"This is mushroom sauce, a sauce made from various kinds of mushrooms,"
If you just say shiitake mushroom, they might not know which kind it is, and saying fungi is too general.
Before, everyone said that the mixed grain rice at school was expensive, but she didn't think so. This time when she went out, she realized that the rice in the state-run restaurant was only three cents a serving, and that was pure white rice. No matter what grade of rice it was, it was at least white rice. But now they were eating mixed grain rice, which cost five cents.
The only possibility is that it's packed tightly, a whole lunchbox full, while state-run restaurants only serve a small bowl's worth. That's probably why it's expensive.
Moreover, the cafeteria offers free soup every day, so it's highly likely they don't make a profit; breaking even is already a good outcome, especially considering how many people are going hungry. The school is constantly trying to improve everyone's health, but alas…
Given the current circumstances, there's very little they can do.
Back in the dorm after dinner, my roommates couldn't help but ask, "Who sent you the package?"
Xiao Jiu then remembered, "It should be my brother. Let me open it and see."
When I opened the package, it was full of food, five or six kinds, and they were all the kind that could be stored.
Come to think of it, sending something from Northeast China to here would take at least half a month, given the mailing speed of that era. If it weren't for this kind of mail, it would have gone bad by the time it arrived.
She first looked at the contents of the package: golden-yellow sweet potato chips that had been steamed and then dried, shrimp candy (a specialty of Harbin), dried sausages, dry stone cakes, a small jar of honey wrapped in many layers, and slices of dried rye bread.
There are six kinds of delicious food, each weighing about an ounce. The total weight of the small packages will not exceed ten pounds, which is not a small amount.
"Wow, your brother is so good to you! Look what he brought you, such a feast!"
Xiao Jiu chuckled, "You all eat as much as you like, don't be shy. Let me see what's written in the letter."
Upon opening the letter, she was greeted by strong, vigorous handwriting; the font alone told her who it was.
She could recognize the handwriting of everyone in her family, and she never expected that the person who sent her the package was not her own brother, but Zhou Yue's brother.
I mainly wanted to say that we parted in a hurry last time, and I didn't have time to send her a gift. I congratulated her on getting into high school, so after I got back, I made a useful list. In addition to the one for her, I also sent a big package of dried goods home. I'll ask her to keep an eye on it to see if it has arrived.
After that, she talked about the local customs and culture of Northeast China, without mentioning her school much. I suppose there are regulations in place, and this letter probably had to go through many people before it reached her.
After reading the letter, Xiao Jiu was quite moved. He hadn't seen his older brother since the Lunar New Year!
They didn't come back during the summer vacation; it seemed like they had more opportunities outside and were all busy with their own things.
When she looked up, her roommates were already busy with their own things, and nothing on the table had been touched.
"Hey, why are you being so polite with me when I'm offering you food? Don't be shy, eat, eat."
Xiao Jiu grabbed some dried sweet potatoes, candy, stone cakes, and bread slices and put them on the table.
"This sausage needs to be cut, so I won't offer it to you. I'll dilute the honey with water for you to drink later. Don't be shy about the rest, eat it!"
Although resources were precious and it was impossible to distribute everything individually, at least the dried sweet potatoes and candies were distributed equally to everyone, and everyone could taste the stone cakes and bread slices after they were broken apart.
She seemed to have received the rest of the items into the cabinet, but in reality, she moved most of them to the space, leaving only a small portion to be displayed on the cabinet surface. As for the sausages, which were so precious, she only kept a small section, and put the rest into the space.
Because of Zhou Yue's concern, Xiao Jiu was in a good mood. She not only wrote a reply, but also prepared a return gift while her roommates were asleep that night.
With a lot of fresh produce available, she looked around and only selected some pickles and pastries. Moreover, these couldn't be sent yet; she would have to wait until it got colder here to send them over, to prevent them from spoiling in transit.
She'll need to use the industrial coupons to buy a few more lunch boxes and oil paper for wrapping pastries. These are sold separately, and they're not expensive as long as you have coupons. Especially the oil paper; you can probably buy a thick stack of hundreds of sheets for a dime.
In addition, he couldn't forget the local specialties of his hometown. Even if he couldn't eat as much as he wanted, he could at least invite his comrades to try some.
Although Zhou Yue has only been here for a few years, in terms of a sense of belonging, he is definitely stronger than Zhou Xing, who left home at a young age.
Speaking of Zhou Xing, I heard that he has now gone to the mountain city and his promotion speed is not slow. He has already reached the rank of lieutenant and deputy company commander.
Born in 1939, he is only 21 years old this year. At such a young age, he joined the army in early 1954, and it has been six or seven years since then.
After joining the army, he studied diligently and was even recommended by the army to attend a military academy. Without this support, it would have been very difficult for him to be promoted to lieutenant. However, he has achieved what he has today in less than seven years, which is enough to prove his ability.
After his maternal grandparents passed away, Zhou Xing had no more attachments here. Since joining the army, he has only returned home once.
They weren't nearly as close to Zhou Yue as they were, but you couldn't say they were heartless; they still received his New Year's gifts every year before the Spring Festival.
