Tang Tang quietly found Lin Guanghui and told him her idea.
Lin Guanghui stared at her silently for a while.
“Alright, I understand.”
No one knew exactly what Lin Guanghui said to the village chief, but early the next morning, Lin Guanghui drove the ox cart toward town with a cart full of cleaned and butchered wild boar meat to help the village “sell” the pork.
At the village entrance, he picked up Tang Tang, who had been waiting there for quite a while.
The ox cart swayed along slowly.
Lin Guanghui glanced at the smiling little girl beside him.
“Where are we going?”
“To town, of course! Still at that little forest.”
Why was everything connected to that little forest now?
Neither of them was in a hurry.
They leisurely arrived at the place, and the little girl spoke up.
“You go into town first. Just come back later.”
Lin Guanghui cooperatively nodded.
“Alright. I’ll bring buns back for you.”
“Okay!”
After watching him walk away, Tang Tang drove the ox cart deeper into the forest and stored all the meat away into her space.
After thinking about it for a moment, she decided these lovable villagers deserved even more.
She took out a bag of milk candies.
Children always liked sweets.
Then she thought again and brought out several bags of milk powder, several bolts of fabric, one sack of flour, and ten jin of dried noodles.
There seemed to be several elderly villagers living alone in the village, right?
Oh, and money too.
The village would need to distribute money later.
She scratched her head.
She had no idea how much was appropriate.
Forget it.
She would ask Lin Guanghui later.
Meanwhile, Lin Guanghui had gone to find Jiang Tao.
After hearing from him how generous and extravagant the little girl was, he realized…
Strangely enough, he wasn’t surprised at all.
It somehow felt perfectly natural for her to behave this way.
After buying the buns he promised Tang Tang, he stopped by the supply cooperative to buy oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar that his mother had asked for.
Then he carried the basket and headed back.
The little girl should probably be done by now, right?
As he turned a corner, he saw Tang Tang sitting atop the ox cart, swinging her legs.
Under the side glow of sunlight, her already pale skin looked even more translucent.
He quickly walked over and handed the buns to her before climbing onto the other side of the cart and turning the old ox around toward the village.
The little girl lowered her head, took a bite of her bun, and suddenly asked:
“How much was the meat altogether?”
“The town purchasing station pays fifty cents per jin. There were eleven hundred jin total.”
Right.
After cleaning the wild boars, removing the organs and blood, the remaining meat, ribs, and pig trotters had all been reserved by the little girl herself.
“Eleven hundred jin means five hundred fifty yuan.”
As he spoke, Tang Tang began pulling money out from her basket.
Ten-yuan bills.
She counted out fifty-five bills, all from the money Jiang Tao had given her previously.
“Do they need ration tickets too?”
…
Was she planning to give both money and tickets?
“If you have some, just give a few. If not then…”
Before he could finish the sentence, Tang Tang immediately interrupted him.
“Yes, yes, yes!”
She grabbed a handful of ration tickets from the bag.
Last time, Jiang Tao had given her an entire sack of tickets and coupons, and she had never bothered sorting them.
She simply threw them all together.
So now, with one casual grab, she pulled out a large handful.
“How many should I give? What kinds of tickets?”
…
The world of rich people was truly incomprehensible.
Lin Guanghui finally let the old ox continue walking on its own.
He removed his outer jacket, spread it over the cart, sat cross-legged on the wooden boards, and carefully placed all the money and tickets onto the jacket.
Resigned, he slowly smoothed out each bent coupon one by one and organized them neatly into stacks.
“You want to give all these to the villagers?”
“Mm. Is it not enough? If it’s not enough, I still have more.”
As she spoke, her hand moved toward the basket again.
“It’s enough! It’s enough!”
Lin Guanghui hurriedly stopped her.
After thinking for a while, he said:
“If you give all of this, it’s too much. And you still have to live your own life too. You can’t just give everything away.”
“I know. I have more.”
Lin Guanghui tightly held the ration tickets in his hands, suddenly unsure what to say.
Finally, he simply gathered everything back into his jacket.
Forget it.
He would ask his father after returning.
This child was far too generous.
Then the little girl suddenly asked another question.
“How many elderly villagers living alone are there in the village?”
That topic jumped unexpectedly fast.
“Seven or eight maybe? Or five or six?”
He hadn’t returned home for several years either and only remembered roughly.
“Oh. Then is this enough?”
“Enough for what?”
She pointed toward the cart.
Only then did he realize there was still a pile of things on the cart.
And all of them were suitable for elderly people.
…
Even though he had already heard about how extravagant she was, hearing about it and seeing it personally were two completely different experiences.
“Let’s go back first. We’ll talk afterward.”
At the mountain foot near the village entrance, he let the little girl off before immediately driving the cart toward the production team courtyard.
This difficult problem could be handed to his father instead.
The village chief was stunned too.
The little girl truly wanted to help the villagers wholeheartedly.
That meant he had to play the villain now.
Some things needed to be made clear in advance.
He absolutely could not let the little girl’s kindness grow cold.
No one knew exactly how the village chief handled things afterward.
But publicly, the villagers who helped kill the wild boars each received five yuan more than the others.
Tang Tang herself received ten yuan extra.
Because of the wild boar incident, the village no longer organized trips into the mountains for the time being.
Without fieldwork, every family became busy storing food for winter.
Taking advantage of the good weather, the village chief organized people to repair the houses of the elderly villagers living alone.
Even a newly arrived young girl had worked so hard to help the village.
Surely the village itself couldn’t behave poorly in return.
With the supplies Tang Tang provided, plus the grain distributed by the village, and with villagers helping gather additional firewood over the next few days—
Those elderly villagers would finally have a decent winter this year.