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Chapter 101 How can this be considered a robbery?

On the 27th day of the twelfth lunar month, Xie Hushan and the young Taoist priest brought Master Luo to the Yaowang Temple and asked him to celebrate the New Year with the young Taoist priest and rest for a few days. After the New Year, he would take several members of the third production team to choose a location, soil, and wood.

Xie Hushan listened to Taoist Luo's rambling on and on, saying that a brick kiln is not something that can be built casually, and that you have to build it wherever there is good soil. There are three types of soil: red soil and yellow soil, and the best soil is red soil, followed by yellow soil. There is also something else: the best firewood is the hawthorn tree, which is both durable and easy to burn.

It might be because Taoist Luo rarely saw people and spoke in the mountains for many years, but now when he saw people, he couldn't stop talking and kept talking to Shen Mo all the way. Shen Mo changed his temperament and listened to his fourth senior brother quietly.

On the 27th day of the twelfth lunar month, the men, women and children of Zhongping Brigade no longer had to be taken by the rickshaw drivers of various production teams to the county town or other markets to buy New Year's goods.

The annual grand opening of Zhongping Supply and Marketing Cooperative has finally arrived.

It’s not that the supply and marketing cooperatives are closed on normal days, but they are mainly open for daily operations. The shelves inside are mostly empty, and only the common non-staple food condiments such as oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and farm tools are guaranteed to be supplied.

Not to mention bicycles, sewing machines, radios, watches and other popular and fashionable gadgets that require indicators, even clothes, cloth, shoes, hats and other daily necessities are very scarce, and the occasional batches are only in small quantities. Therefore, there are basically no busy scenes with traffic or crowds of people in the supply and marketing cooperatives on weekdays.

Only on the 27th day of the twelfth lunar month, from that day until the Spring Festival, the Zhongping Supply and Marketing Cooperative is packed with people.

The hall connecting the six rooms was packed with people. To put it in an exaggerated way, it was not suitable to wear new shoes to enter because you could not bend down to pick up the shoes if someone stepped on them.

Why are there so many customers these days? Because these days there is no need to use connections or backdoors with the supply and marketing cooperatives of the various communes to get quotas and purchase goods.

The county supply and marketing corporation will arrange a batch of limited-quantity commodities under the "rationing system" to be put on the shelves of the supply and marketing cooperatives in each commune to meet the material needs of the rural masses during the New Year.

There are clothes, shoes and hats, cotton, cloth, pork, fish, soy products, etc. Of course, there are usually 20 to 30 bicycles and a dozen watches, which are in-demand fashionable goods. As for whether you can buy them, it depends on whether you have a quota or connections.

Members of some production teams that slaughter fewer pigs and distribute less meat can now take out their supply and marketing cooperative certificates and queue up to buy cheap fish and meat with money.

The limits vary according to the different centimeter output values ​​of each commune. In Zhongping this year, an adult laborer can line up with a supply and marketing cooperative certificate and buy three kilograms of meat, two bundles of hairtail, and ten kilograms of soy products at the same price as a worker in the city.

Farmers are delighted to be able to spend the same money as city dwellers and buy daily necessities that city dwellers can purchase without restriction once a year. This shows how much this group has given and sacrificed for the industrialization of the motherland.

As for the supply and marketing cooperative certificate, it is a product from many years ago. Basically, every household in the production team has one. Even if you don’t buy these things, you still need a certificate when buying farm tools to prove that you have joined the cooperative and are a member of the cooperative.

Many members and their families may wait for these few days all year long, hoping to buy some cloth and make new clothes for their children during these days.

After Xie Hushan settled Luo Laodao in Yaowang Temple and asked Aunt Wu from the sideline group to prepare an extra vegetarian dish from the veterinary station cafeteria every day for Shen Mo to pick up, he returned home.

When I got home, the west room where I lived was already filled with noise, like frogs having a meeting.

On the kang, Han Hongbing, Chen Daxi and five or six others were playing poker. Under the kang, Ma Saner, Wu Shuanzi and others were squatting and playing chess, while the other few people were giving advice to two bad chess players.

