Chapter 8: Sister Ailan
"What do you want to change?" The female doctor was stunned and stopped counting the money.
Money is precious these days, but supplies are even more precious. She has many children in her family. Recently, the little girl fell ill and wanted to drink white porridge. Both she and her husband work and have no time to queue up at the food station. They have not been able to buy white rice. Today, when she happened to go to the toilet, she heard the old lady in the courtyard mention it, so she hurried out.
The things the country folks liked to trade with them the most were soap and cloth, which were necessities that were hard to buy. Although they were both doctors, they had only a limited supply of these things, which were just enough for them to use, and they could not trade with them.
"Sister, can you exchange two bottles of cod liver oil for me?" Qin Lai Di's words surprised her.
"What do you want that medicine for?" Now it's not like the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Many domestic companies have the technology and equipment to extract cod liver oil, and the price is not as expensive as before, but it is still a medicine, and it will not be cheap.
"My sister is sick, and the doctor said she needs to take this." Pandi's night blindness and short stature are similar to rickets, which are actually manifestations of vitamin A and D deficiency, and cod liver oil is the most suitable supplement.
"I don't want it, I'm fine, sister!" Pan Di's face turned red with anxiety. This was the only food they had, how could it be wasted on her.
Lai Di smiled at her soothingly, "Just listen to me."
The little girl looked young and kept calling "Sister" left and right. The female doctor was also very fond of her and felt relieved.
Looking at the younger girl, he judged based on his clinical experience that they were not lying and were not taking the medicine indiscriminately. "But we can't exchange two bottles. The cod liver oil in our hospital is also in short supply."
After all, malnutrition is a common problem these days.
"Okay, then sister, can you give me another bottle first? If it's not enough, you can make up for it."
After a while, the female doctor came out with a bottle of Double Whale brand white cod liver oil. She taught them how to take the medicine and the contraindications of the drug, and generously gave them fifty cents.
Only when they reached a place where the hospital was out of sight did Pan Di say aggrievedly, "Three sister, you only exchanged five kilograms of rice for a bottle of medicine. We are starving to death..." Her voice choked with sobs.
She really felt sorry for the food. She didn't feel that she was sick at all, but the hunger was real. She could not take medicine, but rice could save lives.
"Little fool, we will still have food in the future. We will be able to harvest the autumn crops in two months, but you only have one pair of eyes."
Pan Di lowered her head and said nothing, but her footsteps became heavier.
"Also, why didn't you tell me and grandma that you couldn't see at night? If you had told me earlier, we could have treated it earlier and it might have been cured by now. From now on, you can't read or write under the sun, not even at night. You must sit up straight, or you will develop myopia instead of night blindness."
"Hey, Qin Pandi, did you hear me?"
"Um."
Of course, the two of them did not go home immediately. They went around and around and came to the black market again. The national grain coupons that He Liansheng gave them before he left were fine grains. Qin Laidie exchanged them for local grain coupons for coarse grains, and made some more money. Together with the two yuan and fifty cents she got from selling white rice just now, she bought all the coarse grains, a total of sixty kilograms!
The top student Pan Di feels that her brain is not enough.
If the third sister had not asked for refined food yesterday, the team would have given them 45 kilograms of coarse food at best. But now, after this transaction, the money was consolidated and they were able to get 60 kilograms! The extra 15 kilograms were enough for them to eat for a long time. Did they earn the cod liver oil and the rice porridge yesterday?
Hey, third sister is so cunning!
When she got home, Qin Guihua found that they had taken away all the rice. She was so angry that she was fuming. But when she saw that they had brought back so many things and even changed Pan Di's medicine for her eyes and growth, she couldn't stop smiling.
The third brother's brain is her seed.
*
For the next few days, Lai Di did not go out again. She lived and ate in the pigsty and performed her job duties conscientiously. The people in the brigade saw this and gave her a permanent job. She would be a breeder of the Wulitun Production Team. Like other teams, she would get full work points and have one Sunday off a week.
And sure enough, her hard work paid off. After more than half a month of feeding, the piglets became fatter day by day, with round and chubby bodies, and their growth was pleasing.
The production team has not raised piglets for many years. Looking at the piglets in the pen every day is like looking at golden ingots. Look, several families nearby rely on the piglets for their meals.
"Oh, so many little piglets, eighteen in total. Yesterday I told Wang Laowu from the next team that we had ten pigs in our first litter, but he didn't believe me!" He sipped.
"Oh, if two of them hadn't been crushed to death that day, there would be twenty of them now." Everyone began to sigh, what a pity.
"If you ask me, our Lai Di is still the best. She has learned real skills from Dr. He." The old lady who was speaking was holding an earthen bowl filled with porridge that was so clear that it could be used as a mirror.
"Yes, our Lai Di is the disciple of old doctor He."
"The last disciple."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah."
Qin Lai Di: “…” Why does it sound like something out of a martial arts novel?
When I got home, dinner was a pot of fragrant sweet potato porridge, which was not made entirely of dried sweet potatoes, but with corn pudding added to it, which covered up the moldy smell and gave it a soft, glutinous and sweet taste. Add a plate of salty and refreshing dried radish, and it was really appetizing.
Lai Di and Pan Di drank two bowls in one breath and looked at Qin Guihua subconsciously.
"Eat if you want. You won't die of hunger."
So the two sisters served another bowl, which was so delicious.
