Chapter 3: The most important thing for Shaomai every day is to eat and sleep mindfully...
Having obtained meat and grain coupons from Xiaomai, Qin Xiangxiang decided not to go straight home, but instead went to queue up to buy pork. It was already this late, and she was just trying her luck; she might not be able to buy any.
The daily supply of pork is unpredictable, sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon, and it's sold out quickly. Pork is a hot commodity, and you have to queue up to buy it. However, on certain days during holidays, there may be a surplus of pork, which can lead to oversupply and even purchase it without ration coupons.
There are few days with oversupply; shortages are the norm.
Unfortunately, Qin Xiangxiang arrived just as her turn to sell out. If this happened to an ordinary person, they might curse and leave, but Qin Xiangxiang was no ordinary person.
According to her mother, Zhou Aodong, she was: stupid as a donkey, but thick-skinned enough.
"Sister, could you spare me a piece of meat? I'll give you a dime and a ticket."
Qin Xiangxiang negotiated with the older woman in front of her. It was eight cents a pound of pork and eight cents a tael. Qin Xiangxiang was losing money, but most people wouldn't be willing to accept that. Pork is hard to buy, and there's not enough for a whole family. Why would she share it with you?
Some people are calculating and willing to have the meat precisely cut out an ounce or two for weighing.
"It's you again, Qin Xiangxiang. Well, it's not easy raising a son alone." The butcher recognized Qin Xiangxiang and assumed she was buying meat for her son.
The woman buying meat heard that Qin Xiangxiang was raising her son alone while her husband was a soldier, and she felt sorry for her. She said she would give her an ounce of meat instead of the usual eight portions. The butcher said that the extra two portions could be given to Qin Xiangxiang as a piece of offal.
He kept some offal for himself, feeling that it was too pitiful for Qin Xiangxiang to only buy an ounce of meat, so he gave her some offal as a bonus.
Qin Xiangxiang agreed, and the butcher cut her a piece of pork intestine with a small piece of pig liver, and handed it to her along with the meat.
So Qin Xiangxiang used a dime and a pork coupon to buy a tael of meat, a piece of pork intestine and a little bit of pork liver.
Although buying such a small amount of food was rather stingy, Qin Xiangxiang was very satisfied, feeling that she had made a great haul today. This amount of meat was just right, and with the addition of pork liver and intestines, it would be perfect for making a soup or cooking noodles. Sprinkling some chopped green onions on top would add a touch of meaty flavor, making it delicious.
If you come to buy meat and tell the butcher you want an ounce or two, they won't even acknowledge you. Half a pound won't do either, but a pound is about right. However, a person's monthly ration is limited. If you buy a pound of meat, you can only enjoy it a few times a month. On other days, you have to rely on the cured meat left over from the New Year.
If you could buy an ounce or two of fresh pork every day, who wouldn't want that? Just add some minced meat to your dishes, and they'll taste so much better.
Qin Xiangxiang is also shameless; she will never buy more meat than she can afford, and she often partners with others to buy pork.
Although she is lazy, she is very particular about what she eats. She is also very picky about food and will not eat a bite of anything that is not delicious, even if she is starving. Of course, if she is really starving, she will still eat a bite or two to maintain her vital signs.
If she wanted to eat a few slices of meat every day, she could choose to eat at the workers' canteen. However, the workers' canteen served food at 7:00 AM, 12:00 PM, and 5:00 PM. Qin Xiangxiang couldn't wait until 5:00 PM. After looking at the menu, she didn't want to eat any of the dishes today and didn't want to waste her money.
Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, their textile factory was a foreign-owned factory with better infrastructure than others. However, the food in the canteen was just average. The only thing they offered was a variety of snacks, such as steamed buns, shumai, xiaolongbao, pan-fried buns, potstickers, etc. The craftsmanship of these snacks was commendable.
The soy milk in the cafeteria in the morning is quite good, but for lunch and dinner, most of the meat dishes are just watery and not very tasty, with only a few slices of meat in them.
As for eating flatbread, Qin Xiangxiang also needs to find a special chef, as this requires a lot of skill.
