In the days that followed, Yuan Si settled into a quiet life back home. Every day, she went to work with the production team and ate at the canteen on a set schedule. She also finally learned what the green stuff in that bowl of congee really was.
It wasn't wild vegetables. The wild vegetables were all cooked and fed to the pigs; people weren't even in the running to eat them. The green leaves in the bowl were poplar leaves. The women from the canteen went into the woods to strip them from the trees. After bringing them back, they would pick them clean, blanch them in hot water, and then soak them in cold water. They changed the water daily, and after about a week of soaking, the bitterness of the poplar leaves would be gone. When the canteen cooked congee, they would just grab a few clumps of leaves from the large basin, toss them in, and give it a stir to make a pot of vegetable congee.
As for why people ate tree leaves while the pigs got the wild vegetables, it was because, at that time, people were truly less important than pigs. The pigs had to be well-fed so they could fatten up, right?
Yuan Si didn't quite understand this logic, but in this environment, she had no right to question it.
After returning home in the evening, she finally found something interesting to do: learning how to weave straw braids from Zuo Daya.
Weaving braids involved selecting wheat stalks of the right thickness. You would snip off the thinnest part at the top and the thickest part at the bottom, leaving an arm's-length section from near the top. Just like braiding hair, you would weave three stalks together. When you reached the end of a stalk, you would seamlessly add another, weaving the joint right into the braid. This way, you could make the braids very long.
Her mother, for example, was very deft with her hands. With a flick to the left and a flick to the right, she could weave a long section in just a short while. Once it reached a certain length, she would wrap the finished braid around the leg of a small stool, just like winding yarn.
Twenty-four wraps made one *guan*. A *guan* of braids could be sold at the purchasing station for twenty-four cents. Its main use was for making things like straw hats.
Basically everyone in Li Family Village, young and old, knew how to weave braids. However, few were as nimble and skilled as her mother. Her mother could typically finish one *guan* in a day.
Li Family Village had another way to earn money: processing hemp. This required first growing the hemp, then going through several steps like retting, scutching, and drying to produce the fibers. The purchasing station offered a very good price—over two yuan per *jin*.
However, Li Yuansi's family had little land, and it was all used for growing grain, so they had no hemp to sell.
Yuan Si, however, quite enjoyed weaving braids because she discovered she could train her spiritual power by doing it. She tried to use her spiritual power to control the wheat stalks as she wove. Right now, her power was still very weak, not yet at the point where she could make them move exactly as she wished. She could only use her spiritual power to make the stalks bend slightly in the desired direction; the rest still had to be done by hand.
Even so, Yuan Si practiced with great enthusiasm. After controlling the stalks with her spiritual power for ten minutes or so, it would be depleted. She would then switch to weaving by hand and begin to meditate. By meditating after exhausting her spiritual power, she found that her power would increase by a tiny amount each time, and her recovery speed would also improve.
So, she really liked this task that both earned extra money and trained her spiritual power. Every day after coming home, she and her mother would carry their small stools to the doorway, sit down, and start weaving.
"Mom, why doesn't our team grow things like sweet potatoes, the way other teams do?" Yuan Si took the opportunity to ask the question that had been on her mind.
From her observations over the past few days, she had determined that Team Four of Brigade One of Fanxing Commune was not in a geographically favorable location.
First, there was little land and many people. And for some unknown reason, the fields here were only used for two types of crops. One was winter wheat, harvested in late May and early June. Then, for the next season, they would plant corn. The two crops were simply grown in rotation.
As for anything else, that depended on one's own needs. Although Li Family Village had little land, each household was still allocated a private plot of varying size. What to plant in these private plots was entirely up to the villagers themselves.
For example, if a family was preparing for a son's wedding or expecting a child, they would plant cotton on their private plot, and the harvest would be just enough for their needs. If there were no major family events, they would plant wheat and corn on their plots instead.
