Boarders and day students were two common ways of studying in schools at that time. Boarders eat and live in school, get up on time in the morning, study early, go to bed on time in the evening, and be late for themselves.

Day students only need to attend classes on time, get out of class on time, do not need to participate in morning self-study and evening self-study, relatively speaking, less constrained by management, to be freer, just entered junior high school, stubborn, prefer to be day students.

Since entering middle school, I have become more and more envious of day students, not only because of their relative freedom. What's more, the boarders are too poorly fed and live too poorly.

Every child from the countryside, when the parents send them to school, they are generally a wooden box, a quilt, a straw mat, quilts are varied, straw mats are good and bad, the best is of course the mattress, followed by the straw mat bought, and then the bamboo mat.

The box is generally relatively large, locked, usually locked, and opened when used. Inside were a change of clothes, a rice bag, and a can or two of dried vegetables. If the family gives pocket money, it is usually put in a box.

Each boarder has a boxy, boxy, aluminium box with a lid on it, which is specially used to steam rice. There are also some families who have a particularly difficult life and use porcelain bowls or jars.

My sister and I, each with one such lunch box, and my attentive father knocked out a small dot on the lid of the box with an iron nail to form the names of the two of us, which was easy to identify, not messy, and not easy to lose.

Later, I transferred to Yuxia, where the boarding model was similar, and the two lunch boxes followed us until we graduated from junior high school. They should all be still there now, kept by my father and used as a box for fishing lines.

At that time, the school cafeteria was poorly equipped, with a large cauldron on the stove, made of miscellaneous wood and a large cage drawer, filled with water when steaming rice, and stacked the cage drawer on top of the cage drawer, and a large fire was built at the bottom to steam the rice.

The first thing I did when I arrived at school was to take out the rice I had brought from the box, put it in a lunch box, wash it with water, and then put it in the cafeteria, and the staff would put the lunch boxes into the cage drawer one by one.

In my impression, the lunch boxes are placed casually, and every time it is time to eat, the cage drawers are laid out one by one, and the students who flock to find their lunch boxes according to the marks are crowded every time.

There are hundreds or thousands of students, and the scene can sometimes be very chaotic, often the people in front of them crowd to knock over other people's lunch boxes, and there are also people who take the wrong ones, crying and crying to find the teacher, and find it back with the help of the teacher.

Rural children are simple, they take their own, generally will not take the wrong one, occasionally such a situation, as long as the teacher helps to find, can be found, and I have never heard of anyone deliberately taking someone else's lunch box.

This is why work-study, handing over firewood is an important content, students steam rice, and the stove is full of firewood. Not only do you have to pay firewood for work-study, but in fact, in addition to tuition fees for each semester, another thing you have to pay is firewood.

At that time, the economy was not active enough, no one went to the school to sell vegetables, and the school did not allow it. The cafeteria is only responsible for stir-frying food for the faculty and staff, and the students do not have it, some are just a box of hot meals, and of course, it is possible that most of the rural children do not have the financial ability to go out to buy hot dishes.

After crowding to grab their lunch boxes, the students went back to their dormitories, and from the boxes, they found the dried vegetables they had brought from home, carefully pinched out a little according to the amount of a week, put them in the lunch boxes, and prepared their own meals.

At that time, a kind of "pear water" can was popular, the jar was glass, and the top was tightened with an iron cap, and a plastic gasket was added to the iron cap, which could be sealed. There are various shapes, round, flat, tall, short, and there are some differences in size, but they are not much different, which is basically the same as what is seen on the market now.

No matter how big it is, it can't be much bigger, a jar has a maximum capacity of one catty, and it takes a week to eat, which shows how hard the students' lives are, and they don't dare to clip more every time, in case they don't control it well, they will have to eat white rice in the last few days.

It can be eaten for a week without being bad, and there can be sufficient supply at home, so there are only a few kinds of dried vegetables, the most common is "moldy tofu", followed by "kneading vegetables", and finally "salt tho", which is the main theme, it is the iron three, and there must be one of the three.

