Chapter 22

Have a good night.

At around eight o’clock the next day, Li Erhe walked around the brigade with a loudspeaker, urging everyone to go to work.

There is not much heavy work to do in the fields in winter. You can only apply some manure to the fields when it is not snowing, or go hunting and chopping firewood in the mountains.

These can all be recorded as work points.

Ye Xuanhan was the reserve timekeeper, so Li Erhe took her to the brigade office early in the morning.

The office is located in the very center of the brigade and the conditions are very simple.

It looked like an adobe house from the outside. If it weren’t for the words “Brigade Office” posted right above the door, Ye Han would have thought it was a villager’s house.

As you step over the threshold, the first thing that comes into view is the portrait of the great man, and a red slogan is printed on the wall next to it.

The floor was paved with blue bricks, and in the middle there was a square mahogany table, which was bumpy and looked like it had been there for many years. It looked like it was used for meetings. The filing cabinet placed on the east wall is relatively new and is locked. On the small table next to it are placed a thermos, a feather duster, an enamel cup and other miscellaneous items.

In addition, there is a washbasin rack in the southeast corner, on which is placed an enamel washbasin and a mirror with the words “Award” and “Announcement”, and two towels are hung on the horizontal bar. All that was left were two old small tables with various notebooks and books on them, which should have been used for office work.

Li Erhe asked Wu Youcai to take care of her for a few days.

Wu Youcai is a skinny old man with a pair of inverted triangle eyes, looking very annoying.

He had a stern face and was indifferent to Ye Yanhan. He took out a work time notebook from the filing cabinet, said a few words to Ye Yanhan, and then said nothing more.

For the rest of the day, Wu Youcai ignored Ye Yanhan and went out directly.

Ye Xuanhan had some free time and did not rush to follow Wu Youcai. Since the old man didn’t want to teach her, she naturally couldn’t have the audacity to please him.

Sitting in the brigade office, Ye Hanhan opened the filing cabinet and began to look through the various materials inside. He soon found the work content of the timekeeper issued by the commune.

Every day, I record the working hours of the members, and the rest is to count the breeding conditions of various livestock, which I have to hand over to the brigade’s accountant Liu Xia at the end of the month.

Ye Xuanhan did not have a deep impression of Liu Xia, mainly because apart from speaking to her during the year-end settlement, they hardly met at other times.

The other person’s husband seemed to be the secretary of the commune and was a very upright man.

In the afternoon, when Ye Hanhan was looking at the notebook on the table, a woman in her forties, wearing black cotton trousers, a flowered cotton jacket and a dark headscarf, walked into the brigade office.

Ye Han recognized her as the brigade’s accountant Liu Xia.

“You are Ye Xuanhan, right?” Liu Xia’s voice was gentle.

“Accountant Liu——”

“Don’t call me so strangely, call me Sister Liu,” Liu Xia put the crossbody bag she was carrying on the table against the wall, “I heard from the team leader yesterday that from now on you will be the timekeeper of our Huaihua team.”

“Yes, Sister Liu,” Ye Han felt that Liu Xia was a pretty good person.

“Is it that Old Wu is unwilling to teach you anything?” Liu Xia asked.

“I don’t know. He told me to look at the record book and then he left.”

“Tsk, with his granddaughter’s character, it would be strange if she could do this job,” Liu Xia said disdainfully, “Xianhan, don’t worry about him, if you don’t understand anything, just ask me, anyway, I won’t let Wu Xiaoyue come here.”

“Ah?” Ye Xuanhan looked very surprised. “Really? Sister Liu? Thank you so much.”

She had a guess in her mind that Liu Xia might have a grudge against Wu Youcai or Wu Xiaoyue.

In the next two hours, Liu Xia taught Ye Yanhan many things.

“You are usually responsible for recording working hours and work status. Every day, the team leader will come to report, and you will record it in the notebook in time. Then you will wait for the team leader to tell you to do the rest.”

Ye Xuanhan listened carefully and even wrote down what Liu Xia said in a small notebook.

Seeing Ye Xuanhan’s serious attitude towards learning, Liu Xia developed a liking for her.

In the afternoon, Wu Youcai came back from outside and treated Ye Han as a invisible person without saying a word.

Finished the work and left.

Ye Xuanhan was not annoyed, but laughed in her heart. Don’t think she doesn’t know that Wu Youcai did nothing but was actually planning a big move.

You don’t teach me anything, you just want to make fun of her.

Then we’ll see who will be the joke.

…

As soon as it got dark in the afternoon, I could hear the sound of members reading and reciting words from next door.

The members in the countryside had limited cultural knowledge, and some could not even write their own names, so literacy classes were organized and required to be offered in every brigade.

Wang Jianjun, Zheng Xuehua, several educated youth, and educated young people in the countryside would teach the members to read and write in the literacy classes.

Ye Hanhan remembered that Zheng Xuehua didn’t make any noise today, which was a bit strange, so he thought of going to the literacy class to take a look.

The room where the literacy class was organized was a dilapidated warehouse, which was used to store food in the summer and was cold in the winter, so everyone took classes inside.

With the light of the kerosene lamp shining through the dirty glass, Ye Hanhan saw Zheng Xuehua teaching others to read, and Wang Jianjun sitting in the first row.

The other educated youth sat in the last row.

There were many people in the room and it was dark, so Ye Han sneaked in and sat in the second to last row.

She heard a few educated youth chatting, so she pricked up her ears to eavesdrop.

“I’m telling you, Zheng Xuehua was sleepwalking last night. She didn’t sleep for most of the night and was lying under my bed. I’m a light sleeper, so I heard some noise under the bed and got scared.”

“Oh my, what a coincidence! Wang Jianjun was sleepwalking last night. I got up in the middle of the night to pee and saw him lying on the ground. I tried to wake him up, but he insisted that I stepped on his private part. Tsk tsk tsk tsk.”

A few people chatted in low voices and soon changed the topic.

Ye Han was puzzled. Given Zheng Xuehua’s ruthless personality, how could she not react at all when her things were missing?

Looking at Zheng Xuehua who was teaching everyone to read words in front, there was nothing unusual on her expression and she didn’t look like someone who had lost anything at all.

Ye Xuanhan couldn’t figure it out.

At this time, several educated youth turned the topic back to Zheng Xuehua and Wang Jianjun.

“Oh my god, today Zheng Xuehua came home from work and almost suffocated me. She stinks like cow dung.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Wang Jianjun is the same. He smells terrible. I don’t even want to live in the same room with him.”

“Who told them to frame Ye Xuanhan for no reason? They deserve it.”

“I’ve been displeased with them for a long time. Since they are in a relationship, they should get married quickly to stop them from bothering us all the time.”

Wang Jianjun and Zheng Xuehua did not have a good reputation among the educated youth, but Ye Hanhan was not very clear about this.

In the past, Daya had little contact with other educated youth, so in her memory, these two people were relatively kind in the early days.

He became greedy later on, also after Daya’s parents passed away.

Looking at the members next to Wang Jianjun and Zheng Xuehua on the podium, all of whom were pinching their noses with a look of disgust, Ye Hanhan covered his mouth and laughed for a long time, then slipped out of the literacy class.

In the following days, there was no news of Zheng Xuehua losing anything in the team.

There must be something wrong when something is abnormal. Ye Hanhan felt a little strange, but he didn’t think too much about it.

However, Ye Han remembered clearly that she had given Wang Jianjun one week to pay back the ninety yuan he owed her.