After dinner.
Wu Younian brought along the sixty jin of rice and sixty jin of sweet potatoes he had borrowed from the production team, as well as a kerosene lamp and half a box of matches he had found at home.
Holding a torch, he escorted Ye Qingyun and her four children back to their house.
Only then did the five of them realize that Qiling Village didn’t even have electricity.
Even the carefree Fu Min began to realize how poor Qiling Village might be. She clung tightly to her mother, her heart filled with unease.
Wu Younian showed Ye Qingyun how to light the kerosene lamp.
“Don’t open the valve all the way, and don’t tighten it too much either. Leave it about halfway. That way the flame is just the right size.”
“The roof is made of thatch, so be extra careful when using the lamp. Don’t burn the house down.”
Looking at the fair-skinned mother and her four children, Wu Younian still couldn’t put his mind at ease.
He hurried back home to fetch a hammer and some nails, then helped them drive two hooks into the wall and hang up the lamp.
“Second Sister, settle everything at home as soon as you can. The day after tomorrow, you’ll have to start working with the rest of the team first thing in the morning,” Wu Younian reminded her.
As for food, the grain borrowed from the production team definitely wouldn’t be enough to feed the five of them until the summer harvest. Ye Qingyun would have to figure out the rest herself.
Wu Younian didn’t know much about the Fu family. He only knew that his brother-in-law had been a soldier.
But throughout the day, he hadn’t heard Ye Qingyun mention her husband, Fu Linchuan, even once. Neither had the children.
So he called his second sister outside and quietly asked if something had happened.
Ye Qingyun replied calmly, “Fu Linchuan died in the line of duty.”
Since his body had never been recovered, he couldn’t officially be recognized as a martyr, and the original owner had never received any compensation.
That was precisely why her mother-in-law had driven the “freeloaders” out of the house.
“What? How could that happen?” Wu Younian exclaimed in shock.
Ye Qingyun lowered her head in silence, looking as though she couldn’t bear to revisit the memory.
Afraid of upsetting her further, Wu Younian didn’t dare ask any more questions. He simply patted her gently on the shoulder.
“If you ever need anything, just come to your brother.”
After another reassuring pat on her shoulder, Wu Younian left with mixed emotions.
Watching him disappear into the distance, Ye Qingyun turned around, entered the house, and shut the old wooden door.
The moment she looked up, she found the four children sitting on the bed, their faces filled with tears they were trying not to shed.
The little mud house had poor soundproofing. They had heard every word of the adults’ conversation.
Ye Qingyun took a clean handkerchief from her cloth bag, scooped a basin of cool water from the water jar, soaked the cloth, wrung it dry, and carefully wiped the dirt from each of the children’s little faces.
“We’re going to live better than we did before. Trust me.”
Her voice was gentle yet unwavering, carrying a quiet confidence that inspired trust.
At that moment, Fu Min believed that even if the sky fell, her mother would hold it up.
The four children nestled close to Ye Qingyun and soon drifted off to sleep.
After extinguishing the kerosene lamp, Ye Qingyun opened the small pocket dimension she carried with her in the darkness and took stock of everything she owned.
The original owner had been a full-time military wife and hadn’t worked for years. She occasionally picked up odd jobs, but whatever she earned went toward daily expenses.
Fortunately, her late husband, Fu Linchuan, had earned a relatively high salary. Before the notice declaring him missing arrived, the military had sent her seventy yuan every month.
Aside from the fixed twenty yuan she sent her mother-in-law each month as support and the forty yuan set aside for household expenses, the original owner had always saved ten yuan every month.
After all those years, even after giving four hundred yuan to help her younger brother-in-law with his wedding expenses, she still had four hundred and forty yuan in savings.
On the journey from the capital to Chuanning County, she had spent part of it, leaving her with exactly four hundred yuan.
The original owner also had a booklet of ration coupons. Before leaving, she had exchanged all of them for nationwide coupons.
She had grain coupons totaling one hundred jin, five jin worth of cooking oil coupons, one bolt of cloth coupons, one jin of cotton coupons, and over a dozen coupons for powdered milk, miscellaneous food items, brown sugar, and other necessities.
Altogether, while she wasn’t wealthy, Ye Qingyun calculated that, based on the current standard of living, the money and coupons would be enough to support the five of them through the next two transitional years.
Why two years?
Because it was now April 1975.
There were only two and a half years until the national college entrance examination would be reinstated.
