Chapter 5: Studying
Song Baozhu’s eyes grew even brighter.
The uncles and aunties in the village were so good to her; how wonderful would it be if everyone could eat white rice?
She said urgently to the system: "From now on, I will definitely study hard. When can I learn the 'Crop Science' you mentioned?"
Since it was a learning system, being fond of teaching was hardwired into its programming.
Hearing that Song Baozhu wanted to study hard, the system became very excited and continued its enticement: "Crop science is a branch of agronomy. Even as a branch, there is a vast amount to learn, including seed cultivation and improvement, plant genetics, plant cultivation, plant environment..."
The system rattled off a long list. "If you master these, you can not only grow high-yield rice but other crops as well. If you are diligent, you can finish learning it in about a year."
Song Baozhu had never heard of such things, but she repeated the system’s words back verbatim and asked, "Is it enough just to learn those? Then can I eat white flour at every meal too?"
"Yes."
Song Baozhu sucked in a mouthful of saliva and asked somewhat greedily, "What about meat? If I want Papa, Mama, my brothers, my sister-in-law, and the village uncles and aunties to eat meat at every meal, is that possible too?"
"Then you would need to study Animal Husbandry."
"I'll learn it, I'll learn it!" Song Baozhu was completely captivated by the 'big pie' the system had drawn for her.
That night, she even dreamed of her whole family sitting around a table eating fragrant meat bones.
"Meat... meat..." Song Baozhu blew a snot bubble and muttered in her sleep.
Wang Guifang was using a cattail leaf fan to chase away mosquitoes for Song Baozhu.
Hearing her daughter craving meat even in her dreams, her heart ached terribly: "Child's Father, let's boil a bone for Baozhu tomorrow. Look at how the child is craving it."
*Taba - Ta is used before an address for emphasis, 'Ba' is for father, papa... I innovated and used Child's Father instead of Ta Father or just Father as it won't flow well for the wife to use Father.
Song Dezhu felt the sting of pity too. Hearing this, he quickly said, "Isn't there still a piece of meat at home? Cut some up and stir-fry it to go with Baozhu's rice."
Although they could barely fill their stomachs now, meat was still extremely scarce.
Aside from the grain handed over to the state as public grain, the portion distributed to each household was just enough for satiety.
Without surplus grain, there were naturally no extra resources to raise the production team's pigs and chickens.
These livestock were very difficult to raise; making them fat required a large amount of feed, and they were prone to plagues.
Last year, the production team raised ten pigs and a hundred chickens in total, and all of them were thin and bony.
There were about a hundred households in the team, over a thousand people, and such a small amount of meat was barely enough for anything.
Every household hung their meat to dry, waiting for the New Year to make dumplings as a special treat.
Their family had it even harder.
They had many people, and everyone was tall and sturdy with appetites as huge as oxen.
Even with Song Dezhu and the three eldest sons scrambling for high-work-point labor, they couldn't ensure everyone was full at every meal.
The boys had grown up with tightened belts; if they hadn't known how to forage for food in the mountains and rivers themselves, even the best physique couldn't have withstood such strain.
Everyone was driven mad by the craving for meat.
Even as much as Wang Guifang doted on her daughter, she had no way to let her eat meat regularly.
Hearing Song Dezhu's words, Wang Guifang nodded, then turned to discuss matters with him: "Old Second is nineteen this year and needs to find a wife. If a match is made, that's another sum of money. To hold a banquet, there must be at least a few slices of meat on the table. Our house is getting too small, too. Old First has partitioned off a room to live in now, but if Old Second and Old Third get married, we won't be able to partition anything else; we must build a new house. We only have about twenty yuan saved in total, which is barely enough for the betrothal gift. What will we do about building a house then?"
More critically, Song Zhinan was nineteen and Song Zhixi was seventeen, both at the age for marriage.
Old Fourth and Old Fifth would follow in just a few years.
It was like pulling one weed and bringing up the whole cluster.
A family division would have to wait until at least the fifth son was married.
Qian Xiaoe was already pregnant. Once the second son, Song Zhinan, got married, it wouldn't be long before more mouths were added.
Thinking about all those upcoming mouths to feed gave Wang Guifang a headache.
The family could only eat until they were eighty percent full now; what would happen when more people were added?
She suddenly swung her fan and slapped Song Dezhu: "It's all your fault, birth, birth, birth, giving birth to so many boys. I want to see what you'll use to keep them alive."
Song Dezhu was also worried. Many children made for a lively home, but the grain truly couldn't hold out. Every day as soon as the door opened, half the grain barrel was gone.
He gave a sheepish laugh and said to Wang Guifang, "Well, I couldn't have given birth to them all by myself!"
If his wife hadn't been so strong and fertile, how could they have had so many boys?
