Busy days always pass quickly. It wasn't until after Qingming Festival that Zhao Lingli and Tang Cuilian had the opportunity to go back to work. Meanwhile, Grandma's condition gradually improved. Now Grandpa no longer goes to work and helps Grandma take walks in the yard every day to exercise.
The seventh and eighth sisters, who were not working, took turns taking care of the two elderly people. The eldest and second sisters were praised by the production team for their quick work and were even expected to run for the brigade's March 8th Red Banner Pacesetter and compete for a position in the production team.
As graduation approaches, the studies become increasingly intense. Tao Tao used to be able to go home once a week, but now she can only go home once every two weeks. Every day at school, she does problems from the moment she opens her eyes until she closes them. Tao Tao feels like she has returned to the dark days of high school.
Fortunately, this intensive training helped her overcome her laziness, and sometimes she would even spend some more time in the space at night.
She's not without weaknesses; at least in politics, she often hovers around the passing mark. If it weren't for her relatively high scores in English and math, and her passable scores in physics and chemistry, she probably would have had a hard time getting into the top high school in the city. So she's trying to take a shortcut and complete three years' worth of study in one year. How can she not take it seriously?
It was common for me to study until 11 or 12 o'clock every day.
At the age of ten, Tao Tao had not yet finished elementary school, but in order to be able to go to university smoothly, she had to defy fate and take the middle school entrance examination in Y County in mid-June of 1960 at the young age of ten.
After the exam, Xiao Jiu went home to take care of her grandmother while waiting for her admission notice.
“Jiu’er, you don’t need to go help out in the production team anymore. This summer, you should focus on improving your brother’s grades so he can at least get into high school.”
The eldest brother, second brother, and Yue brother, who are both attending military academy, said they would have special training during the holidays and would not be going home.
My third brother did come back after the holiday, but his classmate found him a tutoring job. He travels to and from the county town every day to tutor high school students for two or three hours each time, and he gets 50 cents a day.
After my fifth sister started her vacation, she found herself a job at a community health center where she could intern and where room and board were provided.
Sixth Sister's outstanding cooking skills caught the eye of her teacher, who offered to help take care of the children and elderly in her family during the summer vacation, providing her with food and lodging and paying her ten yuan a month.
To save food for the family, the older siblings went to great lengths.
The younger brother will be a junior high student starting in the fall. Xiao Jiu had just finished the high school entrance exam. She organized all the materials she had used before and systematically guided Tao Xiaoan through the review, filling in the gaps in her knowledge. However, the more they studied, the more they realized how big the gap was.
Although he has worked very hard for the past six months, he has fallen behind in too much coursework, and it is not something that can be made up in a few days. He can only hope that he will not be distracted in the remaining year, otherwise he will really not be able to get into high school.
In mid-July, Tao Tao received an admission notice from the city's No. 1 High School. She was admitted with the third highest score in the entire school, and the new first-year high school students will report to L City in mid-August.
She got into her ideal high school, No. 1 in the city, and the whole family was very happy. Especially since she was still so young, whenever relatives and friends praised her, they would drag Tao Xiaoan into it and put him down. They would say that he should take his younger sister as a role model, but in reality, they would find ways to criticize him for not being as good as his sister who was three or four years younger than him. This made him very upset.
Xiao Jiu is a meticulous person. "Brother, don't rush into those difficult problems in your studies. Just focus on mastering the basics. In exams, the basic points still account for 50% to 60%. If you master these basics, you'll stand out from many others. If you have time left, then you can delve into those difficult problems. Your error notebook is very important. You should not only look at it every day, but also do it. When you get a question, you should be able to identify the type of question within three seconds and plan out a solution within one minute. Only then can you truly master the problem."
Xiao Jiu shared the experience she had accumulated over her two lifetimes with her older brother, and also showed him the notebook of wrong questions she had previously compiled, marking which questions were likely to appear on the exam and which were frequently asked.
Boarding school in high school means you can only go home once every two weeks or once a month.
The older sister helped her at home to re-wash and air out the bedding, and even carefully found a mosquito net with the fewest patches.
"Your sister said there are a lot of mosquitoes at school. You'll be covered in mosquitoes for at least a month, and they won't be less until after National Day."
The fifth and sixth children used the same bedding from junior high to high school and then to college. She never saw them take it apart to wash it, mainly because she thought they would take care of it themselves when they got older. But Xiao Jiu was different. She had never done any of these kinds of chores since she was a child.
Knowing that her godmother was busy, she specially helped Xiaojiu take apart, wash, and sun-dry the quilts, and fluffed the cotton again to make the bedding warmer.
Both are boarding schools, but the old lady was reluctant to leave because it was closer to the county town. The two of them are very affectionate.
Before the start of the school year, Xiao Jiu went to the county's No. 1 High School to take a photo and received a 10-yuan scholarship. The first place winner received 50 yuan, the second place winner received 30 yuan, and the third place winner received 10 yuan. This year, only the three of them were admitted to the city's No. 1 High School.
