Settling In

This program was produced by Tomato Listening.

Episode 8: Settling In.

In Kindwater Village, the village chief had brought Comrade Wang Yang over in an Ox Cart to pick them up. They all put their luggage onto the cart.

The village chief looked like an old man in his fifties, but in truth, he was only in his early forties.

The hardships endured by people of his generation in this era were far beyond anything Lin Yuzhu could imagine.

The village chief was fairly friendly toward them. "Kids, hurry and get on!"

After greeting the village chief and introducing themselves, they all climbed aboard.

Once they were on the cart, only Wang Yang and Li Xiangbei chatted, while the village chief occasionally joined in.

The sun was bright and warm. The three girls had long since leaned against one another and fallen asleep in the sunlight, sleeping deeply and sweetly enough to ease their exhaustion.

Li Xiangwan patted Lin Yuzhu awake. When Lin Yuzhu opened her eyes, she was still groggy and had yet to realize where she was. Her dazed look made Li Xiangwan chuckle.

By the time Lin Yuzhu had fully woken up, they seemed to have reached the village entrance. Quite a few curious children had gathered around to watch.

It was the busy farming season, and the adults from every household were all working in the fields. No one had the leisure to come watch the Educated Youth.

Besides, several batches of Educated Youth had already arrived over the past few years. They were nothing new to the villagers anymore.

Some people had even heard that another group of Educated Youth was coming to their village and were rather displeased.

Those Educated Youth were all so delicate. They could get sick from doing a little work. What could they possibly do?

They could not exactly let them starve to death in the village, yet they could not do much work either. They had come only to split the villagers' grain rations for nothing. No matter how one looked at it, it was a bad deal.

There was only one ox in the village, and the chief treasured it dearly. It was already quite good of him to have it bring them as far as the village entrance.

In some villages, there could still be several li from the entrance to the village itself, and the village chief would simply have people get off and walk the rest of the way.

So Kindwater Village was already quite kind and generous.

The group got off the cart with their luggage, and the village chief said, "Wang Yang, take the kids back to where you live. I need to take this ox back to the cowshed to eat some grass."

"You kids should rest today. Tomorrow morning, come work with Wang Yang and the others."

They nodded to show that they understood.

After saying goodbye to the village chief, Wang Yang said, "You came at a pretty good time. In another couple of months, it'll be the autumn harvest. You'll be able to earn some work points and exchange them for grain."

"When I first came here, it was winter. There wasn't much grain left in the village granary, and what they gave the few Educated Youth wasn't enough to eat. We still had to count on work points."

"Later, the village chief suggested we use money to make up for work points. That was how everyone managed to get some grain and eat their fill."

After hearing this, Lin Yuzhu understood that it was essentially buying grain with money. When everyone received money before the New Year, the villagers would not object to seeing the Educated Youth pay for it. That was not a bad arrangement, though life would be difficult for any Educated Youth who had not brought money.

Knowing that all the Educated Youth lived together and ate from the same pot, Zhang Yanqiu finally felt comfortable enough to ask, "So the grain is all stored together and everyone eats from it together?" She felt a little uneasy. As a girl, she definitely could not eat as much as the boys. If all the grain were mixed together, she would surely lose out in the future.

Wang Yang smiled, showing that he understood. "Everyone has their own grain sack, and you keep track of it yourself. The grain distributed is the same for everyone. You take out however much you eat for each meal and cook it together. Basically, it's not easy to lose out that way."

Lin Yuzhu, Li Xiangwan, and Zhang Yanqiu all breathed a sigh of relief at the same time. Lin Yuzhu was somewhat surprised. She remembered that the plot was not supposed to go this way. There had been disputes over meals, and in the end, everyone had cooked in separate pots with the people they were close to. It seemed there were still differences between the plot and reality. Lin Yuzhu and Li Xiangwan were both thinking the same thing: if they ate from one communal pot, how could they take food from their space to improve their quality of life?

They could not possibly take out good things to share every few days, could they?

It was not about being selfish. Even cadres' families could not afford to improve their meals with meat every few days.

Everyone was living frugally and enduring hardship at this time.

Ration coupons existed precisely to control how much people could buy. Even buying meat had to be divided into portions. If they took out meat, they would not dare take out more than half a jin. Split among everyone, each person would probably get only two or three bites, not even enough to taste the meat.

The two of them frowned in thought without prior agreement. As people who had once eaten pork until they were sick of it, suddenly being unable to eat pork was something they simply could not tolerate.

It was hard to go from luxury to frugality.

The male lead had already begun to like the female lead, so he would glance her way from time to time. Seeing her frown, he asked with concern, "What's wrong? Feeling unwell?"

Warmth filled the female lead's heart. She shook her head. "No. I'm just a little tired."

Zhang Yanqiu watched the male and female leads with an unreadable expression.

Lin Yuzhu put away her thoughts and followed behind Wang Yang.

The place where the Educated Youth lived was actually a house left behind after an elderly villager without descendants had passed away.

At this time, aside from the former landlords' brick houses, nearly all the houses in the village were earthen homes. They did not look very sturdy, but they were warm in winter and cool in summer.

Lin Yuzhu knew that as long as earthen houses were maintained regularly, they could be quite sturdy.

In the Northeast, torrential rain and flooding were not especially common. As long as the roof did not collapse under the snow in winter, the house was fairly safe.

