Go back to the prosperous days and become a layman

Chapter 634 Unexpected Letter
February 2th, Western Valentine's Day, is Sunday.

There was a south wind blowing all night last night, and the wind was quite strong. I was in the house listening to the sound of the wind passing through the treetops and roofs. It was like the sound of a kettle, monotonous, continuous and a bit boring.

In the north, north wind means cooling, while south wind means warming.

The weather was a little warmer today, so Zhang Guifang planned to clean out her own toilet and take out the feces to make fertilizer.

The news of starvation in other provinces had spread throughout the city. Except for those who pretended to be deaf and dumb, everyone knew that the year was not going to be good.

Ordinary people also have a sense of crisis. They will not panic unless they have food in their hands. However, the current ration is just enough to eat and they cannot save any more.

If you have some spare money, you can go out and earn some, but it's not easy because most places selling food require queuing. The only places without queuing are probably the market or the black market.

Early this morning, when Zhang Guifang went to the water station to fetch water, she heard some gossip, a sour and slightly jealous one.

"Eanzi's mother, your family is up." It's a nice thing to say, but it depends on who says it and in what tone.

There was an old lady with a long mouth who looked weird and acted like her eyes weren't eyes and her nose wasn't a nose when she saw Zhang Guifang.

"The kid got a promotion and is earning more money now." In public, Zhang Guifang was not an arrogant person, she just responded in a neither soft nor harsh way.

"Oh, you know? Chickens are very valuable these days. The boy from So-and-so's family in the west went to the market to buy a chicken because his wife was in confinement and had no milk. Guess how much it cost?" This man seemed to be blind to Zhang Guifang's alienation and continued to speak.

Zhang Guifang smiled aside and did not respond.

Zhang Guifang didn't respond, but someone else said, "How much?"

"Fifty! Fifty dollars for a chicken! Oh my God, that's almost as much as a family's expenses for two months." Someone else continued, and the god with an exaggerated expression spread out his arms, with one palm stretched out and flipping back and forth, expressing his shock.

"So expensive?! I should have raised two chickens earlier." Someone nearby said in annoyance.

"Eanzi's family has several chickens! Right, Euanzi's mother? Just selling the chickens can make a lot of money, enough to buy a bicycle." The man's true intention was revealed, and he spoke to himself.

"How can I sell these? I need to keep them for laying eggs." The chickens I raise at home are all hens. They don't make much noise, so as not to be discovered. But there is no such thing as a wall that is impenetrable.

Zhang Guifang was a little disgusted. After saying that, she picked up the full bucket of water and went home, leaving a group of people chattering behind her.

After returning home, Zhang Guifang poured out the water. Although the water tank was not full yet, she lost interest in carrying water and planned to clear the pit toilet first.

Tang Zhitong didn't have to go to work today, so he took a nap and smelled the scent as soon as he went out.

The pit toilet was usually fine. Zhang Guifang would put a layer of soil in it from time to time to cover up the smell. But once it was turned over, the smell could be smelled from two blocks away.

"Mom, you take a rest, I'll do it." Tang Zhitong rolled up his sleeves and walked forward. He couldn't as a son watch and let his mother do such dirty and tiring work, right?
"Let me do it, you'll smell all over yourself." Zhang Guifang shook her head and refused.

"Oh, you're all smelly, I'll be careful." Tang Zhitong went over and took the excrement cleaning tools from Zhang Guifang, determined to be a excrement cleaning worker.

"You kid..." Zhang Guifang said with a smile that her son was filial, and then gave up her seat.

"Mom, we dug out the manure a little early this year." Tang Zhitong chatted with Zhang Guifang while carefully digging it out.

"The weather is getting warmer, so I'll dig out the fertilizer now and turn the soil over in a couple of days, then spread it all in." Zhang Guifang shared her plan.

"Okay, you go ahead and do your work, I'll do it myself. It's enough for one person in our family to have the stink, we don't want the smell to stick to two people." Tang Zhitong took out a few spoons and started to drive people away.

After Zhang Guifang walked away, Tang Zhitong turned on the cheating device. After a period of accumulation and fermentation, the excrement tasted more refreshing than soy milk.

In fact, this job can be completely done by night soil collectors. No matter it is a public toilet in the alley or a toilet in a private yard, the night soil collectors will do it for free. But there is one thing: the excrement collected will not be handed over to individuals, but taken away by the night soil collectors.

After being dried by relevant units, it is distributed to nearby farms, communes, etc.

A flourishing crop depends on manure.

