Chapter 13-013 Can I exchange these eggs for ten yuan?
After a long period of turmoil, the relationship between teachers and students was not very close, and not many families were willing to send their children to school.
Many families in the commune kept having children, not hoping that they would study and get ahead, but simply thinking that the children only needed to be raised for a few years before they could help with the household chores. Whether it was a boy or a girl, by the time they were around ten years old, they could basically be used as a large part of the workforce and earn a considerable amount of work points.
To prevent situations where children run around everywhere but schools are empty in some remote areas, certain regions have implemented preferential policies.
Just like the town primary school where my mother works, they consider family background when admitting students. If the parents have urban household registration, they pay four to five yuan in tuition every year. If both parents have rural household registration, the school not only doesn't charge tuition, but also gives the student one yuan a year.
Because of this one yuan, the school can only enroll fewer than thirty students from rural households each year.
My older cousin, Song Shijia, is from a rural area. Although he doesn't have to pay tuition, he studies very hard. Also, because his aunt is a teacher at the school, he respects all the other teachers. He is an excellent student in both character and academics, and there are very few teachers in the whole school who don't like him.
"There are few female students in the school. The dormitory is on the first floor next to the cafeteria, and the boys live on the second floor." The male teacher was with Song Xiaoli and Song Shiyi. Although he did not deliberately take them to see the school facilities, he would casually explain a few things.
Song Xiaoli attended elementary school here in her previous life and has memories of the place. She also remembers that because the cafeteria was not big enough and only provided two sets of dilapidated tables and chairs, students and teachers had to eat in their offices, classrooms, or in occupied dormitories after getting their meals.
Moreover, the canteen only served two dishes a day, one meat and one vegetable, and the staple food was basically rice mixed with half coarse grains. The rice was supposed to be unlimited, but in reality, each person could only get two full bowls from the canteen lady at most. Each vegetable dish cost five cents, while a meat dish, if the main ingredient was not something cheap like offal, would cost forty or fifty cents, ten times the price of the vegetable dish. Basically, only the children in the town would occasionally buy it.
However, regardless of whether a student has an urban or rural household registration, meals on campus are not rationed. It seems that each student receives various ration coupons upon enrollment, but these coupons are not actually distributed to the students. The school simply allows students to stay on campus and pays them for their meals.
Children generally don't live and eat at school all the time. Some children from the town eat lunch at school because both parents work and can't supervise them. Those from the countryside, whose commute to school is within three hours, go home to eat and sleep, bringing their own lunch. There are also special cases where students stay at school, such as when parents are away on business, have family matters to attend to, or live too far away. The school provides accommodation regardless of whether it's long-term or short-term, as long as there's a bed available, but students must bring their own bedding from home.
The school dormitories were never full in the late 1970s and 1980s. Some single teachers would take a nap in an empty bed or simply occupy half of the dormitory.
My eldest cousin, Song Shijia, was assigned to live at school because his family was worried about him going to and from school alone (his other cousin from the same commune was staying at his uncle's house in town), so they arranged for him to stay at the school temporarily for a month.
Thinking back on her older cousin's personality, Song Xiaoli had some guesses in her mind. She felt that her older cousin might have misunderstood that her family was of ordinary means, so he was too frugal at school, which made him less healthy and caused him to catch a cold as soon as he got chilled.
I don't know how serious it is.
Thinking this, they arrived at the door of a dormitory. The male teacher who had brought them there knocked on the door and asked, "Song Shijia, are you resting? Your younger siblings have come to bring you some things."
This teacher seemed to be very particular; even when dealing with a small child, he didn't rush in before getting an answer.
Song Xiaoli appreciated this attitude, but after waiting outside for less than thirty seconds without hearing a response from inside, she felt something was wrong; it didn't fit her older cousin's polite personality.
There are only two possibilities if he doesn't answer: either he's asleep, or he's not inside.
Fortunately, my older cousin had only placed a stool behind the door so as not to disturb others coming to the dorm for lunch. When Song Xiaoli bumped into it, the stool was knocked over, and the door opened.
"Brother!" Before he could react, Song Shiyi recognized his own brown quilt at a glance and saw that his older brother seemed to be sleeping on his back. He rushed over excitedly, "Brother, I've brought my aunt's adopted sister to see you!"
Strangely, the noise from banging on the door and Song Shiyi's loud voice were not quiet, but the older child sleeping on the bed only barely moved his eyes before falling back into a drowsy sleep. It's unclear whether he mistook the noise for a dream.
Song Xiaoli quickly ran over, climbed onto her older cousin's bed, touched his forehead with the back of her hand, and pretended to be innocent, saying, "Mom said that when you're sick, you have to compare your forehead like this. If your forehead is hot, you have to take medicine."
Before she could finish speaking, Song Xiaoli's feigned innocence was almost impossible to maintain.
Oh no, my cousin has a high fever!
"It's so hot, what should we do?" This was definitely something that two children couldn't handle. Song Xiaoli's eyes were brimming with tears, and she looked pleadingly at the teacher who was still outside the dormitory.
The teacher was also surprised by this and rushed in, touching Song Shijia's forehead. "How did he get such a high fever? Fatty didn't even say a word when he asked for leave for him!"
Song Xiaoli was a little anxious. She had come here intending to go along with her younger cousin's antics and check on her older cousin's condition, but she hadn't expected to arrive to find him sick with such a high fever. Perhaps this illness would lead to his future weakness. Moreover, given her older cousin's intelligence, he could have easily passed the university entrance exams, no matter how difficult they were in this era. However, after starting boarding school in high school, his health deteriorated, and he often became excessively sleepy, ultimately only managing to obtain a high school diploma and enter his assigned job.
