Xia Xiaolan didn’t know she had just avoided another disturbance from the Xia family.

If Xia Dajun had come to ask the mother and daughter for grain, he certainly wouldn’t have gotten anything good. Of course, having one less trouble was always better – Xia Xiaolan’s time was precious, how could she waste it on irrelevant people?

Thanks to the Xia family members each having their own schemes and being unable to unite their efforts, they couldn’t frequently disturb Xia Xiaolan’s life.

The grain tax notification was delivered to every household. Xia Xiaolan was to go with her Aunt Li Fengmei to the township grain station to submit the grain tax. This was a novel experience for Xia Xiaolan, something she hadn’t experienced in her previous life.

The rice had to be dried thoroughly, free of sand and other impurities. Only plump, golden grains without any shriveled ones qualified as proper grain tax.

Grain tax had to be submitted several times a year – rice after the harvest, and previously wheat and rapeseed. A portion of the field’s harvest was submitted to the state without compensation, replacing the agricultural tax. The grain tax might not completely replace the tax – any shortfall had to be paid in cash. Previously, the production team uniformly handled grain tax and agricultural tax submissions, but after household responsibility contracts were implemented, each family had to handle their own grain and tax payments.

“Now we don’t pay tax anymore, it’s changed to retention fees.”

Liu Fen had gone to catch loaches, so Xia Xiaolan was helping her aunt pack rice. The rice had been dried and sifted – forget about shriveled grains, there wasn’t even a speck of debris.

When Li Fengmei mentioned this year’s “retention fees,” Xia Xiaolan was confused.

There was much she didn’t understand about 1980s rural life. She didn’t understand farming, or how difficult rural life was in the 80s. It wasn’t just the hard farm work – even the seemingly modest grain tax quantity was a huge pressure on farmers… Hybrid rice technology had a breakthrough in the 70s, and Yunan Province began demonstration planting in ’76, but it still hadn’t been widely promoted.

At least in Anqing County’s area, farmers were all growing conventional rice.

Hybrid rice could yield over a thousand jin per mu, while conventional rice at its best yielded only about seven to eight hundred jin per mu.

After husking and processing rice, 100 jin of grain yielded less than 70 jin of white rice. A family of three typically had about five mu of land, and not all of it could grow rice – poor sloping land, unfertile fields that wouldn’t yield grain – the grain tax was submitted without compensation, and any surplus grain would be sold to the state at low prices. Without selling grain, how would farmers have money? And the money from selling grain wouldn’t last – pesticides, seeds, fertilizer, and the “retention fees” Li Fengmei mentioned needed to be paid.

The full name was “unified retention fees,” consisting of three retentions and five unified planning fees.

The five unified planning fees at the township level were: education surcharge, family planning fee, militia training fee, civil affairs special care fee, and civilian transportation fee. The village had three retention items: accumulation fund, public welfare fund, and management fee. The accumulation fund wasn’t like the modern housing fund – it was used for agricultural water conservation construction, tree planting, and purchasing fixed production materials. The public welfare fund was for supporting the Five-Guarantee households, subsidizing extremely poor households, cooperative medical care, and other welfare undertakings. The management fee was for village cadres’ compensation and management expenses.

Li Fengmei certainly didn’t know all this – people just paid whatever the township required.

Xia Xiaolan knew even less. She had only worried about going hungry the first two days after her rebirth, but after her business got on track, she hadn’t experienced real rural poverty.

They packed several bags of carefully selected, golden rice. Xia Xiaolan refused to stay home and review – these past few days Li Fengmei and Liu Fen hadn’t wanted to let her go out. Being someone who couldn’t stay idle, she insisted on going with her aunt to submit the grain tax.

Li Fengmei, worried she might get stir-crazy, agreed to let her come along.

This showed how convenient having a bicycle was – the “28” model bicycle could carry several hundred jin of grain. Without a bicycle, they’d have to use a cart to transport it to the grain station. Halfway there, they met Chen Wangda’s family’s grain delivery group. Chen Qing’s mother called out to Xia Xiaolan and Li Fengmei:

“Let’s go together, keep each other company on the way.”

Li Fengmei was quite happy, calling her “Sister-in-law.”

Xia Xiaolan obediently called her “Aunt.” She quite liked the people of Qijing Village. Though they would gossip behind people’s backs, they weren’t the kind who maliciously tried to destroy others. Though both were villages under Anqing County, Qijing Village’s atmosphere was very different from Dahe Village… Xia Xiaolan felt this had something to do with Chen Wangda being the village chief.

