Xia Xiaolan still did not know she had escaped another round of trouble from the Xia family.

If Xia Dajun really came to demand grain from the mother and daughter, he would get nothing. Of course, one fewer headache was always better. Xia Xiaolan’s time was precious; she had no interest in wasting it on irrelevant people.

It was only because the Xia family each had their own schemes and could not work together that they had not constantly come to bother her.

The notice to turn in gongliang had been delivered to every household, and Xia Xiaolan was going with her aunt Li Fengmei to the township grain station to deliver it. This was a new experience for her—something she had never had in her previous life.

Rice had to be dried as thoroughly as possible, with no sand or impurities, and only plump golden grains counted as qualified gongliang. Shriveled grains were out.

Several rounds of grain had to be turned in each year. When rice was harvested, rice had to be delivered; before that there had been wheat and rapeseed. 

Part of the harvest had to be turned over to the state for free, as a replacement for agricultural tax. Sometimes gongliang alone was not enough to cover the tax, and the rest had to be paid in cash. 

Before, production teams handled grain delivery and agricultural tax together. After the household responsibility system, each household had to deliver grain and pay taxes on its own.

“ Now they don’t collect tax anymore. It’s called tiliu kuan instead. ”

Liu Fen had gone out to buy eels, so Xia Xiaolan and her aunt packed the grain together. The rice had been dried and sifted carefully—there wasn’t even a single broken kernel, let alone any grit.

When Li Fengmei mentioned that they now had to pay tiliu kuan, Xia Xiaolan was completely lost.

Life in the countryside in the 1980s was full of things she did not understand. She did not know farming, and she had never really experienced how hard rural life was back then. 

It was not only the hard labor. Even the seemingly small amount of grain turned in as gongliang was a heavy burden for farmers.

Hybrid rice had already broken through in the 1970s, and this part of Henan had begun demonstration planting in 1976, but it still had not spread widely. In Anqing County, people were still growing ordinary rice. Hybrid rice could yield over a thousand jin per mu; the best ordinary rice only managed about seven or eight hundred jin.

After milling, 100 jin of paddy rice produced less than 70 jin of rice. For a family of three, five mu of land was about normal, and not all of it could be used for rice. There were poor slopes and barren fields too.

And gongliang was handed over for free. If there was surplus grain, farmers also had to sell it cheaply to the state. Without selling grain, where would they get cash? 

But even that money did not stay long. There were pesticides, seeds, fertilizer, and then the ti liu kuan Li Fengmei had mentioned.

The full name of ti liu kuan was tongchou tiliu kuan —“ collective allocations and retained funds. ” It consisted of two parts: the “five collective allocations” and the “three village retained funds.”

The five collective allocations were township-level charges for Education Surcharges, 

Family Planning Fees, 

Militia Training, 

Civil Affairs Relief and Preferential Treatment, 

and Rural Transport. 

The three village retained funds were the Public Reserve Fund, Public Welfare Fund, and Administrative Expenses. 

The Reserve Fund was used for farmland water conservancy, afforestation, and purchasing fixed production materials. 

The Welfare Fund supported five-guarantee households, aided extremely poor households, rural cooperative medical care, and other welfare work. 

Administrative Expenses covered village cadres’ pay and office costs.

Li Fengmei probably did not know all that. Whatever the township asked for, people just paid.

And Xia Xiaolan understood even less. After her rebirth, she had only worried about going hungry for the first two days. Once she got her business going, she had never truly felt rural poverty.

The carefully selected golden grain filled several sacks. Xia Xiaolan refused to stay home and review. These past few days, Li Fengmei and Liu Fen both wanted her to stay in. 

Xia Xiaolan could not sit still, so she insisted on going with her aunt to turn in the grain.

Li Fengmei was afraid she would go stir-crazy at home, so she agreed.

A bicycle really was convenient. A 28-inch bike could carry several hundred jin of grain. Without one, they would have had to drag it to the grain station on a handcart.

Halfway there, they ran into the delivery team from Chen Wangda’s family. Chen Qing’s mother stopped Xia Xiaolan and Li Fengmei.

“ Let’s go together. At least we’ll have company on the road. ”

Li Fengmei was pleased and called her “Sister-in-law.”

Xia Xiaolan obediently called her “Auntie.”

She liked the people in Qijing Village. Of course they gossiped behind people’s backs, but they were not the kind who wanted to destroy someone out of malice. 

