Siheyuan starts from a better life

Chapter 671, Yan family situation

Autumn in Sijiu City is very short. The weather quickly cooled down after November, and every household began to busy stocking up on coal for the winter.

Briquettes are already available in this era, but most residents in Sijiu City still burn briquettes because the price of briquettes is too expensive, costing 5 cents a piece. To save a stove for one day, you need to use at least four or five pieces of briquettes, which is only two or three cents, eight or nine yuan a month, and nearly thirty yuan a winter.

In this era when the average monthly salary is only thirty or forty yuan, and you have to support a large family, it is undoubtedly a very large expense. You must know that a pound of grain is only a dime, and a pound of pork is only a dime. Sixty-seven cents, thirty yuan is enough for a family of six to live for a month.

Therefore, most ordinary households still choose to burn briquettes. Although the briquette stove needs to frequently shake off the ashes, add coal, and stir the fire, it must be taken care of by someone, which is very troublesome. Unlike the briquette stove, you only need to add coal regularly and control it well. The size of the furnace door's opening and closing allows the fire to be used all day long, making it simpler and more convenient.

However, the price of briquettes is very cheap. One hundred kilograms of shaken briquettes only costs one yuan and two thirty. For every one hundred kilograms of briquettes, twenty kilograms of firewood are given. According to the national regulations at that time, residents of Sijiu City were limited to a monthly limit per household. The supply of heating coal is 40 to 200 kilograms. In normal months, it is 40 kilograms per month. In winter, it is 200 kilograms per month. Calculated in this way, it is two and a half yuan a month, and the three months add up to seven and a half yuan, so the price The disparity is still very large. Readers may think it is nothing when they see this, but even for a few dollars, many families could not afford it at that time.

In winter, 200 kilograms of coal per month is definitely not enough to burn coal. Therefore, regardless of whether you have money to buy coal or not, every family has to find ways to get coal. Rich families can spend money to buy coal for those who cannot afford it. As for the share of the family, ordinary families or poor families have come up with various methods, such as burning more firewood, or letting the children go to the streets to pick up coal cores, and go outside the coal stations. Take the coal foam on the ground home and make it into briquettes to burn.

The so-called coal cores, to put it bluntly, are briquettes that have not been completely burned. They are usually found in the canteens of factories or government agencies, and in the stove pits outside the boiler rooms. They are almost always found in the back kitchen of canteens or near the stove pits outside the boiler rooms. , there will always be a large group of children holding iron chopsticks and carrying small baskets, standing in the pit to rummage through the coal cores. There will be disputes where there are interests. The same is true for picking up coal cores. Often there are conflicts over land grabs, or Seeing the coal cores picked up by others makes you jealous and a war breaks out!
Jiang Yan's family basically uses briquettes. Xu Damao and the others started preparing it not very early, so they have no shortage of it at home.

Today happens to be the day when the coal station delivers briquettes to the courtyard. There are more than 200 households in the courtyard, and each family has 4000 kilograms of briquettes, which is more than kilograms! So since early in the morning, workers from the coal station have been delivering coal to the courtyard. They are delivering coal to every household one after another. The entire courtyard is in a commotion!
But the most lively part of the courtyard is the front yard where the third uncle’s house is located.

The third uncle's family did not buy ready-made briquettes like other families did before. Instead, they bought some pure cinders as usual, then added loess and made briquettes themselves.

That's right, Yan Jiecheng got married this year, just two months ago.

To be honest, the job of shaking briquettes requires both physical strength and skills. For the third uncle and his family, it is not a big deal at all! But as long as it can make money, everything is not a big deal in the eyes of the third uncle and his family.

Ordinary professionals can shake twenty or thirty kilograms of briquettes at one time. Naturally, their family cannot compare with professional families. They can shake seven or eight kilograms at a time, but they can't handle the large number of people in their family!

So every time when this time comes, all the men, women, and children in the third uncle’s family join the battle, taking advantage of the population to make up for the gap in skills and physical strength. As for every time after shaking the briquettes, the third uncle’s family, including all the young and old, can’t stand up straight for several days. Come here, you can only talk to others with your waist and head raised, and the third uncle doesn't care at all.

Because in the eyes of the third uncle, nothing is more important than saving money. If the job of shaking briquettes is not too tiring and the whole body hurts for several days after shaking it, the third uncle has the heart to save everyone in the courtyard. The job of shaking briquettes is taken care of, and you can make a very considerable profit difference from it!
Everyone in the third uncle's family feels that it will be easier this year because there is a new force in their family.

When Yan Jiecheng got married, Jiang Yan was busy in the laboratory and had no time to go there. Only He Yuzhu among them went there to save face.

The third uncle, an old boy, wanted to use Jiang Yan's car to marry his son in order to save his face. However, Jiang Yan refused directly. Just kidding, it doesn't matter.

However, the favor that should be left should be left appropriately. After all, they are still neighbors.

With the gift of five yuan and two hot water bottles, this gift is quite substantial. According to He Yuzhu's report, the daughter-in-law Yan Jiecheng married was named Zhao Jing. She was from Dongcheng District, Sijiu City. Her father was an employee of a textile factory and her family was fairly well off.

Of course, Zhao Jing's appearance is naturally incomparable with Yu Li, whom he was originally married to in the TV series, so she can be regarded as Xiaojiabiyu!
The reason why he fell in love with Yan Jiecheng was that Yan Jiecheng had a stable job and his father was a teacher, so he was from a scholarly family.

However, according to He Yuzhu, the three uncles made a big mistake on their wedding day. He also said that he admired the third uncle's stinginess. It's simply beyond the pale.

Originally, a few days before Yan Jiecheng's wedding, the third uncle had approached He Yuzhu privately and wanted to hire He Yuzhu for free to cook their wedding banquet.

If it were He Yuzhu himself, he would probably be deceived, but who asked him to have a smart Qin Huairu, so he refused tactfully.

The reason for the refusal is also quite simple. The chef has the rules of a chef. Except for close relatives, he must charge a service fee for the dishes cooked at his door.

Nowadays, He Yuzhu and Liuzi are very famous chefs in Sijiu City. They charge at least five yuan for a table to cook.

Obviously, the third uncle didn't want to pay the five yuan at that time, even though Qin Huairu took the initiative to reduce the price by one yuan for the sake of the old neighbor.

It was because of this that the third uncle had been angry for several days. Anyway, he was accusing He Yuzhu and the others of not respecting him, the third uncle.

In the end, the third uncle had no choice but to find another chef, who only cost one yuan per table. Of course, your craftsmanship cannot match that of He Yuzhu.

What's even more bizarre is that the third uncle set up three tables, but he only bought two kilograms of meat, a few fish that he cooked himself, and the rest were carrots and cabbage.

This clever woman couldn't make a living without rice. She didn't have good ingredients, so even when the imperial chef came, she was given nothing. Not to mention that the third uncle set the table and the staple food was steamed buns.

Afterwards, He Yuzhu also said that he speculated that there was no way to control the food, otherwise the third uncle would be precise enough to know how many bites each person took.

So this time he set the table in such a way that there were no people inside and outside. Not only did the neighbors in the courtyard look down on it, but the in-laws also had objections to it. If they had not already received the certificate, they would probably take their daughter away on the spot.

However, they were still there to irritate the third uncle for a long time, but they underestimated the thickness of the third uncle's family.

(End of this chapter)