Siheyuan: Banggeng and I are classmates

In a warm atmosphere, everyone was welcomed out of the station, boarded a large truck, and headed towards the Municipal Revolutionary Committee.

Before coming here, Li Muhua was afraid that his identity would cause trouble, so he went to the leader of the Sijiucheng Municipal Revolutionary Committee to talk about his situation.

So I went to the County Revolutionary Committee without any special treatment. After all, if I didn't look at the files and no one explained it to me, there would be at least eight hundred people named Li Muhua in this world, if not a thousand.

Many years had passed since the incident, and no one would have guessed his identity at the first sight.

When we arrived at the County Revolutionary Committee, we saw a row of neatly arranged bungalows with clean beds. Everyone stayed there to rest. They were served in the canteen every day and got up to rest at the sound of a whistle under collective management.

During this period, a welcome symposium was held, followed by visits to revolutionary relics, galas, and other activities in the city for a week.

For a moment, Li Muhua was reminded of his previous life - the hotel opening!

Then the allocation of educated youth points began - at their request, the six people on the train were assigned to the Xiaowang Village Brigade and the Second Production Team in Lianshan Commune, Ji'an County.

Early in the morning of the second day, Li Muhua and others were taken to the Ji'an County Revolutionary Committee by truck. Ma Decai, the leader of the second production team, was already waiting at the door.

After a warm welcome, Ma Decai and four other guys helped everyone carry their luggage.

There were six ox carts parked outside the Revolutionary Committee.

"Drive~~"

"Snapped!"

Ma Decai drove the ox cart like he was riding a horse, and Li Muhua couldn't help but smile.

They chatted all the way, mostly asking about things in Sijiu City, whether they had seen the teacher, etc. Li Muhua and the others answered with a smile.

After traveling for two or three hours, they passed by towering and steep mountains.

Li Muhua couldn't help feeling sad. They really came to the mountain den!

It was not until mid-morning, when the sun had softened, that Li Muhua saw a group of people in the distance. They were seven or eight old farmers with patches all over their clothes, and a dozen half-grown children.

Standing on both sides of the dirt road, they would start beating gongs and drums when they saw them from afar.

When they got closer, Li Muhua jumped out of the car, clapped his hands and walked towards the village with them, and the other eleven people did the same.

Xiaowang Village is located in a valley with a river flowing through the village. It should be a scenic place, but it is not picturesque at all. Even the mountains are bare and treeless, with only some green grass dotted around.

Li Muhua and six other people were led directly to the educated youth site of the second team. There was a small courtyard made of loess bricks and three loess thatched houses. Almost every household in the village was like this.

"Ladies first, you can choose first!" said Li Muhua.

Zhou Ru looked around, pointed directly at the house on the left, and said, "How about we live in this one?"

It was just a house he lived in. As his good friends, Dong Shuwan and Han Lu naturally did not object.

Li Muhua said again: "That's fine, Comrade Zhao Quan, Comrade Hu Lai, we will live in this room!"

"Ok!"

With the help of Captain Ma and others, the luggage was quickly moved into the house. There were three single wooden beds side by side in the room with mosquito nets hanging on them. Opposite them was a long table, stools, kerosene lamps and other items. However, there was no wardrobe, only a few large boxes.

Li Muhua didn't care about these and turned to walk towards the hall in the middle of the yard. On the left was a large square dining table, and on the right was a stove, as well as a stove cabinet and other items.

There were new pots, a new stove, a new water tank, all the necessary supplies, including sweet potatoes and rice, and even some winter melon, pumpkin and other vegetables on the side.

Li Muhua couldn't help but secretly sigh at the importance the production team attached to them, but there was more than that. Captain Ma's wife, an aunt, came in with a basket of vegetables and cooked for everyone.

Smoke rises -

"The conditions here are a bit difficult, definitely not comparable to the old city you came from!" Captain Ma sounded a little ashamed.

Li Muhua smiled and said, "This is a humble room, but my virtue is fragrant. The house is not important, what is important is the people who live in it. For us, this place is no different from the old city!"

"Okay, you guys take a rest first. I've arranged a welcome party for you at the regiment headquarters tonight. I'll come and call you then!"

Everyone agreed with a smile, and after Captain Ma left, they turned back to the house to pack their beds and luggage.

Wait till night -

A bonfire was lit on the flat ground in the village. In the firelight, two older sisters walked onto the stage and began to sing in a melodious opera style.

"it is good!"

At times like this, Li Muhua could only applaud and cheer.

For several days in a row, Captain Ma did not mention any work tasks. He just let everyone familiarize themselves with the situation in the village. So the six people ran around in and around the village all day long, hiking and playing in the water, as if they were on a graduation trip.

However, I still got a general idea of ​​the situation in the village. There were 76 households and nearly people living in their second team. There was a cattle breeding farm, orchard, team headquarters, etc. in the village...

Several people took turns cooking, but in the end the burden fell on Li Muhua.

It’s nothing—it’s just that the food they cooked tastes terrible.

Li Muhua didn't care about it. Zhou Ru always helped him, so cooking was not tiring. What's more, compared to cooking, he hated washing up more.

