The village committee

At present, the village committee bore some very important responsibilities.

For one thing, the grain rations for everyone in the village were kept there.

All the livestock in the village were also collective property and were managed by the village as a whole.

So no one should think the village chief was the only official handling everything.

Wouldn't that work him to death?

In fact, the village had quite a few officials: a party secretary, village chief, accountant, cashier, women's director, militia captain, and so on. All of them were essential.

There were other regular staff members too.

There was no fixed number of them.

So it was perfectly normal for a village to have a dozen or more officials.

The place where all those people worked, plus the warehouses and some of the village's collective facilities-

For example, the cowsheds, stables, chicken coops, and pigsties under centralized management were generally built beside the village committee as well.

They were relatively safer there, and easier to manage.

So the village committee compound was actually quite large!

And in those days, villages often had visitors to receive.

People like Liang Xin and his colleagues, for example, came around roughly every two days and had to spend a night at the village committee.

So the village also needed a designated area for receiving visitors!

Otherwise, where were they supposed to stay?

At the village chief's house?

An occasional stay was one thing. He was the village chief, after all, and naturally had to make sacrifices for the organization.

But even selfless sacrifice had its limits!

If they came to stay every two days, just see whether the village chief's wife would stand for it!

"Oh, Xiao Xin, you're back!"

"Xiao Xin, have you gotten used to living in the city? No, that's the wrong question. Of course you have. How could it not be better than the village?"

"Xiao Xin, have you been home yet? You came straight to the village committee? Oh, you're not an outsider. Why didn't you go home first?"

Everyone at the village committee greeted Liang Xin warmly.

Smiling, Liang Xin greeted each of them in turn.

After all, the biggest event in the village that year was probably Liang Xin being selected by the capital's supply and marketing cooperative and going to the capital to eat commodity grain.

Unless someone got into university, it was hard for anything in this little village to have a bigger impact than that.

Liang Xin knew all these people well, and as soon as he saw them, the memories associated with them, good and bad, rose to the surface.

After all, the village was only so big, with a hundred or so households. Who was there he hadn't dealt with?

So he greeted everyone with easy familiarity.

Only then did he approach Uncle Song, the village chief.

Theirs wasn't the kind of village formed by members of a single clan gathering together.

So people in the village had all sorts of surnames.

The village chief's surname was Song, the same as Aunt Song's from the compound. Perhaps they had been one family five hundred years ago.

By now, they probably weren't related at all.

"Not bad. You look a lot more energetic!"

"Uncle, I'm here on behalf of the supply and marketing cooperative to purchase supplies from the village. I've only just started working, and there's a lot I don't understand, so you'll have to keep me on the right track! Don't let me make any mistakes!"

"You don't need to worry about that."

"You haven't been home yet, have you?"

"No. I came on assignment, after all, so of course I had to report to you first!"

"Haha, good. Come on, give me the paperwork. I'll sign and stamp it for you first, and then you can go home."

"Don't worry. Here in our own village, there definitely won't be any problems with your business!"

This was the era of the planned economy.

What the village was to grow and raise was all decided by the higher-ups at the beginning of the year.

After the harvest, the village would tally everything up and report the figures.

The higher-ups would then assign purchasing quotas to the supply and marketing cooperative based on the village's report.

Although this was an era when agriculture supported industry, and farmers bore the heavy responsibility of feeding the whole country,

that didn't mean the fruits of their labor could be taken away without payment.

Although they got a raw deal, with prices far below market value,

they still received some compensation.

In fact, it was much like being a worker: the fruits of one's labor belonged to the boss, while one received only a little in wages.

It was just that, because the returns from the land were low, the wages were very low too. There were no basic guarantees, and the farmers had to bear the risks as well!

Although the higher-ups did provide some money according to how much of the quota had been fulfilled,

the money didn't come from the supply and marketing cooperative, nor was it paid each time they came to make a purchase.

At the end of the year, the government settled it all with the village in a single payment.

The village then divided the money according to each person's work points.

So how much did each person get?

Judging by the past few years,

most laborers received between one hundred and two hundred yuan.

That came to around ten yuan a month.

It was a long way below what Liang Xin, an apprentice who had only just started working, earned.

And those laborers were young and able-bodied people who earned ten work points a day.

Women, elderly people, and half-grown children earned eight or six work points, meaning their income was only eighty or even sixty percent of an ordinary laborer's.

That was even less.

So when Liang Xin came to purchase supplies,

he didn't need to carry money in his pocket. He only needed the paperwork for checking quantities and marking down prices.

As long as there were no problems with the paperwork and the quantities of supplies he brought back were correct, his assignment was complete.

Of course, people still inevitably made the occasional slipup.