Provincial Party Committee

Chapter 14

Hearing that his son was coming back for the New Year and bringing his daughter-in-law who had never been married, the old man was so happy that he couldn't express it.Wherever he went, as long as someone asked him, he would always smile and tell others the news that his son and daughter-in-law were coming back.Ever since his second son, Erhu, came home from the provincial capital on vacation and brought him the definite news that Wang Yiming was coming back for the New Year, he had started preparing for it a long time ago.

In the past few years, the household contract responsibility system has been implemented in the countryside. The work of rural people is no longer a big pot, and everyone is willing to work hard.Their family was allotted more than ten acres of land, and the wheat they planted could cost five or six thousand catties a season. Excluding the public grain handed in, there were still more than 3000 catties.In autumn, corn, sesame, soybeans, and sweet potatoes are harvested. When the weather is good, the family has all kinds of food, and they can eat white noodles every day.The family also raised pigs, cows, and sheep. At the end of the year, a pig was slaughtered. In addition to selling it to others, the pig offal and pig head meat left alone weighed dozens of catties.Of course, in order to welcome the child back, he left behind a pig's hind leg, which weighed at least forty or fifty catties. This year, the old man is the happiest when he grows up so much.

Seeing his father, Wang Yiming quickly jumped off his bicycle, took out the "Daqianmen" cigarettes (this was a more fashionable brand at that time) that he had prepared earlier from his pocket, took out one, handed it to his father, and said, "Father, Change to this, this one is good." After speaking, he handed one to his father, and then distributed it to the men next to him one by one, and when he saw one, he called them "big brother, uncle, uncle, grandpa" according to their seniority.When I met women, I didn't forget to call them "sister-in-law, aunt, aunt, grandma".This is etiquette. People who work outside must know more about the world once they return to the village.When you meet older people, you must know how to greet them proactively, otherwise they will scold you behind your back, saying that you just left the house for three days, and you don’t know the heights of heaven and earth.You can't speak Mandarin either, you have to speak your hometown dialect.A soldier in a neighboring village had just left for a year, and when he returned to the village, he spoke half-baked Mandarin, and was laughed at by the villagers for several years.

After tossing all day, I finally returned home.After not being at home for half a year, Wang Yiming saw a lot of changes at home.Two side rooms were newly built, and the walls were still whitewashed with white ash. There were a few New Year pictures on the walls, and there were also some celebrity calendars.The floor was paved with red bricks, and the floor was spotless. There was a large wooden bed inside, with newly made bedding and newly bought sheets. It was obvious at a glance that these were prepared for Wang Yiming and Yu Yanmei. of.

Although the main room is still the four tile-roofed houses, the walls of the house are covered with newspapers, which look freshly pasted, and the roof has obviously been cleaned, and the dirty things that are usually hanging are not there. It dangled again, making a precarious look.The table was also wiped clean. Obviously, these are the masterpieces of the younger brothers and sisters. They have put in a lot of effort to welcome the elder brother and sister-in-law.

When they got home, Yu Yanmei opened her travel bag before she had time to eat, and distributed the gifts she had prepared for everyone one by one.Two younger sisters, one of them got a woolen scarf, long, bright red, fluffy and thick, it looks like a high-end good thing, you can’t buy it in the county, only the people in the city, To have such a rare thing.The two girls, Sanni and Sifeng, were extremely excited.

Father got a military sweater, mother got a double-breasted woolen sweater, and bought a pair of suede cowhide cotton shoes for his younger brother Erhu and Yu Yanmei.These were very expensive things for rural people at that time, and ordinary people couldn't afford them, and they couldn't bear to wear them.In addition, there are large and small bags of food, candies in the provincial capital and so on, which immediately heighten the atmosphere of family reunion.

Wang Yiming looked at Yu Yanmei, taking things out one by one, taking care of everything, old and young, everyone was satisfied, he couldn't help admiring his woman's intelligence and care.

In the evening, my father lit the fire and my mother cooked. The whole family ate steaming meals, talked and laughed, and felt very happy.

When resting at night, the mother asked Wang Yiming for advice on whether to let Yu Yanmei sleep by herself or with her son and daughter-in-law.The old lady didn't know that people in the city are open, and even men and women can live together if they are not married.

