Chapter 46

Oil residue steamed cake

This account caused a whole week of trouble.

This week, Wang Fusheng was dismissed from his post and was sent directly to prison along with Liu Jiefang.

However, Chen Lina did not check the farm's accounts thoroughly. She just asked Sun Xiangnan to replenish the missing items and money in the warehouse.

Since ancient times, when a city is surrounded from all sides, an exit must be left to prevent the enemy from jumping over the wall in desperation.

The day lilies from Zhang County flourished on the saline and alkaline soil of the Gobi Desert for eight years, but finally wilted because of Chen Lina, a housewife from Qingshui.

"If I don't pay the account, the mining district will send people to check my account. Mom, what do you say I should do?" Sun Xiangnan was also very worried and miserable.

Sun Duoyu brought some wowotou to his sister, picked up one and took a bite himself, stretching his neck to swallow it.

In the past, Sunjiazhai was the boss of the farm, but now she has started to eat Wowotou with everyone else. The Wowotou made of bran and flour made her choke and she couldn't swallow it.

Give it to Daylily, Daylily pushed it away and said, "I've had enough of this stuff since 1958. I'd rather die than eat it. I want to eat big white steamed buns."

If you want to eat big white steamed buns at this time, you will be scared.

"If you don't want to eat wo wo tou, do you think we had big white steamed buns to eat when Dabao was still here?"

"What should I do? I'd rather die than surrender. Help me up, I can still argue with that bitch. No, I want to take the train to Beijing and see the leader." Huang Huacai had great ambitions in his heart, but his body couldn't support him and he was having a high fever.

Sun Ainan said, "Chen Lina also said that we should return the alimony for the three children. In order to protect the honor of the eldest sister, she will take over the account. After taking over, she will be responsible for the gains and losses of the farm. As for Fu Sheng's affairs, if we don't agree, she will let those educated youth report him and directly shoot him. No, mom, you just..."

"My five thousand yuan, that's what I saved for Dabao, it's my lifeblood. Anyone who dares to take it is touching my lifeblood, don't even think about it." Daylily roared and screamed, my good man, sweating all over, he was almost driven back by her fever.

"Then will you just watch me get arrested? Do you know how long the sentence for embezzlement is now?" Sun Xiangnan's voice hardened. "Mom, it's okay if he goes to jail after liberation. I can just divorce him. My Qiuwa is about to be a Red Expert. If I have a criminal record, her life will be ruined."

"How can a little girl compare to her uncle's money?"

"My eldest sister picked wheat ears by herself and begged for food to go to college. She also raised everyone in Sunjiazhai. My Qiuwa will not be bad either. You have Sun Zhuannan, and I also have Qiuwa," said Sun Xiangnan.

The old lady held the passbook tightly and said, "All the money I saved is for my Dabao. You sisters, the debt collectors, don't even think about it."

In order to prevent her grandson from stealing money, the old lady hid her passbook well. As for her daughter, the money was used to pay off debts. Her grandson Dabao was born after she gave birth to five daughters. Isn't it natural for daughters to sacrifice themselves for their sons?

After leaving her mother's house, Sun Ainan and Sun Xiangnan looked at each other in bewilderment. "What do you think we should do?"

Sun Ainan wants her husband to receive a light sentence, while Sun Xiangnan wants his daughter's future to be unhindered.

After thinking it over, the two sisters agreed, "Okay, let's just steal the passbook. I guess this is the only way."

Nie family.

It’s a rare weekend, and Chen Lina is cooking for her three children.

In the big bucket in the yard, there was a huge black carp that was about one foot long. Erdan and Chen Tiantian were squatting beside the bucket, concentrating on teasing the fish.

The Baiyang River was still frozen, but when the educated youth were digging the underground canal to build a karez, they found that the fish in the canal were fat and big, some were as long as a foot long, and they were all jumping around as if they had no eyes, almost all of them were whitebait.

