Struggle Life in the 1970s

In a blink of an eye, it was the fourth day. Because Chu Ye had just recovered from her illness and had little strength, she did not go to the fields to earn work points for the past two days. It was also because of this that she was able to think carefully about what to do next.

In the evening, when Chu's father and mother came home from work, Chu Ye took the initiative to take on the task of cooking.

The stove at home was made of bricks and mud. It had been used for many years and looked very black. Chu Ye first put some dry cow dung in the fire hole, then put some straw, picked up a handful of dry leaves, lit them with a match, threw them into the fire hole, and finally picked up the cattail leaf fan next to it and blew the air gently.

When the leaves are burned, sparks will appear on some dry cow dung and straw. When blown by a cattail leaf fan, the sparks will turn into small flames. After waiting for a while, the fire will gradually grow bigger. Then add some firewood and you can cook.

This skill is a must for any rural child, not to mention that Chu Ye had been cooking for many years after getting married in his previous life and was already very familiar with it.

Then put a little lard into the wok, and when the oil is hot, pour in the chopped garlic. At this time, the strong aroma filled the whole house. Chu Ye added the freshly cut carrot shreds and stir-fried it slightly. The red and green colors alternated and it looked shiny.

Then add water, bring to a boil, and add the sweet potato noodles. After a few moments, the noodles will float up. At this time, the originally clear soup will become white and sticky. Sprinkle some salt and chopped green onions and serve.

Chu Ye scooped out three bowls and brought them to the dining table. An incandescent lamp was hung above the table. The warm yellow light illuminated the room and made the noodles in the bowls look particularly tempting.

There was a little bit of yellow oil on the soup, and the shredded carrots and chopped green onions looked particularly pleasing to the eye. Chu Ye was not too hungry, so he put more noodles in the two elders' bowls.

Noodle soup is not a rare thing. After working outside all day, coming home and drinking a bowl of hot noodle soup can warm your heart and stomach.

After dinner, Chu's father brought up the matter of the matchmaker again. Chu Ye just laughed it off and said it was too late and they would talk about it tomorrow. He then made excuses and coaxed the two elders to go to bed.

Their home is a large square courtyard surrounded by mud walls and two wooden doors at the entrance. When you push open the doors and walk into the courtyard, there is a three-meter-high tree on the left and a well on the right.

The house was divided into the main hall and the side rooms, both with earth-tile roofs. The dining table was in the main hall, with a stove built against the wall. There was a room on each side, with no door, but a piece of cloth hung over the doorway to block the view. She and her parents lived in the two rooms respectively.

Next to her parents' house, there is a small single room, which is considered a side room of the family. Her younger brother Chu Guangyao lives in it. He is only in the first grade of junior high school now, and he has not returned from the middle school in the village these days.

Before her three sisters got married, Chu Guangyao was still young, and her parents were worried about him, so she slept with them. At that time, the eldest and second sisters usually slept in the side room, and the third sister slept with her.

Back then, their Chu family was also wealthy. Chu Ye’s grandfather used to be the village party secretary. Because of this, their yard was built large and spacious.

But when it comes to her father, the family is not as good as before. Her father is not good at studying. He only finished elementary school and insisted on going home to farm. In his opinion, his father is so arrogant as a village party secretary, but he is just farming with the villagers. So he still has to farm after finishing school!

It is better to plant the land early than late!

Later, her mother gave birth to four daughters in a row. Because of this, the villagers spread gossip, saying that Old Chu was incompetent and could not give birth to a son. Chu Ye still remembered that when she was a child, her father smoked a pipe and scolded her mother, "It's all because of you, the goose that doesn't lay golden eggs! You can't even give birth to a son! You make me lose face in the village!"

Such words frightened the women in the family for a time. After his younger brother was born and his sisters grew up, Chu's father hurriedly looked for families with good conditions and married off his sisters one by one.

