Chapter 521: Gossip Survival System (20)

Fortunately, there is still some time before the New Year, so it is not too late to start preparing now.

She thanked Widow Guo and went home to talk to Grandma Xie about the winter storage vegetables.

"Oh my! I almost forgot about that too!" Grandma Xie slapped her forehead. "We haven't been short on vegetables at home lately, so it didn't cross my mind. I'll go to the Vegetable Station tomorrow to order winter storage vegetables. Coal Balls aren't urgent, though; your Zheng Shu said he knows a friend who can deliver to the door, the kind that doesn't require coupons."

Xie Yang understood in a second: black market coal.

Grandma Xie continued: "... It's just that the quantity is quite large, and our two families alone can't finish it. He is looking for another one or two families, and then three or four families will share a truckload."

With that settled, all that remained was the Wood for the fire.

"In previous years, your Hui Yi helped buy the firewood. How about we ask her first this year? If that doesn't work, we'll ask your Miao Yi for help. Her maiden family is in the countryside, so it shouldn't be hard to get."

The reason they didn't ask Miao Lan for help in previous years was that the two families didn't interact as frequently then as they did this year.

And because Zhao Wenhui had a good relationship with her daughter-in-law, she took the matter upon herself, so Grandma Xie didn't entrust it to anyone else.

With this arrangement, the essential supplies for winter were not so anxiety-inducing anymore.

But with a sense of winter preparation, Xie Yang began to pay attention to all kinds of supplies sold in the open markets and black markets in the streets and alleys, buying everything that could be used for the winter.

Gradually, the cellar area belonging to her family piled up with enough firewood and Coal Balls for a whole winter, and enough radishes, cabbage, and Potato to last the winter.

Every family hoarded these, it was just a matter of more or less quantity.

Roughly speaking, every family knew how much they had used.

But as for other things, they didn't dare to put them in the public cellar.

Xie Yang took the time to convert an idle room in the house into a storage room. Since the temperature was low in winter and there were no heating appliances, it was like a natural cold storage, perfect for storing rice, flour, grain, oil, chicken eggs, and duck eggs scavenged from the Grain Station or the black market in batches. Strings of cured meat and sausages were also hung from the beams.

The ham sent by the Qiu Family was still whole and unopened, and the one that had been opened hadn't been finished yet either.

However, she planned to open it before the New Year, so it could come in handy when giving New Year gifts to close relatives and friends.

She took advantage of the fact that the small vegetable garden hadn't frozen yet to harvest everything. The vegetables that weren't finished, along with the newly bought white radishes and old string beans, were dried into a batch of dried vegetables.

The two sweet potato plants that had provided her family with several meals of vine leaves were dug up, and surprisingly, they harvested twelve large sweet potatoes.

These sweet potatoes looked too good, so she couldn't bear to put them in the cellar and instead stored them in the storage room.

Besides that, the two of them spent a Sunday pickling a vat of sauerkraut and making several jars of Pickled Radish, pickled cowpeas, and other pickles.

Xie Yang also scavenged a honeycomb coal stove in the black market. Before it snowed, she crushed a batch of Coal Balls and used a tool to make them into beautiful honeycomb coals that were more durable than the Coal Balls, then stacked them under the stove after drying them.

The water vat in the kitchen and the backup water vat in the storage room were both filled with water. Although the waterworks had come in advance to wrap the water pipes with straw mats, what if they froze? Emergency repairs wouldn't be as fast as household water usage.

After finishing these, it was almost mid-to-late December. Beijing was already covered in silver-clad ice and snow, stepping into the true cold of winter.

"Sister Yang Yang, this lotus root was brought back by my parents' colleague from a business trip to the south. Add it to your family's dishes; if you have pork ribs, it's very fresh when stewed into soup... Wow! Your house is so warm!"

It was another Sunday, and Zheng Miaomiao knocked on Xie Yang's door carrying a long piece of lotus root.

As soon as the thick door curtain was lifted, the warmth inside instantly gave Zheng Miaomiao the feeling of having arrived in spring ahead of time.

