It was already past four in the afternoon when they got back to school. Jiang Xiaoman had to accompany the driver to Jiangwan Village to collect potatoes, so she dropped Jiang Baichuan off at the school gate.
Jiang Baichuan carried a full woven bag into the gate and saw two student teachers cheering on the basketballs and soccer balls they had brought in the yard.
Tomorrow their summer arts and sports tutoring program will officially begin. Although they don't have a synthetic track, a proper basketball court or soccer field, or even a piano or a violin, they do have professional physical education and music teachers! In a rural primary school where there is a severe shortage of arts and sports teachers, they have already won at the starting line!
Sigh~ The two "starting line" teachers are almost starving to death.
Thanks to the plate of chive dumplings left by Xiaoman, the two of them managed to get by with their breakfast that morning. At lunchtime, Fang Xingchen confidently declared that he had mastered the technique of cooking rice over a traditional rural stove and was going to make them a pot of potato rice, a small dish of pickled vegetables, and a plate of stir-fried green peppers and eggs (the two of them had been successfully corrupted by Jiang Xiaoman and had started to ruin the principal's eggs). That should be enough to fill them up.
As it turns out, what netizens say is true. This is how it is in the early stages of learning to cook. Your eyes may have learned it, but your hands are telling you, "Honey, stop dreaming."
The two of them turned a perfectly good pot of potato rice into a stuffed rice dish. Later, Chu Mengluan suggested that since they hadn't added enough water, they should add more water to make porridge. So they added half a pot of water to make porridge. In the meantime, the two of them went to feed the pigs. When they came back, the pot lid was too tight, and the rice water in the pot had overflowed, making the stove inside and out sticky with rice water! They spent most of the day just sweeping, mopping, and cleaning the stove. They didn't get to eat a single bite of potato porridge, but they were exhausted.
After cleaning the kitchen, the two student teachers completely gave up on the unrealistic fantasy of "cooking for themselves." They went to the village store, bought two packs of instant noodles and a bag of ham sausages, picked some bok choy from the vegetable garden, added two eggs, and cooked a pot of instant noodles to make do with a meal.
Thankfully, rural supermarkets now accept QR code payments. These two idiots came to teach in the countryside without even bringing any cash with them. If online payments weren't so widespread these days, they probably wouldn't even be able to afford instant noodles.
We finally waited until Xiaoman, the chef with superb cooking skills, came back, but to our surprise, only the principal came down!
Fang Xingchen craned his neck to look behind Jiang Baichuan, but couldn't find Jiang Xiaoman. He was extremely disappointed.
"Principal, isn't Brother Xiaoman having dinner at our school tonight?" Chu Mengluan watched helplessly as Jiang Xiaoman drove away in a truck, her heart filled with sorrow and despair.
I only ate a bowl of instant noodles for lunch. Am I supposed to eat boiled vegetables and roasted sweet potatoes that the principal makes for dinner?
Jiang Baichuan glanced at the two young men speechlessly. Seeing how pitiful they looked, he sighed inwardly, "Your brother Xiaoman is just taking the driver to Jiangwan Village to collect some potatoes. He'll be coming over for dinner tonight."
"I also bought some braised food. You've all worked so hard these past few days, so I'll treat you to an extra meal tonight!"
"Great! Principal, we just bought two fish in the village. They're alive and being kept in a pond. Could you please cook some fish for us tonight, Brother Xiaoman?"
"You can ask him about this. Anyway, all I know how to cook is boiled vegetables, hmph~" Jiang Baichuan carried the woven bag into the kitchen.
They already have braised dishes, and now they still want braised fish! It's clear Jiang Xiaoman, that little rascal, has corrupted them…
Jiang Xiaoman followed the car to Jiangwan Village. The car navigated directly to Chen Sao's house. The harvested potatoes were packed into mesh bags and neatly stacked by the roadside.
"Have you found any loaders?" The driver jumped out of the truck, opened the trunk, and skillfully pulled down the loading and unloading ladder.
"With so few potatoes, why bother hiring loaders? We'll load them ourselves!" Aunt Chen shouted, and a group of women in old clothes began carrying sacks of potatoes onto the truck.