If Liu Jiefang was the director, you couldn't even think about eating fish because fish were public property and belonged to the Republic.

He would rather let the educated youth starve to death than let them have a good meal. It's not that he has a bad heart, but that he is useless. In this world, useless people, trash, become leaders, which is more frustrating than bad people.

When the fish reaches Chen Lina's place, it can be eaten.

Not only did the educated youth and farm members have fish soup to drink today, but Chen Lina also brought back one herself.

After the Chinese New Year, there was a shortage of food, and in the warehouse of Mulan Farm, there were only swarms of mice and baskets of cornmeal that had been gnawed into pieces.

Chen Lina picked out several hundred kilograms of wheat from the warehouse and ground it into flour. She had to prepare it for the old professors and experts. They were all her saviors.

But it was not easy to give them subsidies openly, so he took advantage of Sun Xiangnan's confusion and distributed the money to them privately.

The educated youth on the farm had long been accustomed to eating bran and vegetables for half a year and grain for half a year, with three meals of porridge a day. The nests made of corn bran were very filling, and there was a plague of rabbits this year, so Chen Lina gave them some leniency and let them hunt rabbits to fill their stomachs.

Switching to new varieties of spring wheat, upland rice and cotton would cost a lot of money, so the only way to live was to save money, and save money again.

Since the base had a rich and luxurious year, it now uses a mixture of 85 flour and sorghum flour.

Sorghum flour will be given a high status in the future because it is a healthy grain, but if you eat too much, you will get constipation. Moreover, it tastes bitter and astringent.

But now is the time when the snow has not melted and there is not even a blade of grass on the Gobi Desert, yet they still have to eat it. The children cry when they see sorghum flour, but they still have to eat it. What can we do?

I went to Umayyi today and bought back a lot of black oil residue left over from snack factories. I fried them until crispy, then mixed them with peanuts that she got from Hamama in exchange for her khaki skirt and brown sugar from the supply and marketing cooperative. She pawned her clothes to get money for food, rolled them in fermented sorghum flour, and fried them in a pan. They were oily, sweet, and steamed.

When killing fish and peeling their scales, Chen Tiantian would cry as usual. In order to appease the child, Chen Lina could only take the fish to the small woods outside the yard to kill the fish.

Now that the primary school has not been repaired yet, the children in the base are all like stray dogs.

Liu Xiaohong was picking up coal briquettes from the coal slag pile with a basket on her back. She saw Chen Lina holding a fish and tapping its head, so she ran over and helped her to press the fish's body.

What a tenacious vitality! This big black carp is too big and too slippery to be caught or killed by smashing.

"Your mother ran away, and your father was sent to labor reform. There's no one to cook for you or give you food. Why do I see you getting thinner and thinner?" Chen Lina asked.

Liu Xiaohong said, "The chief engineer arranged a job for my brother to make a boiler. My family also has food coupons, and the coal briquettes we picked up are enough to burn. I am not hungry."

After all, the children of working people cannot be watched to starve to death. Liu Xiaogang has indeed rarely come out to beat the children recently. But it turns out that he was dragged to the furnace to burn.

"Come to my house later and I'll give you some special steamed cakes." said Chen Lina.

Liu Xiaohong hit the fish with one blow, killing it. She turned and ran away, shaking her lips and smiling.

Haha, a tomboy, Chen Lina thought to herself.

However, what men like are women who know how to act coquettishly. This girl's personality matches Chen Tiantian's, so she would be a very good daughter-in-law, right?

Chen Tiantian was still crying, and Nie Weimin kept comforting her, saying, "Okay, fish is for eating, look how beautifully my mother cut it."

Seeing Chen Lina turning to look at him with a smile, as if she saw through him, he blushed, turned around and ran away.

Herring has few bones, so just cut it open on both sides and remove the bones, then cut it into thin slices. The transparent fish fillets will look like a thin butterfly.

