Go back to the prosperous days and become a layman

Chapter 464: 463 "The Schemer"

When he got home, Tang Zhitong immediately took out the scale, which aroused Fengzhi's curiosity.

A scale is a wooden pole scale, also called a portable scale. The most common ones are two-sided scales, which are composed of a wooden pole, a weight, a scale hook or scale pan, and two handles.

By holding the handle away from the hook, you can weigh lighter objects; by holding the handle close to the hook, you can generally weigh objects weighing more than ten pounds.

Before the advent of pallet scales or electronic scales, this wooden pole scale was the most mainstream weighing device on the market.

The design of the lifting knob is very clever, making full use of the principle of leverage.

There are also ones that make better use of it, with star surfaces as high as six sides. At first glance, the scale bar looks like it is covered with densely packed stars, which is definitely a nightmare for people with trypophobia.

Generally speaking, a two-sided scale is enough. Small vendors who go to the market or walk around the streets selling apples, peaches, etc. basically use a two-sided scale.

Mu Gan said that although it is an inconspicuous industry, it carries the conscience of commodity trading and is highly recognized by the people.

Of course, there are also unscrupulous vendors who shortchange customers on weights, usually by secretly replacing the weights or using special "techniques".

Very few craftsmen who make scales will violate professional ethics, because the scale bar usually bears the craftsman's mark.

Before this year, not many ordinary people had scales at home. The reason why it became popular this year is to allocate each person's quantity more accurately. This situation will become the norm in the next two to three years.

The weighing scale that Tang Zhitong bought is not large. The heavy side can weigh up to ten kilograms, and the light side can weigh up to one kilogram.

Due to the implementation of the new measurement method, the scale is one jin and ten liang.

As the saying goes, "If you don't know how to use a scale, you can't be the head of the family", so Zhang Guifang didn't stop Fengzhi from playing with it. Besides, a scale is an object that can generally not be broken as long as it is not bent intentionally.

"Brother, how many pounds is this?" Fengzhi hooked up her schoolbag and moved the weight like the businessman she had seen before.

"Three pounds and four ounces." Tang Zhitong took a glance and replied.

"Brother, how do I recognize a scale?" Fengzhi put down her schoolbag, took the scale and asked Tang Zhitong for advice, looking eager to learn.

"Come, let me tell you." Faced with his sister's curiosity, Tang Zhitong took the scale and taught her knowledge in this area under the lamp.

"In the past, the weight of a scale was called 'quan' and the beam of a scale was called 'heng'. These idioms, such as 'weighing the weight' and 'weighing the pros and cons', came from this."

"This is also called 'weighing', which means that when weighing, one must be very careful and not be careless."

"Come, I'll show you a magic trick." Tang Zhitong lifted the handle away from the hook and moved the weight to the first star on the scale bar. There was nothing placed on the hook, but both sides remained balanced.

Fengzhi stared with eyes wide open, watching all this in amazement, while classmate Xiao Wang was laughing beside her, laughing at her husband's deliberate mystery to fool his sister-in-law.

"Isn't it amazing? This star is called the Dingpan Star. When the weight is in this position, both sides are balanced. It symbolizes fairness, justice, and impartiality. It also reminds businessmen to weigh their conscience and never cheat on anything no matter what business they do. This is true for all scales. If a scale is unbalanced, then there is something wrong with the scale."

"To weigh things, look at the stars above. One small grid is one liang. Move one grid back, and it's two liang, and so on."

"In the old days, the scale had sixteen scales on the beam, each scale representing one liang, and each liang was represented by a star. Each of the sixteen stars had a meaning, and the last three represented the three stars of fortune, wealth, and longevity. When weighing, giving one liang less meant losing "fortune", two liang less meant losing both "fortune" and "wealth", and three liang less meant losing both "fortune", "wealth", and "longevity".

"If someone weighs you less in the future, just point your finger at him and call him a wicked man." Tang Zhitong said, touching Feng Zhi's head.

"You sound very serious at the beginning, but what are you teaching the children later? Fengzhi, listen to me, I won't curse you." Student Wang was at a loss whether to laugh or cry after hearing this.

"Well, don't curse, just beat him up. My brother said that we should convince people with reason!" Fengzhi raised her little fist and said.

"Why are you beating her, she's just a little girl? It's time to eat." Zhang Guifang couldn't stand it anymore, so she came over, pulled the little girl over, and urged her.

"I'll calculate everyone's quota later. We'll start weighing ourselves and eat according to the quota starting tomorrow." Tang Zhitong put down the scale, washed his hands again, and sat down to eat.

