Winner in life

The Spring Festival of 1972 is approaching.

Ruihe has been here for half a year, and has been in the bamboo factory for four and a half months. After completing the last batch of large orders before the New Year, although it was only the middle of the month, the Spring Festival was approaching, and the factory decided to pay the wages for this half month and the New Year's money together. Ruihe went to the financial office to collect the salary for the month and the New Year's money, a total of 22.40 yuan. When he walked out of the financial office, he saw Lu Peiyin at first sight among the workers in line. However, he just glanced at her and walked straight out.

Almost all the workers in the bamboo factory were crowded at the door of the accounting office waiting to receive their wages. Other places were very quiet. After Ruihe walked out of the factory, he waved to Li Dashui under the banyan tree at the gate: "Let's go!"

Li Dashui spit out the grass roots and jumped up, "Have you received your wages?"

"Yes."

The two walked home shoulder to shoulder. When the factory was recruiting, Li Dashui's name was recorded by the manager. When the factory received the last batch of large orders before the New Year, one of the workers who cut bamboo strips in the factory had an injured hand and a foot. At that time, the manager called Li Dashui to work as a temporary worker, only doing the work of cutting bamboo and cutting bamboo strips. He rushed to work for more than half a month, and today he received wages with the workers.

Li Dashui said happily on the way: "Eight yuan! My mother will definitely be very happy when I go back. I also asked the manager, and he said that I did a good job. When the factory resumes work after the New Year, let me come back. If I do well for three months, I will be promoted to a regular employee."

"That's great, Aunt Xiu'e will be happy." Ruihe was very happy for him. If it weren't for Li Dashui, he wouldn't be able to enter the factory. He felt sorry that Li Dashui couldn't come in. Now he is very happy to make money together, "When the factory resumes work after the New Year, we will go to work and go home together."

"Yes!" Li Dashui nodded. "By the way, I have already found out what you asked me to find out. Now the housing land in our village costs about 30 yuan per mu. My mother said that it is not expensive to invite villagers to build a house. Three meals are provided and each person only needs 80 cents a day. However, the materials cost 200 to 300 yuan. Do you really want to buy land to build a house? Didn't you give all your wages to your brother? Where did you get the money to buy the land?"

Ruihe thanked him: "Please thank Aunt Xiu'e for me. I have decided to separate the family after the Chinese New Year, and then save money to buy land after the separation."

"Will your brother agree?"

"As long as I agree, I just need to tell the team to move my household registration out and re-register it."

It has been more than four months since the last time they talked about separation. During this period, Zhang Dashan and his wife no longer mentioned the separation, but Ruihe still asked about it privately. Fortunately, in this era and in this village, separation is not a difficult thing, and you don't even need to find the elders in the clan to get their consent. As long as we make it clear with the village cadres, we can move our names out and re-register, and we don't even have to pay the handling fee. Ruihe breathed a sigh of relief when he heard this.

As for the division of the family property when the family is divided, we will discuss it privately. The house we live in now is the mud house left by the original owner's parents, with a total of three rooms and a small courtyard. After the original owner's parents died, that room became the kitchen. Zhang Dashan moved the stove in the courtyard into it, and the remaining two rooms are still one for each brother.

The house is already very broken, and it is definitely not valuable to say that it is valuable. Ruihe learned from Zhang Xiaoshan's memory that the land in the future will be very valuable. When the original owner divided the family, he only took 500 yuan. According to Zhang Dashan, 200 yuan of it was the money that the original owner gave to his family during these years of working, and the remaining 300 yuan was the money for the house. At that time, the Zhang family's house had been demolished and rebuilt long ago. It was a solid red brick and tile house, and there was Zhang Xiaoshan's sweat between the bricks and tiles.

