Chapter 201 Teacher Qin killed a thousand enemies but lost eight hundred of his own.
During the Spring Festival, Qin Xiangxiang's family of four had a lively and joyous celebration. They didn't have to worry about eating meat this Spring Festival; on the contrary, they had a huge pile of duck products at home, with more sea duck meat than they could eat, and plenty of duck products.
Li Jianzhi tried making spicy duck heads, spicy duck necks, duck feet... These duck products made people's mouths numb from eating them.
Finally, Li Jianzhi also made duck liver pâté. Li Jianzhi sighed, "I heard that it's delicious spread on bread."
Qin Xiangxiang sighed, "I don't want to eat duck anymore."
Li Xiaopang: "Mom, we're having duck fat sesame cakes today."
Jiangning City in Jiangxi Province is a major consumer of duck, with dishes like roast duck, salted duck, duck blood vermicelli soup, and duck oil sesame cakes.
Duck oil sesame seed cake, as the name suggests, is a sesame seed cake made from duck oil. Comrade Li Xiaopang was eager to try these delicacies.
Sui Sui: "This is a sesame seed cake!"
Li Xiaopang and his sister were making sesame cakes, while Qin Xiangxiang cowered in her bedroom, ignoring everything. Li Jianzhi, with a green face, supervised from the side.
After the sesame seed cakes were made and sesame seeds were added, Li Jianzhi closed the kitchen door and went to deliver the cakes to his wife. Qin Xiangxiang quickly said, "Don't bring the food into the bedroom."
Li Jianzhi: "Alright, alright, fine, you're such a fussy person."
"If we can be particular, then we must be particular!" Comrade Xiao Qin had long forgotten the days when he lived in the old apartment and hid food in the drawers every day.
Over the past few years, their family's standard of living has steadily improved. If it were before, she would never have imagined that she would ever get tired of eating duck.
Qin Xiangxiang said, "A duck can never compare to a chicken."
Li Jianzhi: "There's also duck liver pâté, would you like some?"
"Help, I don't want to eat anything."
After celebrating their daughter Sui Sui's fourth birthday on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, Li Jianzhi received his approved leave slip. The couple boarded a cargo ship loaded with the first batch of down orders and headed to Shanghai. This cargo ship made a trip every three days, departing in the evening and arriving at eight o'clock the next morning, arriving after sleeping overnight.
On this trip back to her parents' home, Qin Xiangxiang brought a lot of gifts, including various kinds of fish, duck products, and pork sausages. "We're country folk coming to the city."
No one expected the farm to turn out like this in its first year of operation. Even more unexpectedly, the order for duck down led to a surge in duck meat production at the factory, causing everyone to worry whenever they saw ducks.
"Your daughter's hair looks really nice. What's that?"
"Down clip".
Qin Xiangxiang made several dyed duck down hair ties and clips for her daughter. They were yellow, red, and pink, and very pretty. At least for this era, they were exquisitely crafted children's hair accessories.
Although Xiao Sui Sui inherited her mother's laziness, she still has to admire herself in the mirror every day.
Li Jianzhi learned how to braid his daughter's hair.
"Don't move. You're going to see your grandparents soon. Daddy will make you two new little flower buds."
After disembarking, they soon met Qin Wutong and Zhou Aodong, a married couple. The family reunited and exchanged pleasantries. However, they couldn't leave yet; they needed to check their belongings and deliver the down jacket order to the Shanghai Radio Factory.
Qin Xiangxiang finally relaxed after the goods were counted and loaded onto the truck.
Seeing this, Zhou Aodong joked, "My daughter is indeed a 'model worker,' still busy with orders even during the Chinese New Year."
Qin Xiangxiang: "Mom, is Xinhua Bookstore open yet? I'll have Li Jianzhi buy the 'Self-Study Series on Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry' tomorrow morning. Brother Jianzhi, let's buy two sets."