"You're such a fuss-cat!" Zhou Aodong, who rarely fusses over food, always complains that his daughter is picky.
She brought back cold rice and dishes from the workers' canteen, but Qin Xiangxiang only picked out a few slices of meat and didn't eat anything else, preferring to eat them with plain rice.
These days, Qin Xiangxiang's most serious concern is satisfying her hunger. She rides her bicycle, planning delicious meals in her mind, and soon arrives at the bottom of the building.
Her family lived in a row of workers' housing. The old houses, built in the 1950s, were only two stories high, with white walls, red roofs, and wooden doors and windows. Now, after more than ten years, the white walls have turned black, mold has grown underneath, and the doors and windows are always creaking.
These old apartment buildings are very noisy. This community has tens of thousands of residents. Most of them are two-story buildings, divided by units, with one unit and one door number. The layout of the two floors is the same.
Each floor has five rooms. In their unit, three rooms face south, two face north, there is a kitchen, a toilet with two toilet seats, and a cement pool bathroom.
Residents on each floor share a kitchen, toilet, and bathroom.
Qin Xiangxiang's apartment building houses six families. Her family lives on the second floor and has two south-facing rooms and one north-facing room. The Xu family next door has two rooms, one facing south and one facing north.
Their family had a so-so relationship with the Xu family. There used to be a Ge family living in the central area, but they moved away in 1966. At that time, Qin Xiangxiang was about to have a baby. She was a military family member and separated from her husband, so she should be given preferential treatment. The housing management office allocated the extra house to their family, so they had three rooms.
This made the Xu family very unhappy; they also wanted that room, as they had more family members.
In reality, the Xu and Qin families were considered to be in relatively good condition. Qin Xiangxiang's parents were both factory workers and were able to have two rooms. The five rooms on the ground floor housed four families, which was truly crowded. The toilets were also unclean; even with the toilet lids covered, there was still a smell, and Qin Xiangxiang had to hold her nose every time she walked past.
Qin Xiangxiang locked her bicycle, took her things, found her keys, and went upstairs. The wooden stairs creaked with each step she took.
She went back to her room first. There were three rooms in the house. Her parents lived in one room, she lived in another room, and her son Li Qingfeng lived in another room. Sometimes Qin Xiangxiang's grandmother would bring a few of her uncles' and aunts' children to stay, and they would stay in Li Qingfeng's room.
Although Qin Xiangxiang is lazy, her room is very tidy because she can't stand a dirty and messy environment. Her room has to be fragrant and beautiful. The room is only fifteen square meters in size and has a wooden bed. She has been sleeping on this wooden bed since she was three years old. A lot of the light green paint on it has peeled off. Qin Xiangxiang couldn't stand it, so she covered it with a floral cloth and embroidered lace.
Her room was sparsely furnished: a wooden bed, a wardrobe, a desk, a stool, a sewing machine under the windowsill, and an old imported piano that had been used for over thirty years, passed down to her by her mother. It needed frequent tuning, and while the sound quality was decent, she had grown tired of playing it since childhood and had always wanted to buy a new piano. Nowadays, in China, she could only buy domestically produced pianos, but even a domestically produced piano cost over a thousand yuan.
However, if you become a piano teacher at a children's palace, you will have access to good pianos.
Her gaze lingered on the old piano for a while. Before, she had complained that the piano was too old, but in her dream, she was forced to go to the island with the army, and the piano could only be sold off cheaply. After arriving on the island, she never had the chance to touch the piano again.
Thinking about how she sold the piano in her dream, she felt heartbroken and extremely reluctant to part with it.
She absolutely must not repeat the same mistake this time, and she will not go to the island with the army again.
Qin Xiangxiang first locked the money and tickets into a small box in the wardrobe compartment, then hid the remaining candy cakes in her desk drawer. Still feeling unsafe, she found an old lock and locked the drawer.
Her room is usually off-limits to anyone but herself. She forbade her parents from entering her room when she was a teenager, and they did as she pleased. But things changed after they had a son.
