The half month after the New Year is the happiest day since Zhou Wanwan was reborn.

In addition to doing some housework assigned by Mrs. Zhou, the two brothers accompany her the rest of the time. At the instigation of Zhou Wanwan, the three brothers and sisters developed all the games they could think of. The two elder brothers fought cocks, wrestled wrists, wrestled, and slicked -- Zhou Wanwan pulled out of the mouse hole, and even Zhou Chen drew a chessboard with charcoal on a wooden board, and then drew chess pieces on a few small wooden blocks, and the brothers played chess in a decent manner.

Of course, the brothers didn't forget Zhou Wanwan, the second brother taught her to turn the flower rope, and waited for her very patiently, seeing that her little fat fingers couldn't turn over a trick for a long time, and she could even praise her very sincerely for her smart brain and skillful hands......

Zhou Chen also drew a grid on the ground, jumped to show Zhou Wanwan, and told her that she could jump when she grew up in the future. Then he demonstrated jumping rubber bands and kicking shuttlecocks, and finally stole her baby Galaha to show Zhou Wanwan while Zhou Hongying was unprepared. Zhou Wanwan watched her second brother skillfully and enthusiastically demonstrate to her the girl games that she could play when she grew up, and she suspected that the second brother was also very interested in these, but she was embarrassed to touch it because of the boy's face, and now she finally has the opportunity to play brightly, and she is really very devoted.

As a good sister, you have to be empathetic and think about what your brother thinks. Zhou Wanwan pestered the second brother to play with her when she had nothing to do, and clapped her hands very seriously on the side, mobilizing the enthusiasm of the second brother, and letting him play very openly for a while.

In fact, the happiest thing about Zhou Wanwan is that when her brothers are playing chess, she can lean on her brother's arms and enjoy the relaxed, quiet and warm moments.

The eighth day of the first lunar month is Zhou Wanwan's birthday. Except for the two older brothers, no one remembers. Even if her brothers remember, they don't have the ability to celebrate her birthday, and the family hasn't seen eggs for three years, let alone persuade Mrs. Zhou to make her a bowl of noodles. But the brothers still helped her celebrate her birthday in their own way.

On the morning of the eighth day of the new year, Zhou Yang got up to clear the snow, and when he came back, he found an old cotton jacket to put on, which was old and worn, and the only advantage was that it was lenient. tied a straw rope around his waist, put Zhou Wanwan in his arms, and did not tie buttons, and the two plackets were put on the left and right, which was a free shrinkage and warm and comfortable nursery bag. Zhou Wanwan just stretched out his little head from the eldest brother's kangaroo mother-like pouch, and the second brother took a sweater to wrap his head and face tightly. The equipment for going out was complete, and Zhou Wanwan stepped out of the house for the first time since he was reborn.

The snow in the courtyard of the Zhou family had already been swept away by Zhou Yang, and the snow was pushed into the vegetable garden in front of the house, only a pile of wooden barriers near the gate. ”

Zhou Yang was very happy with her sister's surprise, and stuffed half of her small body that was almost running out into her arms and took her to see the snowman.

It was a round, full, clean and clear snowman, and it could be seen that Zhou Yangdui had put a lot of effort into it, and even drew two small strands of curly hair on his head, which looked like Zhou Wanwan. Although the Zhou family was so poor that there was hardly anything to decorate it, Zhou Yang simply pressed the eyes and mouth of the snowman, Zhou Wanwan still liked it so much, she twisted happily in the arms of her eldest brother, and took off the sweater that the second brother covered her, and kissed the eldest brother very loudly as a thank you.

Zhou Yang hugged his sister and laughed silly, and Zhou Chen rewrapped Zhou Wanwan's sweater while laughing and scolding her as a "little pony". In the end, Zhou Wanwan finally got permission to touch a few snowmen up close, and was taken back to the house. Although the Spring Festival has already begun spring, Sanjiatun is still in a cold and freezing, Zhou Wanwan, the poor child, does not even have a decent scarf, let alone a warm hat, Zhou Yang's brother will never dare to take her outside for a long time, and her sister is easy to raise some meat, but she can't get sick.

The birthday passed silently, the brothers didn't tell her happy birthday, and the snowman would melt in a few days, but the brothers' hearts were received every night and will be cherished for a lifetime.

In the next few days, Zhou Yang will still pick a day or two every other day, picking a sunny day at noon and carrying Zhou Wan to let the wind out in the yard.

