I used rebirth to bury his captivating gaze.

Chapter 24 Fatty Pork

The marriage between the Zou and Yang families has finally come to an end. The wedding date, after discussion between the heads of both families, was set for the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month, which is the 19th day of the Gregorian calendar.

The 20th of the lunar calendar represents perfection, while the 19th of the solar calendar represents eternity!

With just over ten days until the wedding day, the Zou family began preparing wedding supplies.

The Zou family had already finished making the furniture, tables, chairs, and benches a few days prior. This was done by Yang Zhannan, with the assistance of his future successor, Yang Zhi, a skilled carpenter.

It was said that it helped him learn carpentry with great ease, much better than the Russian he learned at Tuan Ding Shan Junior High School.

In the late 1970s, the furniture consisted of a set of tall cabinets with two doors, one on top and one on the bottom. The upper cabinet was used to store bedding and pillows, while the lower cabinet was used to store clothes, bundles, or other small items.

The carpentry work done by the carpenters in her family was absolutely beautiful. Not only was Yang Zhannan famous in her own family, the Zou family, but he was also well-known in the village and other villages for his excellent craftsmanship!

The carpenter from the bride's family made the wedding furniture for their own third daughter, and of course, no piece of furniture was missing.

Although he usually handed over the money he earned from carpentry work to his mother in the courtyard, in other matters, it was his own family, and he couldn't possibly side with outsiders!

Furniture will be custom-made according to the betrothal gift list, and additional items not on the list will be added.

After all, this dowry list has been written for half a year. In the past six months, the dowry that young men and women write for their engagement and marriage may have increased even further!

The dowry list is like the clothes young people wear on the street; they wear whatever clothes are fashionable at the moment.

Thirty legs, not one less—this was written on the dowry list when the two children got engaged.

Add a small wooden dining table with four legs to the furniture.

Four beds and four roofs are available;

The "Four-Colored Quilt" is a cotton quilt made of four stripes of floral silk in four different colors, along with coarse white silk and thick white cotton.

One has a red silk floral quilt cover, and the other has a green silk floral quilt cover. Another has a light pink silk floral quilt cover, and the last has a light blue silk floral quilt cover.

The four layers consist of four different colored quilt covers and four different colored striped coarse cotton fabrics used as mattresses.

The two sets of pillows are made of red and green silk, with the same color trim around the outside of the pillows.

The rest of the items were also quickly purchased. They rode in the production team's old white horse-drawn cart driven by the old ox, and in just one day, they went to the supply and marketing cooperative on the main street of Tuandingshan Commune to buy the goods.

The Zou family prepared everything for the wedding according to the Yang family's requirements, and now they are looking forward to the day when the wedding date will be set!

The weddings of the Zou and Yang families were over, and the Lunar New Year was just a few days away. At this time, every household was preparing for the New Year, slaughtering chickens and sheep, making new clothes, and buying firecrackers and other items!

The Yang Family Compound was no exception, and began preparing items for the Lunar New Year!

This day happened to be January 7th, 1979, the Lunar New Year in Northeast China.

In Northeast China, the Laba Festival marks the coldest of the twelve solar terms.

As the saying goes: "On the seventh and eighth days of the twelfth lunar month, your chin will freeze off."

Early in the morning, the sounds of a pig struggling to survive echoed from the Yang family compound...

This desperate shouting echoed into every room of the compound.

Through the gaps in the frost flowers on the windowpane, Yang Yuhan, in the south wing, could vaguely see the shadows of several adults gathered around a wooden table in the yard on the sparse snow, tying up a large, white, fat pig with thick hemp rope.

What horrified her even more was seeing a thick, straight red line flowing down the pig's neck. This line flowed directly into a very large white iron basin, until the basin could no longer contain the weight of the red line, and then it stopped flowing...

Then the first cry for help faded away...

Yang Yuhan watched for a while, then stepped back down from the brick and got into bed. This was just too bloody.

Yang Zhannan had arranged for Wang Yidao, a butcher from the same village, to help slaughter the pig, along with four or five other people to help with miscellaneous tasks.

Wang Yidao divided the cleaned pieces of meat into different sizes and placed them on the wooden chopping board for his employer to process. He then took back the pig brine that his employer didn't want. Perhaps this was the futile reward for a pig butcher in those days.