Wang Yiming said, don't worry about it. In the city, we have lived together for a long time. As soon as she graduates, we will get a marriage certificate. It's nothing.

Seeing what her son said, the old lady said nothing more.

After staying at home for more than a week, on the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, Wang Yiming got up early, ate the meal cooked by his mother, packed his luggage, and it was Erhu, Sanni, and Sifeng who took them to the station.At home, the mother deliberately pulled Wang Yiming aside and said quietly: "I have nothing to say about this girl's character and temperament, but the only thing I don't like is that she is too thin. Look at her waist, it is so thin. You can pinch it with a handful. Son, she looks like this, can she have children in the future? We peasants, I still like fatter ones, big ones, and they look stylish. Look at your cousin, she is tall and big. Big, standing taller than a man."

Wang Yiming smiled and said, "Mom, city people and country people have different aesthetic views. It's hard to find someone in the city with my sister-in-law's size! Who dares to ask for it? It's more than 180 catties. Standing there, It’s like a wall. It’s exciting to do crop work in the countryside, but in the city, you don’t need to do crop work. Why do you need such a big guy! Yanmei’s waist is thin, but her body is strong, her buttocks are not small, and she has children Definitely no problem. The people in their family are like that, and her sister used to be like that too, but now she has gained weight after giving birth, weighing more than 120 catties. In the city, she is already quite fat, so you don’t have to worry .”

After listening to Wang Yiming's words, the mother nodded suspiciously.

Going home this time was Yu Yanmei's official appearance at the Wang family, reconfirming the relationship between the two parties.

In the summer of the second year, after Wang Yiming worked for a year, under Yu Yanli's operation, he got the position of deputy chief staff member as soon as he became a full-time employee.Although this position is inconspicuous in the general office of the provincial party committee, Wang Yiming knew that if it was in the county town, many people would not be able to get such a position if they worked hard all their lives.

When studying in the county town, Wang Yiming saw that those very popular people in the county town, such as the principal of the county high school, the manager of the county department store, the factory director of the county fertilizer factory, and the manager of the food company, these hot positions, but also It is the role of section chief and deputy section chief, and the level of section chief is already a big shot in the county.The seats at the deputy county level are even rarer, and there are only a dozen or so people.As soon as I graduated and worked for just one year, I got a position at the sub-department level. This should be a very exciting thing.

The level has been improved, and the salary has been increased by more than ten yuan. Now, Wang Yiming has an income of more than fifty yuan every month, which is a few yuan higher than the teachers who have worked in the county for many years.Because the situation at home is much better, he doesn't need to save more than a dozen yuan from his salary every month to send to the countryside.Although the younger brother Erhu is also in the provincial capital, because he is a teacher, the subsidy is very high. Not only does it cost nothing to eat, but even the daily necessities are the money he saved from the food expenses. , That is to buy a pair of sneakers for my brother, or buy a few better clothes, which can be regarded as doing my brother's love.

Erhu is a sensible, simple and honest child. He has admired his elder brother since he was a child, and he knows how to love his parents, he is filial to his elders, and he is very considerate of his family's situation.So when he applied for the university, he asked the teachers of the school in advance, where the subsidy is high, and going to university does not cost money.Originally, based on his grades, he could go to a better school in other places, but in order to save travel expenses, he chose to study in the Teachers College in the provincial capital.

After thinking about it, Wang Yiming still felt that he had let down his younger brother in the past, so he spent tens of dollars to buy a set of sportswear for his younger brother and sent it to his school.

Seeing that his brother bought such expensive clothes for himself, Erhu said, "Brother, these clothes look good, but the price is too expensive. They are worn by people in the city. Our family's conditions are poor. Sanni and Si Feng is still in school, and the family has a lot of expenses. We can't compare with others on what to eat and what to wear. From now on, you and your sister-in-law should stop buying new clothes for me. Just give me the clothes you don't wear. I Don't worry about it. Although you are at work, you have to spend a lot of money when you are in a relationship, and you have to socialize. If you are in a big organization, we rural people will be looked down upon if you dress too poorly. You have been working for a year Too much, if you don’t have a new bicycle yet, save some money and buy yourself a bicycle first! Watches are also necessary, look at those who work, who doesn’t have a watch on their wrists, you have to Yes, I am not afraid of being looked down upon by others."

