Telephone

Jiang Xia saw how excited Great-Grandmother was and asked curiously, "Who's looking for us?"

Several women were sorting dried fish outside Great-Grandmother's house.

Once sorted, these dried fish were all sold to Jiang Xia's family.

One woman said impatiently, "It sounded like people from the Post and Telecommunications Bureau. More than a dozen of them came and said they were here to install a telephone at your house. Xiao Xia, did your family apply to have a telephone installed?"

Jiang Xia said, "We did. Did they say when they would come back?"

Great-Grandmother said, "They said they'd arrange to install it at your house today. If you missed them, you'd have to wait for their superiors to schedule another installation date. I told them you'd be back around two or three in the afternoon and could open the door to let them in. Then they went to lay the cables first. They said laying the cables would take most of the day."

When Jiang Xia returned, she indeed saw workers laying telephone lines along the roadside. At the time, she had wondered whether they were installing her family's telephone.

At that moment, two Post and Telecommunications workers came over again.

"Has Comrade Zhou Chenglei returned?"

Mother Zhou hurriedly said, "He's back. I'm Zhou Chenglei's mother."

"We're workers from the Post and Telecommunications Bureau. You applied to have a telephone installed last month, and we're here to install it."

Their attitude was fairly good.

After all, in this era, families that could install telephones at home were no ordinary families.

Jiang Xia knew that household telephones would become widespread in the 1990s. Back then, people had to make an appointment and wait in line to have a telephone installed.

The installation fee was also very expensive, though it wasn't cheap now,