Because of this, the family received a lot of betrothal gifts, and her father's back was straightened again. Now that he heard that the wealthy Zhao family had chosen Chu Ye, his mind became active again.

Chu Ye knew all this very well.

Hearing the faint snoring from next door, she checked the time, put on a thin cotton jacket, and walked out of the room.

The countryside was silent at night, and the moonlight fell on the dirt road like a stream of gauze, allowing one to see clearly even at night. Chu Ye followed the route he remembered to the place where the accident was about to happen. Occasionally, there were domestic dogs barking on the roadside, but the sound soon died down when someone passed by.

Just a few steps away, there were houses that had not yet gone to bed. Lights were flickering through the windows. In the distance, there were mountains and forests. The wind blew through the dense trees, making a whistling sound.

Chu Ye walked towards the river bank with all her heart. She clearly remembered that in her previous life, a sudden river flood destroyed two old houses.

The houses were the old residences of Zhang and Li respectively. They were the good places that the two families had snatched up, and they were once the talk of the town. But later, in response to the call to build a river bank in the village to collect water and nourish the source, the villagers joined the work in a mighty way.

As a result, the original good place became bad, and since everyone else in the village lived in the east, their two families seemed abandoned. So they simply moved back to the village, and the original house was left idle.

In her impression, these two families rarely went back, and she didn't know what was going on. Not only did they go back together, but they also had the bad luck to encounter such a thing.

On this night in the previous life, two people were washed away by the flood. When the villagers heard the noise and rushed over, they found the two people on the river bank. Although they looked miserable, their lives were not in danger. At most, they were hit by stones and wood in the water, leaving some superficial injuries.

Zhang Bo was overjoyed to see the people coming, and he led everyone to a place with turbulent water, where they found the educated youth who was also washed away by the water. However, they were a step too late, and a large amount of river water rushed into the educated youth's mouth. He was no longer breathing, and before he died, he was still holding tightly to the branches of a willow tree hanging down beside him.

When they pulled him out of the river, they all looked sad. This educated youth was less than 20 years old, so he was really young. But Uncle Zhang in the crowd knelt on the ground and kowtowed to him repeatedly, tears streaming down his old face.

After Uncle Zhang cried and told his story, the villagers realized that it was this educated youth who was quick enough to catch him when the flood broke through the house.

The two were washed into the water together. As they drifted downstream, the educated youth stared at a willow tree on the side of the road and quickly reached out to grab it, thus preventing the two from being washed further downstream.

But this was not a good idea. The educated youth couldn't get up by dragging Uncle Zhang, so they swung him to the shore and let him go up first. After they reached the shore, he turned back to rescue him, but found that he didn't have enough strength to pull a grown man out of the water.

After all, Uncle Zhang is over sixty years old.

Under such circumstances, the educated youth asked Zhang Bo to go first and call more people over so that he could still hold on.

However, by the time he called for help, he had already run out of strength and drowned in the icy river.

-

Half an hour later, Chu Ye saw a house light up in the distance. About 200 meters away, there was another small house with lights on. She was excited. It was not that she had not thought about coming here to inform them of this matter in advance, but it was too unbelievable to say it out of thin air. Besides, the three families did not interact much in normal times. If she suddenly said this, others would only think it was unlucky.

The flood in her previous life occurred in the early morning of March 5th, so she came here early tonight, but she still underestimated the difficulty of walking on the night road. She looked up at the moon and felt that she didn't have much time left.

Thinking of this, she trotted towards the house next to her.

The night air was cold and damp. She could feel her nose and face were frozen. The road under her feet was not easy to walk on. There were piles of grass from time to time in the mud, and there were potholes everywhere.

She did not dare to delay. When she was not far from the small house, the sound of the wind in her ears was gradually replaced by the sound of flowing water. Suddenly, a "bang" came from the distance, and then it was as if a giant beast from the abyss was released, rushing towards her with unstoppable momentum.