As a qualified foodie and princess-complex, when the pot of boiled fish fillet was ready, Chen Tiantian was the first to pick up her chopsticks and said, "Auntie, this is really delicious."

Watching her take a big bite of the greasy sorghum flour steamed cake, Chen Lina felt even more guilty. This delicious yet sinful delicacy, the oil residue, was fine for Liu Xiaohong, but if Chen Tiantian wanted to eat more, it would become a steamed cake.

"Director Chen, there's a guy named Sun Xiangnan outside the base looking for you." Postman Xiao Chen shouted outside the door and rode away on his bicycle.

After telling the children several times to be careful with fish bones, especially Erdan, because he was careless. Chen Lina specially placed a vinegar pot next to Nie Weimin to prevent him from getting a fish bone stuck in his throat and having an accident. Only then did she wash her hands and come out.

It was indeed Sun Xiangnan, the warehouse keeper who always wore an emerald green liberation suit and small sleeves, and looked so high and mighty that only his chin could be seen. Today, he looked shabby.

A pair of broken shoes smelled of stinky glue, and the cotton wool on her coat was still showing in some places. She handed over a hand-woven bun with her sleeves, "Hey, Director Chen, my mother spent all the money on raising the three children. This is all that's left. I stole it from her. You can take it and our relationship is over, okay?"

At that time, there was no hundred-yuan note as in later times, but instead there was a ten-yuan note with the unity of all ethnic groups printed on it.

One big reunion note can buy 200 kilograms of rice, 100 kilograms of pork, and 5,000 yuan. That would require five stacks of money. How much can you get if you wrap it in a handkerchief?

"Comrade Sun Xiangnan, don't play tricks on me, and don't pretend to be poor and suffer for me. The five thousand yuan for the three children's support was obtained through legitimate connections. You, your third sister Sun Ainan, your sixth sister Sun Duoyu, and your mother Huang Huacai should have brought it to me. I won't buy into this sneaky trick, and I don't need this little money."

"No, my mother refused to give it to me, and she is about to die. Do you want to force the hero's mother to death?" Hero, hero, another hero.

Chen Lina said sincerely, "I just want to ask you, will the relatives of a hero deposit a large sum of money in a credit union? Will they save enough food at home to feed rats? Don't tell me you don't. You are just like the landlords in the old society. The reason you haven't been locked up yet is because you have a dead hero sister."

Sun Xiangnan's face suddenly changed. He took a deep breath in fear, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and left again.

Of course, she couldn't cheat anyone this time, but Sun Xiangnan had gotten enough from the farm, and he was like a fat sheep. She couldn't hide or run away, and she had to hold on to him and give him all the money.

When she was coming back from Mulan Farm in the evening, she met a bearded man on the way. He was standing in the middle of the road like a fool, holding a canvas bag in one hand, staring at her car as if he was not afraid of being hit.

Chen Lina starts work at 8 a.m. every day and gets off work at 11:45 a.m. Then she has to rush back to the base to cook for the children and then coax Sandan to take a nap.

After getting up, if the children were making noise, she would take Sandan to the farm with her. If the three brothers wanted to have fun, she would go alone.

She drove back and forth for thirty miles, and there were no cars on the road. There was the setting sun, the snow-capped mountains, and the straight road. Of course she drove very fast and honked the horn wildly, but the man didn't move at all. She only braked suddenly when he was right in front of her.

"Comrade Xiao Chen, are you driving?"

"I'm driving well, but Comrade Lao Nie, how come you're like this?"

He had a stubbled beard, two red eyes and a murderous look on his face. If it weren't for his signature black-framed glasses, Chen Lina would have simply not recognized him. This was her husband who had passed away nearly a month ago.

"You are not driving a car, you are flying a plane. When the plane takes off, it is at this speed," said Nie Bozhao.

"Aren't you in a hurry to go home and cook for your sons?"

