Chapter 27: Getting Ready to Go

New Year’s Eve, the 30th day of the lunar year.

Wen Jiajia had to prepare a lot of things on this day, as there was a local custom of offering sacrifices to ancestors and gods on New Year’s Eve.

Even if she didn’t believe this, she had to fit in.

In fact, the New Year celebration started a few days ago. On the day of sending the God of Land to heaven, many families in the village secretly set off firecrackers, and even the firecrackers from the commune could be faintly heard.

The sound of firecrackers made Wen Jiajia feel uneasy. She had not expected this, so should she set off firecrackers?

In the end, Wen Jiajia let go, but because she was too nervous, she almost fell down the stairs when she ran.

At that time, the supply and marketing cooperatives did not have firecrackers for sale. After all, setting off firecrackers was a feudal tradition, so you could just set them off secretly. If you wanted to buy firecrackers in the supply and marketing cooperatives, you had to be the director of the cooperative to not want to work anymore.

Even in that local area – where there was so much incense and so many deities and Buddhas, big and small, the people dared not set off firecrackers or burn incense and candles openly.

Wen Jiajia bought the firecrackers from someone in Qianshan Village. There was a man who knew how to make firecrackers in the village. It was said that he had made his own gunpowder to blow up the Japan decades ago. Wen Jiajia felt nervous after getting the firecrackers, for fear that his hands would be blown up.

Because one pack was used when sending the land god to “speak” good things to heaven, Wen Jiajia asked someone to help buy another pack the day before New Year’s Eve.

That morning, before dinner, everyone started setting off fireworks one after another. Seeing this, Wen Jiajia also hurriedly followed suit.

After that, we started eating, which was flat meat.

What is Wen Jiajia’s favorite thing about the countryside? It must be the abundance of supplies at the end of the year.

Flat meat is a local specialty. Decades later, it can still support the Chinese fast food scene together with mixed noodles, which shows how popular it is.

Fuyang Brigade opened a flat meat workshop at the end of the year. Its main business is to help beat the flat meat filling and make flat meat skin.

When villagers come to make flat meat, they have to prepare their own materials and also need to give a bowl of flour. When outsiders come to make flat meat, they have to give an extra bowl of soybeans compared to villagers.

After hearing this, Jiajia hurriedly bought some leg meat to beat. This stuffing was pounded purely by hand, and she couldn’t imagine how delicious it would be.

The meat was pounded last night. Wen Jiajia ate half of it last night and the remaining half this morning.

The main reason is that this thing needs low temperature and it is easy to deteriorate. Otherwise, Wen Jiajia would definitely beat it up to three, five, six or seven kilograms and keep it for eating slowly.

The flat meat is put into the pot, and after being cooked, it floats up and gradually expands, like a white balloon that is slowly inflating.

After it was cooked, it was scooped out into the skimmed chicken soup, which she also made yesterday. She had cruelly killed the chicken at home that was always jumping up and down and not listening to her.

Wen Xuan even took the yellow shells of chicken gizzards to exchange for ding ding candies, and Wen Jiajia only just realized that such a transaction existed.

The chicken soup is slightly yellow and the flat meat is white and plump.

Sprinkle some chopped green onions on it and eat it with the fried pancakes that Fang Mingyan gave her. She felt that her life was complete at that moment.

After eating, they started to tinker with the things for ancestor worship.

There are bacon, chicken, duck, fish, and rice cakes. In short, it is so rich that it makes people drool.

Wen Jiajia followed the example of the villagers, secretly taking the gifts to the temple, then secretly returning home through a small path, and placing the gifts on the table in the main hall as offerings.

Because her house was the first one after entering the village, Wen Jiajia even closed the small door in the yard for fear of a surprise attack.

She was celebrating New Year’s Eve, and Wei Dai was celebrating it too.

Wei Dai’s life was even more miserable than hers. On New Year’s Eve, he didn’t need to train, so he ran to the Beishan house and was building a bathroom.

Recently he encountered a big problem. He wanted to ask a ceramic factory to help him make a squat toilet, but the factory said it couldn’t make it at the last minute.

In desperation, Wei Dai went to look for another factory.