Wang Yiming thought about it, and what his brother said was indeed reasonable, so he tried every means to save some money. After a year, he bought himself a permanent brand bicycle.On Sunday and Yu Yanmei, I often ride bicycles, go shopping or go to the park.

In the second year, Yu Yanmei also took part in the work and was assigned to be a teacher in the provincial school of finance and economics. With the combined salary of the two, life soon became much easier.After half a year, he had saved enough money to buy himself a Shanghai-branded watch, which was shining brightly, and he wore it on his hand. He raised his hand from time to time to check the time, which seemed extraordinarily energetic.

The younger brother, Erhu, also graduated from university. According to the distribution plan, this group of students came and went wherever they came from.Erhu was first assigned back to the prefecture-level city of his hometown, but out of the need to take care of the family and to go home to help his parents with farm work during the busy farming season, Erhu offered to be assigned back to the county town.According to his grades, he was assigned to Chengguan Town Middle School in the county to teach junior high school Chinese, and he was very satisfied with this job.The county seat is more than 20 kilometers away from my hometown in the countryside. It takes more than an hour to ride a bicycle. I can go home on Sunday and help my parents take care of the farmland.The school allocated him a dormitory, and he could go to the county high school from time to time to see Sifeng who was studying in high school.

Sanni took the college entrance examination last year, but it was very unsuccessful.She studied liberal arts, but after the results came out, she was still more than 80 points away from the cut-off mark.Her parents had wanted her to go back to school for another year and try again next year.But Sanni said that she is not suitable for studying, and her brain hurts when she recites the book, and she has no confidence in repeating it.Don't end up spending money, delaying crop work, and getting nothing.The family has a lot of land and the work is heavy, and the two older brothers are not at home, so they simply dropped out of school to help their parents with farm work, which also reduced the burden on the family.

When he returned home for the Spring Festival, Wang Yiming saw his younger sister Sanni, who seemed to be a different person, a girl of eighteen or nineteen years old, with a thicker waist, a stronger body, and thicker arms like a man. When he walked, he stomped on the ground, as if he could punch a hole in the ground.The former school girl with thin skin and tender flesh now looks like a peasant woman.

Wang Yiming knew that this was all the result of overloaded physical labor.At that time, five or six years of farmland contracting had been practiced in rural areas, and the agricultural mechanization of the era of large collectives had disappeared.The fields of each family have become belts.Because the conditions of each piece of rural land are different, some are high-lying and some are low-lying; some are fertile and some are barren; some are good for irrigation and some are good for drainage.So when dividing the land, it took a lot of trouble.Shrewd farmers do not want to put all their eggs in one basket, so when allocating land, they are all distributed equally. Each household has dry land and paddy fields. Each household is divided into strips. Like a long belt.Such land modules cannot be mechanized farming at all, so almost overnight, with the implementation of the household contract responsibility system, Chinese farmers returned to the era of almost slash-and-burn farming, repeating the ancient farming mode.

It turned out that in the era of large production teams, whenever it was time to plow the fields, Dongfanghong's large walking tractors in the commune would appear on the endless fields one by one, with black smoke coming out of the chimney. Smoke, the sound of the machine roaring, like a strong man unprecedented in history, when he came down, he turned the land upside down.

The original big treasure suddenly became something that no one wanted to see. It stopped in the warehouse. It was corroded, rusted, and then fell into disrepair for a long time. , Dismantled and sold scrap iron.

The farmland water conservancy facilities built in the countryside for decades, those cement main canals and drainage ditches were also artificially destroyed by those greedy villagers who, in order to expand the area of ​​their contracted land, multiplied one or two rows of crops. The countryside has become a production unit where each family fights alone.Under such circumstances, the enthusiasm of farmers to work has undoubtedly increased, but the arduous and heavy nature of rural labor has pushed Chinese farmers in the [-]th century back to the distant past, and they had to rely entirely on manpower , begging for food from nature.

