The Red Era: Starting from a Truck Driver

Chapter 267 Returning Educated Youth
March 19, 1979, Changcheng.

Zhou Lingying was sent to the countryside in 1971 when she was 16 years old, just after graduating from high school. People who went to the countryside at the same time as her were all about the same age. Because at her age, if you didn't find a job immediately after graduating from high school, you would be sent to the countryside. Junior high school graduates were also sent to the countryside at around 16 years old.

Except for the first batch of educated youth around 1968, whose ages varied, those who went to the countryside later were all young people.

Therefore, among Zhou Lingying's group of educated youth, most of them got married in rural areas, and now many of them are facing the decision of returning to the city.

"Zhang Yan, what did you say, Li Mingjun ran away?" Zhou Lingying said a little surprised, but thinking about his personality, it felt very normal.

"Yes, Lingying, didn't you say that his family conditions are not good? How did he get the transfer order?" Zhang Yan said while holding her child.

Li Mingjun was punished in the Youth Corps for cheating Zhou Lingying out of some money and food. But family disgrace should not be made public, so the Youth Corps leader did not issue a notice criticizing him, fearing that his affair would spread outside the Youth Corps, and he would be completely disgraced.

After being punished, Li Mingjun, in order to avoid being criticized in the educated youth team, found a girl from a relatively good family in the commune and married her. Then he applied to be transferred from the educated youth team to the production team.

Although Li Mingjun was transferred to the production team, everyone still ran into him occasionally every year. Every year, when the commune had people from higher levels come to show movies or participate in large-scale activities, he could still be seen.

However, Li Mingjun would try to avoid the educated youth team members whenever he saw them, especially Zhou Lingying. Zhou Lingying would go back to join in the fun when she heard about the movie screenings in the commune.

The atmosphere of watching movies in a commune is completely different from that in a cinema, and it is more interesting.

After Li Mingjun married a commune wife, he did have children. But he never got a marriage certificate. In the countryside, they didn't get one. To get a marriage certificate, you had to go to the county town, and you had to meet the age requirement.

Moreover, the educated youth had to go to the educated youth team for approval when they got married, which was a bit troublesome. In rural towns, people did not care about marriage certificates, and it was troublesome for the educated youth to apply for marriage certificates. In many places, the educated youth got married in the commune, and most of them did not have marriage certificates.

Even Zhang Yan is still like this now. She later married a family living in the town. Because she is educated, she is still working as a primary school teacher in the town. She and her husband now have two children, a boy and a girl, but they haven't even got a marriage certificate.

It’s not that people don’t apply for marriage certificates, but many people in rural areas don’t have that concept.

Now, Li Mingjun has abandoned his wife and children and returned to the city after the New Year. He is the kind of person who left without even saying goodbye to his wife and children, but he must have obtained the transfer order through some channel.

The educated youth did not return to the city in droves. The first batch returned to the city after passing the college entrance examination. The second batch was people with connections. The third batch actually did not include people like Zhou Lingying, but rather young people who had just gone to the countryside in the past two years and were not married.

Many people who have been in the countryside for two or three years and are only about 18 to 20 years old would naturally arrange to go back and get married. For those who have married and had children in the countryside, there is no rush to arrange it later.

Li Mingjun was obviously not one of the people who were assigned previously, but he was able to obtain a transfer order and then leave secretly.

However, this phenomenon actually happens in all parts of the country, and more men leave. Moreover, men who secretly return to the city also have advantages. If a man has children and does not want them to have children, he can marry and have children if he returns to the city.

It was different for women who had given birth to several children. Not to mention having given birth to children, even if they had had a man, they would be easily despised in this era. Therefore, few women secretly returned to the city, and those who did return often asked their families to use their connections to bring their husbands and children along.

Apart from some people who are leaving to go back to the city to attend college, there are more people like Zhang Yan who have husbands and children and have no aspirations to go to college, so they continue to live here.

Zhang Yan also has a job now, although the salary of a rural teacher is very low. But during the summer vacation, with Zhou Lingying's care, she can bring her family here to catch loaches and eels and bring them to Zhou Lingying in the city, which can increase her income a lot. And she can also ask Zhou Lingying for help when buying cloth and some other things without coupons.

In addition to Zhang Yan being taken care of by Zhou Lingying, the same was true for Wang Fang and the other two female educated youth. They all got married and had children, but they still maintained their relationship with Zhou Lingying.