"Moldy tofu" is the easiest to make, and most of the soybeans grown on rural fields are used to make tofu. The tofu is cut into small pieces, accompanied by chili powder, soaked in some oil and sprinkled with salt, sealed in a jar, and after a period of time, it will naturally become moldy and become "moldy tofu".

"Kneading vegetables" is directly removed from the jar and chopped, added vegetable oil and salt and stir-fried. "Shio Tho" is relatively the most high-end of the three, because it is fried in lard, and some meat is added.

Long-term needs, often to bring, the farmer's life is not rich, in fact, the oil put in is not much, not so much as a dish to eat, but to dip a little oil star, taste a little salt, so eat is a week.

One of the three things is the main one, and the others will also be brought, mostly chili fried meat and chili fried fish, but these can not be stored for a long time, and they must be eaten in a day or two, otherwise they will spoil. They usually enjoy it alone, and unless they are quite good playmates, they will share it with each other.

In addition to the above three things, there are also "dried gourds", "dried bamboo shoots", "dried eggplant" and so on, which are also easy to preserve, and can be eaten for a week.

My grandmother once made me one or two jars of "salt tho", which put a lot of fatty meat, and the lard soaked the "salt tho", which tasted very fragrant, and whenever I went around my grandmother's house, I always hoped to get a jar of "salt tho" made by her, but I was often disappointed.

Zuoshan's third uncle, whose fourth son was a few years older than me, was studying at Huibu Middle School at the same time as me, but he was a day student, and he came to school every morning and went home in the evening, and he couldn't remember anything else, except for the jar of fried fish with chili peppers he brought me, which I never remembered.

A big jar full of fish, the fish pieces were very large and fresh, and my cousin like me was very surprised and excited when he found me at school and handed me over with a smile, and the taste was more delicious than the world.

The third uncle has no education, he relies on his father very much, and he discusses all matters in the family with his father. Because the family lives in the countryside and has many children, the living conditions of the family have not been very good, and the third aunt has suffered a lot.

His five sons and two daughters, he often rushed to my house to help, I was just born, my parents did not have time to take me, the youngest daughter of the third uncle, had taken me at home for a long time, and their family took good care of me.

For as long as I can remember, my father's generation, including my cousins and cousins, has always felt a deep sense of care and love from them, and when I began to feel the contempt from others, this feeling in them has never changed in the slightest.

During this year's winter vacation, I went to my hometown to pay New Year's greetings, and my eighty-year-old grandmother secretly stuffed her copper hand stove to me, the copper hand stove is very exquisite, and it is filled with charcoal fire, which can be put in the arms to keep warm, but it will not burn the body, I heard that only large families had it before, and I don't know how grandma got it.

Before I had time to observe carefully, I was discovered by my father, who had just returned from his hometown, and took the copper hand stove, rode a bicycle, and sent it back. Later, I never had a chance to get it, because the next year during the Chinese New Year, my grandmother died.

My second uncle beat me since I was a child, thinking that I was the "man" of the Song family, and called me "man" when he saw me, until he died last year. The most affectionate are my five uncles and aunts, and even after I graduated from high school, they often gave me pocket money.

The hardships of boarders are also manifested in accommodation. The dormitory of the school is quite simple, the thick miscellaneous wood is built into a row of shelves, divided into two layers, and a row of wooden planks is placed on the shelves, which are connected together.

Some planks are nailed very firmly and relatively flat, while others may be too long, damp or dry, cracked or deformed and undulating, cracks or unevenness, and some gaps are large, with silk thorns exposed.

The walls are generally painted with white plaster, but they often fall off, and a large piece of green bricks is directly exposed, and the walls are slippery and can seep water when they are damp in spring. The windows are rarely glassed, either simply pasted with newspaper or nailed with plastic film.

Few people bring mattresses, generally use straw mats, as mattresses on the mat, and then spread the bedding, winter is this straw mat and bedding, summer or this bed of straw mats and bedding, especially in winter, the cold wind often blows the paper or film on the window, whistling and rolling in, I don't know how cold.