Year 1979: Eating meat with my wife and children

Li Xiangdong emerged from the main room with a burp. Fortunately, his two sisters-in-law had listened to his advice and hadn't made too many noodles, but even so, he and his father were stuffed.

The pots and pans in the cabinet by the main house entrance have been neatly arranged, and Zhou Yuqin is tidying up the small kitchen by her own door.

This small kitchen was built with great effort by the original residents, and it doesn't need any repairs now. Just a simple cleaning and tidying up of the clutter is enough.

The small kitchen by Brother Li's door is always in use and doesn't need cleaning. After the couple sorts out the bowls and chopsticks for their own family, they each help out one family.

Brother Li looked at Li Xiangdong, who was hiccuping while working, and asked, "Dongzi, what's wrong?"

'Hiccup~'

Li Xiangdong burped and shook his head. "It's nothing, it's probably because I drank a ladle of cold water just now."

Brother Li gave him a disdainful look. "How old are you? Why are you still acting like a child? We'll be eating separately from now on, so you'd better watch out."

"Understood, brother."

Li Xiangdong straightened up, patted his chest, turned around and saw Zhou Yuqin trying hard to suppress her laughter, then pointed to the corner of the wall.

"That area wasn't cleaned properly."

Zhou Yuqin rolled her eyes at him, then took the rag and wiped it again.

The small kitchen wasn't big, and with Brother Li coming over to help, the three of them quickly got everything ready.

Brother Li washed his face under the tap, and seeing Brother Li Er walking over looking disheveled, he asked, "Are you all cleaned up?"

"Ah."

Brother Li came over, took a handful of water, and splashed it on his face to cool it down. "It's easy to clean up. The main problem is that there's a lot of clutter inside. We can just move it to the back room."

Brother Li nodded. "You guys wash up first. I'll go to the coal shop and get a tricycle. We'll go buy things together."

Coal shops have no shortage of tricycles, although most people now collect their coal from the coal shop themselves on a monthly basis.

However, there are also households that do not have able-bodied workers, or those who do not have time but are not short of money. These people will ask the coal shop's deliveryman to deliver the coal to their homes in a tricycle.

The job of a coal deliveryman is a temporary one. The work is dirty, there's no money in it, and you can't get a permanent position. Most of the people who do this job are farmers from the outskirts of the city.

Of course, with the large-scale return of educated youth to the cities in the past two years, coal delivery workers are now a highly sought-after job.

Especially for some long-time Beijing residents, saving face is everything; they're used to it.

Rather than being assigned by the neighborhood committee to do sewing and mending work alongside other women, they would rather do dirty, tiring, and physically demanding jobs.

If you want them to change their mindset and put aside their pride to pick up needle and thread, they might only understand when their families are starving to death.

"Second brother, third brother, come out when you're ready."

Brother Li didn't go into the courtyard; he just shouted at the gate.

The tricycles were relatively clean. Coal was supplied in rations, and the coal deliverymen would deliver it to residents' homes. Before leaving, the residents would always take a broom and carefully sweep the tricycle bed.

The three brothers didn't buy anything from the supply and marketing cooperative in their own alley. Anyone with eyes could tell from the things they bought that the Li family had split up.

After all, their parents and grandparents are still alive, and they all live in the same courtyard. It's not easy to talk about dividing the family property, and although it can't be kept secret for long, it's good to delay the outsiders from finding out.

Having prepared everything needed for firing alone, Li Xiangdong also bought some cigarettes and alcohol.

As the sun slowly set, people busied themselves again at the stove in front of the main house; tonight's meal was a kind of family division feast.

Unable to get involved, Li Xiangdong strolled around the yard with his daughter in his arms.

"Chirp chirp..."

Li Xiaozhu saw her grandmother take an old hen out of the chicken coop and reached out her hand to go over.

Li Xiangdong carried her to his mother's side and asked, "Isn't this your precious darling? How could you bear to kill her?"

Li's mother gave him a disapproving look, "Aren't you our precious darling?"

"Haha~"

Li Xiangdong, holding his daughter, turned around, intending to get away from his mother.

"Don't go, come here."

Li's mother said softly, "There are only two old hens left in the house now. You can help your eldest and second brothers get some egg coupons back from their homes in the future."

Li Xiangdong nodded. "Understood."

"Don't be too generous. Just let them pay whatever amount is due."

Li's mother held a chicken in one hand and a kitchen knife and a bowl for catching chicken blood in the other. "Alright, move away from this. Don't let my granddaughter see this."

Tonight's dinner was quite lavish, which naturally took longer, and it was already dark by the time we ate.

The cigarettes and alcohol that Li Xiangdong bought came in handy. After the children had eaten and drunk their fill, they were the first to leave. Then, the two older brothers, who had drunk too much, were helped back to their own rooms by their two sisters-in-law.

Gradually, only Li's father, who was drunk, and Li Xiangdong, who was being pestered by his father to stay, remained in the main living room.

Li's father grabbed his arm and began to ramble on in his drunken state, "Third brother...do you know why...why the house in the family wasn't divided?"

Li Xiangdong wasn't drunk at all; he was perfectly sober. Hearing his father's words, he asked curiously, "I don't know, why?"

Mr. Li hiccuped, puffed on his cigarette, and chuckled, “You…you’ve made something of yourself. The eldest and second eldest aren’t up to par. I…I plan to leave the house to them. Didn’t you…didn’t you want to save enough money to move out? The house…the house isn’t yours.”

Li Xiangdong looked closely at his father beside him and said in agreement, "Okay, leave the house to my eldest and second eldest brothers. I'll save up enough money and figure out how to get a house myself."

"Okay...Okay."

Mr. Li patted his shoulder, then his body went limp and he slumped onto the table.

Li Xiangdong grabbed a handful of uneaten peanuts from the table and put them in his pocket before helping his father back into the inner room.

Li's mother helped her youngest son to his bed and then urged him, "Third son, go back to your room and go to sleep. We can clean up the leftovers on the table tomorrow morning."

"Yes, I replied."

Li Xiangdong smiled, turned around, lifted the curtain, and went out.

After hearing the door to the main room close, Li's father, who was lying on the kang (a heated brick bed), immediately got up and sat on the kang. At this point, he showed no signs of being drunk at all.

"The third brother is very cunning; I wonder if he noticed it or not."

Li's mother handed him a teacup filled with water and said with a smile, "You just put on a show this morning, and now you're doing this again. How could he not understand?"

Mr. Li sighed and said, "It's better than saying it directly. If he really has the ability to buy a house on his own, then what I said is the truth. If he can't, then what I just said was just drunken talk."

Mother Li nodded and said, "When our third son was in the countryside, his parents said they would save their money for him. Now that he's back, I don't think his parents' intentions have changed."

“Let’s do this: from now on, you don’t need to contribute to the family with your salary. Save the money for the eldest and second eldest’s families. Sigh, even if the third eldest has his own house in the future, I don’t know if he will complain about us if we don’t give him a share of the family’s house.”

Mr. Li was getting annoyed and irritated listening to Mrs. Li's nagging.

"When the third son buys a house, we'll help him out with some of the money. We'll try our best to make sure none of our three sons are shortchanged. Damn it, if I had known there would be so many problems, I should have only had one child. When you were pregnant with the second and third sons, you should have beaten them up!"

Li's mother chuckled, "Hit the child? Our mother would definitely beat you to death first!"