Xie Yang hadn't been home long after getting off work and was accompanying her little cousin on the heated kang in her loungewear.

Seeing Zheng Miaomiao bring lotus root, this was a good thing! It was rarely seen in the north during winter.

However, the family was eating Fish tonight. She had bought a Grass Carp at the black market and a piece of tofu at the Vegetable Station, planning to have one fish served two ways—the fish head and tofu stewed into soup, and the fish meat braised in soy sauce. The lotus root would be left for tomorrow.

She carried the lotus root, which was four or five sections long, into the storage room, grabbed a handful of crispy dates on the way out, washed them, put them on a plate on the kang table, and invited Zheng Miaomiao to sit down and eat.

Zheng Miaomiao circled around the new chimney stove the Xie Family had installed: "Why is this stove a bit different from the one at my house?"

How to put it, it was a bit like the small mobile fireplaces she had seen in her past life—a square table with a hollowed-out center inlaid with glass on four sides. When a bonfire was lit in the table hole, it was a small fireplace.

But the one at the Xie house wasn't glass; it was sheet metal.

Still, it was more practical than the chimney stove her family used. Her family's stove was purely for burning fire to keep warm, while the Xie family's could also serve as a dining table.

Oh, and that's not all! If you remove the cover in the center of the table and replace it with a wire mesh, you can boil tea, roast fire, and heat up food.

"Sister Yang Yang, where did you scavenge this from? It's beautiful and practical!"

Zheng Miaomiao was so envious she wanted to get one for her own home, but she could see that this chimney stove wasn't brand new; it definitely wasn't bought at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative.

Xie Yang smiled and said: "It wasn't bought; it was modified from an old chimney stove."

Their bedrooms all had canopy beds, and in the early years, they used hot water bottles and charcoal braziers for warmth.

It wasn't until Mother Xie finished her confinement after giving birth to her that the family scavenged a chimney stove, placed it in the corner of the room, and lit a fire. The flames danced in the stove, and a pot of water was placed on top, which could keep them warm without being too dry, and there was hot water to drink at any time.

And it was much safer than a charcoal brazier—

Because there was a straight, long chimney pipe that could vent the smoke from the charcoal fire to the outdoors through a hole dug in the wall. As long as the chimney was sealed properly, even if the windows and doors were tightly closed, there would be no carbon monoxide poisoning incidents.

Later, as the family's conditions improved, every bedroom was equipped with such a chimney stove.

Before winter set in this year, the old lady took the stoves out of the utility room and wanted to clear the flues before using them, so as not to be blocked by charcoal ash and affect the smoke exhaust.

Xie Yang saw that two of them were rusted beyond recognition. Anyway, currently, only her bedroom needed a stove lit at night to keep warm. Since winter began and the heated kang flue was connected, the old lady no longer went back to the bedroom to sleep; she lived and slept in the main room with the heated kang.

Especially this year, with an additional little cousin who wasn't even a year old, who would want to go back to a cold room when there was a warm, heated kang?

Xie Yang simply dismantled the two rusty chimney stoves, replaced them with some new sheet metal, added some wood, and with the electric welding gun, mallet, and hammer she borrowed from the factory, she went to work and assembled a square chimney stove table, replacing the usual dining table.

Removing the central sheet metal cover made it an ordinary stove, which could boil water and stew vegetables, and you could eat while stewing just like having Hot Pot; putting the cover on made it a dining table, and because there was a fire burning underneath, the food on the table wouldn't get cold; replacing the cover with a wire mesh allowed for boiling tea, heating milk, and warming dry food. You could also put a few raw chestnuts or raw Potato on it, and they would be cooked in a while. If you felt that apples or oranges were too cold to touch, you could also put them on the wire mesh to roast for a while; once they were warm, you could peel and eat them, which was both warming to the stomach and could supplement vitamins.

The lower part of the stove table was designed as a storage compartment for stacking Wood and Coal Balls, saving the trouble of going to the cellar for firewood every day.

With the kang lit in the main room and the stove table, wasn't it as warm as spring and summer?