During this period, at the suggestion of Li Muhua, several people followed the villagers' example and reclaimed a private plot of land behind the yard and sowed seasonal vegetable seeds.

For this group of spoiled students, just reclaiming a small piece of private land made them feel proud, as if they had accomplished some important task, which made Li Muhua laugh.

A week later, Captain Ma asked everyone to go to work and they officially participated in the brigade's labor.

After the exhausting double harvest, the commune leaders called for turning the slack season into a busy season, asking the team members to level and deep-plow the land, dig rivers and build embankments...

Li Muhua knew that this labor was meaningless, but he had no choice but to go to work.

To refute is to question the leadership, and absenteeism without illness is passive resistance and will be criticized. He can only follow the example of the old hands in the village and work without putting in any effort.

Winter is coming——

Snowflakes are flying, heavy snow covers the green leaves, and the whole world looks pale.

"Hu~~"

Li Muhua was wearing a torn cotton-padded jacket, exhaling hot air and cursing: "What a lousy weather! It's so hot in the summer and so cold in the winter, and there's no kang or coal stove..."

Li Muhua missed the old city and his warm little house again.

"Just save your energy and lie on the bed like me!"

Hu Lai, who had lost a lot of weight, huddled in a torn quilt, shivering.

Seeing that he was still acting cute after being served by her, Li Muhua said coldly, "Have you forgotten what Captain Ma said?"

"We have to work until New Year's Eve, and then we can start after we eat dumplings. Even if it snows today, we have to work even if it rains bullets."

"If I stay in bed like you, what will we eat later? How will we go to work?"

Guessing that what Li Muhua said was right, Hu Lai cursed his leader in his heart, smiled and said flatteringly: "Don't say anything, Uncle Li, go and cook. I'm starving now, and I'm waiting for your magical meal to sustain my life!"

"The friendship of revolutionary comrades is in our hearts. I will remember all your kindness to us. In the future, I will..."

Zhao Quan waited for Hu Lai to finish flattering him before he said weakly:

"Brother Li, can I call you Uncle Li too? Please be kind and let's eat dry food today. How can we stand the cold wind if we eat porridge every day?"

Li Muhua turned around and said, "Do you think I want to make porridge? It's much more troublesome than cooking rice!"

"You are now also the warehouse manager. How much grain money will we need to pay at the end of the year? Have you calculated it?"

"Probably, about seven or eight yuan per person!" Zhao Quan replied in a muffled voice.

This matter gave him a headache as well. After staying there for half a year, they had to pay for buying chickens and ducks, firewood, rice, oil and salt. At the end of the year, when work points and rations were calculated, they did not get any grain, but still had to pay seven or eight yuan for food rations.

This is only half a year, and we are eating food subsidized by the government. If we stay for the whole next year, there will be no subsidized food...

I have to ask the commune for twenty or thirty yuan, plus other expenses, I estimate that I can only spend sixty or seventy yuan a year.

For a moment, the two people's hearts were colder than the snowflakes outside.

Hu Lai couldn't help but say, "Then you should put less rice in the porridge and more sweet potatoes. One pound of white rice is equivalent to five pounds of sweet potatoes!"

"Yes!" Li Muhua nodded and walked out of the house. "I'll also give you roasted sweet potatoes!"

Hu Lai muttered in bed:

"If this continues, we probably won't even be able to afford sweet potatoes next year. If I had known this, I should have been reborn as a cow in my previous life. Not only would I be able to take care of the cow, but I would also have fodder to eat and a few eggs from time to time to replenish my body..."

Hearing his mumbling, Zhao Quan asked slyly: "Let me ask you something, you and Dong Shuwan..."

Before Zhao Quan could finish, Hu Lai shouted, "Get lost! We have never withheld food from Uncle Niu. I fed them all the feed and eggs the team distributed!"

"How dare you ask me this? I want to ask you something! As a warehouse manager, have you ever stolen eggs? Or the seeds and grains that we carefully selected?"

Zhao Quan also hurriedly shouted: "No, if I ate it, I would be raised by your Uncle Niu."

"Get lost, I couldn't even become Master Niu's son, and you're taking advantage of me..."

Li Muhua walked into the kitchen, broke the ice on the water tank, gritted her teeth and washed two bowls of rice and put them into the pot, then used a knife to peel the sweet potatoes, sat in front of the stove and lit the firewood.

The face under the firelight flickered. Listening to the crackling sound of the burning firewood, Li Muhua thought of his worries.

He has been here for half a year and has seen the attitudes of the villagers. From time to time, there are guys who help the three of them with work and bring them food in an attempt to get close to them.

These three men are quite good. Nowadays, people are encouraged to live in the countryside for their whole lives, so naturally, not many people want to be the son-in-law who can't be offered a job.

Before, the three of them still had the arrogance of city dwellers and could refuse this "goodwill", but after half a year, when they calculated the total account, they found that their income was not enough to cover their expenses, and the situation would only be worse next year.

Unlike Li Muhua, they knew that the college entrance examination would be resumed and the educated youth would return to the city. If their families stopped sending money, then...

Li Muhua added another piece of firewood into the stove.

Just as he was lost in thought, a pair of footsteps walked into the room, and Li Muhua came back to his senses and stood up.