Chapter 114 The Lazy Girl in the Historical Fiction 2
Village Party Secretary Li Taimin walked into the Luo family's courtyard. Luo Dashan was smoking a pipe. When he saw Li Taimin, he got up and poured him some tea. Li Taimin didn't stand on ceremony and took a big gulp from the enamel cup. The tea leaves were grown in his own vegetable garden and dried by himself to drink slowly.
After finishing his tea, Li Taimin said, "Dashan, I went to a meeting in town this morning. The leaders said that a group of educated youths are going to be assigned to our area, including two bad elements. What do you think we should do about it?"
Upon hearing this, Luo Dashan's face darkened even more. These educated youths were no pushovers. There was a young female educated youth next door who somehow started flirting with a married woman. In the end, they were caught having an affair, and she was sent to the Great Northern Wilderness. The man next door also had his leg broken by his wife's brother, and his wife took the child back to her parents' home. I heard they got divorced.
Divorce is a very new word for people in rural areas. A divorced young wife will be gossiped about. If she hadn't really been unable to make it work, she wouldn't have divorced him.
There were other unsavory things too. In Luo Dashan's eyes, these educated youths were just restless, always finding fault and causing trouble.
But the town leaders said that since everyone had come, they couldn't refuse, so they had no choice but to bite the bullet and make the arrangements.
Luo Dashan tapped his pipe and said, "Clean up that old primary school; it'll be enough for them to live in. As for the 'Five Black Categories,' they can live in the cowshed at the foot of our mountain."
The old primary school that Luo Dashan mentioned was the school where the children used to go to school. It was just four bungalows connected together. Now that schooling is no longer popular, the place has been vacated and is perfect for these educated youth to live in.
As for the cowshed at the foot of the mountain, the cows used to live there. Later, two more cows came into the village, so a new cowshed was built, and someone was hired to take care of herding the cows. The place was abandoned.
Although it's a cowshed, it's still a place to shelter from the wind and rain. Rural people value their cattle highly, and the cowshed was built very sturdily. Now that people live there, it's not too bad in the summer. We'll see what to do in the winter.
After discussing it with Li Taimin, Luo Dashan woke up Luo Aihua and asked him to drive the tractor to town to pick up people and bring his sister-in-law back, since she was on holiday and had come home today.
Luo Aihua was groggily woken up by her father. When she heard that he was going to drive a tractor to pick someone up that afternoon, she was a little happy. Driving a tractor was much easier than working in the fields. But when she saw the steamed buns on the table, she frowned and said, "Little sister isn't eating again?"
Upon hearing this, Luo Dashan's face darkened further. He handed Luo Aihua a steamed bun and told him to leave quickly. Seeing his father annoyed Luo Aihua, and not daring to offend him, Luo Aihua took the bun and left.
A group of young men and women had gathered in the town. There were eight people in total. Six of them were standing together, and the remaining two boys were standing together. The tall boy was very tall and thin. His face was thin and pale. His clothes were obviously too short, revealing his wrists and ankles. However, he was very calm and had sharp eyes, which made him seem unapproachable.
The smaller one, who was slightly fatter, was leaning against him. He was still thin and pale, with timid eyes, like a frightened little animal being tightly protected by the taller boy.
The youngest looked no more than ten years old, and the oldest was probably fourteen or fifteen. I didn't talk to them because they were considered "black five categories." Their grandfather was a physics professor at Tsinghua University who returned to China to serve his country, but he was caught up in this calamity and was exiled to the Great Northern Wilderness.
Their parents severed ties with them and went abroad. Their grandfather used all his connections to get them assigned to a better place, instead of the harsh and cold Great Northern Wilderness where life was extremely difficult.
The other group of men and women stood together, their faces not showing much joy. They had all seen their former friends who had gone to the countryside, and they had all become completely different people, with dark skin and dry, yellow nails. Some of them had not even returned, saying that they had stayed in the area and become country people, never to return to the city.
