Lijuan thought that since she was going to the county seat, she had to dress up beautifully. She didn’t expect that in the county seat, she would be described as a country bumpkin, which was embarrassing.
Xiulan sneered in her heart and wondered how Lijuan could get foodstuff in those kind of clothes.
Foodstuff was a precious and expensive thing, and even if you didn’t have to eat it yourself, would you give it to others then?
Even if others would want to share it, it must be given by kind-hearted people who see how pitiful others were.
But what about Lijuan? She was dressed like that which was like going on a blind date. Who would pity her and give her foodstuff?
Xiulan thought to herself and didn’t say anything. She just let Lijuan go to suffer this time so that she wouldn’t have to say some sarcastic words every time she sees her coming back, as if it was so easy for her to go to the county seat and beg.
Soon after Lijuan left, she also went to work.
That day, she received the task of cutting rice.
The summer harvest season was ongoing now.
The production team had two harvests every year, one in summer and one in autumn, and they planted rice twice every year.
The summer harvest was happening in August, and the autumn harvest was in October.
After the summer harvest, the public grains would be handed over and left to the collecting team, and the remaining grains would be distributed for the first time within the year. The autumn harvest was the same as the summer harvest, and the remaining grains from the public grains would be handed over for the second grain distribution.
Now that the summer harvest was happening, after a busy period of work, the first grain distribution could be carried out and the family would have grains to eat.
Therefore, at that moment, the people in the production team were full of energy in their work, and they were looking forward to being able to finish their work early and share the food with their own family after turning over the public grains.
***Original translation is from enchantesstranslations.com. Please read it on the translator’s website.***
Everyone was almost exhausted and if they couldn’t get foodstuff to eat, it was possible that many people would starve to death.
August was the time of the year when the sun was the most vicious, and everyone would get severe sunburn when they were working.
Looking at the members of the production team who were sweating and working hard, Xiulan also mustered up her energy and cut rice together with them.
Most of the rice cutters were women and children. Men were responsible for carrying the cut rice and sending them to the rice field, and then there were team members who were specifically responsible for threshing.
Carrying a load was heavy work, so women couldn’t do it and only the male team members could.
Because the work was heavy, relatively speaking, the work points would be a little more. Especially if you did a lot of heavy work, you could get full work points in a day.
The more work points you got, the more foodstuff you would get at the end of the year. Even if the work was tiring, men were still happy to do it.
Especially in some families, where the labor force was small and there were many children, they could only earn more foodstuffs by doing heavy tasks and earning more work points.
After a busy morning, Xiulan, on the pretext of going to the toilet, hurriedly took out the sunblock from the space and applied a little more to herself to prevent tanning.
During the lunch break, the production team had sent wowotou to everyone.
For people who had been working all morning and were a little dizzy from hunger, it was undoubtedly an emergency.
When they got the wowotou, some took it home to eat and went back to rest as well, and some sat under the shade of the tree beside the ridge. A group of people would eat wowotou and chat together.
There were no entertainment activities these days, and everyone liked to chat together when they were resting.
Xiulan also found a shady place and sat down alone, but instead of eating the wowotou sent by the production team, she took something to eat from the space.
At noon, she ate something casually. She ate a vegetable bun and an egg, then drank a glass of milk.
After eating and drinking, she planned to lie down in the shade of a tree and sleep for a while, so that she could regain her strength and do more work in the afternoon.
Before she could lie down, she heard a loud cry. She looked in the direction of the sound and saw several children surrounding the two children.