Winter of 1961.

Evening!

The Sixth Production Team of the First Production Brigade, Xinlin Commune, outskirts of Beijing.

A thatched cottage surrounded by a bamboo fence.

Five people sat around a worn-out, blackened Eight Immortals table.

They were dressed in tattered cotton-padded jackets, patched all over, resembling the attire of beggars from the Beggars’ Sect, with occasional holes revealing the blackened, straw-stuffed cotton inside.

On their feet, they wore either tattered cotton shoes or straw sandals.

The colors of their clothes had faded to a pale hue.

At the head of the table sat a middle-aged woman, while two teenagers and two children sat at the lower end.

On the table, there was only a bowl of soybean paste.

In their hands, they held black ceramic bowls containing a sparse amount of cornmeal, so little that it could almost be counted.

A boy of about fourteen or fifteen, sitting to the lower left, expressionlessly sipped the thin, watery porridge.

He dipped the tip of his chopsticks into the paste and finished the porridge in a few mouthfuls.

Then, looking at the woman at the head of the table, he said calmly, “Sun Xiuhe, this family must be divided. We need to move out.”

Upon hearing this, a boy of about seventeen or eighteen sitting across the table slammed his chopsticks on the table and shouted, “Wang Qingsong, how dare you speak like that? Can you call Mom by her name? Did all your schooling go to the dogs?”

Wang Qingsong sneered at him.

Then, glancing at the woman beside him, who looked conflicted, he said indifferently, “If we don’t divide the family, I’ll take Xiaomai and move to the county town. Whether we divide or not, it makes no difference.”

Sun Xiuhe was not his biological mother.

Six years ago, his mother had died during childbirth while delivering his younger sister.

Two years later, his father remarried a widow named Sun Xiuhe, who already had a child.

Sun Xiuhe had brought a boy with her and later gave birth to another boy after joining the family.

Life wasn’t great, but it was manageable.

However, half a year ago, his father had gone out to repair a water channel and never returned.

Losing a laborer was a devastating blow to the family.

If it were normal times, it might have been easier.

But these were difficult times.

Years of natural disasters had caused severe food shortages, with each person rationed only about three liang of grain per day.

Three liang was about the size of a fist.

Frankly, that amount couldn’t even fill one meal, let alone last an entire day.

His anger and desire to divide the family weren’t solely due to hunger, as their situation was no different from the rest of the production team, the commune, or even other regions.

Everyone was struggling.

Only the cities were slightly better.

What angered him was that while he was studying in the county town and couldn’t return often, his younger sister Xiaomai had been turned into a “fatty” by the others.

If she had genuinely gained weight, he would have been grateful and wouldn’t have proposed dividing the family.

But this “fatness” wasn’t real; it was edema caused by malnutrition.

Her once-thin cheeks were now swollen as if she had been beaten, and her eyes were narrowed into slits due to the swelling.

When he pressed her calf with his hand, it left a deep indentation that took a long time to recover.

This was something he couldn’t accept.

Sun Xiuhe looked at Wang Qingsong with a helpless expression. “Qingsong, you know how things are these days. Every family is short on food. What can I do? Look at Pingping and An’an—they’re not getting enough to eat either.”

Wang Qingsong glanced at the boy who had just lashed out at him and the toddler sitting beside him, who was less than four years old.

He sneered and asked, “Not getting enough to eat? Yes, I know that. But why is it that only Xiaomai has edema, while they’re fine? Tell me, Sun Xiuhe, where is your conscience? Has it been eaten by dogs? This family must be divided.”

By the end, he was almost shouting.

If there wasn’t something fishy going on here, all his years of schooling would have been for nothing.

The reason they hadn’t divided the family earlier wasn’t because of any deep affection between them.

It was solely because he was a middle school student.

As the saying went, “No matter how hard life gets, we mustn’t let the children suffer. No matter how poor we are, we mustn’t neglect education.”

As a middle school student, he had a fixed ration. Being a boy, he received 32 jin of grain per month.

Although much of it was bran, bean dregs, wild vegetables, and corncob powder—used to make substitute food—it was still a significant amount.

As for meat, eggs, and soybeans, those were out of the question.

Nowadays, meat, eggs, and soybeans were classified as health products and were no longer available on the market.

City dwellers used to have rations, but even those were gone now.

In other words, ordinary people could no longer buy these things.

Only those with severe edema could get a medical certificate from the hospital to obtain about one jin of soybeans per month for treatment.

What good was one jin?

“Wang Qingsong, you’ve got no respect. Do you want a beating? I’ll teach you a lesson!”

Seeing his mother being scolded, Wang Ping immediately threatened to hit him.

Wang Qingsong stood up, his face cold. “Go ahead and try. Do you think my eldest and second brothers are pushovers? I just don’t want to bother with you.”

He wasn’t the only child in the family.

He had two older brothers.

Speaking of his brothers, they were quite fortunate.

In 1955, before the urban-rural dual structure was fully established, they had managed to become city dwellers. Back then, moving to the city was much easier than it was now, when you needed an introduction letter or proof from the production team just to leave the commune.

Even if you left, without a city household registration, you couldn’t do anything in the city.

No registration meant no job, no money.

No registration meant no rations, no grain tickets, and no way to buy food.

Without a household registration, life in the city was nearly impossible.

After the urban-rural dual structure was established, finding work in the city became extremely difficult.

Not just for regular workers—even temporary positions were hard to come by.

Working in the city and becoming part of the great working class was the dream of every rural person.

As for his second brother, he was also lucky. After the urban-rural dual structure was formed, moving to the city became very difficult.

But three years ago, during a large recruitment drive in the city, his eldest brother had spent some money to secure him a position as a worker—a formal one at that.

Later, a wealthy man took a liking to him and married his daughter to him.

The reason the man married his daughter to him was that his second brother had a “red” background—politically reliable.

As for Wang Qingsong and his younger sister Xiaomai, they were too young at the time and missed the chance to move to the city.

Over the years, he had been able to attend school, and the family had managed to get by, thanks to the support of his eldest and second brothers. Otherwise, life would have been unbearable.

The reason he hadn’t divided the family after his father’s death and had endured the situation was because he had thought long and hard about it.

He and his younger sister still needed to attend school.

Although his eldest and second brothers were now city dwellers, they didn’t have the means to bring him and Xiaomai to the city.

He had originally planned to tough it out until he could pass the technical school entrance exam, after which life would become easier.

But the others weren’t giving him the chance!