| Chapter 27. | |
| Tian Bajin and the old man smoked a pipe and drank a cup of tea to shake off the smell of alcohol. After sitting for a while, they got up and called everyone to get to work. Although it wasn't time to start work yet, as the village secretary and a military family member, he had to set a good example and couldn't hold back Aiguo and Chaohua and Guanghua, the uncle and nephew in the army. | |
| Tian Manyin filled a large pot with hot water to take to the fields. After everyone left, the room was empty again. Tian Qinghua had already returned home and brought Dahuang over to feed it bones. Dahuang sniffed the bones, its eyes suddenly lit up, and it started eating voraciously. Tian Qinghua affectionately stroked Dahuang's head, occasionally muttering a few words. | |
| "Dahuang, eat slowly. Eat those two pieces. Those two pieces are ones I've already gnawed on. I deliberately didn't finish the meat and saved them for you!" | |
| "Dahuang, isn't it delicious? You have to thank Anan properly. If it weren't for her, we wouldn't have had this treat. Don't scare Anan anymore. Anan is timid and can't stand being scared by you." | |
| ... | |
| Tian Sisi found it amusing. If dogs could understand human speech, they'd be geniuses. At that moment, Old Lady Zhao and Li Yuedi were discussing sending meat to Mantong and her other married daughters. These days, everyone was short of meat, and now that they had so much, they wanted everyone to have a taste. Old Master Tian interjected, "Send it to everyone else, but not to Tian Manlan." | |
| Old Lady Zhao paused, looking pleadingly at her husband, hoping he would agree to send some meat to her youngest daughter. But the old man completely ignored his wife, reiterating, "Don't you dare send it over behind my back! Humph, I told you before, if she doesn't listen to me, I'll pretend I never had her. Whether she lives or dies is none of my business." | |
| The old man got angry whenever he talked about his youngest daughter, who had given up the job he had arranged for her. "She wouldn't go to the factory, but insisted on marrying that lazy good-for-nothing. She's really disgraced Tian Liujin!" The old man couldn't catch his breath and started coughing violently. Zhao Laotai was so frightened that she quickly agreed, "Okay, okay, I won't send it. Don't be angry." | |
| Tian Sisi quickly brought the old man a glass of water and patted his back to help him catch his breath. After a while, the old man finally recovered, but his face was flushed and he was panting heavily. The old man's lungs had been injured before, and two pieces of artillery shrapnel had been removed from his left lung. That's why the old man felt unwell in winter and couldn't get angry. Normally, he shouldn't smoke, but the old man was very stubborn. He insisted that not letting him smoke was worse than taking his life. No one in the family could persuade him, so they could only limit the amount of tobacco he smoked. | |
| Tian Sisi thought of a recipe for a lung-nourishing wine in her spatial dimension. She decided to try it after making the glutinous rice wine. If it worked, she'd let the old man drink it. Suddenly, Tian Sisi remembered her mother, Zhong Juying, mentioning in her past life that the old man had died of emphysema when the original owner was twenty. That meant the old man had only ten years left to live? | |
| No, the old man had to live to be a hundred! Not for anything else, but because the old man loved her so much, she had to find a way to improve his health. Tian Sisi secretly resolved to brew that lung-nourishing wine. | |
| Meanwhile, Old Lady Zhao had already started cutting the rabbit meat. Li Yuedi whispered, "Sister-in-law, there's no need to send Mantao and Manju." | |
| Tian Mantao and Tian Manju were both daughters of Tian Bajin. They also had a second daughter, Tian Manxing, who was the most beautiful and married in Shanghai, rarely returning home. | |
| Grandma Zhao rolled her eyes at her, cleanly and efficiently cut the three rabbits in half with a kitchen knife, then stacked the six halves into a basket, lined it with dry grass, and instructed Tian Xinhua to ride his bicycle to deliver the meat to his uncle and several aunts. She also whispered to him to go to his aunt's place and deliver the meat. Tian Xinhua nodded knowingly. Tian Shouhua went to work with Tian Bajin and the others in the afternoon. He was supposed to go in the morning as well, but he had to accompany Tian Sisi up the mountain and had taken a half-day off. | |
| Tian Xinhua pushed Tian Manyin's beloved bicycle out, | |
