"You need a household registration booklet to write a name. What did you learn in school?" Old Lady Li came in, untied the key from her belt, opened the box, and handed a piece of paper from the household registration booklet to Mingbei: "This is the name your brother wrote for Zhenzhen. Just write it according to this. I have to keep my household registration booklet. It will be terrible if you lose it later."
Zhenzhen looked at the three handsome words "Li Mingzhen" on the note and couldn't help praising: "As expected of you, you are the eldest brother. Look how well you write." Glancing at Mingbei, Zhenzhen couldn't help but sigh: "If the eldest, second and third brothers were not at home, I really wouldn't want you to teach me how to write. I'm afraid your poor handwriting will ruin my writing."
"Just being able to write is enough, why are there so many requirements." Mingbei took out a pencil and tried his best to copy Li Mingzhen's words stroke by stroke several times, then pushed it in front of Zhenzhen: "Try to write it. I tell you that your handwriting may not be good at the beginning, just practice more and it will be fine. I didn't practice calligraphy more because I didn't want to waste the notebook. Otherwise, my handwriting would definitely be no worse than my brother's. It's mainly because I'm too good at living."
Zhenzhen looked at Mingbei with a frown on her face, not knowing where to start to complain about him. Old Lady Li, who was sitting on the kang, could not help but knock on her pipe and sneered, "Come on, your handwriting has been flying since you were a child. You can't even sit on the stool if I ask you to copy the text twice. You never know how to put your books and notebooks in your schoolbag properly, and you just stuff them in. You are the one who wastes the most on notebooks in our family. You lose the pages at the back halfway through using them, and you still have the nerve to say you can't bear to throw away your notebooks."
Li Mingbei's past was exposed, and he was blushing with shame. He glanced at Zhenzhen who was laughing, and couldn't help but discuss with Mrs. Li: "Grandma, look, Zhenzhen is laughing at me, you have to protect my image as a brother."
"You have lost your image in front of your sister. Try to see if you act like a brother." Old Mrs. Li put down her pipe, got off the kang, took out a clean calendar paper from the cabinet, took Zhenzhen's new textbook, and sat on the kang to wrap it in a book cover.
Zhen Zhen quickly said, "Grandma, I want the white side to be on the outside, and the painted ones to be hidden inside. It won't look good if it's too fancy."
"You are such a mischievous little girl. People are worried that the book cover is not fancy enough, but you complain that it doesn't look good." Although she said this, she still followed Zhenzhen's wishes and put the white side outside.
Zhenzhen sat at the table, writing her name stroke by stroke. She hadn't touched a pen for six years, and her hands were too small now, so it was hard for her to write. After writing her name neatly, Zhenzhen tilted her head and looked at it, not very satisfied: "It's too ugly."
Mingbei looked at Zhenzhen's handwriting and then at his own, with a look of disbelief on his face: "How come your handwriting is so beautiful right after you started writing? Did you practice secretly?"
"Yes!" Zhenzhen smiled and said, "When you taught me to read, I picked up your old notebooks and wrote them down."
When Grandma Li heard her grandson yelling, she quickly got off the kang to take a look. She saw the three characters "Li Mingzhen" on the paper. Although they looked a little big, they were straight and pleasing to the eye. Grandma Li smiled and touched Zhenzhen's hair: "Our Dabao is very smart. Look at how good his handwriting is. You can tell at a glance that he will go to college."
After glancing at Li Mingbei's writing, Old Lady Li rolled her eyes at him and said, "I'll be satisfied if you can get into high school."
Mingbei was a little discouraged, but then he thought of Yu Wanqiu's appearance, and his restless mind settled down again: "Grandma, I will definitely be admitted to high school. I also want to work in a hydrolysis plant in the future."
"Okay, not bad, you finally have ambition." Old Lady Li nodded and casually criticized Mingbei: "But I think you still need to practice your handwriting. If the teacher can't understand your paper during the exam, it will be useless no matter how well you do."
Zhenzhen gave Old Lady Li a thumbs up in approval: "Grandma, even though you haven't been to school, you know the ins and outs of schooling very well. My third brother also said the same thing when he came back last time."
"That's right." Old Mrs. Li sat back on the kang and continued to wrap the book covers proudly. "I raised your brothers. I know everything about their schooling and exams."
Mingbei sighed in frustration: "Then I will copy one more text every day."