The courtyard of the Zhou family is the same as in Zhou Wanwan's impression, sitting in four adobe thatched houses facing north and south, there is a low barn made of wooden planks and mud pasted out against the east wall, and the yard is surrounded by a circle of wooden poles with the thickness of a child's wrist, which is estimated to have been clamped for some years, and has suffered a major disaster in the past three years, and has no intention of repairing, it has become black and gray, and there are gaps in decay and destruction by livestock in some places. Although Sanjiatun does not rely on the big mountain, there are several small soil bags with miscellaneous forests around, and there is a small cold mountain with a radius of three or four hundred acres ten miles away. Therefore, the farmers who are a little more diligent in Sanjiatun are all using wood to clamp the shovel, and the Zhou family has many sons, and the shovel is particularly neat.

The gate is open in the middle, and a four- or five-meter-wide sandwich road leads straight to the door, and on the left and right sides are the south garden, which adds up to more than half an acre, and is now piling up the snow swept out of the winter. Further to the courtyard by the east shoji is the livestock shed, the west shosho is the dog kennel and chicken coop, the pigsty is in the southernmost downwind, of course, now the Zhou family has no livestock except for a few people.

According to Zhou Wanwan's memory, there is also half an acre of land in the back garden, and the back shoji is a firewood and straw stack and a toilet. Because the air behind is empty and desolate, the wind is very hard, Zhou Yang will not take Zhou Wanwan to go, he just takes his sister to stand in the yard for a while and points out to her the things in the yard.

Zhou Wanwan looked at this familiar and unfamiliar courtyard of the Zhou family, and the line of slogans on the wall of the Zhou family, which was no longer clear, and could vaguely identify it: a radish weighs a thousand pounds, and two donkeys can't pull it. The house of Aunt Zhao Wu on the front street is painted with a propaganda poster of sweet potatoes laying eggs and high yields, and it seems that it has been painted for a long time, if it weren't for the slogan next to it, Zhou Wanwan wouldn't have been able to identify the red lump bigger than the basin as a big sweet potato. These weeks and nights have passed by at a glance, and when she comes back in this life, she has never paid attention to these.

Zhou Wanwan's eyes stopped on the thatched house and firewood and haystack covered with heavy snow, and after looking at it for a long time, she felt like she had seen the illustrations in a foreign fairy tale book for children in her previous life, although she knew that the white snowdrift in front of her would not be as soft and sweet as in the fairy tale, and there was no dim warm light and delicious food in the house covered by heavy snow, but she just felt warm in her heart. She was in the arms of her eldest brother, being cared for, and this happiness and warmth allowed her to coat everything she saw with a layer of warmth. Moreover, she knows that in this life, she will firmly grasp this happiness and warmth and never let go.

When Zhou Wanwan and his brothers' happy annual vacation time was about to pass, there was a small episode.

The reason is that after Zhou Jun turned over at home for a few days, he complained unwillingly, why don't you have rats in the mouse hole? With so much food, it stands to reason that the rats of the Zhou family can't starve to death, why haven't you seen one?

Zhou Wanwan sweated, she really didn't expect this layer. It's really unreasonable to save so much food and not a single mouse. So, at noon the next day, a big and fat rat basked in the sun under the window root of the south wall of the Zhou family. Zhou Yang hugged his sister and quickly hid in the house, such a big mouse, don't bite your sister!

Zhou Jun and the other men of the Zhou family poured out of their nests and pounced on the rat who didn't know whether to live or die, and in the end, the big rat died under Zhou Chunlai's axe.

That night, the Zhou family ate the meat they had not seen for a long time, stewed rat meat. Although she knew that the space would produce and there would never be any diseases, Zhou Wanwan still insisted on refusing to go to the East House to watch them eat, and she would really have a psychological shadow when she saw her......

In the next few days, under the unremitting rummaging of the Zhou family, several more big rats were caught, which was really a fruitful New Year. At the same time, other families in Sanjiatun also saw the figure of the mouse, stimulated by the rat meat, the whole village began a very large-scale rodent extermination operation, until the nearly 100 rats released from the space before and after the night were all killed or fled outside the village, and the rats of Sanjiatun became extinct again.

Like the Chinese New Year in Tunzi, almost all the families of young and middle-aged young men have eaten rat meat, and everyone must talk about rats when they meet. The old people in the village even speculated that the disaster year was coming to an end, and the rats had returned, proving that our land could support them again. The rats can be fed, can people still be hungry? That's a good sign.

