Chapter 179 Wine, Cabbage, Meat, Vermicelli This Is Called Chinese New Year!
On New Year's Eve, Hong Gouzi's family moved into a new yard. This year Hong Gouzi made a lot of money. Relying on the palace's urine collection business, Hong Gouzi could earn six to seven taels of silver a month, and his income in a year was seven
Eighty taels.
With a family income of seventy or eighty taels, he belongs to the middle-income class in Beijing. The Hong Gouzi family has made a class jump from a large courtyard in a slum area to a small courtyard with a single family. In this small courtyard, regardless of the rooms,
How much, but the rent is not low at all. It's nearly two taels of silver a month, and ordinary people can't afford it.
"Second brother, let the children who are helping us move the house have a meal. Mom and your sister have prepared the meal." Hong Gouziniang came out of the kitchen and said to her son happily, asking him to take everyone with him quickly.
Get ready to eat.
Today, there are a total of thirty people helping Hong Gouzi move, which is considered a large team. These people are all relying on Hong Gouzi to make a living. If the boss moves, they will definitely not be able to move here.
Normally when young men come to Gouzi's house, they don't get anything to eat. But it's different today. It's New Year's Eve and it's a housewarming ceremony, so it doesn't make sense not to have food.
After a long drink, he asked his friends to quickly serve the food. After a while, the young men brought four large basins of stew and two baskets of steamed buns from the kitchen, and then cooked them on the table set up in the yard.
"Don't move your chopsticks in a hurry. I have prepared wine for everyone today. Let's have a bowl of wine first and then eat."
"Master Mouse is open and has made some good wine for us. Let's have a good drink today." A helper at the table chatted casually, then quickly ran into the house, took out the wine jar, and gave it to everyone who came over with a spoon.
Friends, have a drink.
This group of people are actually children, some are even only eight or nine years old, and they usually have no access to alcohol. However, they know that adults like to drink this stuff, so they pretend to be adults and drink a bowl for themselves.
liquor.
After returning to the table, the young men raised their bowls high, clinked glasses with everyone, and then carefully brought the bowls to their mouths and took a sip.
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"Why is this wine so spicy?" Li Yuting took a sip of wine and choked out half the bowl of wine due to the spicy taste.
The others laughed out loud when they saw Li Yuting's embarrassment.
"Yuting, you are still young and can't control your drinking. Put down the wine bowl and eat more meat dishes. There is a lot of meat in my boss's dishes today, as well as jars of diced meat." The man next to him was slightly older than Li Yuting.
The child, seeing that Li Yuting was in a mess after drinking, quickly put down his wine bowl and gave him a bowl of food.
The stew is the most common stew of cabbage, vermicelli and meat in later generations. It is already an excellent dish for low-income children like Li Yuting.
After eating two large bowls of stew and several steamed buns, Li Yuting's childish face glowed red, and the buddies next to him also finished their meals. Several leader-like figures began to gather together to prepare for more drinks, and like
Li Yuting and others had to help clear the table and then go home.
After coming out of Hong Gouzi's new home, Li Yuting and his buddies took one more look with envy. Then, accompanied by the sporadic sound of New Year's cannons, they walked home.
Arriving at the courtyard in the slum area, Li Yuting said goodbye to his friends and then went into his house.
"Ting'er is back, why do you smell so drunk?" Li Yuting's mother is a woman in her thirties. It can be seen from her demeanor that she has a bookish air that is very different from other people in the courtyard life.
Seeing her son come back and smelling the smell of alcohol on his body, Li Yuting looked unhappy.
"Mom, the boss moved today and let us have food and wine. I took a sip of the wine and it was very spicy. Brother Da Zhuang said that I couldn't control the wine, so I stopped drinking."
"Ting'er, don't drink anymore in the future. Go and wash your face quickly. Mom will cook meat and vegetables for you tonight."
After Li Yuting washed her face, she and her mother packed up and prepared for the New Year's Eve dinner. The Li family only rented a room, and they had to go to the open-air kitchen outside the yard to cook. In the middle of winter recently, the two of them pooled their money to buy
A briquette stove allows you to cook and keep warm in the house, which is quite convenient.
The New Year's Eve dinner in the evening was still cabbage, vermicelli and meat, which was no different from what was served at Hong Gouzi's house during the day. But Li Yuting didn't mind having a heavy meal at all. He thought it would be better to eat this every time.
The small briquette stove had good firepower, and the rice was cooked in a short time. The couple ate the New Year's Eve dinner on the small table next to the stove.
"Mom, please eat more, I will be full at my boss's house."
"Mom eats less, you need to eat more until you are full so you can grow up."
"Mom, when the child grows up, I will rent you a good house like Hong Gouzi. Today, Brother Da Zhuang told me that after the Chinese New Year, he will let me push a cart through the alleys, so that I can earn 20 yuan a day.
With money, mother can sew less clothes for others."
Seeing her son talking excitedly about his future, Ms. Li Zhang felt sad and wanted to cry. She was from a family of officials, but something happened to her family and her father was deprived of his official position and exiled to the army. She was better off and found a man to marry.
Unexpectedly, the man fell seriously ill the year before last and died shortly after. The two of them were left with some family property that could be exchanged for money. Later, all the family property was robbed, and they had to move to the slums to live in the slums.
Orphans and widowed mothers, how do you live like this? Fortunately, the capital city has started to get better in the past year and a half. The market has become more active, and there are more opportunities to make money. You can work by mending clothes for others, and your son will follow the neighbors in the next half of the year.
Where did Hong Gouzi work, the couple miraculously managed to survive.
However, for Li Zhang, who has experienced prosperity, these days are always a bit sad. With such a young son, he has to push a urine cart to make a living, and he has to be bullied by the older children. Life is really difficult. Fortunately,
I met a nice neighbor who could help take care of my son and prevent him from being easily bullied.
"Ting'er, hurry up and eat. It's still early today. Let's practice calligraphy and learn arithmetic so as not to light oil lamps again and waste money."
"Mom, do you still need to study today? Isn't today the Chinese New Year?"
"Study can't be delayed, and every day can't be wasted."
"Mom, my child can't take the scientific examination and become a scholar, so what's the use of studying? Hong Gouzi didn't study, but he still made a lot of money."
"Ting'er, don't talk nonsense, reading and literacy are always useful."
When Li Zhang said this, she was not confident. She didn't know if it was useful to study in such a situation, but out of mother's instinct, she still wanted her son to learn some words and not become blind. In order to
To enable her son to study, she saved money and bought lamp oil specifically so that her son could practice calligraphy and learn more about books at night after finishing his work.
The writing brush used by her son to practice calligraphy was bald and stained with water, and the writing place was a wooden board. There were no copybooks or books, and the only thing used as a teaching material was a newspaper. This was the best thing that Li Zhang created for her son to study.
The conditions are met! It is difficult for orphans and widowed mothers to survive in this era, and it is even more difficult to make progress.