Chapter 44.2: Director Zhao has ill intentions

Zhao Ke didn’t know that the students she had only taught for three days had already dragged her along to wield a broadsword in front of Guan Gong, and had even successfully refreshed her personal image, leaving Fu Zhiqing with a deep “blow up” label.

Zhao Ke was a bit busy.

In the north, when building houses, it’s customary to raise the beams in March and build the walls in July.

But building a pigsty was urgent, so they couldn’t follow these customs.

The reason they hadn’t started construction immediately was that the brigade took these piglets too seriously and even held a meeting to discuss how to build the pigsty.

Zhao Village’s production team was poor, so they definitely couldn’t build it like the county pig farm, but they needed to balance sturdiness, safety, and warmth to minimize losses as much as possible.

Zhao Ke used her crude drawing skills to sketch a simple diagram and showed it to the brigade leader during the meeting, explaining as she went:

“The pigsty will have a full grass cover. The north and south walls will be built halfway, and the other half will have a row of removable wooden boards—sealed tightly in winter and removed for ventilation in summer.”

“The floor of the pigsty will be sloped, and the composting pit will be built behind the pigsty. There will be an opening in the back wall of each pig pen so that when cleaning, urine and manure can be pushed straight in, making composting more convenient.”

After demonstrating with her sketch, Zhao Ke asked the brigade leader and others, “How is it?”

Deputy Team Leader Xu questioned, “Isn’t this too complicated for just a pigsty? Our production team’s two pigs survived just fine last winter with simple care, and I see that the Liuhezi brigade also just built three simple walls…”

Zhao Ke looked down at her drawing, “Is it really that complicated? I don’t think so?”

This is about the same principle as the village’s dry latrine, isn’t it?  

Accountant Niu spoke up for Zhao Ke, “Building a pigsty isn’t like building a house where you need adobe bricks. Just wrap dry straw in mud and weave the gable walls, mainly digging the foundation and compost pit, plus the beams and planks… It’s just a bit more effort, but it’s not impossible.”  

Zhao Ke added, “The walls need to be sturdy. If a pig breaks through them, besides catching the pig, you’d also have to repair the pen.”  

Last year, when Zhao Ke was on leave from working at the bearing factory, she had witnessed the whole village chasing pigs. She had a great time watching. Now that she was the one raising pigs—so many of them at that—if she had to catch them often, no one would be able to stand it.  

Deputy Team Leader Xu wasn’t convinced and turned to Zhao Xinshan, “Lao Zhao, what do you think?”  

Zhao Xinshan held his enamel mug, thought for a moment, and said, “It’s a bit more work, but that’s fine. Let’s do it this way.”  

The team leader’s word carried weight, so Deputy Team Leader Xu didn’t object further.  

Building the pigsty was a task for the entire production team. Zhao Xinshan made it clear that it was voluntary labor, and the team members had no complaints. They simply rolled up their sleeves and got to work.  

Zhao Ke temporarily freed herself up and went to handle other matters.  

The main work at the pig farm was currently feeding the pigs and composting fertilizer. The bigger the pigs, the heavier the workload. Zhao Ke suggested that the pig farm workers’ labor points should be divided into regular daily points and overtime points during busy periods.  

According to her proposal, Zhao Xinshan only agreed to have five women as caretakers.  

And this kind of labor point system earned significantly more than working in the fields.  

As soon as the news got out, almost every woman in the production team signed up.  

A crowd of women squeezed into the brigade office. Zhao Xinshan and the others couldn’t stand their loud voices and escaped early, leaving Zhao Ke alone to face them.  

Zhao Ke wasn’t annoyed at all. She was actually happy about the women’s enthusiasm.  

However, looking at Zhao Er Nai across the table, Zhao Ke was slightly helpless, “Er Nai, at your age, you shouldn’t be joining in on this, should you?”  

Zhao Er Nai stood with her hands on her hips, extremely dissatisfied, “I can still work and earn labor points, so why can’t I be a caretaker?”  

