Chapter 33: Moving Party

Xie Yi was a shy child. With a rosy face, he stood in front of Wen Jiajia and said, “Hello, Auntie.”

After saying that, he even pulled his brother’s hand. The brother, who was just over two years old, looked very young and imitated his brother in a baby voice, “Hello, Auntie.”

Wen Jiajia’s face was almost frozen from smiling.

It is indeed correct to call her auntie, but it sounds weird.

But she didn’t force the child to call her “sister.” Nowadays, people call each other according to their generation.

“Hello.” Wen Jiajia shook hands with him. “What’s your brother’s name?”

“His name is Xie Sheng. You can call him Xiao Sheng.”

“Okay, Xiaoyi, go play.”

Xie Yi touched his head, feeling something was wrong. Before he could figure it out, Wen Chun pulled him into the house to play with building blocks.

Wen Jiajia was still plucking the chicken.

Plucking feathers is actually quite troublesome. Wen Jiajia can’t stand the hair on the chicken. If she sees obvious chicken feathers when eating, it is easy to lose her appetite. So she plucked the feathers very carefully. Fortunately, there are plucking clips in the kitchen. As long as there is enough time, she can completely remove all the feathers.

However, Wen Jiajia is not so picky. She can still tolerate some fine hair.

The sun was shining brightly in the yard.

It took Wen Jiajia more than half an hour to finally prepare the chicken.

Not only did she pluck the chicken, but she also gutted it on a wooden block in the yard and cleaned its internal organs.

Leave the yellow shell on the chicken gizzard for now.

This thing is called chicken gizzard lining, a traditional Chinese medicine that helps in strengthening the stomach and aiding digestion. It can be exchanged for sugar in my hometown, but I don’t know if it works here.

It doesn’t matter if you can’t exchange it; you can just eat it at home.

It’s true that her family often eats too much…

The chicken was a regular local chicken. Considering that it contained meat, ribs, and pig’s trotters, Wen Jiajia planned to put the chicken in a casserole to make soup.

It was not yet noon, so there was no rush to stew it. She put the chicken in the kitchen and went to prepare the pig’s trotters.

Pig’s trotters also have hair, and the hair is not easy to pluck. It is harder than chicken feathers and is more uncomfortable to eat.

In this case, plucking clips won’t be of much use; you have to use fire to heat it.

She lit a charcoal fire in an iron basin and then placed the pig’s trotters on the already burning charcoal fire.

Within two seconds, the only sound was a crackling one.

Then the smell of roasted pork skin wafted into her nose. There was a faint fragrance in the stench, and there seemed to be a stench in the fragrance. Wen Jiajia turned her face away and stayed away.

In fact, she still likes to eat pig skin.

Roasted pig skin can be eaten with water. She had eaten this dish in Yunnan. Although the cooking method was very crude, it firmly grasped your taste buds. Wen Jiajia found it amazing.

Later, she went home and wanted to recreate it, but she couldn’t recreate that taste no matter what she did.

Pig skin can also be dried and fried. After frying, soak it in water and cook it with tomatoes, mushrooms, and eggs to make hot and sour pig skin soup.

The taste is so good that even if someone has no appetite, just one spoonful of it will immediately whet their appetite.

Wen Jiajia makes it almost every week in winter, and her hot and sour pork skin soup is even tastier than that made in restaurants.

She couldn’t think about it anymore. Her throat moved and her saliva was secreted profusely.

The pig skin was roasted until it was charred, then soaked in water. After it softened, she scraped it off with a knife, removing all the hair and dirt.

The pig skin was slightly yellow at this point. Wen Jiajia chopped it into small pieces and decided to make spicy fried pig’s trotters.

After all the busy work, the hour hand on the watch had turned to 11 o’clock.

The clear voices of children rang out in the living room one after another. Wen Jiajia poked her head out and said, “Xiaoyi, is your mother coming home at noon?”

Xie Yi nodded. “Yes, Mom will be home in a moment… um, I will be home at 12:30.”

Wen Jiajia felt that this child was very impressive, especially in his sense of time.

She suddenly felt a sense of urgency. Should she give Wen Chun and Wen Xuan some guidance? If nothing unexpected happened, they should have taken the college entrance examination in the late 1980s, and the admission rate at that time was not very high.

Sure enough, the kids from the next-door neighbors are the ones who can most stimulate the desire to push their children forward.

At least they had eaten a few pieces of cake from others, so Wen Jiajia did not let the Xie Yi brothers go home.

“Be obedient and have lunch before you leave,” Wen Jiajia said, “Invite Wen Chun and Wen Xuan to your house for dinner some other day.”

Xie Yi hesitated for a moment and nodded obediently. His mother said that when visiting someone else’s home, one should listen to the host.

Wen Jiajia said, “You’re so good. Keep playing.”

The time ticked to half past eleven.

The rice was ready, and the rich aroma of rice wafted out of the kitchen window and blew away in the breeze.

Through the window, she could see the flat meadow and the lake sparkling in the sun.

This is her favorite window view, so she loves to be in the kitchen.

Bamboo shoots were being cooked in a small iron pot on the stove. The taste was sweet and fresh with a hint of meat.

After a while, the bamboo shoots were almost cooked, so she took them out and threw them into cold water. This would minimize the astringency of the bamboo shoots.

She cut the spring bamboo shoots into thin slices and stir-fried them with the chicken offal.

Considering that there were children around, she was very restrained and only added some green peppers to enhance the flavor.

After frying, she brought it to the table and opened the lid of the wooden barrel for steaming rice. She had asked Wei Dai to make a wooden steamer that could be put on the wooden barrel. At this moment, there was a bowl of steamed eggs and a plate of steamed bacon on the steamer.

