Chapter 2 Being a Guest
"Are Xiaoru and Deming back?"

A small courtyard with a fence made of branches of varying thicknesses. The gate is made of slightly thicker branches. Some vegetables are planted in the front yard, and there are about a dozen chickens raised in the yard, which are foraging for food.

At the back of the yard, there are three earthen houses built with straw and mud, with thatched roofs and a small thatched shed on each side. In front of the house is a one-wheeled wooden cart, and next to it is a one-meter square millstone.

The people in the house vaguely heard the voices of the boy and the girl, lifted the hand-woven straw door curtain, and came out to greet them.

She was a middle-aged woman wearing a gray top with traditional slanted cloth buttons and blue pants. The clothes were only patched at the knees and elbows. Her head was bandaged with cloth. Her slightly yellow face was already covered with frost, and there were obvious wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but you could still vaguely see that she must have had a better face when she was young.

"Aunt Qin, we're back." The young man Wang Deming was the first to greet her with a smile and wave.

Aunt Qin pretended to complain, but her face was full of smiles. "Your uncle Qin specially arranged for brother Huairu to go to the town to get some liquor. The dishes are ready and are waiting for you to come back and eat."

"Are you tired? Come inside."

Aunt Qin took a few steps forward and greeted Wang Deming enthusiastically. She looked him up and down and directed her daughter to work. "Huai Ru, go get a basin of water for Deming to wash his face. Look at all the dirt on him."

"Oh, I know, Mom."

Qin Huairu shook her braids, rolled up her sleeves, and quickly went to the house to fetch a basin of water and put it on a dirt platform at the door, "Hurry up and wash."

"Hey," Wang Deming happily washed his hands and face, carefully washing away all the dust and dirt from his fingernails, and then washed away the dust on his face. He took a towel made of rough white embryo cloth, and Qin Huairu whispered, "This is what I use."

"Okay." Wang Deming wiped the water off with a smile, returned it to Qin Huairu, and then stepped inside.

Qin Huairu washed her hands and face with the water that Wang Deming had just used. After putting the towel on her shoulders, she sprinkled the water into the garden.

Just as she was about to carry the basin into the house, her mother called out to her, "Huai Ru."

Aunt Qin beckoned Qin Huairu to her side with her little hand and whispered, "Today your father and the leaders of several other mutual aid groups in the village are hosting Wang Deming to talk about farming. We can't go to the table. Your sister-in-law and your nephew are also eating in the east room."

"I left a few pieces of meat for you in the stove. Go and eat them secretly later."

Then he carefully looked up and down his daughter's clothes and asked, "Do you two have any?"

"Mom, what are you talking about?" Qin Huairu blushed and stamped her feet shyly.

Aunt Qin patted her chest and breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good. Let me tell you, the most important thing for a woman is her body. You can't just give it away without thinking."

She secretly glanced at the house. There were people laughing and talking inside. It was obvious that they had started eating. She lowered her voice again, "Xiao Ru, don't think your mother is nagging. Although Wang Deming is an outstanding farmer in the village and many people beg him for favors, what future can he have in the village? In the end, doesn't he also rely on his sister in the city?"

"But she is my sister after all. It's hard to say what will happen in the future. You have to grasp it yourself."

Hearing her mother's words, Qin Huairu's big watery eyes subconsciously glanced at the house and she defended herself in a low voice: "Mom, Deming said that he graduated from high school and will go back to the city to study Chinese medicine to make money. He used to work as a tailor with his sister and could earn more than ten yuan a month."

Aunt Qin curled her lips and said, "Xiao Ru, we haven't been to the capital, so we can just let him come back and say whatever he wants."

"Your family also sent your brother and you to school. Your brother studied for six years before he could finish high school. How could anyone finish high school in just two years? It's good enough that you can recognize all the characters."

"You're still graduating from high school? It's good enough that you can graduate from primary school in just two years."

Qin Huairu didn't want to pay attention to her mother and was about to turn around and go to the kitchen, but Aunt Qin called her back again, and her voice became even lower, "Huairu, a matchmaker came to our house today, saying that she was helping a family in the capital."

"Mom~~~" Qin Huairu was stunned, and then her face changed, "Deming and I."

"Shh!" Aunt Qin immediately put her finger to her lips, "Keep your voice down! You damn bitch."

He glanced at the house again, and heard the sound of people toasting each other. He rolled his eyes at Qin Huairu and whispered unhappily, "How can mom hurt you?"

"Looking good doesn't make you a meal. I don't want you to follow my path."

"How much have your father and I suffered over the years?"

She pushed her daughter and said, "Go to the east stove and eat. I'll tell you more in the evening."

Aunt Qin's face was full of smiles again. She lifted the straw door curtain and laughed heartily, "Deming, you must eat more and drink more today. Our Qinjia Village has depended on you in the past two years."

"Haha, there's not enough food. Auntie, make more."

"That's enough, that's enough, uncle and aunt are too polite."

Thinking about what her mother had just said and listening to the lively scene in the house, Qin Huairu hesitated as she walked towards the kitchen. Was Deming really lying to her? He only graduated from primary school. Did he stop studying because he couldn't go any further?
No, everyone in the surrounding villages praised him for being smart. How could he not be good at studying?

To put it another way, he is such a smart man, how could he be so bad even if he only graduated from primary school?
Who in the surrounding villages doesn't ask him for guidance when farming? When the time comes, he will farm and I will weave, men will farm and women will weave, and we will have a few more children. Qin Huairu suddenly blushed and walked briskly into the big stove in the east.

This stove is actually a small triangular thatched shed built against the wall of the east room. It is not used normally and is usually only used during the Chinese New Year when pigs are slaughtered. Only wealthy families in the village have one.

