After resting for a night at Zhou's house, after breakfast the next day, Zhou Cuiling went to work at the grain station, and Meng Tao returned to the Meng family's yard and began to tidy up the room she was going to live in.

The educated youth had already finished breakfast and were preparing to go to work. When they saw Meng Tao coming in with two travel bags, they couldn't help but talk to her for a while.

They were all in the same production team. Meng Taohua used to be a noncommunicative person, but she knew the names of the educated youth who lived in her house. The five male educated youth were Jiang Xiaodong, Sun Yutang, Qian Jin, Wu Guoliang, and Zhao Ming; and the three female educated youth were Jiang Limei, Qian Xiaoyun, and He Huijuan. She would have to live with these eight people day and night in the future.

The educated youths said hello and went to work. Meng Tao closed the gate and walked into the house. There were three main rooms with a hall in the middle and a partition behind the hall where some of the furniture used by Grandpa Meng and Meng Taohua were stored. The east room was now occupied by three female educated youths, and the west room was vacated by a male educated youth and repainted. Although the technique was not very good, the four walls were clean and white, which looked very comfortable. Meng Tao only needed to clean up the lime and loose sand on the ground, hang a curtain on the window, clean the bed frame, tables, chairs and cabinets behind the hall, move them in and put them away, and then he could live in it.

Hmm, it seems like there is something missing? I bought bed sheets and mosquito nets in the provincial capital, but no quilt!

It is late autumn now, and we need to cover ourselves with a thin quilt at night. Let's just get through tonight and wait and see tomorrow. I'll go to the commune supply and marketing cooperative and buy two quilts.

See if there's anything missing and buy them together.

Meng Tao walked out of the house and looked at the yard. The educated youth were quite nice and had cleaned up the yard very well. The room on the left was now a dormitory for the male educated youth. They used the cement given by Bao Shunfeng to build a rectangular flower bed in front of the room with stones and waste bricks. They loosened the soil and planted two holly trees and some unfamiliar low plants in it. It looked quite decent. The edge of the flower bed was wide so one could sit on it to enjoy the cool air or place a washbasin there. Every morning, one could water the plants directly after washing their face and brushing their teeth.

On the right are the kitchen and woodshed. In front of the kitchen stands a large water tank, which was originally there. In the corner of the yard past the woodshed, a large chicken coop was built with bamboo strips, in which several hens and roosters were kept. Two long bamboo poles were placed between the courtyard wall and the persimmon tree, which were enough for drying clothes and quilts.

There are vegetables planted in the back garden, and there are toilets and bathrooms.

Meng Tao walked to the water tank and opened the bamboo cover. There was half a tank of water inside. She decided to use the water to clean the furniture first and then fetch it back when she was done.

After working for more than two hours, they finally finished cleaning the bed frame and some furniture. These were not the ones moved back from the Tian family, but the single bed frame, small wardrobe, tables and chairs that Meng Taohua used when she was "unmarried". They were made of good wood and were still very solid. There was even a small dressing table with a simple and elegant shape. It can be imagined that Grandpa Meng really loves his granddaughter.

Meng Tao couldn't move the bed frame by herself, so she first swept the floor of the room and hung up the curtains. She happened to have bought some light-colored floral fabrics in the provincial capital, so she cut a piece and did some sewing.

Then she carried the empty bucket to the well to fetch water. Meng Taohua was used to farm work and housework, so she had no problem fetching a few buckets of water and had the strength to do so. But Meng Tao felt uncomfortable, with shoulder pain and poor balance. She even spilled a bucket of water at the beginning. Fortunately, most people were working in the fields at that time, and no one saw her embarrassed look, otherwise they would be surprised: Taohua went to the provincial capital and came back without knowing how to fetch water? !

By the time she had filled the tank with water, the educated youth had finished their work and returned for lunch.

Several male educated youth enthusiastically helped her move the bed frame, cabinets, boxes, tables and chairs into the room. Sun Yutang also took a piece of leftover iron wire and helped her hammer two nails in the room and pull it up, so that she could hang clothes on it at ordinary times, and if the washed clothes did not dry on rainy days, she could also hang them in the house to dry. Meng Tao expressed her gratitude.

She needed to go to the brigade headquarters and had agreed with Captain Bao Shunfeng that when they finished work and came back, she would go to return the travel expenses she had advanced and also advance food to last until the day of food distribution.

Although she now has money and food coupons and can get by without advance payment of food, she still shouldn't be too extravagant, lest people notice that she is not the same Meng Taohua as before.

Meng Tao went to the brigade headquarters. The captain and the accountant were all there. Meng Tao paid back the thirty yuan and ten kilograms of food coupons. She watched the cashier tick her name in the notebook and write "the coupon has been paid back on a certain day of a certain month of a certain year". Then she started to apply for an advance payment of food. After receiving a slip, she waited for the captain to approve and stamp it, and then she could go to the warehouse keeper to collect the food.

Team leader Bao Shunfeng was issuing a certificate to a member while scolding him. After the member left, it was Meng Tao's turn to stamp the certificate. He was also scolded. The general idea was that Meng Tao should be more efficient and should have sorted out the family affairs this morning so that he could go to work and earn work points in the afternoon. If he didn't earn work points, he would not have enough food to eat.

Meng Tao nodded in agreement. The team leader was a black-faced Bao Gong, with a bad temper but a righteous heart. Once you get familiar with him, you won't be afraid of him anymore. Just treat him as a nagging man in menopause and ignore it.

I looked at Aunt Yang's scoring book last night. A strong laborer could only earn ten work points a day. One work point was three cents, and ten work points were thirty cents. Thirty cents for a whole day's work! My God, that's only the price of two bowls of noodles in the provincial capital, and you have to add the food coupons. Meng Tao was devastated. She originally felt that she might not be able to support herself by earning work points alone, and now she has even less motivation to go to work.

After coming out of the brigade headquarters, Meng Tao went straight to the warehouse keeper to get food. The warehouse keeper had already greeted the brigade leader. He took the note and looked at it. Seeing that Meng Tao was holding a few cloth bags in her hands, he began to weigh the food for her. Meng Tao didn't bother to see how many pounds it was. She was dumbfounded when she saw the food scooped out: half a bag of corn kernels, half a bag of high-grain grain, half a bag of wheat in shells, and half a bag of rice, all of which were unprocessed!

She had to carry it to the mill herself, grind it into flour and thresh the grain before she could eat it.

Meng Tao felt a pain in her scalp. "Who knows that every grain of rice on the plate is the result of hard work?" It was so hard to get some food! Meng Tao borrowed a shoulder pole from the warehouse keeper, tied four cloth bags at both ends, and staggered away.

When they arrived at the mill at the entrance of the village, there happened to be a grandmother with her eight or nine-year-old grandson grinding flour inside. They also had several bags, and the two of them had all the tools, including a dustpan, a sieve, and a small straw broom. Meng Tao didn't bring anything with him, so he asked to work with them to grind the flour. There were two of them, so Meng Tao wanted to borrow tools, and then she would give them the bran, so that it wouldn't be considered taking advantage of them.

The grandfather and grandson agreed readily. Now was not the time of terrible famine, and people did not need to eat bran, but it was a good feed for chickens, pigs, and cows.

So the three of them, the old and the young, pushed the millstone for several hours, and when the sun was setting, they had finally finished grinding the grain, and each of them carried their loads back home.

(End of this chapter)