Go back to the prosperous days and become a layman

Chapter 632 Chapter 631 Paper Shortage
Friday, July 2, sunny.

It is now the 69th day of the twentieth century, the weather is getting warmer, and the willow trees are beginning to change their clothes.

Han Yu wrote a good poem: The rain on the main street is as soft as butter, the grass looks green at a distance but is not there when you get close.

There was no rain, but the light green on the willow trees was very conspicuous. From a distance, there was a little light green, but when you looked closer, there was nothing.

The wild vegetables in the fields are also feeling the warming weather. I believe that in a few days, they will be able to sprout new leaves.

Tang Zhitong has resumed his normal work hours from today.

After dealing with some recent work in the morning, Tang Zhitong went straight to find Fang Yuan after lunch.

Before he quit smoking, Tang Zhitong was not sensitive to the smell of cigarettes and felt that Fangyuan’s office had no smell.

After quitting smoking, Tang Zhitong entered Fang Yuan’s office again. Wow, the smell of tobacco oil hit him right in the head.

"Are you back? How is it over there? Are you adapting?" Fang Yuan saw that it was Tang Zhitong and asked.

"Except for the food being a little worse, everything else is okay." Tang Zhitong sat down and gave Fang Yuan a brief account of the situation over there.

"Oh, I've heard that life in other places is not easy, but I didn't expect it to be so difficult." Fang Yuan sighed after listening, and then shook his head.

"Henan Province is the worst. This time I went out, I saw people hitting the car windows both ways. The car windows were all smashed when I went there." Tang Zhitong also shook his head. Henan Province is really too difficult.

Most of Henan Province is plains, which is particularly suitable for planting. It has been highly valued in history. Whenever a dynasty changes, words like "fighting for the Central Plains", "vying for the Central Plains" and "a place of contention for military strategists" will appear on paper.

Tang Zhitong felt that this place was valued mainly because of its geographical location, not because of its grain production.

As we all know, the Yellow River is an above-ground river, and this area is a plain. Throughout history, it has suffered many disasters such as the Yellow River bursting its banks and flooding.

Therefore, despite its grain production, Henan Province has never been treated as a granary by successive dynasties.

Throughout history, the places that can be called granaries have changed several times. At first, it was "Su, Changshu, and the world is well-fed" in the Southern Song Dynasty, then "Su and Hu are well-fed, and the world is well-fed", and finally it was "Huguang is well-fed, and the world is well-fed" in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

It was after liberation that Henan Province was positioned as a major agricultural province, and it was also after liberation that the Yellow River was cured.

As a major grain-producing province, it is hard to justify the fact that it is the most tormented by some people...

"I don't want to talk about this matter. I want to talk about the WH Municipal Bureau. Judging from the feedback from grassroots employees, the director who was dealt with was a popular person, but he was dismissed because of fraud. Brother Yuan, we must learn from this." Tang Zhitong knew Fang Yuan's character. He was straightforward and was afraid that he would be impulsive.

"You want to talk about me, right? I know, I'm not stupid." Fang Yuan laughed.

"Hey, there's one more thing. The lunch boxes on the train cost 40 cents each, which is an acceptable price for us escorts. Some suburban routes do not have the opportunity to eat boxed lunches. Should our escort department make some minor adjustments to the escort arrangements? Let everyone have a chance to subsidize it?" This was the second thing Tang Zhitong wanted to say.

As the head of the escort department, Fang Yuan has to worry about the quota for employees even if he is not confused. Therefore, it is particularly important to make good use of existing opportunities within a reasonable and legal scope, which can also win the support and support of employees.

"That's a great idea! I wouldn't have remembered it if you hadn't mentioned it. I'll talk to Lao Zhang about it later and see how to make appropriate adjustments." Fang Yuan became interested when he heard this. The escort department had only a small piece of land, and even if there was a good harvest, the amount that could be distributed to each person would be limited.

"Okay!" Tang Zhitong was happy to see Fang Yuan agree to it. This matter was not only beneficial to Fang Yuan, but also to the escort. Moreover, Tang Zhitong himself was also an escort.

It is a bit conspicuous to eat a box lunch on the train by yourself, but if all the escorts do the same, it will not be so conspicuous.

Maybe this is called win-win. If this happened after the reform and opening up, Tang Zhitong felt that he could be a typical example of a rich person leading others to become rich.

However, employees in other departments of the Escort Department do not receive such treatment.

As for how to balance these things, Tang Zhitong didn't worry about it and left it to Fang Yuan to solve.

When Tang Zhitong returned home in the afternoon, he was humming a song.

If you don't open your eyes and see the outside world, you won't know how good life is in Beijing.

Even though Zhang Xinping and Wu Aijun kept saying that the public security in Beijing was much worse than before, that was only compared to their own situation. It was still much better than other places.

