Zhou Xiaoan was born in 1940 in Peizhou Mine, with three older brothers and one sister, and one younger sister and younger brother.

The child in the big family is not big or small, and she is a girl, with older brothers and sisters suppressing above, and younger brothers and sisters to take care of below, her parents are patriarchal, and her family life is difficult, she has never worn a good dress since she was a child, and she has never eaten a full meal.

In fact, for children of this era, Zhou Xiaoan's growth experience is not very difficult, many people have come over like this, and there are even many people who are not as good as her.

But there are a few things that still make Zhou Anan feel that Zhou Xiaoan has been treated badly, and if she can be treated fairly in these things, her life can be much better than now.

Zhou Xiaoan is eager to study, and he is diligent and intelligent, but he only went to primary school for one year.

Her younger sister Zhou Xiaoling is one year younger than her, and she is in the same class as her, but her academic performance is much worse than her. When the exam results came out, Zhou Xiaoling, who had been frail and sickly since she was a child, was sad and became seriously ill, and her mother took Zhou Xiaoan to the mine to screen cinders in order to appease her sister, and never let her enter the school again.

At that time, it was already after the founding of the People's Republic of China, although Zhou Xiaoan's father Zhou Dahai died, the family was not unable to afford two children to study together.

Two of the three older brothers worked in the mines, one joined the army, the elder sister was also married, and the family also had a compensation for her father's death in a mining accident, and there was no shortage of money for her to go to school.

The most important thing is that the little uncle Zhou Yuehai has a good position in the army, and every month he will send a large amount of money and all kinds of tickets in short supply to subsidize them.

But no matter how Zhou Xiaoan cried and begged, her mother Wang Lamei still let her drop out of school.

The youngest daughter is not in good health and has a serious mind, and she doesn't know how much money she will waste if she gets sick again, compared to the second daughter, what does it matter if she goes to school for a few days less.

Nine-year-old Zhou Xiao'an carried his younger brother to do housework every morning, and in the afternoon he went with his mother to sift cinders, sifting a ton of 800 yuan, sifting for three months, and saved enough 60,000 yuan to buy a pair of rubber rain boots for his sister to wear to school. (In the old currency before the currency reform, 10,000 was equal to one yuan.) ）

Zhou Xiao'an's chance to change his fate again was at the age of twelve. The city's labor propaganda team came to the mine to recruit team members, and if they were admitted, they were formally established, and the salary of level 16 was 40 yuan and 5 cents, which was 4 yuan more than that of the national regular workers, and they were promoted to a certain level to be national cadres.

Zhou Xiaoan usually works at home with little talk and boring head, in Wang Lamei's words, she is "stubborn and stubborn", but she has no stage fright when she arrives at the exam site, and she has some talent for singing and dancing.

But Zhou Xiaoling, who had high hopes from her family, was defeated. Zhou Xiaoling was seriously ill again.

This time, Zhou Xiaoan refused to give up the exam in order to appease his sister's emotions, and Wang Lamei also wanted to let the family have one more salary-earner, so she made a new set of clothes for Zhou Xiaoan to prepare for the retest.

But the day before the retest, his younger brother Zhou Xiaoquan had an accident.

Zhou Xiaoan was busy preparing for the exam, and entrusted his younger brother to his sister Zhou Xiaoling to take care of, Zhou Xiaoling was weak after illness, and failed to hold Zhou Xiaoquan, so he rolled down the waste rock pile on the mine and broke his head, unconscious, and his life was in danger.

Zhou Xiaoling also fell into a coma several times because of self-blame, and the sister and brother were admitted to the hospital together.

Zhou Xiaoquan was rescued in a coma, Zhou Xiaoling was too frightened, hugged Zhou Xiaoan and cried and refused to let go, the whole family was in a mess, and when the two children turned around, Zhou Xiaoan had already missed the exam.

The new set of clothes made for the exam was also worn on Zhou Xiaoling, who was recovering from illness and going to school.

Zhou Xiaoan resumed his life of doing housework and screening cinders every day, until he was fifteen years old, and he hurried to recruit workers to work when he was old enough to recruit workers in the mine.

Because of his low level of education, Zhou Xiaoan could only go to the mine as a temporary worker to select stones, with a salary of 14 yuan and 5 yuan a month, and 24 catties of food standards, all of which were handed over to his family without leaving any land.

My brother married a daughter-in-law, I have a wife and children to raise, my younger siblings go to school, and my grandmother's family has a big family to help, and she is used to dedicating everything to this family.

Originally, Zhou Xiaoan was not ready to get married so early, and Wang Lamei planned to let her earn a few more years of salary for her family.

In this era, there are many girls who remarry at the age of twenty-seven or eight in order to help their parents, and if nothing else, Zhou Xiaoan will definitely have to be dragged into such a big girl.

The accident happened to the little uncle Zhou Yuehai.

Since the death of his father Zhou Dahai, Zhou Yuehai has been sending money to his family for more than ten years. His rank in the army is getting higher and higher, and he is sending more and more money, so it can be said that this family can eat and help the Wang family, and most of them are supported by him.

But since last year, Zhou Yuehai has suddenly heard nothing.

Zhou Yuehai's unit sent special personnel to appease them and asked them to cooperate with the revolutionary construction and keep Zhou Yuehai's affairs strictly confidential, but did not provide any specific information about Zhou Yuehai.

Zhou Yuehai's life and death have been unknown since then.