Actually, they don't owe them anything; they're just repaying the kindness their grandparents showed them after their deaths.
Even if he doesn't come back, Zhou Yue has already repaid enough.
The two brothers have both chosen to join the army, probably because they know that the brothers have no ties to the country, which is quite remarkable.
They left home at a young age, their mother died early, and their father didn't care for them. Just when they finally met their loving maternal grandparents, they suffered another major tragedy.
A sigh, an expression of unspeakable bitterness and sorrow.
——
Considering that she didn't have enough cash on hand, Xiao Jiu wrote a letter home before the National Day holiday, informing her that the school had organized a small class for high-achieving students during the holiday, and she wouldn't be going home.
In reality, there definitely wasn't any. It was a three-day holiday, and she planned to take advantage of this rare opportunity to sell more items from the space.
Let her cash increase. A hundred yuan sounds like a lot, but if she really wants to buy something, it's just a drop in the bucket.
Xiao Jiu spent five yuan to buy ten lunch boxes, fifty cents to buy five hundred sheets of food packaging paper, and fifty cents to buy two hundred and fifty sheets of oil paper.
Five industrial vouchers were handed over; the packaging paper was not required.
Then she used these wrapping papers to pack the pastries, brown sugar, and rock sugar in the space according to a ratio of one pound. She had already learned how to pack them at the supply and marketing cooperative, and she learned it after doing it a few times.
During the three years of hardship, sugar coupons were especially precious. Some companies even allocated a fixed number of sugar coupons based on seniority. Except for those with infants at home who could receive one sugar coupon per month, everyone else was given a seniority-based system.
Previously, anyone with a formal urban household registration could receive one pork supplementary food item each month, distributed in the first, middle, and last ten days. When meat was scarce, the supply was one ounce, and when it was plentiful, it could be three ounces.
In addition to these hardships, there were also pastry coupons. Not only did you need pastry coupons to buy bread and pastries, but some types also required grain coupons. The prices were not cheap either, with the cheapest costing 50 cents and the most expensive reaching two or three yuan per kilogram.
With just a simple package, who knows how many people will be overjoyed?
Nowadays, what formal employees, dual-income families, and multi-income families lack is not money, but tickets; some tickets are so expensive that you can't buy them even with money.
For example, there were food coupons, meat coupons, oil coupons, and sugar coupons that every household lacked.
She had never seen meat dishes in the school cafeteria; apparently, meat had been unavailable since May or June.
Come to think of it, if people can't even get enough to eat, where are they going to get food to feed pigs?
Thinking about this, Xiao Jiu felt that if Zhou Yue's package hadn't been sent through the military, it probably would have been stolen long ago. How could it have been safely delivered to her?
There will be a three-day holiday for National Day. The 30th is Friday, and school will end at 4 pm on Friday. Students are required to return to school at 4 pm on the 3rd. The holiday will last for three days: the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
After leaving school with her little backpack, she wandered around the streets, mainly to inquire about current prices, but she heard many things that made her shake her head and sigh.
"Another batch of old canned meat?" Because there is no fresh meat in reserve, the market can only supply canned meat. To buy canned meat, you have to pool several tickets to buy one box, depending on the weight of each can.
Here they were, two aunties standing at the entrance of the supply and marketing cooperative, complaining about the canned meat they had bought through connections, their faces full of frustration.
"If it weren't for my family hosting a dinner party, why would I have gone through connections to buy something like this? Other people buy novelty, but we're buying it with our own blood and sweat!"
Three meat coupons were exchanged for just one can of meat, not even enough to fill a tooth gap, not even a drop of oil could be squeezed out.
"This is already pretty good. I want to buy some, but I don't have the money or the coupons. How much is this box?"
When the other person extended two fingers, I heard them gasp.
"My God, just one box for two yuan? And you're charging so many receipts? Aren't you just trying to rip me off?"
"I got it through connections, it's already pretty good. So many people want to snag one but can't. Sigh, okay, I'm not talking to you anymore, I need to hurry back and cook."
Another aunt watched her retreating figure with a bitter expression.
"With the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival approaching, we still can't find any fresh meat to supply. What are we going to do in the future?"
The aunt's lament drew a response from another young mother: "Has the meat ration coupons been reduced at your workplace?"
"Why wasn't the number reduced? We used to get one ticket each for the first, middle, and last ten days of the month, but now it's been reduced to two. But what's the use of just having tickets? We can't buy fresh meat, and as for that legendary canned meat, we can't afford it. We don't have that many tickets to spend!"
...
Besides these, she also overheard that the price of black market grain coupons was quite exorbitant: three yuan for a jin of local grain coupons, four yuan for national grain coupons, and as much as five yuan for local flour coupons.
What is a face-off ticket?
In other words, grain coupons are now subdivided into coarse grain coupons, flour coupons, rice coupons, pastry coupons, and so on.
Xiao Jiu wiped the sweat from her forehead and couldn't help but sigh, "I've learned something new again. If I hadn't heard this today, I wouldn't have known that the supply of grain coupons was not limited to household registration, but that they were even further subdivided into different categories."
It's so difficult, so incredibly difficult!
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