The Fiery Era: Starting from Longxugou

"Boss, eat some steamed buns! Don't just eat vegetables, they won't fill you up!"

Seeing her eldest son only picking at his food, Liu Guiying handed him a cornbread.

"Why!"

Zhao Shi'an was happily eating noodles and soup when he heard his mother's words. He agreed and took the yellowish-brown cornbread.

I took a bite, and it stung my throat a little, but fortunately, the original owner was already used to it, so it wasn't unacceptable.

While eating, Zhao Shi'an would occasionally look around at his home. The room where they ate was small, about thirteen or fourteen square meters, and the ceiling was very low.

The base of the wall was blackened, and the wall surface was yellowish-white. It was soaked by rainwater and looked terrible, with patches of mold and mildew. The exposed parts of the wall revealed weeds and reed leaves from the adobe bricks.

The roof beams were blackened by smoke, and things were hung haphazardly on them.

The corn was strung together and hung on the beams, with the outer husks not completely removed; several layers of tender husks remained. The weather in Beijing was too cold to peel the husks off like in the south, leaving the golden-orange corn stranded and hung outside. Keeping it indoors would easily attract dust, so leaving the tender husks on to dry would allow for longer preservation and also prevent dust accumulation.

Several strings of dried garlic hung next to the corn.

Two willow baskets hung from the roof beam, bulging with contents. According to the original owner's memories, there were many vegetable seeds and various dried vegetables, such as dried green beans and dried sweet potatoes.

In the inner room, near the stove, there was a large water vat with cracks on its body and several loops of hemp rope wrapped around it.

Connected to the stove was a kang (a heated brick bed) that took up half the room. Near the head of the kang was a large wooden box containing the family's clothes.

The window in the inner room was very small, and the small squares of the window frame were inlaid with a lot of broken glass, and even more so with old newspapers pasted on it. It was almost noon, and although the sunlight was shining in, the room was still a bit dark.

Zhao Shi'an withdrew his gaze and then looked around at his surroundings.

The eight-immortal table where they ate was limping, with two bricks placed underneath. The large kitchen cabinet near the door on the east side was the only intact piece of furniture in the house, a gift from the original owner's carpenter grandfather.

The cabinet was taller than a person, with pots and pans on top, two small drawers in the middle, and grain storage underneath.

He knew that this contained several months' worth of food for his family, as well as some wheat flour.

Last November, flour coupons were officially issued in Beijing. During the trial period of the policy, my family stockpiled six bags of flour, each weighing fifty jin (25 kg), for a total of 300 jin (150 catties).

We only eat wheat flour at home during festivals and holidays; the rest of the time we eat corn flour.

In more than half a year, he hadn't even finished one bag of flour. He gave the other five bags to the villagers who sold sesame cakes and pan-fried buns, and made a small profit from the five bags of flour.

Next to the cabinet was a large earthenware basin filled with large chunks of coarse salt.

Zhao Shi'an understood why his family, despite being so poor, had hoarded so much stuff.

Those who have experienced the collapse of the legal tender and the gold yuan will understand that money in hand is just a piece of waste paper, far less important than exchanging it for hard currency such as grain, salt, or cloth.

What puzzled him was that the original owner had said that life was getting better and better.

Why does he still look so poor?

Putting everything else aside, this mud-brick house is so dilapidated that it's almost a dangerous building, yet people still live there. It's extremely depressing to be inside!

This dilapidated house was only recently repaired and reinforced.

Before the land reform, their large family lived in a shack. After the land reform, the vegetable market bully's courtyard was divided among the three families. Their home was renovated over a long period of time on the basis of the original dilapidated adobe house, and it is now in its current state.

Previously, the living conditions were even worse.

Looking at the surroundings, Zhao Shi'an frowned deeply.

When he was a child, he lived in a half-brick adobe house built by his grandfather. At that time, he did not think the house was small. But when he grew up, he felt that the house was too low and somewhat oppressive.