Zhou Xiaolin, the third son of the Zhou family, who was also a soldier in the army, secretly guessed with his family that Zhou Yuehai was likely to be sacrificed.

The situation at home and abroad is unstable, war is on the verge of breaking out, many operations in the army are carried out in secret, the mission is top secret until it is over, and even if the participants die, they cannot notify their families.

And Zhou Yuehai was the commander of the reconnaissance battalion before being promoted to colonel and regimental commander.

It is almost common for people from reconnaissance battalions to go on secret missions, and most of them are of a top-secret nature.

The Zhou family lost a large sum of money from Zhou Yuehai, and their lives were immediately stretched.

In fact, according to the current situation of the Zhou family, the standard of living is already very good in the working family. Four children work to earn wages, two daughters-in-law also have jobs, Wang Lamei takes her grandson to do housework at home, and only Zhou Xiaoling, Zhou Xiaoquan and two granddaughters need to spend money to go to school.

Compared to the situation where some workers earn money to support their families alone, their family's standard of living is superior.

But that was on the premise of not helping my grandmother's family.

After Zhou Dahai's death in the mining disaster, Wang Lamei gave up the work index of taking care of her in the mine to her younger brother Wang Fuchang, and the Wang family also came to live in Peizhou from the countryside.

But at that time, the first national census had been missed, and the Wang family except for Wang Fuchang were all rural hukou, and when the Wang family recruited rural workers on a large scale in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the children of the Wang family were small, and when they were old enough, they had to have an urban hukou to recruit workers.

The Wang family came to the city easily, and Mrs. Wang said that she could not let her children and grandchildren miss the opportunity to be in the city, so she could only let Wang Lamei help with both soft and hard methods.

This has been going on for almost a decade.

Now that Zhou Yuehai's subsidy has been lost, the Wang family can't skip eating, Mrs. Wang sits at Zhou's house every day and cries and wipes her tears, and Wang Lamei is at a loss.

At the same time, Zhou Xiaoling's body had problems again.

Zhou Xiaoling has often been sick since she was a child, and last year was the high school exam for her junior high school graduation.

The Zhou family, who lost Zhou Yuehai, dragged the Wang family and the whole family with a heavy burden, and the country's food supply became more and more tight, and the two daughters-in-law were already angry, and Wang Lamei had no ability to increase nutrition and nourish Zhou Xiaoling.

At this time, the Han family came to give their eldest son Han Dazhuang a kiss to Zhou Xiao'an, and the bride price was 200 yuan and 50 catties of cornmeal, as well as 20 catties of soybeans and two catties of sugar.

The bride price was given as if it was specially tailored for the Zhou family's predicament.

The father and son of the Han family are also workers in the mine, and their hometown is not far from the Zhou family, so they know the situation of the Zhou family very well.

At the urging of the Wang family, Wang Lamei asked for 300 yuan, increased the cornmeal to 100 catties, and settled Zhou Xiao'an's family affairs.

There is no shadow of rice and white flour in the grain store, the cornmeal is on top of the fine grain index, a person only has one or two catties of supply a month, and the rest can only buy dried sweet potatoes and all kinds of chaff, this hundred catties of cornmeal and twenty catties of soybeans are so precious that you can imagine.

Sugar is even more of a sought-after item, with only two taels of supply per month for regular workers, and there are no more than a few times a year in non-staple food stores, and it is difficult to buy sugar stamps.

The younger brother of the Han family's hometown kept an eye on the people's commune's canteen and smuggled the family's old grain to his brother's house in the city, avoiding the search of the commune cadres, so that their family could come up with so much fine grain under such a tight grain situation.

Moreover, the father and son of the Han family are all underground workers, counting the underground subsidy, the salary is more than 60 yuan, and the state gives special care to heavy workers every month for four taels of sugar tickets, the Han family has a small population, makes a lot of money, and the family conditions are very good.

These things will change the son to a yellow flower girl as a daughter-in-law, which is impossible in normal years.

Han Dazhuang is thirty-five years old, working as a miner in the Peizhou Coal Mine, one eye is a glass flower, silent and wooden, looking forty or fifty years old. When I went to my hometown in the countryside to find a daughter-in-law, I only introduced a widow, let alone a big girl with a yellow flower with a city hukou.

And this big girl is very beautiful.

Zhou Xiaoan agreed to the marriage under Wang Lamei's constant crying.

Before getting married, Wang Lamei put forward another condition, after Zhou Xiaoan got married, he would hand over ten catties of food stamps and five yuan to his family every month.

The two families quarreled for a few days, and it became five catties of food stamps and five yuan per month, and Wang Lamei asked Zhou Xiaoan for a new set of clothes, and the marriage was decided.

The life of more than three months after marriage is very chaotic in Zhou Xiaoan's memory, Zhou Anan only knows that the Han family has a great opinion of her, and as the food supply becomes increasingly tight, the food as a bride price and the money and food stamps she gives to her mother's family every month make her mother-in-law's family more and more angry.

And Zhou Xiaoan's life is getting more and more sad, her memory is becoming more and more blurred, and the most profound thing is only hunger.

A fist-sized bran dumpling a day, gruel that can be seen in the shadow of a person can't be drunk casually, and her work physical exertion is very large, so that in the last period of time she was a lot of confusion, until she was pushed down the stairs by her mother-in-law and sister-in-law and fell to death, Zhou Anan took over her life.