Madam Chen seemed quite concerned about Xia Xiaolan, asking about her studies along the way.

Xia Xiaolan had scored full marks on English tests twice. This subject was Chen Qing’s weakness. Remembering Chen Wangda’s help to her and her mother, she voluntarily offered to tutor Chen Qing:

“Aunt, if you trust me, I can tutor Brother Chen Qing in English during his breaks.”

The current college entrance exam in English wasn’t difficult – even in her previous life’s exam, mastering over 3,000 vocabulary words was about enough. But in her previous life, students accumulated vocabulary from primary school through middle and high school, and by the time of Xia Xiaolan’s rebirth, there were various vocabulary apps for using fragmentary time – what was 3,000 words then?

But for 1983 examinees, especially those from remote areas, it was very difficult.

No matter how poor one’s Chinese scores were, facing one’s mother tongue, you could still get some points. But with English, there was no foundation. In the first few years after the college entrance exam was restored, it wasn’t even included in the total score. It came suddenly for examinees, and teachers didn’t know how to teach it systematically.

Just rote memorization, without any efficient memory methods.

Vowels and consonants?

When they couldn’t even read words, how could they distinguish vowels and consonants?

English wasn’t just a roadblock for Chen Qing’s college entrance exam path, but for other examinees too… Even if they wanted to find teachers for extra tutoring, they had to be able to find teachers! Even though Chen Wangda knew people in the county, he couldn’t find such connections – he was just a village chief, not the county chief.

No one knew how Xia Xiaolan had learned English, but she had scored full marks twice, so she must have learned it well.

Chen Qing’s mother was delighted, holding onto Xia Xiaolan and not wanting to let go. Chen Qing’s grades weren’t bad – if his English could improve some, next year’s college entrance exam would be more secure-

“Xiaolan, when submitting grain later, you queue behind your aunt.”

Xia Xiaolan couldn’t understand her aunt’s expression. Li Fengmei was beaming – it was just queueing, was it that important?

Only when submitting the grain tax did Xia Xiaolan belatedly realize the benefits of queuing behind Chen Wangda’s family.

A long queue stretched outside the train station. Chen’s family didn’t cut in line but chatted casually on the road outside. Inside the grain station was bustling with noise as township leaders and village chiefs verified grain one by one.

Xia Xiaolan had thought they would just weigh according to the slip, verify, and leave the grain – wouldn’t that complete one household?

She was truly too naive!

Submitting grain tax wasn’t nearly that smooth.

When it was a household’s turn, grain station staff would insert a hollow iron tube into the sack to extract grain samples for inspection. Yunan Province’s wheat matured in June, and they had submitted wheat to the grain station at the end of June. This time was for submitting rice.

The iron tube extracted some rice, and the grain station staff poured it into their palm to look:

“Unqualified.”

The grain submitter made apologetic pleasantries, saying something unknown, and it became third-grade grain.

Third-grade was considered qualified, but with lower grain grade, more weight had to be submitted – the evaluation criteria were in the hands of the grain station inspectors, and they almost always graded low, with first-grade grain rarely appearing.

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

The grain station staff saw Madam Chen and, though still looking serious, rated their rice as “first-grade.”

Xia Xiaolan couldn’t see the difference in the rice, and the surrounding people certainly weren’t convinced, but no one argued with the grain station staff. There were whispers:

“It’s the Chen family from Qijing Village.”

“Chen Wang…”

“Shh, don’t talk.”

Chen Wangda didn’t even need to come over – the old man was accompanying the township leaders. When it was his family’s turn, the grain station staff automatically rated it “first grade.” Xia Xiaolan understood the way things worked – a person’s reputation casts a shadow, and with the old man’s prestige, the grain station staff didn’t dare play tricks.

The Chen family’s grain verification went especially quickly, and soon it was Li Fengmei’s turn. The rice that Li Fengmei and Xia Xiaolan had weighed at home as 100 jin per bag weighed less than 80 jin on the grain station’s scales – Li Fengmei’s face darkened, but she said nothing.

Xia Xiaolan had already figured out the trickery, but could she speak up and expose it? Even in workplace competition, not everything was positive energy. Xia Xiaolan knew well how troublesome petty officials could be.

“This is also from our family.”

Madam Chen casually added.

The grain station staff looked at the grain submission slip – the household head’s surname was Liu, with no connection to the surname “Chen.” How could they be one family?