He Xiaogang was short and had the build of a frail scholar. Every day, he worked in the production team, earning only seven centimeters. Liu Moli looked down on him.
In today's rural areas, if you don't earn enough, you won't get much food. He Xiaogang didn't earn enough, so he barely had enough to eat, and certainly didn't have any extra to offer Liu Moli. Furthermore, every time he went to work, He Xiaogang was exhausted doing his own part, making it impossible for him to help Liu Moli.
Four years of rural life had worn away Liu Moli's innocence and liveliness. The intense labor in the countryside had left calluses on her hands and her skin had become dark, yellow, and rough.
Every morning, Liu Moli would look at her haggard self in the mirror and smile self-deprecatingly. These days were a world apart from her life in the city four years ago. With so little to eat and so little money to burn, when would this end?
Over the past few years, although Liu Moli has not become a profit-seeking rural woman, she still looks down on men like He Xiaogang who try to get close to her without any benefits.
The educated youth site was built by the villagers of Zhoujia Village a few years ago specifically for the educated youth who went to the countryside.
In those days, young people in the city responded to the call of the nation and went to the countryside to receive re-education from the poor and lower-middle peasants. In other words, city kids couldn't just learn from books; they had to go to the countryside to participate in labor and experience the hardships of the peasants.
At the beginning, there were only one or two educated youth sent to the countryside. The village chief of Zhoujia Village was still Zhou Hongming's father. He assigned the educated youth from the city to live in the villagers' homes, and the village provided a small monthly food subsidy.
At first, the educated youth were enthusiastic about their work. But after a few days of working alongside the villagers, they began to complain bitterly. Rural labor was incredibly intense, starting at dawn and ending at dusk. After just one day, the educated youth, not only in pain from their arms and backs that couldn't be lifted, but also from the palms of their hands gripping the hoes, developed blisters.
Unlike in the city, life in the countryside was different. If you weren't feeling well, you could take a day off to rest. During the double-harvest season, the crops in the fields were ready for harvest. Even if the educated youth's hands were covered in blisters, they would just pick the crops the night before and then continue working the next day.
The food in the countryside is definitely not as refined as the food people eat in the city. In addition, the harvests in those years were not very good, so the villagers only had sweet potato porridge at home. The whole family would grab a handful of rice and add some wild vegetables and grains to make a thin porridge for three meals a day. Even in the harvest season, the villagers would at most add a few vegetable dumplings to fill their stomachs.
The village's food allowance for the educated youth was modest: ten kilograms of rice and twenty kilograms of sweet potatoes per month. This allowance was the maximum tolerance the old village chief could offer. In those days, every household was struggling, so the village had to keep some food in reserve, in case any villager ran out of food and had nowhere to borrow.
The educated youth's grain subsidy was already the share of a working class in the village. Every family had to live frugally to survive. If they ate dry food every day, the educated youth's food would not even be enough for themselves.
The educated youth lived in the homes of villagers, eating the same old sweet potato and vegetable leaf porridge every day. There were barely any grains of rice in the porridge, leaving only the thin soup, barely enough to reflect a person's reflection. The educated youth had suddenly gone from a life of plenty to starvation, feeling incredibly aggrieved. Furthermore, they had to work with the production team during the day, leaving little food in their stomachs at night, leaving them unable to sleep in the middle of the night due to hunger.
As time went on, the educated youth became increasingly dissatisfied. Some of them even acted like city dwellers, believing they deserved special care from the villagers. After all, shouldn't the villagers cook all their food for them? How could they possibly finish ten kilograms of rice and twenty kilograms of sweet potatoes with only thin porridge every day?
The villagers who had educated youth living in their homes were also fed up and flocked to the old village headman's house to complain. The educated youth, living in their own homes, would eat as soon as it was time for dinner, leaving their bowls and leaving immediately, sometimes even complaining about the taste of the food. They wouldn't even think about washing the dishes or sharing the housework. Were they just hiring a "father" or "mother" to keep them at home?
The old village chief initially thought that the educated youth going to the countryside was just a formality and that they would be able to return to the city within a year or two.
Unexpectedly, wave after wave of educated youth continued to move to the countryside, even transferring their household registrations there. Two years passed, and the old village chief heard nothing about the educated youth returning to the city. Only then did he realize that these young people from the city had become residents of Zhoujia Village.
This was the way it was in the countryside; no matter how much they disliked the guests, they would maintain a superficial politeness. For the first year or two, the villagers of Zhoujia Village were very tolerant of the educated youth. When the team leader assigned work, he would assign the educated youth some of the easier tasks.
However, once they learned that the educated youth would settle down in the countryside, the villagers' politeness vanished. "We're all from Zhoujia Village, so why should you be treated specially?" And this wasn't just a one-off favor. Wouldn't it make my job harder if I took care of you?
The villagers had complaints, so the team leader had no choice but to follow the rules when assigning work. If the educated youth were to be given light work to earn high salaries, the team leader would surely be drowned in the villagers' spit.
From that point on, the educated youth were paid only as much as they could perform. This left many who were unable to lift anything at all completely helpless. Compared to the villagers, who were used to farm work, the educated youth only did half as much work in a day and were paid only five or six cents per cent. The few who did manage to earn seven cents were the result of some villagers taking pity on them and turning a blind eye.
They only gained five or six centimeters a day, which was worse than even the old women in the village. Feeling ashamed, the educated youth were more worried about their stomachs.
The rules of the countryside were clear: if you didn't work, you got no centimeters, and the fewer centimeters you got, the less food you got. The educated youth toiled tirelessly, only to have a meager stomach year-round. Eating a meal became a distant dream for them.
Even the most nitpicky people lost their energy after being dizzy and hungry every day. Since they couldn't even earn enough food to eat, the educated youth no longer despised the sweet potato porridge they ate at the villagers' homes.
If they weren't family members, eating from the same pot for a long time would definitely lead to conflicts. When the villagers saw that the village no longer subsidized the educated youth's food, they were unwilling to let the educated youth eat and drink for free at home.
The old village chief was afraid that the conflict between the villagers and the educated youth would deepen, so he simply called on the villagers and the educated youth to work together during the slack season to build a educated youth site.
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