She also forbade her son, Li Qingfeng, from entering her room. The dirty boy crawled and rolled around everywhere, and if he dared to get on her bed, she wouldn't be able to sleep at night.
But this child was mischievous and cunning. He knew that his mother might be hiding delicious food in her room, so he would try to sneak in and steal food whenever he had the chance.
This wretched son! The thought that she had given birth to three of these wretched creatures in her dreams made her feel even more that Li Jianzhi was a bad omen and that she had to divorce him!
Qin Xiangxiang touched her nose. She opened the window and unscrewed a bottle of osmanthus-scented dew on the table. This dew was made by her from osmanthus flowers she picked herself last autumn when they were in bloom. She put a little on a handkerchief, tucked it into the vent, and the wind blew in from outside, filling the room with the fragrance of osmanthus.
Besides the osmanthus-scented dew, there were many other things on her table: Pechoin perfume, pearl powder, perfume... She was a girl who loved beauty.
Her room was clean and beautiful, with a pleasant fragrance in the air. Every time Qin Xiangxiang looked at her room like this, she felt a sense of joy from the bottom of her heart.
If outsiders saw her room, they would definitely think she was a gentle, beautiful, reserved, and elegant woman, and would never guess that Qin Xiangxiang was a lazybones.
Qin Xiangxiang didn't change her clothes. Wearing her blue overalls, she carried the meat to the kitchen. As soon as she stepped out of the room, she frowned. The downstairs area was really dirty and smelly. Someone was probably using the toilet. She opened the toilet seat, and the smell wafted out. Someone was also chopping garlic. The combination of these smells was truly indescribable.
She closed the kitchen door to shut out the smell, put on an apron, quickly washed the cutting board, and prepared to chop the meat. Since it was only an ounce of meat, it turned into minced meat after a few chops. She then added some scallion and ginger water to marinate and remove the fishy smell.
She always takes her stomach very seriously. She'll stir-fry the minced meat over low heat until it's dry and fragrant. She'll save half for cooking tonight and the other half to make some small shumai for breakfast before going to work tomorrow morning.
While marinating the minced meat, Qin Xiangxiang first cooked a pot of glutinous rice. The glutinous rice she cooked now would be perfect for wrapping shumai tomorrow morning once it cooled down.
Every morning, the workers' canteen served shumai. However, this type of shumai was a product of the planned economy under the communal dining system. To be precise, it was simply glutinous rice wrapped in a thin dough wrapper. Due to the shortage of supplies, the shumai in the workers' canteen was simplified to a thin dough wrapper filled with leftover glutinous rice. This practice was criticized by some particular families in the past, who said that it was just like wrapping rice in a dumpling wrapper, which was simply insane.
However, at that time, the workers' canteen's shumai was also considered a delicacy by many people. Although it was just ordinary glutinous rice, it was steamed with soy sauce and some frozen lard, making it incredibly fragrant.
Many mothers who finish their night shifts will buy five or six shumai from the cafeteria after their shift, fill a lunchbox, and take it home. Their children are overjoyed.
Qin Xiangxiang loved the shumai her mother brought home when she was little, and she even learned to make it herself.
When making shumai at home, you can add diced shiitake mushrooms, diced meat, diced bamboo shoots, and if you want to be extravagant, you can even wrap salted egg yolk inside... Roll the dough out thinly, and make the filling puffy inside. The resulting shumai should be small and plump, like a thin-skinned pomegranate.
Before going to work tomorrow, she will devoutly appease her stomach by eating five or six small steamed dumplings in one go, then ride her bicycle to the factory and go to the canteen to get a pot of sweet hot soy milk.
Only after drinking the sweet soy milk can you have the energy to work.
She didn't need to eat anything else for lunch. She brought a lunchbox of shumai, soaked the lunchbox in boiling water for a while, and the shumai inside heated up. Although it wasn't as delicious as when it was freshly cooked in the morning, it was still very tasty, and it even had meat inside.
Thinking about this, Qin Xiangxiang realized that her days as a textile worker weren't so unbearable.
The most important things every day are eating and sleeping mindfully.
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