There were a few small pieces of chicken and a lot of potato cubes in the residual heat stove, a few pieces of cut oven meat in the bowl, and two steamed buns made of half-grain flour. Qin Huairu's nose twitched twice, and she smelled the aroma of the meat with a slight intoxication. She carefully picked up a piece of oven meat and put it in her mouth to chew and taste it carefully.

The roast meat is made from the best pork belly, which is specially marinated to remove the fishy smell and add flavor, and then baked with additional honey.

The meat is crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, and it melts in your mouth. The aroma of fat, meat, and honey mix together to create an indescribable delicious taste on the tip of your tongue.
Humph! This was bought for me by Deming. If it weren’t for me, would you be able to eat such delicious meat?
In the main room in the middle of the three mud houses, you can see dried straw everywhere in the walls, some of which have already been extended out of the walls; various farm tools are hung on the walls, including several sickles, hoes, plows, hemp ropes, straw hats, etc.

There was no canopy on the roof, and bundles of solid straw were exposed outside, with peeled wooden purlins stacked on top of each other on the middle beam.

There is a large eight-immortal table in the middle of the main room, which looks very grand, but the matching stools are obviously mismatched. They are just square wooden stools, some of which are almost falling apart and are tied with hemp ropes.

There were four dishes on the table: chicken and potatoes, scrambled eggs, stir-fried tomatoes and cabbage, and the hardest dish was the Tianfuhao's roast pork mentioned earlier. Some were served on plates and some were served in large bowls. The plates were blue and white plates that were relatively intact, while the large bowls were very rough pottery bowls with cracks on them.

There were two glass bottles of liquor on the table, but less than half of the bottle was left.

Wang Deming pretended to be drunk, "My dear uncles and brothers, please stop drinking. I feel dizzy now."

"Haha," everyone at the table laughed good-naturedly.

Qin Huairu's father had a dark complexion. Although he was less than 50 years old, his face was already full of wrinkles. His skinny upper body was only wearing a jacket, which was empty and exposed his shoulders. His arms were covered with veins. He held a pipe in his calloused hands and took a puff from time to time. "Deming, you have to practice your drinking capacity in the future."

"You are going to be a cultured person in the future. Drinking is definitely necessary when you meet and see off guests."

Wang Deming smiled bitterly and waved his hands, "Uncle, I'm still young, I can't compare to you and the older brothers, and I need to practice more."

"Besides, what's the difference between an educated person and an uneducated person? It's nothing more than reading a few more books." Wang Deming changed the subject and mentioned the purpose of the meal in Qinjia Village. He bowed to the portraits of Mao and Zhu on the north wall and said, "Uncle, we should thank the Communist Party for distributing land, mules, horses, plows and hoes to us."

"The weather has been good over the past two years, and after paying our public grain tax, every family can now have enough food to eat."

"But we don't have any cash. We can only rely on the money from selling eggs to buy oil, salt, sauce and vinegar. We sell the pigs we raise at the end of the year, and the mutual aid group gives us a penny, so each family doesn't have much. If we want to buy a piece of cloth for our family, we have to sell grain again. When the next year comes, we will go hungry again."

"So, the next step is to get some more cash from the fields."

"My idea is this. Let's build a second fence. The northern fence should be 1 meters high to block the north wind. We move the leek roots over there, cover them with woven straw mats, and then cover them with a layer of horse and cow manure." Wang Deming said as he moved the plate on the table to demonstrate.

"In this way, as long as March of the following year, or even February of the lunar calendar, chives will grow. At this time, they are called green chives in the capital, and their price is more expensive than meat. In the past, they were only grown by vegetable farmers in the Guang'anmen and Fuchengmen areas."

"And their method is more troublesome. They have to use a broken house, and it uses water and carbon."

Hearing Wang Deming's words, the smile on Qin Huairu's father's face was as bright as a flower, as if he had seen that the winter leeks were sold at a good price, and the family had extra money to improve their lives. "Haha, Deming, you scholars are the ones who have to do this!"

"The variety of uses for this type of land is one after another. First, earthworms are used to raise chickens and pigs, then pig manure is used to raise fish, and the mud from the fish pond is used for farming."

"Come on, have another drink."

"Haha, Brother Qin, you have to seize such an excellent son-in-law like Deming. All the families with daughters in the surrounding villages are eyeing him."

The table was filled with alcohol, and the leaders of several other mutual aid groups in Qinjia Village began to joke around.

Old man Qin smiled naively, "The children are still young, there's no rush. Besides, isn't Deming still studying in the capital?"

Seeing Wang Deming's face flushed and he was a little shaky, Old Man Qin asked him a series of questions as if he was just chatting casually: "Deming, you've been studying in the city for two years. How many more years do you plan to study?"

"Do I have to study for another four years to finish high school?"

"Are you going to continue living at your sister's house and find a job in the capital, or are you going back to the village?"

"If you really can't make it, go back to the village and farm. You're a good farmer."

Wang Deming seemed drunk, but he forced his eyes open and answered in a daze, "Ah? I'm in middle school? I've already graduated." He quickly calculated the old man Qin's intentions in his mind.

They all knew that he had been dating Qin Huairu since last year. The old couple had never expressed their opinion before and looked like they tacitly approved of it. Why did they suddenly start asking so many questions today?
Did he think that Qin Huairu had turned 18 this year and was old enough to start questioning him? Was he planning to marry her to him?

Although I was not old enough, just 16, I did not meet the requirements of the newly enacted marriage law and could not officially register my marriage with the government.

But in the countryside, no one cares about this. Even if they don't reach the marriageable age, it won't affect the couple's life.
(End of this chapter)