The kerosene lamp in the kitchen flickered unsteadily, stretching the shadows of the family long against the wall. Mother Yuan had just finished clearing the dishes, and before the crisp clatter of the tin bowls fading away had completely dissolved, Father Yuan sat down along the edge of the brick bed. “Time really flies. In the blink of an eye, another year is drawing to a close. But this year is incredibly eerie. Not a single decent, soaking rain has fallen yet. The rice seedlings in the fields are all drooping their heads, their roots exposed in the dry, cracked fissures of the mud. If this keeps up, I’m afraid they’re going to wither to death.”
“Tell me about it!” Mother Yuan was currently rubbing her aching lower back, and hearing these words instantly sparked her anger. Slapping the rag down against the rim of the washbasin, she splashed water all over the floor. “Last year, there was too much rain, and we had to brave the downpours to drain the fields. This year, we finally didn’t have to suffer through that, and I thought we could catch our breath, but who would have thought we’d be busy scrambling to irrigate the fields instead! Sigh, with this year’s water scarcity, I’m terrified those water-grabbing brawls will break out again. A few years ago, to fight over water, Li Sanshun’s family from Lizhuang and Xin Baoming’s family from Xinzhuang actually raised hoes and drew blood. The heavens are truly refusing to give people a way to survive!” The fields of those two families were close to each other, and since they belonged to different villages, they would bicker whenever there was an issue with the water in the fields.
Sitting in the corner, Li Xia’s heart suddenly skipped a beat. While the speaker had no underlying intentions, the listener certainly took it to heart. In her past life, although she had heard her great-grandfather mention the hardships of the famine years, she had never paid it any attention. After all, so many years had passed that she merely treated it as a story told by an old man. She didn’t even know which year the college entrance examination had been suspended; she only knew about its resumption in 1977 because her great-grandfather was among the first batch of university students after the restoration, which was the only reason it had accidentally stuck in her mind. Back then, she was too busy squandering the family fortune, so why would she bother to specifically memorize whether the famine years occurred in the 1950s or the 1960s?
“Could it be… could this year be the start of the famine years?” A wave of panic welled up in Li Xia’s heart. Although she could rely on the lucky draw system to keep herself from starving, she couldn’t very well let her entire family look half-dead from hunger while she remained rosy-cheeked and healthy. If she had known she would reincarnate into this era of scarce food and clothing, she would have done whatever it took in her past life to learn a few life-saving, money-making skills instead of fooling around with her fair-weather friends every single day.
But it was too late for regrets now. Li Xia bit her lip. Harboring the mindset that “it’s better to hoard too much than to starve,” she nudged over to Father Yuan’s side and said with a hint of urgency in her voice, “Dad, let’s hoard some grain!”
Father Yuan was bending over to repair a wobbly little stool. Hearing this, he abruptly snapped his head up, his eyes filled with astonishment and even a bit of wry amusement. “What is a child like you blindly worrying about? There is still grain at home. Why would we hoard grain?”
“Dad, I’m not blindly worrying!” Anxious, Li Xia pressed closer and pointed toward the parched, cracked ground outside the window. “Just now, hearing you say it isn’t raining made my heart suddenly ache with worry. I just feel like something isn’t right. Besides, our family’s grain really isn’t much anymore. Eldest Brother and Second Brother are right at the age where they are growing, and they need an extra half-bowl of rice every single meal. What if… what if we really run out of grain later on?”
Father Yuan and Mother Yuan exchanged a look, both seeing the hesitation in each other’s eyes. They suddenly recalled the matter of their youngest daughter prying out the pearls—seven out of the ten had been found by her, and they fetched the highest price. At this moment, the couple remained silent, their minds a chaotic jumble as they thought about the sheer luck their youngest daughter carried with her.
Late at night, after the children were fast asleep, Mother Yuan finally leaned into Father Yuan’s ear, keeping her voice incredibly low. “Dear, what do you think… what if we just buy some grain? The things our fifth child says… sigh, it’s better to believe it might be true than to dismiss it entirely.”
