Era: Start as a buyer

Chapter 192 A Female Beggar

Millet has a higher sugar content than rice and is easier to digest and absorb. It's an advantage, not a disadvantage. In the future, high sugar content means that you will gain weight easily, and easy digestion and absorption means that you will gain weight quickly.

But in Luo Cheng's time, for some hungry and bloated people, millet porridge was more of a life saver.

"Second sister-in-law, there's someone knocking on the door."

"Here, put the dishes in the cupboard and I'll open the door."

Zhao Qian and Luo Yan were slowly drinking millet porridge. As for the monkeys, they planned to feed them some later. In fact, it can be fed now, but as the monkey has proven, he can't eat hot tofu in a hurry. Feed it hot food. If it wants to eat, it will become impatient and eat unsteadily. Feed it some more when it cools down a bit.

Breakfast at Luo Cheng's house is not only millet porridge, but also dried radish and bean curd. The bean curd must be made with moldy tofu, salt, chili powder and wine. Of course, this is the way of doing things here in Changcheng. They like to add some chili pepper to everything they eat. In some areas, sugar and rice wine are added, and some sauces are added.

These days, there are very few people who have side dishes for breakfast. If someone knocks on the door, it's better to put it away. However, Zhao Qian was also surprised that there was no one knocking on the door at this time. It was an underlying rule not to visit during the meal.

After seeing Luo Yan put the side dishes in the cupboard, Zhao Qian opened the door and saw a beggar. Zhao Qian has a kind heart and is pregnant. Even though she is only eighteen years old this year, she still has an old idea of ​​doing good deeds for the child in her belly.

Monkey Congcong followed Zhao Qian, standing at her feet holding her calves and staring at the beggar at the door.

"There's nothing to eat at home. Go away. There are so many people begging for food these days."

When Luo Yan saw that her second sister-in-law opened the door, it was a beggar, and she immediately stepped forward to chase him away. It was not that she was not kind-hearted, but that there were so many of them. In years of famine, good intentions can only kill one's own people. How many people are kind-hearted at first, but hunger affects themselves and the family around them. If you give someone a mouthful of food, who can save yourself when you need a mouthful of food to save your life?

Not to mention beggars, even in urban areas, many older people still can't bear to see others starving to death. Squeeze a bite out of the rations that you don't even have enough to eat for others.

If you go to rural areas, you will see that rural people do not have rations and canteens have been cancelled, at least in many places. The commune in Longjin Town has canceled its canteen. Some places close to mountains and rivers may still be able to support it, but many places can only rely on God.

The commune here in Longjin Town is better. Although there is less precipitation this year, at least there is a reservoir to support it. There is also a ridge on the mountain where you can go hunting. But there are fourteen communes in one county. A bad commune means that the mountains are not too big and the water is not deep. When there is a drought, there is no water, and there are not many game animals on the mountain.

If it weren't for the county's dispatch and the support from other communes, even in the south, many people in the valleys would starve to death.

So let alone a beggar, there are so many people starving to death now that Luo Yan doesn't have much sympathy anymore. Monkey Congcong is a snobbish monkey. He saw that Luo Yan was driving away the people at the door. He immediately walked to Luo Yan and grinned at the beggar at the door.

"Yanzi, don't be like this, go and pour him a bowl of porridge."

"Second sister-in-law, hey, you really should go back to the town and have a look."

When Luo Yan heard Zhao Qian's instructions, she said helplessly, but she had to listen and went straight back to the stove to fill a bowl of millet porridge. It was quite a full bowl. It wasn't that she was disgusted, but that she really couldn't help. But Zhao Qian had already told her to fill it up a little and let the other person hold on for a while, just in case this bowl of porridge saved someone.

"Thank you~."

"Hey, she's still a woman."

Pour the porridge to the beggar in exchange for a thank you. But I didn't expect it to be a female beggar. It's a pity. If it had been two months earlier, many people would have escaped, including a few members of the family. There are women between the ages of fourteen and twenty who can be sold as women, married off to exchange for food for their families.

But now we don’t marry unmarried men, and we don’t even give them for free. I don’t even have enough to eat. It should be said that I didn’t have enough to eat before, but now I eat even less. What’s the use of having a woman? If I don’t usually work, I can just move and save my energy. I don't have the energy to bother with women.

And if you want a woman, you have to have one more mouth, which is a burden.

Some people say that with one more woman, there will be more labor force in the family. You cannot stop marrying your wife just because of temporary difficulties. This is true, but foreign women have impacted the market of local women.

Let's not talk about the cancellation of the collective canteen. If it had not been cancelled, and there was an extra daughter-in-law from outside, the pressure on the canteen would have been even greater. After the cancellation, it was back to everyone eating what they wanted. But the canteen is cancelled, not the commune, and food is still provided according to the work-point system.

If you marry a daughter-in-law from out of town, there will be one more person in the commune, but the food output will not necessarily increase by one person. To put it simply, marrying a woman from out of town is equivalent to robbing someone else's food rations in the commune.

We don’t have enough food to eat, so why marry so many women who have escaped? It’s not like there are no women in the area. For families with at most daughters, when they are of marriageable age, don't ask for any betrothal gifts or anything like that, just marry the one who is suitable.

In the end, the commune came forward to marry foreign women, but the commune would not arrange work for foreign women. In other words, foreign women cannot earn work points here. If we don't do this, local women will not be able to get married, and everyone will not have enough food to eat.

But in fact, it is just like this, it is not easy for women to marry, and the idea of ​​​​preferring boys over girls is more vividly reflected at this time. Everyone thinks that daughters are raised for others, and everyone wants to marry off their daughters as much as possible without having anything to eat. The key problem is that single men want women, but they can’t support them.

There is a family in the town's commune with two sons, both of whom are old enough to want women. The only thing a father can say is, if you don't have enough to eat, you can marry whatever you want.

So Luo Yan lamented, if a female beggar had come here two months earlier, if she had been younger, she could have lived with a random man. But now, no man wants it. Rural people don’t want her, let alone city people. You know, city people don’t even want rural women.

Those who escaped can still do some work in the countryside, but in the city, if a city man gets married, he will be the same as a rural man. If he can't register a household in the city, he can't find a job, so who wants it?

Let's put it this way, the crooked melons and dates in the city now are those who have lost their wives or are older. There is no shortage of wives. In the first two months, people in the yard were gossiping about a forty-year-old man 'taking in' a sixteen-year-old woman. This matter spread and the man's workplace found out about it, but it was not easy to deal with.

If there is no such thing as 'taking in', just drive them away. There are so many people who starve to death, but this one is not missing. But if you take someone in and then drive them away, there is something wrong with your character and morality. If this were the case in the past, if you, a man in his forties, would not even spare a sixteen-year-old woman, you would definitely be criticized by countless people.

Now~~, let the man clean the toilet for a month and reflect on it. Then things passed like this, so what if it doesn’t pass, special treatment will be given in special times.

"How old are you."

"Sixteen years old."

"Sixteen? Yanzi, go get some water and wash her face."

"Second sister-in-law, why are you washing a beggar's face?"

"This beggar is pretty tall. Didn't your brother say he wants to help his friend Chen Leizi find a wife? Wash her face and see what she looks like. If she's more pretty, ask your brother to send it to Chen Leizi to see."

"But what if this beggar doesn't want to."

"I am willing, if you give me something to eat, I am willing."