"Mom, I came back to visit you this time to give you a lesson. This math and physics knowledge is very useful. You and Dad should both come and listen to my lesson."
"Don't call me a model worker anymore, just call me Teacher Qin."
Li Jianzhi: "..." Kill a thousand enemies, lose eight hundred of your own.
However, the best way to integrate knowledge is to learn it first and then teach others.
"Dad, Mom, just listen carefully and think about the lesson."
Qin Wutong and Zhou Aodong looked at each other in bewilderment.
Back in the old apartment, the same people were still living around. Many of them came out to exchange a few pleasantries with Qin Xiangxiang, while Zhou Aodong, as if in a competition, boasted about his daughter being a "model worker".
“In recent years, many people have moved away. New workers’ housing has been built. The housing built after 1974 all have independent kitchens and independent bathrooms. Everyone is waiting for their quota to move.”
“This year, some educated youth have returned to the city. The houses in the city are becoming increasingly crowded, and some people are even building shacks.”
Qin Xiangxiang asked softly, "Mom, has anyone added a house on top of it?"
"Add a cover? No."
Qin Xiangxiang said, "I guess that in two years, more and more people will return to the city, and they will definitely want to add more houses on top of it."
Qin Wutong: "That's impossible. The housing management department will absolutely not agree to it."
Li Jianzhi smiled to himself, thinking that his wife's estimate was definitely correct. With more and more educated youth returning to the city, they would definitely want to build more houses. How luxurious it would be to have a "small two-story" house in Shanghai!
Returning to the house she had lived in since childhood, Qin Xiangxiang felt a surge of emotions. Meanwhile, Li Jianzhi had already taken Xiao Pang to claim the kitchen, saying he wanted to show off his cooking skills to his parents-in-law.
"Little Fatty Li, you can cook now?"
"Doesn't anyone cook for you at home?"
When the children in the building learned that Little Fatty was back, they all came to greet him. Those kids from back then are now grown up, some even in junior high school, and they understand a lot of things.
Li Xiaopang: "That's because I'm a great cook! Have you heard of the shipping magnate of Hong Kong? He was so moved by my cooking that he cried."
"And Chen Wen, have you seen the movie? This actress praised my cooking skills after eating the food I made."
The neighbors in the building exclaimed, "Wow! Li Xiaopang, you're not kidding, are you?"
"I'm a dog if I lie!"
Qin Wutong listened to the children's conversation from afar and felt very gratified. When she returned to the house, she exclaimed, "Our grandson, Xiaopang, actually has a talent for cooking!"
Zhou Aodong hesitated and said, "...Could it be like you?"
Qin Xiangxiang: "He looks like his father."
Li Jianzhi: "A big black pot."
"Little Fatty has lost a lot of weight."
"That's called being strong."
Li Jianzhi thought his son, Li Xiaopang, was fat for this era, but when he thought about the size of elementary school students fifty years from now, he could only describe Li Qingfeng as "sturdy," which made him seem rather simple-minded.
With his stature, standing in front of the large cauldron, he had a commanding presence that suggested he was an invincible figure.
So much so that everyone watching believed he was a "good cook".
When Qin Wutong and Zhou Aodong ate the dishes made by their grandson, Qin Wutong silently ate his rice, while Zhou Aodong said, "...This cooking is just like his grandfather's."
Qin Xiangxiang prepared down vests, knee pads, gloves, and other winter supplies for her parents. When Zhou Aodong learned that a chemistry professor worked as a pig farmer in their factory, her lips twitched for a moment.
"This Teacher Shen teaches math, physics, and chemistry to the workers every day. Mom, I'll teach you math, physics, and chemistry too."
Zhou Aodong: "Mom is too old to learn this."
"Impossible! Mom, you're so amazing, there's no way you can't learn it!" Qin Xiangxiang praised her mother excessively.
The next day, he asked Li Jianzhi to go to Xinhua Bookstore to buy two sets of "Self-Study Series on Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry", a total of thirty-four books. The sales clerk at Xinhua Bookstore was shocked and kept asking him what he was going to do with them.
