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Chapter 93 Alone Together (4K)

Just as it got dark, Han Laogou's voice rang out from the loudspeaker of the Zhongping Production Brigade:
"Hello, Xiao Zhang, is the machine on?"

Every time he broadcasts, he starts with this sentence and has to confirm with the announcer whether the machine is turned on. Over the years, he has developed his own unique broadcasting style.

Upon hearing these words, almost all members of the Zhongping Production Brigade pricked up their ears and listened to the broadcast attentively.

On the contrary, when the brigade announcer is broadcasting, everyone will be more perfunctory and not give face, because the announcer usually reads the newspaper step by step to convey the instructions from the superiors. Those news or documents that are too serious are simply incomprehensible to the majority of the members of the Zhongping Brigade, and their brains hurt after listening to them for too long.

But since Han Laogou broadcast the notice personally, it must be related to the specific affairs of the brigade, and the words Han Laogou used in the broadcast were straightforward and easy to understand.

"That~ all the members of Zhongping Brigade~ all the members of Zhongping Brigade~!"

"Ah~ I have something to tell you!"

"After dinner, each of us must send at least one representative to our brigade headquarters hall to attend the celebration party held by our brigade for our Zhongping militia who supported the reservoir project. Each family must send someone, don't be so lazy that you can't walk. The county leaders have already met with us young men, so don't act pretentiously! You all know what's going on!"

"Also, when the production team leaders and accountants of each team come, please bring the plans for slaughtering pigs and distributing meat for the New Year. After the celebration party, the team will try to approve the plans for slaughtering pigs for each team at night. Then, each team can slaughter pigs tomorrow and distribute the meat to everyone as soon as possible."

"Finally, I'll say it again. If any family dares to send crying and quarreling children to the meeting again like I did last time, I will seize all the children. When you parents come to claim them, you must beat them in front of me and then take them back."

"Militiamen from all teams participating in the reservoir project, hurry up after dinner. The brigade has prepared rewards for you. After all, you have brought real honor to our brigade. If anyone doesn't come, I will confiscate the rewards and assume that he doesn't want them."

"Secretary Yang, do you have anything to say? If not, then it's all right. Hurry up and eat. Come back soon after you finish eating. The sooner the meeting is over, the sooner you can rest."

"Xiao Zhang, turn off this machine."

The broadcast is over.

Han Laogou's peasant-like cunning can be said to be fully demonstrated in this simple broadcast.

He knew very well that if the team simply told everyone that there was a celebration party for a group of young men, there was no way these unruly people in his team would be willing to come to the team to show their support. They would be too lazy and would have very sufficient reasons to refuse to attend.

He is either his son or his nephew. He has become so capable that as an elder I have to hold a celebration party for him?
Therefore, Han Laogou deliberately put the matter of slaughtering pigs and distributing meat together with the celebration party. Under this arrangement, everyone may not care about the celebration party, but will definitely care very much about how many pigs their production team will slaughter for the New Year this year and whether the brigade can agree to slaughter them. This involves the question of how much meat they can get during the Spring Festival, which is in their personal interests, so they will definitely go to the meeting.

Not long after Xie Hushan's family finished dinner, Han Hongbing, Chen Daxi, Ma Saner and other three teams of militiamen gathered at the door of Xie Hushan's house and followed Xie Hushan to the brigade hall for a meeting.

They will go first, and grandma will go with Miss Taozi, Auntie, and Daxiu later, leaning on her crutches. In fact, grandma doesn't have to go at all, but her grandson won the red flag, and she was lucky enough to stay in a nursing home for a month. Her grandson also brought things home when he came back. If she doesn't go to the conference to show off these things, she will always feel that something is missing. Grandma's vanity is actually no less than others.

Especially since she had to show off Miss Peach to others and enjoy the envious and jealous stares from other old ladies.

The brigade headquarters meeting hall was converted from a material warehouse in Zhongping Town before liberation. Although it was simple, it had a large space. When Xie Hushan and his colleagues arrived, there were already quite a few women whose homes were close to the brigade headquarters sitting on small stools, busy with needlework and chatting about the gossips of the Dong and Li families.

