Chapter 24 Chapter 24 Chapter 24...
Chapter 24
After so many years of friction, the city dwellers were unwilling to go to the countryside to work in the fields, and the villagers were unwilling to accept those who went there to work in the fields. Just when they thought that the situation would not change according to their own will, the village chief opened a window for others based on his imagination.
If the twins look alike and have a good relationship, they can take turns going to the countryside without anyone noticing.
Educated youth were entitled to family leave, but whether or not they could get it depended on whether the village where they were sent to work in the countryside would approve it. However, if the twins wanted to swap someone else for the one who was sent to work in the countryside back in the city, even if they didn't have family leave, there were ways to do it.
Following the ideas given by the village chief, the village party secretary and the production team leader also made their own strategies and improvements based on this guess.
Everyone had a very creative idea, but fortunately, after talking for quite some time, the three of them finally came to a consensus.
It didn't matter whether it was Weisheng Yiran or Weisheng Anran who came to join the team, as long as the number of educated youth in their village remained the same. Beyond that, it was all about what benefits Weisheng's daughter could bring to Kaoshan Village.
At present, this girl, who is not sure whether she is an older sister or a younger sister, can take pictures, develop photos, drive a tractor, and repair various mechanical things... If all the girls in Weisheng's family are of this level, then the villagers really don't mind who is who.
After figuring this out, the three village chiefs began to discuss how to deal with Jin Menglan.
Using her work points to compensate for the door was the most basic thing, but she also needed an explanation for her slanderous reporting of innocent educated youth, to prevent future villagers from following suit. Furthermore, she shouldn't have wronged the educated youth in vain; she also needed to be compensated for that.
The village party secretary said, "As for the photos, I'll have Weisheng calculate how many photos need to be retaken. The cost of the retakes will be paid from Lao Jin's work points."
The work points earned in Kaoshan Village were the money earned from selling various grains. At the end of the year, the village would distribute this money to the villagers according to the work points each person had worked.
Jin Menglan had already used up some of her work points this year to pay for her family's expenses, so the remaining money was definitely not enough to take the photos again. Since she wasn't married yet, she asked her parents to share the difference.
On the other side, Jin Menglan was also carried all the way back to Old Jin's house.
Menglan's mother was startled and rushed over to see her daughter who was still unconscious on the door panel. While calling Menglan, she asked the director of the women's department what happened to her daughter.
What can the Women's Director say?
You said I was too fat. Did your daughter vomit because I sat on her?
Glancing at the villagers who had gathered to watch the excitement, the women's director then focused on the situation: "Meng Lan had bad intentions and wrote a letter of denunciation to the Revolutionary Committee. Afraid Weisheng would get wind of it and run away, she went to knock on Yu Tao's door...
Ren Weisheng was developing photos inside and didn't dare open the door for her, so she knocked like crazy and finally knocked down Yu Tao's door. "The pressure from the door must have made her faint."
The women's director's description didn't include Wei Sheng swinging a small hammer, Yu Tao pulling at her pigtails, or herself causing someone to vomit. In short, everything was an accident, but the fact that your daughter was a bad-hearted person was undeniable.
The aunt who was sending Jin Menglan home waited for the women's director to finish speaking and immediately said, "Oh my God, isn't this retribution in this life?"
Menglan’s mother: “…”
Menglan's mother could never have imagined that her daughter could do such a thing, but when she thought about how her daughter had been like a possessed person these days and how her every move was different from before, she had to believe what the director of women's affairs said.
Some say Weisheng behaves like a capitalist, but Menglan's mother says her daughter is more like him. Thinking of this, Menglan's mother couldn't help but look at her daughter carefully again... Could this child really be possessed by evil spirits?
No one dared to talk about gods and ghosts during this period. But the more Menglan's mother thought about it, the more she felt that there was something wrong with her daughter. Because of this thought, Menglan's mother did not say a word to defend Jin Menglan in front of outsiders.
Jin Menglan's face was extremely dirty, all covered with her vomit. Seeing this, Menglan's mother felt nauseous and without thinking, she used the rag at hand to wipe Jin Menglan's face.
Because the village chief hadn't announced Jin Menglan's fate, after sending everyone away, Menglan's mother glanced at her still unconscious daughter and went to the outer room. While doing chores around the house, she pondered how to exorcise the evil spirit from her daughter.
