In fact, it's not just about hygiene knowledge; within her capabilities, she also teaches them some basic traditional Chinese medicine knowledge that can help them save themselves.
For example, how to reduce fever through massage, and how to clear heat and detoxify by picking wild vegetables by the roadside. These common sense tips are not only free, but can also achieve twice the result with half the effort. The children listened attentively, and she felt a great sense of accomplishment as she spoke.
Unfortunately, it stopped raining after autumn arrived, and not a single drop fell even during the autumn sowing season. This was a harbinger of trouble, and she reminded the people around her countless times, but no one took it seriously.
Because of the many birds and insects, the vegetables we planted had to be constantly tended to, with people picking off the insects every day. Otherwise, the good vegetables would be eaten by the insects before they could grow. The grandparents in the family also developed this habit. Whenever they had free time, they would go to the vegetable garden to pick off the insects. In the past, they could feed them to the chickens, but now they save them up and throw them into the manure pit to decompose.
Sparrows and rats are both considered pests. Once the government issued a call to action, every household took action. In the past, the chirping of sparrows was annoying, but now more people are catching them, especially children, who often catch sparrows to roast and eat. As a result, after autumn, the chirping of sparrows can hardly be heard anymore.
But you also have to watch out for other birds, otherwise the seeds you planted will be dug up and eaten by the birds before they even sprout. Every day, the old people in the production team would take long poles to chase away the birds in the fields.
In this era, without pesticides or chemical fertilizers, we had to use this most primitive method to solve the problem at its root.
In the past, people would make a scarecrow in the field, but now the birds are smarter and don't care at all.
But we can't just let the birds eat the seeds we've worked so hard to plant, so we have to form a small team to go out into the fields every day to let them roam freely.
When my father returned home on the weekend, he said in a heavy tone.
"The price of grain on the black market has gone up again because the price of grain in grain stores has gone up, so they have followed suit. Fortunately, we have stockpiled enough grain, so we should be able to get through this period."
The couple rented a room in the county town specifically to store some of their illicit grains.
Over the years, they've accumulated a lot of grain, and they've taken all of it to the county town. The rest they couldn't take there, so they stored some in the rented room in town and some in the Zhou family's cellar. Now, they'd rather spend money to rent a house than store it all at once in the old house where the Tao family is now, for fear that one day it might be taken advantage of by someone with ulterior motives.
Fortunately, with the children going to school, the number of people in the family has decreased, so we should be able to get through these three years quickly.
This wasn't obvious this winter, but by the first half of next year, the effects became apparent. Drought, the communal dining hall system, and various production tasks overwhelmed the people, and famine ensued.
During the day, Xiao Jiu went to work in the production team with her grandparents and ate in the communal canteen. The advantage of eating with the group was that she didn't have to worry about what to eat every day; she could just take her bowl and line up to get her food when it was time.
These days, no one is allowed to be picky about food. Everyone is given a fixed amount; you can't just be given as much as you want to eat.
Most families bring their meals home to eat because the canteen has limited space; if the whole village ate there, how big would that space be?
So their family was no exception; they simply used a small pot to serve three people's worth of food at home.
Xiao Jiu usually eats very little at home, and her goal is straightforward: to get her grandparents to eat more. If she gets hungry, she'll eat the food stored in her space.
This attitude became even more pronounced after she started eating at the cafeteria. At first, her grandparents thought she was too young and needed to grow, so she shouldn't eat too little. If she hadn't used her lack of weight loss to prove that her appetite was that small, the two of them probably wouldn't have believed her so easily.
But ever since all the pigs, sheep and poultry in the family were handed over, there has been no more goat milk. Her grandparents try to cook her an egg every day to supplement her nutrition.
Every time she goes out holding a warm egg, she is moved to tears. This is the love her grandparents give her. She is so lucky to have been born into this family.
If she comes back early from work, she will take out the pot from her space and quickly boil a pot of eggs, cook porridge, and steam the frozen buns and dumplings so that she can eat them whenever she is hungry.
So even though she eats very little at home, she hasn't lost any weight, and of course, she can't gain weight either. She exercises a lot every day, and she eats very little oily food, so it's no wonder she can't gain weight.
Even if she had the ingredients in her space as a backup, she still couldn't cook meat dishes. First, the flavor would be too strong, and second, the cooking time would be too long. She didn't have that much time. Besides, she was always surrounded by groups of colleagues at work, so she didn't have the opportunity to cook for herself. Living in this era was truly difficult.
The food in the cafeteria wasn't particularly delicious, but it was affordable. She ate sweet potatoes all the time, and it made her have acid reflux and farts all the time.
When people finally get to eat grains, they eat the coarsest kind of grains, and when they drink the soup, their mouths are full of dregs. Swallowing it down is difficult, and it stings their throats. Even so, everyone is willing to eat it. They don't want to eat sweet potatoes, mainly because many people's stomachs can't handle eating too many sweet potatoes.
The canteen cooks seasonal vegetables. When sweet potatoes are plentiful, they mostly eat sweet potato stems and leaves. In short, sweet potatoes play an extraordinary role during this period.
She's so young and she can't handle it, let alone her grandparents who are older. Xiao Jiu really wanted to cook for her grandparents, mainly because they had stored food and cooking utensils at home, but her grandfather refused.
“We survived the famine before, there’s no reason why eating sweet potatoes would make us collapse. Sweet potatoes are good stuff, without them, how many people would starve to death. It’s just acid reflux, it’ll pass. It’s not as bad as you think. It’s okay, don’t worry about us. Just take the eggs I boiled for you and eat them. Why are you secretly saving them for us?”
When Xiao Jiu brought back two eggs for her grandparents two days later, the old couple couldn't hold back their tears. It happened once, twice, every time, and nothing they said could change their minds. It would be a lie to say they weren't moved.
"I'm grown up now, and I have the strength. My grandparents raised me, so now the nutrition should go to you to nourish your bodies, not for me to eat by myself. You don't need to cook for me anymore, just keep it for yourselves, okay? Otherwise, I'll have to save it every two days, which is such a hassle."
Because Xiaojiu had a space where she could get the nutrition from eggs, the elderly couple finally agreed to cook an egg for themselves every day after her insistence, all because of what Xiaojiu said.
“I hope my grandparents live to be a hundred years old. I don’t want your health to collapse. Our family is so big, and we all depend on you to take charge. If you collapse because of malnutrition, what will we do? What will I do?”
Who could resist a sweetheart who always puts you first?
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