Chapter 22 Trouble
Qin Huairu's eyes flashed with thought: "De Ming originally wanted to tell me a good news."

"But suddenly, Uncle Yan came to our house and called him away. He insisted on taking him up the mountain to watch the kiln. Deming said he would tell me when he came back."

".But I see Deming is very happy, so he should tell me about buying a house in Beijing, right?"

Hearing her daughter's words, Aunt Qin looked even more satisfied, with a hint of complacency on her face, but she continued to instruct Qin Huairu: "Well, Xiaoru, let me tell you, you must find out the truth about this matter! Do you understand?"

"As the saying goes: Marry a man to get food and clothing. My daughter is so pretty, she should go to the city to enjoy a good life."

"If you continue to marry into the countryside, your mother is the best example. She faces the black earth and works hard, making fire, washing clothes, cooking, feeding chickens, cutting grass, and farming. She has to get up before dawn every day to work and is busy until the evening. She may not even have a full meal at the end of the year."

Aunt Qin took Qin Huairu's hand and showed her palm: "Look at my hands, the palms are full of calluses, and the backs of my hands are full of frostbite cracks, these are all caused by working hard."

"But it's different in the city! You've been to the city before, isn't it just cooking a few meals and washing a few clothes every day?"

"When the baby is born, I can just take care of it. Compared to life in the countryside, it's a blessing."

"By the way, we have to ask Widow Yan how much the bride price is willing to give. The family in the city is willing to give 10 yuan, Yan, well, Wang Deming's family can't pay less than this!"

Qin Huairu was speechless when she heard her mother's mercenary attitude. She retorted helplessly: "Mom, the capital city is not as good as you say. You have to make money as soon as you open your eyes, otherwise you will starve!"

"Deming once told me: Beijing is a big city, and it's not easy to live there. There's a saying: Poor Deshengmen, bad fruit market, and blind Taoer Hutong."

"If you don't have a stable job in Beijing, you have to do odd jobs. If you don't work for a day, you won't have anything to eat the next day, and the only food you have is cornmeal steamed bread."

"And even jobs are divided into different levels: the first-class jobs are definitely for educated people, which are both respectable and well-paid. Just writing a few hundred or a thousand yuan a month can earn you a lot of money, and you can also hire people to help you. The lowest-class jobs are for men who do hard labor, such as pulling rickshaws or working as porters, and for women who make soles for shoes, sew socks, and button buttons."

“It’s hard.”

When Wang Deming arrived at the mountain, he first checked the blue brick kiln. By observing the smoke exhaust port, the bottom floor, the kiln door, and the fire viewing hole, he also took the water adding record written by Grandpa Yan every day for the drinking water kiln.

He turned around and said to Uncle Yan and several village cadres with a relaxed smile: "Uncle Yan, you have done a good job. There has been no problem so far. This furnace brick will definitely be fired very successfully."

Wang Deming pointed at the kiln and said, "Didn't I tell you before? Compared with red bricks, blue bricks have an extra process of 'going down the kiln to drink water'."

"If we don't add water and let the bricks in the kiln cool naturally, the bricks that come out are red bricks, which can't be sold at a high price. But if we add this extra step of 'putting water into the kiln to cool', the bricks that come out are green bricks, which can be sold at least five times more than red bricks!"

"The principle is actually very simple. By adding water, the air inside the kiln is exhausted. At the same time, the kiln is sealed and the pressure inside the kiln is maintained to make the bricks more compact."

"So the reason why the green bricks were not fired properly and turned into green-red bricks is actually because they were not sealed properly. If they were sealed properly, they would not need to be put into water all the time."

Uncle Yan was relieved. "That's good. I was afraid that I wouldn't do well and let our village's hope of making money go to waste."

"Deming, I don't understand what you mean by air or pressure. Why don't you teach it to other young people in the village next time? Young people learn things quickly."

Wang Deming looked at Uncle Yan and then at the other village cadres, and smiled indifferently: "Uncle Yan, you can teach this to anyone. Don't even think about how many years we can make money from this earthen kiln in our village. When we make money in the future, we will definitely build a more advanced kiln: with better sealing and more bricks produced at one time."

"But I'm thinking this way: our village doesn't have much food in stock right now. We've only had enough food for two years. Strong laborers must still focus on growing food. We need to have enough food. So, I asked you to find an older person to do the kiln work. Apart from mixing mud and making bricks, everything else is a meticulous job."

"Besides, the older you are, the more careful and cautious you are in doing things. Didn't I just say that the most worrying thing about burning green bricks is that the kiln is not well sealed and the water is not drained in time?"

Uncle Yan glanced at the village cadres covertly and laughed heartily: "Haha, Deming, you are still scholars! By the way, Deming, where is the kiln for burning cement?"

"The cement is already half-burned. Let's put on our masks, mix the gypsum and iron slag in according to the ratio I wrote, grind them up, and continue burning!"

As soon as the cement kiln was opened, a cloud of dust blew out due to the pressure, making Wang Deming and his group covered in grayish-white dust.
A group of people wearing masks broke the dry finished product that had been burned into a lump and moved it out. Then, they used a large stone mill from the mountain and pushed it to crush it bit by bit. They then added iron slag and gypsum, crushed them together, mixed them, and put them into the kiln. They added coal, started the fire, and continued to burn.

