Chen Weiguo entered the grain station shop, picked up the kettle that had been sitting on the stove for the whole night yesterday, and poured it into the thermos bottle.
Then, she carried the thermos bottle to Old Man Fang's office and replaced his cup with new tea.
Old Man Fang's office was behind the grain station. Beside the warehouse were three single rooms with wooden structures.
One room was used for quality inspection, one room was used for resting, and the last room was the stationmaster's office.
The office facilities were simple. There was a set of brown tables and chairs, a wooden bookcase, and a metal stove. They were more or less damaged, giving off a strong sense of age.
Old Man Fang's desk was covered with a layer of glass. There were many old photos under the glass. After a long time, they had stuck to the glass, and the color had become a lump, making it impossible to see clearly.
After pouring water for Old Man Fang, Chen Weiguo went to the warehouse again.
The warehouse was not as big as the new storage warehouses in the future. It was built by connecting three large warehouses that could store a million catties of grain.
Their warehouse yard was huge.
Usually, when it was time to hand over the public grain, the farmers would hand over the best quality grain and oil to the grain station as soon as possible.
At this time, farmers believed that paying taxes was a matter of course.
During the grain purchase period every year, the first consideration was not the small family, but the competition to pay the "patriotic grain" and actively pay taxes and grain.
If it was in the past, their grain station would not be short of grain this month.
The grain that was handed in could not be piled up in several warehouses, and there was no place for the staff of the grain station to stand.
However, this year was different from the past. The famine had caused fewer and fewer people to hand in grain. In addition, the roads were difficult to travel in winter, and it was inconvenient for many farmers to enter the city. They could only let the grain station's staff go to the countryside to collect grain.
"Weiguo, were you busy yesterday?"
A few employees in the warehouse who were checking the goods greeted Chen Weiguo.
They were the colleagues who had gone to the countryside to collect grain yesterday.
" Fortunately, it's not a grain day, so there aren't many people." Chen Weiguo smiled." How's your harvest?"”
"Sigh! Don't mention it!" The person who replied to Chen Weiguo was a middle-aged woman called Zheng Wenqiu."Yesterday, our legs were about to break from running. We collected less than 500 catties in total, and they were all of substandard quality.”
"The mission from the city this time is to collect 5,000 catties. How could we have collected it before this year!”The middle-aged man said with a frown.
His name was Li Weidong, a quality inspector at the grain station.
The quality inspector was a good position. If the grain submitted by the farmers was not up to standard, the quality inspector's mouth would be the deciding factor.
During the harvest season, the quality inspector only needed to stand there with his sharp awl to inspect the grain, and the farmers would come up to him and say good things to him, handing him cigarettes.
The table next to him was often filled with cigarettes, sticks, and boxes. It was more lively than the counter of the supply and marketing cooperative.
Due to the famine this year, Li Weidong's " extra income " had shrunk by more than half. Now, he had to save on smoking.
When had he ever lived such a hard life?
Chen Weiguo looked at the unsealed bag of grain on the ground. He walked over and pinched it. He rubbed it in his hand, and a lot of sand and wheat bran fell out.
"The quality of this grain is not good."
The grain had a lot of moisture and impurities. This grain was not conducive to storage. In the later stages, the grain station needed to dry and sieve it again, which was time-consuming and laborious.
"The 500 catties this time are all third-grade rations!”Li Weidong sighed deeply." When I was grading the grain, those farmers almost beat me up!”
There was a story! Chen Weiguo, who liked to join in the fun, quickly put down the thermos bottle and leaned over to ask,"Quickly tell me, what happened?”
Seeing that someone wanted to hear it, Li Weidong was also excited." Let me tell you, when we went to that place, we saw that the kids in the village looked quite fat as soon as we entered the village, unlike the children in other places who were as thin as paper due to hunger. We thought that there was a chance, but guess what happened in the end?”
Li Weidong kept him in suspense. Chen Weiguo had no choice but to play along with his desire to show off." What's wrong?"”
"When we went to the village secretary's place, the village secretary's attitude was quite good. He asked his neighbors to give us some grain. The quality was good. The goods that were handed in were all inferior, and there were even moldy ones! They were unhappy that I didn't accept them. They said that I was making things difficult for them. They even said that these were all good food that they couldn't bear to eat. As they spoke, they wanted to make a move and were stopped by the village chief.”
As Li Weidong spoke, his temper flared up." They all have fierce looks on their faces. They don't look like they're hungry. How dare they say such things!" I won't take a single grain of their food!"
When Chen Weiguo heard this, he thought for a moment and felt that something was wrong.
In this era, farmers were willing to contribute to the country unless they really couldn't afford to eat.
This year's harvest was really poor, which led to a shortage of grain everywhere. A lot of the grain in the capital was transported from other regions to mediate.
But Li Weidong said that the people in the village were not thin. What was going on?
Chen Weiguo suddenly remembered that he had seen a disease called hunger edema in a documentary in the future. It was usually caused by excessive protein and energy deficiency during famine or war.
In other words, the villagers that Li Weidong saw did not look plump because they were full, but because they were really too hungry and undernourished. Most of the people in the village had edema!
If this continued, the villagers might starve to death!
"Brother Li, I remember that I still have something to do. I'll go and find the station chief first!”
Chen Weiguo stood up and rushed to Station Chief Fang's office.
This book comes from：m.funovel.com。