"You old rogue," Wang Guifang punched Song Dezhu lightly before blowing out the lamp to go to sleep.
Neither of them noticed that Song Baozhu had stopped snoring softly. After being woken up by her cravings in her dream, she had quietly pricked up her ears and listened to her parents' entire conversation.
She was shocked after hearing it.
So, her Papa, Mama, and brothers had never actually eaten their fill at any meal?
Recalling that she had her own separate bowl of white rice at every meal, and how her mother would sometimes fry an egg in oil for her, or boil some bone soup every few days, or stir-fry a few separate slices of meat for her...
Song Baozhu felt deathly guilty. It turned out that her Papa, Mama, and brothers were lying when they said they didn't like eating those things.
She wiped away her tears and said to the system in a muffled voice: "Tomorrow I will study even more. I want to unlock the courses as soon as I finish learning the characters."
The system's teaching was stepped; one must complete the previous course and pass the assessment before the next course could be unlocked.
Given that Song Baozhu was completely illiterate before, she was currently learning foundational knowledge, such as recognizing characters and learning addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
She had to finish these basic courses before she could unlock the agronomy she wanted to learn.
With Song Baozhu being so motivated, the system was naturally happy.
Although an accident had occurred right after it left the factory, causing it to drift outside the cosmic calendar, and Song Baozhu was the first host it had bound with, meaning it didn't know the level of other hosts, based on its assessment, Song Baozhu had a very high IQ. Her learning progress also supported its assessment.
With a host who was smart and motivated to learn, the system could already imagine the sealed energy flowing toward it incessantly in the near future.
Both the person and the system fell into a beautiful dream, harboring wonderful visions of the future.
When she woke up early the next morning, Song Baozhu washed her face and sat at the table writing and drawing.
Song Zhidong was the first to get up. He sharpened his hoe, and seeing his sister, who usually loved to sleep in, up so early, he couldn't help but tease her: "Zhuzhu, why are you up so early? Where are your sleepiness bugs?"
By this time, Song Baozhu had already learned ten more characters. She looked up at her cheerful eldest brother and let out a sigh like a little adult.
Mama said Eldest Sister-in-law was pregnant and her nephew would be born soon; there wasn't enough food at home.
If she didn't study, what would they do?
This sigh gave Song Zhidong a fright. This child was usually all smiles; why was she so abnormal today?
"What's wrong? Who bullied you? Tell Eldest Brother, and I'll teach them a lesson!"
Song Baozhu shook her head. "Eldest Brother, go on with your work."
Since she couldn't speak about the system, she could only silently shoulder the responsibility of supporting the family on her own.
She had to ensure the family had enough food before her nephew was born and before other sisters-in-law married into the household. Otherwise, everyone would go hungry.
Feeling the weight of this great responsibility, Song Baozhu wiped away a bitter tear for herself and threw herself back into her studies.
Seeing that his sister was ignoring him, Song Zhidong had no choice but to return to his room, muttering as he walked: "Zhuzhu is acting so strange today."
After Song Zhidong and Qian Xiaoe got married last winter, Wang Guifang and Song Dezhu had partitioned off a separate room from the original western side of the house for the young couple to live in.
The room wasn't particularly large, but it had plenty of light. Wang Guifang and Song Dezhu had also commissioned a new cabinet for them and made a new set of bedding.
Qian Xiaoe kept everything spotlessly clean, with the bedding neatly stacked on the bed.
Ordinarily, items like cabinets and bedding were part of the dowry a new bride was supposed to bring into the marriage.
However, Qian Xiaoe's parental family was too poor.
Their village wasn't like Xiangfu Village, which sat in front of a river and behind a mountain; even during those difficult years, people in Xiangfu could head to the mountains or the river to scavenge for something to fill their stomachs.
Her village was poorly situated with barren loess soil, resulting in poor crop yields. On top of that, her family was even larger than the Song family; her mother had given birth to four sons and four daughters in total.
She was the third child, and two of the four daughters had been given away.
That she had been able to grow up safe and sound was already considered lucky.
Her family had taken the Song family's betrothal gift and used it in a hurry to marry off her eldest brother, so there was no money left to provide her with a dowry.
She had entered the Song household wearing nothing but tattered clothes, fully expecting to be made miserable by her mother-in-law and looked down upon by her husband's family.
To her surprise, her mother-in-law hadn't said a word and even took the initiative to arrange furniture and belongings for the young couple.
Qian Xiaoe was filled with gratitude.
She felt that her mother-in-law's whole family was quite good, though they doted on her sister-in-law far too much.
Watching her eat white rice at every meal, and occasionally meat and eggs on top of that, even though Qian Xiaoe also found her sister-in-law very likable, her heart still twitched with the pain of such extravagance.
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