Chapter 16

In the afternoon, the two brothers Qiao Dashan processed the wild boar, reserved the meat they needed, and let the villagers choose the rest.

After selling the rest of the wild boar, they made a total of 109.60 yuan, except for the portion they kept for themselves.

This is because they are the only two brothers who share the meat, so there is a lot of meat left to sell.

If there are many people going up the mountain to hunt wild boars, there will be almost no meat left after each family has divided the meat, so it is acceptable for each family to get a few dollars or ten dollars from the sales.

Now the money is divided between the two brothers Qiao Dashan and Qiao Xiaoshan.

“I’ll just take fifty yuan, and give the remaining few yuan to my parents.” said Qiao Xiaoshan.

Qiao Qiping looked at his youngest son’s family and said with relief: “You don’t need to worry about me. You two brothers can share the money. As long as you two brothers have good parents, that will make me happier than anything else.”

Qiao Dashan agreed: “We are here to take care of your parents, don’t worry, you can take these few dollars of change, I’ll just take fifty, and besides, I get more money, so it’s only right that you take more.”

“Brother, no need.” Xu Li refused. Fang Mei stepped forward and said, “Okay, okay, I’ll listen to you, brother.”

Xu Li: “No, if it was only a dime or two it would be fine, but this is almost five dollars.”

“Here.”

“No, no.”

“Here.”

“No, no.”

…

The familiar scene above started the vicious circle again.

Seeing that the two sisters-in-law were about to get angry over a few dollars, Qiao Xiazhi on the side hurriedly said, “You two are pushing each other here, you don’t want it, right? Then give it all to me.”

As he said that, Qiao Xiazhi took the money.

Xu Li and Fang Mei were confused again. How did things go back to the way they were before?

Just when the two of them didn’t react, Qiao Xiazhi took out another forty cents from his pocket and added it in, then divided it into two, each worth five yuan, and handed them to Qiao Daguo and Qiao Erguo.

“Big brother, second brother, you two take this money and the meat to give to your eldest and second aunts. Be careful on the road, this money is a gift from father and second uncle, you two can’t steal it. Also, give the money secretly, understand?”

Qiao Daguo and Qiao Erguo took the money handed over by Qiao Xiazhi and said, “Don’t worry, we understand. Then we’ll leave.”

After saying that, the two of them put the meat into a basket, put the basket on their backs and went out.

It’s still early now and we can get back before dark.

Qiao Qiping and Zhu Shizhen have four children in total. The eldest is Qiao Dashan, the second and third are twin sisters, Qiao Xiu’e and Qiao Xiuyun, and the fourth is Qiao Xiaoshan.

Both my elder and younger aunts married in the next brigade, not in the same small brigade, but not far away.

The round trip, including the delay on the road, took about an hour and a half.

Seeing Qiao Xiazhi divide the money among the two aunts, Fang Mei and Xu Li finally felt relieved and seemed to feel more comforted.

This child has really changed for the better.

This time the child thought of things that they didn’t think of.

“Okay, let’s have dinner together as a family tonight. I’ll go cook.” Speaking of happiness, Zhu Shizhen was the happiest one.

Everyone wants their sons and daughters to live well.

My son has hunted a wild boar, but he still remembers his two married sisters. He gives some of the money from the sale to them to improve their lives. As a mother, how can I not be happy and relieved?

The amount of money is not the point. The point is that brothers and sisters care about each other, and harmony is the most important thing.

The most important point is that the summer solstice in their family has really changed completely.

This family will definitely get better and better in the future.

In the evening, Zhu Shizhen and his two daughters-in-law cooked.

Braised the pig’s head, then cut it in half and gave it to the men in the family to drink with.

Then I stir-fried pig intestines with pickled bamboo shoots.

I also stewed some bone soup and added corn grits to the bones. That’s what I ate in the evening.

No matter how the staple food is arranged, having meat is the happiest thing.

As for the pheasants hunted today, they were sold to the villagers, but the wild rabbits were not sold. Qiao Xiazhi thought that since there was meat to eat at home, she would make some hand-shredded rabbit meat for the villagers to try.

Although it’s a bit extravagant, her family still spoils her and lets her do as she pleases.

Anyway, it ended up in everyone’s stomach.

Thanks to a wild boar, the lives of the villagers have improved in recent days, and everyone is more energetic to work hard for the upcoming summer harvest.

At the end of the year, the times that make the villagers happiest are the summer harvest, autumn harvest, and slaughtering pigs and distributing grain and money at the end of the year.

Now it is summer harvest time, and the wheat fields are all golden.

The green one is rice, but it will be harvested in autumn.

Everyone should take advantage of the good weather to harvest the wheat and dry it in the sun.

In this way, everyone can wait for the grain to be distributed after it is delivered.

During the summer harvest, almost every household that can contribute goes to the wheat fields.

But Qiao Xiazhi had never done this before, and although things have changed now, she still can’t do the job of harvesting wheat for too long.

This is not like working for your own family. If you can do it, do more; if you can’t, do less.

Nowadays, we still work in groups. Once we go to the fields, we have to persevere, otherwise we won’t get any work points and it would be in vain.

Instead of this, Qiao Xiazhi might as well read a book at home, and then make some mung bean water or herbal tea for everyone in the afternoon.

This way you can still end up well.

“Xiazhi, thank goodness you have me. You insist on bringing us herbal tea every day to cool us down. Otherwise, it would be really hot to death in this hot weather.”