Zhang Dashan took out 300 yuan and said he wanted to buy Zhang Xiaoshan's room for his children to live in after marriage. At that time, Zhang Dashan's eldest son was only 13 years old, and it was too early to get married, while Zhang Xiaoshan was already 30 years old and was about to get married. Although Zhang Xiaoshan was unwilling at that time, he had a good temper, and his fiancee's temperament was exactly the same as his, even more docile. Neither of them was a character who would argue with others, and Zhang Xiaoshan had to muster up the courage to say that he wanted to split up the family.

So he took 500 yuan and split up and left. It was 1986, and both the land price and the house price were much higher than in the 1970s. Zhang Xiaoshan could only reluctantly buy an old and dilapidated earth house. He finally saved up money to rebuild it, but the youngest son fell ill as soon as the money ran out...

Thinking of this, Ruihe asked Li Dashui again: "Is the owner of the old house that Auntie mentioned last time still selling it?" Someone at the old ancestral hall wanted to sell a house, which was a wing room in the old courtyard, and the asking price was 185 yuan.

Li Dashui shook his head: "I don't know, do you want to buy it?"

"I can't afford it." It's so old, and even if he buys it, it won't be much better than what he lives in now.

I can't afford it. I can't build it.

Ruihe had to accept the reality of continuing to live under the same roof with Zhang Dashan and his wife, and planned to separate the family but not leave home, and separate the money and food.

The matter of separation is imperative, Zhang Dashan invited the three sisters of the two to come back to persuade them. This is the first time Ruihe has seen the three sisters of the original body.

The three sisters have already started families and married to other communes. They don't have time to come back usually, but Ruihe has made up his mind. The sisters love their eldest brother and the youngest brother, so they persuaded him and saw that he didn't listen, so they just said that they can support themselves even if they separate, and they didn't say anything more.

Zhang Dashan and his wife disagreed, but there was nothing they could do. As long as Ruihe didn't hand in any wages but ate every meal at home, they couldn't stand it. But Ruihe didn't want to make it look so ugly. Fortunately, Zhang Dashan compromised after seeing that he had made up his mind. So on the 24th day of the twelfth lunar month, they agreed to divide the family and invited the elders of the clan to be a witness.

First of all, the house. I don't know if it's because there are no children yet, or because the earthen house is shabby, Zhang Dashan has no objection to Ruihe's proposal to divide the earthen house where he lives and half of the kitchen room. The three earthen houses are connected together, and Ruihe lives in the one on the far right. He also occupies half of the yard, and the well is shared.

As for the family's food, he wants his share of the production team issued at the end of November, and one-third of the tickets that have not expired should be given to him. The village usually distributes food after the two rice harvests. Because he entered the factory after the second rice was planted, Zhang Tiansheng still remembered his work points for more than two months. Although it was not much, he was given some food, plus the basic food ration of 108 kilograms. Ruihe was allocated 131 kilograms of grain, and Zhang Dashan didn't mention the other miscellaneous grains, so he didn't ask for them.

In fact, although Ruihe entered the factory, the wages for the first four months plus the full attendance bonus totaled 171.2 yuan. He gave Zhang Dashan 80% every month, which was considered "public", and the money was enough for him to buy food. However, Ruihe saw that Zhang Dashan still bought sweet potatoes with the villagers, so there must be more money left. He estimated that there was at least 100 yuan left from the wages. Zhang Dashan only gave him 20 yuan, and he didn't say anything.

In order to make the division of the family smoother, Ruihe had already made such preparations and didn't care.

Then it was the family's private plot. Zhang's private plot was 1.5 cents, and Ruihe got 7 cents. Finally, there was a group of chickens raised in the yard, and Ruihe got five.

He only took the bowls and chopsticks he used for those small items, and gave all the others such as oil, salt, the only iron pot in the family, broom, etc. to Zhang Dashan, so that the division was complete.

Ruihe's many concessions made Zhang Dashan's reluctance to separate from the family fade a lot. The process of separation went smoothly. Before the Chinese New Year, they reported the separation to Zhang Tiansheng, the leader of their production team. Zhang Tiansheng agreed: "I will help you report it when the production team goes to work after the Chinese New Year." This is really not a difficult thing to do, it's nothing more than re-registering a name.