With the major event completed, it was almost lunchtime. According to local custom, every family does this: after slaughtering the pig and finishing their work, they invite several tables of relatives and friends from the same village or neighboring villages over for a celebratory meal!

Old Yang Hong and Yang Zhannan are highly respected in the village, both for their unparalleled carpentry skills and for their impeccable character and reputation!

This week it was Liu Shulan's turn to cook. Today was a special day, with Yang Zhanbei as the head chef for lunch, and the other wives of the family all went to the kitchen to help him.

Yang Zhanbei has been traveling around for many years and has naturally learned some cooking skills. He has also been in contact with restaurant chefs. Today, as a chef, his cuisine is even more special, which is stewed dishes with pork as the main ingredient!

With his wife helping out, the chef naturally became more adept at cooking.

The two sisters, Yang Yuhan and Yang Yuqiu, also joined in the work. Yang Yuhan went to the field outside the gate to carry corn stalks, while Yang Yuqiu squatted under the big iron pot to add firewood.

Yang Yumei remained the same as always, standing alone at her doorstep watching the commotion. After a while, she went back inside to work on her winter break homework. Once lunch was ready, someone would naturally come to call her for lunch.

In addition, we borrowed plates, bowls, chopsticks, and three wooden dining tables from our neighbors and placed them on the heated kang (a traditional brick bed) in the east room of the south wing.

The other three dining tables are the original ones, placed behind the kitchen and separated from it only by a thin mud wall.

The men outside and the men of the family went to the dining table in the east room of the south wing to be guests, while the young boys and women of the family stayed in the kitchen to eat and drink at the three dining tables.

There are six wooden dining tables, each with six sets of bowls and chopsticks, just waiting for our Peking University chefs to start the feast!

A moment later, a shout came: "The food is here!" Many people carried plates, and in an instant, pork dishes were served on three tables in each of the two rooms.

Every dish on every table is the same. Each dish is served one plate at a time, and the plate is filled only after the food has been eaten to half its original size.

Rural people are particular about their meals; they cook with a basin, unlike restaurants where dishes are served on a single plate.

Pork dishes include various parts of the pig, such as braised pork fat with sauerkraut, sliced ​​pork belly, pure pork blood sausage, steamed pork blood, pork intestines, braised pork, and so on.

The dishes are laid out; let's eat.

While we were eating, my wife suddenly remembered that today was the Laba Festival.

"I've been eating a lot of meat, but I feel like this pork doesn't taste as good as cornmeal porridge. I eat cornmeal porridge every day, and then I crave pork. But now that I'm eating pork, I want cornmeal porridge. What do you guys think is going on?"

Everyone at the kitchen table was so engrossed in eating and drinking that no one paid her any attention. She then asked, "Stop eating and answer me!"

Everyone paused briefly to pick up some food, but no one answered her as she continued eating her meat.

“Yu Han, you usually love to argue with me, but you’re not saying anything now? Tell me, Third Aunt, isn’t this a kind of pathological condition? You used to be like this all the time, wanting whatever you couldn’t get.”

Yu Han looked up at her rosy, bland, and unreasonable face. She didn't want to talk to her; she just wanted to enjoy the aroma of the fresh pork on her plate.

In my past life, as a person from the future, how could I have tasted such delicious pork! In this era, pork is not fed with pig feed, but in the future, it is fed with all kinds of poultry feed, and it tastes like eating dry firewood.

Seeing that Yu Han ignored her, Diao Yan asked the same question again.

"Mom, go downstairs after you've finished eating. Stop asking those pointless questions." Yu Mei glanced at her sideways.

This time, Yang Yuqiu was completely enraged. Finally, after all these years, she was able to eat some good food, but this damned woman in front of her kept causing trouble.

She put down her chopsticks, her anger rising, and shouted, "Diao Yan, it's not that I, as your elder, am disrespectful to you, you're just being shameless!"

"Emma! Yu Han, how dare you insult your elder, your third aunt?"

"Third Aunt, you're being unreasonable! Isn't it you who insisted on making me answer?"

"Yu Han, say less. After you've finished eating, go to the side and wait to be cleaned up."

"You just answer when I tell you to? Hurry up and apologize to me."

"Why should I apologize to you? You deserve it!"

"Heh! You're a piece of trash, watch me slap you..." Diao Yan said, standing up and raising an arm towards her. Yu Han seized the opportunity to grab her arm and twist it backward, almost breaking the extra arm.

