Life in siheyuan era

Thank you to all the readers for your support. After posting for more than three months, I have thought a lot and learned a lot. I want to say a few sincere words at the end of this book.

The comments I received for this novel were almost all criticisms. It's probably one of the most criticized novels on Tomato Novel! But among these comments, one sentence from Mr. Ku Qiezi resonated with me. He said, "The writing is very good, but this style won't attract many readers..."

This gentleman's view is very insightful. I was indeed constrained when writing this novel because I have great respect for that era, so writing it was very tiring. And I naively wanted to incorporate some principles into it, which made it even more tiring. Several times, I considered giving up, but it was already my fault for not allowing readers to enjoy a relaxing read, and it would be an even bigger mistake to leave it unfinished.

Over the years, I have read many online novels, and my overall feeling is that they are developing towards entertainment. There's nothing wrong with that. In this era, everyone is carrying a heavy burden, so why should reading a novel be tiring too? So, I chose the wrong subject matter for this novel. The era I chose was not an era of entertainment.

Although I didn't experience that era myself, I consulted many people who came from that era in order to write this novel. These people experienced the Three Years of Natural Disasters, the Cultural Revolution, and the Reform and Opening Up. Some even experienced being laid off and having to find their own jobs. Some elderly people who retired in the 1990s even had trouble getting their pensions at one point.

But they are still full of optimism about the future. When talking about that era, they would say it was very poor, but also very fair. Everyone's living standards were the same. The only difference was that families with fewer children could eat two more white flour buns, while families with more children would use white flour to exchange for corn flour. Everyone felt balanced. They worked hard at work, and after work, they had their wives, children, and warm beds.

An old master worker once told me a story. One of his friends repeatedly sought out the factory leaders to change his cadre status to worker status because cadres received 28 pounds of grain coupons per month, while workers received 30 pounds. That's how it was in that era. Miners working underground definitely earned more than the mine leaders. Their monthly grain coupons even reached 54 pounds. In that era, young women waiting to be married were willing to marry miners. A miner could easily support a family of five.

There are many more stories like this. A female textile worker, because she had attended a private school for three years, had good eloquence, and was an old party member who joined the party in 1953, had good relationships with her colleagues. The factory leaders wanted her to leave her production job and become the factory's Communist Youth League secretary, but she refused because she had to raise three children. Her salary and food rations on the front line were much higher than being the factory's Communist Youth League secretary.

When talking about this, I asked her, "Do you regret it?" She said she didn't regret it because three little mouths were waiting to eat. That was the reality at that time.

There are many more stories like this. I originally wanted to incorporate them into the novel, but I had concerns during the writing process because there was no shadow of scar literature in the materials I collected.

Take that female textile worker as an example. She was from a rich peasant family, while her husband was from a revolutionary cadre family (originally a small landlord family, he joined the People's Liberation Army on November 1, 1949, and participated in the Korean War). They experienced the Cultural Revolution, but were not affected in any way. Perhaps one was a textile worker and the other was a salesman.

And her two sons also went to the countryside, but they only had one negative thing to say about the life in the youth settlement, "The food was bad."

These are all real materials, but the result of collecting them and writing about them only tied my own hands.

Okay, I've rambled on again. Just one last sentence about this article: the theme of this novel is only one sentence, "People only have social value when they embody the value of being utilized."

Thank you again sincerely to all the readers for your support. I am currently preparing to write a novel about alternate history. If there are no accidents, it will definitely be officially published in two months. At that time, please criticize and correct me again.