Rebirth 1977 Great Era

Chapter 1065 Visitors from Inner Mongolia: Envy, Jealousy, and Hatred (Bonus Chapter for Monthly Tickets: 32K)

"Guests from Inner Mongolia?" Fang Yan was slightly taken aback.

The only person I know in Inner Mongolia is my brother-in-law.

Could it be that my brother-in-law's family has come?
"Yes, she's from Inner Mongolia. She was a fellow educated youth who went to the countryside with your sister. She also returned to the city with her husband, but they said they came back a bit late, and the good policies from back then are no longer in effect. Now they can't get a household registration in the city."

"Your eldest sister and brother-in-law are not home today. They haven't left either, saying they want to wait until your eldest sister and brother-in-law come back tonight to meet them."

"Oh..." Fang Yan breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing this, as long as it wasn't her brother-in-law's family.

Those people are a bunch of weirdos.

When my brother-in-law wanted to leave, they refused to let him go, saying that the family would lose a laborer if he left. In the end, my younger brother gave them all the money he had, paying for the value my brother-in-law would produce for them in the future, and only then did they let him go.

Just like that, her brother-in-law and family stopped having any contact. Fang Yan thought they had shamelessly come knocking on their door again.

It turned out to be a female educated youth who had returned from studying with her elder sister.

They just came back a little late; it was already the end of May 1978. The policy had changed not long after my older sister and her family returned last year.

The approval process for changing agricultural household registration to urban household registration ("non-agricultural household registration/commodity grain household registration") will be significantly tightened. Furthermore, after a rural resident marries an urban resident, their children's household registration will be forcibly transferred to the rural spouse's name.

This is the "Regulations on Handling Household Registration Transfers" issued at the end of November 1977, which explicitly restricted the conversion of rural residents to urban residents.

The household registration system was strictly frozen from 1978 until the temporary residence permit system was introduced in 1984.

It primarily affects married families of educated youth sent to the countryside, and also extends to cross-provincial urban-rural marriage groups.

Fang Yandajie returned to the city in 1977 (see Chapter 231) just in time for the policy window, while those who returned to the city in May 1978 were already subject to new regulations.

The core of this policy is to control the size of the urban population through the household registration system, which objectively creates a dilemma for many educated youth families who are separated.

The eldest sister's family avoided restrictions by returning to the city early, while others who returned late became typical cases of being trapped under the new policy.

He greeted Lao Hu in dialect:

"Let's go over for dinner. We'll have stewed chicken tonight."

"Okay." Old Hu didn't stand on ceremony; given their current relationship, there was no need to refuse a meal.

Huang Huijie said to her assistant, Xiaolin:

"Xiao Lin, go and call the Yanjing Hotel and ask them to send over some seafood."

Fang Yan said to her:
"We have enough food at home, so we don't need to cook seafood, right?"

Huang Huijie said:
"We have guests at home, so let them try some seafood. There aren't many restaurants in Beijing that serve fresh seafood, so let's treat them to something special."

After saying that, she turned to her assistant, Kobayashi, and said:

"By the way, have them prepare it over there and deliver it when the time comes."

"Okay!" Xiaolin nodded and then went to make a phone call to order food.

Then Fang Yan and Lao Hu's family walked home.

The sidecar motorcycle isn't parked at the entrance yet, so the older sister probably hasn't come back yet.

My brother-in-law is busy every day, I don't know if he's come back yet.

Upon entering the courtyard, Fang Yan heard the sounds of children chasing and playing.

Crossing the front yard and entering the main yard, you see Mingzhu playing with three children in the yard, while Anton stands to the side, grinning as he watches the group of children chasing each other.

The family cat was already perched on a tree, peering out cautiously at the bewildering behavior of the human cubs.

As for the three dogs in the house, they followed the children in the yard, as if they wanted to join in.

Upon seeing Fangyan return, they immediately wagged their tails and ran over.

The children in the yard noticed the newcomers. Besides Fang Yan and Old Hu, there were two bodyguards, Cui Changshou and Li Chuanwu, behind them. These two men exuded a fierce aura, and the sight of so many unfamiliar faces left the three children speechless.

The boy standing in the middle was about seven or eight years old. The faded blue polyester shirt he was wearing was obviously ill-fitting, with the cuffs rolled up three times and extending past his wrists. There were crooked patches sewn on the back of the collar, which was obviously made from an adult's old clothes.

But what's most eye-catching is the brown leather belt around his waist, worn down to reveal frayed edges, yet still firmly holding a palm-sized leather quiver, inside which are several toy arrows made of reed stalks, with faded eagle feathers glued to the fletchings.

The little girl on the right has two thick braids, with red ribbons tied to the ends, glistening with an oily sheen.

She was wearing dark blue work pants with patches at the knees, the stitches fine and neat, clearly her mother's handiwork, but the cuffs were rolled up high, revealing the dark brown skin around her ankles, a stark contrast to her fair calves.

What's even more special is the silver bracelet on her wrist, engraved with blurry cloud patterns, its edges polished to a shine, clearly an old object passed down through generations.

The little boy on the far side hid behind his sister, only showing half of his face.

He was wearing a military green jacket with a blackened collar, but around his neck hung a wolf tooth pendant tied with a cowhide rope. The tip of the wolf tooth still had some mottled bloodstains, as if it had just been polished.

His shoes were the most interesting; they were a pair of Liberation shoes with worn-out soles, but the uppers were embroidered with small Mongolian yurt patterns in colorful yarn, the stitches crooked and uneven, revealing a clumsy earnestness.