Although they seemed to be having free time, they were actually waiting for Xie Hushan to come back so that he could take them to the supply and marketing cooperative to go shopping.

Why wait for Xie Hushan?
Because the person in charge of the supply and marketing cooperative, Director Zhang Wen, was an old acquaintance who had worked together on the construction site for three months, they were planning to have Xie Hushan take everyone to find Old Zhang to openly build relationships and use the back door.

What can a group of young men who are old enough to get married buy? They just go to Lao Zhang to build up their friendship and see if there is anything important that can be purchased for their marital happiness, such as a radio, a sewing machine, a bicycle, or even a wardrobe with a mirror. These things are props that can help get high scores when going on a blind date with a girl.

Seeing Xie Hushan enter the house, the militiamen who had been waiting anxiously in the house immediately stood up and pushed Xie Hushan out without saying anything. They took him straight to the supply and marketing cooperative. Xie Hushan didn't even have time to say a word to his grandmother before he was pushed out the door of his house. He could only shout to tell his grandmother that he was going to the supply and marketing cooperative, and then spoke silently in the crowd:
"Brothers, let me ask if you need my grandmother to take some with you..."

"I've been waiting outside your house since six in the morning. I've already asked for you. You don't have to buy anything for Sixth Grandma. Auntie and Daxiu have already lined up." Han Hongbing put his arm around Xie Hushan's back and urged him:
"Hurry up, my dear Xie Siling. Although Lao Zhang and I have been comrades for three months, we can't waste time like this. If all the goods are sold out, our friendship will be useless."

"Why don't you believe me? Didn't I tell you that when I take Han Lao Er to Hong Kong Island to deliver the cattle, I will bring back the radios and watches for you. There's no need to fight with everyone for anything now." Xie Hushan patted Dahei who was running beside him and said:
"Only Dahei trusts me. You are worse than dogs. Ever since I told Dahei to steal a young wife for him, he has brought me two bellybands for women from somewhere. His loyalty to me is second only to Lao Meng."

"With Dahei's awareness, Lao Meng will take over Siling in the future. I would feel sorry for Dahei if I don't give him the position of deputy commander. It's useless for me to be so nice to you brothers. Who has ever held a woman's bellyband for me?"

"You make it sound easy. I bought it for you. It's a place that even Monkey King has not been to. What if Commander Xie loses it? If you lose it, the money I used to marry a wife will also be lost. Where can I go to cry?" Wu Shuanzi whispered beside him.

Xie Hushan looked at Wu Shuanzi and patted him on the head: "Wish me a good thing! If you don't lose the money, there's no hope for you and your sister-in-law. Give up, I've heard everything."

A group of militiamen nearby also laughed out loud. Wu Shuanzi cursed in frustration: "Damn it, I don't know which gossiping old woman said that I watched women bathe every day, and that I delivered wood ash to my sister-in-law once a month... My sister-in-law and my aunt treat me like a hooligan. This old woman who spread gossip is so immoral, she will not die a good death, God will punish her..."

"Shuanzi! Be kind! Look at it more positively." Xie Hushan patted Wu Shuanzi's shoulder earnestly and said, "What if the other person is kind-hearted? Don't keep cursing and swearing. It will make you look uncultured and more likely to be single."

"What a fucking bastard!" Wu Shuanzi became angrier the more he thought about it.

Ma Saner was chewing a frozen persimmon nearby and was more concerned about the bellyband issue:
"Xie Siling, does the bellyband that Dahei brought you look good? Can you show it to me?"

"What the hell are you looking at? Why are you so curious? Are you treating me like a rag?" Xie Hushan was quite curious when he heard Ma Saner's words, and cursed in dissatisfaction.

Those two pieces were Han Hongzhen's bellybands. When she was at the market, she met someone selling brightly colored scraps of cloth. She bought a bunch and went back to sew several bellybands out of the scraps. She gave two to Taozi. The small bag she gave to Taozi that time was these things.

Nowadays, rural women don’t have any underwear. The older ones don’t care about it. It doesn’t matter if they wear it or not, because no one will see it anyway. In order to avoid protruding nipples, young girls and wives wear a bellyband under their clothes to save fabric. It is a common underwear for young women in rural areas.

