Chapter 654: The '50s Motherhood System (11)

Every day spent hibernating through the winter was very leisurely.

On the day of the Laba Festival, she made a point of rising early to put the eight ingredients she had soaked before bed the previous night—glutinous rice, red beans, kidney beans, lotus seeds, peanuts, longan, red dates, and Job's tears—into a pot to simmer slowly.

When the clouds parted and the sun rose, the Eight-Treasure Porridge, bubbling away in the pot, had thickened; she added a few pieces of yellow rock sugar, and once the sugar had completely dissolved, the fragrant and sweet Eight-Treasure Porridge was ready to be served.

Xie Yang first ladled out a bowl for herself, then portioned the remainder into several aluminum lunchboxes she had entrusted Cao Zhuren to buy for her.

After she stood under the eaves, pondering what to plant in the spring while gazing at the empty courtyard, and finished off a large bowl of hot, nutritious, and delicious Eight-Treasure Porridge, she picked up a bamboo basket, covered it with a piece of dark blue dyed homespun cloth, and headed out.

First, she delivered a portion to the village Party secretary; then, she walked to the township to deliver a portion to Cao Zhuren, and entrusted Cao Zhuren to deliver portions to the Town Mayor and other Cadres.

When Cao Zhuren returned her lunchbox, she gave her a portion of porridge in return: "It doesn't have as many ingredients as the one you sent me; did you really manage to gather all eight ingredients? It's a true Eight-Treasure Porridge! And you added sugar, didn't you? My little daughter has a greedy mouth and a sharp nose; she took one sniff and scrambled to eat the porridge you sent, pushing aside the porridge we made at home."

In this day and age, families who can gather all eight ingredients to cook porridge for Laba are few and far between, let alone those who add sugar.

Xie Yang smiled and said, "That I could escape the sea of bitterness and regain my freedom and a new life is all thanks to the help of Cao Zhuren and all the leaders; I am just happy you don't find it beneath you."

"What are you saying? Who would find such delicious sweet porridge beneath them? Don't be so extravagant in the future; it's not easy for you to live on your own."

As the conversation flowed to this point, Cao Zhuren pulled her over and whispered:

"If you were to meet a suitable partner, would you be willing to see someone?"

The daughter of the Xie Family, who had escaped the sea of bitterness, built a new house, and was holding a large sum of money, was now, at the very least, a hot commodity in the local marriage market.

Families with good conditions were still taking a wait-and-see approach; after all, the Xie family members were all relatively short-lived, and they disliked the bad reputation of marrying an orphan. Furthermore, she had spent ten years at the Zhuang family's place; although she had never been a proper wife to Zhuang Mingcheng, it still affected her reputation to some extent.

But families who were too poor to afford a wife had no such concerns. Why, there were already several women who had come to her, asking her to act as a matchmaker.

However, Cao Zhuren still had some judgment; even if she were to introduce someone to Xie Yang, she wouldn't do it randomly. But truth be told, she really did have one or two candidates in mind she thought were decent.

Xie Yang shook her head: "Thank you for your kindness, Cao Zhuren, but I don't have any thoughts in that regard for the time being."

Cao Zhuren assumed she had been deeply hurt by Zhuang Mingcheng, sighed, and said: "The Zhuang family are truly not good people! They wasted so many years of your life. Well, when you have recovered your spirits and have any thoughts, tell me anytime."

"……Okay."

……

Once Laba passed, the New Year was not far off.

With no work in the fields during winter, the men in the village who had connections went to the township or the County to take on odd jobs, while the women stayed home to wash, dry, and prepare New Year goods, or else they made plans to go to the township to visit the big market.

Xie Yang had also been to the market a few times; it was mainly because the house she had moved into was essentially empty, and with the New Year approaching, she needed to stock up on food and daily necessities.

Everyone knew she had a sum of money; besides what she had spent on building the house and making furniture, the rest she held onto, reluctant to spend, which only invited people to covet it. It was better to spend it generously.