Li Jianzhi: "My wife wants to study math, physics, and chemistry on her own, and the other set is for my mother-in-law."
"No way?"
“My mother-in-law was a model worker when she was young. And my wife was also selected as a provincial model worker last year. The two of them are not willing to admit defeat and are competing with each other to learn from each other.”
Qin Xiangxiang sneakily stuffed a whole set of math, physics, and chemistry books into her mother's room, thinking to herself: "The serfs have been liberated and are now singing!"
"Mom, let's start studying tomorrow. I'll give you homework every day, and we'll learn as much as we can."
When Aunt Qin Wenxian learned that her niece Qin Xiangxiang had returned, she rushed over. She was wearing a new outfit made before the Lunar New Year, and she also brought some old children's clothes. She also borrowed a down vest from the neighbor.
“My niece has been living in the countryside all these years and probably has never seen such a nice thing. I’ll wear it to show her. This child has had a tough time.”
"She just picked the wrong person. I found so many good men for her back then, but she just had to fall for a soldier. Now look what happened, she's stuck in a poor mountain village all day."
"Our Dr. Wei finally managed to escape from the mountains, but my sister-in-law's family sent their daughter back."
The man next door works at the radio factory. He received a new down vest, and after bringing it home, he went back to the factory to work overtime. He specially picked out this vest for his wife; it was a bright color.
His wife, a nurse, loved to look good and immediately wore the vest out to show it off. The hospital's family compound was shocked, and everyone praised how warm it was.
Some curious people disassembled a section of the thread and examined the down filling inside closely, praising it as high-quality stuff.
"Such light duck down, how much effort must have been put into making it? This is the modern equivalent of silk and satin."
"Thanks to the good benefits at the radio factory, we can afford such nice clothes in winter."
"How much does this vest cost? If it's handmade... my goodness, that's incredible."
Qin Wenxian had to persuade her and give her many gifts before she finally managed to borrow a "down vest" from her neighbor. She had heard that this novelty was only available at the Shanghai Radio Factory and had never been seen anywhere else; it was a custom-made item.
"Qin Wenxian, you'd better be careful, there's only one of these down vests."
"Don't worry, I'll let my niece and nephew-in-law broaden their horizons. You know, it's not easy for them to come to the city, and they've never seen such good things before."
Qin Wenxian put on a vest, carried a box of cakes and pastries, and went to visit her elder brother and sister-in-law. After so many years, Qin Wenxian was still the same as before, and she couldn't stand her elder brother's family living a good life.
Ever since Qin Xiangxiang was awarded the title of model worker, her sister-in-law mentions it every day—on her mother's birthday, on her brother's birthday… She keeps bringing up the model worker title, which infuriates her.
Qin Wenxian didn't believe that her niece was living a good life. In her opinion, a big city is a big city. Even if she had to beg for food and sleep on the streets of Shanghai, it would be better than being a factory manager in a small rural town.
Apart from a few megacities like Shanghai and Guangzhou, the rest of the place is just a small rural town.
“My niece is definitely going to regret this. Back then, I asked her to switch jobs with my niece Dongmei, but she refused. How stupid of her.”
"She'll probably never have the chance to see something this fashionable in her lifetime, and she'll regret it so much she'll be heartbroken!"
Qin Wenxian arrived at her elder brother's house full of pride, only to find Qin Xiangxiang lecturing her own mother, Zhou Aodong. Zhou Aodong looked at Qin Wenxian as if she had seen a savior.
She and her sister-in-law never got along in the past, but she didn't care about that now.
Math, physics, and chemistry are the most annoying subjects!
"Think about it, your aunt is here. Invite her to sit down and talk."
Qin Xiangxiang sneered inwardly: "Auntie, you've come at the right time. I'll give you a math and physics lesson."
Qin Wenxian was dumbfounded: "???"
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