"Don't just copy, write each word clearly." Old Lady Li lectured him, and then stabbed him in the heart: "By the way, I think your handwriting is not as good as Zhenzhen's. Later, you can teach those Chinese and arithmetic words to your sister, and when she learns, she can write on the book cover herself. Look at your notebook, it's so dirty. If you smear Zhenzhen's book cover black, she will definitely be unhappy."
Thinking of Zhenzhen's habit of being clean despite her young age, Mingbei was also afraid that he would be hit by the pipe again if he made a mistake in writing, so he quickly agreed, took out Zhenzhen's new word book, and taught her everything that needed to be written on the cover one by one.
Although they were all very familiar Chinese characters, Zhenzhen still wrote them very seriously. In her previous life, she had been writing with a mechanical pencil since she was a child, and she used a ballpoint pen when she was in junior high school. The characters she wrote were only ordinary. Although they were not like dog crawling, they were far from beautiful. Therefore, Zhenzhen was particularly envious of people who wrote well. In college, she even signed up for a calligraphy class to be influenced by it. It was a pity that she was unstable at that time. Every day, she was either busy chasing dramas or playing mobile games and reading novels. Although she went to class seriously every week, she did not practice much after returning, so she did not make much progress.
After being reborn, she started elementary school again. Although the content of the textbooks was very simple, Zhenzhen was still full of expectations for going to school. Only after graduation did she realize the happiness of going to school. Apart from other things, she at least had to practice her beautiful handwriting.
In Zhenzhen's anticipation, the school day came in a blink of an eye. Grandma Li woke up the whole family early in the morning. Wang Sufen went to the kitchen to make hand-rolled egg noodles for Zhenzhen, while Grandma Li took an old wooden comb and combed Zhenzhen's hair, which had just been washed last night. Zhenzhen had been eating pine nuts and hazelnuts since she was a child, and she ate both coarse and fine grains, so her hair was black and smooth, as beautiful as black satin. Grandma Li tied two braids for Zhenzhen and tied two newly bought red hairbands at the ends of the braids.
Standing up and taking two steps back, Old Lady Li looked at Zhenzhen's outfit with satisfaction: she wore a light yellow floral shirt with a red cardigan on the outside, and light blue khaki pants underneath, which looked beautiful no matter how you looked at her.
"My granddaughter is so pretty, and the clothes your uncle sent back are also beautiful. We can't buy such good clothes here." Old Mrs. Li nodded with a smile, opened the box, took out an apple and stuffed it into Zhenzhen's schoolbag: "Wash it and eat it after class."
Zhenzhen happily touched the bright red apple. There were many kinds of wild fruits in Beicha, but this big apple was rare. "Grandma, where did this apple come from?"
"I bought them on the street. They were just delivered yesterday. I only managed to get ten in total." Old Lady Li said, "I'll give you six to eat and four to give to the meat buns. I'll ask your sister-in-law to scrape them with a spoon and give them to him later."
Zhen Zhen blushed and felt a little embarrassed: "I eat the fruits from the mountain. I'll give more of these good apples to Rou Bao. Grandma, you should try one too. This one is really sweet."
"You can't bite it!" Grandma Li stroked her granddaughter's face with a smile, and then urged her to eat quickly: "Your mother cooked noodles for you, go and eat quickly, don't be late for the first day of school."
After breakfast, Li Muwu solemnly took down his big bicycle from the wall of the warehouse and patted the seat with pride: "Daughter, get on. Dad will take you to school."
Zhenzhen looked at the Gangtie Primary School, which was a few hundred meters away from her home, with a frown on her face: "It's so close, I can just walk there, no need to take a bicycle."
"That won't work. School is different than usual." Li Muwu carried Zhenzhen to the back seat without saying anything and pushed her to school excitedly. Mrs. Li and Wang Sufen were afraid that Zhenzhen would not be able to adapt to school, so they looked at each other and followed behind to send Zhenzhen off.
In this era, every family has different levels of attention to their children's schooling. Some families want their children to study more so that they can get a good job in the future, or to have a better chance of getting a job in a factory. Others think that school is a place to take care of their children, and that they will be noisy at home, so sending them to school at least means that there are teachers to take care of them, which saves a lot of worry. Therefore, on the day of school, some children come with their own schoolbags, and some are sent by their parents. However, Zhenzhen, who came with three children from a family and pushed a bicycle, was the first.
Li Muwu carefully parked the bicycle next to the gate and lifted Zhenzhen off the seat. People who lived nearby had long known that the Li family had bought a new Forever manganese steel bicycle, and they all greeted them, saying, "Hey, I pushed your bicycle out to send my daughter to school." There were also people who lived far away, who, seeing the very rare manganese steel bicycle, came forward one by one to touch it.
