaohua is too young to control the burning speed of the firewood.
Only when the house gets cold will I remember to add some firewood to the kitchen.
Aunt Lin was in pain all over, but she felt better after resting for a night.
She struggled to get off the kang (a heated brick bed), turned over a corner of the kang, and pulled out some small bills.
It was all one-cent coins; I counted them, and it only amounted to eight cents, plus two two-jin grain coupons.
This is all the family's savings are left.
She slept quite well last night, which was rare for her. It wasn't until she woke up this morning that she belatedly realized why she had slept so well.
It's because my son has really changed for the better.
He barely slept a wink all night, spending the entire night adding firewood to the kitchen so she could get a good night's rest.
That's great, my son has improved.
But she still loved her son. It pained her to see him staying up all night to watch over the fire.
So he took out all the money he had and handed it to Xiaohua:
"Take your money and coupons and go to the supply and marketing cooperative to see if you can scrape together enough to buy some coal."
Xiaohua took the money and tickets, muttering grumbling in dissatisfaction:
"Coal has already risen to three cents, and there aren't enough coupons; you can't even buy 30 jin (15 catties) of it."
"Hey, we can owe the tickets to the supply and marketing cooperative for now, and buy as many as we can."
...
Lin Mo entered the courtyard and happened to run into Xiao Hua, who was taking money and coupons to buy coal.
He overheard the conversation.
In the mountain villages of Northeast China, coal is not a very efficient fuel. If a family were to rely entirely on burning coal for heating, it would take them nearly 150 days, from autumn to spring, to burn about 3,000 jin (1,500 catties) of coal.
On average, it costs 10 jin a day, which is 3 cents a jin, so it costs 30 cents a day.
Actually, it's not too bad. Five yuan is enough for the cost of coal each year.
But their own family's finances were already riddled with holes from their own actions; even five dollars could bankrupt a family.
He also understood why his mother had emptied the last few cents of their savings to send Xiaohua to buy coal.
It must be because of myself.
I went into the kitchen to cook for my mother.
After working so hard for so long, we still have nothing at home, except for the twenty-odd kilograms of rice we got in exchange for the rabbit.
Then look at the layout of your own house.
The west room of my house has a separate heated kang (a traditional heated bed), so I can add coal to the kang from inside the room without having to run out repeatedly.
The east room where my mother and Xiaohua lived was connected to the kitchen, so the heat from cooking would go into the east room; if no food was being cooked, there would be no heat.
In the summer, however, the east room would become unbearably hot whenever someone cooked, making it uninhabitable, but I never heard my mother or Xiaohua complain about it.
This represents taking thrift to the extreme.
I want to have enough money right away to buy more coal for the house and convert my mother's kang (heated brick bed) into a separate kang.
What to do if I have no money...
He suddenly remembered the wild boar.
I originally wanted to replace that wild boar with piglets for breeding, but the cycle is too long, and it's not a quick fix.
Compared to the pedantic production team leader Chen Gang, village chief Wu Fengshou seemed less pedantic.
After the rice porridge in the pot was cooked, Lin Mo chopped some pickled vegetables.
After serving the food to his mother and bringing it into the house, he turned and left home to see if he could try his luck at the village chief's house.
They traded wild boars for some coal with the village chief.
Theoretically, a wild boar weighing over 200 to nearly 300 pounds can be exchanged for 5,000 pounds of coal.
But that wild boar was male, so it couldn't be used as meat in exchange.
Two thousand catties?
To solve this urgent problem and put my mother's mind at ease, I'd be willing to exchange it for a thousand kilograms.
On the other side, the village chief was holed up at home, sitting quietly eating with his wife Liu Juan and son Wu Ji.
A bowl of rabbit meat and half a fish were placed on the wooden table, but the village chief looked worried.
This was the second-to-last meat meal, and the team couldn't resist fish for two days straight.
After tonight's meal, the fish will be completely gone.
I wish I could live like this every day; who wouldn't want to eat meat at every meal?
"Knock knock knock".
Just as I was lost in thought during my meal, there was a knock on the courtyard gate.
"Village chief, are you staying at home?"
The village chief recognized Lin Mo's voice from across the courtyard and silently walked out of the yard to open the door.
Seeing that the guy's hands were empty, his expectant eyes drooped again.
"What's up?"
“Good news,” Lin Mo forced a smile.
"I caught a wild boar in the mountains."
Upon hearing this, the village chief's eyes lit up.
With shifty eyes, he cautiously peered out of the yard, then grabbed Lin Mo and pulled him inside, closing the door behind him.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen recipes, such as braised pork, dried cured pork, stewed pig's trotters, and stir-fried pork belly, floated through the village chief's mind one after another.
Before the village chief could ask any questions with surprise, Lin Mo confessed first:
"Bad news, it's a male, so we can't eat it."
"But if we can find a pig farm, we can trade piglets with them."
The village chief's heart was taken on a roller coaster by Lin Mo's words, going up and down in turns.
"Chen Gang went to the county and hasn't come back yet." The implication is that the previous bet is still far from being finalized.
Lin Mo did not directly address this point, but instead stated the purpose of his trip:
"Anyway, I'm simple-minded. I just want to trade this male wild boar for two thousand catties of coal."
"It's a great deal."
The village chief mentioned Chen Gang because he wanted to get to know Lin Mo about everything, down to the smallest detail.
He certainly wanted the pig, but he had to pull some strings to lower the value of a wild boar.
However, his plan to pull things apart fell through, and he could only mutter to himself in his heart.
Wild boar, male, suitable for breeding.
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