Han Hongzhen kept two for herself, thinking of washing them and hanging them up. Aunt Wu hung them next to the stove for her to roast while the stew stall was lighting a fire to boil the water before dawn. This way they could be dried and put away without having to wait for the sun to come out, to avoid the embarrassment of being seen by men.

It is true that there are no men out and about before daybreak, but there are those who walk in the dark night.

Every day before dawn, Dahei would smell the aroma of braised pork and walk around the braised pork stall. He knew that he should not steal other people's braised pork, so he just came to smell the aroma to satisfy his craving.

When it arrived that day, Aunt Wu was going to collect firewood. When Dahei saw that there was no one at the stall, although he was not allowed to steal the stew, he saw two rags hanging next to the stove. As a member of the third team, he should do his duty for the third team. With the spirit of "if you don't pick up something, it will be lost", he picked up the two bellybands and left, wagging his tail.

Go directly to the second stop of the day, Xie Hushan’s home.

Every morning, if Daxiu didn't live with her grandmother, Dahei would definitely come to visit, because he knew that Xie Hushan was good to him and always gave him a few bites of steamed bread during breakfast.

That's how the bellyband came into Xie Hushan's hands.

In the afternoon, when Han Hongzhen closed her stall, Xie Hushan returned the bellyband to her and confessed to her all the facts of Dahei's crimes.

Han Hongzhen didn't say whether she believed it or not. The young widow asked the fool Lao Meng.

She thought Lao Meng would not lie, so she asked Lao Meng whether Dahei would steal things.

Lao Meng is worthy of being his deputy commander.

His grandmother had no foresight at all. Her eyeballs were almost blinked out, but Lao Meng didn't notice it at all. She even made him squint and rub his eyes quickly.

Lao Meng told the young widow in a confident tone: "Commander Xie did not lie. Dahei is really good at stealing things."

If we just say this sentence, there is actually no big problem. The problem lies in the additional statement that Lao Meng made to prove that Dahei stole something:

"I've seen it steal watermelons. Commander Xie told it to steal whatever it wanted. It's really a thief."

After Lao Meng finished speaking, the young widow never paid any attention to him again until now...

Xie Hushan also liked Dahei. In order to thank it for stealing the rag, he paid for two meat bones at the veterinary station and had a meal with Dahei, sharing them equally.

"Where can we get so much money to buy foreign goods? Taking into account the time it takes to go to the reservoir, and deducting all the funds reserved for famine relief, we only get a little over 180 yuan." Chen Daxi said to Xie Hushan from the side.

The militiamen next to them also nodded. They were all about the same age, around 18 or 19, just starting to earn money, and had all worked in the reservoir. Adding it all together, their annual income was probably similar to that of Chen Daxixi.

A laborer who works intensively, especially in a harvest team, would only receive a little over 180 yuan after all deductions throughout the year.

Not to mention Taozi and his colleagues in the Yakou Brigade, who worked extremely hard all year round, but in the end, they found themselves owing a huge debt to the country.

"I said I spent money to buy it?" Xie Hushan said to everyone dissatisfiedly.

Chen Daxi asked in confusion, "No money? Commander Xie, are you planning to treat Hong Kong Island as a county restaurant and yourself as a translator? Are you going there to rob people?"

Then I imitated the lines of the translator in "Little Soldier Zhang Ga":

"Don't even mention eating a few of your rotten watermelons. I don't even ask the price when I eat at a restaurant in the city."

Xie Hushan said righteously: "Hong Kong Island belongs to our country, right?"

A group of militiamen nodded vigorously: "Yes!"

"Is it occupied by the British now?" Xie Hushan asked again.

Everyone said, "Yes!"

"We will get it back sooner or later, right?" Xie Hushan continued to ask in a persuasive manner.

A group of young men patted their chests and said, "Of course, if we are needed that day, we must be the first to go!"

Xie Hushan looked at them:

"Then when I go back, I will first take back some of the things that originally belonged to us, and I will not take them for myself. I will return the things I have taken back to our production team as a collective. How can this be considered robbery?"

(End of this chapter)