Restarting life by going to the countryside to support medical work

Chapter 5 Life
In front of the butcher's stall, Li Yancheng blinked hard, looking at the pile of things on the chopping board.

The butcher told him that there was no meat left, only the ribs.

He really couldn't understand why such a good thing was left over.

In fact, even in the early 1990s, the best-selling parts of pork were always fat and lard, which could be used to make oil, while spare ribs were difficult to sell because they required a lot of oil to cook.

Oil is a good thing, but the monthly ration is limited. Who can afford to use more?

"Master, how do you sell this?"

"Sixty-five cents a pound."

Meat with bones is cheaper than pure meat. If it is pure meat, the price is between 70 cents and 75 cents depending on the location.

"How many are there in this pile?"

The master was slightly stunned by the question, raised his eyelids and looked at Li Yancheng, and asked hesitantly: "Young man, are you planning to buy them all?"

"OK"

"These also need half of the meat ticket." The butcher suspected that this young man was here to make fun of him.

He has been selling meat for more than ten years, and he has never seen anyone buy so many ribs at one time.

He originally planned to send the remaining items on his stall to the restaurant in front later.

Li Yancheng laughed when he heard it. He smiled and took out a handful of tickets from his pocket. The top few were meat tickets, which added up to more than ten kilograms.

The meat ticket needed to buy spare ribs only required half of the normal amount of meat, and the tickets he had were enough to buy these with some left over.

"Master, I have meat coupons. They should be able to be used in the city."

The butcher leaned over to take a look, and saw that it was a ticket from the city. The suspicion on his face immediately disappeared.

"Yes, yes, of course. Please wait a moment, I will weigh it for you." The butcher nodded his head like a praying mantis.

He can take the meat tickets from the city to the ghost market and exchange them for those from the county, and make a little profit in the middle.

"Hey, Master, could you please help me chop the ribs, they are this big."

Li Yancheng gestured with his hands to indicate the size he wanted, as he didn't have the right tools to chop the bones when he got home.

"no problem."

Pigs nowadays cannot be raised as big as they are in later generations. Half a pig's ribs, including the spine, weigh less than seven pounds.

In the end, the butcher chopped the meat for him as requested and took four yuan and forty-two cents in cash, plus three pounds of meat coupons.

Carrying the spare ribs wrapped in oil paper, Li Yancheng happily pushed his bicycle out of the vegetable market.

After he left, the butcher happily began to pack up his stall. All the meat was sold out before eight o'clock today, so he could go back and rest for a while.

"Old Jiang, you hit a brick wall today."

Next to the meat stall is the seasoning company's stall in the vegetable market. The two have been neighbors for several years, and he has never seen anyone buy so many ribs at once during such a non-festival period.

Normally, when people buy ribs, they would just buy one or two to try for fun.

The ribs sold at butcher stalls basically end up in restaurants.

"What you said, maybe there are guests at home today."

Lao Jiang, the butcher, bent down and carefully wiped the meat scraps on the chopping board while retorting with a smile.

"Looking at his age, maybe he is here to greet the girl's family who came to visit today." "Well, it's possible. He has a ticket from the city, so he may be here for a blind date. I don't know whose family he is from. It feels like I've never seen him before."

"I haven't seen it either." Old Jiang shook his head. "The guy is wearing military uniforms. He must have just been demobilized or he is in a military unit in the city."

“That’s not possible,” the seasoning seller directly denied it.

"Didn't you see that what he was wearing was all old-fashioned? The army changed their uniforms last year. He must have been a retired cadre before last year and was assigned to work in the city.

If a girl marries him, she can go to the city and enjoy a good life with him."

In the eyes of the residents in the town, coming to the county town is considered entering the city, but in the eyes of the people in the county town, going to the city is considered entering the city.

Everyone’s consensus is that living in the city is definitely better than living down there, and it would be a great achievement for a girl to marry into the city.

Li Yancheng didn't know that in the eyes of others, he had become the person who had to greet his mother-in-law today.

He walked out of the vegetable market and rode his bicycle to the bus station. On the way, when no one was paying attention, he put the package of ribs into the warehouse.

There was no concept of time in the warehouse he brought through. He once experimented by putting a cup of boiling water in there overnight. When he took it out to drink the next day, it still caused heartburn and burned his mouth, just like when he had just poured it.

This way he doesn't have to worry about whether the food he puts in there will go bad after a long time.

He planned to buy some food and put it in whenever he had time, mainly meat. Now it was not like the past three years when there was a severe shortage of everything. At least there was enough food every month.

His monthly ration was 32 kilograms, of which 30 percent was fine grains and the remaining 70 percent was coarse grains, such as bean flour and corn flour.

Ten percent of the fine grains are rice, and the rest are noodles. It doesn't matter to him whether he eats rice or noodles, but he has to find a way to replace the coarse grains with fine grains.

The bean flour cakes and corn flour buns he ate in the cafeteria these two days made his throat feel irritated.

But all this will have to wait until his medical support is completed next month.

After riding for less than five minutes, I arrived at the Yishun County bus station and parked my bike in a special bicycle storage area outside the bus station.

It costs two cents per time, and the deadline is 6 p.m. at the latest. If you haven't picked it up after that time, you won't be able to pick it up that day. The bicycle keeper will tie up all the bicycles that have not been picked up with a thick iron chain before leaving get off work. If you come to pick it up tomorrow, you will have to pay another two cents.

"Master, I have to go to the city. Will I be able to pick up the car in the afternoon?"

I paid two cents to the bike inspector and took two wooden tags from him. I tied one to the bicycle and carried the other with me. When you go to pick up the bike, the inspector will only let you take the bike if the two wooden tags fit together.

"As long as you can catch the three o'clock train, you can be back here by five o'clock at the latest."

"That's fine, thank you, Master."

"You're welcome."

After packing up the wooden sign he brought with him, Li Yancheng walked quickly towards the ticket window of the bus station.

The cars here can drive directly to Qianmen. The whole journey is about 50 kilometers. It can be arrived in two hours without any accidents. The ticket price is 60 cents.

It’s five or six kilometers from Qianmen to my home, and I have to take the bus.

After handing the ticket stub to the conductor and getting on the bus, Li Yancheng finally breathed a sigh of relief. He felt inexplicably excited when he thought about returning to his home in this life.

The bus was scheduled to leave at 8:20. When he got on, there were only six or seven people on board. By the time it started, all the more than 30 seats were already full. Everyone got there on time.

When there are a lot of people, the car becomes noisy. People who know each other or not can get together to chat. They all use erhua tones, speak fast, and like to swallow words.

Li Yancheng, who was sitting in the corner of the last row, leaned against the carriage, closed his eyes, pricked up his ears and listened with interest to the people in front of him chatting about random things. He felt that this was life.

(End of this chapter)