Zhang Hongmei's holiday is almost over. It's mid-May, and the weather is already very hot. It's a dry heat, not humid, but it feels like you're about to get oily from the sun.
Before leaving, Zhang Hongmei went to the old lady's house. "Grandma, I'm going back to school tomorrow. This is some smoked meat I saved for you. Let my aunt cook it for you."
"Take it back, aren't you going to give it away later?"
"Yes, I'll give it to you too. You can keep it to eat. There's not much, only three or four pounds. Give the rest to Huang Ying at the post office. I guess she'll have to pay me. If she does, I'll take it. Next time I come back, I'll buy some brown sugar and have the canteen make some sugar buns."
"Okay, I trust you to handle things. Take good care of yourself."
The next morning, before dawn, Zhang Hongmei, Er Ya, and Zhu Zi rode off on their bicycles. The holiday was over; it was time to go back to school.
They arrived at school at seven in the morning. After watching Zhu Zi and Er Ya go inside, Zhang Hongmei rode her bicycle and continued on her way.
I arrived home by 11:00 AM. In the afternoon, I tidied up the yard and turned over the furrows to plant vegetables.
Cucumber, eggplant, pepper, and tomato seedlings have all been grown in the space and can be planted directly. Green beans and bok choy can be planted directly.
Because there were several large tanks of water in the ring, after planting, I watered them.
I watered it again before going to school the next day, so there shouldn't be any problems.
On Friday, Zhang Hongmei went to see Song Zigan and said, "Come to my house tomorrow morning, there's something you've been longing for."
Upon hearing this, Song Zigan immediately guessed that there was meat involved. "I'll arrive first thing tomorrow morning."
Zhang Hongmei smiled at the excited boy and went back to the classroom.
Zhang Hongmei had just gotten up at six o'clock on Saturday morning when she heard a knock on the door. How eager this child was!
"You're here early. Come in."
"Red Plum, does it have flesh now?"
"Well, you're lucky. There are wild boars in the traps when I go back this time. I'll bring you some smoked meat."
"Hongmei, you are so kind."
Zhang Hongmei went to the storeroom, took out a ten-pound piece of smoked meat, and handed it to Song Zigan.
Song Zigan took it and weighed it in his hand. "This must weigh more than ten pounds, right?"
"Yes, ten jin."
"Hongmei, meat on the black market is now five yuan a pound. Here, this is fifty yuan." Song Zigan took out five ten-yuan bills and handed them to Zhang Hongmei.
Zhang Hongmei took the money, counted out two bills, and handed them to Song Zigan. "This is enough. I'll exchange this money for brown sugar later and take it back to the village next time so everyone can have a taste."
"I don't want any. I'm already grateful for any meat at all. I didn't give you any extra."
"Take it, stop talking nonsense." Zhang Hongmei said, stuffing the money into Song Zigan's hand.
Song Zigan felt extremely embarrassed. "Wait for me, I'll go home and find you some candy coupons."
"No need, I have more than ten two-jin sugar coupons on hand. Keep yours for the old man."
Song Zigan thanked Zhang Hongmei again, packed the meat into a bag, and went home excitedly.
He drank a glass of milk, ate two boiled eggs, and filled the water tank. Then he took a bag containing ten pounds of meat to the post office.
"Sister Huang Ying, I'm here."
"Hurry up and come into my office. I've prepared everything for you, and I even found some foreign newspapers for you, but you just can't understand them."
Zhang Hongmei took a look and saw that it was an English newspaper. "Hehe, I can't understand it either, but I'll keep it to wallpaper the walls."
"By the way, Sister Huang Ying, this is smoked wild boar meat; it's a little tough."
“Great! My family hasn’t eaten meat in almost a year. Sell it to me.”
“I brought these to you. They were found in the trap in the village. I just brought these over.”
"Wait a minute." After saying that, Huang Ying started to reach into her pocket, counted out thirteen yuan, hurriedly went out, and came back in a short while later with a wad of money.
“Hongmei, your son is fifty, here you go.”
"Sister Huang Ying, you don't need so much, just give me thirty."
"How can that be? I'm afraid you won't be able to explain it when you get back."
"It's alright, thirty is enough. If you have any sugar coupons, just give me some; I want to bring some brown sugar back to the villagers."
"Yes, I have some. I'll go borrow a few more. These are tickets we just issued today."
Finally, Zhang Hongmei took the newspaper, thirty yuan, and five jin of sugar coupons and went home.
I had nothing to do in the afternoon, so after lunch I went to the building and bought five pounds of brown sugar and two pounds of white sugar.
I went up to the second floor and bought two bottles of ink, a dozen sheets of white paper, and a dozen sheets of letter paper.
On Sunday, I stewed the remaining smoked meat and sent Liu Jianguo five steamed buns made from two portions of dough, as well as a lunchbox of smoked meat stewed with potatoes.
Afterwards, they went to the municipal government and delivered the same meal to Liu Changhai.
As Liu Changhai ate the food Zhang Hongmei had brought him, he thought to himself, "This girl is really something." Seeing Xiao Wu watching him eat with such longing, he reluctantly shared half with him. He even gave him a disapproving look at him, thinking, "So greedy!"
Zhang Hongmei didn't want to eat the smoked meat, so she gave it all to the two of them. She went home and cooked noodles with tomato, green pepper and egg sauce, and ate a big bowl of cold noodles with relish.
In the afternoon, I stayed home and read English newspapers. I'm at least at the English Level 8, so reading newspapers shouldn't be a problem for me. However, there wasn't much in the content that I could learn from, so I put it aside and started reading domestic newspapers instead.
The next day at school, the gatekeeper stopped her and said, "Zhang Hongmei, here's your letter and the parcel slip."
"Thank you, sir." Zhang Hongmei looked at the address and saw the handwriting; it must be a letter from Zhang Shouyi.
I went to the post office during my lunch break. The package was quite large, so I had to go home again, which made me late.
I didn't have time to read the letters in the afternoon; I could only read them during evening self-study.
Zhang Shouyi's letter contained nothing else but to tell her that he had sent her some materials, as well as milk candy and milk powder.
Zhang Hongmei thought to herself, "The milk candy will probably melt by now."
When I got home that evening, I opened the package. Half of it was filled with documents. I wondered if I could share these with my classmates, afraid of causing trouble for Zhang Shouyi.
I should summarize it myself and then hand it to the teacher; the original document definitely cannot be shown.
I had three generations of milk powder and two bags of milk candy. The milk candy hadn't melted, so I put them all into my spatial storage.
So for the next month, Zhang Hongmei spent her time organizing the materials sent by Zhang Shouyi.
The teacher was extremely excited when she received the materials compiled by Zhang Hongmei. This could easily be turned into a textbook.
So the teacher was very excited and hadn't calmed down by the time class started.
"Classmates, I have some materials here. Everyone should copy them. We'll be using these in class from now on."
The students below were even more excited. They were doing well in other subjects, but they didn't know where to start with politics. Now, they finally had a direction to study.
When the students received the twenty pages of densely packed materials and copied them separately, they realized that it was another document shared by Zhang Hongmei.
All the students were extremely grateful to Zhang Hongmei and copied the text diligently.
The learning atmosphere in the second year of high school was even more intense. All the students were putting in their best effort and studying diligently, and no one was slacking off.
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