After winter set in, more people got married, and Li Long attended several wedding feasts before December.
Although he lived in the County Seat most of the time, his household registration was in the village, and he had the Big Courtyard on the Team's land. Whenever someone on the Team got married, they sent him an invitation, usually delivering it to his eldest brother Li Jianguo's home.
At the time, rural wedding feasts were still mainly held in the family's own courtyard.
Even in winter, the Fourth Team's villagers had grown better off, and they had ways of managing.
They erected a framework of iron pipes in the courtyard, then covered it with several hundred yuan's worth of plastic sheeting, sealing the top, bottom, and sides tightly except for a doorway. Inside, they set up three or four stoves, extended the flues outside, and built roaring fires. That did the job.
Eating there was not as warm as eating indoors, but it was not cold either.
Nobody knew which family had first used this equipment, but after that first use, it became highly sought after. The next few families holding weddings borrowed the whole setup, put it up in advance, and used it.
Actually, Li Long had his doubts at first about attending the Team's feasts.
After all, eating outside in the depths of winter meant some dishes might cool before they even reached the table. What kind of feast would it be if you started crunching ice halfway through?
But after attending one, he discovered it was not as bad as he had imagined. Eating a feast inside a plastic greenhouse had a flavor all its own.
Overall, most of the Fourth Team's villagers were quite satisfied with how 1994 had gone.
Most of the Ten-Thousand-Mu Farmland Renovation projects