Xie Hushan and his group of young men were squatting against the wall outside the hall, chatting. After a while, Accountant Zhao rode his bicycle with the high-spirited Ma Laowu on his back. From a distance, Ma Laowu saw Xie Hushan at a glance and greeted him loudly:

"Hu San'er, why can't you speak when you see your uncle?"

Xie Hushan decisively turned his head away and pretended not to see the two old men.

"Hu San'er, your fifth uncle is talking to you." Accountant Zhao's smile became even more exaggerated, and he helped Ma Laowu shout loudly to Xie Hushan again.

Xie Hushan turned his back, with his head facing the wall and his butt facing the two people.

He knew why the two old men were so happy and cheerful before the Spring Festival even arrived.

How could he not be happy? The more than 700 yuan of public funds that he refused to hand over and the public funds in the young widow's hands were now in their hands.

Old Yang told Xie Hushan everything during their chat, and they also made up a lie together with Taozi and the young widow, just to prevent themselves from asking Taozi about the public funds when they came back.

The gist of the lie was that Ma Laowu went to Han Hongzhen to reconcile the accounts and collect the money. After collecting the money, he found that part of the previous sideline income was in Xie Hushan's hands, so he went to Xie Hushan's house to ask Taozi. Unexpectedly, Taozi actually knew the truth, so she took the initiative to hand over the sideline income of more than 700 yuan to Ma Laowu in the presence of Yang Liming, Han Hongzhen and Accountant Zhao.

No matter whether Xie Hushan believes it or not, there is nothing wrong with the procedure of this nonsense.

You, Xie Hushan, are not at home, and the team needs to reconcile accounts and collect money. The person you haven't married yet cannot contact you, so you can only hand over the public funds to the government in the presence of other people witnessing it.

When the money was in Xie Hushan's hands, these two old men dared not be so arrogant to him. Now Accountant Zhao even dares not to lend him a bicycle. How could this be possible before?

"Pick some Der for Uncle Wu. Hey, Accountant Zhao, would you like to eat it? Chenggui, please try it. Would Second Brother like a bite?" Ma Laowu jumped off the bicycle and walked towards Xie Hushan, greeting others while talking to his mother.

He had a very smug look on his face. There were not many opportunities to humiliate this bastard, so he had to seize the opportunity and squeeze him to death. Just think about how this little bastard had squeezed him in the past?
Xie Hushan was so angry that his teeth itched. He squatted on the ground and looked at Ma Laowu who was standing in front of him: "Are you treating this Der as a New Year's treat? You can invite others to eat this thing together?"

"I'm happy to treat you! You little bastard, ah~ The team that repairs cars takes some money from you, it's like asking for your life, you keep calling me Laowu and you keep saying you're two-faced, but you're not enough to show off, you've squeezed me, are you behaving yourself now?" Ma Laowu walked in front of Xie Hushan, put his hands on his hips and looked down at Xie Hushan.

Xie Hushan nodded and forced a smile: "Okay, Ermianfei, you wait, this time it's my bad luck, I admit it, you wait for the next time."

"Just give in, Uncle Wu won't bully you." Seeing Xie Hushan gnashing his teeth but helplessly giving in after being bullied by his words, Ma Laowu nodded with satisfaction and took out two packs of Beidaihe from his pocket:

"The sideline group you led made a lot of money for the team this year, and you led a large group of militiamen to the reservoir to bring back honors for our team. This is a reward from our third team for you."

Xie Hushan was stunned for a moment, he didn't expect that his family got into such a big trouble and almost caused major economic problems for the production team, but Ma Laowu actually rewarded him with two boxes of cigarettes. It turned out that being rich means being generous and generous, and it's not stingy at all.

"Hey, Ermianfei, why don't we have it?" Han Hongbing and others saw it from the side and immediately questioned it with dissatisfaction.

Ma Laowu turned and looked at them:

"What? You guys are also researching homemade airplanes? That was researched by Hu Saner. What does it have to do with you?"

Seeing that everyone was depressed and lowered their heads to try their luck, and they quieted down for a while, Ma Laowu suddenly smiled:
"There are fourteen of you, each of you gets one box. It's in Accountant Zhao's bag. Two boxes for studying the homemade airplane, and one box for riding the homemade airplane. Is that reasonable?"

Everyone nodded and smiled: "It's reasonable, Uncle Wu is very reasonable."

