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墨書 Inktalez
The magical "land distribution" brought about tremendous changes in the countryside. Besides being able to eat our fill, my biggest feeling was that my parents began giving us Lucky Money on New Year's Eve.
During the era of Production Teams and Collective Farming, although my father was a state employee earning a monthly salary of twenty to thirty yuan, our family belonged to the "fourth category" within the Production Team. In the words of those labor-intensive farmers, we were receiving "care rations." Aside from my mother, my father had to allocate a significant portion of his meager salary to the Production Team as "investment" so that we three siblings could receive our share of food. After the land was divided and households were established, my parents first had to tighten their belts to build a house, leaving them in a constant state of financial strain, making it impossible for them to give us Lucky Money.
In recent years, on New Year's Eve, the three of us children could only watch longingly as a few meager bones simmered in the pot, hoping for a little fat to fill our bellies. There was only one occasion when my father mysteriously managed to save a few oranges, which he magically handed out to each of us two when the New Year arrived, leaving us with memories that lingered for many years.
On the first New Year's Eve after the "land distribution to households," after eating rice cakes and drinking bone soup, Dad called the three of us together. He gave each of us a few brand new RMB bills, about four or five in total, amounting to two jiao and five fen.
Mom told us, "This is traditional Lucky Money. Now that life is a bit better, we want you to be happy too. You can spend this money however you like, but don't waste it, and make sure to keep it safe so you don't lose it."
As soon as we received the Lucky Money, after a moment of excitement, our first thought was to hide the money well, as this was the first Lucky Money we had ever received.
I am the boss, and I am back in middle school. The first place I found to hide money was my backpack. I took out the only notebook with a plastic cover and placed the money in the natural pocket between the cover and the first page, thinking it should be the safest spot.
My younger brother is a bit mischievous; he doesn't like paper money and prefers to play with coins. He suggested exchanging money with our mom, and after swapping all the Lucky Money for coins, he crawled into the bedroom, pushing me and my sister into the living room. He fiddled around in there for quite a while, and I guessed he was probably hiding the money in some wall crevice.
My sister's method was the simplest. She found a glass bottle that our mom had used when she was a Barefoot Doctor, carefully wiped it inside and out with a rag, and then put the money inside. She carried this precious bottle with her every day from then on.
With money in hand, although my mother said we could spend it however we wanted, none of us were willing to spend it. Having grown accustomed to a life without money, we weren't quite sure how to use it.
In the past, I might have thought about using this money to rent those inexpensive comic books, but now I had moved on from "little books" to "big volumes." Moreover, going to a place like Gaosha that rented comic books required a lot of determination and time. As for stationery like pens and paper, my parents already had enough money to buy them for me, so I didn't need to figure out how to save up.
My younger brother and sister were still in elementary school and had a bit of a sweet tooth; as long as they had money, they would definitely buy a piece of sugarcane or a pastry to indulge themselves. On our way to Osmanthus Primary School, we passed by the dam pump station where my classmate Quanwen's family specifically grew sugarcane. It seemed there was a discount for elementary school students who came asking to buy; each piece was only one or two cents. However, it was winter break at that time, which wasn't the season for sugarcane, and they couldn't go out. The Lucky Money was just sitting there untouched.
Later I thought, we did have the idea of spending money, but at that time in the countryside, apart from a consignment store, if we wanted to buy anything, we had to go out. The closest place where things were sold was the Li Family Ferry Crossing in the Commune, which was four or five miles away. It was hard to make a trip there unless we were visiting relatives or doing something else. The farther towns like Gaosha and You Lan were even further, with a journey of more than twenty miles, which was unthinkable.
However, children cannot hide money, and we quickly found a way to spend it.
The countryside was all dirt roads, and it was particularly difficult to walk after it rained. In the summer, we would rather walk barefoot to avoid a lot of trouble. But at this time, it was the Spring Festival, and the temperature was always hovering around zero, and it was also the rainy season, raining every few days. No matter where we went, it was muddy and difficult to walk.
Fortunately, at this time, our family’s conditions improved a bit, and my parents bought each of us a pair of tall rain boots that we could wear when going out. However, they easily got muddy, and the first thing we did when we got home was to find a stick to scrape off all the mud stuck to the surface and soles of the boots. This task quickly became our “market” for using Lucky Money.
The first to pay was my younger sister. Being younger, she struggled every time to scrape off the mud and often couldn't get it all clean. The first to put in labor was my younger brother. He had always spoiled my sister more than I did and didn’t have the “good child” image in front of our parents and teachers like I did. He was exposed to some “non-traditional” things in society earlier and often engaged in bartering or buying things.
After they had operated this primitive form of “hired labor” a few times, I finally joined in. At home, I had always been someone who preferred to “do big things” rather than “do housework,” so I usually tried to avoid the task of scraping the rain boots whenever possible, thus often being the one who paid for the “wages.”
However, I am someone who prefers to "make money" rather than "spend money," so I occasionally take on casual work. This contradictory mindset has remained deeply ingrained in me for decades without any fundamental change. My parents may not have realized that the first "Lucky Money" they gave me unintentionally opened a corner of the curtain for us to enter the "labor and market system" of society.
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