A bag of potatoes weighing fifty pounds would be a heavy load for most men in the city, even struggling to carry upstairs. But these women, accustomed to farm work, handled it with ease, even smiling. Before, when they wanted to sell potatoes, they had to carry dozens of pounds on their backs and walk a long way through the mountains to the market. Now, Xiaoman helped them contact a potato buyer; his truck drove right to the village, and they could get paid on the spot simply by loading the potatoes onto the truck.
Aunt Chen called five people to help load the truck. Besides her second sister, Shan Qiaoqiao, and Jiang Wumei from the village, there were two other strong people in the village. Their families weren't assigned to sell potatoes this time, but Aunt Chen promised them that next time Jiang Xiaoman collected potatoes, they would be given priority. This time, they wouldn't work for nothing; carrying a bag of potatoes onto the truck would earn two yuan, meaning they could earn fifty yuan in an hour of hard work—a very rare and valuable job in the countryside.
"Xiaoman, take the driver inside for some tea! I made red bean cakes and some roasted peanuts," Aunt Chen invited them inside to rest.
The driver didn't stand on ceremony with her, just smiled and went inside. It wasn't that he lacked gentlemanly manners, but he knew that these people scrambling to load and unload potatoes were paid by the number of sacks they carried. If he helped carry one sack, they would earn one less sack's worth of wages. In the countryside, there were very few opportunities to earn money right at their doorstep, and he didn't want to rush up and cause trouble.
Seeing that Jiang Xiaoman seemed a little down, the driver smiled. He thought the young woman was quite kind, just like him when he was young. He always felt sorry for women carrying bags, but there was nothing he could do about it. Many men in the countryside say they go out to work, but they don't actually bring back much money each year. How can a whole family survive on farming alone? If the women want to buy their children some good food or more books, they have to find ways to earn money themselves.
Five thousand catties of potatoes sounds like a lot, but it's actually quite quick to bag and load them onto the truck. Jiang Xiaoman had a couple of cups of tea and a few red bean cakes with the driver when he announced that they were all loaded. Looking at the time, it hadn't even been an hour.
Mrs. Chen was very polite and repeatedly told them to eat at her house before leaving. The driver quickly waved his hand and refused, saying that his company had a rule that unless they missed mealtimes, there were time restrictions on when to leave and when to return to the factory. This was also to prevent drivers from using company vehicles to smuggle personal goods on the road. Mrs. Chen had no choice but to give up. She went inside and got a few clean plastic bags, and filled them with a lot of red bean cakes and roasted peanuts that she had made herself.
The driver was in a hurry to get back to the factory to complete the handover, so he dropped Jiang Xiaoman off at the school. Jiang Xiaoman carried red bean cakes and roasted peanuts into the school and saw three teachers in the yard, enthusiastically cleaning the school playground with shovels and bamboo brooms...
Chapter 44
"You guys are busy with your own things, haven't you cooked yet? I'll go cook!" Seeing that the three of them looked disheveled, Jiang Xiaoman smiled and quickly ran to the kitchen to prepare the meal.
Langshan Primary School was built quite a while ago. Back then, it's said that even getting sand or cement required approval from higher authorities, let alone the artificial turf and synthetic running track we have now. The entire school playground was just a large open space, trampled bare by children during the school year. After a summer vacation, it would be overgrown with weeds again, full of potholes. Every year at the start of the school year, the weeds had to be cleared first, then soil had to be carried to fill the potholes, and finally, the ground had to be swept again. Year after year, it's been like this since Jiang Xiaoman was a child.
Carrying a basket on his back, Jiang Xiaoman walked across the newly leveled playground and entered the kitchen. He found the rice already cooking. He lifted the lid and immediately frowned: Sure enough! As long as his uncle came back, they would never be able to eat authentic rice again!
Tonight's dinner is still the health enthusiasts' favorite: braised potatoes with red beans o(╥﹏╥)o
"The principal said that the red beans harvested last year were too many to eat and were starting to get infested with bugs, so he soaked a whole basin of them! He said we'll have red bean rice tonight and red bean porridge tomorrow morning," Fang Xingchen told Jiang Xiaoman, looking pale and sickly.