Wen Jiajia picked up some lard with chopsticks and put it on the egg custard to melt it.

Then she poured half a spoonful of soy sauce, placed the spoon on the egg custard, and gently slid the bottom of the spoon over it, so that the yellow egg custard would have a light soy sauce color.

“It’s time to eat,” she called. There were three dishes in total, and this amount of food was now considered a regular operation in her family. “Go wash your hands; you are not allowed to come to the table without washing your hands.”

Several children ran to wash up and did so very carefully.

Apparently, several children have developed good habits.

Wen Jiajia’s home cooking is at least above average, and the children enjoy the food very much.

They mixed the rice with egg custard and added some sausages. By the end of the meal, Wen Xuan’s mouth was covered with rice grains.

Wen Jiajia ate almost all the chicken offal. Surprisingly, the children didn’t seem to like it.

Wen Jiajia was quite annoyed. She should have cooked it with a stronger flavor, more sour and spicy.

—

Afternoon.

Wen Jiajia stewed the chicken before taking a nap.

The charcoal fire for scalding the pork skin had not yet burned out, and the casserole had its own unique atmosphere, with water boiling slowly and the chicken slowly oozing out its flavor.

It is said that people feel tired in spring and sleepy in summer. It is easy to feel drowsy in the afternoon in both spring and summer.

The two children could not be saved, so Wen Jiajia didn’t care anymore. She put on a cotton eye mask, lay down on the bed, and fell into a deep sleep until her powerful biological clock woke her up half an hour later.

—

Outside the room.

Four children scrambled to climb the tree, but none of them could make it.

“Xiao Yi, Xiao Sheng!” someone shouted.

“Hey! Mom, I’m at Chun’er’s house.”

Xie Yi let go of the tree and hurried out the door. After running a few steps, he turned back and pulled his brother, asking anxiously, “Chun’er, Xuanxuan, do you want to go to my house to play? I have a wooden horse at home.”

Wen Chun scratched her hair. “Okay.”

Next door.

Shen Xun was shocked when she didn’t see the children after returning home. She didn’t feel relieved until she heard Xie Yi’s voice.

Not long after the reply came, she saw four children at the door of her house.

Xie Yi rushed over: “Mom, my brother and I are playing at Aunt Wen’s house next door.”

Shen Xun asked, “Did you cause any trouble for others?”

“No, Aunt Wen treated me to lunch,” Xie Yi said, showing his tiger teeth. “There were sausages and egg custard—super delicious!”

Shen Xun was genuinely surprised. She looked at Wen Chun and Wen Xuan and went over to hold their hands. “Come on, it’s windy outside. Let’s go inside and play.”

Wen Xuan raised her head and said, “Auntie, we are here to play with the wooden horse with Xiao Yi and Xiao Sheng.”

Xie Yi called her auntie, and she remembered it and now put it into practice.

Xie Yi blushed. “You can’t call me Xiao Yi. I’m older than you and Chun’er. You have to call me ‘brother.’”

Shen Xun smiled. “The wooden horse is in the room.”

Wen Chun and Wen Xuan followed her in.

Just as they entered the living room, Xie Sheng climbed onto a chair, turned on the radio on the table, pointed at it, and said, “The wooden horse isn’t fun. Let’s listen to a story.”

In the middle of the day, there were no stories to listen to, just some reruns of storytelling.

However, the obscure story attracted Wen Chun and Wen Xuan more than the wooden horse. They sat on the soft sofa, leaning their ears towards the radio, listening intently.

Wen Chun thought, this is indeed more fun than the wooden horse.

“Do you have a radio at home?” Xie Yi asked.

Wen Chun shook his head. “We don’t have one at home, but my aunt can tell many stories.”

“Then you can come to my house to listen in the future. There aren’t many good stories at noon. You have to wait until the evening when there will be trumpet and poetry recitation!”

Xie Yi enthusiastically introduced it to Wen Chun, mentioning many contents of children’s programs in succession, which made Wen Chun itch with curiosity.

“How can I buy a radio?” Wen Chun asked, holding her face and thinking for a while.

Xie Yi frowned. “Use money and tickets, and then go to the department store to buy it.”

After thinking for a while, he said, “There are only department stores in the city. I have to take the bus at the entrance of the army. The journey is very uncomfortable.”

Wen Chun asked again, “How can I get rich?”

Xie Yi was stumped. How would he know this?

It’s just that he is a persistent person. When he encounters a problem that is difficult to solve, he naturally wants to understand it first.

“Money… money needs to be earned. I get money from taking care of my brother, and my parents also earn money from work. Unfortunately, Xuanxuan is too old and doesn’t need you to take care of her. Why don’t you work too?”

Wen Chun used her three-year-old brain to the fullest extent and decided to raise chickens to make money.

There’s nothing she can do. As a kid born and raised in the countryside, what she’s heard since she was little… uh, what she’s heard since she was three years old is “The eggs must be saved to exchange for money.”

In this situation, the best solution she could think of was to raise chickens. It was difficult for her aunt to make money, and Wen Chun didn’t want to ask her aunt for money to buy a radio.

She fell into deep thought again until she was gradually attracted by the crosstalk on the radio.

Shen Xun listened from the side, stuffing a steamed bun into her mouth and trying hard not to laugh out loud.

___

Wen family.

Wei Dai came back in a hurry, carrying more than a pound of meat from a nearby meat processing plant.

He has a friend who works in a meat processing factory, and he gets his pig’s trotters from him in the morning.

He wanted to say something to Wen Jiajia, but when he pushed the door open, he found Wen Jiajia sleeping soundly with her pillow in her arms.

Wei Dai closed the door gently, put the meat in the cupboard, and left in a hurry.