The Red Era: Starting from a Truck Driver

Chapter 200 Slow and Fast

Things were slow in the past. Life was slow, cars, horses, and postal services were slow.

Only enough to love one person in a lifetime.

Some people say that everything is slow in this era, the pace is slow, and life is slow.

Jiang Cheng now deeply understands this point. It is indeed slow, but most people do not want this kind of slowness.

The pains of life can never be understood by those who complain without reason.

Jiang Cheng used to think that "Life Was Slow Back Then" was a good article, and everyone envied and reminisced about that era of slow life.

But how many people who actually live in this era think that this era is good?

Transportation and postal services are slow, and people in love are not willing to wait half a month to receive information from each other.

The reason for the slowness is actually the bad roads and backward transportation tools. Drivers are unwilling to drive on bumpy roads, and postal workers don't want to ride bicycles for more than ten hours every day.

Drivers want good roads, postmen want good transportation, and what they desire is speed.

The next morning, Jiang Cheng left the BF area with a new pass and arrived at the Lichuan Reclamation Farm after more than a day.

From the last time I talked to Director Hou to now when I came again, the warehouse outside the reclamation farm that I asked Director Hou to build last time was built in just a few days.

Although it was a wooden warehouse without a foundation, the speed was still fast enough. In addition, there had never been any earthquakes here, so there was nothing to worry about even if there was no foundation.

With such a warehouse, at least next time Jiang Cheng comes to get something, he will not be limited to one truckload of things.

Vegetables are not very valuable in Hong Kong, but roasted sweet potatoes are valuable. There are movie theaters in Hong Kong, and some areas have commercial streets.

There are charcoal and sweet potato plants on the reclamation farm. If we send them to Hong Kong, we can not only make money but also help many poor people from the mainland.

However, this time Jiang Cheng came to the farm, he did not pick up any goods. The main reason was that the warehouse had just been built, and he had come here more frequently this month. In the future, when he needed any goods, Jiang Cheng would contact us by phone in advance.

Kaiyang Village, Jinhe Commune, Yi'an County, Changcheng, Jiang Family.

Zhou Lingying brought printed cloth back to Jiang Cheng's rural hometown during the day, mainly to give some cloth to everyone. Because the printed cloth has a lot of patterns on it, to be honest, even if it is made into a top, women would be embarrassed to wear it out.

Women these days tend to be more plain, and their clothes look like flowers, making them really 'flower girls', which is embarrassing.

But if it is made into bed sheets and quilt covers, it is really festive. If someone is getting married or something and gets a set of this, everyone will envy them.

On the day Jiang Cheng left, Zhou Lingying did not hide the fact that he had taken several pieces of printed cloth with him last time. She couldn't hide it, but she didn't try to hide it either.

To put it simply, the things were too good. Zhou Lingying's husband had worked so hard to get them, so there was no reason for him to share them with his neighbors, even if the neighbors paid for them.

It is true that Jiang Cheng is a driver, but he is only the driver of their Jiang family, not the driver of everyone in the courtyard.

Lotus root starch and brown sugar can be easily bought without tickets in other places. It's just that people can't go to other places. At least it's not difficult for a man who often travels to other places to buy those things.

But printed cloth is not a specialty of any particular place. It is something that you cannot get even if you have cloth coupons.

On the day Jiang Cheng left, Chen Li, relying on her good relationship with Zhou Lingying, ran to her house to ask what she and her husband had carried back yesterday.

Zhou Lingying did not hide it and asked Chen Li to help her take out a piece of printed fabric from under the bed. In order to cut it evenly, Zhou Lingying asked her to help straighten it and shorten it to two meters. Then she used a sewing machine to trim the edges, and a printed bed sheet of 1.5 meters wide and 2 meters long was produced. Chen Li's eyes widened when she saw the printed bed sheet. Women of this era could not resist such things at all.

After much persuasion, as "good sisters" in the courtyard, they had talked about men and childbirth together in private. Chen Li bought a printed bed sheet from Zhou Lingying at a high price.

Cotton cloth on the market costs about one yuan per meter, but its width is also basically one meter. In this way, the number of meters of a piece of cloth is also long. Of course, the supply and marketing cooperatives also have wider cloth. But generally speaking, one square area of ​​cloth costs about one yuan.