When he first heard the principal mention eating red bean rice, he thought it would be similar to the sweet and thick red bean porridge his family made. Now it seems he was incredibly naive! Why couldn't Principal Jiang sell his red beans and had to keep them for himself? It must be because they didn't taste good!
This old variety of red beans, saved by farmers themselves, is very small, with little flesh, almost entirely skin. It's very difficult to cook until tender, no matter how long you soak it. It always tastes undercooked. Even worse, eating too much of this red bean rice causes constipation! o(╥﹏╥)o
"Pfft~ That's because your principal doesn't know how to make it! These red beans need to be soaked overnight to soften the skins before they can be cooked until soft. Oh well, I brought red bean cakes..."
"What? It's made from red beans again?" Fang Xingchen exclaimed in shock.
"Don't worry, this is red bean paste made from cooked and peeled red beans. Have you ever had red bean paste mooncakes? It's that kind of filling!"
"Oh, as long as you can eat it!" Fang Xingchen was stunned after saying that.
Not long ago, he was a pampered young master who found even imported cream cookies made by his mother too sweet. Now, he actually cherishes even a simple red bean paste mooncake?
The child is so pitiful!
Jiang Xiaoman had tricked everyone into coming, so it wouldn't be right for them to be eating undercooked red beans with Jiang Baichuan, would it? After looking at the food in the kitchen, he decided to cook something nice for his juniors.
Before it got dark, I grabbed a cleaver and a bamboo basket and went to the vegetable garden. The chives I had cut earlier had grown back, so I cut a couple of bunches. I chopped a cabbage, picked some green peppers, and saw that eggplants had also sprouted. I ran over, lifted the eggplant leaves, and searched carefully. Sure enough, I found four big eggplants hidden underneath!
With eggplants in hand, Jiang Xiaoman no longer wanted to pick red amaranth and water spinach; he was almost sick of those two vegetables. However, in the countryside at this time of year, vegetable gardens only grow these few kinds of vegetables repeatedly. Villagers are used to having vegetables at home and never buying them from outside. His father, as usual, planted a lot of amaranth this year, especially the red kind; eating so much of it, his poop was practically red…
I can't think about it anymore, I should just make something delicious!
There was still a large piece of cured wild boar meat left over from last time. I cut off a bit, sliced it thinly, and made a stir-fried cabbage with cured pork, adding two chili peppers—similar to the dry-pot cabbage sold in restaurants. The eggplant was at its tenderest, so I cut it into chunks and cooked it with the cured pork; it was tender and fragrant! This time, he changed the way he prepared the chives. He chopped the chives, added eggs, salt, and chopped green chili peppers, making a chive and egg pancake that was both beautiful and delicious.
Finally, I took out some seaweed and made a seaweed and egg drop soup. Combined with the red bean cakes I brought back, it was enough for the four of us.
"Waaaaah~ Brother Xiaoman, your cooking is so delicious!" Chu Mengluan picked up a piece of chive and egg pancake, took a bite, and almost burst into tears.
"I never expected that eggplant chunks braised with salted pork would taste so good! My housekeeper always seems to make braised eggplant." Fang Xingchen especially loves eggplant, and kept picking up pieces of eggplant with his chopsticks to eat.
"Hmph~ With so much meat, even roasted shoe soles would taste good, let alone eggplant!" Jiang Baichuan snorted lightly, but didn't say anything more.
After all, Jiang Xiaoman brought this piece of salted meat for them to eat. If conditions allowed, wouldn't he want the two student teachers to eat better? Isn't it just because they don't have money? After the summer vacation, school will start again, and those kids at the school who were abandoned by their parents in their hometowns and left unattended, let alone new schoolbags and stationery, their parents won't even pay the less than two hundred yuan a semester for textbooks and miscellaneous fees.
In fact, the village chief had privately advised him, saying that those parents were simply taking advantage of his position as principal to support their children, so they simply abandoned their children in their hometown. If he could harden his heart, he should simply stop subsidizing the tuition and fees for those children. Did those parents really have the nerve to let their children drop out of school before finishing elementary school?