She moved faster than an adult, and Song Xiaoli almost couldn't catch her breath.
Prolonged high fever could damage the brain, so before we can get my older cousin to the hospital, we need to try physical cooling methods first.
Seeing that even such a young girl knew how to apply cold compresses, the male teacher finally came to his senses, took the enamel basin from under Song Shijia's bed, and went downstairs to get cold water.
After he left, Song Xiaoli gasped for breath several times before she was finally able to speak in a barely steady voice.
"Brother, let's put all the raw eggs in one basket, and take out the cooked eggs too. We'll try to get that teacher to help us exchange the eggs for money so we can take you to the hospital!"
The two children didn't bring any money or tickets with them when they went out. If Song Shiyi hadn't been thinking about bringing his brother some good food, they wouldn't have any bargaining chips left. They would probably have to try to borrow money from the teachers here by using their mother's name.
Originally, Song Xiaoli's smaller basket contained fifty raw eggs, more than half full. Fearing she couldn't carry it, Song Shiyi placed some more raw eggs on top of his own basket. He then added the eggs from his basket together, bringing the total to seventy-five raw eggs. In addition, there was a cloth bag containing twenty boiled salted duck eggs, ten hard-boiled chicken eggs, and ten hard-boiled wild duck eggs.
The townspeople received money and ration coupons every month, but getting so many eggs was no easy feat. In the free market where no coupons were needed, eggs cost about ten cents each. One hundred and fifteen eggs, some raw and some cooked, even if mixed with some small wild duck eggs, could still be exchanged for ten yuan.
Ten yuan was enough for them to take their older cousin to the hospital for treatment.
Song Xiaoli whispered the price of eggs she had "heard from someone else" to her cousin, suggesting he try exchanging the eggs for ten yuan. Song Shiyi didn't think much about how his sister had figured out the price so quickly; he was just instinctively listening to the advice of someone close to him when he felt helpless.
When the teacher returned with a basin of water that was more than half full, Song Shiyi had not only re-sorted the eggs, but had also secretly prepared his words.
"Teacher, we want to take my brother to the hospital, but my parents haven't come yet, and we don't have any money. Can we exchange these eggs for ten yuan? We brought seventy-five raw chicken eggs, and in the other bag, we have twenty duck eggs, chicken eggs, and wild duck eggs, all of which are cooked. Can we exchange all of these for ten yuan?"
After he finished speaking, Song Shiyi was so nervous that his heart was about to jump out of his chest, and he didn't dare to look the teacher in the eye.
The teacher was also stunned for a moment before realizing what the child had said.
He has elderly parents and young children to support. The whole family combined only has less than three catties of meat coupons per month, plus some other grain and oil coupons, which is simply not enough to feed the children well regularly. Recently, his youngest son has also fallen ill, probably due to the change of seasons, and needs to supplement his nutrition. However, his mother goes to the free market every day but hasn't been able to collect much good stuff.
If we can buy this many eggs for ten yuan, it will definitely last until the child recovers, and we can also share a lot with the rest of the family to supplement their nutrition.
He and his wife both have jobs, so they can easily come up with ten yuan. This kind of private transaction doesn't require a receipt, which he thinks is a great deal. But now the one proposing the transaction is a five-year-old boy, and he's a little unsure if a child can make this decision.
Seeing the teacher's interest and hesitation, Song Xiaoli quickly interjected, "Please, uncle, give us ten yuan. If you think there aren't enough eggs, I have plenty at home. We have more eggs than we can eat. I'll ask my mom to bring another basket when she goes to work."
It's said that children speak without thinking; a five-year-old boy has no reason to lie, and a three-year-old girl has no reason to lie. The teacher thought that if the Song family wasn't short of eggs, the price of this transaction would be similar to that in the free market, and he and Song Wanxia still had a colleague relationship, so there shouldn't be any major problems.
He took out a simple money pouch from the inside pocket of his somewhat worn clothes and counted out eleven one-yuan bills.
"Here's eleven yuan for you. Consider the extra yuan as a gift from your uncle to buy you candy."
Boiled eggs don't keep well, and ten wild duck eggs are small, so giving an extra piece of money shows that the teacher is quite kind.
“Then we’ll give you this basket first,” Song Xiaoli said, pointing to the small basket piled up so high that the lid couldn’t be closed. “We can have Mom take it home later. Teacher, where is the hospital in town? How do we get my brother there?”
My older cousin is already twelve years old; he's not someone two little kids under six can lift.
"I'll take you there. I've already finished my morning classes." The teacher removed the wet cloth from Song Shijia's forehead, lifted the thin blanket, and picked him up. "You two come with me. It should take us less than half an hour to walk there."
This is taking into account that children walk slowly; otherwise, it would only take adults ten minutes to walk briskly from the town's primary school to the town's hospital.
Song Xiaoli had the young man carry the empty basket on his back, put her older cousin's shoes at the bottom, stuffed a thin blanket inside, and then closed the lid. "Young man, you carry this, I'll carry the lunchbox!"
My little cousin is currently without a leader and is completely following Song Xiaoli's instructions. After putting on his not-too-heavy basket, he jogged with Song Xiaoli to catch up with the male teacher in front of them.
The male teacher, who was about 1.72 meters tall and had a slender build, appeared incredibly tall to the two children from behind.
Song Xiaoli was glad that they had met this teacher today.
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