"Hold Han Laoer's box and don't send it out. I didn't hear clearly what he called me just now. I need to listen again." Ma Laowu said as he looked at Accountant Zhao who was taking out cigarettes for the young men.

"Fifth Uncle!" Han Hongbing shouted immediately.

Ma Laowu smiled and said, "Good attitude."

When a group of young men happily squatted at the foot of the wall, opening cigarette boxes and lighting cigarettes, Ma Laowu continued:

"You can't smoke cigarettes for nothing. When the team kills pigs, you have to help. If anyone dares to be lazy and not go, I'll go to your house and take the cigarettes back."

"Uncle Wu, how many pigs should we kill?" Hearing the question of how to distribute the meat in their own team, a group of people looked at Ma Laowu eagerly. Ma Laowu waved his hand, signaling everyone to keep a low profile, and then he walked a few steps towards the door of the hall and deliberately shouted loudly into the hall:
"We can't kill many. Our three teams are so poor that we almost have to beg for food. Just to show our respect, kill fewer. Kill four!"

Ma Laowu's words set the tone for the brigade's celebration party.

During the entire celebration party, Han Laogou and Yang Liming spoke on the stage one after another, but no one from the members attending the meeting sat in the audience to listen. Even the rewards given by the brigade to the militiamen could not attract their attention.

The rewards were mainly certificates of honor, such as Five Good Members, Five Good Militiamen, Model Workers, Youth Activists, etc. These things were just pieces of paper to fool silly boys, but except for Xie Hushan, the young men in the militia brigade all liked these empty certificates of honor.

The only real reward of some value was provided by the commune, which gave each militiaman who participated in the reservoir mission a pair of green rubber shoes.

Han Laogou was giving a speech on the stage congratulating the Zhongping militia for successfully completing the task of supporting river engineering, while the brigade members were discussing another matter enthusiastically below the stage, which was what Ma Laowu said, that Production Team 3 would slaughter four pigs this year.

Both sides were doing their own things and the scene was very harmonious.

In the view of the members of Zhongping Brigade, although each production team's pigpen has a dozen pigs weighing close to or more than 100 kilograms and are eligible for slaughter, not all of these pigs are slaughtered and distributed for meat during the New Year.

First of all, some pigs, like the public grain, have quotas. After they are raised to a sufficient weight, they must be sold to the state. The state pays the production team at a unified price, which is an economic task assigned by the state to the production team collectively.

Secondly, there are some pigs that are sold directly or slaughtered and sold for meat in order to exchange money for the production team to buy seeds, fertilizers and other means of production.

Because Han Laogou had been controlling the number of pigs raised by each production team in Zhongping Brigade, each production team had deducted the two big heads, and there were only a few pigs left in the pigsty.

Therefore, in previous years, when each production team slaughtered pigs and distributed the meat, in the end, each person only got a little over a pound on average. It wasn't much, at most it was enough to satisfy everyone's cravings and have a few treats.

Production Team 3 has a total of 139 people and more than 250 acres of land, but they need to slaughter four pigs for the New Year. Smart people from other teams have already calculated that, assuming a pig weighs 100 kilograms, that would be 400 kilograms of meat. On average, each person in Team 3 will get nearly 3 kilograms of meat.

If a normal family of four or five people can get ten kilograms of meat during the Spring Festival, doesn't that mean they can eat whatever they want?
How much money did Production Team 3 earn this year?

Looking at the members in the hall talking about each other, Xie Hushan sighed.

Ma Laowu was certainly confident. He ran two stalls selling braised pig offal, and relied on the continuous supply of pig offal from the small canteen of the veterinary station. He could earn more than ten to twenty yuan a day at least, and even thirty to forty yuan at most. In the past six months, Production Team 3 had saved more than three thousand yuan from these two stalls, and now it was all in his hands.

Compared with previous years, the sideline group earned more than two thousand yuan, which is a huge amount of money. Not to mention killing four, they wouldn't feel too bad even if they killed two more Ma Laowu.

Didn’t you see that he and Accountant Zhao were so proud of themselves that they were about to fly to the sky?

This year, not only can the three teams eat more meat, but each member can also get more dividends.

After the brigade celebration party, I went home and had a good sleep. The next day, I rested at home for a day and told Han Hongbing about going to Hong Kong Island so that he could be prepared.