Wang Deming's body and hair were covered in dust. Fortunately, he wore a mask. "In two days, when the kiln temperature drops, the cement will be ready. We can transport it out and grind it into powder for use. Of course, the cement we burn is definitely not as good as that produced by Tangshan Qixin Cement Factory. They are a big factory, and both the crushing of raw materials and the temperature of the kiln are much better than ours."

"But our cement is definitely enough to build houses in the countryside."

"Haha, that's enough, that's enough!" Uncle Yan's heart was filled with excitement and energy. Restarting the kilns on the mountain to make bricks would make much more money than farming!
Uncle Yan had calculated in his mind before that these kilns could produce 5 bricks each, and three kilns could produce 15 bricks. If a brick was sold at 2 cents, that would be 300 yuan a month, and more than 4000 yuan a year! It was a huge sum of money! Each of the 40 households in the village could get at least 100 yuan by the end of the year!
Oh my goodness, good times are coming! By the end of the year, every family can buy new fabrics and make new clothes!

"Ahem!" A village cadre wearing glasses took off his glasses and wiped them: "Uncle Yan, it's a good thing that the kiln is firing again. Should we report this to the township?"

"This kiln on the mountain should belong to the collective property of the village. If we finally make some money, should we hold a meeting to discuss how to distribute it?"

"Comrade Deming, you are the proposer and main promoter of this kiln. Can you please tell us your opinion first?"

Wang Deming's gaze wandered back between Uncle Yan and the village cadres. After a moment, he laughed and said, "Uncle Yan's opinion is my opinion." What the hell is going on?

He would never get involved in such things. He had to spend money to buy the green bricks and tiles fired in the village kiln because of this.

"Uh"

Uncle Yan's face darkened and he waved his hand: "What's there to report? We have our own way in our village, there's no need to report to anyone!"

"Uh"

"Besides, since it belongs to the village collective, we can just distribute the profits to each household!"

The bespectacled cadre subconsciously pushed his glasses up on his nose and continued to persuade: "Uncle Yan, the key is that some families in our village have few people and don't contribute, while some families have many people. If we divide it this way, won't anyone be dissatisfied?"

"If he is not satisfied, let him come to me! I am the representative of the poor in the Farmers' Association, so come to me if anything goes wrong! You just ate a few mouthfuls of a full meal and you don't even know your last name? Why do those with more people in the family always take advantage of those with fewer people in the family?"

"."

"What? It's not enough that you've taken advantage of the farmland, but you still want to take advantage of this? What do you want to do? Do you want to be the landlord?"

Uncle Yan's words embarrassed the village cadres, who were still trying to explain: "Those families do have few people, and they are weak and sick and can't do heavy work, so they lend their own fields. This is a good thing, right? Won't they still have food by the end of the year?"

"What the hell is helping each other?"

Wang Deming just watched this kind of thing coldly. His impression of the countryside of that era was actually the people's commune. Was it the bloody fingerprints of Xiaogang Village that allowed the land to be secretly distributed to each household?
As a result, after he came to this era, he found that the land in the village was actually divided according to households, and it was not a big collective at all.
Of course, although the distribution of land to each household was fair, there were always families with more able-bodied laborers; some had less, some suddenly fell ill and were unable to farm, and some were just lazy.
So the state has started to set up mutual aid groups in rural areas this year.
The village cadres were speechless after being rebuked by Uncle Yan, and turned their attention to Wang Deming: "Comrade Deming, you studied in Beijing and have seen a lot. Do you have any other suggestions?"

"Oh, Uncle Yan, I suddenly remembered something I need to tell my mother. I'm going down the mountain first." Wang Deming made up an excuse and slid down the mountain. I'd rather stay away from this kind of thing than get involved in this mess.

As soon as Wang Deming entered the courtyard, Wang Shuqin was shocked by her son's dusty appearance: "Oh, why are you covered in so much dust?"

I quickly went back to the house and took out all of Wang Deming's spare clothes: "Hurry up and go to the river to wash them. Take off your inner and outer clothes and change them. Before it gets dark, I'll wash them for you and hang them up."

Fortunately, the weather was still hot. Wang Deming took his clothes to the river, dived into the water, and then used the soap he brought to wash himself thoroughly, and then washed his clothes.

As a result, when he got home, his godmother Wang Shuqin complained to him: "Deming, why are you a grown man washing clothes? You are still a cultured person!"

"Let mom wash it next time."

Wang Deming hung the clothes on the hemp rope in the yard and responded with a smile: "Mom, isn't this a convenient thing to do?"

"Hey, come over and eat."

When Wang Deming entered the room, he found that he and his godmother were the only two people, and there were two sets of bowls and chopsticks on the table. He asked curiously, "Mom, Xiaoru is home? Why didn't you stay for dinner?"

Wang Shuqin brought the steamed buns to the table, sat opposite Wang Deming, and picked up the chopsticks: "It's inconvenient for her to stay here when you come back, so I gave her 2 kilograms of white flour and let her go home."

"Besides, Mom has something to tell you."

".Deming, did you know that Qin Huairu went to the city for a blind date?"

(End of this chapter)