Several other elderly women, also not young, squeezed to the front and launched a sonic attack at Zhao Ke—  

“Those younger wives aren’t as strong as us! Are you looking down on us because we’re old and useless?”  

“If you don’t believe it, let’s compare right now. Their grip strength isn’t as strong as ours.”  

“That’s right.”  

Zhao Ke was speechless. Weren’t these the same people who, when slacking off during work, would claim they were “old,” “not in good health,” and “couldn’t keep up”…?  

And saying those younger women weren’t as strong as them—no, it was just that the younger ones didn’t dare argue with them. If something happened and the elderly women collapsed on the ground, who could deal with that?  

Zhao Ke raised her loudspeaker to suppress their voices, “There’s an age requirement for caretaker. You must be between eighteen and forty-five years old. Let me clarify—I don’t have any bias against age, but this job is really tiring, and I can’t bear to let you suffer.”  

“We’re not afraid of hardship.”  

“Exactly.”  

“I just want to earn labor points…”  

Zhao Ke coaxed them, “Er Nai, ladies, don’t worry, there will definitely be other suitable work for you in the future.”  

Zhao Er Nai took the lead in confirming, “You promise?”  

Zhao Ke nodded, “I promise.”  

Zhao Er Nai: “I don’t believe you.”  

Zhao Ke: “…”  

Believe it or not.  

Zhao Ke’s face turned serious, and she said directly, “We follow the rules. If you don’t meet the requirements, then you don’t meet the requirements. There’s no fooling around.”  

She then called out to the middle-aged women in the back, “Whose grandmothers are these? Take them away, quickly, don’t interfere with others signing up.”  

The women in the back laughed, and a few of them stepped forward to drag their grandmothers to the back.

Zhao Er Nai’s daughter-in-law didn’t dare to pull her, and Zhao Ke didn’t bother with her either. She wrote down all the people who signed up and met the requirements, then said to the group of women, “Everyone is good at working, but raising pigs requires skill. Starting tomorrow, after finishing work, all of you come here for training. It will last for three days. After it ends, there will be an assessment. Our brigade’s pig farm caretakers will be the five people with the best results.”

The women resisted and complained—

“Huh? We still have to train?”

“Who hasn’t raised something before? What training do we need?”

“Exactly, can raising pigs be harder than raising kids?”

“Don’t talk nonsense. Don’t you all just tie your kids at the field’s edge and let them pee in circles? You call that knowing how to raise them? That’s not scientific at all.”

The women laughed, “Director Zhao, this student girl, why is sare you talking so rough now!”

Zhao Ke was exasperated, “Training is a must. If the piglets die, it’s everyone’s loss. Don’t you all want to get a few extra cents when dividends are distributed?”

Of course, they did.

Although the women were still reluctant, they stopped complaining.

“I’ll read the list one last time to confirm.”

Zhao Ke read the names one by one and reminded them, “For this caretaker job, I guarantee fairness, justice, and complete transparency. There will be absolutely no falsification. If you’re afraid you won’t remember, you can ask the kids at home to bring a pen and write it down, then teach you when you get back.”

The women laughed, mostly thinking that having their kids teach them was a joke.

Tian Guizhi and a few other women squeezed forward and asked anxiously, “Director Zhao, why aren’t our names on the list? We also signed up.”

“Tian Guizhi, Wang Xiuping, Li Mei, Liu Haizhi, Sun Jihong.” Zhao Ke picked up a work manual beside her, read the names, and smiled, “You didn’t join the cooperative’s shares. You probably forgot about the cooperative’s rules. Caretakers must also follow the rules. Your families have school-age children who don’t attend school, so you don’t qualify as caretakers.”

Among these women, aside from Sun Jihong’s family, which was genuinely struggling to even afford food, the other four families all had daughters but were unwilling to let them go to school.

If collective dividends weren’t mandatory, Zhao Ke would have wanted to kick these families out completely and see if they’d panic.

But the ultimate goal wasn’t to get angry; it was to solve the problem.

