readsfreenovel Chapter 9 No Rural Areas in the Past 2
Chapter 9 No Rural Areas in the Past 2
The next day, after waking up, Liu Yuxi calmed herself down, got dressed, replaced the coal briquette in the coal stove, tidied up the house, washed up with hot water from the kettle on the stove, and then went to the living room.
Look at the calendar, it's December 4th, 1974. The little girl's parents passed away on December 1st. This needs to be remembered. Although feudal superstitions are being abolished now, at least the seventh day after their death should still be observed, and every year on the anniversary of their death, we should visit their graves. Later, we should erect a cenotaph next to their graves for the original owner, hoping that the family of three can be reunited.
Yesterday she only received the memories; today she needs to familiarize herself with the house. After her grandparents passed away, her parents moved into their house, while the little girl lived in the inner room of her parents' house. The room behind the living room was temporarily vacant. The room contained ordinary furniture, nothing special.
Then we came to the kitchen. The kitchen entrance still had the old-fashioned stove, a cabinet, a large water vat, and several pickling jars. Further inside, there was a half wall of firewood, mainly chopped coarse firewood, and the other half was piled with some coal briquettes and some miscellaneous tools.
Since her grandparents built the house, it hasn't been maintained for over 20 years except for roof repairs and cleaning. Now she lives alone, and she's decided to ask the neighborhood committee after the seventh day after the original owner's parents' death to see if the house can be renovated.
She wanted to connect the kitchen door to the bedroom. She was still not comfortable with being seen while cooking, so she sealed off the original door. There was a small angle between the side room and the bedroom, so she could incorporate the kitchen directly into it. She could open a door through the angle to connect to the bedroom, making the kitchen even larger. She could also turn the top half of the original door into a window, making the kitchen brighter.
Moreover, there's no need for so many bedrooms now. She plans to keep one bedroom, open up the back of the living room to make the living room bigger, and the natural light in the house will no longer be affected. She will also seal off the original door connecting to the kitchen, leaving only a window, and open a door in the living room to enter. The front half will be partitioned off to a dining room of about 10 square meters, with a partition, and the back will be used as the master bedroom, leaving about 20 square meters, so that it will be more comfortable to live in.
Having figured everything out, Liu Yuxi began to organize the belongings of the original owner's family of three. She put the original owner's parents' personal items in a separate box, and put away clothes, quilts, shoes, and the like separately, to give to neighbors at an appropriate time in the future.
In those days, there was no such thing as not wanting things. Every family was short of living supplies, especially cloth. There were only so many cloth coupons every year, and every family had many children. Everyone was living a life of "new clothes for three years, old clothes for three years, and patching and mending for another three years." Since the original owner's family consisted of only three people, everything in their home was considered a valuable possession by others.
After tidying up the original owner's parents' belongings, they then tidied up the little girl's things. The little girl started school in 68, and the current school system is "6+2+2".
This is the first semester of junior high school. After the incident at home, the school teachers were understanding and let her go back to school after dealing with the family matters. She organized all her textbooks from elementary school to the present and planned to systematically go through them in the next few days. According to the timeline, the girl will take the college entrance examination in 78, so she has to study hard. "I must get into Tsinghua or Peking University in this life!" Liu Yuxi told herself.
Everything else was packed up. While tidying up all the furniture, some money and bills were found in the gaps and drawers of the table. Together with the little girl's own saved pocket money, there was a total of 56.3 yuan and some receipts.
The biggest piece of furniture in the house is a 28-inch bicycle. It was bought because the parents needed to take their daughter to school before going to work, and they were short on time. Although it's six or seven years old, people nowadays take good care of their things, and the bicycle still looks about 80% new. They can keep it for her to ride in high school.
Don't say she can't reach it. The girl's family is from Northeast China. She's already 1.6 meters tall at 13 years old, but she's very thin, like a stick. She needs to eat more to gain weight, otherwise it will be harder to manage after puberty.
In the following days, Liu Yuxi went through the textbooks at home. Everything else was fine, including the Russian language class that was only introduced in the first year of junior high school, which she had already studied. However, she was not very confident about politics, since the ideas of each era are different.
She only had one copy of the Little Red Book at home. Even after memorizing it all, she felt that she could understand the main ideas correctly, but she still felt that she couldn't fully grasp them. She could only continue to study it in the future.
Neighbors also came to visit her. Except for the two single young men living in the front house, who were visited by their neighbor Aunt Liu who brought them some things, the others came to visit her in person.
Let's talk about this courtyard house. Except for Liu Yuxi's family, which owns the property, the original owners took their whole family overseas when the liberation was over.
Then the neighborhood committee took back the property. Because the courtyard was close to the textile factory, it was later assigned to the factory and became their staff quarters. This was also the reason why her parents were assigned to work at the textile factory.
The three main rooms in the backyard belonged to Director Wang of the second workshop of the textile factory. Aunt Liu was his daughter-in-law. She didn't work and stayed at home with her eldest daughter-in-law to take care of the children and the family. They had one daughter and two sons.
The eldest daughter, Wang Hongmei, is 29 and already married. The eldest son is 26 and also married, with a son who is 6 and a daughter who is 3. The second son is 18 and just started his second year of high school. The family is currently looking for work, as they really don't want their youngest son to go to the countryside.
Li Hai lived in the west wing. He was a driver at the textile factory and often went on business trips to allocate supplies, but he made a good living. His wife stayed at home to take care of the children. They had three daughters and one son.
The eldest daughter is 20 years old. She got married at 18 because she didn't want to go to the countryside. The second daughter is not very bright. Last year, when she was 16, she was tricked by her classmates into going to the countryside in Anhui Province. The third daughter is 15 years old and is in the second year of junior high school. The youngest son is the same age as Liu Yuxi, but he is the only son in the family. He is a bit spoiled and is currently in the fifth grade because he repeated a grade.
The front yard has three main rooms where Zhang Qing, the deputy director of the textile factory's logistics department, lives. He is the fattest person in the whole yard. In his own words, "When I was a child, I didn't have much to eat, so now I crave everything. This is just bloating."
Her health must indeed be poor. Her daughter-in-law, Aunt Wang, looks very robust, but the two of them only have one son, who is now married. They have a 5-year-old grandson and a 3-year-old granddaughter, and her daughter-in-law is pregnant.
Zhang Qing and his wife hoped that their daughter-in-law could have more children, boys or girls, as long as the number was high, because they felt that having only one son was too few.
In the east wing of the front yard lives Gao Wen, a worker in the textile factory workshop. His parents are still alive, and he has two daughters, aged 9 and 4, who are currently trying to have a son. Gao Wen is the only one working in his family, so they are probably the poorest in the whole compound.
However, his father often went out to do temporary work, and his mother and his wife often picked up matchboxes from the neighborhood office to paste at home, so their living conditions were only slightly worse than those of this courtyard.
The west wing of the front yard was occupied by Jiang Bo, a colleague of Liu Yuxi's father in the same department and also a porter. His wife worked as a kitchen helper in the textile factory kitchen, but she was also a full-time employee.
He has two sons, one 12 years old and the other 9 years old. His wife prefers daughters but doesn't have any herself. Because Jiang Bo and Liu Yuxi's father are on good terms, she is the kindest to Liu Yuxi among the neighbors in the courtyard.
There was a back room on each side of the front gate, which was assigned to two single male employees of the textile factory: 21-year-old Li Daniu and 19-year-old Ye Gang.
Because two leaders lived in the compound, the atmosphere there was always harmonious. At most, the children would bicker, but there were basically no conflicts.