Since she needs fertilizer to grow vegetables in her own yard, Zhang Guifang is reluctant to waste the manure.

With the help of the plug-in, Tang Zhitong was digging out the manure pit while throwing the smell into the air sixty meters away, letting it blow away with the south wind...

There were chemical fertilizers these days, but the yield was so low that not only Tang Zhitong’s family but even the commune might not be able to get one.

In order to make the vegetables in his own yard grow more vigorously, Tang Zhitong secretly mixed the wood ash and feces collected at the construction site into the manure while he was cleaning it.

Of course, Tang Zhitong did not work honestly. He used plug-ins to solve most of the workload and piled the raw fertilizer into the shape of a grain pile.

Finally, Tang Zhitong mixed some mud and then spread it evenly on the pile of dung.

Those who have worked in the countryside know that this is called composting. The purpose of the mud is to allow the microorganisms inside to multiply freely and decompose the excrement into organic fertilizer, so as to achieve the purpose of long-lasting and slow-release fertilizer effect.

"Well done." When Zhang Guifang came out again, she saw the pile of manure neatly stacked by her son like a grave, and praised him.

"I have to do this job, right? Just tell me next time so you don't have to do it yourself." Tang Zhitong wiped the sweat from his forehead and said with a grin.

"Aren't I worried that I'd tire you out? Have you looked inside the pit? Does it need to be re-dug?" Zhang Guifang stood by the pit and looked inside.

"I've seen it, no need, I'll just sprinkle some soil in it later." Tang Zhitong said from the side.

Whether it is a public toilet in the alley or a pit latrine in the yard, they all adopt the soil seepage type. When they are used to a certain extent and the water in the excrement no longer seeps down, it means it is time to move to a new location.

"Change your clothes after you're done and hang this one in the yard to dry in the sun." After hearing what Tang Zhitong said, Zhang Guifang did not insist. She turned around and went back to do her own thing without telling her son what happened when she was carrying water just now.

After changing clothes and having breakfast, Tang Zhitong followed Xiao Wang to Chunshu Hutong. When Xiao Wang sent Jingying home yesterday, Ye Zhijuan asked the couple to go there today. "Didn't our mother say anything?" Tang Zhitong asked on the way.

"No, it shouldn't be a big deal. We'll know when we go and take a look." Student Wang pedaled his bicycle leisurely, from the flower market to Chunshu Hutong, roughly from south to north. With the south wind blowing, it was not too tiring to ride.

"Okay." Tang Zhitong was unsure, thinking that if there was no foreign exchange market for the beeping kettle he was tinkering with, he would just take out the two-way switch.

Children’s contradictions are like the weather in June: cloudy quickly and sunny just as quickly.

When Tang Zhitong and his wife arrived at the Women's Federation dormitory, Jingmin was having fun in the yard with the group of kids he had quarreled with a while ago.

"Brother-in-law!" Jingmin ran over to greet Tang Zhitong and his elder sister after seeing them. He looked them over and didn't find anything edible, so a look of disappointment appeared on his face.

"Let's play here and don't quarrel." Tang Zhitong touched his brother-in-law's head and pulled Xiao Wang upstairs without caring what he felt.

Jingmin didn't call her "big sister", and her sneaky look made Xiao Wang very unhappy. He frowned and thought that if he didn't take her away, the "little commander" might lose face.

"Are you here? How do you feel about this trip to Wuhan?" Ye Zhijuan asked her daughter and son-in-law kindly when she saw them enter the house.

"It was pretty good. Not only did I see the Yangtze River Bridge, but I also visited Yue Lake after work." Tang Zhitong replied happily.

"How is the food supply over there?" Ye Zhijuan nodded and asked with emphasis.

"It's quite low. I see that comrades in the local municipal bureau all have edema." Tang Zhitong was stunned, but did not hide it and chose to tell the truth.

"Alas, I used to think that there was a famine in other places and that people would be a little hungry, but I didn't expect it to be this bad." After hearing this, the smile on Ye Zhijuan's face faded and she sighed.

Tang Zhitong didn't say anything. They were all family, and there would be no point in hiding something like this.

"Thank you for the knife fish you brought me two days ago. It's delicious. Are there many of this kind of fish over there?" Ye Zhijuan took a deep breath, and a smile appeared on her face as she thanked him.

"There are not many in this season. We have to wait a little longer before going upstream. Maybe it will be relieved by then." Tang Zhitong replied, thinking about the conversation he had with the fishermen while on the boat.