Only three years remained before the markets would begin opening up.
As long as she didn’t spend recklessly, once she got through these next two or three years, she was confident that, with her abilities, whatever she chose to do would be enough to give her family a prosperous life.
Ye Qingyun set aside one hundred yuan and left the remaining three hundred untouched.
She figured one hundred yuan would definitely last until the summer harvest.
But the next day, when she arrived at the Hongyan Commune Supply and Marketing Cooperative, she discovered that her home lacked absolutely everything.
Mosquito nets, thermoses, kitchen knives, cooking oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, tea, pots, bowls, ladles, cups, toothbrushes, soap, blankets—every single thing had to be bought.
Fortunately, the weather was warm, so they only needed thin blankets. Otherwise, thick cotton quilts would have cost even more.
There was also the small private plot in front of the house, less than two hundred square meters in size. She needed to plant vegetables there as soon as possible. Otherwise, she’d have to keep buying vegetables.
Then she remembered that, before leaving that morning, the four children had looked at her hopefully and asked if she could bring home some meat.
They were craving it.
Standing in front of the butcher’s stall, Ye Qingyun swallowed hard. Even she, despite being over three hundred years old, wanted some.
Unfortunately, there weren’t any meat coupons in her ration booklet.
What now?
Meat coupons were in short supply, so the only option was to exchange some of her other coupons and add a little cash.
After buying the meat, Ye Qingyun returned to the production team carrying bags full of supplies and prepared a lavish meal to reward herself and the children.
Thanks to the delicious food, the emotional disappointment they had felt vanished almost instantly.
Life back in the countryside wasn’t all that different from life in the city after all.
But when she settled the accounts before bed, she discovered that, after using up several coupons, only eighteen yuan remained from the one hundred she had set aside.
Ye Qingyun stared in disbelief at her youngest son sleeping beside her, then looked at her three daughters lying on the bed.
No wonder people said children were little money-eating beasts. Raising kids really was expensive!
Thinking about it, it made sense. Everything she had bought that day was for five people. Handkerchiefs, toothbrushes, cups—none of those things could be shared, or the children would definitely end up fighting over them.
“If we keep spending like this, we probably won’t even make it through a year.”
Ye Qingyun silently warned herself that she had to become more frugal.
She couldn’t continue living by the same standards she had in the city.
But simply cutting expenses wasn’t enough.
She also had to find ways to earn more.
…
At six o’clock the next morning, the production brigade’s work bell rang.
Ye Qingyun had already gotten up at five-thirty. She had boiled a pot of hot water and filled the thermos, steamed five sweet potatoes, leaving them in the stove to keep warm with the remaining heat, and reminded her eldest daughter to prepare half a cup of malted milk for herself and her younger siblings.
They had spent several days traveling and moving, and she worried they might not adjust well to the new environment, so they needed something nutritious.
Of course, Ye Qingyun didn’t neglect herself either. She made herself a cup of malted milk as well.
A sip of milk, a bite of sweet potato. Well-fed and full of energy, she headed to the team’s gathering point to begin her first day of work.
At the equipment shed, Ye Qingyun received a wicker basket and a sickle from the storekeeper.
After asking about the surrounding area, she immediately headed toward the riverside.
Accompanying her were two newly arrived educated youths, both around eighteen or nineteen years old.
They had probably arrived only a few days before her, and neither of them even knew how to handle a sickle properly.
The production team raised three pigs, which were fed twice a day.
Once at ten-thirty in the morning.
Again at five-thirty in the afternoon.
Other people were responsible for chopping the pig fodder and cooking the pig slop. The task assigned to Ye Qingyun and the two youths was simply to gather pig grass in advance and deliver it to the pig keeper.
Every morning, Ye Qingyun filled three baskets with pig grass.
Every afternoon, she filled another three.
Even during lunch, she didn’t rest. She wandered around looking for more patches of pig grass, scouting good locations for the following day.
The two educated youths followed behind her. After exhausting themselves, they could only manage one basket in the morning and one in the afternoon.
And even then, neither basket was completely full.
Because if they packed them any fuller, they couldn’t carry them.
Everything looks different once there’s something to compare it with.
Watching Ye Qingyun work with relentless determination, the two newly arrived educated youths felt incredibly conflicted.
They were afraid that if she didn’t work so hard, their production team would lose out to the others.
Yet they also worried that they themselves would be left behind by her.