Chapter 66

Today Yang Yuyan learned a lot.

For example, for the first time she chopped wood, for the first time she fetched water, for the first time she realized that the iron pot was heavier than she thought, the cabbages were heavier than she thought, the white radish was dirtier than she thought, and the sweet potatoes were even less like food than she thought. And so on.

Because Prof. Dai had always accepted students to eat at his place, whether they were his students or not, the kitchen was like a small battlefield. Many of the students worked here without pay, on their own initiative and with their own schedules and worksheets, and whether they ate here that day or not, they would arrive before cooking and watch the numbers cook.

Today’s lunch consisted of steamed sweet potatoes, stewed cabbage, fried radishes, and a big pot of two-meter rice, which is rice mixed with millet.

Before we eat, we need to cook first.

Yang Yuyan followed her newfound classmates to the kitchen and was shocked.

Oh, God.

She sighed in her heart.

This was the first time she had walked in, and the kitchen was much bigger than she had imagined, it was two rooms big, with a door leading to the outside.

There were two eyelets for the stove, one of which held a pot that could fit a person in it to cook in, and one of which was covered with a lid.

A male student was squatting there to clean the stove, rasping out all the ashes and rubbing them out. Professor Dai had already changed into a pair of earthen cloth clothes, walked in and saw it and said, “This can be used as fertilizer.”

The male students laughed and said, “I know, Professor, I won’t throw it away.”

The rest of the students, both men and women, were at work.

They brought water in from outside the house, poured it into water pots or buckets, and then put cabbages, radishes, and sweet potatoes in to wash them, and the cold well water drenched their hands red in no time.

Yang Yuyan looked, also went to get an apron, stretching two hands to help carry cabbage, back and forth a few times, her hands were frozen, wooden no feeling. This cabbage is so cold, so the people who wash it aren’t even colder?

Because they don’t peel off all the outside leaves and don’t want them, and as a result the already bad leaves on the outside are carefully cleaned, in order not to waste a little bit of food.

White radish is also very cold and has a lot of soil, they are different sizes and don’t look very good, but the students who wash them are still very serious.

The sweet potatoes had even more dirt on them, all muddy. Two female students held the sweet potatoes and carefully dipped and washed off every bit of mud.

Yang Yuyan volunteered to help, but everyone just asked her to help carry the vegetables. Even so, she was exhausted, and after a while, she felt so sore that she couldn’t hold on any longer. She didn’t want to be seen as a petite bag, so she carried on, and her face became more and more grim as she carried the vegetables.

Shi Wuwei came in to send firewood to see her face is not right, a careful thought to understand, smiling over to pull her: “You do not be so solid, dry endless, Su Jian in the time to pick only the simplest work to do, you also have to learn from him.”

Next to a male student heard and laughed and agreed: “That’s right! That Su Jian kid is the most cunning!”

Yang Yuyan unobtrusively propped up her waist and said, “What did Mr. Su do?”

Shi Wuwei pulled her outside and made her stand next to a wooden stake, he placed the firewood sticks he bought from outside the school on the stake, lifted a wood knife, squatted down to chop the firewood and said, “He is the supervisor. Specializing in supervising my work, watching me chopping firewood, saying that he was worried that I would accidentally chop my hand too late to save it, so he specially cared for me.”

Yang Yuyan was instantly amused, and after laughing, she had to defend Su Chunjun, “Nonsense, Mr. Su wouldn’t do that.” She didn’t believe it, Mr. Su wouldn’t do that.

Shi Wuwei split the long firewood branches into suitable lengths and chopped away the short and thin branches, while shaking his head and sighing, “You were cheated too deeply and didn’t see his true colors.”

Shi Wuwei, wanting to relieve Yang Yuyan of the burden of not letting her in to work, and avoiding the possibility that openly sheltering her would upset the others, kept saying bad things about Su Chunjun nonstop, a mixture of truth and falsehood.

He said that Su Chunjun started coming to the class with Prof. Dai in order to eat here for nothing!

The school cafeteria has food, and there is also a subsidy for students with good grades, which is not only cheap but also well-fed and nutritious.

Su Chunjun took the subsidy first, and then came to Professor Dai’s place to eat for free. It was for the sake of eating for nothing that he made the effort to become Professor Dai’s student.

Shi Wuwei: “See, this is his nature!”

Yang Yuyan was once again shocked by Teacher Su’s colorful school life, and this time she didn’t have half a doubt because this was exactly what Teacher Su would most likely do.

Shi Wuwei then said, students are enrolled in school with school uniforms, and what about this school uniform, you need to shell out money. But it can be owed first and paid back slowly. He said, “Guess, how many years did Su Jian owe before he paid it back?”

Yang Yuyan estimated Mr. Su’s nature and said, “Did he not pay it back until he graduated?”