Jin Menglan woke up slowly and first smelled an even more disgusting smell. When she found that the smell came from her body, she immediately felt nauseous and vomited.
When Menglan's mother heard the noise, she hurried into the house and saw Jin Menglan lying on the edge of the kang, vomiting on the ground.
Looking at the ground, Menglan's mother felt nauseous.
Jin Menglan was previously carried back on a door panel. After arriving home, Menglan's mother and several other women carried Jin Menglan onto the kang.
According to living habits, Jin Menglan's shoes were taken off before getting on the kang and placed on the ground at the edge of the kang above her head. At this moment, Jin Menglan turned over and vomited, and the vomit fell into the shoes she had just taken off.
At this moment, Jin Menglan also saw the cloth shoes underneath, and her already bad face instantly turned darker.
Seeing her mother standing at the door, Jin Menglan asked her mother to throw away the shoes.
"How can you just throw away such nice shoes?"
Menglan's mother felt that her daughter was not only possessed by evil spirits, but might also be possessed by a capitalist.
After a while, Jin Menglan finally cleaned herself up, and her mother asked her why she reported Weisheng.
"You know how torturous those cuff-wearing people are. If they really let them take someone away, they'd be skinned alive. What's the unsolvable problem that requires you to do this?"
Jin Menglan was choked by the question, and she really couldn't think of any reason to make her behavior less inexplicable.
After a long thought, Jin Menglan wanted to accuse Weisheng of having an affair with Ma Junming, just to bolster her still-unresolved plan. But then she thought about the autumn harvest, and how Ma Junming hadn't been back in days. It was a stretch to imagine they hadn't even met in their entire lives, let alone anything else.
After thinking about it for a long time, she could not find any reason, so Jin Menglan turned her head away and refused to answer her mother's questioning with silence.
Menglan’s mom: …I just want to ask, if this isn’t possessed by evil spirits, what else could it be?
╮(╯▽╰)╭
After the new gate was installed, Weisheng stayed closed for half a day before announcing his exit.
She first picked out the photos of the village head, party secretary, production team leader and other families and placed them separately. She then used the developed photos to identify the negatives, and then properly preserved the negatives according to the names. Only then did she take the photos of the villagers to find the village head.
There is a very large house in the village committee compound. When people used to eat from a big pot, it was the villagers’ public canteen. Later, when they stopped eating from the big pot, it became the venue for villagers to hold meetings.
Weisheng asked the village chief for the key to the venue, picked up a can of paste that Yu Tao had helped him make, and went to decorate the back wall with the photos.
When Weisheng announced he would allow villagers to take photos for free, he had already told the village chief where the photos would be placed. The village chief even had a white-painted wooden board placed in the venue.
After printing a few words and cutting them out of red paper, Weisheng pasted them on the top of the whiteboard before starting to stick the photos on top.
Afraid that the photos would be taken away and he would not be able to explain himself clearly, Weisheng was thoughtful enough to write the number and the villager's name on the back of each photo and on the whiteboard where the photos were pasted with a black pen.
At the same time, he took out a notebook and wrote down the numbers and the corresponding names of the villagers one by one.
If someone takes the photo away later, a number and a name will appear where the photo was originally pasted. Even without Weisheng's notebook, you can know who the taken photo belongs to.
Originally, it wouldn't be that troublesome, but Weisheng knew Jin Menglan would definitely take the photo of her with a ferocious and sinister look. So, in order to let all the villagers know whose photo was missing, he had to write down their names as well.
After pasting all the photos, Weisheng took out his camera and mobile phone to take two photos for record.
After work in the afternoon, the villagers came to the village committee compound to sign out, and Weisheng asked everyone to go and see the whiteboard wall in the meeting room.
The villagers entered the venue one after another, and then crowded around the whiteboard wall.
There were a dozen or so large characters on the top of the whitewashed wall: 'Our Kaoshan Village*We in Kaoshan Village'
Below this line of words, there is a group photo of the village cadres of Kaoshan Village.
Below the group photo are individual photos of village cadres pasted according to their standing positions in the group photo.
The reason for taking this group photo is because Weisheng didn't want people to find fault with it when pasting the photos together.
