There is Room for Rebirth in the 1950’s

Chapter 10 The Farmyard

Zhang Dayou and his brothers chose the foot of Beishan Mountain. There is a lot of wasteland in this place. When the children grow up, they can continue to build next to it. It is also convenient to pick stones at the foot of the mountain. In addition, it is far away from the entrance of the village, so the whole family can hide on Beishan in case of emergency, so the three brothers helped each other build houses in the village, and they could hear them shouting loudly from 100 meters away.

The house of Zhang Dayou's family is closest to the foot of the mountain, so the walls are also the highest, all of which are cut from large blue stones, a typical northern courtyard.

The vermilion gate was just painted last year when a wedding was held. When you enter the gate, you can see three fruit trees planted on the east and west sides of the yard, and two jujube trees on the west side. The trees are many years old and were transplanted directly from the mountain. , the tall leaves can also shade part of the sun in summer.

Not far from the west wing, a tall grape trellis was set up, and a large bluestone table and a few stone stools were placed under the grape trellis. In summer, the family also likes to sit here to eat and take advantage of the cool.

The persimmon trees on the left near the kitchen were also transplanted from the mountain, and the fruits of these three trees make the children of the family very happy every year.

A well was built not far from the tree. With this well, the family does not have to go to the village to fetch water for many years. In addition to washing clothes and going to the river at the entrance of the village, this well meets the needs of the family. Because the children in the family were young, the wellhead was built high and covered with fast iron plates.

The open space in front of the East and West Wings is well-leveled. In addition to drying corn and sweet potatoes, there are also dried wild fruits harvested in autumn, mushrooms, fungus and other mountain products. The whole yard is very clean and organized.

On the left side of the courtyard, there are three rooms against the fence, which are the outer kitchen, and the second room is a small warehouse, where there are dried vegetables in the autumn, pickles jars eaten in winter, and a small amount of coarse grains. In the last utility room, there are farm tools, baskets, broken pieces, etc. at home. There is also a cellar in the kitchen, which is on the Ming Road, where the whole family's coarse grains are kept.

A small cellar was also dug in the east wing of Zhang's father and Zhang's mother. No one except Zhang's father, Zhang's mother and Zhang Guoqing knew about it. Here are the hidden wealth of the family, such as a pair of gold bracelets and two gold rings that Zhang's mother married as a dowry, and a box of jade pendants, jade plaques, jade rings, etc. that Zhang's father kept secret when he liquidated the landlords in the village, and some Before liberation, I exchanged wild things for 3 gold bars and 2 packs of silver dollars, as well as more than a dozen wooden ornaments and jade ornaments that Zhang's father had privately collected, some of which were cracked.

Xiao Guoqing once asked Zhang's father, and he didn't know if it was worth it after hearing what Zhang said. He just followed his father to the landlord's house to deliver prey when he was a child. I just saw the landlord wipe it carefully, he guessed it was quite valuable.

Mother Zhang's dowry gold bracelet is going to be given to her sister-in-law a hundred years later, and the two gold rings have already been given to her two sisters as dowry.

Zhang's father told Xiao Guoqing that he couldn't say this, otherwise he would be robbed and sent to jail. He also promised to let him pick half first, and the rest will be divided among the three brothers after a hundred years. He is also smart and never told others.

Next to the kitchen is the East Wing, which has three rooms. This is where the eldest Zhang Guofu's family lived. Now the child is young, the eldest nephew is over 10 years old and lives alone in a room, the 8-year-old second and third twins live in a room, and the younger niece lives with the elder brother and his wife.

Five west wing rooms were built on the right side of the front yard, and the first two rooms were for the second child, Zhang Guoqiang, who lived in a spacious room with only two children.

The last two belonged to the third child, Zhang Guoqing. Last year, when he got married and set up a new house, he directly opened up these two rooms and built a suite. Those who come and go in the village don't pay attention to sitting on the pit, Zhang Guoqing knows that Zhou Jiao has a little cleanliness. A small living room and a study are arranged directly outside, and the bedroom is not easily opened, and usually enters the bedroom from the small living room.

The room in the west wing was vacated by Zhang’s father, who used it as a granary. In the dead of night in the countryside, the children’s cries were especially loud. The second child was small, and the second daughter-in-law had a big mouth. It was also possible to avoid using it as a granary in the middle. The two brothers had a conflict.

