A Young Woman's Heart

It's just that in this era, foreigners are encouraged to study, just like in the Republic of China period. Foreign things are considered good, and there are even news reports saying that KFC and McDonald's are more nutritious than regular stir-fried dishes!

As for junk food, that came about a few years later.

Today, my mother was unusually not cooking. Instead, she was leisurely leaning against the cardboard box behind her, sitting in a chair and knitting a sweater.

"Is dinner ready for tonight?" Mo Xueyao asked curiously.

"Of course not, do you think we'd let you go hungry, you brat?"

"What are we having for dinner today?" she asked again, because she couldn't smell any meat or vegetable aromas.

Her mother, holding a knitting needle, glanced at her sideways and crossed her legs: "It's in the rice cooker, get it yourself."

"Where's the food?"

There are no vegetables today.

"Damn, how are we supposed to eat without any vegetables?"

“We’ve been eating too well all the time, so today we need to reflect on the past and appreciate the present.” The father twirled the scissors in his hand and casually poked them into a piece of foam board. “We’ll have buckwheat porridge.”

Buckwheat porridge?

“Yes, that’s why we got such good treatment when we went out to work.” Her mother seemed about to launch into another long-winded speech. Mo Xueyao tried to avoid her, but the fruit shop was so small that her mother could hear her no matter what.

"Alright, alright, Mom, it's the 21st century! Can you please stop bringing up those old stories?" Mo Xueyao covered her ears and hid behind Li Wanyan. "Fine, I'll eat it."

"How would you know how hard things were in the past if we didn't tell you? We can't spoil you..."

"I'm not spoiled at all."

"Tch, with your inability to endure hardship, how can you not be spoiled?"

"I've already said it, times have changed..."

However, her mother still insisted on speaking, so Mo Xueyao could only sit down with a bowl of buckwheat porridge, pretending that she couldn't hear anything.

Li Wanyan pursed her lips, curled the corners of her mouth slightly, lowered her head, and sat down next to Mo Xueyao.

The porridge was still very hot, so she could only scoop up a spoonful and keep blowing on it.

The father and mother sat down opposite them, each with a bowl full of buckwheat porridge.

Buckwheat porridge is not pretty at all. Unlike white porridge, which is crystal clear, it looks very murky. The soup is pale yellow, as if it has been mixed with muddy water.

“When I was very young, I started working, around 1968, I think. I was only about twelve or thirteen years old then,” the mother said to herself. “I worked at a grocery store from seven in the morning to nine at night, without a single day off for a whole month. Luckily, they provided food and lodging, so I could earn a little money at the end of the month. Back then, my monthly salary was only six yuan and eighty cents, you can imagine…”

“Prices are different!” Mo Xueyao said with some dissatisfaction. She felt that her mother was just making excuses in order to lecture her. “Back then, the highest denomination was only ten yuan, wasn’t it?”

“It’s definitely different. When I was in school, I only got fifty cents a day for pocket money! Haha, it sounds like a lot now, but it was actually enough for me to eat.” The father smoothed things over and picked up the salt, asking, “Xiaoyao, do you want some salt?”

"Is this porridge sweet or savory?"

"It doesn't have much flavor. You can add sugar if you want." The father followed the mother's train of thought and recalled, "Oh, back in the day, when I was little, no one had much sugar to eat. We could only eat a lot of sugar during the New Year. Do you know how we used to show that our family was 'rich'? When guests came, we would offer them a bowl of buckwheat noodles."

Mo Xueyao interrupted him, frowning slightly as she asked, "Buckwheat flour—what's that?"

"It's a kind of flour-like stuff—just think of it as flour. You put it in a pan, stir-fry it, and once it's cooked, sprinkle some salt or sugar on it and you can eat it."

Mo Xueyao simply couldn't imagine what that thing would taste like.

Is it edible?

"Of course they can. Back then, it was a real treat. They would sprinkle a lot of white sugar on the roasted buckwheat flour. The more sugar they sprinkled, the more hospitable and enthusiastic the family was."

"Wasn't it distributed equally back then? Everyone got the same things, right?"

“The allocation is just based on your job, giving you various tickets, but you still have to pay for them.” The father shook his head. “Some families don’t have enough money, so they secretly sell their tickets to others to get some cash…”

"So that's how it is."

"In short, sugar was a rare commodity back then. We could only get it during the New Year, when we exchanged toothpaste tubes for it. We were lucky if we could add a little salt to it at other times." As he spoke, his father added a lot of salt to his bowl and began to eat it in large mouthfuls.

"Then why aren't you adding sugar?"

"Haha, I'm tired of eating it now. Back when things were first reformed and opened up, I made a lot of money from my first job, so I bought a ton of candy and ate so many cavities!"

The mother waited for the father to finish speaking before continuing, "Back then, when we worked at the shop, we were given food, which was buckwheat porridge with a little salt or sugar, and sometimes we could add some wild vegetables. It's nothing like now, with so many different kinds of food, and you get something different every day."

Mo Xueyao also sprinkled salt into the buckwheat porridge, stirred it well, and took a bite—the taste was nothing special, just a bowl of ordinary salty porridge.

"Adults always reminisce about things that are unnecessary. It's a new life now, can't you look forward?" Mo Xueyao said irritably. She was very dissatisfied with today's dinner, but fortunately she had already eaten a hamburger beforehand, so it wasn't too bad to swallow.