It is not realistic not to get married. When you are a girl, you will have spring thoughts. After you get married, you will have tasted meat and know the taste. Women still need men.

Moreover, after Zhang Yan and Wang Fang got married and had children, they had many common topics with Zhou Lingying and could talk about some shameless things together.

"Zhang Yan, if you can go back in the future, will you go back to Jinan alone?" Zhou Lingying asked.

"I can't abandon my son and daughter. Even if I can take the children back, I won't go back. How can I get married if I take the children back with me?" Zhang Yan replied.

Zhang Yan's family conditions in her hometown are average, so it is a problem for her to go back and live there, after all, she is a daughter, not a son. She also can't bear to leave her child.

As for the man, he has been married for many years, and the sweetness of being together for the first time is long gone. Moreover, rural men don't know how to coax women. How many people envy Zhou Lingying, she found a man who is not only good-looking, but also good at coaxing women.

He bought clothes and food for Zhou Lingying, and took her to the movies and took photos. But the rural men, let alone those things, didn't even say any sweet words.

But no matter how bad a rural man is, he is still a man. How many women are willing to be widowed, especially in this era with few entertainment activities. At night, men like to do that, and women are the same.

So even if Zhang Yan can return to the city in the future, she has no intention of going back. For now, she just wants to live a good life. She thinks being a primary school teacher in the town is not bad.

Although Zhang Yan is a teacher, she is a private teacher, so she does not receive a salary, but only a subsidy and work points. She receives a subsidy of eight yuan a month, and then she is given work points.

The work point income was calculated based on the output of the production team. If the harvest was good this year, they would get more points, and if the harvest was bad, they would get less. In other words, the income was unstable, but it was better than being a farmer.

But just over a year later, after the household contract responsibility system was implemented in Changcheng and work points were no longer allocated, the support for rural teachers had to rely entirely on the finances of the township, because the tuition fees paid by rural children alone were not enough to cover everyone's salary and some school expenses.

Many girls in rural areas do not go to school, and there is no nine-year compulsory education now.

If there were no financial subsidies, even if a teacher was paid the minimum junior teacher salary of 27 yuan, in rural areas a teacher would have to pay the tuition fees of 150 students, and there could not be only one teacher for a grade.

Therefore, before the household contract responsibility system was implemented, the townships and villages would give some subsidies to teachers, and then the production teams would share the other income. After the household contract responsibility system was implemented, it became common for some poor townships to delay the payment of teachers' wages. This is because private teachers are not formal employees, but "temporary" workers hired by schools when they are short of teaching staff.

"You're going to stay here today. The eggs and food you ordered are prepared for you." Zhou Lingying teased Zhang Yan's son.

"I don't want to live here anymore. It's not as convenient as before." Zhang Yan said.

Zhou Lingying now has a niece living in the side room, and her two daughters also live there. Zhang Yan lives here, basically sleeping with Zhou Lingying when her man is not here.

But Zhang Yan came here this time with her children and went for a walk in the city. It is different now. In the past, if you went to the city, you had to go back at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, otherwise there would be no cars in the afternoon.

In the past, there was only one bus at the bus station in the county town that traveled back and forth between the communes, and all buses going to the city center came from the bus station in the city center.

Now, due to the demand for travel, the county also has cars that go directly to the city, although they are cars that have been eliminated in the city. However, there is one more bus between the city and the county, so that people coming from the county to the city can take the bus before 8 o'clock in the morning.

In the afternoon, there are two buses from the city to the county town: one at 1:50 and the other at 3:40.

In this way, if you arrange your time reasonably, people from the county town can have fun for four or five hours in the city.

"The money will be recorded in your account." Zhou Lingying said.

"Well, now we have started to plant rice in the fields. Go to the fields to find some eels every noon. When there are enough, I will bring them to you." Zhang Yan nodded and said.

In Jiangxi Province, rice seeding and sowing work begins this month. The eels also end their hibernation this month, but their activity is low.

When transplanting rice, people will trample on the fields, and there are many eels these days. You will find some eels when transplanting rice, and even in the south, when planting rice, you will irrigate the fields first. Then you can often find big turtles next to the water in the fields.

There are many turtles in Jiang Cheng's space, all of which are caught by people who catch yellow eels and sold at a few cents per pound. The key is that there are now turtles as big as three washbasins in the space.

