The Ups and Downs of the Commoners 2 Page #17

This book is the second volume of the novel "The Ups and Downs of the Commoners". It will tell you about caused by the disastrous consequences of the "Great Leap Forward" and the People's Commune Movement in China in the middle of the last century to the livelihood of the Commoners, as well as the difficult path of study of the protagonist of this book, Fang Zhengben.

• Novel

								

This affairs teacher is very conscientious. He saw that the students were eating steamed sweet potatoes today and still steamed sweet potatoes tomorrow, and he was very careless, so he decided to improve the food for the students. After hard work, he got in touch with the grain station in Fenghuang District of the county, where he bought more than 500 kilograms of soybeans. The school is said to be 80 or 90 kilometers away, and several workers walked for days on the road with two rack cars before pulling them back to the school. Since then, the school cafeteria can be lively.
Every day, the masters took a small amount of soybeans to a stone mill and ground them into soy milk, with okara to boiled them and set aside. When the sweet potatoes in the enamel basin of the classmates were steamed, they poured an iron scoop of soy milk with okara on the sweet potatoes. After their treatment, it really adds a lot of flavor to the sweet potato. So the small blackboard hanging under the window of the school cafeteria has become the most eye-catching star, and students passing by there will stare at the small blackboard for a long time, because the latest food information is released every day: sweet potato soy milk in the morning, soy milk sweet potatoes at noon, and sweet potato soy milk in the evening. On special days, there will also be a meal of vegetable leaves with soy milk and rice porridge.
In order to constantly introduce new dishes, the Affairs teacher and the master workers can be described as painstaking.
At noon one day, the evening recipe was according to the custom to announcing on the small blackboard: Leap Forward-style Assorted Vegetables with Rice porridge. The students were very excited to see it. Fang Zhengben remembers that when he went to a restaurant with his parents in Chengdu this spring, he once ate Braised Assorted Vegetables, which included pork, chicken, pig trotter tendon, meatballs, winter bamboo shoots, as well as pig heart, pig stomachs, pig tongue, etc., the color was golden and red, and the taste was good. But it's not yet known what this Leap Forward-style Assorted Vegetables with Rice porridge is.
When it was time for dinner, the students found that there was a basin of colorful rice porridge in the middle of their table, and nothing else. However, the rice porridge is not thin, and it smells quite fragrant. Fang Zhengben thought it must be Leap Forward-style Assorted Vegetables with Rice porridge. The student in charge of dividing the rice quickly divided the rice porridge into everyone's bowls, and everyone tasted it carefully, carefully distinguishing what was in this Assorted. At this time, some students said: "What Assorted? I ate it, and this is not only rice but also soy milk!" Another student said, "There is also okara!" They ate red sweet potatoes, yellow pumpkins, green Swiss chards, leaf mustards and lettuce, plus carrots and white radish. At this time, another classmate fished a bamboo leaf from his porridge, put it on his chopsticks and said, "Look, there is another bamboo leaf!" Everyone calculated, if the okara and soy milk are counted as the same, it is exactly ten. Wang Dingjun said: "I always feel that there is something with a special fragrance, but I can't tell what it is for a while!" Fang Zhengben said: "I also feel this way. It looks like cypress leaves." The students tasted it again and said, "Well, by the way, it's the fragrance of cypress leaves! It's just that it's mixed in soybeans and ground up, so I can't see it." Wang Dingjun said: "It can be seen that the masters are not easy, in order to make up an 'Assorted', even bamboo leaves and cypress leaves are used!"
The Affairs teacher and Master workers in the school cafeteria are not satisfied with the efforts they have made to improve the food of students during this time, and they are constantly exploring how to do their work better.
On December 31, the school canteen announced to all students through the small blackboard under the window that they would "launch a satellite" for the New Year's Day dinner. The money and grains needed for this "satellite launch" were saved by the school canteen's careful calculation and savings on weekdays. The affairs teacher repeatedly emphasized from the podium in front of the canteen: "Attention students! Attention students! Tomorrow is New Year's Day. To celebrate New Year's Day, tomorrow night, the school canteen will prepare sumptuous dish for everyone, but the canteen does not have so many basins to divide them, please prepare an enamel basin for each table to divide the dishes. Each table must be prepared by noon tomorrow and placed on your table after lunch. The chefs will divide the dishes directly into your basin." Hearing this news, the students were excited and immediately discussed the preparation of the enamel basin. Wang Dingjun asked, "Who at our table has an enamel basin?" Several male students looked at each to other, and all shook their heads and said, "I didn't!" None of the classmates at their table are wealthy, and none of the male classmates have an enamel basin. Seeing that everyone said no, Zheng Guoqiong blushed and said: "I do have one, but..." She thought that although she had an enamel basin, she used it to wash her face and feet, and also took baths and wash clothes. How can a girl's supplies be used to fill food for everyone? So she stopped talking again. Zhu Zihong said: "If there is, take it out and use it!" Everyone said, "Yes, you take it out and use it!" Zheng Guoqiong saw that everyone didn't mind, and said: "Since everyone doesn't mind, I'll take it!"
At noon the next day, Zheng Guoqiong took an enamel basin decorated with blue lace to the canteen on time. She also repeatedly declared: "Don't worry, I have washed it several times, and I must have washed it clean!" Everyone is happy to see that she have solved a big problem with the enamel basin, and of course there can be no objections.
Before dinner, everyone gathered outside the canteen very early, and saw a group of Master workers and shuttling back and forth between the kitchen and the canteen, busy with each other. The dinner bell rang, and people poured into the canteen like a tide to their tables. They saw a basin of rice and a small basin of golden steamed pumpkin with rice flours on the table. The enamel basin they had prepared themselves already contained two dishes, one side with fried lettuce in white oil and the other with Twice-Cooked Pork. Students gathered around their tables, laid out their bowls, and began to divide dishes into the bowls. Several Master workers also shouted the names of the dishes and walked through the crowd. They divided into group and two people per group, one holding a large basin and the other holding an iron scoop, to distribute the freshly made dishes to each table. The teacher on duty, who was standing on the podium, saw that the students had finished dividing the two dishes, and he issued a command: "Start eating!" "

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