The three children's faces all had a healthy rosy glow, a mark left by the wind and sunshine on the grassland.

Mingzhu whispered a few words to them, and the three children immediately relaxed.

They greeted each other in their local dialect.

The boy in the middle clutched the hem of his shirt and took a half-step forward. Suddenly, as if remembering something, he straightened his back, puffed out his chest, and shouted in Mandarin with a heavy grassland accent, "Uncle, hello!"

The address had a distinct Mongolian ending. After he finished speaking, he lowered his head somewhat embarrassedly.

Fang Yan smiled and replied:
"Hello there!"

The little girl on the right was more outgoing. She imitated how adults greet guests, slightly curtsied, and called out in a clear voice, "Hello, Uncle!" The silver bracelet on her wrist jingled with her movements, and she tugged at the child behind her.

When the little boy hiding behind his sister was pulled out, he nervously pursed his lips and suddenly raised his hand to give a crooked Young Pioneers salute. However, the sleeve was too long and almost hit his own face.

He said awkwardly:
"Hello, Bayart!"

She realized she had misspoke after she finished speaking, and quickly corrected herself in Mandarin, her face turning bright red.

Fang Yan chuckled and ruffled their hair, replying:
"Hello!"

Then let Justice and Pearl say:
"Alright, let's keep playing."

As a result, the righteous child immediately reminded him:
"Master, it's time for class!"

I'm speechless at the dialect. Kid, you don't need to be so cursive, do you?
He said:
"We have guests at home today, so we're giving you the day off."

The righteous boy nodded, but it was impossible to tell whether he was happy or disappointed.

After spending a lot of time with the dialect, Zhengyi unconsciously started to imitate it. The poker face was the first thing he learned. Except when he was playing and acting like a child, he always imitated the dialect like a mini version.

At this moment, the noise outside was heard in the room. Zhu Lin lifted the curtain and saw Fang Yan and the others returning. He immediately whispered to them:
“My older sister’s fellow educated youth who were sent to the countryside together have arrived and are waiting for her and her husband to return.”

Fang Yan nodded and said:

"Old Hu and the others just told me."

After saying that, he lowered his voice and asked:
"By the way, have Mom and the others come back yet?"

Zhu Lin pointed towards the kitchen:
"You're back. You're cooking in the kitchen. The chicken you ordered for stew has been prepared and they're stewing it now."

Fang Yan pointed to the main hall:
"I'll go say hello first, then I'll go check on the kitchen."

Zhu Lin nodded, and then let Fang Yan and Lao Hu enter the main hall together.

A young couple was sitting in the main hall.

Their clothes had been changed to the common styles found in the city, but their faces still showed traces of herdsmen, just like the children outside. The woman was an educated youth sent to the countryside, and the man was a local herdsman.

Their features were even more pronounced than when my older sister and brother-in-law returned years ago.

The woman was wearing a blue floral polyester shirt with a red badge that read "Serve the People" pinned to her collar, and like most intellectuals, she had a pen pinned to her chest.

The pen cap has been worn and faded, indicating that it has been used frequently.

The man was very tall, about 185 cm, with thick limbs and hands that were much larger than others.

As soon as Fang Yan and his companion entered the room, the two of them stood up.

“This is my husband’s dialect,” Zhu Lin greeted them.

"Hello, host!" the man greeted the man in dialect somewhat reservedly.

The woman then extended her hand and said:
"Hello, Comrade Fang Yan! My name is Zhuang Shan, and this is my husband, Batel."

Fang Yan shook hands with her and noticed that the other person's hands had large, deformed knuckles.

"Hello, hello, welcome to my home!" Fang Yan said to them with a smile.

Then Lao Hu and the others greeted the couple and started chatting.

Zhuang Shan clutched the faded "Certificate of Return to the City for Educated Youth," the edges of the paper frayed with sweat. She said:
"We set off from Baotou in early May and endured several days of crowded, slow-moving trains..."

"We finally managed to get hard seats on the third day, and the kids slept half the night on the luggage rack."

“I originally wanted to go with your eldest sister,” she said, her voice lowering, “but that winter, Batel took on the commune’s lambing duties, which delayed us until spring…”

Before he could finish speaking, Batel suddenly slapped his rough hand on his knee: "It's all my fault! I had to wait until those lambs were weaned!"

Zhuang Shan was quite angry, and she said:

“When we got to the police station, they said that only those born before December 1977 were considered ‘old educated youth’,” she said, twirling her pen cap in her hand. The faded cap looked like a piece of sheep bone under the light. “Those of us with herder family members are considered ‘cross-provincial rural marriages.’ The policy says that… the children’s household registration must be with the rural family.”

Suddenly, Batel pulled a sheepskin notebook from the hidden pocket of his Zhongshan suit. Inside were three crumpled grain coupons. He complained:
"We went to seven or eight subdistrict offices, and they all said they didn't have any quotas,"

He muttered, sounding somewhat aggrieved:

“One cadre said, unless… unless I change my Mongolian name to a Han name and pretend to be a migrant worker from Hebei.”

Zhuang Shan said:

“We just wanted to find Fang Jie and Brother Yuanchao, to ask them if they had any ideas. Brother Yuanchao was just an ordinary herdsman back then. After he came back with Fang Jie, it hasn’t been long since we last met, and he’s now a technical police officer in the city bureau…”

Fang Yan glanced at his wife, and the two exchanged a look. They both sensed a deep resentment, envy, jealousy, and hatred in her words!

PS: I got another 100 monthly votes, so after finishing this chapter, I still owe everyone 32000 words.

There will be more this afternoon.

(End of this chapter)