The separation was settled. Because Ruihe did not give his wages this month to the family, Zhang Dasao told Zhang Dashan that they had separated during the Chinese New Year. Zhang Dashan scolded her: "Xiaoshan is still my brother after the separation. How can he spend the Chinese New Year alone? Just do what I say and buy things to prepare the New Year's Eve dinner!" When the family was separated, the uncles and aunts said that the younger brother was a kind person and it was a blessing to suffer losses. Is this a good thing for him? He shamelessly took a large sum of money. During the Chinese New Year, it was just right to let Xiaoshan come over to celebrate the New Year together, so that others could see that he, as the eldest brother, took good care of his younger brother who had separated from the family. This woman! No sense!

Mrs. Zhang went out angrily, and just happened to meet Ruihe's face. Then she glared, turned her head, and walked out without stopping.

Ruihe looked puzzled, and put away the things he had just purchased after entering the house. It felt good to be able to be the head of the family and spend his own money. Ruihe had a plan in advance. He first used the kerosene certificate to buy oil to light the oil lamp, so that his house would have light at night. He also bought a new enamel pot that he had been thinking about for a long time, so that he could drink water in the future. The most important thing was that he bought paper and pencils.

He carefully opened the notebook, adjusted the pen holding posture many times, and then lay on the bed and carefully outlined, writing the three words Xu Ruihe stroke by stroke. "Is it written well?"

A voice in his head told him: "Very good and standard."

Ruihe smiled happily, and slowly stroked the three words with his fingers. After that, he put away the notebook and pen and continued to organize the things he had just purchased.

This time when he went shopping, he also bought three catties of cotton, twelve feet of cloth, white sugar, salt, cooking oil, a pottery pot for cooking, a thermos, and other daily necessities. Today, he spent 11.73 yuan on all the things he had to buy to support his family. This time, when the family was divided, Ruihe got his own cloth coupons. He was afraid that they would expire and he would not use them. Today, he used them all up to buy twelve feet of cotton cloth, which cost him six yuan.

After putting the quilt that had been dried in the sun into the house, Ruihe sat cross-legged on the bed and stuffed the core that had also been dried in the sun into it, and then patted the quilt carefully several times.

This set of quilts was already very old. When winter came, Ruihe turned it out, took off an older summer coat to patch the sheets, and pasted five more patches on it before it was patched. It was ugly, but everyone was living like this now. One person was only given one foot and two feet of cloth coupons a year, and an adult could only make a long coat and long pants. The rest could only be used to make a vest or shorts. Cloth coupons were precious. Even clothes were patched, so the quilts at home were even more unnecessary.

After folding the quilt and placing it at the head of the bed, Ruihe picked up the twelve-foot cloth he had just bought today and looked at it. The cloth was ordinary gray cotton cloth and felt quite soft, but he didn't know how to make clothes and couldn't bear to make new clothes now. He was still growing taller, and if he made new clothes now, he wouldn't be able to wear them next year. Ruihe also put the cloth away and got off the bed to sort out other scattered items.

At the end of his busy work, he put his hands on his hips and looked around his room, his eyes full of joy.

At noon, he cooked by himself. In the past two days, with the help of Li Dashui, he separated the kitchen into two rooms. After sealing the original half door, he opened a new door between his room and the kitchen, and then built a new stove, making a move to completely separate the family. After washing the newly bought pottery pot, he put it on the stove and started to cook porridge. Iron pots are still relatively expensive now, so he didn't dare to buy one. He washed the sweet potatoes while watching the fire, chopped the sweet potatoes into pieces and added them to the pottery pot. When the sweet potato porridge was ready, he added a spoonful of white sugar, which made him feel that the meal was much sweeter.

He was not idle after lunch. He and Li Dashui made an appointment to go fishing.

"Life Winner [Quick Wear]"