sbdcsierra Chapter 34 1980
Chapter 34 1980
Around 2 PM...
"Sewing tools, a sewing machine, and... 80,000 yuan in cash."
After being busy until after 1 p.m., when all the elderly people were sent to their afternoon rest, the early shift of nursing care at the nursing home finally came to an end.
Zhou Jianling works three shifts and can go home to rest after her shift ends, but Li Xiaoyun, who works the long day shift, hasn't finished her work yet.
However, she wasn't busy from the afternoon until before dinner, so she could take the opportunity to rest for a while.
The workload was considerable this morning, and given that the young woman is a conscientious and responsible person, she was indeed quite exhausted.
Zhang Yang also returned to his room, but instead of taking a nap, he leaned against the headboard and began to take stock of what he had accomplished that morning.
The 30 management points and the elderly people I've interacted with have all increased my favorability towards them to some extent...
Of course, the most important thing was those three tasks that were completed inexplicably...
Three tasks, and a cash reward of up to 75,000 yuan was in hand.
Even he himself found it somewhat unbelievable.
Logically, he should have been extremely excited at this point, but in reality, looking at those prompts, he couldn't feel happy at all.
Although he was just an elderly man living in a nursing home, he still felt uneasy.
"The detachable collar I remember..."
Zhang Yang didn't rush to claim the mission rewards, but stared blankly at one of the items that had never appeared before.
A shirt collar, well, just the collar...
It hovered quietly in mid-air in his sight, emitting a faint green light.
There haven't been any special effects in the rewards for other tasks...
"Memory..." Zhang Yang recalled the novels he had read before, hesitated for a moment, and finally reached out and gently touched them.
bang~
With a soft sound, the detached collar vanished before his eyes, then transformed into a dazzling green light that enveloped his entire body.
……
Crackling sound
When Zhang Yang opened his eyes again, the environment around him had changed drastically.
The garden villa is gone, and so is the large lawn.
In the old alleyway, behind the overpass, the deafening sound of a series of firecrackers filled the air.
Before the faint smoke of gunpowder had even dissipated, a group of children rushed forward to search for unlit firecrackers on the ground.
In a small room, no more than a meter wide and four or five meters long, built using the space under the stairs under the overpass, Zhang Yang saw Old Mrs. Zhang again.
However, this version is more than twenty years younger.
"Songhai is most famous for its Hongbang tailors, but 'Hong' is just a homonym; it should be called 'Fengcai' (奉才)."
The old lady now looks to be around 50 years old, with very little gray hair and clear speech; she is much better than she was this morning.
At this moment, she was pointing to sewing tools such as measuring tape and scissors on the narrow table in front of her and talking to a young woman in her twenties.
"The traditional tailors of Fenghua all came from the Fenghua area of Ningbo, hence the name."
"I previously had my daughter, Ah Xiu, cover my job, so now I'll teach you this tailoring skill..."
"Thank you, Mom!" The young woman nodded happily in thanks.
"Don't thank me yet. I won't hold back when I teach you, but how much you learn depends on yourself."
The old lady shook her head and said calmly, "Making suits for a tailor requires four skills and sixteen methods..."
"Four skills: knife, wheel, hand, and heat; sixteen methods: flat, smooth, straight, round..."
"Each piece must be made in strict accordance with the steps of measuring, cutting, trying on, altering, and making. A good suit takes at least half a month to make."
"Today I'll start by teaching you about 'quantity'..."
As the old lady spoke, she picked up a measuring tape and began to demonstrate to the other person.
Zhang Yang stood to the side.
He had just tried it himself, and all five senses were normal, but he couldn't affect others at all, so he could only stand by and watch.
As for the current situation, he had more or less anticipated it before touching the reward of that mission.
Under his watchful gaze, the old lady meticulously taught him tailoring techniques.
Through their conversation, Zhang Yang gradually learned about the current living conditions of Mrs. Zhang's family.
In 79, when the educated youth returned to the city, the old lady's son and daughter were among them.
The eldest daughter went to a farm in Northeast China and married a fellow educated youth from Songhai.