Even when she was very young, she always had vegetables with her meals. This was the first time she had only eaten porridge and had no vegetables at all.

“We should look forward, but we can’t forget the past,” the mother retorted. “You have to know that this kind of life is something we have achieved through hard work and struggle.”

"Okay, okay—"

"You brat, you can't handle hardship. What will you do when you enter society?" the mother said, half scolding and half worrying.

"You don't need to worry about that. Besides, being able to endure hardship isn't necessarily a good thing—it might make others think you're easy to bully," Mo Xueyao emphasized again. "Like I said, it's a new era now!"

"Keep trying to argue, I can't win against you." Her mother's eyes glared at her like knives.

"Tch, it's clearly you who's being unreasonable."

"Alright, alright, you two stop spouting nonsense. You're both so unreasonable. You're mother and daughter, just like mother and daughter."

The father tried to smooth things over, but he suddenly became the target of Mo Xueyao and her mother's attacks.

The two of them instantly stood on the same side.

"You're the one talking about us, but you act like you're so reasonable."

"Exactly, they always do something stupid."

As we were chatting, another customer arrived.

The man casually bought some bananas, paid but didn't leave immediately; instead, he started chatting with Mo Wenli.

"Hey, fellow countryman?" Mo Wenli said with a hint of delight after noticing his accent, offering him a cigarette. "You're from Northeast China too?"

"Oh? Boss, you're from Northeast China? I can't recognize that accent. I'm from Dalian."

"Haha, I couldn't hear your accent either. I had to listen carefully to make out a little bit."

"That's what happens when you stay in the South for too long."

"Tsk tsk, I've met another fellow townsman." Mo Xueyao clicked her tongue. She had never had a good impression of so-called fellow townsmen who tried to curry favor with each other. She always felt that when you're away from home, it's more likely that fellow townsmen will take advantage of each other.

"By the way, boss, I happen to have a cell phone here. I don't want to use it anymore and want to sell it, but it was bought second-hand and I don't have the invoice. Do you want to buy it? We're from the same hometown, so I can give you a discount."

"Oh? What kind of phone?"

"This is the one, an older Nokia phone. If you don't need it, you can give it to your wife or kids. Get a cheap SIM card so they can contact you if anything happens."

These words struck a chord with Mo Xueyao. She quickly finished her bowl of buckwheat porridge and excitedly ran to her father's side to examine the phone.

"Oh my, it's a style from two years ago, but it still looks pretty new?"

"Yes, look at it, it's in pretty good condition and it can be turned on normally. See, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just that my SIM card is still inside, so I'll have to take it out later."

I tried making a call and found that all the calls went through.

"This one is pretty good, how much is it?"

"Cheap, seven hundred yuan."

"It's too expensive, it's been through three hands."

"This would have cost me almost two thousand!"

"Five hundred, five hundred. If you're willing, I'll buy one for my daughters." The father played with the small phone, and Mo Xueyao, who was watching from the side, nodded vigorously.

This is for her to buy things, so of course she's happy to accept.

"It's better not to buy it. If you want to buy it, go to a store," the mother advised.

"It's alright, look, all the functions are working fine."

"Yes, boss lady, don't worry. You can try out the phone's functions right here. There will be absolutely no problems. Where can you buy one this cheap in a phone store? Even a second-hand one costs at least a thousand!"

"What's the point of buying it? Your daughter won't need it."

"It'll be easier to contact you if anything happens."

"Yes, safety is very important. This price is really cheap. Where can you buy a Nokia for such a low price? This is not a counterfeit!" the young man quickly added. "I'm only doing this because we're from the same hometown. I was thinking that I was going to sell it anyway. If I went to a store, I wouldn't have an invoice and they would try to negotiate the price down. It would be too much trouble. How about this, I'll sell it for six hundred yuan, okay?"

"Okay, okay, six hundred it is."

"Okay, okay, thank you, brother." The young man turned around and removed the SIM card. "I'll take the SIM card out first, haha, I can't give you this SIM card."

“Of course.” The father replied matter-of-factly.

After receiving the money, the young man carefully counted it and verified its authenticity before saying with a beaming smile, "Well, boss, I'll be going now, I have something to do."

"Okay, no need to see me out."

The father waved his hand, watched him leave, and then looked triumphantly at Mo Xueyao beside him: "Hey, I got you two a cell phone, wasn't I great?"

"Yes, Dad is the best!"

Although it's called "the two of you," the actual user is definitely Mo Xueyao.

After all, there's only one machine; at most, Li Wanyan will keep it safe.

"We'll just get a SIM card then," the father said, picking up the phone the young man had left behind. He tried to turn it on again, but the screen was completely black and he couldn't turn it on at all.

"what happened?"

"Did you not insert a SIM card?"

"It has nothing to do with that, right?" Although the father said this, he still inserted the SIM card with some doubt, but it still wouldn't turn on.

After removing the back cover, the battery was there, but there was no circuit board inside, only a piece of iron for weighting...

"Didn't I tell you not to buy it?"

"Oh dear, how could this be? There must be some mistake!" The father still refused to believe it and kept fiddling with the door until it was almost time to close before he finally realized that he had indeed been tricked.

Mo Xueyao was afraid of being scolded along with everyone else, so she went to bed early. She could hear her mother scolding her father outside, which faded away as the roller shutter closed, but it still didn't stop...

……

Chapter 241 The Big Fox Spirit and the Little Fox Spirit?