The fisherman knew all kinds of fish in the Yangtze River and told Tang Zhi clearly when there were more tung fish.

The locals call the Yangtze River knife fish "jiangdao" and say that this kind of fish is very abundant during the season, and a single net is almost entirely filled with jiangdao. Moreover, before last year, jiangdao could not be sold at all.

Although the meat of Jiangdao is tender and delicious, it is covered with thorns. In addition, it is small in size and does not have much meat, so there is a saying that "looking for meat among the thorns".

No matter how delicious something is, if it is troublesome to eat, it will no longer be the first choice of food.

According to the fishermen, river knife used to be "cheap as mud" and no one thought this fish was that good. But once it was caught, it could not be wasted, so poor people would eat it reluctantly. Even so, the river knife that was caught could not be sold out and had to be fed to cats.

Everything is just the past. As people have eaten less of it in the past two years, Jiangdao has become a delicacy and its value has doubled. But who could have imagined that decades later, Jiangdao could be sold for several thousand yuan per pound?

After hearing what Tang Zhitong said, Ye Zhijuan was distracted for a few seconds and didn't say anything.

"Mom..." classmate Xiao Wang shouted from the side.

"Oh." Ye Zhijuan came back to her senses and pointed at the sofa: "Come, sit down and talk."

"Ever since Anzi's invention generated foreign exchange, I've benefited from it and my position has moved up a step..." Ye Zhijuan said slowly after the young couple sat down.

"Mom, your qualifications are there for everyone to see, and they have nothing to do with me. In my opinion, those inventions were made possible by you. If you hadn't stepped in, those things would still be on paper." Tang Zhitong knew it was impolite to interrupt Ye Zhijuan, but he felt a little arrogant if he let his mother-in-law continue talking like that.

"You, I know what's going on." Ye Zhijuan smiled and continued, "You saw them during the Spring Festival, some came to pay New Year's greetings. In fact, after Jingying and Jingmin left with you, more people came."

"I know why they come here. Those who are already earning foreign exchange just want to earn more. Those who haven't earned foreign exchange want me to help them come up with some ideas and do something that can earn foreign exchange."

"A while ago, a local fishing company even sent some hairtail and Spanish mackerel directly to the Women's Federation, implicitly saying that they were after foreign exchange."

"Sending fish is certainly against the rules. Sister Li criticized them and the fishery company accepted the criticism, but they also have difficulties."

"It's better in winter. Once the fish are caught, they can be frozen even if they are thrown outdoors, and then shipped all over the country. Once the weather gets warm, this can no longer be done. At the same time, the capacity of cold storage is limited. Even if they are frozen, they cannot be transported long distances and can only be processed locally."

"It's fine to process it locally. As long as it's eaten, it's not considered a waste. Can we adjust the dietary structure, save some food locally, and transfer it to other places?" Student Wang asked tentatively.

"It's not that simple. The local ration is already low enough. If it is lowered further, there will be public outrage. Besides, spring is coming soon, and people will choose fish even less than free wild vegetables, locust flowers, and elm seeds." Ye Zhijuan shook her head. It was no wonder that her daughter took things for granted. After all, her daughter had never been troubled since she was a child.

"Then what do you need me to do?" Tang Zhitong asked from the side. Ye Zhijuan said so much, so it must be related to this that she asked him to come here.

"Didn't you bring some spiced fish before you went to Wuhan? I brought some to work, and your Aunt Li kept praising your cooking skills." When she said this, Ye Zhijuan had a smile on her face.

"I kind of understand. Aunt Li wants to make it into canned food?" A flash of lightning flashed through Tang Zhitong's mind, and he blurted out the answer.

"That's right, that's what your Aunt Li meant. It's good to be able to export and earn foreign exchange, but if there is no market abroad, it's not in vain. You can store the money and put it into the market when needed.

Although the investment may be a bit high, there is no better way.

Your Uncle Luo received a letter a while ago, oh!" Ye Zhijuan sighed heavily before she finished speaking, her eyes were very complicated for a moment.

"Jingying, go back to your room first." Ye Zhijuan drove her second daughter back to the bedroom, feeling very heavy and speaking in a low voice: "Anzi, you are also a member of the editorial board, you also have the right to know.

I won't hide it from you, but don't tell anyone outside.

The letter your Uncle Luo received contained photos. Your Uncle Luo and I’s hometown was severely affected. There was nothing to eat. Many people suffered from liver disease, edema, uterine prolapse, and even... death. "

(End of this chapter)