But this time they haven’t reached an agreement yet. The septic tank team won’t allow us to build it, saying it will affect the water source.

Ah! Wei Dai sighed more these days than he had in the past year.

In this case, we can only build the simplest bathroom.

It’s a small brick house with cement inside, a small platform, and two small wooden barrels. It can be considered a top-notch toilet these days.

That evening, on New Year’s Eve, after Wei Dai had his family reunion dinner in the army cafeteria, he quietly pushed his cart to clear the garbage.

There was a lot of sand and wood on the ground. After finishing the bathroom, he had to start decorating the house. He had to clear away some of the things in the yard before he could start decorating.

After running back and forth more than ten times, he not only cleared away the sand, wood, and bricks, but also pulled out all the weeds in the yard.

The moon rose high in the sky. Wei Dai straightened up and wiped the sweat off his face. He looked up at the moon and suddenly felt that those sour poems that he could not understand when he was young did make some sense.

Seeing the moon really reminds me of home.

I wanted to call it a day and go to work, but now I don’t want to do that anymore. If I finish the work one day earlier, Jiajia can come one day earlier.

It’s late at night.

The winter nights are very quiet. There are neither frogs croaking in the fields nor cicadas chirping in the woods.

Wen Jiajia had no plan to stay up all night. In her previous life, even the Spring Festival Gala couldn’t make her stay up all night, let alone now.

After a busy day today, Wen Jiajia was exhausted. After tidying up her things, she lay down on the bed and fell into a deep sleep.

When she opened her eyes again, it was New Year’s Day, New Year’s Day of 1973.

Wen Chun and Wen Xuan wore new clothes that they had made previously and had only worn twice, and took with them the small bags that Wen Jiajia had sewn for them using old cloth, and went out to pay New Year’s greetings.

They went to pay New Year’s greetings, and Wen Jiajia also welcomed wave after wave of children.

When things finally calmed down, Wen Jiajia had to take Wen Chun and Wen Xuan to Hegou Township to pay New Year’s greetings.

—

Although you don’t live with your in-laws, you still have to be polite.

In fact, a few days ago, Wei’s father and mother had mentioned whether they should go to Hegou Township to celebrate the festival. However, Wen’s parents passed away last year, so they had to stay at home for a year, so Wen Jiajia refused Wei’s parents.

Wen Xuan was not very happy about going to Hegou Township.

She held Wen Jiajia’s hand and kept asking, “Aunt, will we come home again?”

Wen Jiajia: “Yes.”

“You’re sleeping at home, right?”

“Yes.”

She was worried: “I can’t sleep at night without you, and I always wake up in fright.”

Wen Jiajia: “…”

She found that Wen Xuan was speaking more and more like an adult and was very shrewd.

The New Year in Hegou Township is similar to that in Fuyang, with similar customs and food.

What surprised Wen Jiajia was that Wei Chengcai’s cooking was delicious. He wrapped the flat meat that Wen Jiajia brought and fried it in a frying pan, then cooked soup. The taste was completely different from ordinary flat meat and more fragrant than meatball soup.

Wei Wenzhu took her two children to play around the village. Because of the Wei family, the small bags that they had finally emptied were full again. They were filled with melon seeds, peanuts, and a few pieces of sugarcane.

There are not many fruits in winter, so sugarcane is a good thing.

There was a large area of ​​sugarcane planted in Hegou Township, and there was also one in Fuyang. However, most of the sugarcane in Fuyang was sold to the sugar factory, and only a part was kept. Wen Jiajia got two pieces and ate them all in two days.

Seeing that Wenchun and Wenxuan had some in their pockets, Aunt Wen Jiajia took them up without saying a word and started to chew them carefully.

Chew, chew, chew, the sweet juice fills your mouth, as if scraping out all the oil and water that has accumulated in your stomach during this period of time.

Wen Jiajia left the Wei family with a lot of bags. Wei’s father and mother were really good people, and they let Wen Chun and Wen Xuan eat and drink as they pleased.

Fortunately, she brought some extra money today. If she hadn’t given the old couple 20 yuan, Wen Jiajia would have been embarrassed to go home.

