"Grandma." A girl wearing a thick navy blue cotton jacket and two pigtails walked in and shouted towards the kitchen.
She looked to be about thirteen or fourteen years old, with a thin build, a slightly yellow complexion, delicate features, and her little face was red from the cold wind outside. The breath she exhaled turned into white mist. The girl walked into the house, stomped her feet, put down the patched shoulder bag on her shoulder, touched her younger brother and sister who were hiding in the quilt on the kang, and turned to walk towards the kitchen.
That person was Jiang Dani. Time passed quickly, and five years had passed in the blink of an eye. It had also been five years since Jiang Yilu was reborn into this era.
Jiang Yiliu and Jiang Sini had woken up long ago, but they just hid in the warm kang and refused to come out. The five-year-old Jiang Yiliu was completely different from the red monkey back then.
Maybe it was because he was curled up on the heated kang, his fair and tender little face was rosy, and his facial features were delicate and pretty. Except for his nose which was like his father Jiang Dahai, the rest of his features were like his uncle Gu Xiashi, and even better, which perfectly illustrates what it means that a nephew resembles his uncle.
The Jiang family didn't mind, because the men in their old Jiang family were only good-looking. They were so happy that their grandson was handsome. No one in the village had a child as handsome as their precious grandson. If he looked like this, it meant that their grandson was destined to be a city dweller in the future. This was what Old Lady Miao said, and no one knew where she got the causal relationship from.
During these five years, the Jiang family has also undergone many changes.
Jiang Dani is now a fifth-grade student. Jiang Erni started school two years later and is now in the third grade. Jiang Sanni is also ten years old this year. Old Lady Miao was not satisfied with the family paying for several girls to go to school. Moreover, Dani and Erni were already in school, so she wanted Sanni to stay and help her with housework. It was only after Jiang Yiluo's soft and hard persuasion that Old Lady Miao agreed to allow Jiang Sanni to go to school. It cost her six yuan a year, which made the old lady very distressed.
The school was located in the Hongqi Commune in the neighboring village, and it took two or three hours to walk back and forth. Jiang Dani would come back home after school every morning to help Grandma Miao with housework. Erni and Sanni would take dry food for the afternoon and stay in school every day.
Jiang Yiluo had advised his eldest sister more than once that it was obviously not cost-effective for her to walk such a long distance every day just to come back to help grandma with work for so long. Besides, he was there with grandma, so there was no need for her to do so.
But Jiang Dani still insisted on coming back at noon every day. She felt that she would only feel at ease if she did more work. Now the three girls in the family were all in school and there were a lot of servants at home. If she did more work every day, her grandmother would no longer think about letting one of them drop out of school and come back.
Jiang Dani cherishes this hard-earned opportunity very much. Jiang Yilu also understands what she is thinking. Apart from feeling more pity for this elder sister, he dares not persuade her any more.
It is late autumn now, and the climate in Northeast China is already very cold. Jiang Dahai and Gu Dongmei are the main force of the production team. They have no time to rest at this time. The production team has to harvest the sweet potatoes in the fields before the cold winter comes. These sweet potatoes are the main food for the villagers for the next six months. Part of them will be steamed and dried to make sweet potato flour that is easy to preserve. If they eat sparingly, the sweet potato flour allocated to each household is enough for a family to eat for half a year. In this way, the remaining food can be exchanged with city people for industrial coupons and other tickets that their village does not have.
From small screws to large bicycles, all these things require industrial coupons. However, such rare tickets can only be obtained by people working in factories. Therefore, those who have relatives working in factories would use grain to ask others to exchange some tickets for them.
In recent years, the government has tightened its control and does not allow people to conduct such private transactions. Once caught, they will be severely criticized. Therefore, villagers are extremely cautious when doing such things. They only dare to exchange money secretly with acquaintances. In this way, even if they are caught, they can say that it is normal transactions between relatives.
The Jiang family has lived a good life in recent years. After all, Jiang Dahai and Gu Dongmei are both hardworking and earn a lot of work points, plus there is the monthly subsidy from Old Man Jiang.
Since the quarrel that day, the second branch of the Jiang family has never come to the Jiang family's old house again. During the holidays, they simply go directly to Fan Xiaojuan's parents' home, as if they really want to cut off this relationship. Jiang Yiliu knows that his second uncle will never let them go so easily, and he has never relaxed his vigilance against their family.
The weather is cold now, and Jiang Yilu's body may not have been replenished in the womb. His hands and feet are cold in this weather. He spends most of the day hiding in the hot kang, covered with a thick quilt and refusing to come out.