Treating them as if they were just facing financial difficulties, Zhao Ke spoke with great understanding, “Even if you study seriously and have a good chance of being selected as caretakers, your families are temporarily unable to afford it. The brigade understands, and there will be more opportunities in the future.”

Their expressions didn’t look good.

They hadn’t bought shares because they thought it wasn’t necessary—who knew if there would even be any profits?

But this caretaker job was different; it earned work points for sure.

Sun Jihong looked distressed and pleaded, “Director Zhao, my family’s situation is special. Could we…”

Zhao Ke raised her hand slightly and, while there were many people around, brought up the matter of midwife training: “You can also sign up for midwife training. There’s currently one spot available. The only requirement is that you must be a married woman. The age limit can be relaxed, but you must be nimble.”

The women started discussing it upon hearing this, but they were hesitant about becoming a midwife.

Zhao Ke said to Sun Jihong, “Being a midwife requires skill and has stricter requirements, but the pay is good. You don’t have to focus solely on being a caretaker.”

Sun Jihong furrowed her brows and thought carefully.

After speaking with her, Zhao Ke raised her voice, “I will also work to get more midwife spots. Training must be done in advance so that when you attend the commune’s training, you won’t be completely clueless.”

“I’ve looked into it—it’s not just our production team that lacks a midwife. If our village’s midwife has good skills, she can assist with deliveries in other production teams as well. There’s no need to worry about having too many midwives in one team and competing for work. At the very least, when our pig farm has its own piglets in the future, we can help with that too.”

“Everyone, sign up enthusiastically ah!”

Everything that needed to be said was said, Zhao Ke raised the loudspeaker and shouted, “Alright, meeting dismissed!”  

The training for pig farm workers actually didn’t require much content, only about half an hour each day, and Zhao Ke could handle it.  

But as for midwifery, Zhao Ke didn’t understand it at all. If she just read from the pamphlet word for word, it would be somewhat irresponsible. So Zhao Ke went to Granny Qian’s house again, asking her to help with some preliminary midwifery training.  

Old Qian had gone out for a walk. In the courtyard, Qian family’s nine-year-old granddaughter was doing chores, while Granny Qian held her less-than-one-year-old grandson in her arms and refused, “There must be someone to do the housework, I can’t go.”  

Zhao Ke persuaded, “It won’t take too long, about an hour each day. Morning, noon, or evening—whenever you’re free, we can arrange it.”  

Granny Qian gently stroked the little grandson’s back without saying a word.  

“Granny Qian, I’ve heard all about it. You’re especially experienced in midwifery. If you pass it down, the women will all benefit, and you can take this chance to go out and look around. The women in our production team have been full of energy lately, their spirits are completely different.”  

Granny Qian weakly pulled at the corner of her mouth, “What’s different?”  

“The pig farm workers get a lot of work points from the brigade. Everyone is scrambling to sign up, morale is very high.” Zhao Ke finished and praised her, “You used to earn money from midwifery to supplement the household, your family must have valued it a lot, right?”  

However, today Zhao Ke had chosen the wrong thing to praise. Granny Qian lowered her eyes and said lifelessly, “No difference, they just treated me like an old maid all the same.”  

Zhao Ke asked, “And you just accepted it all?”  

Granny Qian resigned herself, “I fled to this place to escape a famine. If the Qian family hadn’t taken me in, I would have starved to death. Even if I didn’t accept it, I had nowhere else to go.”  

Zhao Ke frowned, “It’s a new society now. When I was at the bearing factory, ‘Women hold up half the sky’ wasn’t just a slogan. The reason why many women in our production team still have no status is because the men in their families always earn more, and they don’t value the contributions women make to the household.”  

“If women have financial security, those old mindsets will definitely change little by little. Granny Qian, just help me out.”  

Granny Qian was silent for a long time before she gave a slight nod.  

Zhao Ke quickly set a schedule with her. For the first three days, it would be from 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM—right after Zhao Ke’s half-hour pig farming training, Granny Qian would share her midwifery experience.  

After three days, they would start at 5 PM and end at 6 PM.