—

Time flies, and not long after the Spring Festival, people everywhere have to turn the land.

The fertilizer of Fuyang Brigade has been fermented. Wen Jiajia contributed her part to the fermentation method this year, which made her scared, fearing that the fertilizer would be bad and delay production.

Local composting is mostly done in early winter. Wen Jiajia needed to remind the villagers that rice husks can also be used for composting, but who knew that the old farmers had already known about it.

In rural areas, rice husks are often burned together with rice straw in the fields as fertilizer.

In this case, Wen Jiajia did not need to beat around the bush when reminding them. She seized the opportunity and said to Captain Fang, who was thinking about how to arrange farm work next year by the edge of the field: “Captain, I saw in a book that charcoal is better than ash. Do you think it would be better to burn these rice husks into charcoal and use them as fertilizer than to burn them into ash?”

Fang Baoguo puffed on his cigarette, not really paying attention: “Aren’t the ash and charcoal you mentioned the same thing?”

Wen Jiajia explained: “Of course not! Charcoal absorbs more water than ash; it can purify and moisturize.”

Fang Baoguo was an old farmer and didn’t quite understand the high-sounding terms like moisturizing and cleansing.

However, he naturally had an inexplicable respect for intellectuals. When Wen Jiajia spoke like this, he couldn’t help but listen carefully.

Fang Baoguo pondered for a moment, turned around, and tapped the ground with the end of his pipe: “Is it mentioned in the book? Can you tell me in detail?”

Wen Jiajia then explained that charcoal can absorb moisture from the air and also has the property of ventilation.

“Compared to burning to ash, the compost made by mixing rice husks with livestock manure and rotten leaves after burning to charcoal is much better than the compost without charcoal,” Wen Jiajia explained. “It’s like the black soil in the northeast, and it’s also moisturizing, warm, and breathable. It can be said to kill two birds with one stone.”

Even though Fang Baoguo was uneducated, he had been farming for half his life. He felt that this method was feasible, but, being cautious, he still consulted with some old farmers in the village.

After saying this, Wen Jiajia just stopped caring.

The more she talked, the more mistakes she made. She just hoped that she wouldn’t need to be involved in this matter anymore and it would be best if it could just pass quietly.

Fang Baoguo is indeed quite capable.

Not long after, Wen Jiajia heard that Captain Fang and a few others were collecting rice husks and piling them into small piles, preparing to burn them as charcoal in a field far away from residential areas.

Never underestimate the skills of the farmers of this era. Even a half-baked person like Wen Jiajia only needed to give them a little bit of the key points, and they would be able to master everything.

The burnt rice husks are mixed with feces, leaves, and other things, and after fermentation, they can be used to fertilize the land and add nutrients.

In addition, the villagers began to discuss the production of green manure.

Wen Jiajia was really enlightened. Hybridization was not something that would be available decades later. People were already doing it very well.

For example, planting mung beans in the gaps between sugarcane fields, planting soybeans in the gaps between corn fields, planting astragalus in the gaps between rice and rapeseed fields… These have been mentioned repeatedly at team meetings, and it is said that a piece of land will be vacated this year for the experiment.

When spring comes, spring rain is as precious as oil.

After the Rain Water solar term, it would rain continuously, making it impossible to dry clothes.

Wen Jiajia had to move the drying basket that had already been put away from the room out and prepare a pot of charcoal fire every day to dry clothes.

Since there was no need to raise pigs anymore, Wen Jiajia cleaned up the pig pen before the New Year and installed a few wooden boards to serve as a bathroom. And since there would be less need for firewood in the future, Wen Jiajia did not save on firewood.

So she bathed more frequently, and now she takes a bath almost every day.

There is no other way; this is the south, where humidity is serious. Besides, once the habit is formed, it will be very uncomfortable if you don’t take a shower for a day. You will always feel itchy if you don’t wash for a day.

It is still raining outside today. The rain is not heavy, but it feels like it is lingering and very annoying.

However, the villagers like this kind of rain the most. The continuous spring rain soaks the dry land. The tender green buds emerge from the ground while it is wet, stretching their branches and leaves, absorbing nutrients and water from the soil to grow better.