Chapter 12

“Sufen, it’s not that I don’t want to lend it to you, the point is that I really don’t have it at home. I just got married and I haven’t bought many things yet!”

What Gu Qijiao said was true. When she got married, her parents gave her a lot of dowry, including firewood, rice, oil, salt, bedding, quilts and tableware.

But there was no trivial thing like toilet paper at home. The soap that Gu Qijiao used to wash the sheets in the morning was brought by Zheng Yunsheng.

Most of the things for the wedding were purchased by Gu Qijiao. Zheng Yunsheng only brought himself and some daily necessities from when he lived in the commune.

According to Gu Qijiao’s memory, after she married Zheng Yunsheng, her in-laws also sent some things to her, but she hasn’t received them yet.

“Then…then go to your mother’s house and get some for me. It’s not far anyway. Qijiao, we are good friends. It’s just a small matter. You won’t refuse to help me, right?”

Wang Sufen looked at Gu Qijiao pitifully, her eyes filled with disgusting calculations.

Gu Qijiao felt that it was enough for a person to be so shameless.

“I’m already married, and I’ve given the keys to my parents. They must be out earning work points now. Even if I go with you, I can’t get into the house to get the paper for you.

You’d better go back quickly before it gets on your pants. Hurry home and get some cloth to cover it up. If you’re late, someone will see it and it will be a joke.

After talking for a long time, Wang Sufen still failed to get toilet paper from Gu Qijiao.

After listening to Gu Qijiao’s words, she was indeed worried that if she delayed any longer, her pants would be stained red, so she could only get up and leave unwillingly.

Gu Qijiao watched Wang Sufen walk to the gate of the yard, and when she saw that she was about to disappear, she suddenly called her.

“What’s wrong?” Wang Sufen turned around in surprise when she heard Gu Qijiao calling her. She wondered in her heart whether Gu Qijiao remembered where the paper was.

Or, even though Gu Qijiao doesn’t have paper, if someone is willing to give her some cloth to use temporarily, that’s also good!

You know, the pieces of cloth that Wang Sufen’s mother found for her were all rotten and hard.

The pad underneath didn’t absorb blood at all and often rubbed Wang Sufen’s thighs.

Wang Sufen thought that it would be good if Gu Qijiao was willing to take out some better cloth.

But Wang Sufen was obviously overthinking. When she turned around, she saw Gu Qijiao looking at her with a smile and saying:

“Sufen, my life is not easy now. You owe me the sixty cents, and the paper you borrowed a few months ago. Remember to return it to me as soon as possible!”

It turned out that Gu Qijiao called her to collect the debt. Wang Sufen rolled her eyes at Gu Qijiao and replied impatiently:

“Got it, got it.”

As Wang Sufen was speaking, she ran away at a rapid speed as if there was wind under her feet.

She didn’t know whether she was worried that Gu Qijiao would chase her and ask her for money, or her period was too heavy and she was afraid of making a fool of herself if she replied too late.

Of course, Gu Qijiao was not interested in knowing what Wang Sufen was thinking.

Seeing that the man was finally sent away, she got up and went back to the backyard to continue washing her sheets.

After washing the sheets and hanging them up to dry, Gu Qijiao went to the kitchen and saw that the large pot of water she had boiled in the pot where she had washed the dishes was already boiling.

She went to the backyard, washed the sheets in the wooden basin, and moved it into the house.

Then he used a wooden bucket to collect the boiling water in the pot and poured it into the wooden basin in the house.

Finally, I went to the backyard and fetched a bucket of cold water back to the room, then slowly added it to the wooden basin to adjust the temperature of the hot water.

When the water temperature was cool enough to touch with hands, Gu Qijiao took off her clothes and sat in the wooden tub.

After taking a shower, Gu Qijiao found a set of homespun clothes from the closet and put them on.

At this time, although the cloth coupons could be used to exchange for Dacron fabrics to make clothes, the supply of Dacron fabrics was very limited and a little expensive.

For most rural people, “Dacron” is something they cannot afford or buy.

Therefore, the country people generally wear homemade clothes made of homespun cloth.

