Unexpectedly, she grabbed nothing.
Li Min and Li Hongling both dodged away at the same time and looked at her with frowns.
What was wrong with them?
Were they reluctant to leave this place?
“Sister Li, what’s wrong? We can go over and live with Educated Youth Tang. We can still come back too. It’s so close.”
She didn’t notice the villagers’ increasingly strange expressions at all.
Li Min and Li Hongling looked at each other helplessly.
Where did this fool come from?
“Did you even ask clearly about the situation before saying you want to live at someone else’s place?”
“What situation? Isn’t she also an educated youth?”
The villagers couldn’t hold back anymore and burst into laughter.
“Oh my, I’m dying from laughter. She doesn’t know anything and still dares to say that. Did she take a fancy to Educated Youth Tang’s house?”
“Educated Youth Tang is living perfectly fine alone. Why should she let an outsider move into her home?”
“Exactly. If you’re envious, buy your own house too. Then you can live however you want.”
Educated Youth Tang was a great benefactor of the village.
Such a young girl had come all this way to their village. They absolutely couldn’t let her be bullied.
Seeing Jiang Ruxue still standing there in a daze, Li Hongling sighed.
“Who told you there’s an educated youth living alone in a house at the foot of the mountain? Did you not listen to the whole story?”
There was no need to ask.
No one in the village was that foolish.
The villagers wanted to protect Little Tang’s affairs as much as possible.
Jiang Ruxue thought about it. It seemed that after the villager said that sentence, she had walked away.
The other person had continued speaking afterward, but she hadn’t listened.
Seeing her expression, what else was there not to understand?
There was no helping it.
They would have to live together from now on.
Li Min and Li Hongling could already foresee chaotic days ahead.
“Educated Youth Tang is indeed an educated youth, but that house was bought by her personally. It is not part of the educated youth station anymore. It is already her own house. She paid money for it and completed the household registration proof. You can ask anyone in the village about this.”
They explained every word clearly to her, afraid she might do something foolish again someday.
“That’s right. Educated Youth Tang spent her own money on it.”
“She bought the village’s house. All of us received a share of the money.”
Then the topic drifted away.
“Speaking of which, after Educated Youth Tang arrived, our lives have been getting better and better.”
“That’s right. Just meat alone has been distributed three times. Two of those times, she was the one who hunted the wild boars.”
“And there were so many worker quotas too.”
“Exactly. And now the workers’ benefits are getting better and better, right?”
…
While no one was paying attention, Li Min and Li Hongling quickly dragged Jiang Ruxue away and brought her to the neighboring courtyard.
“Go tidy up first. We’ll need to cook soon, and there’s still work this afternoon.”
After saying that, the two returned to the educated youth station to move their own things.
From now on, they would definitely need to cook separately.
They would divide the food rations later.
The autumn harvest was approaching again.
The little girl had already been in this era and in this place for one full year.
Overall, she was still very satisfied.
The people she met were all very lovable.
She hadn’t encountered those extreme troublemakers from novels.
That was rare, and very good.
The next day, when she went to work and saw the newly arrived educated youths, the little girl didn’t pay much attention.
After all, they didn’t live together.
If she liked them, she could interact with them more.
If she didn’t, she could stay far away.
Just as she was about to leave after work, the village chief called her from afar.
“Little Tang!”
“Village Chief Uncle.”
The little girl walked toward him.
She had always been good at respecting the elderly and caring for the young.
“Village Chief Uncle, is something the matter?”
“Little Tang, how are the pigs you’re raising?”
Ever since the little girl began raising pigs in spring, the village chief had been thinking about it.
“They’re doing well. They’ve grown quite big. Village Chief Uncle, do you want to take a look?”
It wasn’t just the village chief who was curious.
More than half the villagers followed along.
The little girl opened the gate but didn’t open the house door.
She led everyone straight to the pigpen.
A fence separated the pigpen from the back garden, and the fence gate was also closed.
The pigpen had just been cleaned that morning and was still very tidy.
Three pigs were inside grunting.
“Village Chief, these pigs must weigh over three hundred jin, right?”
The little girl didn’t know whether this counted as well-raised or not, so she didn’t answer.
“If these pigs are raised until after autumn, they’ll weigh at least over four hundred jin. If the feed keeps up and they’re raised until winter, before New Year, they could reach five hundred jin… It’s not impossible…”
Everyone was stunned.
“Educated Youth Tang, how did you raise these pigs?”
The little girl thought for a moment.
“Feed them more. Wild vegetables and rice bran are both fed to them. Chop the wild vegetables finely. Clean the pigpen often and keep it clean and dry.”
Mm.
There were also vegetables from the space and water from the space.
It was that simple?
I can do that too.
How many rural people were afraid of hard work?
Turning back to look at the chicken coop, none of the ten chicks had died.
There were seven hens and three roosters, all strolling leisurely.
Then they turned to look at the back garden.
It was lush and green, many times better than their own gardens.
“Educated Youth Tang, how did you tend this? Why is it growing so well?”
The little girl thought for a moment and answered seriously:
“My seedlings were good.”
Thinking of the large green seedlings their wives had brought home in spring, it seemed those plants were indeed growing much better than the ones they had raised themselves.
Just as they wanted to ask more, the village chief had already clasped his hands behind his back and led the way out.
“Go home and eat. There’s still work this afternoon!”
His son had already told him about the seedling greenhouse.
The village chief wasn’t in a hurry.
They needed to be stimulated from time to time.
If they stayed stuck in old ways, when would they live good lives?
Hmph.