Li Muwu was both proud and reluctant. Seeing these people touching it endlessly, he suddenly became anxious: "Okay, okay, stop touching it. What if the paint falls off?" When they heard that the paint would fall off easily, everyone stepped back. This thing was very expensive and they could not afford the compensation if it was really damaged.
Li Muwu looked at so many people surrounding his bike, but was worried about leaving it here, so he thought about riding home first and then running back. Old Lady Li ignored him and led Zhenzhen directly into the school gate.
Although it is called a school, the Steel Primary School is actually just a row of houses with four rooms in total. One is the teacher's office, and the other three are for grades 1 to 6. The playground is not big, and there are no facilities besides a flagpole, but the students still run around the flagpole happily.
Most of the students who come here to study are from the area south of the railway. There are not many children of school age, and the school does not have that many buildings, so there are blackboards on both sides of a classroom. Grades one and two are in the same classroom. The teacher usually teaches the first graders first, assigns homework after class, and then goes to the other side to teach the second graders. At this time, the teacher does not distinguish between subjects. Chinese, arithmetic, ideology and morality are all taught by one person. One teacher teaches two grades, so there are only three people in the Iron and Steel Primary School, including the teacher and the principal.
The classroom was filled with the most old-fashioned long tables and chairs. The second-grade kids were all having fun on the playground, but there were seven or eight first-grade kids in the classroom. Zhenzhen looked around and chose a seat in the middle of the third row. As soon as she put down her schoolbag, Mrs. Li whispered to her, "Sit over here. When we light the stove in winter, we put it in the aisle. It's too cold if you're too far away, and too hot if you're too close. This seat is just right."
The winter in Beicha is more than 30 degrees below zero. The red pine in the stove at home is burning all day and night, and Zhenzhen is so hot that she can't even wear a sweater. But the school is different from home. Although the fire is burning all day, there is no one in the classroom to watch the stove at night. They all use coal to suppress it and poke it open in the morning. Although the fire is not extinguished all night, the heat accumulated during the day is basically gone at night, so many children have frozen hands and feet when they go to school. Mingnan and Mingbei both went to elementary school here, so Old Lady Li knows everything about the school.
Zhenzhen took out the rag prepared by Old Lady Li from her schoolbag, washed it under the faucet outside, and came back to wipe her desk and chairs clean.
"Grandma, Mom, I have to go to class soon, you should go back quickly." Zhenzhen put her schoolbag in the hole of the table and prepared to send Grandma Li and Wang Sufen out.
Old Lady Li looked around and saw that many children had come in one after another. She nodded reluctantly and said, "Okay, I'll go talk to your teacher and ask him to keep an eye on you. You're so young, what if someone bullies you?"
Old Mrs. Li went out with Wang Sufen, still mumbling. Zhenzhen was helpless to see them heading straight for the office. Although she was one year younger than the other children, no one in the classroom could compare to her in terms of hands-on ability, so Zhenzhen was not worried about being bullied at all.
Zhenzhen was fair and cute, and her clothes were beautiful. Wang Xiaoqing, the first-grade teacher, saw her as soon as she entered the room. Teacher Wang raised her teaching stick and knocked on the table, trying to make her voice louder: "Students, be quiet."
It was the first time for all of them to enter the classroom. Although they were naughty at home, they were in awe of the school. When they saw the teacher talking, they all quieted down. The second graders at the back also turned their heads curiously and looked at this group of immature greenhorns.
Teacher Wang introduced himself first and wrote his name on the blackboard. When it was time to call the roll, even though Teacher Wang had taught three or four times, the students still had a lot of different answers. When it came to Zhenzhen, a clear and loud "Here!" instantly made Teacher Wang breathe a sigh of relief. Looking up, she was dressed neatly and beautifully, with white skin, big eyes, and a little chubby baby fat on her cheeks. She looked very cute.
Teacher Wang couldn't help but smile. After taking the roll call and teaching a class, he found that Zhenzhen was the fastest among the children, so he immediately appointed her as the class monitor and gave her the "important task" of collecting homework.
Since Zhenzhen started school, Grandma Li suddenly felt that her house was empty. Although her great-grandson Roubao was chubby and cute, she felt lost when she couldn't see her beautiful granddaughter. So Grandma Li had another activity every day. She would go to school to take a look when she thought the school was about to end. But she often misjudged the time. Sometimes she went too early and the get out of class was not over yet, and sometimes she went too late and the children had already returned to the classroom, which made Grandma Li very upset.
