After steeling himself for the life ahead, Li Xiangdong picked up his stick and set off again.
Once he had gone past, a wolf darted out of the woods and followed him from a distance.
That was how the scene at the beginning came about. Fortunately, Li Xiangdong overcame the two wolves with his courage—and even killed one.
Glancing back at the wolf lying beside him, Li Xiangdong smiled. “Now I’ve got a proper meeting gift for Aunt!”
With a gift in hand, Aunt wouldn’t be put in an awkward position when he met her.
After all, no one had an easy time of it these days, and he could eat a lot. His uncle might not say anything, but he was bound to have some thoughts about it.
With this wolf, at least no one would say anything for the time being.
In a few days, once his household registration and grain allocation registration were settled and his ration grain issued, there would be even less to worry about.
Once his household registration and grain allocation registration were taken care of, he would have to start thinking about how to earn money to support himself.
For now, he was in a situation where he could eat his fill without having to worry about anyone else.
But he could really put away a lot of food!
At this time, everything was organized around the collective economy. Everyone in the village earned work points. A strong laborer earned one workday, or 10 work points, a day.
If the production team leader assigned some other kind of work, earning 13 or 14 work points counted as a lot.
But there weren’t extra work points to be had every day.
At most, a person would work 280 days in a whole year, earning a total of 2,800 work points.
In Northeast China, the number might be even lower. The weather was cold, and the busy farming season lasted only about 150 days. The rest of the time, aside from the deep cold when people had to winter, ...
...the production team would organize people to build water conservancy projects, spread base fertilizer, or do sideline work. All told, that added up to about another 100 days of work.
Even if a strong laborer worked 280 days a year, they could earn about five jin of grain a day, or 1,400 jin over the course of a year.
Women, the elderly, and children earned less. Women could only get eight work points a day, while the elderly and children could get five or six.
A typical family of four—a couple and their two children—would get about 3,900 jin of grain a year.
But not all that grain was distributed directly. It was divided into ration grain and work-point grain, at a ratio of 70% by population, 30% by labor.
Of the 3,900 jin of grain, they would receive 2,730 jin as ration grain, with the remaining 1,170 jin allocated as work-point grain.
At the end of each year, they could choose to take their work-point grain as money or as grain. If they chose money, it would be paid at the purchase price.
That purchase price was about ten cents per jin, so the family could get 117 yuan in cash. That was how much they could earn in a year.
That money also had to cover all kinds of household necessities, including cotton, cloth, salt, kerosene, needles, thread, and so on.
Of course, all of this was only what they could receive in theory.
In practice, it depended on the village’s harvest that year. After deducting the state grain quota, grain set aside for collective needs, and seeds and feed retained by the collective, only the remainder was divided according to the 70-30 ratio.
If the harvest was poor that year, individuals would receive much less. But there was a firm standard: “Enough or not, 360 jin!”
That meant everyone had to be guaranteed at least 360 jin of ration grain a year. But what if there simply wasn’t enough? Then they could only make up the difference with vegetables and melons.
And that was only the income of a family of four, with two laborers and two children.
If a family had many people but few strong laborers, they wouldn’t have anything left over—in fact, they might even end up owing the production team.
If Li Xiangdong settled in Shuangjing Village, he could earn 1,400 jin of grain a year as a strong laborer. That might seem like plenty, but he ate a lot.
While another strong laborer could get by on four jin of grain a day across three meals, he would need at least six.
Other people could make 1,400 jin last a year, but he would finish it in seven or eight months. What would he do for the remaining months?
It was a serious problem.
Turning to look at the dead wolf lying nearby, Li Xiangdong’s eyes shifted. It seemed there was only one way for him to earn money now.
Only with money could he buy grain and keep himself from going hungry.
As the saying went, “Live off the mountains if you’re by the mountains, live off the water if you’re by the water.” The Lesser Khingan Mountains lay just behind the village, and there were all kinds of animals in the mountains. If he could hunt some game, he could hand over a portion to the production team and keep the rest for himself.
He could sell his share to the Supply and Marketing Cooperative for money.
That was about the only way he could make money now. He would have to wait another ten-odd years before he could go into business.
But the problem was, even if he decided to hunt, he first needed the right equipment.
What could he possibly catch hunting barehanded?
But buying a gun was out of the question. With the dozen or so yuan he had left, he couldn’t buy a damn thing.
A new single-barreled shotgun cost 120 yuan in the store, while a double-barreled one cost 200. Even a secondhand one would set him back seventy or eighty yuan.
As for rifles like the Type 53 or Type 56 semi-automatic, he couldn’t even dream of them. Never mind whether they were available on the black market—the price would be outrageous, and more importantly, bullets were hard to come by.
He was so broke he could hear the coins rattling in his pocket. He didn’t own so much as a room or a patch of land.
If he wanted to earn money, he would have to go into the mountains and hunt. Take the wolf in front of him, for example. He had put two holes in its hide, but if he skinned it, he could probably sell it for eight or ten yuan.
And he could eat the meat.
Who cared if he didn’t have a gun? He would go into the mountains even with an axe.
Li Xiangdong made up his mind.
Li Xiangdong barely slept that night. For one thing, thoughts kept crowding into his head; for another, it was simply too cold.
There was a fire right beside him, but the ramshackle house was drafty on all sides. The temperature inside never rose, staying somewhere around fifteen or so degrees below zero.
If he fell asleep in that cold, he would surely get sick. Whenever he couldn’t stay awake any longer, he got up to move around. When he went out to bring in firewood, he rubbed snow over his face.
He stayed that way until the sky began to lighten.
Just as Li Xiangdong was dozing off, he heard someone approaching. When the footsteps drew near, a voice called out, “Who’s there? Who’s in that house?”
Li Xiangdong quickly stood up and went outside. He saw an old man in his sixties.
“Good morning, Uncle. It’s me!”
The old man looked him up and down. “Who are you? How’d you end up staying here?”
“Oh, my name’s Li Xiangdong. Sun Qingfeng’s wife is my aunt. I came to visit them, but I got here too late last night, so I made do here for the night!”
“Good grief, child, why didn’t you go straight to their house when you arrived? It’s so cold in here!” As soon as he heard Li Xiangdong was a relative of someone from his own village, the old man immediately lowered his guard.
Li Xiangdong scratched his head awkwardly. “Heh, I mainly didn’t know which house my aunt lived in. By the time I got to the village last night, all the lights were out, and I didn’t want to bother anyone!”
“Now, how can you say that? No matter how late you arrived, you could’ve knocked on doors. All right, come on, I’ll take you to your aunt’s house. Hurry up and gather your things!”