They didn't want to live like this, but they had no other choice. Soon, they heard the sound of a tractor. They had come to town by tractor before, which was a precious thing in the countryside. The fact that the village they went to had one meant that things were not too bad.
For a moment, some people's faces showed a hint of joy and anticipation. Luo Aihua also drove the tractor to the group of people. In his cab sat a pretty girl with short hair, who was Luo Aiguo's wife, Wang Aihong.
"Hello, I am Comrade Luo Aihua, here to take you back to the village. Please come on up."
Luo Aihua, a strong young man, helped the group into the truck bed. Then, seeing that the two boys were motionless, he frowned and called out, "Comrades, hurry up and get in, we're about to leave."
The two boys didn't answer. A man sitting in the back of the tractor said, "Comrade Luo, let's go. Those two are bad elements and don't deserve to ride on the tractor. Let them follow behind."
The two boys had walked here when they came to town. Fortunately, it wasn't too far, and they managed to stumble and fall all the way to the place.
Luo Aihua frowned even more. The two children in front of him were so thin and looked so pitiful. Their shoes were worn down to their toes, which were bleeding from the chafing. He yelled at them, "Hurry up and get on the bus! What if we run into wolves on our way back to the village if it gets too late?"
Hearing him say that, the people in the truck bed dared not try to persuade him anymore. If those two bad guys were eaten by wolves, they would suffer the same fate, after all, it was a matter of two lives.
The tall boy glanced at Luo Aihua, helped his younger brother into the truck bed, and then got on the truck himself. The two huddled in a corner, very quiet. The tractor started up with a chug, taking the eight people back to Shanghe Village.
When they arrived at the village entrance, the village chief, the village party secretary, and several burly men were waiting there. They all breathed a sigh of relief when they saw the tractor arrive.
Luo Aihua brought the people there and then drove the tractor back. Their village has a special warehouse to store tractors and some farm tools. These are public property and cannot be taken lightly. Wang Aihong went with him, as it would be closer for the two of them to get home from there.
Luo Dashan led several burly, dark-faced middle-aged men, and the educated youth indeed behaved themselves, not daring to cause trouble. These rural farmers had developed muscles from farming, and they looked formidable.
They brought the people to the primary school, where everything was already set up, and several wooden beds had been moved over. Although simple, they were basically usable. The educated youth had also brought their own pots and pans, and they could settle in tonight. However, looking at the drafty walls and the muddy yellow earth, they were still secretly alarmed. They had thought the situation would be bad, but they hadn't imagined it would be this bad.
They were all city students; when had they ever seen such a drab, gray house?
They complained bitterly, but Luo Dashan ignored them and told them to go to the village committee to collect their grain after they finished packing. Each person would receive 20 jin of corn and 30 jin of sweet potatoes, enough to last a month. Starting next month, the grain would be distributed according to the number of work points they had worked.
Everyone quickly got to work; they were all panicking because they hadn't received the food.
As for Xu Yanhui and his younger brother Xu Qinghe, they were taken to the cattle pen, where several bundles of straw were placed on the ground. They would live there from now on. They were told to go to the village committee tomorrow to be assigned work. Then Luo Dashan left with his men.
Xu Yan rummaged through the straw and found a large bag of sweet potatoes and corn, as well as matches, salt, and a few broken bowls and basins—it was much better than he had expected.
He and his brother had been hated by everyone lately, and he thought that once they arrived here, they would be lucky to be given a stinking cowshed. However, the situation was much better than he had imagined. There should have been no cows living here for a long time, and there wasn't much of a smell, only the earthy smell and the smell of grass and trees. They even prepared this much food for him and his brother, enough to last them for a while.
He was preparing to cook when he saw his younger brother already asleep on the haystack. After being displaced for so long, he now seemed to have a temporary place to stay in this dilapidated cowshed.
It's alright, not that bad.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