No matter which photo was placed in front and which in the back, it would be easy for someone with ulterior motives to find fault with it. So Weisheng took a group photo and pasted individual photos of the village cadres in the same positions as in the group photo.
In the group photo, the village head and the production team leader stood on both sides of the village party secretary, the accountant, the women's director and others stood on the left and right of these three people, so Weisheng pasted the photos in this order.
After this step is completed, the rest of the people will stick them according to the locations of the houses in the village.
The village chief's house is in the third row of the village, and Yu Tao lives in the fourth row, so the photos of Yu Tao and her mother-in-law and sister-in-law are in the third and fourth rows respectively, and the same is true for other people's houses.
Oh, there are special cases.
Because Jin Menglan broke into the darkroom and destroyed some of the photos, there were no photos of Jin Menglan's sister-in-law, Ma Junming's mother, sister, and several difficult people in the village that were not easy to deal with on the wall.
Everyone looked at the photos, and except for the few who didn't have photos, everyone else was very happy.
By the way, Jin Menglan was in pain all over, and since Weisheng hadn't covered up for her, many people in the village were talking about her anonymous letter of denunciation. To avoid the spotlight, Jin Menglan hadn't left the house for the past two days. So she didn't see that the photo she most wanted no one to see had been hung on the whiteboard wall by some scheming woman.
In order to make this photo more eye-catching, everyone else's photos are four inches, but Jin Menglan's is a small five inches, which is slightly larger than everyone else's.
Not only that, if the exposure time of other people's photos when they were being put on the film was 8 seconds, then Jin Menglan's photo was 10 seconds, so it looks a little darker than other photos.
After viewing their own photos, the villagers looked at others'. Then, without prior agreement, they all came across Jin Menglan's photo. Thinking of Jin Menglan's recent activities and looking at the photo again, the villagers lamented that appearance reflects the heart, and their impression of her changed drastically.
Especially Li Wenxuan.
Li Wenxuan didn't believe that Jin Menglan would do such a thing at first. In order to get close to Weisheng, Li Wenxuan even went to Weisheng to ask about the situation at that time.
Weisheng was too lazy to pay attention to him and just said that if he wanted to know, he could go ask the village chief.
However, Li Wenxuan did not ask the village chief, but went to find Jin Menglan.
Jin Menglan often gave Li Wenxuan food from home and things Ma Junming gave her—one egg today, two cookies tomorrow. Although the two had only known each other for a short time, they were close in private. The villagers always assumed Jin Menglan went to the Youth House because she got along well with Zhang Xiaoyu.
When they arrived at the Jin family, Jin Menglan denied it flatly and told Li Wenxuan Weisheng's true identity.
I had already had this in mind, but I didn't expect that Li Wenxuan would be dissatisfied with Jin Menglan the next day.
It was nothing, Weisheng's act of helping others that night had already begun to bear fruit.
Of the four connected private plots, cabbage seedlings have already grown on the other three, but Li Wenxuan's plot is still bare.
At first glance, there was not even a single weed growing, let alone cabbage seedlings.
Knowing that they had just come from the city and had no seeds, the cabbage seedlings in their private plots were distributed to them by the village committee.
The same seeds sprouted in all three plots, which made everyone wonder why. This thought reminded them of the day when they cleared the wasteland and planted cabbages.
Then Li Wenxuan also thought of the situation that day.
That day, the villagers rushed to help Weisheng plant cabbages. Even Zhang Xiaoyu and Shen Zhao, whose plots were on Weisheng's left and right, were taken care of. Li Wenxuan's plot was at the very edge, and only Jin Menglan went to help him.
Whether it was clearing land, building ridges, sowing seeds, or watering the fields, Li Wenxuan had never done this before. Jin Menglan had almost entirely cleared his half-acre cabbage patch for him.
It is said that the more you do, the more mistakes you make, the less you do, the fewer mistakes you make, and if you do nothing, the least mistakes you make. So Jin Menglan, who did the most, became the scapegoat.
Li Wenxuan found an old educated youth to help him check the situation of his private plot. The old educated youth had been in the village for several years and any problems related to crops were not difficult for him.
When people came, they squatted on the ground to look for a while, then stretched out their hands to dig the soil again, and finally found a few cabbage seeds covered with white hairs in the soil.
Li Wenxuan: “…”
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