Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Chen Goudan was stunned. He had not realized that it would be so easy. But he maintained his pose of being pitiful and long-suffering, and thanked Wang Mingtao!
“Thank you, Brigade Leader! Thank you…”
Wang Mingtao glanced at Chen Dagui. “Chen Dagui, your wife has asked the two children to get lost. What about you? Do you agree?”
Of course, he agreed!
Chen Dagui had long wanted to get rid of these two freeloaders. How much food did it take for his household to support these two children?
He said without hesitation, “He himself wanted to leave. He’s a heartless beast. The faster he goes, the better!”
Wang Mingtao nodded. “Alright, then you can move out! Goudan is thirteen and he’ll be fourteen after the new year comes. He’s old enough to be independent. Give the two children thirty kilograms of grain. Goudan’s father’s old house will belong to them. Also…”
“What?” Wang Qiuhua leapt up before Wang Mingtao could finish his sentence. “We have no food in our house. These two brats have freeloaded for so long, and now they dare to ask for food when they’re leaving? We’re almost out of food. We have no food!”
Wang Mingtao looked exasperated. “If you don’t give them food, then you can bring out everything you took from Ergui’s house. You took their parents’ things and now you want to force the children out? Wang Qiuhua, let me tell you, if you continue to make trouble, I will throw you out of the brigade.”
Wang Qiuhua was so frightened she dared not speak.
Chen Dagui was unwilling to give anything. He said, “Brigade leader, it’s not that my wife is unwilling to give them food, but we really have nothing left in the house. We ourselves are almost out of food, what do we have to give them?”
Chen Goudan kept quiet. He was not so stupid as to refuse everything.
His father had been a hardworking man. While he was still alive, his household had done fairly well. The year his father died, the brigade had not yet distributed the food. In the end, the food was given to their grandmother, because she had taken them in.
But Chen Dagui continually made trouble for his grandmother. His eldest uncle had taken away all the furniture and blankets, and most of the food. His grandmother was elderly, but had to work hard to obtain work points to support them.
After his grandmother passed away, all that was left in the house went to his eldest uncle’s family.
But Chen Goudan was well aware that he would not get much food.
He would take whatever he could get.
He did not owe his eldest uncle’s family anything. He himself had worked hard to gain work points to support himself. His little sister did not eat much. The assistance from everyone in the brigade would be enough to keep her alive.
The two of them had worked hard for them, day and night…
In the end, Chen Dagui only agreed to give them fifteen kilograms of grain, all of it coarse grain.
Together with an old quilt, two changes of old clothes, an earthenware pot for cooking rice, and two chipped bowls. Wang Qiuhua did not even give them chopsticks.
Lastly, Chen Ergui’s old house was larger than Chen Dagui’s house. So Chen Dagui had moved into the larger house and he certainly would not let them have it.
He said he would give two ramshackle buildings in the small courtyard to Chen Goudan. That was where Chen Dagui’s family had lived. One of them was now used for storage, and the other was where Chen Goudan and his sister lived, where the firewood was also kept.
He gave them these two buildings because they were nearby. He could continue to store his things there, and Chen Dagui and Wang Qiuhua planned to continue using them.
Chen Goudan knew what they were thinking. So he just gave the buildings to the brigade in exchange for an even more rundown old house at the foot of the mountain.
Chen Dagui and Wang Qiuhua were stunned.