Just in time for the New Year, she bought a few bolts of cloth to make herself some new clothes; she also bought a few catties of cotton to fluff up a new quilt.

If she saw someone selling a New Year pig at the market, she would be quick-eyed and fast-handed enough to buy a slab to make sausages and cured meat, keeping it to eat slowly.

Zhishu Xifu had tipped her off, saying that the village Cadres had already held a meeting and would allocate her a plot of land after the New Year. Although it wasn't the fertile land distributed to the landlords during the land reform, it was still a Paddy Field that could grow rice and rapeseed.

With that, spring plowing would begin after the New Year; if she didn't stock up on some oil and fat, how would she be able to cook for herself on the sly when the time came?

Xie Yang also planned to raise pigs herself, but it was too late for this year; once spring arrived, she would raise one or two, and by the time she slaughtered the New Year pig at the end of the year, she wouldn't have to worry about having no meat for the New Year.

The Production Team wouldn't be established for another five or six years, and for now, households were allowed to raise pigs and sheep. As long as one could afford to feed them, no one cared how many one raised.

But in reality, a household would raise at most one or two; if they had more, what would they feed them? Even if they only fed them pigweed, it still required labor to go out and cut it.

Therefore, although buying Pork was relatively easier in this day and age than in the special era, it was still not easy to buy. The main reason was that there simply wasn't that much Pork on the market.

The meat dishes on the day the roof beam was raised had been bought for her from other villages through Cao Zhuren's intervention.

Xie Yang, however, was not short on pig feed; the wheat bran sifted from grinding wheat flour had already piled up to the point where it had to be stored in sacks. Once she unlocked rice seeds in the future and harvested them to pound into rice for herself, there would also be rice bran. Once she raised pigs, the wheat bran and rice bran would have a place to go.

It was just that she hadn't heard of anyone's sow about to give birth recently, so even though the Pig Pen had been built with the help of the craftsmen when the house was being built, the piglets were nowhere to be found; she could only wait until after the New Year to see.

If it really didn't work out, she would just have to thicken her skin and ask Cao Zhuren for help. After all, Cao Zhuren was the Women's Director of the township and often had to run to various villages to mediate disputes between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law or husbands and wives; the breadth of information she received was certainly wider than her own.

Xie Yang went to the market a few times with Zhishu Xifu and other women, and after buying everything she ostensibly needed, she stopped going out and continued to stay home.

But it was the New Year, after all, so there had to be a festive atmosphere.

She spent half a day cutting a batch of window flowers and writing a few pairs of spring couplets, picking out the ones she was most satisfied with; she pasted the window flowers on the windows and the spring couplets on the courtyard gate and the main entrance.

Don't look at the fact that the original owner was taken to the Zhuang family to be a Child Bride at thirteen; before her father passed away, she had still attended school for a few years.

Although what was taught back then was not quite the same as what was taught in primary schools now, she had learned simple literacy and arithmetic. As for whether her handwriting was good or not, with her parents both gone, there was no way for the villagers to verify it.

The calligraphy style she wrote in now was what she had learned from Song Yanqing in the previous plane, especially after Comrade Lao Song retired and returned to the Farm in Qinghe Village to spend his twilight years; he always loved to pull her into the study to teach her calligraphy and painting, and one could say he became more clingy as he grew older.

Her brush calligraphy had also made rapid progress during that time.

Now, without deliberately imitating his handwriting, the "Fu" characters and spring couplets she wrote off the cuff clearly showed his influence in their bold and elegant brushstrokes.

Seeing the spring couplets and "Fu" characters she had pasted on the door, Zhishu Xifu, who had come to deliver roasted wheat flour to her, was full of praise: "Xiao Xie, did you write these yourself? They are written so well! They are much prettier than what my Liuqiang writes. Would you mind writing a pair for me when you have time?"

Xie Yang naturally agreed: "I would be more than happy if you like my writing, Auntie. If you're not in a hurry, I'll write them tomorrow and send them to your house."

"No need for you to make a special trip; I'll have Liuqiang come over to pick them up. I'll have him bring the red paper over in a while too."