Mother Chen carried the nearly half-full sack of shrimp from the handcart into the house and asked Chen Sidi, her fourth child, a question.
"Have you finished preparing the two sacks of shrimp you brought back?"
"Not yet. There's still half a sack. It was almost noon, so I cleared out the pot to cook lunch first. If Zhiyu and Grandma hadn't helped, how could I have managed it all by myself? They had to be washed and boiled, and then taken to the threshing ground to dry."
"Then let's all wash our hands and eat first. We can finish the rest afterward, and the pot will be free for boiling them again while we eat."
Chen Sidi followed behind her, nodding repeatedly. "Right, I've washed them all clean. They just need to go in the pot."
"Then it won't take long. The sooner we put them out, the sooner they'll dry. We can't afford to delay; they all have to be dried within three days."
"They definitely will. They've usually dried completely in three days before."
Chen Haichao asked curiously, "Where's the college student? Wasn't she helping out at our house earlier?"
"Once she finished helping, wouldn't she go home to eat? It's not like she'd grow roots in our house."
"Oh."
As soon as Father Chen got home, he looked for his water pipe and tobacco tin. After working all morning, he finally had time to sit down and take a few puffs.
"After lunch, we still need to take the log roller back to the production brigade's yard."
"Mm. Dad, we can't just leave that piece of wood outside the door forever. I want to ask a carpenter to see what kind of wood it is. If it can be made into a tea table, we can have a set made."
"A tea table? Where would we put it? We're busy enough working every day. You have time to sit around brewing tea?"
"Uh..." It wouldn't be long before they didn't have to go to work anymore.
"Your eldest uncle mentioned just now that this wood would be good for a coffin. How about giving half of it to your grandma to have one made? She was just saying a while ago that she was getting old and wanted to have a coffin made in advance, to keep ready."
Chen Haichao almost lost his composure. Make it into a coffin?
Thinking it over, families with elderly people did prepare coffins in advance these days. Some elderly people even prepared their own, then suspended them from the roof beams for when they were needed.
That way, if something unexpected happened, the family wouldn't be unable to afford one or find good wood. After all, burials in the countryside were still in the earth, and putting a coffin on the roof beams was also called "seating the longevity wood."
You could see them just by taking a walk around the village.
"Wouldn't it be a bit of a waste to make it into a coffin..."
"What waste? Good wood is hard to come by, and a coffin needs good wood in the first place. Once it's buried underground, it can bless the whole family. Besides, we picked it up."
"Let's leave it by the door for now. We'll get a carpenter to take a look and see whether it'll work, whether it's suitable, before deciding."
"Your eldest uncle said that if we were willing to provide the wood, he'd pay all the labor costs. One family supplies the material, the other pays the money. That's fair, and labor isn't cheap either. I think it's a good suggestion. Your grandma is seventy, after all; it's time to prepare in advance."
He said helplessly, "Let's find someone to look at it first."
"If there's any left over, we can have a few chairs made too. Otherwise, when your sister and her whole family come back for New Year, there often aren't enough stools for everyone."
"Then let's wait until after New Year and have a carpenter look at it."
After lunch, the family prepared the remaining shrimp and some fish, then pushed them on the handcart to the threshing ground to dry, returning the log roller to the production brigade along the way.
They heard quite a bit of gossip on the way.
Wang Zhiwen and Liu Chunlan had returned after getting their marriage certificate around lunchtime. Apparently, when they came back with the brigade leader, both of their faces had been blank. After staying up all night, they had been as pale as paper, and once they entered the village, they had each gone home.
Some nosy people with nothing better to do had even followed them, making a few snide remarks along the way.
"You two are married now, so why are you going home separately?"
"When are you two holding the wedding banquet, now that you've got your marriage certificate?"
"Hardly anyone in our village gets a certificate. They just hold a banquet and call it done. What does your marriage certificate look like?"
"You're married now, so when are you having a baby..."
"Chunlan, you'll have to call Zhao Guilan 'Mom' from now on..."
And other teasing remarks like that.
Apparently, their faces had turned hideous when they heard those remarks, and they had run off in shame and anger.
Chen Haichao listened with relish. Serves them right!
In his previous life, they had carried on together for twenty years, brazenly at that. One had egged him on, and the other had beaten his sister! In this life, Chen Haichao had locked the two of them together twenty years early, so they could live openly together and stop ruining other people's lives.
After returning the log roller to the production brigade and signing for its return, he figured he had nothing else to do, so he would wander down to the sea and try his luck.
Buying and selling still weren't allowed, and people needed a letter of introduction just to travel. Smuggling was the most profitable trade, but that wasn't something he could do either. He could only look for a way to make a little money; he was terribly poor.
