Traveling through 70's wine

Gu Hua returned the bowl to Wen Qing, who took it back to her side. Wu Qing had already made a tofu and fish head soup, a stir-fried celery, and two steamed rices. After they ate, Wu Qing rushed to wash the bowl and said to Wen Qing, "Xiao Qing, you are so capable. We eat better than the boys."

Wen Qing said, "Sister Qingqing, don't praise me. It's all luck. I'll go fetch water and boil it for a bath." In early summer, when it was dark, Wen Qing picked up a shoulder pole and a wooden bucket to fetch water from the village well. She brought it back in a flash. A load of water weighed 7 or 80 kilograms. She walked twice, filled the water tank, boiled a pot of water, and went to the house to take a bath. I hadn't taken a hot bath in the past few days, and I felt refreshed after taking a bath. I also washed my clothes, washed the water jar that had held loaches, and put it in a big pot to boil for tomorrow.

Wen Qing then climbed up to the attic. It was already dark. She didn't turn on the light and took the book into the space. There was no sunrise or moonset in this space. It was always daytime. The time in this space was four times faster than outside, and the plants grew faster than outside, but she herself was not affected by the speed of time.

Wen Qing went to the study room and calmed down to read. She had studied three textbooks in college before, but the junior high school textbooks were not difficult for her now. She needed to memorize more in Chinese and do more exercises in math. The teacher had repeatedly explained these principles to them before. Now that she had plenty of time, Wen Qing honestly did what the teacher taught her.

In June, the village began to harvest wheat. Early in the morning, the educated youth and villagers gathered at the entrance of the village, waiting for the team leader to assign tasks. During this period, Wen Qing had been in a group with Wu Qing and several other educated youth. Today, she was in a group with villagers Aunt Lin and Yang Hua. One person was responsible for harvesting wheat, one was responsible for carrying wheat, and one was responsible for bundling wheat. Three people had to harvest wheat from three acres of land. Aunt Lin said, "I will harvest the wheat, Yang Hua will bundle it, and the educated youth Wen will be responsible for carrying the wheat." The most difficult part was carrying the bundled wheat to the drying dam. They had to run back and forth from the field to the drying dam under the scorching sun, but Wen Qing did not say anything. For her, anything was possible.

The villagers looked down on the educated youth for their hard work, but they also envied their city dweller status.

Yang Hua said to Wen Qing, "Wen Zhiqing, I heard that you caught a lot of loaches. What are you going to eat for lunch?"

Wen Qing said: "We caught some the day before yesterday, but not many. I saw other people in the village also caught a lot."

Yang Hua swallowed and said, "We got a few at home, but they were all eaten by my grandparents and my brothers. Are you guys going to catch some today?"

Wen Qing said: "Wheat fields are dry land, there are no loaches, but we can catch field mice."

Aunt Lin was cutting wheat in front and heard the two men talking: "Don't dawdle, get to work."

Yang Hua grabbed a handful of wheat straw and tied it up. Wen Qing tied up bundles of wheat with ropes, carried them to the drying yard, untied the ropes, and spread the wheat on the ground to dry out the moisture.

At noon, everyone went home for lunch. In the afternoon, Wen Qing brought boiled thatch root water. She added a little salt and sugar to replenish the water. In the afternoon, she continued to carry wheat to the drying yard. Sweat soaked her clothes again and again, forming circles of white sweat stains on her back. When it was time to get off work, the scorekeeper announced today's work points. All the female villagers had 8 points, while the female educated youth had only 7 points. Wen Qing couldn't help but get angry and asked, "Accountant Lin, why do we female educated youth have fewer work points? This is not right." Accountant Lin is a man in his forties. "Your work is easier, so you should get one less work point." Wen Qing said, "Wu Qing is cutting wheat and I'm carrying wheat. We both worked on 3 acres of land. How is that less than others?" At this time, several male educated youth stood up and said, "We all do the same work. We can't discriminate." It was very noisy for a while. After the team leader came over and asked clearly, he said to Accountant Lin, "Everyone has worked hard, and everyone has 8 points." Accountant Lin glared at Wen Qing and said, "Thank you, team leader, for being fair." He ignored Accountant Lin's dissatisfaction.

