Three Small Compartments

This program was produced by Tomato Listening.

In the ninth episode, Three Small Compartments, Wang Yang borrowed a rag, scrubbed the straw mats clean, and hung them in the yard. Once they dried, they could be laid out.

Only then did the three of them take a break before starting to sort out their sleeping spots.

Li Xiangwan and Zhang Yanqiu both disliked the heated wall. It had not been whitewashed and looked grimy.

Lin Yuzhu did not mind. Once winter came, that heated wall would be a treasure, so she slept beside it.

Zhang Yanqiu liked the spot by the window. She thought it was brighter and made her feel more open inside.

Li Xiangwan and Lin Yuzhu did not see it that way. If someone came in at night, the spot by the window would be the most dangerous.

Neither of them said so, and naturally, no one fought her for it.

And so, Li Xiangwan slept in the middle. She carried secrets and wanted a space of her own for them.

But in this era, never mind whether she could get a place of her own to live in within the village—if she did, would a young woman like her dare live alone?

At the time, legal knowledge had not yet reached every household, and there were still plenty of people in the village with crooked minds and audacious hearts.

How many female Educated Youth had been harmed back then?

Setting up a household alone was not a wise choice for female Educated Youth.

At first, some Educated Youth had been scattered among various farming families. They brought their own grain and ate with the local residents.

Male Educated Youth were not much of a concern. At most, differences in living habits caused a few inconveniences.

But female Educated Youth were different. Over time, some cases came to light where they had been harmed by the families they stayed with.

Later, in order to protect the Educated Youth, the authorities had villages build houses for them. Those with better luck even received housing subsidies. Village chiefs did not want trouble either, so gradually, any vacant houses in the village were reserved for the Educated Youth.

Besides, these Educated Youth had no idea when they would be able to return to the city. Living in villagers' homes forever was not a solution, but setting up a household alone was something Lin Yuzhu would not even consider.

Li Xiangwan was no fool either. She took a small stack of dark blue homespun cloth from her luggage and asked the other two, "Do you want to use this cloth to divide up the kang?"

Their kang faced the doorway directly. If someone opened the door to go out in the morning and did not close it, it would be easy to expose themselves.

In Lin Yuzhu's opinion, it was very necessary to put up curtains around the kang.

Southerners cared a great deal about privacy. Even among the same sex, they felt embarrassed about being naked in front of each other.

Lin Yuzhu saw that Li Xiangwan had brought out so much homespun cloth and had even specifically bought dye to color it. Clearly, she had prepared for this long ago.

Lin Yuzhu had secrets too, so she naturally approved. Having something to block the view was better than nothing, though it would definitely make the room darker. But what could one demand from a collective dormitory?

Homespun cloth was not easy to buy in the countryside, and it had cost money. Lin Yuzhu did not have the nerve to take it for free, so she took out fifty cents and handed it to Li Xiangwan. "I think we should use the cloth to block things off. Forget whether we need to avoid seeing each other—there are boys in the other room."

"This curtain makes it easy for us girls to expose ourselves. Even if we hang a curtain over the doorway, someone has to lift it whenever they go out."

This earthen house only had two rooms, plus a kitchen. Whatever everyone did was basically done in the kitchen.

Their kang faced the kitchen directly. How could that possibly be convenient?

When Zhang Yanqiu saw Lin Yuzhu take out fifty cents, her expression stiffened, and she was not very happy.

In her view, people only needed to be more mindful in everyday life. Besides, they all slept on the same kang, so it was impossible to leave her out. Still, she reluctantly took out fifty cents.

Li Xiangwan did not stand on ceremony. She took the money and slipped it into her pocket.

They would be living together for a long time. If she started out being overly generous and got them used to holding out their hands to her whenever they needed something, what then?

In her previous life, she had also helped friends from ordinary families. Later, she discovered that while those friends acted affectionate toward her on the surface, they held all sorts of grievances against her behind her back.

Because they split restaurant bills, they would complain that she made them pay when they went out to eat. Her family was so well-off—how could she have the nerve?

From then on, she understood that in some people's eyes, if you were better off, you should naturally contribute more.

She sneered inwardly. Now that she was here, she naturally knew to keep a low profile. She certainly could not gain a reputation for being too free with her money.

Clearly, Li Xiangwan had come fully prepared. She had even brought nails and rope.

There was certainly no wire available to run lines at this time. Having rope was already quite good.

The girls fumbled about without any plan, while Li Xiangbei benefited from being Wang Yang's childhood friend. He only needed to unpack his luggage. When he came over after finishing, he took over the job.

Wang Yang and Li Xiangbei were responsible for hammering in the nails, while the girls threaded rope through the curtains they had sewn.

Once everyone worked together to finish, their little earthen kang had been divided into three small compartments.

The kang was not small. After the bedding was laid down, there was still space left over, so it no longer felt so cramped.

With things arranged like this, Zhang Yanqiu was quite satisfied too. Who would not want a private space of their own? The kang cabinets had also been placed crosswise, so each of them had a side where they could open their own cabinet doors. It was perfect.

The sun outside was scorching, and the mats had already dried completely. The three girls brought the straw mats inside and spread them over the kang. Only then did the place finally look clean, and all of them felt much more comfortable.

After looking at the earthen house for a while, it did not seem quite so unpleasant anymore.

Wang Yang and Li Xiangbei went to the village chief to collect food rations for the four of them. The girls gradually took out their luggage and put it away. They could not leave everything outside to get in the way forever.