"Wah! Wah!" Yang Chong's two children cried.

"Xiaoping, Qiusheng, don't cry. Let's not eat and go back to the house." Xu Fengying quickly picked up the little one, and with the other hand, she took the older one's hand and walked out.

The two were still locked in a stalemate when Yu Mei saw Diao Yan getting the short end of the stick and joined in the fight.

"It's all because her grandma is too full of herself. She doesn't fight when she's eating coarse food and wild vegetables, but now that she's eating meat, she's fighting. Starting tomorrow, I won't give you any pork."

"Grandma, I need to eat meat." Yu Mei immediately let go.

"Grandma, I want to eat pork too, it smells so good!" Yuqiu said, letting go of Diaoyan's arm.

"Shulan, are you taking turns cooking today?"

"Mom, it's time for me to cook."

"Alright, hurry up and remove these tables. Make corn porridge for dinner, and don't serve any pork dishes." After saying that, the old lady swayed and walked away.

"Ah! Why should we!" Yu Mei and Yu Han said at the same time.

"Don't talk to me." Yu Mei said.

"Are you talking to me?" Yu Han.

"You two don't need to argue anymore. Just because today is Laba Festival, we have to drink corn porridge. The old lady has ordered that we eat corn porridge tonight."

"What bad luck! I finally managed to transmigrate and get to eat some fresh pork, but I still got..." Yu Han quickly stopped herself from saying the wrong thing.

"You can wear the moon, so I can wear the sun? Let's go to the sun and eat some divine pork." Yu Mei retorted, unconvinced.

"Pfft!" Everyone burst out laughing.

"Alright, you two are talking nonsense. Get out of here. Save your stomachs for corn porridge tonight!"

The meal ended unhappily!

After everyone had lunch, the men who had helped out all went home.

As is customary, the eldest and youngest men of the family would place pieces of fatty pork from the chopping board in the yard onto the snow in front of the window of the east wing, and then use a hard wooden stick to draw a large circle around the placed pork.

Then, use a large shovel to rub the snow, pile the pork up on top of the snow to create a thick snow mountain, and then pour water over the snow. The resulting structure is about the size of a white ice tomb!

Then, the 20-30 jin of fatty pork and a pig's head that were left for the temporary kitchen were stored in a large ceramic jar in the west granary where grain was stored. The pig's head was to be used to set up a table in the courtyard on New Year's Eve to welcome the gods.

There were other odds and ends in the storeroom, such as yellow sticky rice cakes in a large gray ceramic jar, frozen white flour steamed buns, white flour buns with red bean filling, or mooncakes that were hung high up near the Mid-Autumn Festival, with each person holding a few pieces weighing one pound, or small farm tools, etc., all of which were put into this earthen house.

A frozen head of fat pork was used up. Half of it was used to entertain guests, and another half was sold to people in the village. In the end, there was a whole head of pork left.

The chopped pork chunks and another pig's head were kept until the Lunar New Year, specifically for roasting on the second day of the second lunar month (the day of the Dragon Head Raising Festival). They were then frozen together in ice and snow to deter thieves and prevent rats from gnawing on the pork. In those days, there were no refrigerators in the countryside, so the pork had to be eaten before spring arrived; otherwise, it would rot as the weather warmed up.

It's actually quite cold today, speaking of Laba Festival.

Today is Laba Festival, and it is a folk custom to drink "Laba porridge"!

Laba porridge, as a city dweller, is of course a rice porridge made from many ingredients.

For a rural area, it was a simple and straightforward concept. Especially in the economically difficult 1970s, it was a topic that most farmers had never even heard of. Even if they had the concept, they couldn't find the ingredients to make Laba porridge!

For dinner, Liu Shulan made cornmeal porridge as instructed by the old lady, and the leftover pork and vegetables from lunch were indeed not placed on the women's table.

Apart from the mother and her two daughters in the south wing, everyone else ate the cornmeal porridge as if it were medicine, grimacing and finding it hard to swallow!

Fortunately, they ate much faster than at lunchtime, and everyone left the table within minutes.

Yu Qiu and Yu Han helped Liu Shulan clean up the kitchen, and then went back to their room to sleep after they finished.

Late night

A series of knocks came from outside the front door...

"Open the door quickly, ma'am... hurry..."