They're just taking advantage of Jiang Baichuan's soft heart and easy to bully.
But if Jiang Baichuan could abandon those children and watch them drop out of school, he wouldn't be the Jiang Baichuan he is today.
Because he needed to save money to support those children whose parents couldn't be relied on, even though he had a little more money in his pocket recently, Jiang Baichuan still couldn't help but be stingy. After all, raising children isn't just about feeding them. Sometimes when the children had headaches or colds, the grandparents couldn't bear to buy medicine and would just tell the children to tough it out on their own.
Jiang Baichuan couldn't stand it. Even if the school didn't have money for meals, the first-aid kit was always stocked with essential medicines. Whenever a child caught a cold or cough, they would ask Jiang Baichuan for medicine. Where did Jiang Baichuan get his medicine? Of course, he bought it by saving money from his meager savings.
After dinner, the four of them tidied up the kitchen together, washed up, and didn't rest. Jiang Baichuan hadn't been able to buy suitable clothes in town today, so tonight they had to sort out the sizes and quantities of clothes for the children who needed to buy seasonal clothes. Jiang Xiaoman took on the task of shopping.
"Principal, aren't these children's parents... going to buy them clothes?" Chu Mengluan couldn't help but ask.
"It's not that we don't want to buy, it's just that we'll make do with what we have." Jiang Baichuan sighed. "You've all seen how poor we are here these past few days, and some of the parents are really outrageous. They take the poverty allowance for the whole family and then spend it on cigarettes and alcohol, completely disregarding the well-being of their wives and children!"
“Those who are willing to stay in the village to study are either from families that are really too poor to go on, or their parents simply don’t care about them and just want them to drift through life until they turn eighteen and then go out to work. Forget about seasonal clothes, I’ve even seen cases where they don’t give them money for books and force them to go to the mountains to cut bamboo shoots to exchange for money to buy books.”
"How could there be such parents in the world?" Chu Mengluan was immediately furious.
"Not all families are like that. Some are genuinely poor and have no choice. Their families are either disabled, elderly, weak, women, or children. They have no labor force and still have to keep having children. They rely on the potatoes and corn they grow every year, plus the government's poverty subsidies, which can only guarantee that the family won't starve. They don't have a single bit of savings, so where would they get the money to buy clothes for their children?"
"Look at the clothes they're wearing now. Some of them don't fit well, and the colors aren't like children's clothes, right? These clothes were donated by Xiaoman from the school!"
"Otherwise, why do you think I'm so stingy with my meals every day? It's because I'm worried about the students having any emergencies." Jiang Baichuan sighed. "In winter, if you don't dress warmly enough, you'll easily get sick, and medical treatment is expensive. Now that the weather is warm, if they're still wearing thermal underwear, they'll get heat rash, and buying prickly heat powder and floral water will cost money. It's better to save that money and buy the kids a couple of sets of clothes for the changing season."
Fang Xingchen and Chu Mengluan were both stunned.
“Um, Principal, didn’t our country announce that it had completely eradicated poverty a few years ago?” After a long pause, Fang Xingchen asked blankly.
“You don’t understand! Of course, the country wants all its people to live a good life, and it has been making great efforts to help impoverished mountainous areas get out of poverty and become prosperous. But there are some people in this world who have broken their spines! They refuse to stand up!” Jiang Baichuan said, his teeth clenched with hatred.
“A few years ago, a group of poverty alleviation cadres came here. They said that our environment is good, and we can grow some Chinese medicinal herbs such as honeysuckle. We can raise bees to harvest honey, and we can also pick the honey, dry it, and sell it. It should be such a good thing!”
"And what happened? Everyone mobilized their Party members and cadres to plant honeysuckle seedlings, but a few months later, good heavens! More than half of them were abandoned! The rest bloomed but no one picked them; they were just left there unattended! Once the honeysuckle buds opened, they had no medicinal value and only benefited the wild bees all over the mountain!"
"And then there are our potatoes here. This variety supposedly won some major award, and the experts put in a lot of effort to promote its cultivation, even risking their lives here. But look at us now! The experts sacrificed their lives, and all the potatoes on the mountains have been used to feed pigs! The market vendors are also driving down the prices; perfectly good potatoes are now cheaper than wild vegetables!"