When I got home, Fengzhi had already returned from school and was asking Zhang Guifang for paper to wrap the cover of her textbooks.

"Just use newspaper and replace it when it breaks." Since last year, the quality of ordinary paper is hard to describe, and the only acceptable paper is New Year picture paper.

New Year pictures are generally divided into three types.

One is the old-style New Year picture, which shows a fat baby holding or stepping on a carp, implying abundance every year; the second is the new-style propaganda poster, which publicizes the achievements in a certain field over the past year, usually focusing on agriculture, with various fruits and grain crops piled together, implying a good harvest; the last type is a portrait of a person, the kind that can be hung at home for worship.

When it comes to portraits of people, ordinary people generally don’t say “buy”, they have to say “invite”. The period before the Spring Festival is the peak period for “invite” to homes.

The Tang family didn’t have any New Year pictures to use as book covers for their sister, but they did have some rice paper, but it was too expensive and even less suitable.

"The newspaper is too thin." Feng Zhi curled her lips, looking disgusted.

"If it gets torn, just wrap it again. We have plenty of newspapers at home anyway." Tang Zhitong gave his sister a slap on the head.

"Okay." Feng Zhi agreed reluctantly, but also made a new request to Tang Zhitong: "Brother, the teacher said that we should cherish our exercise books in the future, and erase the pencils after writing before continuing to use them. Do you think we can wrap the exercise books?"

"No, it can't be covered with an exercise book." Tang Zhitong shook his head. The cover paper of today's exercise books is not thick and can't be covered at all.

"If you don't wrap it up, it will fall off before you finish using it." Fengzhi was a little doubtful.

"Then let mom sew it up for you." The quality of last year's exercise book was not good. Not only did the cover fall off, but the content pages inside were also easy to fall off. In the end, Zhang Guifang sewed it up with needle and thread.

Student exercise paper is an inconspicuous small category of daily necessities. Last year, the city of Beijing implemented new supply regulations: the People's Education Committee determined the total quantity, each school determined the usage plan, and then the municipal cultural supplies company specially arranged production and procurement, and the retail stores were responsible for supplying the products in a certain area according to the plan.

The order is very interesting. First decide the quantity, then decide the plan. That is to say, these are all for this year, no more.

The stores are said to be responsible for the distribution of books, but in order to distribute them equally to each student, the school finally takes them back and distributes them to each student, and then collects the money and hands them over to the stores. The number of student books has definitely decreased, but the price has not increased. It is said that there is a financial subsidy, and the price of paper has increased, but the price of the books has not increased.

People in Beijing are used to this and approve of the regulation. A 36-page student edition costs only six cents per copy. What else can you ask for at this price?
As for subsidies, in these days, whether it is food, clothing, or daily necessities, which one of them is not subsidized? If there is no subsidy, it is embarrassing to bring it up.

Primary and secondary school students don’t understand this. They only know that exercise books are hard to buy, so they finish writing on the front side and then turn over and use the back side.

However, the supply of exercise books is even more severe this year. According to Fengzhi, the teacher had clearly required students in lower grades to do their homework in pencils at the beginning of the school year, and to erase them with erasers after finishing, so as to facilitate the repeated use of exercise books.

Children have limited hands-on abilities, but Tang Zhitong had no intention of helping.

She picked out some newspapers without sensitive content from a pile of newspapers and gave them to Fengzhi, asking her to learn how to wrap them first. She then ran over to cook, allowing Zhang Guifang to take a break.

While Tang Zhitong was cutting vegetables, Xiao Wang came in with Feng Zhen, carrying a kettle.

"The kettle in your room is broken?" Zhang Guifang asked after seeing the kettle in her daughter-in-law's hand.

"No, this is a trial product given by the kettle factory. It was made with the help of Anzi." Student Xiao Wang smiled and placed the kettle in front of Tang Zhitong.

"It's produced so quickly? It's quite efficient!" Tang Zhitong put down the knife, pulled off the lid of the pot, and held it in his hand to look at it.

"It looks no different from what we have at home." When Zhang Guifang heard that her son was involved, she became interested, but she didn't see the point.

"This kettle will make a sound." Tang Zhitong put the lid of the kettle to his mouth and tried to blow it, but the edge of the lid was a little high and it got stuck on his nose, making it unable to make close contact with the whistle, so he had to give up.

"Put some water in and boil it to try." Seeing that her husband was stuck, Xiao Wang smiled happily and scooped a bucket of water from the water tank nearby and poured it into the kettle.

Well, Tang Zhitong looked at the enthusiastic family and didn't want to be a spoiler, so he cut the vegetables and waited calmly by the side without mentioning cooking. There was only one stove in the room, and a "singing kettle" was squatting on it.