Chinese peasants are like a hard-working old scalper, struggling day and night in the fields for their own morsel of grain. Although they live in the mid-80s, they are not fundamentally different from the era of slash-and-burn farming. Even the land has to sweat hard, relying on its own flesh and blood to work on the yellow land.Such labor, over time, can not only change a person's living habits, but more importantly, it can also change a person's physical condition effortlessly.A slender and slender rural girl, after years of physical labor, will become an amazing appetite, her waistline will suddenly increase a lot, her shoulders will become broad and her back thick, and her back will even become thick-backed. Seen from behind, she is not much different from a man.

Seeing the transformation of his younger sister Sanni in just one year, from a fair-skinned, slender student girl to an authentic rural woman, Wang Yiming was filled with emotion.He remembered a book he had read, which said that during the great purges of the Soviet Union in the 30s, those noble and charming girls were systematically persecuted in order to transform them into socialists like ordinary laborers. The builders, the relevant departments organized these beautiful girls to go to the lumber field to work as wood bearers.Over the past few years, these slender and elegant noble women who were engaged in music, dancing and other artistic work, under the heavy physical labor every day, one by one, they have become like sumo wrestlers with big waist and round waist.They have great strength and an amazing appetite. They can lift a log by themselves, no different from men with good physical strength.Those men who had seen their beautiful figures before and were fascinated by them all lost their appetite one by one, and immediately lost any unreasonable thoughts.

This shows how heavy physical labor, labor that exceeds the human body's load, sometimes brings great disasters to human beings.Wang Yiming thought, if Yu Yanmei was also in the countryside and engaged in such physical labor, what would she be like in a year?Will the slender waist of the willow, the figure that made me obsessed, the fair skin, the elegant temperament of the city woman, and the swaying gait disappear?
Looking at his younger sister, he felt distressed again, and asked: "Sanni, don't you regret not going to school? How hard it is to do farm work! Now our family can afford your education again, why didn't you go to school? Anyway, you passed the exam. No school is better than being a farmer here. Years of exposure to wind, sun, and rain, people age quickly. Look at Dad, he is already a standard little old man before he is 60. Those big cadres in the city , is 60 years old, and looks like she is in her 40s. Yu Yanmei’s father is only a few years younger than our father, and his waist is not bent at all, and the skin on his face is white and rosy, like I’m the same, it’s a lifetime for others, there’s a big difference between a city dweller and a country dweller! Don’t tell me you’re willing to be a rural dweller for the rest of your life?”

Hearing what her brother said, Sanni knew that he was also doing it for her own good, so she smiled wryly and said, "Brother, I understand your kindness, but I saw that this is my fate. , I can't help it, I can't get into college even if I study. I'm not like you, I'm born smart, the aura in our ancestor's grave was taken away by you and my second brother, neither Sifeng nor I The material for studying, this is also good, you can spend more time with your parents at home, you can rest assured to work, everyone has their own life, we are such a life, don't hold grudges against anyone."

After hearing this, Wang Yiming had no choice but to give up, giving up the idea of ​​persuading his sister to study again.

Yu Yanmei had just been working for half a year, and suddenly found that she did not come on time for her supposed period. She went to the hospital for an examination and found out that she was pregnant.Come back to discuss with Wang Yiming what to do.Wang Yiming was quite happy when he heard this, and said: "Anyway, the child is already pregnant, and the first child, no matter what happens, can't be aborted. People say that the first child is smart. Let's go through the marriage formalities quickly." Now, I'm going to the office, I want a house quickly, hurry up and get ready!"

Yu Yanmei first told her sister Yu Yanli about her pregnancy.Yu Yanli also agreed that they should get married as soon as possible.When I got home, I told my mother about the pregnancy, and my mother told my father.The family members discussed it and decided to hurry up sooner rather than later, and on the following New Year's Day, the wedding was held.

Wang Yiming and Yu Yanmei, through their sister Yu Yanli, found an acquaintance in the hospital, issued a marriage certificate, and then successfully obtained a marriage certificate.Holding the marriage certificate, Wang Yiming went to the logistics department of the general office and asked for a house.

(End of this chapter)