"By the way, do you know which family the third son of the Zhao family is looking for now?" Qin Guihua asked with a pout.
Laidi and Pandi blinked.
She pointed to the left wall.
"Sister Baozhu?"
Qin Lai Di was stunned. These past few days, Liu Baozhu had often gone to the pigpen to "play" with her, but she never mentioned a word about her family's agreement to Zhao Qingsong's marriage proposal. She even tried to test whether she would go to the city in the future and when she would go to Haicheng to live with He Liansheng. Why did he leave alone without taking her with him...it turned out that he was waiting here.
Of course, except for Lai Di, everyone thought that He Liansheng was disgusted with the Qin family relying on him, so he returned to Haicheng to hide away.
To be fair, Zhao Qingsong's hardware conditions are really good. If a woman is willing to be a stepmother and not have her own children, can balance career and family, does not care about his petty actions, and can even save some private money for her own old age, it is actually not bad for her to marry him. After all, his career was very successful in the first few years of his career, which was indeed a shortcut for rural girls to change their destiny.
However, how many girls in the world are there who are so versatile and considerate?
Qin Lai Di secretly sighed. If Liu Baozhu wants to get married, then let her get married. She will not meddle in other people's business. It is hard to say who will cheat on whom between these two!
Seeing that she had no regrets or anger, Qin Guihua dropped the subject and asked Pan Di whether the cod liver oil was effective.
The little girl squinted her eyes and thought for a while, "It works. Before, we couldn't see it until the sun went down, but now we can't see it until dark."
"Grandma, if we can buy pork and sheep livers in the future, it will also help with this disease."
"You are just talking nonsense." But he made a note in his heart to see if he could tell Wang Lifen when he slaughtered the pigs at the end of the year.
"I heard someone say they wanted to eat pork liver. Was it Lai Di, the little glutton?" Suddenly, a thin female comrade with short hair and smiling eyes came in from the door. She looked about 50% like Lai Di.
"Sister!" Qin Lai Di looked at her intently.
Qin Ailan is only twenty-four years old this year. She has a pale oval face, deep eye sockets, prominent cheeks, and dry, chapped lips. If you don't know her, you would think she is over thirty.
Lai Di remembered that her eldest sister was plump before she got married, with flesh on her cheeks, red lips and white teeth. She was a famous beautiful girl in the surrounding villages. The reason she looks like this now is actually because she is worried.
The Liu family was well-off. Her parents-in-law, uncles, and sisters-in-law all had jobs. Her eldest brother-in-law, Liu Jiawei, was also a steel factory worker with a good salary. Ailan, a rural girl, would not have been able to marry into the family if she had not been pretty. But the family was full of workers, and she was the only one with a rural hukou. She had to eat the food that everyone shared, so it was inevitable that she would be gossiped about.
In addition, she and Liu Jiawei have been married for six years and still have no children, which makes the Liu family even more unhappy.
If Liu Jiawei is unhappy in his husband's family, he will not be in high spirits even if he is honest and considerate.
Qin Lai Di has encountered many such cases in her lifetime. Infertility is sometimes not necessarily caused by any organic disease, but rather psychological factors.
The more anxious you are, the more you can't get it. The more you can't get it, the more anxious you are. It's strange that your mentality doesn't collapse. My eldest sister in my previous life had a drastic change in her personality in the tenth year of her marriage. She went missing on a rainy night. When she was found again, she had gone crazy.
Although pregnancy would not be a big deal in the 21st century, and some people could live happily without getting married or having children, Lai Di still felt sorry for her elder sister. She was such a good person, how could she end up like that?
"What's wrong, girl? Don't you recognize me?" Qin Ailan patted her shoulder and said with a smile.
"Just to get to know each other, but...I miss my elder sister."
Qin Ailan smiled and said, "Are you thinking about me or the delicious food?"
She opened the cloth bag and said, "I fried the bean flour myself, added some sugar, and soaked it in boiling water for breakfast. You are growing up, you can't be hungry." She also secretly saved the sugar, only two or three taels at most.
"I have two pounds of stir-fried silkworm beans. Come, try them." Salt, chili, Sichuan pepper and star anise are added during the stir-frying process. It is crispy, spicy and fragrant. After eating one, you will want to swallow your tongue.
As the two little ones ate, Qin Guihua became a little anxious, staring at her belly intently, "Still no news?"
Ailan shook her head in bitterness.
"Last time I told you that the old Chinese doctor didn't help?"
Ailan nodded and wiped her eyes gently.
Qin Guihua couldn't bear to see her eldest granddaughter sad, so she quickly changed the subject, "Why did you bring so many things back? Just live a good life. Your sister and I have food and drink. Don't worry about them." Isn't this just handing over something to her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law?
"It's okay, they don't know, I went out to do this myself."
"How can you collect all these good things?" She had seen the Liu family's mother-in-law before. She was like a chicken boiled in cold water - a stingy person. It was impossible for her to collect so many things under her nose and take them out safely.
Qin Ailan paused, and seeing that her two sisters were eating happily, like two satisfied little hamsters, she didn't want to mention anything unhappy. "Grandma, I came back today because I have something to ask you to help me make a decision."
"My mother-in-law is going to retire next month. Now there is someone at home who can take over her job. Everyone else has a job, but I... Grandma, do you think I should go?"
"Yes, of course we should go." The little hamster Lai Di suddenly interrupted.
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