Tang Zhitong has hardly ever calculated his energy intake and consumption since he was a child. He only paid attention to it for a few days when he was losing weight, but today he became a "calculator".

Harris and Benedict conducted experiments in the early 20th century and formulated and quantified the basal metabolic energy, namely BMR.

After the meal, Tang Zhitong calculated Xiao Wang's basal metabolic rate based on his height and weight, which was about 1450 calories.

The so-called basal metabolism is the energy required to complete the most basic survival. Simply put, it is the minimum calories consumed by the human body to maintain normal vital signs, such as breathing, heartbeat, body temperature, etc. when it is lying flat and static.

It can be roughly understood as the number of calories a person in a vegetative state needs to consume in a day.

If you move a little more, this value will have to be multiplied by a coefficient.

Daily commuting is considered light exercise, so your basal metabolic rate needs to be multiplied by 1.3, which is 1885 calories.

Whether it is rice, white flour or cornmeal, the energy contained in 500g is only about 1750 calories.

The gap is 135 calories, and an extra two kilograms of vegetables are needed to make up for it.

The others are similar, with certain gaps.

After this calculation, Tang Zhitong felt that the quotas for the people in the old city must have been calculated by an expert, and everything was based on the demand line.

There is a slight gap, which can be made up by other foods such as cooking oil, meat, eggs, etc., focusing on achieving a balance between inputs and outputs.

However, this amount is very unfriendly to Fengzhen, Fengzhi, Jingying and Jingmin who are still growing and developing.

Young people have a fast metabolism. This is the time when they use their brains to learn and their bodies to grow. In addition, they are taller than their peers, so their metabolism requires more energy.

Tang Zhitong has a deep understanding of this. When he was in junior high school in his previous life, he could eat four or five steamed buns for lunch, and at least ten buns a day, and this was with some vegetables and oil.

One pound of flour can only make seven steamed buns, so there is still a shortage of three.

After much deliberation, Tang Zhitong finally decided not to use flour for the time being. Going hungry for a few days is not a bad thing. As for replenishing the body with nutrients, he can use the improved meals on weekends and the pine nuts on weekdays to supplement it.

Pine nuts are good things. They are high in energy. Two ounces of pine nuts can contain 600 calories.

The key is that pine nuts have a lot of energy, but they don't make you feel full. After eating them, you still look hungry.

I believe that after this period of hunger, the children will learn their lesson, and when their lives improve in the future, they will be less likely to go out and tell others what delicious food they have eaten.

perfect!

Now each person can eat about two taels of pine nuts every day, which can produce seven cents of pine nut kernels, but you can eat more in the future.

The pine nuts at home have always been kept in the side room, but Xiao Wang rarely touches them. It is always Tang Zhitong who is responsible for frying them.

Tang Zhitong thought that at most she could just be the conch girl for a few times, secretly adding some food from the space into the bag to keep it in a normal state, and eat it for the next half a year.

It doesn’t matter if the pine nuts in the space are fresh. At worst, you can just live on campus “occasionally” and carry your little house to find a place in the wilderness to fry them.

As for what Ye Zhijuan said about life being more difficult in the future and that we need to take things slow and steady, we should leave the problems to the future and deal with them as they arise.

I believe that once she is tired of being hungry, she will not bother about the details of the food source, right?
Once you buy a scale, you naturally need to use it.

Tang Zhitong calculated how much food each person ate every day based on each person's ration, and distributed it in the ratio of 3:4:3 for three meals a day.

In this regard, Tang Zhitong has read the autobiography of the writer Ma Bo. He tried 244 (2 taels in the morning, 4 taels in the afternoon, and 4 taels in the evening), and also tried 433, 154, and 334. He also tried not eating in the morning and eating half a catty each at noon and in the evening. After repeated comparisons, he finally adopted the 343 method.

One pound of white flour or cornmeal can produce one and a half pounds of steamed bread or cornbread. The rice is weighed dry and then steamed in individual bowls, with the main goal of fairness.

"It's been a long night, have a drink of water." Classmate Xiao Wang poured a glass of water for Tang Zhitong and placed it in front of him.

"You must be hungry lately?" Tang Zhitong pulled Xiao Wang over and let her sit on his lap.

"No, I'm not that delicate. I'm still full from yesterday's meal." Xiao Wang was a little shy. Although he was not full on weekdays, he did not admit it.

Xiao Wang knows that as long as she says she is hungry, her husband will definitely find her food in some way. But everyone is hungry, so why should she be special?
"Be patient, believe me, I'll go to Anton and everything will be fine when I come back from there." Tang Zhitong lay on Xiao Wang and sniffed him, and it seemed that his body didn't have any special reaction.