It is said that there was a student who usually had excellent grades, but he suffered from stomach cramps during the exam, which caused him to underperform and fail to get into the city's top high school. He could only enroll in the county's top high school instead.
The harshness of the competition made Xiao Jiu realize at this point that there is only one spot for everyone. If you don't work hard, the people behind you can step on you, and you may not even have a chance to react before being ruthlessly eliminated.
Because Tao Changyi had to go to work, Xiaojiu didn't let him take her. She asked Cuihua to take her to the county bus station and then let her go back.
"Sis, you go back. I can handle it myself. You don't need to send it over. Sending it over there and back will cost a lot of money."
When Cuihua took her to the station, all she had left was a handbag; she had already hidden her bedding roll.
She knows her younger sister is capable, but the family doesn't. It wouldn't be appropriate for her not to give her gifts.
"Sis, just wander around the county town for a bit, and go back after it gets dark. There's a black market in the grove of trees next to the county's No. 1 High School on the east side."
As she spoke, she winked at Cuihua, who was both amused and exasperated, and could only give her instructions.
“I’m taking responsibility. You have to go to school obediently and don’t run around. The family doesn’t need your money now, so don’t even think about going to the black market.”
Everyone in the county's black market knows that this little girl has probably caused quite a stir.
Xiao Jiu stuck out her tongue, knowing that's what she would think, so she could only obediently agree.
Actually, school officially starts the day after tomorrow; today and tomorrow are for registration. The reason I'm going so early is to see if there are any opportunities in the city.
Before coming, she released a lot of the grain and dried goods at home and handed them over to Sister Cuihua to manage, because Cuihong could take them away at any time without exposing them to the outside world. This time she released more than 100 catties of her inventory. The coarse grains were what Tao Changyi had hoarded before, and the fine grains were specially prepared for her family. Ten catties of pork was enough for two families to eat for a month or two.
It takes about two hours to get from their county town to the city by bus. Back then, they only traveled on national highways, and there were no expressways yet. The road was very bumpy. She hadn't ridden in a car for a long time, and she got terribly carsick. Luckily, she was sitting by the window. She vomited everything she could on the way. When she got off the bus, her legs were weak.
The ticket seller noticed that her face was frighteningly pale and asked her with concern.
"How are you? Is anyone coming to pick you up? You've thrown up like this. Why don't you sit in the lobby and rest for a while?"
"It's okay, sister. Someone will pick me up. I'll be fine after a short rest."
Sitting in the bus station waiting area, I drank some water and ate an apple before I gradually regained my composure.
"Young lady, you see I'm all alone and it's inconvenient for me. Are you going to wait a while? Could you watch my things for me?"
Just as the cold sweat on her forehead was beginning to dry, a middle-aged woman said she needed to use the restroom and asked her to watch her things.
Xiao Jiu's awareness of fraud prevention instantly alerted her, and she stood up abruptly.
"Excuse me, I have to go. You'll have to find someone else to keep an eye on things for you!"
"Hey, you little rascal, there are no cars leaving right now, what's wrong with asking you to watch my things for me? Why are you being so stingy?"
The middle-aged woman was not in a hurry to find the next target; instead, she became angry and embarrassed because the woman had rejected her too decisively.
Xiao Jiu lifted her eyelids, glanced back at her things, and sneered.
"You're right, I am stingy. Who knows what's in your bag? What if something's missing? Are you going to try and extort me? Do you think I'm stupid, or that I'm easy to bully?"
Then, glancing around, she said to the other onlookers, "Does she look like she needs to use the restroom? She's arguing with me here so leisurely. If she had that kind of time, she would have finished using the restroom long ago. I don't think she's in a hurry at all. She's just digging a hole for me to jump into!"
"Little girl, if you're not going to help, fine, but why are you slandering people here?"
The middle-aged woman seemed to have met her match, and her voice kept rising as she tried to suppress Xiao Jiu's aura with her voice.
"I don't know who started it," Xiao Jiu rolled her eyes at her, hung the water bottle around her neck, picked up her bag, and was about to leave.
To her surprise, the bag was snatched away the moment she grabbed it, and by the very person she had just argued with. At first, she thought the woman was crazy, that they hadn't finished arguing, but who would have thought—
"What are you doing with my bag? That's your bag."
Both bags belong to the same brand, are military green, and both have the words "Shanghai" written on them. However, one is new and the other is old, one has a patch and the other does not.
Naturally, the new bag was hers, because it was sent back from the mountain town by her aunt, and it was still brand new. Her grandmother specially asked her to take it with her.
She had originally carried that bag to avoid attracting attention; she had put all the heavy things in her spatial storage, and the small bag only contained some food and a change of clothes.
She was already upset enough, and then someone dared to snatch her bag right in front of her; it really shattered her worldview.
"This is my bag. When did it become yours? You call it, and it doesn't respond? I knew you were a strange woman, weren't you? So you were waiting for me here, trying to openly steal my bag. Fine, then tell me, what's in this bag?"
"What else could it be? Just a few apples and a few clothes. Tell me, am I right?"
Oh, this is what I noticed when I sat next to her and saw what was inside her after she unzipped her bag and took out an apple.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com