| hanging the basket on the back seat. Tian Sisi insisted on going along. Grandma Zhao initially refused, but couldn't resist Tian Sisi's pleading and agreed. Tian Sisi quickly changed her clothes, put on a hat, gloves, and scarf, and happily jumped onto the back seat to follow Tian Xinhua to deliver meat. Donghua, Qinghua, and Qinghua, after receiving a piece of milk candy from Tian Sisi, went contentedly to the foot of the mountain to gather firewood, no longer clamoring to come along. When Tian Bajin and his group arrived at the field, their task for the day was composting manure. At this time of year, there were no chemical fertilizers or urea; they used only farmyard manure. Although the yield was lower, the harvest was truly green and organic food. | |
| Several women followed Zhu Aiqing to work on the other side. In the village, men and women worked separately. Men did strenuous work like hoeing, tilling, and carrying loads, while women did lighter tasks like transplanting rice seedlings, harvesting rice, and weeding. Therefore, women's work points were lower than men's. A woman's full work points were 10, while a man's were 13 (this figure was obtained by Lao Yang from his elders and may have some errors). Ten work points equaled one work point, and one work point was worth about six or seven mao (0.6-0.7 yuan). | |
| It might sound like the villagers earned a good amount, but in reality, it wasn't. First, very few men or women received their full work points; usually, getting two-thirds was considered good. Some older and weaker individuals only received half work points. Second, even if they received their full work points, they wouldn't receive the full amount. After deducting production costs and advance payments from villagers, a typical family would only receive a few dozen to a little over a hundred yuan a year. | |
| Like Tian Sisi's family, Zhu Aiqing and Tian Manyin both received full work points and never received advance payments. Even after a year of hard work, their year-end bonus was less than two hundred yuan, less than Grandpa Tian's monthly salary, and less than that of an average city worker. Therefore, farmers in the 1970s greatly envied those who could work in factories, because it meant receiving wages, meat coupons, cloth coupons, oil coupons, and enjoying all the privileges of city dwellers. | |
| Villagers arrived one after another, and under the village head's arrangement, everyone enthusiastically engaged in production labor. The village head, Zhong Boqiang, was from Zhongjiawan, in his fifties, younger than Tian Bajin. Zhong Boqiang and Tian Bajin had a good relationship; they had been captured by the Japanese as laborers and escaped together, becoming revolutionary brothers who had shared hardships. Zhong Boqiang's left little finger had also been broken by a Japanese whip. | |
| Zhong Boqiang also has a son in the army, in the same unit as Tian Aiguo, but his rank is lower, currently only a captain. Therefore, although Zhong Boqiang is the village head, he always follows Tian Bajin's lead; you could say that Tian Bajin is the de facto leader of Yuequan Village. | |
| After assigning the labor tasks, Zhong Boqiang picked up a fence and started shoveling manure. He walked over to Tian Bajin, sniffed the air, and laughed, "Brother Bajin, the food's good! Want a couple of drinks for lunch?" | |
| "We farmers wouldn't dare use grain to brew wine. My family eats lunch at your place, brother," Tian Bajin said, shoveling manure as he spoke to Zhong Boqiang. | |
| Zhong Boqiang felt a pang of sympathy. He also loved a drink, but he had given it up in recent years. Why? His children weren't even full; how could he dare drink? Ah, Brother Bajin is so much better; he has a good older brother to help him, unlike himself. Zhong Boqiang felt a pang of sadness. | |
| Seeing the expression on Zhong Boqiang's face, Tian Bajin knew that he must have been thinking about his parents, brothers and sisters who died at the hands of the Japanese again. If you were to ask who hated the Japanese the most in Yuequan Village, it would undoubtedly be the Zhong Boqiang and Tian brothers. Although other families in Yuequan Village also had relatives who died at the hands of the Japanese, the Zhong Boqiang family and the Tian Bajin family were the only ones who were killed by the Japanese. | |
| Zhong Boqiang had a toddler who had just learned to walk. The Japanese soldiers brutally killed him by throwing him to the ground. The little boy, fair and tender, lay there, his body mangled and bloody. Zhong Boqiang fainted upon seeing this. The entire Tian family was also wiped out by the Japanese. After that, Old Master Tian resolutely joined the army. Zhong Boqiang and Tian Bajin also wanted to go, but Old Master Tian stopped them, saying that both families had to continue their lineage, otherwise their ancestors would blame them. So the two stayed home to farm and married early, devoting themselves to carrying on the family line. | |