Chapter 435

Xie Siyang said, "Director Su, do people live in this place? I guess these are empty, abandoned courtyards; people should have moved away long ago."

"Who doesn't repair their courtyard wall? How can one live like this?"

Gao Peixia said, "You don't particularly understand the situation in the countryside. Some people don't even have courtyard walls, only a single cave dwelling."

As they were talking, Su Yang had already pushed open the dark wooden door of the cave dwelling and walked in.

Under the dim light, an old woman was sitting cross-legged on the kang doing needlework.

Hearing someone enter, she put down her work and asked, "Who is it?"

Su Yang said, "Auntie, we are staff from the county, here to visit and understand the situation. We mainly want to ask you, in a situation like yours, has the village issued you any relief grain, or those relief clothes, etc.?"

The reason he called her Auntie was because elderly people in the countryside work in the fields for a long time, and under the wind and sun, they look particularly old, so she looked very old, but her actual age was probably around sixty.

The old woman doing needlework immediately got off the kang and found two enamel tea mugs on a cabinet with peeling paint nearby, "You are cadres, right? Sit down, I'll pour you a cup of tea."

She offered seats very enthusiastically, but in this cave dwelling, there was only one small wooden stool.

The other two just sat on the edge of the kang.

The three of them didn't sit. Su Yang said, "We just ate, so we aren't thirsty right now. We just want to ask about the situation."

The old woman said, "I heard there were relief clothes and grain and such, but we haven't seen any grain at all. I heard that after it was brought over, it was taken to the grain station."

"Clothes are always taken to the village to be distributed, but after passing through the village head's hands, all the wearable clothes are gone. They gave them to their own relatives to wear. I've lived half my life and have never seen any."

Su Yang continued to ask, "Then how many people are in your family? How many mu of land do you have?"

The old woman said, "There's only me left in my family. My husband and son are both dead. Although there are still more than ten mu of mountain land, I'm old and can't farm it anymore. I only planted one mu of potatoes in the field next to it, just barely enough to eat every year."

Hearing this, Xie Siyang said, "Then didn't they give you a quota for a poor household or something, giving you some relief grain every year? How many households in the village live alone like you?"

The old woman said, "There are quite a few like me. There's an old man at the west end; he originally had two sons, but they went out to work in the coal mines a few years ago and didn't come back."

"So life is also very difficult, and now he's almost at the point of going out to beg for food. As for what you mentioned, we haven't seen any of it at all. These are all decided by the village head and the others."

Xie Siyang said very angrily, "See that? These people are simply not human; they don't even let go of these relief items."

Gao Peixia said, "These are actually common in the village. Regarding poverty alleviation and the like, you have only seen the tip of the iceberg. The tricks involved are even more disgusting than you imagine."

Su Yang looked around the cave dwelling; it was all old-fashioned wooden furniture, and it looked like the kind from more than ten years ago, because the locks used were the old-fashioned kind, the brass locks that needed those long keys to open.

The so-called furniture was just a pair of large wooden chests, a three-section cabinet, and then nothing else.

With conditions like this, they are 100% poor households and households enjoying the five guarantees, yet they weren't given a quota in the township and village.

Xiushui Xiang is poor, but there are definitely none with such poor conditions. Even though she was so financially strapped, the old woman was still busy making tea for them.

Su Yang took out the 100-plus yuan he had in his pocket, "Old lady, we have other things to do, so we won't stay here long. I came out in a hurry today and didn't bring much money, so just take this 100 yuan to buy some rice and flour."

Seeing this, Xie Siyang directly took out several hundred-yuan bills from her bag and stuffed them into the old woman's hands.

Gao Peixia also wanted to take money out of her pocket, but Su Yang said, "Maybe we'll visit a few more families, and if we encounter someone even more difficult than this old lady, you'll have a place to contribute."

The old woman thanked them profusely. These few hundred yuan exceeded her annual income. She kept saying words of gratitude and sent the three of them out of her courtyard, which had no walls.

Before leaving, Su Yang asked for the old woman's name and learned it was Li Qihua, and then they continued to the next house.

After visiting several families in a row, Su Yang chose to visit those that looked like they had dilapidated courtyards or were only cave dwellings. Sure enough, not a single one of the poorest people in these villages had ever been helped by poverty alleviation.

Some people didn't even know what poverty alleviation was, and they didn't know at all that the government had such policies.

What made Su Yang feel most angry was a family with an old couple, both over 70, and one of them was paralyzed on the kang, completely losing the ability to work.

Such a family was a proper poor household among poor households, because compared to the old lady at the first house, they didn't even have the ability to grow potatoes at home. They were eating fried flour.

So much so that when Xie Siyang saw the bowl of fried flour on the head of the kang, she was a bit dazed and asked Su Yang, "What is this?"

Su Yang said, "This is wheat that has been fried, then taken to a flour mill to be ground like flour, and then it can be used as daily rations."

Speaking of this, Su Yang suddenly asked the old man, "Grandpa, is there a mill nearby?"

The old man said, "There is one that was installed in the last few years, but grinding flour costs money, and it's very expensive. We all push the stone mill ourselves."

"I'm not afraid of you laughing at us, but my health has been getting worse these past few years, and I don't even have the strength to push the stone mill. This fried flour was pushed last year."

Xie Siyang had never eaten fried flour. She took a bite and said, "Take a bite, it feels okay, but eating it as a staple food every day, I'm afraid it's hard to handle."

"Grandpa, how do you usually eat it? This is too dry and choking."

The old man said, "We usually don't eat in the morning. At noon, we pour some boiling water and stir it, and then we can eat it."

"At night, we pour some water and drink some fried flour paste, and that's it..."

Xie Siyang's eyes widened directly, "Grandpa, do you just eat this? How can you eat this year after year?"

The old woman looked outside with dull eyes for a while and said, "What else can we do? If there's nothing to eat, we can only eat this, otherwise we'll starve to death."

Gao Peixia asked, "Didn't you go to the village committee for your situation? You completely meet the conditions for a poor household. Didn't they give you any poverty alleviation grain? Even two bags of flour a year would be fine."

The old man said helplessly, "They did give us a quota for a poor household, and they did give us flour, but after he finished pressing his fingerprint on the roster, they took the flour back, including the two times we received clothes."

Finally, the old man said very sadly, "They all say the Party's policies are good, but in the end, they are all good for them, and we haven't seen any of it."

Gao Peixia took out 100 yuan from her bag, "Old lady, take this 100 yuan first to buy some daily necessities."

This time, Xie Siyang took out at least seven or eight hundred yuan from her bag and stuffed it into the old man's hands.

The old man's hands were trembling with excitement. His originally dull and empty eyes suddenly became spirited. Perhaps this was the hope for a future life he had seen.