My husband's family is even worse off than this family; three generations of them have always lived in a small attic room of less than 10 square meters.
My eldest son went to the countryside a few years later, and his situation was slightly better in Nanjing, but it was still in the countryside.
Now that their two children are coming back, the urgent issues to be resolved are housing and employment.
Unfortunately, the youngest son, who was with her at the time, was also facing the problem of getting married.
The woman's family was quite polite; they said they didn't need the "three turns and one sound" (a traditional Chinese stringed instrument), but the couple's housing situation had to be resolved.
At home, there is only one living room, which is 20 square meters.
Including the old lady herself, there are four households, ten people, and 20 square meters.
Finally, with a determined effort, the house was divided into three parts. The south-facing front half was set up as the youngest son's new room, and the north-facing back half was divided into two sections by adding an attic.
The attic was left to the eldest son's family, while the lower half of the room was for the old lady and her eldest daughter's family.
If there's not enough room to sleep, set up bunk beds; if you need privacy, draw a curtain. Get back first.
But even if people come back, they can't be without work.
The old lady eventually retired again and had her eldest daughter take over her job at the textile factory.
So, in order to support her family, in 80 she took out all her savings, borrowed the cheapest storefront in the neighborhood, and started a tailor shop again, returning to her family business...
The young woman in front of her was her youngest daughter-in-law.
After graduating from high school, she couldn't find a suitable job. She even threw a tantrum at home because her mother made her daughter take over her job.
However, he is still quite serious about learning tailoring now.
Sunrise and sunset, and time just passes by day by day.
After the tailor shop opened, the old lady taught her daughter-in-law tailoring skills while also racking her brains to find ways to earn money to supplement the family income.
As for Zhang Yangyao, he thoroughly experienced the everyday life of Songhai in the early 1980s.
It was real fireworks.
There wasn't even gas.
Every day, I had to light the coal stove to cook.
At dinner time, the entire alleyway is shrouded in thick smoke, and the air is filled with the pungent smell of smoke.
In later times, PM2.5 levels would definitely be off the charts, but in the 1980s, it was perfectly normal.
Looking at the lives of people in the 1980s and watching the old lady teach sewing skills, Zhang Yang felt a little bored, but also quite novel.
The three-wheeled cars driving on the road look just like little turtles...
A small 14-inch television would be moved into the alleyway and turned on whenever the weather was nice in the evening. A group of adults and children would gather around, watching TV, chatting, and eating sunflower seeds...
The Men from the Bottom of the Atlantic... Garrison's Gorillas...
Not to mention the adults and children, even Zhang Yang, who was bored, watched it with great interest.
Meanwhile, the old lady's tailor shop business gradually began to improve.
The main reason is the old man's signature product—the detachable collar.
Buying ready-made clothes is expensive, and if you want to buy fabric to make your own, you need fabric coupons first. Even if you have fabric, you have to be careful with your money and save wherever you can.
Making one set of clothes is not easy, let alone making several sets to change every day.
But the people of Songhai love to dress up and keep up with the times, so what can be done?
The detachable collar was born out of this need.
If you wear a fake collar and then put on a coat over it, who could tell?
It saves on fabric and is cheap. You can buy several and change them every day. Isn't that perfect?
False collars became popular in Songhai in the 1970s, but the old lady made further improvements to them.
The styles and colors are constantly being updated, from large pointed collars and small square collars to lace trims and ruffles, and then there are various styles such as half-shoulder, full-shoulder, and with a chest area, suitable for matching with different outerwear.
The collar should also be crisp and well-formed.
At first, everyone would wash the detachable collars clean, soak them in rice water, and then spray them with water and iron them flat when they were dry and stiff.
Later, they found it too troublesome and changed it to using multiple layers of polyester fabric as the lining.
When it was the old lady's turn, she had a sudden inspiration and thought of cutting up old X-ray films from the hospital and inserting them into her wig collar.
No matter how many times you wash it, it will never deform. The only downside is that the edges are prone to wear and tear after a while.
Fortunately, the product was inexpensive, so not many people cared about this minor flaw.
So, thanks to this detachable collar, the tailor shop earned its first pot of gold, and business gradually began to improve.