“Has Cao Ni’er woken up? She is also a poor person. Her husband is gone, so there is no one at home who can help her. What should a woman do with two children?”
Ah Wu felt a headache, but there were still people chattering in her ears, which made her frown and want to interrupt those annoying voices, but the memory that appeared in her mind immediately diverted her attention.
This was the 23-year life of a little girl named Ye Wu.
Ye Wu was born in Zhangjiagou, Baihua County.
It is now 1965.
This land had just experienced a few years of three years of famine. Everything was still recovering slowly. People lived a difficult life and the material conditions were poor. Almost every household was living frugally.
Ye Wu was born in poverty. There were three older brothers and one younger brother in the family. As the only daughter, even in the current situation where sons were preferred over daughters, Ye Wu still had not suffered too much, but that was compared to other girls in the village.
In such an environment, Ye Wu had no choice but to work in the fields at a young age. She had become very skilled in basic household chores such as collecting grass for pigs, washing clothes, and cooking.
However, in the Ye family, as long as the boys had food to eat, Ye Wu also had food to eat. Therefore, she survived the three years of famine.
In the second year of the famine, that was, in 1962, she was married to Kuang Aijun, a man from the same village who was a soldier, at the decision of her elders.
Kuang Aijun’s family had a simple population. Apart from the two elders, there was only one older brother and one younger brother. This was considered a sparse family at a time when there were five or six children.
Because Kuang Aijun’s military allowance was high and Old Mr. Kuang had good carpentry skills, no matter how difficult it was, there was always a group of rich people in every era, and Old Mr. Kuang’s skills were exactly what those people needed.
Relying on Kuang Aijun’s allowance and the private goods that Old Mr. Kuang secretly took, even during the three years of famine, the Kuang family’s life was not particularly difficult.
The Kuang family was also one of the few families in Zhangjiagou that demolished the thatched house and built a brick house, so there was never a shortage of girls who wanted to marry Kuang Aijun.
In the beginning, the two elders of the Kuang family chose Jin Qiaoqiao, a girl from the Jin family in the same village, for their son.
However, before the two elders of the Kuang family asked the matchmaker to come to the door, the Jin family arranged another marriage for their daughter, that was, Zhang Youdong, who was also a soldier in the army like Kuang Aijun.
The surname Zhang was a common surname in Zhangjiagou, and the clan members had a close relationship. They supported each other in the production team and formed their own faction.
However, Zhang Youdong’s family was an exception. It was just because Zhang Youdong’s mother had a bad character and could only take in but not spend, which made the clan members disgust her.
There were many children in the Zhang family. Zhang Youdong had two older brothers, one older sister, and a pair of twin younger brother and sister.
The two elders of the Zhang family were partial. They always let their son, who was a soldier, subsidize his other brothers and sisters.
Unlike the two elders of the Kuang family, although they also took the filial piety of their sons, they would at least save some money for their sons to marry a wife. When building a house for their eldest son, they also did not forget the share of their second son.
It was common in this era for brothers and sisters who were doing well to help brothers and sisters who were doing poorly. However, there were few elders like the Zhang family who sucked their son’s blood, complained outside that their son did not earn enough, and suspected that he hid private money.
Therefore, although they were both soldiers, Zhang Youdong was far less popular than Kuang Aijun.
Jin Qiaoqiao and Ye Wu were both good girls praised by everyone in the village. One was good-looking and had an uncle who worked part-time in the county supply and marketing cooperative; the other was a virtuous woman who could make a living.
The Kuang family had good conditions, so they naturally chose the former. They wanted to choose a pretty, eloquent, and lively girl for their son who was a soldier.
However, since the Jin family had already arranged a marriage with the Zhang family, the Kuang family naturally set their sights on the Ye family.
In this era, there were few couples who were in love freely. Kuang Aijun asked for leave to come back to see each other. There was nothing that he was dissatisfied with, so the marriage was settled.
In this way, Ye Wu married Kuang Aijun and moved from the Ye family to the Kuang family.
Life after marriage was no different for Ye Wu.
Kuang Aijun did not have the qualifications for his family members to join the army, so Ye Wu lived with the two elders of the Kuang family. The old couple were kind people and never had been harsh to Ye Wu.
Ye Wu was lucky. She found out that she was pregnant soon after the wedding, and then she gave birth to a pair of twins in the next year.
It was also in this year that the youngest son of the Kuang family got married. The two elders of the Kuang family officially divided the family for three children, and the two elders lived with the eldest son.
From then on, except for the five yuan filial piety fee set every month, all the subsidies sent home by Kuang Aijun were kept by Ye Wu, his wife.
Ye Wu officially moved to the new house not far from the Eldest Brother of the Kuang family, Kuang Aiguo. Old Mrs. Kuang occasionally came to take care of the twin grandchildren.
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Lucien On ABRWF Chapter 34.1