After the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the weather slowly began to warm. The north wind no longer whipped people's faces like knives, the light of the sun warmed up a lot, the snow showed a little sign of melting, and the ice skates on the eaves became bigger unconsciously, and even the sound of water dripping down could be heard in the warm sun of noon.

At noon, when he was drowsy by the sun through the window paper, Zhao Simao came to Zhou's house again. Like last time, Zhao Simao received the highest standard of reception, and was enthusiastically pushed by Mrs. Zhou to take off her shoes and invite her to the kangtou, and pushed the cigarette basket in front of her.

Zhao Simao came this time to discuss the marriage of Zhou Chunlai and Shen Yufen by the Shen family. The New Year's gift that Zhou Chun came from a year ago was really a relief for the Shen family, and it solved the urgent need. The Shen family has many children, and they are all young, Shen Yufen, as the eldest in the family, the Shen family originally did not plan to let her get married early. First, I can help my parents more at home, earn more work and pull my younger siblings, and secondly, I also want to take care of the Zhou family and ask for more dowries.

But in the past few years of drought, the Shen family's parents' abacus has been completely empty. Shen Yufen is at home, and she can't exchange it for food or money if she earns work, and she has to eat an adult's ration. The most important thing is that in the last two years, Sanjiatun has almost never married, firstly, it is true that there is no bride price, and secondly, no one can afford to raise a big living person.

So years ago, the Shen family's proposal to get married was politely rejected by the Zhou family on the grounds that Zhou Chunlai was not at home, and after the year, the relief food distributed by the Shen family seemed to be less and less, and they had to survive the months of starvation, and the Shen family had to bring up the old matter again. This time, the Shen family no longer insists on the 100 catties of wheat and 100 yuan of bride price that they said when they were engaged, as long as the Zhou family takes out 50 catties of wheat, the 100 yuan can be given to Shen Yufen in two years after marriage.

Such a condition, the Shen family repeatedly weighed the Zhou family's family background, and put forward it according to the New Year's gift given by Zhou Chunlai. I have to say that the Shen family's estimate is really accurate, the Zhou family doesn't have fifty catties of wheat, and fifty catties of flour can still be obtained. However, taking out fifty catties of flour, the Zhou family is not far from breaking off.

Before dinner that day, the Zhou family held a family meeting on the matter. The vast majority of people, to be exact, except for Zhou Chunlai, do not agree to get married. All the food is given to go out and what do you eat at home? There is another big living person, what do you feed on?

Listening to everyone's words, Zhou Chunlai sat on the north kang and smoked a dry cigarette roll without saying a word. He also knows the situation at home, and he knows that everyone is telling the truth. But a few years later, he met Shen Yufen in private, and the situation of the Shen family was so bad that Shen Yufen had to ask him for help. Almost half of the relief food received a year ago was used to pay off the debts of the past, and the remaining little was barely enough to survive for two months when I drank rice soup that was so thin that it could illuminate people's shadows every day. The six children of the Shen family, Shen Yufen's three younger brothers, one thirteen, one fifteen, and one sixteen, are all half-grown children who eat Lao Tzu to death, and this bit of food is almost the same as not eating for them, and they are all so hungry that they can't stand.

Shen Yufen's younger sister, who is two years younger than her, is also looking for someone, and she is willing to marry as long as she has a bride price of thirty catties of wheat. If it weren't for the fact that the youngest sister was only eight years old, it was estimated that she would have to find someone, and she would not be able to wait at home to starve to death, and how much could she earn some rations for the family, and what reason would she have not to marry?

In this case, Shen Yufen can't eat white food at home, and she has to marry everything. Otherwise, her eldest sister would hardly have the face to see her younger siblings in the family, and she would be even more sorry for her parents.

"Fourth, what do you think?" Everyone said so much, Zhou Chunlai didn't say a word, and Mrs. Zhou urged Zhou Chunlai to express her position. In this matter, everyone can say that they are against it, but it is not good to draw a final conclusion, and they are waiting for Zhou Chun to make a final decision. Only if he himself says not to marry, their opposing family members will not be left to complain in the future, and Mrs. Zhou, who is a mother, will not take this responsibility.

Zhou Chunlai still didn't say a word, but his action of smoking dry tobacco was much more fierce.

How could he not know what his family thought, but he couldn't say anything about this "not marrying" anyway. Once he says it, his fate with Shen Yufen will be exhausted, and the Shen family will definitely withdraw from the marriage, and then immediately arrange for Shen Yufen to marry someone who can afford the bride price.

The Zhou family's family meeting ended in silence.