Zhou Lingying's printed cloth is one and a half meters wide. It was originally used to make quilts, sheets, etc. It was cut into a two-meter length, which is an area of ​​three square meters.

But considering the relationship between neighbors and sisters, Zhou Lingying only charged Chen Li six yuan. It was indeed double the market price of the cloth, but she sold it to her without using cloth coupons.

Cloth coupons are actually the most scarce ticket in China. The population is increasing rapidly every year. However, the country has not even solved the problem of food and clothing. People in big cities cannot achieve rice freedom. Adhering to the principle of solving the problem of food first and then solving the problem of clothing, the cloth coupons issued to one person in a year are not enough to make a set of clothes.

An adult male needs about 15 feet of cloth for a set of clothes, but the cloth coupons issued are only 8 feet, so a person needs to save up at least two years of cloth coupons to make a set of clothes.

It was not until the 1970s that such a large number of cloth coupons were issued. In the 1960s, people did not have such a large number of cloth coupons. It took three years to get enough cloth for a set of clothes.

So on the black market, food coupons are actually easy to buy, but cloth coupons are difficult to buy.

I only paid one dollar more and bought printed cloth with floral patterns. For a city dweller with a job, that was a real bargain.

In addition to Chen Li's family, Zhu Lan's family also bought a lot of printed cloth from Zhou Lingying for their own use. The price was the same as Chen Li's, and Zhu Lan also got some peanuts from the supply and marketing cooperative for Zhou Lingying to eat, unlike others who only care about personal feelings.

Jiang Cheng was busy with work, so Zhou Lingying naturally had to take on the responsibilities of being his son and brother. She had to count money in front of her neighbors, but if she had good things and her family had enough, she would definitely take good care of her parents-in-law and Jiang Cheng's sister Jiang Yan.

So Zhou Lingying took the cloth and some sheets with the edges sewn on a sewing machine back to Jiang Cheng's hometown, and gave a sheet to her parents-in-law, sister-in-law and Jiang Cheng's sister.

As for the extra fabric she brought, she wanted to show it off to others~~to take good care of her sisters.

We knew that the educated women who went to the countryside were poor, and that they might have some savings in some good communes, but in Jinhe Commune, there were no side jobs, so we allowed them to catch eels in the fields and take them to the city to pay off their debts.

It is not October yet, but in Changcheng, there are still many eels in the fields at night.

Zhou Lingying really didn't think about reselling to make money for other educated youth, but she wanted to show off her man's ability, but she would feel uncomfortable if she didn't "share" things with them. If she "shared", she didn't want to suffer a loss.

Zhu Lan's supply and marketing cooperative collects eels, so Zhou Lingying is borrowing Zhu Lan's abilities to take care of some of her educated youth friends.

When the female educated youth heard that Zhou Lingying wanted eels, they all went out with baskets and other things after dinner. Those who didn't have flashlights went to borrow from the male educated youth. The light from kerosene lamps was not strong, and they didn't have the illumination of flashlights, so they could only be used to see the road.

But the female educated youth were united and went out in groups of three or five. They agreed on the division of labor and the eels they caught were counted together.

This female educated youth happily went to the fields to catch eels tonight~.

Zhou Lingying did not go back to the city this afternoon. She had agreed with her educated youth friends that they would catch eels in the evening and go to the city together tomorrow. Zhang Yan and Wang Fang also wanted to see what kind of life Zhou Lingying lived in the city after getting married.

But she stayed at her hometown for one night, and no one knew who had spread the news, or who in the village had seen it. In the evening, Jiang Cheng's grandparents came to see their granddaughter-in-law.

This made Zhou Lingying very embarrassed. Her husband had told her that he didn't want to offend other relatives. So even though she had never met someone Jiang Cheng didn't want to deal with, she instinctively resisted him.

The key point is that the printed cloth Zhou Lingying brought was not all "sold" in the educated youth dormitory. Many female educated youth had no money and had to save food.

Even though Zhou Lingying asked them to owe money, people these days actually resisted owing money. They would feel uneasy if they owed others things, so Zhou Lingying provided them with a way to exchange debts for fabrics. They all thought that if they caught the eel, they would get Zhou Lingying's things.

(End of this chapter)