The dried shrimp had just been put out to dry and wouldn't be ready to sell to the big truck until the fourteenth. In the meantime, he would see what else he could find that would bring in money. Ideally, he could sell it all to the big truck at once, rather than trouble two people with the same business.
"Dad, you take the handcart back. I'm going to look around."
"All right."
He headed toward the sea again. The seashore was a natural treasure trove, the birthplace of business without capital, where you could catch a white wolf barehanded.
Those near the mountains lived off the mountains; those near the sea lived off the sea.
Along the way, people were still gossiping about the older wife and younger husband. The village would probably be talking about it for years. Even at New Year, it was rare to have such a fresh bit of excitement.
He walked all the way to the shore, the sea breeze blowing every strand of his hair straight back. Facing the sea, he spread his arms and raised them high above his head.
"The sea is my hometown~ The sea breeze blows~ The waves roll~"
After humming loudly, he walked down onto the beach. The little crabs scuttling across it were startled and instantly darted into their holes.
The beach beneath his feet was covered in a dense expanse of holes, with little sand balls the size of boogers scattered over it. They were all balls of sand rolled by the little crabs and little holes dug by them.
Anyone with a fear of clusters would feel uncomfortable just glancing down.
Some time had passed since low tide that morning, and the water was already rising. He couldn't stay long, so he hurried toward the lowest point the tide had currently reached.
Hardly anyone came to forage at low tide now, since they couldn't sell what they found. So apart from a few children digging in the holes, he was the only adult on the whole beach.
There were plenty of clams beneath the sand, but digging them up took too much work and too long. The tide would be coming in soon, so he jogged straight toward the reefs.
He had been in too much of a hurry the previous morning, and the tide had risen by the time he pulled the child out. When he came back at low tide the previous evening, it had already been dark, and he hadn't had time to look around.
The reefs were probably one or two hundred meters from shore. As soon as he approached, he saw dense patches of mussels and seaweed. Nobody wanted them; anyone in the village who wanted to eat some could come grab a handful or dig a few out.
Chen Haichao made a wide circuit around the reefs. The stretches of rock were almost completely covered in barnacles and mussels of all kinds. Although they were all edible, prying them off took a lot of effort. People worked from morning to night, and by the time they got off work, it was dark and they were exhausted. The women still had to see to the whole family's food and drink. Basically, nobody had eaten so much that they had energy to spare for digging them out.
As a result, they were everywhere, almost overgrown.
He made a mental note: dig them out. He had to take them home and dry them for storage. All of them could be exchanged for money, and they grew readily too. It would be great if he could establish a long-term connection with the big truck's driver.
There was nothing he could do about it. Everything was under collective organization now, so nothing was easy to do, and nothing could be separated from the collective. Finding a way to make money wasn't easy.
But it would be soon. Eating from the big pot was already a thing of the past, and collective organization would soon change too. Then there would be the household contract responsibility system, with the family as the unit, and they could do whatever they wanted.
He hadn't brought any tools, so he didn't start digging. He just looked around and surveyed the place, making a mental note of it.
Seeing two worthless blue swimmer crabs by his feet, he picked them up. He gave them a squeeze, and they were quite plump, so he took out a handful of rice straw he'd grabbed earlier and stuffed into his trouser pocket, held down their two big claws, and tied them up simply.
Even if you gave them away now, nobody would eat them, because they were too much trouble. In the future, they would cost even more than gazami crabs. Gazami crabs were thirty or forty yuan a jin, while these were fifty or sixty.
Swinging the two crabs as they brandished their claws, he looked up at the tide. It was nearly up to him. He would make one last circuit, preferably catch two more to make a bowlful, and then head back. He hadn't eaten them in a long time.
Just as he was looking down and searching everywhere, a splat caught his attention. He walked carefully toward the reef where the sound had come from.
The reefs were covered in barnacles, making it hard even to put a hand on them. The stones underfoot were uneven too, and one careless step could leave him bloodied from a fall.
He went around the reef in front of him and reached the other side. His eyes instantly lit up, and he was utterly astonished. An even more joyful light shone in his eyes.
"Ah, holy shit..."
He hurried forward and crouched down. The sea bass before him flicked its tail in a shallow pool, splashing droplets onto his face, but he grinned in delighted surprise and wiped the water off.
"Whoa, this can happen?"
The sea bass before him weighed a little over three jin, but the main thing was that it had a gold bracelet around its head!!!
The gold bracelet had nearly dug into its flesh. Both its body and head were bigger than the bracelet, which was wedged tightly beneath its pectoral fins.