The two rooms in the east wing of the main landlord are the bedroom and the warehouse of the old couple. Mother Zhang specially puts dried pheasants and hares, as well as some fine grains, eggs, dried red candies, bacon and mountain products, etc. Only Mother Zhang has the key here, and no one else can enter. The second daughter-in-law wanted to go in and was scolded several times by Zhang's mother. Except for Zhang Guoqing, no one in the family has entered this warehouse.

The eldest daughter-in-law, Zhang Cuilan, also only has the key to the kitchen cellar, and there are only two of them, one of which is still in the hands of Zhang's mother.

As for Zhou Jiao, who became pregnant right after she got married, she would not reach out to take things back to her natal home. Except for her grandparents, it is impossible for her to sneak into the uncle's house.

In addition, the 300 yuan gift money given by the Zhang family plus the 500 yuan for buying three turns and one ring, she only bought a brand-name sewing machine for 220 yuan. She already had a watch in her hand and did not buy a new one. It's probably new. When she got married, she brought the cloth her grandmother gave her, her clothes, and the wardrobe wooden box arranged by her grandfather.

The Zhang family is not divided, but the daughters-in-law of each house can keep it for dowry. It is said that the 800 yuan is calculated from the 300 yuan gift money of the Zhang family boss to the 500 yuan of the second child. I don’t know how it was calculated. Anyway, the third child is 800 yuan. Yuan, if it is less, he makes up more by himself, and it is the third house's private possession.

For this reason, I heard that the second child, Zhang Guoqiang, and his wife had a fight, because the second daughter-in-law Lin Juhua did not even have a suitcase and married in clothes without patches. The second child was angry. Thinking about 500 yuan, my heart hurts. I borrowed my elder brother's bicycle.

So Zhou Jiao added more than 300 private house money later given by Zhang Guoqing, and the cash is estimated to be close to three thousand less than the sum of the whole family.

No one knows the money except Zhang Guoqing, who is afraid that others will miss it. Especially when his family asked him, he also insisted that he only had 300 dowry money and 100 yuan left over from the dowry plus Zhou Jiao’s private house money, which was less than 500 yuan. How much money, such as how much Zhou Jiao spent on him before, when she was pregnant to buy snacks, when and what money was spent, no matter how confused others are.

In fact, except for the pension that grandpa asked to keep secret, someone with a heart still calculated it. For example, her mother-in-law should know how much she has, but she is clever enough to fool everyone.

In addition to eating and chatting with the whole family in the main room, there are two rooms in the west wing on the right. These are the rooms of the two sisters of the Zhang family. Except for occasional visits when they come back to live, they are basically vacant. Relatives and guests from home live in it.

Going out of the main house to the back, the back yard will be bigger, at least three times the size of the front yard. The entire backyard is divided into three parts, in addition to growing vegetables, there is also a piece of land for sweet potatoes and potatoes in the middle.

In every corner of the fence, loofahs in summer, pumpkins in autumn, and winter melons are crowded together, and pumpkins can be used as staple food and are the most grown.

There is a row of thatched houses built in the right corner of the back of the mountain, and there is a simple kitchen inside, which is used for roasting pigs. There are 2 pigs in the pigsty next to it, and about 10 chickens are raised in a small open space not far from the pigsty, because they are afraid that the chickens will run away.

The thatched hut on the left wall of the backyard is the toilet at home. For convenience, the ground was paved with bluestone to make a squat pit like the one in the city. The only thing is that it will be very comfortable to finish the hut inside in winter in the north.

A few steps away from the toilet, there is a back door through the wall, which is used to go directly to Beishan to collect firewood. If you want to go to Beishan, you don't have to rush out the main entrance and go around in circles and go out the back door directly.

The whole family started to collect firewood in autumn in Northeast China. Firewood will be needed throughout the winter until next spring when the snow melts, let alone firewood for several kangs in the family.

It is not easy to get briquettes in the countryside, not to mention that the firewood on the mountain is free, and no one will go to the city to buy briquettes for burning. On the contrary, the city will buy firewood for burning, and now there are some people in the village who labor to chop firewood and sell it in the city.

After the first snowfall in Northeast China, cat winter began. Every household tried their best to collect firewood, prepare winter clothes and food. It is not convenient to go out during the cold winter months. Now that winter is just beginning, you can go to the city to buy grain at a high price or exchange fine grain for coarse grain. The Zhang family has been collecting firewood for the past few days to satisfy their hunger by hunting pheasants and rabbits. The Zhang family has worked hard, and now there are several piles of tall timber not far from the back door of the backyard.