"Then, is there really no way to help? Principal, how much is your annual salary? How long can you subsidize us?" Chu Mengluan felt extremely distressed and finally understood why Jiang Baichuan was so distressed to see them eating an extra egg that cost only a few cents.
Because he had saved that money penny by penny, saving it for the children in the mountains in case of emergencies.
Thinking of this, Chu Mengluan couldn't help but bite her lip. She had two thousand yuan in living expenses every month, and since she was teaching in the mountains this month and had nowhere to spend her money, she decided to use up her two months' worth of pocket money in advance to buy seasonal clothes for the children.
“What can we do? There are only two teachers left in the school. Sister Caiyun went back to have a baby. Uncle Baichuan has to teach so many students, cook for the children, and grade their homework all by himself. Even if he wanted to make money, he wouldn’t have the time,” Jiang Xiaoman sighed.
Everyone fell silent.
A moment later, Fang Xingchen took out his phone, silently clicked on Jiang Xiaoman's profile picture, and transferred three thousand yuan to him.
“Brother Xiaoman, I usually spend money extravagantly and haven’t saved much. This three thousand yuan is my living expenses for my internship. Anyway, I’m eating and drinking at school now, so I’ll save this money to buy the kids a couple of new clothes for the changing season.”
“I also have over two thousand yuan here, Xiaoman, I’ll transfer it to you, you can buy some meat for the kids later.” Chu Mengluan also took out her phone and started transferring money.
Jiang Xiaoman: "..."
"No, why are you transferring money to me? I'm not the school's accountant! If you're going to transfer money, transfer it to Principal Jiang!" Jiang Xiaoman was speechless.
"Aren't you the school's cook?" The two student teachers were also stunned.
"No, I'm not!!!" Jiang Xiaoman was on the verge of collapse.
"Pfft~" Jiang Baichuan was almost dying of laughter at these three clowns.
"Fine, give it to me then. I'm the one doing the shopping anyway. I don't need that much. I just calculated it; based on the quantities you guys have tallied, two sets of summer clothes per person, plus underwear and shoes/socks, it should cost no more than three thousand yuan." Jiang Xiaoman sighed resignedly, took out her phone, opened the built-in calculator, and sent a screenshot of the approximate budget to the group chat, explaining it to them—
"Summer clothes don't need to be fancy. I checked out a few T-shirts and mosquito-repellent pants that we often see at local markets on wholesale websites. A set costs less than 20 yuan. As for summer shoes, I suggest buying these clearance caterpillar shoes. They have soft soles, are breathable, and can be used as sneakers. For socks and underwear, just buy a big bag in bulk. All in all, it should cost about 2,000 yuan."
After a pause, Jiang Xiaoman glanced cautiously at her uncle: "Um, Uncle, if we have any extra budget, could we get the kids another sun hat? I see all the kids in the city..."
"What sun hat? Aren't the straw hats that cost three yuan and fifty cents each at the market good enough? Don't waste them!" Jiang Baichuan roared.
This is another reason why he doesn't want to get married or have children. If he were to have a spendthrift like Jiang Xiaoman, he wouldn't want to live anymore.
With a budget of two thousand yuan, not to mention using the school's account balance, the revenue from the video account during this period was enough. Since all the school's faculty and staff were here, Principal Jiang asked the intern teacher to help write an approval form, which was signed and approved on the spot. Jiang Xiaoman picked up her phone to place the order, and the whole process was completed in less than an hour.
"You got your eggs for free! From now on, the school's procurement will be your responsibility." Jiang Baichuan gave his nephew a satisfied look.
My nephew is very good at spending money, but he's also very good at saving money. I can teach him a lesson so he can save money and not spend it!
"This isn't some lucrative job, yet it's being made to seem like I'm getting a huge advantage. I even have to pay for shipping..." Jiang Xiaoman muttered to herself before silently accepting the task of purchasing bulk (discounted) items online for the school.
After all, Uncle Baichuan, a man living in the last century, didn't even have a Taobao account.
Chapter 45