It was still bright, and Wen Qing was in no hurry to go back. She said to Wu Qing, "Sister Qingqing, let's go dig for field mice." Several male educated youth also wanted to go together. Yang Hua heard it and said, "Wen Zhiqing, can I go with you?" "Of course." Yang Hua happily took the hoe and followed. They came to the field where the wheat had been harvested. Some children were picking up the wheat ears that had fallen on the ground. When they filled a basket, they would take it back home to supplement their family's food rations.

Everyone dispersed to look for vole holes. Gu Hua, with his sharp eyes, quickly discovered a hole and shouted, "There's a hole here." Luo Yixing and Guo Jianguo gathered around and dug along the hole. After digging for a while, they saw a smooth hole in the soil that was slightly larger than a fist. Wen Qing said, "We can't dig like this. The vole will run away from other holes soon. Let's look for other holes first." Everyone started looking carefully nearby and found three or four more holes. After digging a distance, Wu Qing said, "First find a few baskets to block the hole entrances, and then light a fire at one hole to smoke the vole out." Several people went to find straw and baskets separately. Gu Hua asked Luo Yixing and Wen Qing to block the other hole entrances, and he lit the straw and put it into the vole hole. A burst of smoke went into the hole, and soon smoke came out from other hole entrances. It was a few voles who panicked and got into the baskets that blocked the hole entrances. "Here they come," everyone cheered. This time, they caught seven voles. Guo Jianguo and Luo Yixing took the voles out and killed them with hoes. They dug holes in other fields and set them on fire. They worked for two hours and caught 2 voles in total. There were seven of them, and each of them got five. Yang Hua strung the voles together with straw ropes and left happily. Several educated youths took the voles to the ditch, removed their hair and internal organs, cleaned them up, and buried the internal organs deep in the soil to prevent them from polluting the ditch. Then they went home.

Wu Qing said, "Out of 10 field mice, we can eat 4 today, stew them in brown sauce, and make the rest into jerky to eat later, is that ok?"

"Okay, let's make dinner first." Wen Qing said with a smile, "I guess everyone will go digging for voles tomorrow, so it will be difficult to catch them."

While cooking, Wen Qing went to fetch a load of water, preparing to take a bath and do laundry.

Wu Qing’s cooking skills are pretty good. The cooked field mouse had no muddy smell, and both of them were very satisfied with the meal.

After dinner, Wu Qing made the remaining six field mice into barbecued jerky. Wen Qing took a bath and washed and hung clothes in the yard. Gu Hua came over and asked, "Wen Qing, how do you cook field mice?"

"Braised",

"We too, shall we continue digging for voles tomorrow?"

"Okay!"

Everyone was tired after a day's work and went to bed early.

Wen Qing went to the space to check on the vegetables and medicinal herbs that were planted, then went to the study to practice for two hours before leaving the space.

Everyone was busy for a week, drying, threshing and storing the wheat before the rain. Then came the plum rain season, which was a perfect time to plant rice. After the rice was planted and the wheat was delivered to the county grain station, everyone finally had some free time.

That day, the team leader Lin Changsheng gathered all the villagers together and decided to distribute grain to everyone. Since only wheat was harvested, only wheat was distributed. In the end, ten work points could only be divided into half a catty of wheat. Wen Qing got 35 catties and Wu Qing got 45 catties.

The two men carried the food back home, but they looked at each other with worried faces. With such little food, how could they survive until the autumn harvest to distribute it?

Wen Qing said, "On market day, we go to town to exchange some coarse grains and mix them with the food."

Wu Qing said: "Okay."

On market day, Wen Qing carried ten kilograms of wheat to the town. It was ten miles from the village to the town. She could take the village ox cart, but there was only one ox cart in the village and there were many people on it. Wen Qing and Wu Qing decided to walk. They set out at six o'clock in the morning and walked for more than an hour. They arrived outside the town at around 7 o'clock.