As for things like sweet potatoes or peanuts, no one on their team grew them. The Third Brigade, not far from here, grew a much greater variety. Every year, if someone in the village got a craving, they would have to trade their own wheat for some.
Yuan Si had looked into it. The current varieties of wheat and corn were not high-yield, so one *mu* of land didn't produce much grain. That was why the people here had such a hard life; they worked tirelessly every day but still couldn't fill their stomachs.
"Sweet potatoes? What's that? It's not proper grain. Who would waste good land planting that stuff?" Zuo Daya said, her expression making it sound like the most obvious thing in the world.
"But they have a high yield! If we planted our private plot with sweet potatoes, the two of us probably wouldn't go hungry all year. Besides, you can even stir-fry the sweet potato vines as a vegetable. How great is that?" 'When you can't even fill your stomach, looking down on this and that isn't a very wise move,' Yuan Si thought. 'Isn't the priority to fill your stomach first?'
Right now, every family in Li Family Village used their land to grow "proper grain," leaving no space for vegetables. They could only squeeze in some loofah gourds or similar plants in the corners by their walls. So, even though summer was approaching, their diet still consisted mainly of wild greens and tree leaves. The fact that there were no fresh vegetables to eat was a marvel in itself.
"Absolutely not. What's been passed down from our ancestors here is to plant wheat and corn. We don't plant anything else," Zuo Daya said, completely unmoved. "And you, you need to settle down. Why are you always asking people about mountains and rivers? What do you need to know that for? Let me tell you, you are not to go anywhere." Her mother had heard that her youngest daughter had been asking people if there were any mountains or bodies of water nearby. She assumed that after leaving home once, the girl had developed a wild streak and wanted to wander in the mountains like the village youths, forgetting how young she still was.
"I know." Yuan Si let the words go in one ear and out the other. 'If I don't find another way to survive, I'll definitely starve to death here,' she thought. 'Those five daily "meals" of vegetable congee from the canteen are so watery, they're gone after one trip to pee.'
But Li Family Village really was in a poor location. The surrounding area was a vast, flat plain, without a mountain in sight. Based on the information she'd gathered, the nearest mountain was over seventy kilometers away, a round trip that would take several days. The nearest body of water was a large reservoir more than ten *li* from the village. It was said that a water ghost lived at the bottom and had dragged a swimming child under a few years ago. When the body was later recovered, there was indeed a dark bruise around the ankle, as if someone had pulled on it from below. Ever since, the story had been blown into a fantastical legend, and everyone was terrified, leaving the area completely deserted.
And that reservoir was the first target Yuan Si had set her sights on. 'I don't believe in any water ghosts,' she thought. 'And even if there is one, I'll just go down there, catch it, wash it up, and toss it in a pot to stew.'
Of course, she couldn't tell her mother about this plan. It would probably scare her half to death.
"You're just as stubborn as your big sister and third sister," Zuo Daya quietly advised her youngest daughter. "When you go out for your work assignment, don't just focus on cutting grass. When you have a moment, wander over to that little grove at the edge of the village. Look at your Second Great-Uncle's eldest grandson next door. Every time he comes back, he secretly brings back a few twigs. I've seen him do it several times."
Another disadvantage of having no mountains was that you couldn't burn firewood freely. There weren't many trees around, making it impossible to rely on gathering branches for fuel. Besides, the trees now belonged to the collective, which meant the branches were also public property. People could only use the corn stalks and wheat straw distributed by the production team each year. But with so many people and so few resources, every family had to be extremely frugal with their firewood when cooking.
Back when the communal canteens were established, every family had to turn in their grain, and their firewood was handed over as well. They weren't required to turn in all of their firewood, though. After all, families still needed to boil water and do other small things at home, so everyone just turned in half.
Zuo Daya was the type of person who always wanted to come out on top. Losing half her family's firewood at once had made her feel uneasy, so she was always thinking about how to go out and gather more things to burn. And now, she was passing that experience on to her youngest daughter.