Shi Wuwei was shocked, “Ms. Yang, it seems that you know his nature very well, then how can you still be deceived by him!”

Yang Yuyan’s head was ironclad, and she continued to defend Mr. Su with a straight face, “Don’t cheat the youth to be poor, Mr. Su is very powerful now.”

At this time, a male student walked out with a large basin of sewage, heard her words, stood still and said icily, “What’s the difference between him and the assholes outside now? What’s there to be proud of? I’m blushing for him, in vain he still has the face to come back to school again!”

This was the first person to be upset with Mr. Su in front of her. When the stranger’s hostility hit her face, Yang Yuyan had a momentary daze.

Shi Wuwei had already stood up and shouted, “Zhang Sihai, shut up!”

Without another word, this male student coldly went to pour out the sewage and carried the basin inside.

Shi Wuwei paused for a moment and said to Yang Yuyan in embarrassment, “Don’t take it to heart, I believe that Su Jian will not turn bad.”

Actually, Yang Yuyan’s own distinction between good and evil in her own mind was not so strict. After she reacted, she could also understand why Zhang Sihai would say that. It was because in this ideal-oriented, pure and natural campus, Su Chunjun’s behavior of rocketing up in the officialdom and eating his way through all sides would not be admirable in itself. In the opinion of black and white people, Su Chunjun has already “fallen”.

Yang Yuyan is not very concerned about whether Mr. Su is with those old oil in the officialdom together with the dirt, because the current government is walking on the road of destruction, who all know, it has no prestige to speak of, all over the world, this so-called national government can not control who can not control, it is still sitting here, just because the bigwigs and the foreigners have not been divided into a high and low, and have not decided who will be the boss.

And she wasn’t the only one who knew that this National Government didn’t have long to live, everyone knew that. People in the government knew it, and people on the street knew it too. Even Zhang Ma said, “Hundreds of years of emperors have fallen, how many years they can last is still unknown, I don’t think any of them look like they have dragon energy.

Fortune-tellers on the street’s best skill is to calculate the dragon’s qi, they sit in places where people gather, such as train stations, store entrances, intersections, etc., like a storyteller to talk about the dragon’s qi, such as when the emperor of the Forbidden City did not have the dragon’s qi, the dragon’s qi when the northeast side of the move, all these things they open the eyes of the sky nah, the darkness of the day to the sky a look at the night to see the astrological signs, you will know all about it.

Yang Yuyan in the roadside has also seen several times fortune tellers say dragon gas, said the head of the road. And these gentlemen will also calculate where the dragon energy in China is now, one time in the west, one time in the north, one time in the south, one time in the east, today the dragon energy surnamed Yan, tomorrow will be surnamed Zhang. Gentlemen do not mention the name of the person, all vague to say, this is called the Northwest King, that said the King of Jin, said the hilarious good, there are people from the stalls to buy hot food to give the gentleman to eat it.

Evidently, even the people on the street do not have any hope for the Nanjing government, do not think it can save China, can beat back the foreign fleet.

Mr. Su jumped on this fast-sinking ship, what he wanted to do, she was not sure. Because she now also vaguely feel that Su Chunjun went to become this small section of the Finance Bureau is not a figure of wealth. She felt that his goal in life was not so shallow. If he wanted money, wanted to make money, there were countless ways, with his head not to think out.

But she didn’t really want to get to the bottom of it right now.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t curious, or that she was afraid of answers she couldn’t accept, but because she wasn’t qualified to ask right now.

She asked, he answered, and then what? How was she going to be involved in his life? How was she going to have a place? She had no hands, no brain, no skills, so what could she do?

It was better not to ask than to ask in vain.

After she grows up a little more, not seeking to grow to the same height as him, as long as she can rely on herself to stand up later, she then go to ask, are more valuable than asking the answer now.

But it was one thing for her to have confidence in Mr. Su herself, she didn’t expect Shi Wuwei to have confidence in him as well.

“Do you trust him that much?” She asked back, “Why?”

Shi Wuwei thought for a moment and said, “I don’t think he’s like that kind of person.”

Any further conversation would slide the topic into an unpleasant and ungraspable direction, so Shi Wuwei and Yang Yuyan simultaneously changed the subject.

Yang Yuyan saw the mountain of firewood piled up behind him, all of which were this kind of thin firewood branches, so she asked, “How much does this firewood cost?”

Shi Wuwei: “Not much money, just two or three cents.”

Yang Yuyan was shocked: “So cheap?”

Shi Wuwei laughed and said, “How much do you think a quart of firewood costs?” He held up five fingers, “Just five cents.”

And a quart of firewood meant two quarts picked up by a flat stretcher.

