mijobooks Chapter 61 Settling Accounts!
Chapter 61 Settling Accounts!
On her way home, Er Ya's heart was as heavy as if she were visiting a funeral. Every step she took felt like walking on needles.
Facing the howling north wind, Er Ya wrapped her cotton-padded coat tighter. For some reason, for a fleeting moment, she missed Lao Jia…
Back at the courtyard house, Zhang Chengfei did not go directly to the east wing of the front yard, but instead followed Zhang Erya and her group to the middle yard.
The family sat down, and Qin Huairu brought over a teacup: "It's almost time for bed. I was worried that you wouldn't be able to sleep if you drank strong tea, so I made you some sugar water."
Zhang Chengfei nodded and smiled: "The Dongxu family is very thoughtful."
Qin Huairu blushed slightly and quickly turned away to hide it.
Jia Dongxu asked his third grandfather if there was something he couldn't say on the way and had to say at home.
Zhang Chengfei first took a sip of sugar water, then put down his teacup before slowly saying, "Dongxu, you know about our machinery factory setting up an electric kettle workshop, right?"
Jia Dongxu nodded: "I heard about it. I was even planning to sign Qin Huairu up for a temporary job..."
While speaking, he secretly glanced at Zhang Chengfei, hoping he would say something.
Zhang Chengfei felt his gaze and paused slightly: "I developed this electric kettle, and the factory gave me two temporary worker positions as a reward."
Two spots? Everyone in the Jia family held their breath, especially Qin Huairu, whose fingers even began to tremble slightly.
Zhang Chengfei continued, "One of the spots should be reserved for my eldest brother's son, Wen Kui. The other one, I plan to give to your family..."
"Give it to my family?" Jia Dongxu interrupted him excitedly. "Third Grandfather, are you really going to give it to my family? You...you're not lying to me?"
Zhang Chengfei frowned: "Would I, a grandfather, lie to my own grandson?"
Upon hearing Zhang Chengfei's words, the entire Jia family erupted in excitement!
Jia Dongxu never expected that he would be able to get things done even after asking Yi Zhonghai for more than two years.
Zhang Chengfei was assigned a position less than ten days after joining the factory.
Even though it's a temporary job, temporary positions are hard to come by these days! Over there, so many young people have been queuing for two or three years and still haven't gotten a turn!
Qin Huairu was so happy she didn't know what to say. She was from a rural area in Changping, and when she married into a courtyard house at the age of eighteen, she was often looked down upon.
In 1953, the "Urban-Rural Dual Transformation" policy was introduced, and she finally obtained a Beijing household registration, becoming a city dweller. However, because she was unemployed, she always felt a lack of self-confidence…
If you have a job, even if it's just a temporary one, then you're a real city dweller, and no one can look down on you anymore!
Banggeng, standing to the side, was even more excited, shouting that his mother had a job and he was now a child from a dual-income family.
"Xiaoli in my class has parents who are factory workers, and she's so arrogant! Every time I talk to her, she ignores me."
"Mom, if you also become a factory worker, Xiaoli will definitely be happy to be my friend!"
When the topic of making friends came up, Banggeng blushed.
Little Dang was still too young to understand what her mother's job as a factory worker meant to the family, but seeing the whole family happy made her clap her hands with joy.
Zhang Erya had been in a bad mood ever since she treated everyone to a meal, and now she finally breathed a sigh of relief, thinking to herself that she was glad she hadn't fallen out with her third uncle over the three yuan and eighty-four cents for the barbecue.
If things had turned sour back then, would that temporary worker position still have been available for Qin Huairu?
Believing that Qin Huairu was benefiting from her, Zhang Erya began to condescendingly make demands: "Bang Geng's mother, once you get your salary, you have to give me three yuan a month for retirement."
Three yuan a month, forty-two yuan a year. Zhang Erya rubbed her hands together, very excited.
These days, temporary workers only earn fifteen yuan a month. Qin Huairu quickly did the math in her head: give her mother-in-law three yuan, and she'll still have twelve yuan left... That's quite a sum of money.
She was about to nod and say yes when Zhang Chengfei suddenly tapped the table: "This spot isn't for Dongxu's wife, it's for Erya."
For Er Ya? The entire Jia family was shocked once again.
Jia Dongxu tried to persuade him: "Third Grandfather, I'm afraid my mother can't... she's too old."
Zhang Chengfei: "There is no age limit for this recruitment of temporary workers."
Zhang Erya: "I don't know many characters..."
Zhang Chengfei: "So we need intensive training. You need to learn at least 150 characters every day so that you can get rid of the 'illiterate' label before recruitment."
Actually, Lao Niu already said that there are no educational requirements for this recruitment. Er Ya is good enough to be a packaging worker in the factory; whether she can read or not doesn't matter.
He said that simply to make it easier to collect Er Ya's negative emotion value.
Zhang Erya, unaware of the intricacies of the situation, felt suffocated again: "But Third Uncle, I... I can't..."
From childhood to adulthood, she was supported by her father when she was young, by Lao Jia after she got married, and by Dongxu after Lao Jia died. How could she possibly work a job?
What's more, three days of memorizing "The Road to Shu is Hard" had already taken half her life. If they added fifty more characters every day, they might as well just kill her!
Er Ya strongly objected: "Otherwise, let Qin Huairu go. I... I'm too old to work."
Zhang Chengfei sighed: "Er Ya, do you know why your family's life got harder and harder after Lao Jia passed away, eventually becoming the poorest in the entire courtyard?"
Zhang Erya sniffed: "Because Dongxu's salary is low, and we have a large family with two children."
Banggeng and Xiaodang each had a grain ration of six jin and nine jin respectively. Their rations weren't enough, so they had to buy overpriced grain on the black market. Dongxu's working grade wasn't long enough, so how could they not be struggling to make ends meet?
Zhang Chengfei shook his head: "No, it's because you don't know how to plan."
Zhang Erya objected: "Third Uncle, I don't like hearing you say that. How am I incapable of planning? I'm clearly better at managing money than Yan Bugui, okay?"
Putting aside everything else, just after Old Jia passed away and before Third Uncle moved into the courtyard house, Zhang Erya was like a goose that plucked feathers from every passing goose, grabbing the best of everything.
If Yan Bugui is a stingy miser, then Zhang Erya is a magnetic miser; she not only refuses to pluck feathers, but she also attracts other people's feathers!
But now? Third Uncle actually said she doesn't know how to manage a household. How could this not make Er Ya angry?
Zhang Chengfei smiled and said, "Don't be impatient, kid. Let your third uncle break it down and explain it to you in detail."
He told Zhang Erya that when Lao Jia passed away, our country's succession system was not yet perfect, and there were no age requirements for succession.
"If you had taken over from Lao Jia instead of Dongxu, have you thought about what would have happened?"
Er Ya thought her third uncle was talking nonsense: "Of course I'll go to work and Dong Xu will stay home and do nothing."
Zhang Chengfei then asked, "If you were still working, when should you retire according to policy?"
When should I retire? Zhang Erya began to think.