Once the Laba Festival is over, the New Year is just around the corner. Time really flies, year after year.
This year, for the Laba Festival, Grandma not only cooked a big pot of sticky Laba porridge, but also made baked buns with cabbage and tofu filling.
"Although we planted a lot of sweet potatoes this year, we need to dry them into sweet potato chips to prevent the vermicelli from leaking out,"
Everyone in my family loves to eat rice noodles, but we had to make sure we had enough food during the famine. So we saved up what we had and couldn't bear to use fresh sweet potatoes to make rice noodles anymore.
We'll eat the rest of the sweet potatoes. The amount we have at home will only last until next spring at most.
Although potatoes can be made into starch balls, everyone is reluctant to use them.
Drying these potato slices is already quite a hassle; if I make some more starch, how many potatoes will be left?
Fortunately, there were plenty of cabbages and radishes this year. Two-fifths of the cabbages were pickled into sauerkraut, one-fifth remained in the ground, and the remaining two-fifths were harvested and put into the cellar. There were more radishes planted this year than cabbages. Half of them were dried to make dried radishes, and the other half were used to make spicy dried radishes. The rest were used for stir-frying and pickling.
Grandma didn't want to throw away the radish greens either; she dried most of them and made them into dried vegetables, and a small portion of the tender ones was pickled.
The field also grew scallions, garlic sprouts, spinach, coriander, and other vegetables. The reason they were still growing was thanks to the plastic sheet she took out of the warehouse. When no one was around, she happily dragged it home.
Grandma and the others certainly knew what this was, because it wasn't that it didn't exist, but rather that it was too expensive for ordinary families to afford.
"My goodness, where did you get this?"
"I found it on the road. Nobody saw me pick it up. Grandma, this stuff feels nice to the touch, and it's transparent. Could it be used to shelter these vegetables from the wind and rain?"
When Grandpa and Grandma heard this, they thought it made sense. So they found some bamboo, bent it and planted it in the ground to make a roof. Then they laid plastic sheeting on it and covered the excess with soil. That's how a simple plastic greenhouse was made.
Grandpa and Grandma didn't know if the creature inside would survive being surrounded like that, but their beloved granddaughter had taken it home, and it was sold in the county town. So they told each other to try not to let outsiders come to their house, to avoid causing trouble.
"Don't worry, it's so cold, no one's out strolling around. We found this, if anyone comes to ask for it back, just tell us the size, and we'll return it to them. It's no big deal."
With this mindset, the grandparents didn't care who came to their door looking for it. In their view, since it was picked up on the main road, it must have nothing to do with the villagers. After all, the entire Xihe Village, including the village chief's house, didn't have the means to buy a piece of plastic sheeting. Such a piece would cost at least ten or twenty yuan.
There are plenty of plastic sheets in the warehouse, mostly for keeping vegetables fresh. Besides these, there are also styrofoam boxes, which will be used to sell ice cream and drinks in the future, so we won't have to go out to buy them anymore.
This year's Laba Festival falls on January 20th, 1956, which is a Friday.
My older brother, Tao Zui, has gone to high school in the city and only comes back once every two weeks.
He was admitted to the city's No. 1 High School through a special admission program this fall and is currently only a freshman.
In the spring of 1952, Zhou Yue studied fifth grade with Tao Ran, and in the fall of that year, he moved up to sixth grade with Tao Ran.
This year, both of them are in the graduating class of the county's No. 1 Middle School, and they only come back once every two weeks.
Tao Qing just started junior high school this year. He didn't get into the county's top high school, so he's attending a junior high school in the township. Even though it's close by, he can only come back on Saturday afternoons.
Tao An just started third grade this year and studies in town, but he can go back to the courtyard house every day.
I cook for myself, get up by myself, and go to school by myself.
Winter break is just around the corner, so I'll just make do with what I have.
Grandpa would bring over some steamed buns and mantou during the day, and the younger brother would heat them up himself and also cook some porridge. He would go back to the old house during holidays.
After the autumn planting, my parents were really free, so they went to the county town winery to find temporary work. They were paid eighteen yuan a month with room and board provided.
Although they were just temporary workers, both of them had extensive experience in brewing and were of a certain age, making them much more capable than ordinary apprentices. If they did a good job, they might even get a raise. They didn't know how long they could keep this job, but at least for now, they were staying on based on their skills.
The demand for baijiu (Chinese liquor) surges in winter, and the couple, with their experience, went straight to the job posting after seeing it.
They were asked a few questions, and they answered them fluently. They were selected without spending a penny.
So this morning, Grandma started cooking porridge and making pancakes. At noon, Grandpa took the oxcart to deliver them to my youngest brother first, then to my third brother. The others lived far away, so naturally they didn't get any.
Grandpa took the extra pancakes back to the courtyard and put them in the kitchen for his son. It would be enough for him to eat for two or three meals. Grandpa would pick them up from school tomorrow afternoon.
One is in third grade and the other is in seventh grade. They can cook simple meals, and even when the weather is bad, the two brothers can still manage to feed themselves.
With their parents staying in the county town to make a living and their grandparents having to take care of their younger sister, the older brothers had no choice but to support themselves.
His little sister can cook when she's just over two years old, so he can't lose face.
On the evening of the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month, not only did my eldest brother, who was studying in the city, return home, but my second brother, Zhou Yue, who was studying in the county town, and my third brother, who was studying in the village, also arrived home one after another. Only my youngest brother, who was in elementary school, had been on holiday since the 20th of the twelfth lunar month and was picked up by his grandfather and taken to the old house early.
My parents only get a holiday on New Year's Eve, a total of seven days, and they don't go back to work until after the New Year. This is much better than I expected.
When the children come home, the grandparents are the busiest. They don't eat or sleep well at school, so they try their best to supplement their nutrition when they come home. First of all, there is plenty of goat milk. The old goats are old after all, and although they don't have much milk, the lambs just gave birth in the fall, so they have milk now. The milk from the two ewes is enough for the older brothers to drink once in the morning and once in the evening.
The reason why Xiao Jiu is not lacking in nutrition is because she has had a bowl of goat milk every morning and evening for the past five or six years. Even though she was born with congenital deficiencies, the Tao family has made up for it.
If there was leftover milk, people in the village would bring things in exchange for it if a new mother had given birth. Whether there was enough or not, it was the gesture that mattered. As long as they showed their attitude, that was enough. But if they tried to get it for free like the Niu family did before, the grandparents would definitely not stand for it.
Xiao Jiu hadn't seen Sister Cuihua for a long time. On the day before the Lunar New Year, her second and third sisters came over for a visit, bringing two bags of peach shortbread.
“This was bought by my older sister when she came back. She asked us to deliver it. She’s very busy right now, taking care of two elderly people. She was supposed to get two days off a month, but they all prefer to rest rather than come and help. Fortunately, they gave my older sister a raise. Now she gets fifteen yuan a month. We two occasionally go over to help her out and take over, otherwise she’ll be too tired.”
Xiao Jiu was a little confused: "Weren't you supposed to be taking care of two elderly people? Why are you all hiding?"
The second sister sighed: "The old man is paralyzed, and he's always in need of bodily functions. Nobody wants to take care of him. The old lady goes out for walks every day, saying that out of sight, out of mind. It's lucky that their family is well-off, and the old man gets some kind of subsidy, otherwise he would be in real trouble."
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