“All of this firewood was cut back by someone who went out into the wilderness, it’s gotten a little more expensive recently because of the New Year, but in order to sell it, the firewood sellers try to bundle as much as they can. So these you look at as much, but in fact it doesn’t cost more than a few cents to buy back.”

Shi Wuwei said while chopping the firewood, “Coal is expensive, a truckload of four hundred pounds costs more than a dollar, and recently the price has increased, but also limited supply. It’s all for burning, and the firewood is just a little bit smokier.”

Yang Yuyan felt that today is really eye-opening, this is all she at home to her sister, mom, mom Zhang and teacher Su will not get the information, as if the wind on the face, before a fresh.

At eleven twenty, the first dish came out of the pot.

The main course was sweet potatoes, and as soon as the lid of the pot was lifted, the steam came out and the aroma of the sweet potatoes ran out. A whole pot of steamed sweet potatoes, all whole, layer by layer in the pot, the bottom of the pot with a little water, so steamed.

When the sweet potatoes were steamed, Shi Wuwei took a piece for Yang Yuyan and told her to stick it on her chopsticks and eat it.

“It’s very hot, eat it slowly. Don’t throw away the skin when you tear it off, you can feed it to the pigs.” Shi Wuwei also held a chopstick in his hand and inserted it into the sweet potato, skillfully teaching her to throw the sweet potato skin at the designated spot.

After the sweet potatoes were all picked up in the basket, she began to fry the radishes. It is actually a stew. First use vegetable oil and lard to boil sauce, then add water, bury the radish cut into pieces, then add water, then add salt, cover the pot, wait for steam, inside the water rolled, remove the lid, collect the juice.

After the fried radish was also served out, it was set on the long table in the kitchen, steaming several large pots of sauce-colored fried radish, emitting a strong radish fragrance.

Shi Wuwei stood outside the door, stretched his neck to sniff deeply, and sighed, “Radishes can be sweet!”

The last dish was stewed cabbage, even simpler, pour water, pour cabbage, cover the pot, add lard and vegetable oil when it rolls, and add a large spoonful of condensed oil residue. This dish was made by Prof. Dai, and all the students were drooling when he added the condensed oil residue.

Professor Dai said, “This makes the cabbage especially delicious!”

Shi Wuwei gulped reflexively.

It seemed to be really delicious.

Although Yang Yuyan had never eaten cabbage stewed with refined oil residue, she knew by looking at their expressions.

Finally, salt was put in, shrimp skin was put in, and the pot was released.

At eleven forty, all the meals were served on the table.

Prof. Dai greeted everyone to get on the table and start eating.

Prof. Dai called out to Yang Yuyan: “Yan Yan, you sit too, don’t be polite.”

Yang Yuyan was still very interested in this novel meal, but Yang Yucan guessed that she wouldn’t agree to eat lunch here. So she waved her hand and shook her head in full refusal.

Being pressed to the stool.

Luckily, before she could raise her chopsticks, Yang Yucan finally arrived.

She came in through the front door and went around to the kitchen before finding her own sister.

Seeing that she was all seated, Yang Yucan hurriedly walked over and bowed to Professor Dai first, “I’m sorry, Professor Dai, it’s me who’s late. Yan Yan.”

Yang Yuyan hurriedly stood up and walked over.

Professor Dai also stood up and greeted, “No need to be polite. Then you guys are going back here, right?”

Yang Yucan held Yang Yuyan and said, “Yes, my mom is waiting for us at home. We’ll take our leave then.”

Yang Yuyan dutifully bowed, “Goodbye Professor Dai, goodbye everyone, bye.”

Everyone at the table laughed and said “bye-bye” to her.

Shi Wuwei quirked, “Sayonara.”

Everyone had to laugh even more.

Prof. Dai also laughed and said, “Then I’ll add one more, the Russian word for bye is …….”

Yang Yuyan bit her tongue and learned it, and Mo Ming felt that her tongue would probably suffer if she learned this phrase.

There were only two or three students here who had learned Russian, and they all said goodbye to Yang Yuyan in Russian as well, causing her to repeat it a few more times, and the tip of her tongue hurt even more.

Finally coming out of the small red building, Yang Yuchan led her away.

She asked, “Sister, why did you come so late? Is there too much going on at home? What happened to your hand?” There was a wound on the back of Yang Yucan’s hand, like it was dug out by a fingernail.

Yang Yu Cicada looked at it and said unconcernedly, “It’s nothing, I accidentally touched it when I was washing dishes at home.”

Yang Yuyan, who also experienced washing vegetables today, nodded with empathy, “Washing vegetables is quite troublesome.”

Yang Yuchan’s experience today is much more profound than hers, pulling her to speed up her pace and saying, “Hurry up and go, there are still a lot of things to do at home.”