CH 169

Lin Lan went to the sale and first bought the things that she previously wanted to buy but couldn’t bear to do so. When she saw that someone was selling food and eggs, Lin Lan bought it without hesitation.

It was cheap, so why not buy it? The key was that it didn’t require stamps.

Country people would take the eggs to the city to exchange for food stamps— one catty of eggs for two catties of food stamps. When they come back, they have to take food stamps and money to buy food. To put it bluntly, it was to exchange one catty of eggs for the qualification to buy two catties of grain or just a disguised price increase. That’s why Lin Lan couldn’t understand how they calculated things when some people would always brag that their prices were cheap at this time. Even if it’s a penny a pound of food, but without selling supplies to exchange for  the stamps, one could only starve.

Could they still claim that it was cheap?

In the sale, they usually sold whole grains such as dried sweet potatoes, sorghum rice, bean noodles, etc.. They would also sell the hybrid noodles of bean noodles, sorghum noodles and sweet potato noodles, which were bitter, astringent and quite unpalatable.

If there were soybeans or wheat, it would be ideal, but there were not many. Occasionally people did come to sell it, just to exchange them with cash for urgent uses. Unless it was to see a doctor, go to school or pay for a funeral, most people were reluctant to sell food like this.

Therefore, Lin Lan would definitely buy it if she encountered it since she was not short of money. She had five growing children who were short of food. When she bought it back, she would help herself and others, so why not do it when she could?

She bought 30 catties of wheat and 10 catties of soybeans, bundled them up on the back seat of the bicycle before going to the Supply and Marketing Cooperative to have a look.

Her third sister was coming to bring her cotton.

When she arrived at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative, she came here at the right time. She bought five feet of labour cloth and half a catty of cotton.

Several salesmen in the Supply and Marketing Cooperative knew her and they relaxed two centimetres more when measuring the cloth for her, for fear that she would pick on them.

Lin Lan thought it was good to be a little bit more aggressive. If she was timid, the salesperson would pinch and tear the cloth exactly by its measurements.

The big braided salesperson who fought with her last time had a good attitude towards her this time. Lin Lan also knew that her name was Qiu Dongmei, and the other older, honest and gentle-faced worker was called Wang Huijuan.

Lin Lan didn’t have a ticket for kerosene, so she wanted to ask them to keep an eye on it and see if she could collect some or buy some kerosene at a high price.

Although the policy did not allow the reselling of bills, kerosene and grain were all necessary materials and ordinary people would naturally find a way to do without it. Everyone knew this well and the salesperson often took the opportunity to make some extra money.

Qiu Dongmei told Lin Lan, “There are no tickets, but do you want the candles?”

Candles were expensive and were obviously not resistant to burning, but Lin Lan thought that it would be okay to buy some.

In addition, Wang Huijuan saved a little kerosene with her, so there was no need for a ticket. However, it was 10 cents higher than the market price.

Lin Lan decided to buy it.

Although the market price of a pound was 36 cents, the tickets that they would get a year were simply not enough for this kind of stuff.