"If you can't balance work and life, the money I give you is enough. I think you should focus on your family instead of risking your life like this," said Nie Bozhao.

They haven't seen each other for two months, and Miss Chen didn't call her or give her any gifts, but she actually asked her to return home.

Chen Lina stepped on the accelerator and the car was about to fly. "Comrade Lao Nie, I am not only your family member now. I am also responsible for the survival of thousands of people on the farm, as well as the food supply of tens of thousands of people in your mining area and three bases. I have a military warrant and I have to achieve self-sufficiency in the mining area within three years. You actually want me to return to my family?"

"I don't deny that you are amazing, but you are risking your life by driving like this. You have a military warrant and you have ideals, but the road is under your feet, and if you step on the gas a little more, you will fly into the sky."

Nie Bozhao got off the car at the base and walked all the way towards the farm.

In the boundless Gobi Desert, there is a big highway and this small car. It is not driving too fast, but flying too low. If it were given two wings, it could really fly directly into the sky.

"No more than 120 mph at most. This is the standard speed on the highway. The highways of the future, both in terms of road conditions and traffic conditions, will be much worse than this one. I drive 120 mph on the highway." Chen Lina still wanted to argue.

"Impossible. I calculated your speed based on the wind speed, the distance between the two mountains, the white poplar tree, and the distance you moved. Your speed was 145 mph. Chen Lina, when I went to Beijing for a commendation ceremony, I rode in a Mercedes-Benz, which was imported from Germany. The drivers of the 247th Combat Unit that had entered western Tibet and Ali could not drive as fast as you."

He added, "That's because the Mercedes-Benz had been running too slowly for a long time, and the oil between the gears had all solidified. The car had been having problems, so in order to improve its performance, it was speeding. I can only tell you that even the maximum safe speed of a Mercedes-Benz is only 180. And yours is a domestically produced Red Flag. In the field of car manufacturing, there is currently an insurmountable barrier between us and capitalist countries."

How accurate, Chen Lina thought to herself. Engineering students cannot be bullied. If she continued to argue, Nie Bozhao should be able to directly give her the equation. She really did run 145 yards just now.

He was really angry. His eyes were red like a wolf that had been hungry in the desert for three months. He said angrily, "If you don't step on the brakes, I will take back the right to drive this car. I have to declare that from now on, you no longer have the privilege to use it."

Originally, this car was allocated by the base to Nie Bozhao. In order to make things convenient for his children and wife, he would rather ride in a Liberation truck to travel around all day than leave the car at home.

"If you take it, I will divorce you."

"If I don't take it, I'm afraid you'll want it tomorrow, want it..."

Chen Lina suddenly understood that his ex-wife died because her car overturned and she fell into a pit of sand. That was his inner demon. Even in his previous life, if he found her speeding, he would take away her keys and make her worry.

When they went to the desert to participate in a rally, he could stare at her from morning to night, without blinking, until the end of the competition.

"Okay, I'm wrong, isn't it? Look, it's only 60 yards now, very safe, just like a snail crawling slowly. Do you see those people by the Baiyang River? They are our members and educated youth who are surveying the land and preparing to dig karez. Our farm is thriving now."

It seemed that coquetry was of no use. The man was very angry and furious, and said nothing.

"I am your little princess. It's understandable that I am a little willful. Don't be angry." Chen Lina said again.

When they arrived at the base, the man still said nothing.

Chen Lina also has a temper, but she doesn't dare to lose it now. The three children are like prisoners in a prison, waiting in front of the big iron gate. When they see her car, they immediately jump up with their fists raised.

Nie Bozhao got out of the car and picked up Sandaner. The child was frightened by the stranger and started crying. He rubbed his eyes and started shouting, "Uncle Ha, stinky, I don't want Uncle Ha to hold me."

Erdan was sharp-eyed, jumping up and down behind him, "Dad, dad, is this snow lotus? It smells so good. Can I eat it?"