"Well, I believe you." Classmate Xiao Wang sat on Tang Zhitong's lap, which made him taller than him. He gently touched his stubble and kissed him on the forehead.

"Jingmin said he wanted to eat dumplings on Sunday, so I planned to make some fillings for the occasion." Tang Zhitong looked up and smiled at Xiao Wang, giving her a heads-up in advance.

"Okay, as long as you don't make it difficult for me." Xiao Wang didn't even ask where the filling came from, because she felt that she was getting more and more greedy...

In fact, Xiao Wang is not the only one who has a desire for food, Tang Zhitong does the same.

Many body reactions cannot be acted out, especially the behaviors after being hungry.

What’s more, Tang Zhitong has no personal experience?

In order to get closer to reality and avoid being exposed in his studies and work, Tang Zhitong has not been eating alone outside recently. He wants to form muscle memory after deeply experiencing the supply of this era.

This was indeed Tang Zhitong's first time experiencing this special period, but he had reasons to rely on for doing so.

One is the information I saw in my previous life. Before 1960, there was no record or memory of widespread starvation among the urban residents in the old city.
The second one also happened in the previous lifetime. Tang Zhitong’s parents were both rural people from Shandong Province in this era.

Both my grandpa and my grandpa, there were several people in the family, who took care of a small piece of land and lived a very difficult life. Wild vegetables and porridge were the common meals, but none of them died and all of them grew up.

Tang Zhitong's father once told a story about ancient times when meals were distributed in the public canteen. In order to save energy, each family would send a representative to collect the meals.

A bowl of porridge made of dried sweet potatoes and sweet potato leaves. Because we were so hungry, anxious and weak all over, the adults had to sit down and rest several times on the way home.

Tang Zhitong's father said he couldn't remember the exact year, but Tang Zhitong knew that the public canteen was disbanded in the first half of 1961, so it was most likely the autumn of 59 or 60.

In my hometown in my previous life, no one starved to death under such difficult circumstances at the same time, let alone the commercial grain population in the current city?

Although a light diet is indeed the best way to lose weight, the feeling of being 80% full is indeed not pleasant.

I stewed a lot of cabbage in the evening, but it didn't work at the right time. Even though I was full, as soon as I urinated, my stomach felt empty again, and I always wanted to stuff something in it.

As a time traveler who lives next to a warehouse, doing this does seem a bit incompetent and even cowardly, but Tang Zhitong firmly believes that it is better to be safe than sorry.

I am not a bachelor who can feed the whole family by myself. If I reveal my true identity, both Xiao Wang and other family members will be implicated.

Doing this is not just for yourself, but for your family.

As for your stomach, just be hungry for now. You’ll get used to it after a while.

You can't let your family go hungry and suffer through the hardships of life while you eat delicious food and drink spicy drinks, right?
Besides, eating alone without telling his family would make him feel guilty, so Tang Zhitong couldn't do such a thing.

Tang Zhitong has a plan for his future life. He will go to Andong in a month or so. Each person will be subsidized with three to five kilograms of cornmeal every month. Wouldn't this increase the fixed amount?
By then, everyone will have learned their lesson and won’t let the children know about the food. If they eat a little more quietly, no one will tell anyone.

The next day, November 1959, 11, Tuesday, was sunny.

Early in the morning, Tang Zhitong pasted a piece of paper on the wall of the main room.

Written on it is each person's ration, clearly indicating the weight of dry food that each person can eat per day and per meal. From now on, we will follow this ration.

"Mom, stew more cabbage at night next time, and give everyone an extra handful of pine nuts. I'll go to Andong in a month or so, and I'll definitely bring back something. We can go hungry, but we can't starve ourselves to death." Before leaving, Tang Zhitong secretly told Zhang Guifang.

Zhang Guifang nodded. Who would want to starve themselves?
"You can mix the dry goods that uncle brought, such as black fungus and sausages, into your dishes every three to five days. But you have to know the limit. You can't be hungry, but you can't eat too much either." Tang Zhitong thought for a moment and added.

"I know, don't worry. Although we don't have enough to eat, we are better off than our neighbors. We should wait for a while before eating your uncle's dry goods. Who knows, the days ahead may be even more difficult." Zhang Guifang rejected her son's suggestion.

"Okay, then you decide." Seeing that Zhang Guifang was clear about the situation, Tang Zhitong said no more.

People of Zhang Guifang's generation and older have at least experienced the Republic of China and the two wars of resistance against Japan. They are used to seeing the days when people were living in poverty and suffering. When comparing the present with the present, they may think that life is better now.

This may be one of the reasons why there has been no Li Zicheng in recent years.

(End of this chapter)