Lin Yuzhu's and Zhang Yanqiu's bedding was clearly old hand-me-downs from home, while Li Xiangwan's was obviously new.

Zhang Yanqiu was a little surprised. She knew Li Xiangwan came from a worker's family, but she had not expected her parents to spoil her so much. She felt both envious and jealous.

Lin Yuzhu sighed. Lin Mother treated her far better than the Li Family parents did.

When Li Xiangwan had left home, she had taken nothing but a few changes of clothes. She had bought all this luggage in Beijing.

So sometimes, when one looked at things from another angle, there was really nothing to envy.

Just then, the system reminded her that the radishes had matured and been harvested. Did she wish to continue planting White Radish?

Lin Yuzhu silently thought, Continue planting.

Yet her face remained calm, revealing nothing unusual.

Unpacking was not complicated. Not long before the morning work shift ended, the three of them had finished. They folded the bedding and put it in the wardrobe, settled their luggage, and only then did the three girls leave the room to look at the grain.

In this era, grain was stored in cloth sacks. None of them had brought any, so they could only borrow some from the village for now. When they went to town, they would have to buy their own grain sacks or use work points to settle the cost with the village.

After the four of them marked and stored their own grain, the remaining three Educated Youth gradually returned from work.

There were two female Educated Youth. One was Zhao Xianglan, from West Lake. She and Li Xiangwan were considered half-fellow townspeople, so they later got along quite well.

The other female Educated Youth was Wang Xiaomei, from Hunan.

Lin Yuzhu remembered her. She loved spicy food and always wanted to add more chilies whenever she cooked, making it hard for everyone else to get used to it. They had had plenty of conflicts over that in the past. She did not know whether that would happen again.

The other was He Yuanfang, who looked honest and simple. Lin Yuzhu could not help glancing at him from the corner of her eye.

If she remembered correctly, he was not as honest as he appeared. In the book, he was not a decent person and liked peeping at female Educated Youth. That made the curtains even more necessary. One could never truly know what was in another person's heart.

Since they were meeting for the first time, everyone greeted one another with smiles. No one could tell whether the others were good or bad.

When Zhao Xianglan and Wang Xiaomei entered and saw that the room had already changed completely, Wang Xiaomei immediately said, "Oh, who brought so much homespun cloth? Is there any left? Put some up for us too. It doesn't look right for only one end of the kang to have curtains."

Wang Xiaomei's Mandarin was poor. After two years in the Northeast, her speech carried both a Northeast flavor and the accent of her hometown, making it sound rather strange. Her words made Li Xiangwan frown slightly. The cloth had not come for free, after all. From Wang Xiaomei's tone, it sounded like she wanted to take it without paying. "It's all used up. If you want more, you'll probably have to buy it at the market."

Wang Xiaomei looked a little unhappy. Having been here for two years, she could not help feeling superior to the newly arrived Educated Youth. Hearing that there was no homespun cloth left, she muttered, "If you ask me, we're all sleeping in one room. You're making a fuss over nothing. Better to use the cloth to cover the door. Everyone just needs to be more careful, and no one will expose themselves. I could use the rest of the cloth to make something else."

"We're all women. What are we afraid of seeing?"

Lin Yuzhu was somewhat surprised by Wang Xiaomei's words. Never mind whether she considered the homespun cloth valuable, this talk of not being afraid to bare herself in front of others was quite bold.

She had once read a discussion post about the differences between southern bathhouses and northern bathhouses.

Northern bathhouses had large communal rooms without separate stalls. Everyone bathed in the same room and could see each other clearly. Whether someone had a good figure or a bad one could not be hidden at all.

In the south, however, there were private rooms, so southerners were extremely particular about such things.

Lin Yuzhu clicked her tongue. Clearly, some ideas could not simply be divided along northern and southern lines.

In Li Xiangwan's eyes, Wang Xiaomei was a little thick-skinned. She ignored her and turned straight toward the kitchen.

Lin Yuzhu shrugged. There was no way she would take down the cloth, and she followed her out.

Zhang Yanqiu naturally did the same and went out with them.

Seeing that no one paid her any attention, Wang Xiaomei looked embarrassed. She spat toward the doorway. "Pah! So pretentious, copying capitalist ways and wasting national resources!"

Those words were rather harsh.

Zhao Xianglan tugged at her. "We're all Educated Youth sent to the countryside. Why make things like this?"

Wang Xiaomei snorted, pouted, and said, "We're all in the same room, but they put up curtains while we didn't. People will laugh at us."

"It makes us look poor and uncultured, while they're the delicate ones who are afraid of being seen. Are we supposed to be careless and unafraid of being looked at? Who from the village would even come here?"

Zhao Xianglan looked toward Wang Yang, who was chopping firewood in the yard, and the newly arrived Li Xiangbei.

Then she looked back at Wang Xiaomei and stopped trying so hard to persuade her. "You're already causing conflict the moment you arrive. People will think the two of us are unreasonable and intolerant. If you want to stay mad, be mad by yourself. I'm going out to see what we're making for lunch."

Wang Xiaomei stamped her foot. "Traitor!"

They had not known each other well to begin with. A small quarrel among the girls was not easy to notice, and the boys did not realize anything was wrong.

The village had issued them crushed corn kernels, not whole kernels, but corn ground down to about the size of rice grains.

It was quite filling when cooked into porridge, though it took a long time to cook through.

In winter, if one wanted to save firewood and was reluctant to simmer it for long, it would feel rough in the throat and would not taste very good.

In summer, there was no shortage of firewood, so they naturally simmered it longer. It tasted quite fragrant.