Tubu is a kind of hand-weaving technique that has been used by the working people of China for thousands of years.

“Jiji, jiji, Mulan weaves by the window” describes the scene of making homespun cloth.

In the rural areas of the 1970s, almost every household in the north had a wooden loom, because homespun cloth was made of cotton, which was produced in abundance in the north.

There are relatively fewer in the south.

Gu Qijiao’s family had a loom. Her mother worked during the day to earn work points, and sat on the loom after work in the evening, weaving with the shuttle back and forth until late at night.

The clothes that Gu Qijiao was wearing now were made of the cloth woven by her mother herself.

After changing her clothes, she washed the clothes she wore on her wedding day and hung them in the yard together with the bed sheets.

After doing all this, half a day passed.

There is a watch on the bedside table at home. It belongs to Zheng Yunsheng. He is reluctant to bring it with him when doing farm work, so he always takes it off and puts it at home.

Gu Qijiao looked around and found that it was still early, so she went to bed and lay down for a while.

She took a hot bath and her fatigue was relieved a lot. When it was almost noon, she got up and went to the kitchen to cook lunch.

Put a handful of rice in a pot and cook it. When the water in the pot is almost dry, add a large bowl of cornmeal to the rice.

This is how every household in the rural area ate at that time. No family could afford to eat pure rice. Rice was mixed with corn, potatoes, or sweet potatoes.

In the words of rural people, this kind of life is “one dry rice and two porridge” (dry rice for lunch, porridge for breakfast and dinner), or “two dry rice and one porridge”.

It was already good enough to live like this. Gu Qijiao still remembered that when she was a child, the food distributed by the commune was not enough to eat.

At that time, people filled their stomachs with various wild vegetables from the fields, such as “pig ears” and wild rice, and fried noodles made mainly of persimmons and corn bran.

Gu Qijiao’s family was a little poor when she was a child, but she had never suffered much.

She heard from her grandmother’s generation that even earlier, when her grandmother was young, there were not enough wild vegetables in the mountains to eat.

They could only pick leaves from trees and dig roots from the ground to fill their stomachs.

Gu Qijiao couldn’t even imagine the days of using only one pound of oil a year.

Because she had lived in poverty for many years when she was young, Gu Qijiao, who had lived a middle-class life for several years, did not feel uncomfortable living in such a poor life now.

After she picked the vegetables, she went to check on the chicken coop.

There are three chickens in the chicken coop, two chicks and an old hen.

The old hen has started laying eggs. It was raised by Gu Qijiao’s parents in the past. The two little chicks were obtained by Gu Qijiao’s mother in exchange for eggs from the villagers.

At this time, the village was only allowed to raise three chickens, one for laying eggs, one for eating, and one for selling.

It’s not okay to keep one more.

Even growing vegetables has rules, and they must be grown in one’s own vegetable garden.

If you plant in a place that does not belong to the land, such as on a wall or at a doorstep, and the team sees you, they will definitely pull your seeds out.

Gu Qijiao found an egg in the chicken coop. She took the egg and the vegetables she had picked back to the kitchen.

Heat some oil in a pan, stir-fry the cucumber and eggs, boil some Chinese cabbage, and then it’s done.

Just as the dish was about to be served, Zheng Yunsheng came back from outside.

When he saw his wife busy in the kitchen, he couldn’t help but smile happily.

“Jiaojiao, it’s great to have you here!”

When Zheng Yunsheng spoke, Gu Qijiao had just packed the Chinese cabbage. When she heard Zheng Yunsheng’s affectionate address, she couldn’t help but pause.

I was extremely confused.

This man is so abnormal.

Just because she woke him up last night and refused him to do that, he is so clingy to her now?

Jiaojiao is long, Jiaojiao is short, it’s endless.

Is it true that for men, what they can’t get is the best?

This is not the result that Gu Qijiao wanted.

She also wanted to cool down her relationship with Zheng Yunsheng and divorce him naturally.

But it seems that her cold treatment has aroused Zheng Yunsheng’s desire to conquer and curiosity!