Father Yuan remained silent for a long time, his fingers unconsciously tracing the edge of the brick bed. Finally, he let out a sigh. “Let’s buy it. It’s grain anyway, so it won’t spoil just sitting there. The two boys at home are eating us out of house and home right now, so even if there isn’t a food shortage later on, we don’t have to worry about it going to waste.”
As they spoke, the couple secretly felt incredibly fortunate in their hearts—thankfully, they had the money from exchanging those ten pearls. Otherwise, it would have been difficult even to find someone to buy grain coupons from, let alone hoard grain, and they wouldn’t have had the confidence to speak of it at all.
The next morning, just as the sky was beginning to brighten, Father Yuan pocketed the money and pulled Mother Yuan along to the town’s grain station. The two of them didn’t dare to delay, purchasing two hundred catties of cornmeal and fifty catties of dried sweet potatoes in one go. Loading the items onto a handcart and covering them with a piece of coarse cloth, they hurriedly rushed back home. The wheels of the handcart creaked and groaned against the dirt road, drawing the gazes of quite a few villagers along the way. Father Yuan simply pretended not to see them, burying his head and pulling forward.
It wasn’t until evening that Li Xia discovered several bulging burlap sacks inside the storehouse—moving closer to sniff them, she caught the distinct aroma of cornmeal. Her heart gave a sudden thump, and she hurriedly ran out into the courtyard, bumping right into Father Yuan as he was unloading the handcart. She quickly asked, “Dad, did you go buy grain today?”
Father Yuan straightened his back and wiped the sweat from his forehead, a hint of pride on his face. “Yeah. Didn’t you say your heart was uneasy? I thought about how our family’s grain wasn’t much to begin with, so I bought some back to save you kids from starving.”
“You… you just wheeled it back out in the open like this?” Looking at the burlap sacks that hadn’t been fully unloaded from the handcart, Li Xia’s voice completely changed its tune—how many villagers’ doorways did they have to pass on the way back? Two hundred catties of grain was no small amount in this day and age. To display it so ostentatiously, if a famine really struck later on, wouldn’t it be the equivalent of writing the words “our house has food” right on their faces?
Father Yuan froze for a moment and scratched his head, finding his daughter’s words a bit strange. “If I didn’t wheel it back, did you want me to shoulder it back instead? It’s two hundred catties; I couldn’t carry it even if I tried.”
“Dad, I’m not talking about how you transported it back!” Li Xia took a deep breath, trying her best to calm her voice. “I’m saying, have you ever considered—if, and I mean if, it keeps refusing to rain, the fields yield absolutely nothing this year, and every single household runs short on food. When that time comes and people remember our family bought so much grain right at this moment, what do you think will happen?”
The smile on Father Yuan’s face instantly froze. Although he was uneducated, he had rolled and crawled through this world for decades. He had heard of and witnessed far too many instances during famine years where people turned against each other or even took dangerous risks just for a single bite to eat. At this moment, he stared at Li Xia, his eyes filled with absolute shock—just how old was this child? How could she think of something so profound? He took a sharp breath, only to find a cold sweat breaking out across his back. Looking at his youngest daughter again, his gaze held a few more ounces of gravity. “Alright, your dad understands. It was your dad who failed to consider things thoroughly.”
That very night, Father Yuan relayed Li Xia’s words to Mother Yuan in their entirety. The couple sat at the head of the brick bed, growing more and more anxious the more they thought about it. Previously, they felt that “buying a little to be safe” was enough, but now they felt it was far from sufficient. Mother Yuan bit her lip. “Dear, we can’t just let it slide like this. We need to buy more, hide it secretly, and make sure no outsiders find out.”
Father Yuan nodded, his gaze becoming resolute. “Tomorrow I’ll go to town again. This time, I’ll switch to a grain station further away. Once I buy the grain, I’ll hide it in the old kiln cave on the back mountain first, and wait until nightfall to quietly transport it back.”
“Alright,” Mother Yuan responded. Outside the window, the moon hid behind the clouds, and the night grew even darker.