“That’s right. Yesterday, I heard someone in the neighboring brigade fainted from the heat. He had heat stroke and was vomiting and having diarrhea. It was really frustrating.”

That afternoon, Qiao Xiazhi made some herbal tea for everyone and brought it to them.

The ingredients for the herbal tea are all collected locally in the mountains by her, and all she has to do is boil them with great effort.

Just as the villagers here were saying that someone in the neighboring brigade had fainted from the heat, someone here also fainted.

“Oh, Dalin fainted.”

The villagers worked hard and carried Chen Dalin under the big willow tree. Then they patted his wrist and pinched his Ren Zhong.

It took a long time for the man to finally recover.

As soon as Chen Dalin woke up, the villagers began to talk to him about his concerns.

“What’s going on?”

“Why did you faint again?”

“Are you hot or hungry?”

“Are you feeling uncomfortable anywhere else?”

Qiao Qiping felt his pulse and said, “Dalin didn’t have a heat stroke. He fainted from hunger.”

As soon as these words were spoken, the villagers exclaimed again.

“Why did you faint from hunger again? Didn’t the brigade just lend you some food to send back a few days ago?”

“Yes, the grain we borrowed was calculated to last you until the summer harvest. You can’t go hungry again. You’re afraid you’ll faint from hunger!!”

“Tell me the truth, is it your wife who took the food back to her parents’ home again?”

Chen Dalin is the same age as Qiao Daguo, but he got married a few months earlier, after the autumn harvest last year, while Qiao Daguo got married before the Chinese New Year.

Chen Dalin’s wife was pregnant and if it was two months later, her pregnancy would have been obvious.

However, apart from Chen Dalin’s family, no one else knew about this matter.

Chen Dalin’s girlfriend was someone he had chosen himself, a girl from the next brigade.

Originally, the Chen family was not very satisfied with this girl and they all said that she was not good enough.

But Chen Dalin was so bewildered that he fell in love with her and insisted on marrying her, and in order to bring her home, he even made it a fait accompli.

After Chen Dalin got married, his wife used her pregnancy as an excuse to stay away from women and eat good food every day.

During the Chinese New Year, in order to save face when she returned to her parents’ home, she knew that her parents-in-law had money because of the money distributed by the brigade, so she forced her parents-in-law to take out twenty yuan so that she could take it back to her parents’ home to visit relatives.

The betrothal gift was one hundred yuan, which was already the highest among the surrounding teams.

But there was no other way. Chen Dalin had already made the girl pregnant, and if he didn’t give it to her, he would report her to the police.

For the sake of their son, the Chen family had no choice but to agree.

After the Chinese New Year, Chen Dalin’s wife asked Chen Dalin for fifty yuan, saying that her younger brother was going to build a house, and she wanted to take it home to help her brother build the house.

Even if the Chen family was considered to be of average condition at that time, they could not withstand such torture from her.

But Chen Dalin threatened to abort the child if she didn’t give it to him. In the end, the Chen family’s elders had to scrape together fifty yuan for her to take the child back.

However, just before the spring planting, Chen Dalin’s wife started to make trouble again. She insisted on being the head of the family and either dividing the family or handing over all the housekeeping duties to her.

The Chen family elders knew what she was capable of, so there was no way they would let her take care of the household.

They almost got into a fight over this matter, and the fight ended only when Uncle Chen fainted from anger.

But she was so angry that she passed away within two days. Later, Aunt Chen handed over the housekeeper power to her, but Aunt Chen also passed away within half a month.

I heard that Chen Dalin’s wife took all the family property back to her parents’ home, and that’s why Mrs. Chen was so angry that she died.

But outsiders are not very clear about these things, only Chen Dalin himself knows.

Since then, the two brothers of the Chen family have separated.

Basically, whatever Chen Dalin earns, his wife will take back to her parents’ home, and she doesn’t care what her husband does.

Anyway, no one knew what Chen Dalin was thinking, and the villagers couldn’t bear to see it and gave him help occasionally if they could.

But it has been more than half a year now. Helping once or twice is fine, but if it goes on for a long time, who doesn’t have a family? Whose family is not in trouble?

The Guangda team has helped me so many times.

If you really count it, even if he distributes grain during the summer harvest, he might not even be able to pay back the grain he borrowed.

It is said that marrying a virtuous wife will bring prosperity to three generations, while marrying an unvirtuous wife will ruin three generations. Chen Dalin is a good example.

If Chen Dalin had some opinions of his own, the Chen family wouldn’t have been like this.

Thinking about the concern of his fellow villagers and looking at everyone’s worried eyes, Chen Dalin, who had recovered, felt ashamed and raised his hand to slap himself hard.

The villagers had nothing to understand after seeing this.

Chen Xiaolin was about to step forward to stop him, but the captain shouted with a dark face, “Don’t stop him.”

“Beat him. Beat him to wake himself up. If he wakes up, he can still be saved. If he fails to wake up, even if he dies, he will suffer less.”

“You have no opinion of your own. The villagers can help you temporarily but not forever. Who can you blame for all this now? You can only blame yourself for what happened.”

“Think about it carefully! If you can’t figure it out, the team can’t do anything about it. You chose this path yourself, so you can’t blame others.”

“Okay, let’s get to work quickly. We can collect the food early while it’s still early and feel relieved.”

As he said this, the team leader went to the wheat field to harvest wheat. Now he could do nothing about Chen Dalin’s problem.