These houses, built almost entirely of adobe, are much lower than half-brick adobe houses, and the feeling inside is even more oppressive. Looking up and taking a look, excluding the main beams, the ceiling height is only about two and a half meters, much lower than the ceiling height of modern buildings.

It's not that we don't want to build tall, it's just that the conditions are limited, and tall adobe houses are prone to collapse.

After looking around, Zhao Shi'an couldn't help but sigh, "This place is truly destitute!"

"Boss, eat your food, then take a nap. You have school this afternoon!"

After dinner, Liu Guiying told her eldest son to take a nap.

"Hey! I'm going to take a nap, I'm actually a bit sleepy. Dad, do you want to sleep too?"

Zhao Shi'an nodded, then looked at his father beside him and asked.

"Go to sleep! I'm not sleepy!"

Zhao Youtian waved his hand as he spoke.

"Okay, I'm going to sleep now!"

As he spoke, Zhao Shi'an walked into the inner room.

"Big brother, I'll go with you...hehe!"

Zhao Xiaoyue was about to say that she wanted to sleep with her older brother, but before she could finish speaking, her mother glared at her and stopped her.

Zhao Xiaoyue chuckled and ran out the door to go play with her younger sister at her second uncle's house.

Zhao Shi'an went into the inner room and found that the wooden box at the west end of the kang (a heated brick bed) had been worn smooth.

There was also a broken flowerpot on the stove, in which garlic was planted, and the garlic sprouts were growing quite well!

After looking around the inner room for a while, Zhao Shi'an took off his shoes and got onto the kang (a heated brick bed). The meal had just been prepared, and the kang was still warm. He lay down fully clothed.

The question that had puzzled him earlier was gradually pieced together from the original owner's memories.

After the land was divided among the family members, life did get much better. When the land was first divided, the family had no money, and the government gave them relief funds.

But there are so many places to spend money: repairing houses, buying seeds, buying farm tools, and even carts—all of these are places that cost a lot of money.

Fortunately, once we got the equipment, the family's burden was reduced. Except for the first year when we had to buy seeds, we saved our own seeds after that.

Although the capital city is located on the North China Plain, the weather is much colder than in his hometown, and the climate of this era is also much colder than in modern times.

Currently, crops in Beijing are harvested only once a year.

His family are vegetable farmers, responsible for providing vegetables to the city.

If you only grow vegetables, you can harvest three crops a year. Turn the soil in March, and around the spring equinox, start planting spinach, chives, coriander, scallions, garlic sprouts, etc.

These vegetables are fast-growing and can be harvested in April or May. After the harvest, other common summer vegetables such as green beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes can be planted.

After the harvest, continue planting autumn vegetables: Chinese cabbage, radish, green onion, etc.

Therefore, the family rarely grows grains, only planting peanuts, soybeans, sesame, corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes in the corners.

Besides satisfying my younger siblings' cravings, I can also exchange them for products like tofu and sesame oil.

With such a hardworking family, they should be living a good life.

After all, their family were vegetable farmers, and vegetable farmers in the capital city at that. In his mind, which vegetable farmer near the city didn't own several houses? But the original owner's family was too poor!

He soon realized that the vegetables of this era were all old varieties, and production could not be increased.

Take the green beans that terrified countless people born in the 1980s and 1990s across four provinces, for example. In this era, even with proper care, the yield of green beans per mu was just over 1,000 jin, which is several times less than the modern yield of 5,000 to 6,000 jin.

Although vegetable prices are acceptable, production is low, so you can't earn much money per acre.

In addition, they didn't have much land, so their income was naturally low. His family only had 2.2 mu of land in total, and his second uncle's family had less than 2 mu.

Although the average person in the suburbs of Beijing received 1.2 mu of land during the land reform, the vegetable plots were different, with each person receiving less than half a mu.

If it weren't for the fact that my parents did odd jobs everywhere during the off-season, life would have been even harder!

In this era, relying solely on growing vegetables is enough to keep you from starving.

Seeing that even with land, the family was still struggling, Zhao Shi'an couldn't imagine what life was like before liberation.