These days, corn stalks, wheat stalks, cotton stubble, bean stalks, sweet potato vines and other fuel materials were all distributed. Because of Jiang Yilu's health, the fuel materials his family received were not enough every winter. Finally, they asked Meng Pingchuan in the city to find some connections and bought some coal briquettes. Coal briquettes could be burned more often than corn stalks, and the price was also much higher.
"Brother, let me help you put on your clothes." Si Ni crawled into the bed, with her little head tucked into the thick quilt, and said to her brother beside her with great reluctance.
Every time the eldest sister comes back, it means time for lunch, which means time to get up. Sini benefits from her younger brother. Old Mrs. Miao has a lot of work to do on weekdays and cannot always keep her darling little baby under her nose, so she lets the fourth granddaughter who is closest to her grandson in age take care of her younger brother. As a result, Jiang Sini enjoys the right to get up with her brother.
Si Ni is lazy by nature and her reactions are usually slower than those of normal people. It may be because she was weaned too early as a child. She is thin and small, and looks the same age as Jiang Yilu, who is two years younger than her. If they go out, people who don’t know them would think they are twins, a boy and a girl.
Although she is small in stature, she has a strong sense of being an older sister. Every time she wakes up, she thinks about helping her younger brother get dressed. However, Jiang Yilu, who has the skin of a child but the heart of an adult, how could she let her seven-year-old sister help her get dressed? She refuses every time.
Jiang Yilu had to wear a lot of clothes, because he always caught a cold easily in this season. These days, the village health station had very few medicines, and once he had a fever, he had to go to the county hospital, which was both troublesome and time-consuming. So Jiang Yilu would always subconsciously wear more clothes in this kind of weather to try not to catch a cold.
The small inner garment was altered from his father Jiang Dahai's clothes, and the outer sweater was re-knitted with the wool from an old sweater. This method is a feature nowadays, and his is already pretty good, at least the fabrics used are still intact. Many people's clothes are patched beyond repair and are full of patches, but they still wear them anyway, because cloth coupons are so rare.
After Jiang Yilu put on four tops and three pairs of trousers, he put on a thick cotton-padded jacket. This cotton-padded jacket was also modified from Old Man Jiang's old cotton-padded jacket. He specially asked his mother to modify it into an ankle-length style, which was enough to wrap the whole person. Although it looks weird now, at least it is extremely warm to wear.
After Jiang Yilu put on the last coat, he looked like a ball. His armpits were stretched out by the thick layers of clothes. His hands couldn't stick to his body at all. They were slightly open, and he walked like a little penguin.
He was thankful that people nowadays didn't know what a penguin looked like, so no one would laugh at him for this. He looked down at his own inconvenience and sighed. He could only wait until his body was stronger and put exercise on the agenda. He couldn't let his body hold him back in this life.
"Xiaobao, grandma made some egg custard for you, and it's only for you to eat. Don't feed it to Si Ni secretly. You are weak and need to nourish your body, okay?"
As soon as Old Lady Miao came out of the kitchen, she saw her precious grandson. Her old face was as bright as a chrysanthemum. She held Jiang Yilu's hand and said affectionately, "This grandson of hers is good in every way, but he likes his sisters too much. He likes to secretly share any good things with those girls, which makes the old lady particularly dissatisfied."
However, in the old lady's view, this was also because her grandson was too kind-hearted, and she was afraid that if she was not careful, her precious grandson would suffer again.
Jiang Yilu responded with a smile, but as for what to do when the time comes, that is another matter.
Facing the elderly who were particularly kind to him, he felt mixed emotions, not knowing how to treat them, and could only hide it with a smile. Over the past five years, he had gradually gotten used to the kindness of his grandparents, parents, and him, but at the same time, he clearly knew that this kindness was only based on the fact that he was a boy in this life. If he was still Jiang Lai Di in his previous life, he would probably still have the same painful life as in his previous life.
So he couldn't accept this kindness without any reservations, and couldn't really accept them from the bottom of his heart. Now, he could only hypnotize himself and try to please the grandparents who were the real masters of the family, and make the lives of his sisters easier in his own way.
His efforts were still effective. At least, Mrs. Miao, who treated him as her dearest child, almost obeyed his words. Under his persuasion, Mrs. Miao was no longer so mean to her granddaughters, except for occasional scolding. His sisters all started going to school, and the food was much better than before.
Jiang Yilu took advantage of Old Lady Miao's inattention and scooped a spoonful of egg custard into Fourth Sister's mouth. The two of them had done this action countless times and had become extremely coordinated.
Jiang Yilu also ate a spoonful, feeling the smooth and delicious egg custard in his mouth, and smiled at his fourth sister. He believed that with his efforts, the five siblings would live a different life in this life.
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