Rebirth: The Courtyard Bride Is Cool and Radiant

Chapter 195: Chapter 195: Resonating with Everyone

Yunyi knew that once the task was completed, Liu Chenglin would leave, but she never imagined he would handle things this way.

It was only when I saw the person that I understood why Liu Chenglin dared to do so—those two really looked very much alike.

I also understood why, since coming to the countryside, Liu Chenglin had little contact with the villagers and the Zhiqing Point, aside from the Branch Secretary and me.

However, I wasn’t going to embarrass myself by asking what was going on.

The Branch Secretary hadn’t much concealed the fact that Yunyi had been seconded to support the disaster area. So, when Yunyi arrived under the Willow Tree to wait for work assignments, the villagers quickly surrounded her.

The villagers kept asking about the disaster area. Yunyi recounted what she could, sticking to the facts. This touched the hearts of the more tender ones, who began to cover their mouths and cry.

The others were no better off; all eyes were red, and for a moment, the atmosphere was thick with sorrow.

Life, however, had to go on. Hearing Yunyi’s account stirred the villagers’ compassion. Each one declared they must contribute more public grain this year to ensure people in the disaster area had food and to support the nation.

Even the village cadres were moved by everyone’s enthusiasm. ”Don’t worry,” one reassured them, ”I’ll go to the commune today and settle this matter.”

There were objections raised in the village, but the minority yielded to the majority, and so the matter was settled.

The villagers stated that while they couldn’t do much else, tightening their belts to support the disaster area was within their capabilities. It wasn’t as hard, they reasoned, as the famine years they had endured.

I truly hadn’t anticipated that simply speaking the truth would resonate so deeply with everyone.

This is the spirit of our nation, I thought. Even while struggling with basic subsistence, the ethos of mutual aid remains: when one region faces difficulty, support comes from all sides.

Their contributions might be insignificant, but a single spark can start a prairie fire. Suddenly, many ideas flashed through Yunyi’s mind.

I might not have thought much about the future before, but now my heart raced. The future felt full of promise!

Today’s task for the village was to bring back all the straw from the fields and chop it up with a straw cutter. Some would be used as feed for the brigade’s livestock, and some for compost.

The job assigned to the female educated youths, including Yunyi, was feeding the straw cutter. This involved sitting and placing straw into the machine. The work wasn’t exhausting, but the dust was overwhelming.

As Yunyi sat there, she listened to the villagers’ chatter. ”It would be great if our village had a tractor,” one mused. ”Then we could also borrow a grass cutter from Hua’an Farm Reclamation.”

”Dream on!” another scoffed. ”Where would our village get that much money for a tractor? In my opinion, once Hua’an Farm Reclamation gets electricity, we’ll just bask in their glow. Then, like the commune, we can use electric motors to power the grass cutters directly—that’s more realistic.”

”Exactly! Hasn’t there been talk about this for a while now? Why hasn’t there been any movement?”

”I heard it’s definitely settled,” someone else chimed in. ”The neighboring commune wanted to compete with us. If the lines went through their area, their commune would naturally benefit, so the two communes have been vying for it.”

”But now, it’s been decided! The electric lines will go straight through our village’s back mountain. If all goes well, our village could have electricity by this New Year. Just thinking about it makes me happy!”

”When will they start working on it? I wonder if they’ll need labor to carry the electrical poles?”

”How do you know all this?”

”When my brother-in-law’s village got electricity, many people from there helped carry the poles and haul the wires. They earned eighty cents a day for their work.”

Suddenly, everyone’s conversation digressed from chopping straw and making compost to the prospect of carrying electric poles for money to ensure a prosperous New Year, and it didn’t return to the original topic.