On the third day, Xie Hushan had to go on another long journey because today was the Little New Year.

He got up from the kang before dawn. Today he would ride his bicycle with Taozi on its back and send her back to his home in Yakou Brigade. He would also deliver the New Year gifts he had prepared to Taozi's parents and wish them a happy new year in advance.

Then, based on the road conditions, I would decide whether to send Taozi home that day and then ride my bike back immediately, or to stay at Taozi's house for one night and then set out back the next morning.

The reason for doing this is because of local customs. According to the rules, before getting married, Taozi is still a girl from the Jin family, and the girl must celebrate the New Year in her own home.

After getting married, if Taozi wants to go home, she has to wait until the second day after the Spring Festival to go back to her parents' home. When she returns, her identity changes from a relative to a guest.

Xie Hushan originally wanted to take a bus with Taozi, but there was no traffic to the Yakou Brigade, and they had to walk more than ten miles to the nearest stop. It would be better to ride a bicycle for seventy miles than to walk more than ten miles, at least it wouldn't be so cold.

Grandma was reluctant to let Taozi go because she didn't know when she would see Taozi again. Maybe she would have to wait until the slack season next year.

But she couldn't force Taozi to stay with her for the New Year, so she could only wrap Taozi into a ball herself, fearing that she would be frozen and blown on the way, while she kept nagging at the other party.

Taozi was very good at comforting her grandmother. She told her grandmother that Xie Hushan would go to Yakou Brigade to find a place to open a brick kiln after the New Year, and that he would not stay in the brick kiln forever without returning to Zhongping Village. When Xie Hushan had time to go home, she would go with him to visit her grandmother.

In order to prevent Taozi from leaving, Daxiu, who was crying with red eyes, tied a rope around her and Taozi's wrists before going to bed last night. In her opinion, if Taozi woke up and got up, the rope would be pulled and she would wake up immediately and continue to watch Taozi and not let her leave.

It's just that Daxiu underestimated her own sleep quality. Not to mention that she didn't react at all when Taozi got up and untied the rope, even when Xie Hushan and Taozi had finished breakfast and were ready to leave, she didn't react at all when Xie Hushan patted her face.

This extraordinary alertness really allowed her to guard prisoners and she could lose eleven out of ten.

Just as Xie Hushan was doing the final inspection of the bicycle for this long-distance cycling trip, Han Hongzhen hurried over to deliver Taozi and gave her a small bag.

This scene made Xie Hushan a little puzzled. Logically speaking, what Taozi did at the beginning almost scared Han Hongzhen to death, but why did the relationship between these two people seem so harmonious now?

After waiting for a long time for Taozi and grandma, Han Hongzhen finally said her farewell words.

Taozi sat on the back of the bicycle with a small bag on her back. She waved at the two of them and urged Xie Hushan, "Brother, hurry up. Don't let grandma and sister freeze at the door."

After Xie Hushan rode his bicycle out of Zhongping Village, they were finally the only ones left. This was the first time he and Taozi were alone together.

Taozi sat quietly and obediently in the back seat, while Xie Hushan pedaled Yang Liming's bicycle desperately, and the only sound was the rattling of the bicycle chain.

Xie Hushan was afraid that Taozi would be bored, so he wanted to tell a joke. Unexpectedly, Taozi also started talking at this time, and the two people spoke almost at the same time:

"Taozi, can I tell you a joke?"

"Third brother, why did you pretend to be so cool?"

"Ah! It's not this joke. I'll change it for you." Xie Hushan immediately replied.

Miss Taozi is really patient. She hasn't forgotten this incident for more than three months...

Xie Hushan complained in his heart that the girl was waiting until there was no one else around to ask him this question.

I don't know whether this was taught by her grandmother to take care of herself, or if she figured it out on her own.

It's not easy to fight.

If it were an ordinary person, they would definitely be caught and then slowly trained, preparing to live the life of Laozi Shudao Mountain.

Who is Xie Hushan? He immediately sold out Yang Limin, who had slept on the kang, to attract Tao Zixi's attention:

"Taozi, Lao Yang told me about what you did when I was not at home. He even asked me to go home and teach you a lesson, but I did not listen to him."

(End of this chapter)