There was a big turtle that was found by a child. At first, he thought it was a pile of cow dung. When he got closer, he found that it was moving. He then called people nearby to catch it. Then a female educated youth Zhou Lingying knew bought it for two yuan and sent it to him.

Anyway, it is true that wild turtles are very good for replenishing qi and blood, and the big eels are also good for replenishing qi and blood. Jiang Cheng has eaten it. If a young man with strong qi and blood eats it, it is no different from taking Viagra without side effects.

Zhang Yan worked as a teacher in the commune, and with the work points earned by her husband, she was actually under great pressure in life. But because of Zhou Lingying's connection, she often came here to get some eggs and some rice, flour and oil to improve her life.

It is also because of this that although Zhang Yan has no family here, her parents-in-law dare not bully her, and if they really quarrel, she can take her children to Zhou Lingying's place to stay for many days, making her husband and parents-in-law anxious, knowing that she has someone to rely on in Changcheng.

Zhang Yan was not the only one who did this. Wang Fang and two other female educated youth also followed Zhou Lingying's lead. They were all from the same group of educated youth, so they looked after each other and regarded Zhou Lingying as their biggest relative in Changcheng.

In the past, with Zhou Lingying's support, they could buy many things without tickets, and they could also exchange some things they caught in the fields for money. At that time, the female educated youth's parents-in-law and some of their husband's relatives tried their best to give up the idea of ​​favoring boys over girls in order to gain these benefits.

It is even more serious now. Many educated youth are returning to the city. There are many cases of abandoning wives and children, and husbands and children. No proof is required to buy train tickets. Many parents-in-law of educated youth are really afraid that their daughters-in-law will run away for nothing.

Even some people in the countryside who married educated youths were worried that they would run away even though the women had not yet met the conditions for returning to the city, so they locked them up and did not allow them to go out. There were also many who were not given a penny and could not leave even if they wanted to.

"Lingying, since you like my son so much, why don't you arrange a marriage between your daughter and my son?" Zhang Yan said to Zhou Lingying.

"That won't work. My man is crazy about this. He dotes on his daughters to no end. When the deputy district chief here was the director of the street office, he wanted to arrange a marriage between his grandson and my daughter, but he didn't agree, not even as a joke." Zhou Lingying said.

Actually, Zhou Lingying didn't like Zhang Yan's son very much, because he was average looking and quite dark. She liked to tease Zhang Yan's son just because she envied Zhang Yan for giving birth to a boy.

Zhou Lingying has indeed been a little crazy recently. Whenever she sees a very young little boy, she always thinks, it would be great if he was her own.

Jiang Cheng didn't know what she was thinking. If he knew that his wife always thought about such unrealistic things, he would collapse first.

Zhang Yan didn't expect Zhou Lingying's husband to be so resistant to even a childhood marriage, but she just thought of this temporarily. This statement was half a joke, and the other half was really about wanting to arrange a marriage with Zhou Lingying's family.

Zhou Lingying's husband Jiang Cheng has been a driver for many years and has met many important people. His niece Jiang Juan was able to study in the city because of her connections.

Zhang Yan had long known about the relationship with the subdistrict office, and she also had some connections with the supply and marketing cooperative and some other units.

For example, at the enamel factory, even if he didn't ask his neighbor who worked across the street for help, when Jiang Cheng went there to buy a few basins and quilts, people would sell them to him directly without the need for tickets.

In addition to this, there are also soap factories, match factories, machinery factories and so on.

When Zhang Yan and Wang Fang got married, Zhou Lingying gave them wash basins, cups and thermoses, which was more impressive than giving money as a gift. The key point is that in this era, money is not given as a gift. Zhou Lingying felt embarrassed if she gave too little, and she felt she didn't have the energy to give too much.

The water bottle and washbasin are what the wedding couple needs most, and they are not cheap.

A wash basin was not cheap in those days, and it cost six or seven yuan in the market. Jiang Cheng did not need a ticket and could get a cheaper price at the factory. Adding a thermos bottle, it cost more than ten yuan to send it as a gift.

And more than ten yuan can be used as a bride price in rural areas.

(Think about it, we wrote so many scenes about someone at the beginning, it seems a bit of a loss if he doesn't appear at all. So we should bring him back to the stage. In addition to this person, the characters who appeared before should also gradually reappear.)
(End of this chapter)