After returning home and opening the box to count the money sent by her son and the industrial tickets saved at home, Mrs. Li gritted her teeth and went to the street to buy an alarm clock. She also asked Mingbei to teach her how to use it. With this thing, Mrs. Li can finally get to school on time. She happily gave her granddaughter a pot of honey water and kept an eye on her to see if there were any bad boys bullying her precious granddaughter.
After Zhenzhen arrived at the school, she felt that her life was very fulfilling. When the teacher finished teaching the first grade and went to teach the second grade, Zhenzhen would turn back to listen, especially the Chinese class. The texts of that era were very interesting, which made Zhenzhen feel very novel. After school, Zhenzhen went home and did the homework assigned by the teacher first, and then copied the text several times carefully. The hardworking spirit made Mingbei, who finally knew how to make progress, also compete with him, and finally in the final exam, his score returned to above 90 points.
Winter has arrived in a blink of an eye. In the past, Zhenzhen would stay at home during the winter and rarely go out, but now she has to go to school and can't be as lazy as before.
Zhenzhen was wearing a thick cotton-padded jacket with a fur coat on the outside. She was wearing homemade sheepskin boots on her feet. They were made of the same yellow sheepskin she had used to commit suicide by banging her head against the door that year. She also had a thick layer of rabbit fur inside, making them very warm to wear.
The low temperature in Beicha cannot be resisted by cotton-padded jackets alone, so every family with some property here has a fur jacket. Some of them are furs collected from hunting in the mountains, and some families cannot hunt, but if they have plenty of food, they can also exchange them for fur jackets.
Wearing a thick fur hat and leather gloves, Zhenzhen went out alone with her schoolbag on her back. Since the weather turned cold, Zhenzhen stopped letting Grandma Li send her to school and did not allow her to go to school during the day. Apart from other things, Zhenzhen was really afraid that Grandma Li would fall down in the knee-deep snow.
But it was really hard to walk like this with one foot deep and one foot shallow. Zhenzhen glanced around and saw that there were not many people nearby, so she moved forward carefully, ten meters at a time, and arrived at the school in less than a minute.
After scraping off the snow on her feet, Zhenzhen wiped the tables and chairs as usual before sitting down in her seat. Today is the final exam, and after the morning exam is over, the children of Gangtie Primary School will have a four-month winter vacation.
The principal stood at the door and rang the bell, and Teacher Wang came in with the test papers and handed out the Chinese and math papers at once. When Teacher Wang finished handing out the second-grade test papers and sat down to drink some water, Zhenzhen had already stood up.
Teacher Wang thought the ink on the paper she gave to Zhenzhen was smudged, so he quickly asked, "What's wrong? Is there something you can't read clearly?"
"I'm done and want to hand in my paper!" Zhenzhen brought the paper to the podium and smiled sweetly at Teacher Wang: "Teacher Wang, can I leave first?"
"Uh..." Teacher Wang didn't react. It's only been ten minutes since she found the test paper. She has finished answering it? She quickly looked through the two papers. The papers were neat and the handwriting was regular. She got all the two-digit arithmetic questions right. Teacher Wang couldn't help but smile and became more friendly to Zhenzhen: She is worthy of being her favorite student. She is smart enough.
"Okay, then you go back, and drive slowly on the way." Teacher Wang gave an instruction, then took out a red pen while sitting on the podium and wrote 100 points on Zhenzhen's paper.
Zhenzhen carried her schoolbag and put on her hat. After leaving the school and walking to a deserted place, she suddenly disappeared from the spot.
After acquiring the skill of teleportation, Zhenzhen has not acquired any new skills as she has grown older in the past few years, but her original skills have been constantly upgraded. Now, the map in Zhenzhen's mind is getting wider and wider, and the distance Zhenzhen can teleport is getting farther and farther.
Almost instantly, Zhenzhen appeared in an empty alley in Jiacheng City, more than a thousand kilometers away. She pulled her hat down a little, and wrapped her scarf tightly around her mouth and nose before walking out of the alley. Touching the few gold coins in her pocket, Zhenzhen planned to exchange them for some money and tickets. The Cultural Revolution would begin in May next year, and it would be inconvenient to do anything at that time. It would be better to exchange more now in case of emergency.