Every rural household had a small yard, each arranged in its own orderly way. Some even built wooden sheds to store farm tools and firewood.

Some households also built Chicken coops and doghouses in their backyards. Usually, there would be pigpens there as well. If things were not kept in order after entering the yard, it would look very dirty and messy.

Fortunately, the yard of the Educated Youth house was fairly clean. Still, when Li Xiangwan and Zhang Yanqiu saw the old earthen house, their faces turned somewhat pale, and the bitterness in their hearts deepened.

They knew life in the countryside would be hard, but they had not expected to live in a house that looked as though it might collapse at any moment.

Lin Yuzhu had already prepared herself mentally and could handle it fairly well, but the other two girls were close to breaking down.

Moreover, the country paths were all dirt. After one walk down them, their originally black cloth shoes had been coated with dust, and their pant legs were dirty as well.

They were all girls who loved cleanliness. Their feelings were a tangled mess at the moment, and they likely would not recover anytime soon.

There were three other Educated Youth living in the house: two girls and one boy. The girls had been timid and did not dare sleep in the room where the elderly person had once lived. There were only two rooms for sleeping, one for the male Educated Youth and one for the female Educated Youth. Upon entering the earthen house was the kitchen, without even a living room. If guests came, they had to sit in the kitchen.

The three Educated Youth were all working and had not yet returned.

Wang Yang led the four of them inside. Looking at the packed dirt floor, hardened from being trampled over and over, the girls no longer knew what to think.

Lin Yuzhu was somewhat surprised too and could not help covering her face. "Ah, what a difficult era."

In this era, only office buildings might have cement floors. Ordinary city homes generally had floors paved with red bricks—the kind of red bricks used to build houses, not floor tiles.

Back then, no home was truly clean. On ordinary days, people could sprinkle water on the floor to settle the dust.

If it was not kept clean, there would be a great deal of dust inside.

That was why there were not many people in that era with spotless clothes and skin. In the countryside, though, there was no such thing as laying bricks on the ground. Every household had dirt floors. Once people got used to them, the dirt became packed down and firm, making it less likely to raise dust instead.

Seeing their poor expressions, Wang Yang smiled. He sighed inwardly. Hadn't he been the same when he first arrived? Now that he was used to it, it was nothing much. He just did not know when these days would end.

When Lin Yuzhu entered the room they would be staying in, the first thing she saw was a large earthen kang bed. In the middle of the kang was a heated wall that nearly reached the roof.

Lin Yuzhu was originally from the north, and her family had lived in a single-story house for some time when she was young. Seeing signs of movement beneath the kang, she knew it had to be heated separately.

With winters in the Northeast this cold, the people's ingenuity was truly displayed to the fullest.

Usually, rooms had both heated walls and heated kang beds. A heated wall was generally shared by two rooms, allowing it to warm both rooms during winter, much like radiators in an apartment building. To save firewood or coal, the heated wall and earthen kang were connected to the household stove.

Then there was an opening in the heated wall that led to the roof, which was the chimney people saw.

If it was properly prepared for winter, the room would be especially warm. A warm kang, a wife, and children—that was a truly sweet life.

However, some kang beds were not connected to the stove and could only be heated separately. Their room appeared to be one of those.

Looking more closely, the room was quite large. If it relied only on the heated wall by the door, it might not stay very warm in winter.

Also, if an earthen kang were built along the door side, it could probably sleep only three or four people.

The boys lived on the other side of the heated wall. Their room was small. Other than the kang, there was only a passageway. Put in a table for the water vat and thermos, and it would be packed to the brim.

Anyone with obsessive-compulsive tendencies would surely feel distressed seeing this scene, perhaps even collapse, because the kang in the girls' room could only sleep five people. The heated wall naturally ran lengthwise rather than across the room, and the middle section against the two windowless walls could sleep only two people.

It seemed someone had already claimed those spots. There were belongings on top of the kang cabinet.

The villagers also had a clean and tidy side: every household kept its kang beds very neat and clean.

At this time, households that cared more about such things would lay down a layer of newspaper on the kang, then spread a straw mat over it, sweeping it clean every day.

Along the wall beside the kang, there would be a row of kang cabinets for storing bedding and clothes. Firewood was worthless in the village, so nearly every household made their own furniture.

The kang cabinets were just there. Since Lin Yuzhu and the others had only just arrived and no one had been maintaining the kang, they had to handle everything themselves, so it looked somewhat dirty and cluttered.

Li Xiangwan and Zhang Yanqiu were still in shock and could not come back to their senses for a long while.

Lin Yuzhu put down her luggage and looked at the things on the kang. A straw mat was rolled halfway up and placed on it. There were clumps of dirt and dust on the earthen kang. They definitely could not lay the mat down directly; it would be impossible to sleep on and would stir up dust.

"Let's put the straw mat on the table and sweep the kang."

"Also, did either of you bring enough newspapers?"

"It would be best to lay a layer of newspaper over the kang before spreading the straw mat."

Only then did the two come back to their senses and nod repeatedly.

Fortunately, Zhang Yanqiu had brought newspapers. This was not the time to argue over who had not brought any. After sweeping the kang clean, the three of them climbed onto it and laid out the newspapers together.

There was no glue or tape in this era, so they could only overlap the newspapers and hold them down that way. The people's ingenuity was truly displayed to the fullest.