You call yourself an experienced old farmer, yet you can’t raise pigs as well as a young educated youth, and you can’t raise seedlings or tend a garden as well as her either.
How do you still have face?
Stay poor then!
Since the last incident, Lin Guanghui and Jiang Tao’s status had risen repeatedly.
No one dared underestimate the two of them anymore.
When dealing with others, things had become much smoother.
Recently, everything had been going extremely well for them.
Xiangyang Production Team had already begun the autumn harvest.
The little girl still worked together with the educated youths.
The water in the rice fields had already been drained.
Everyone lined up in a row, each responsible for an arm-span’s width on both sides, and moved forward together cutting the rice.
The older educated youths were already very familiar with the task.
They bent down, briefly got used to the sickles in their hands, and started cutting swiftly.
The little girl had done plenty of farm work over the past year, and her stamina was sufficient.
She wasn’t afraid of this either.
She gripped the sickle and caught up.
At a glance, the new educated youths had clearly never done farm work before.
Zhang Hongjun, who had already cut down a large section ahead, finally remembered them.
He hurriedly turned back to teach them how to hold the sickle, how to bend, how to position their legs, and how to use their strength.
Seeing that they were clumsy but not completely helpless, just inexperienced, he quickly caught up to the front again.
Cutting rice, harvesting wheat, breaking corn, collecting sorghum, harvesting soybeans, then digging potatoes and sweet potatoes.
After one autumn, the villagers lost weight again.
The little girl was no exception.
Since autumn harvest began, she hadn’t cooked at all and had eaten only ready-made food.
Even so, she still lost a full circle of weight, and her face seemed to have darkened by one shade.
The little girl happily told the educated youths that this was a healthy complexion.
After autumn harvest came the grain tax payment, followed by grain distribution.
This year’s harvest was good.
The educated youths had not lacked work points either.
This year, compared with last year, they received an additional hundred jin of coarse grain and thirty jin of black wheat.
Food that could actually reach their mouths made them happier than anything else.
The little girl hadn’t taken leave this year.
She had honestly worked the whole year, worked seriously, and had strength too, so the work points she earned were the same as adult men.
No one objected.
After all, everyone had seen how much strength the little girl put in.
After grain distribution, there was another event that hadn’t existed in previous years:
Harvesting fish!
In spring, fish fry had been released into the river, and nets had been placed downstream to block them.
Now no one knew how well the fish had grown.
The villagers brought fishing nets, buckets, basins, baskets, and all kinds of containers, happily heading to the riverbank.
Several men held a net, found the right angle, tested the force, and cast the fishing net onto the water surface.
After several minutes, they pulled the edge of the net and slowly drew it back.
As they pulled, they sensed something wasn’t right.
Why was it so heavy?
The men looked at each other.
There really were fish!
“Quick, get a few more people!”
Several people rushed over at once.
They pulled the edge of the net, slowly gathered it together, and then pulled it toward shore.
“Whoa, why is it so heavy? There really are fish, right?”
“There should be. Otherwise how could it be this heavy?”
The villagers watching nearby hurried over to help.
Only with everyone working together did they slowly drag the net ashore.
Some sharp-eyed villagers on the bank had already noticed.
“There are fish! There are fish! There really are fish!”
“Oh my, why are there so many fish?”
“Village Chief, are these the fish fry we released? They grew this big?”
…
Once the entire net of fish was pulled onto the shore, the fish jumped around wildly on the grass.
The villagers were stunned.
There were far too many.
The village chief hadn’t expected so many fish to be caught in just one net either.
The large ones weighed three or four jin, while the small ones were already half a chi long.
The village chief thought for a moment.
“These fish are enough for each household to receive five or six. The weather isn’t cold yet, so they won’t keep for many days. Let’s only catch this one net today. Everyone is exhausted from the autumn harvest, so cook them for the elderly and children at home to enjoy.
The remaining fish can be caught again before New Year, after the weather freezes. Then we can freeze them and eat them slowly during New Year. What do you think?”
The villagers immediately felt this suited their wishes.
“Good!”
“Good, Village Chief. We’ll listen to you.”
“Wonderful. We’ll have fish for New Year too.”
“Alright, Village Chief, hurry and divide the fish!”
…
Each person received one large fish and two small ones.
The villagers carried their fish home cheerfully and noisily, their faces filled with the joy of life and anticipation for the future.
The educated youths also received fish.
That evening, they stewed a pot of fish with vegetables and stuck corn cakes around the side.
The corn cakes carried the aroma of fish, and the educated youths ate until they could barely straighten their waists.
Zhang Hongjun and the other older educated youths sighed emotionally.
Life was truly getting better year by year.
In the previous two years, they wouldn’t even have dared dream of such days.
Satisfied.
Too satisfied!
The educated youths discussed turning the remaining fish into salted fish.
In a few days, they would go to town and mail them separately to their families so their families could have a taste.
Life at home was certainly not as good as here.
The little girl thought the same.
She turned the fish she received into salted fish, added two more, then mailed two to Tang Jinyu at home and three to her grandparents in Fengcheng.
Everyone could have a taste.
No matter what, it was a meat dish.
She didn’t know how their lives had been recently.
However, the little girl no longer thought of mailing grain or anything like that.
Every family had adults at home.
No matter what, they should be living better than a little girl alone outside.
They could always think of some solution.
If she didn’t have her space, she would probably be living similarly to the educated youths now.
At most, she wouldn’t go hungry.
Thinking of this, the little girl once again sighed emotionally.
The space truly was a wonderful treasure.