Covering Jiacheng with her consciousness, Zhenzhen soon saw several people buying and selling things in an alley not far away. There were also several people carrying food and chickens walking there. It was estimated that place was Jiacheng's default barter place.
Nowadays, the country does not allow people to resell things, but when the supply of various materials is not very sufficient, people are still allowed to barter. Many people play this edge ball and sell some food and game. As long as they are not reported, there is usually no problem.
Zhenzhen walked around the alley and walked towards a man whose chest was bulging with what seemed to be a lot of money. She asked softly, "Do you want gold?"
The man looked at the child at his waist in astonishment. From the sound of the child's voice, it seemed to be a little girl. He couldn't help but feel a little annoyed: "Whose child dares to play here? Go home quickly."
"I really have some!" Zhenzhen stretched out her hand to stop him and said in a low voice, "Food and gold bars are fine. I have them at home. My parents are sick and can't go out, so they let me go out to exchange some money to buy medicine."
The man was kind-hearted, fearing that the half-grown child would be deceived. Seeing her confident words, he said, "I don't want the gold. It's useless if it's not eaten or drunk. I want to buy some fine grains. My child is a delicate child and is sick. He doesn't like coarse grains."
Zhenzhen frowned slightly: "I also have fine grains, rice and flour are all fine, but there is one thing, because the adults at home are sick, no one grinds the rice and wheat we harvested, so I can only give you the unhusked ones, but the price is definitely cheaper than the flour sold in the grain store."
The woman seemed to have some connections and didn't feel embarrassed at all. She just looked at Zhen Zhen suspiciously: "Are you sure you can sell me food this cheap? Don't fool me!"
Zhenzhen smiled and said, "It's a matter of money and goods. If you don't see the food, you won't pay. Why should you be afraid of losing out?"
The man thought about it and realized that this made sense, so he negotiated the price with Zhenzhen, which was one-third cheaper than the grain store and did not require grain coupons.
"That's settled then. How many pounds do you have? I'll buy more."
Zhenzhen smiled: "How many pounds do you want?"
"Fifty kilograms?" the man asked tentatively.
"Okay!" Zhenzhen agreed immediately.
Seeing Zhenzhen's straightforward look, the man thought that Zhenzhen's family was from a farm, otherwise you wouldn't be able to find so much unhusked rice and flour anywhere else. He quickly counted his family's belongings and quickly added, "I need 50 kilograms of rice and flour each. I don't have enough money, so I'll give you industrial tickets for the difference."
Zhenzhen was just thinking about getting some tickets to buy some daily necessities. When she heard this, she immediately responded, "You can give me the tickets first. Any tickets will do."
"You are quite a smart kid." The man glanced at her with a half-smile, then nodded readily, "Then when will we exchange?"
Zhenzhen paused, and used her consciousness to cover the surroundings. She soon found an uninhabited place. She whispered, "There is too much food for me to deliver. Go home and drive the food cart. We will meet outside the woods in the west in half an hour.
"Okay, it's settled." The man nodded, and just as he was about to leave, he stopped and looked at Zhenzhen: "Aren't you afraid that I will take away your food, kid?"
A hint of coldness flashed across Zhen Zhen's eyes: "If I didn't have some ability, I wouldn't have come out, right?"
The man felt cold all over and shuddered instantly. He didn't dare tease the child anymore and hurried home to prepare the cart.
The author has something to say: This is a big chapter with 6,000 words. I will try to write 6,000 words every day next month. I hope you will continue to support me. Also, I will continue to ask for your collection of the column. Thank you all.
I saw some readers were worried that Zhenzhen would be found. Actually, it is not that easy to be found. One reason is that it is far away. Another reason is that the article says that every family with a little money wore fur coats and fur hats. At that time, men, women, old and young all wore the same style. Even if someone suspects, they will look for her locally. We, Zhenzhen, have all returned home.
The good-looking "Gain Ten Pounds by Skipping a Meal" is getting fatter and fatter. Red envelopes are dropped every day. There will be a long chapter of ten thousand words at the end of the month. Little fairies can search for it.
"You'll Gain 10 Pounds Without Eating for One Meal" by Yi Jin. The 18th-tier celebrity who would gain weight even if she drank cold water actually got a foodie system when she was starving to death. From then on, the more she ate, the more beautiful she became. Her figure was like Victoria's Secret. As long as she ate, her acting skills would explode and she would be blessed with great fortune!
Shan Zhenzhen: System, I’m not kidding, I can eat you until you go bankrupt, believe it or not!