Chu Ye was stunned in place, then quickly reacted, rushed forward and slammed the door, shouting anxiously, "Come out quickly! There's a flood!"

After shouting, he continued to knock on the door hard and repeated it again.

The roaring river was getting closer and closer, like thousands of horses galloping right next to my ears, and the next moment, the door opened.

Uncle Li in the room was planning to go to sleep and had even taken off his coat when he heard someone knocking on the door urgently and shouting that water was coming.

He felt disturbed by the noise, so he put on his coat and planned to go and see what was going on. As soon as he opened the door, he was dragged by the people outside and ran ten meters away. At his age, he ran a few steps so fast that his heart almost jumped out of his throat.

Just when he took a breath and wanted to see who was playing a trick on the old man, he heard a loud "boom". When he turned around, he saw that most of the house he was in was collapsed by the river.

"Oh my God! How come there was such a sudden flood!" Uncle Li shouted, and then patted his chest as if he had survived the disaster. Fortunately, he was pulled out by someone, otherwise the consequences would be unimaginable.

Looking around, isn’t that the fourth girl from the Chu family?

"Si Ya, why are you here?" Uncle Li asked in confusion, but Chu Ye didn't have time to explain in detail.

She pointed to a house not far away with a light on, "Uncle Li, is there anyone there? The water is going down!"

Looking in the direction he went, Uncle Li clapped his hands, "Oh! There's Lao Zhang and an educated youth over there! Quick! We have to rescue them."

"Uncle Zhang, go back to the village and call more people over. I'll run over and see if I can save them."

After saying that, the two of them quickly went their separate ways.

The two houses were not far apart, but when Chu Ye arrived, he was still a step too late, and half of Zhang Bo's house was also collapsed.

She called out toward the ruins, but getting no answer, she continued down the river.

-

Earlier, Zhang Bo had arranged for the educated youth to live and was about to leave. It wasn't that he wanted to go back and forth like this, but mainly because all the old houses here were vacated and there was no place for him to live.

It was true that the educated youth who went to the countryside originally lived in a large courtyard. It was a two-story hut made of mud and tiles. This educated youth lived well on the second floor, but who would have thought that only his roof collapsed. It would take a long time to repair the roof and wait for it to dry.

The village chief simply told him to live in a villager's home first. Unexpectedly, he pointed and chose two old houses by the river.

So after work this afternoon, he and Lao Li brought people over. The educated youth took a look and said they wanted to live in his old house. He naturally agreed and helped the educated youth pack up their things. He has been busy until now.

Unexpectedly, just when he was about to go home, the educated youth stopped him and said that he heard a loud sound of water outside. He still didn't believe it, so he was pulled out by the educated youth. As soon as he stepped out of the door, he was swept away.

The current hit the two of them, and in the blink of an eye they were several meters away from the house. When he came to his senses, he realized that the educated youth was still holding his wrist tightly. With a quick move, the educated youth grabbed the willow branch hanging down from the shore.

The two of them just swung in the water for a while.

-

Here, Chu Ye, the river was full of moisture at night. She walked quickly along the shore, and there were many traces of water on her face.

It was difficult to find someone at night, let alone someone who was swept away by the water. She remembered that the male educated youth died by holding on to a willow branch, so she began to pay attention to the trees by the river.

This one, is not.

This one, isn't it?
Just as Chu Ye was staring carefully at the trees on both sides of the river, she noticed with her sharp eyes that a figure seemed to be crawling behind a clump of dark trees not far ahead.

She hurried over, the closer she got the clearer she could see, closer, closer, she could see clearly! It was a wet person climbing onto the shore from the river.

She found it!

When Chu Ye ran over, Zhang Bo had just climbed onto the shore, as if the water ghost had come ashore. She reached out and pulled Zhang Bo over and away from the shore.

Looking at the river again, he saw a weeping willow being held in the man's hand, holding it steady to prevent it from drifting away. At this moment, he was looking at Chu Ye intently.

(End of this chapter)