No one was just waiting there. Xiao Wang was telling his family the origin of the kettle, but he did not mention Aunt Li's name. He just said that the country was short of foreign exchange and a leader asked Tang Zhitong to invent something.

The main house of the Tang family was burning hard coal this winter, and the fire was very strong. As soon as Xiao Wang finished speaking, the kettle started to make a "wuwuwu" sound.

The sound is small at first, but as the water boils more and more, it becomes louder and louder.

The family was surprised to see this. Xiao Wang said to Tang Zhitong with a smile, "The kettle factory has already produced a batch of them and put them on the market. They were quickly sold out."

"That's great, the effort was not in vain. I just didn't expect them to act so quickly." It took only about ten days from experimentation to finalization, and then to trial production and sales. The efficiency is already high enough.

The higher you are, the farther your voice will reach. If this happened to me, even if I tried my best, it would be good if I could finalize it in ten days. The remaining steps would be extremely difficult.

"Don't you see who came forward?" Student Wang winked at Tang Zhitong, and everything was said without words.

"It's considered a completed task. Even if I can't earn any foreign exchange, I can still recover the funds." Tang Zhitong smiled. He achieved a guaranteed result, and the rest was pure profit.

At present, although industrial products are not unsalable, the economy is not very healthy.

Due to the North's tearing up of the agreement and withdrawal of investment, as well as a series of aggressive actions, serious financial problems have arisen in the country. However, private savings are high and people have money but do not consume it, which is a headache.

It is not popular to release money crazily at the moment, and the top management is also trying to find a solution until the high-priced candies are launched next year...

While eating, Zhang Guifang pointed at the dishes and said, "The street office is distributing vegetable coupons today."

"Do we need tickets to buy vegetables in the future?" Tang Zhitong couldn't help but think of the queues before the New Year.

"I heard so. Well, do you think the vegetables will be like grains? They will be in short supply even with coupons." Zhang Guifang was a little worried.

"Who knows. Anyway, we can grow some vegetables in our yard, so life should be a little better. Mom, does the vegetable ticket stipulate a certain ration for each person per day?" Tang Zhitong was not too worried about his family's lack of vegetables.

"No, one ticket buys a fixed amount for ten days, and there is no regulation on the number of kilograms per day. From the sound of it, the specific supply depends on the production situation. There will be less in the off-season and more in the peak season." When distributing the vegetable tickets, Zhang Guifang and the neighbors listened to the explanation of the street staff and kept it in mind.

"That's it, then. If we have some, we'll buy some. If not, we'll eat our own produce. When the weather gets warmer, I'll go to the suburbs to dig some wild vegetables, and there will definitely be no shortage of vegetables at home." Tang Zhitong smacked his lips. It seemed that the vegetable company had left enough room for maneuver. There was no hard and fast rule on how much to give every day. The right to interpret the specific allocation was in their hands, and the main focus was on flexibility.

After dinner, Tang Zhitong found the food coupons, each of which had the number of days printed on it.

Not only was there a shortage of paper for student notebooks, but even the quality of paper used for tickets was declining. The paper used for vegetable coupons was much worse than the paper used for grain coupons in the previous two years. Its color was like that of farmers who had worked in the fields for a long time and were tanned by the sun.

The food coupons from the previous two years were as white and tender as the skin of young ladies.

Tang Zhitong put the food ticket back to its original place and asked Fengzhen: "Do you want to wrap the book in a book cover too?"

"Yeah." Feng Zhen nodded in response.

"Okay, I'll go back and find a newspaper for you." The two sisters treated each other equally and wrapped the things in newspapers.

When Tang Zhitong came back, Fengzhen was helping Fengzhi wrap the book covers.

Tang Zhitong put down another stack of newspapers, as well as a stack of letter paper with the letterhead of "Municipal Post Office" printed on it: "If you don't have enough exercise books, use letter paper. When you run out, ask me for more, or you can ask your sister-in-law. Tell Jingying later that if you don't have enough, get some from home."

Although the paper supply is tight, due to their work, the couple's unit has a sufficient supply of stationery.

"Brother, where is mine?" Feng Zhi was very envious and asked expectantly while blinking her big sparkling eyes.

"You use the exercise book first, and we'll talk about it when you're done." Tang Zhitong didn't plan to give it to Fengzhi. Fengzhen was in junior high school and had a lot of homework to do, and she had to write with a fountain pen. The exercise books couldn't be erased and could be reused, so it was reasonable to give her more.

What's more, the higher the grade, the more draft paper or a lot of exercises are needed for math, physics, chemistry and composition, all of which require paper as a base.

"Okay then." Feng Zhi pouted, a little disappointed, wondering when she would be able to finish using up her exercise books. At the same time, she was a little envious of her sister. If only she could grow up quickly and go to junior high school...

(End of this chapter)