Both being villages under Anqing County, Qijing Village and Dahe Village were very different… Xia Xiaolan thought that had a lot to do with Chen Wangda being the village head.

Chen’s older sister-in-law seemed quite concerned about Xia Xiaolan and asked about her studies the whole way.

Xia Xiaolan had scored full marks in English twice. That subject was Chen Qing’s weak point, and because she remembered the help Chen Wangda’s family had given her and her mother, Xia Xiaolan offered to tutor him.

“ Auntie, if you trust me, I can help Chen Qing improve his English during the holidays. ”

The college entrance exam English paper was not difficult. Even in later years, knowing around 3,000 words was usually enough. But that was for students who had built their vocabulary over primary school, middle school, and high school. 

By the time Xia Xiaolan was reborn, there were even apps for memorizing words in spare moments. Three thousand words was nothing.

For candidates in 1983, especially in remote areas, it was much harder. Even if Chinese scores were bad, at least you were testing in your mother tongue and could still pick up some points. 

English had no foundation at all. In the early years after the gaokao was restored, it had not even been counted in the exam score, so the subject was thrown at students with no warning. Teachers themselves did not know how to teach it systematically.

There were no efficient memory methods. 

Vowels and consonants? 

If you could not even read a word, how could you tell them apart?

English was not only Chen Qing’s roadblock—it was everyone else’s too. Even if you wanted a tutor, where would you find one? 

Chen Wangda might know people in the county, but he could not conjure up a teacher out of nowhere. He was only a village head, not the county magistrate.

No one knew how Xia Xiaolan had learned English, but she had scored full marks twice. 

That alone proved she was good at it.

Chen Qing’s mother was delighted and could hardly bear to let Xia Xiaolan go. 

If Chen Qing could improve his English, next year’s gaokao would be much more stable.

“ Xiaolan, when it’s time to turn in the grain, line up behind our family. ”

Xia Xiaolan did not understand Li Fengmei’s expression. 

She was all smiles. It's just lining up in a queue, what was so important about that?

Only when it was time to turn in the grain did she realize why being behind the Chen family was such an advantage.

Outside the grain station, there was a long line. The Chen family did not cut in. They simply stood outside chatting while they waited. Inside the station, it was noisy and crowded, with township leaders and village heads from each village supervising the inspection.

Xia Xiaolan had thought it would be simple: weigh the grain, check it, keep it, done.

She had been far too naive.

Turning in grain was nowhere near that smooth.

When it was a family’s turn, the grain station staff would thrust a hollow iron tube into the sack. When they pulled it out, they could inspect the grain sample inside. 

Wheat in Henan ripened in June, and they had already turned in wheat at the end of June. This time it was rice.

The staff took out some rice with the tube, poured it into their palms, and looked at it.

“ Not qualified. ”

The person handing over the grain smiled and pleaded. No one knew what was said, but after that, it became third-grade grain instead.

Third-grade grain counted as qualified, but because the grade was lower, more jin had to be turned in. The standards were controlled by the grain station inspectors, and the grade was almost always pushed downward. Nearly no one ever got first-grade grain.

By noon, it was finally the Chen family’s turn.

When the grain station staff saw Chen’s older sister-in-law, they still looked serious, but they rated her family’s rice as  “ first grade. ”

Xia Xiaolan could not tell the difference between the rice grades, and the people around them probably were not convinced either. But no one argued with the grain station staff. 

They only whispered among themselves:

“ The Chen family from Qijing Village. ”

“ Chen Wang… ”

“ Shh. Don’t say it. ”

Chen Wangda himself did not even need to come over. The old man was off accompanying township leaders. Once it was his family’s turn, the grain station staff automatically rated the grain as first-grade. 

Xia Xiaolan immediately saw the trick: reputation mattered. The old man’s authority was there, and the staff did not dare play games.

The Chen family’s grain was inspected very quickly. Soon it was Li Fengmei’s turn.

The rice Xia Xiaolan and Li Fengmei had weighed at home was 100 jin per sack, but at the grain station scale it came out to less than 80 jin. 

Li Fengmei’s face darkened, but she said nothing.

Xia Xiaolan had already seen through the scam. Could she really stand up and expose it? 

In the workplace, not everything was about positive energy. She knew very well how troublesome petty officials could be.

“ This is our family’s too. ”

Chen’s older sister-in-law casually added.

The grain station worker looked at the receipt. The head of household was surnamed Liu, and had nothing to do with “Chen.” 

How could they be the same family? 

This series has advanced chapters, you can check out my Kofi!