Reborn in a small village in the 1990s

Chapter 36

Zhao Tingliang is in his fifties, with very short hair. He wears an old felt hat that looks like it's been there for ages, and a thick leather coat. With his hands tucked into his sleeves, he replied, "Go ahead. Right now, in our team, my horse-drawn cart is the only means of transportation. I have to go for everything, big or small, in the village."

"What's wrong, little girl? Are you going to town too?"

Zhao Da'e chuckled: "Okay, I'm going to the street to buy some good food."

Zhao Tingliang shrugged: "Do your parents know? If they don't, I wouldn't dare take you out. What if you get lost? Your parents would try to extort money from me."

"Don't worry, with Fourth Grandfather around, how could I get lost? Fourth Grandfather has been driving a horse-drawn carriage his whole life and has never lost anything. How could he possibly take me out and lose me?" Zhao Da'e flattered.

Zhao Tingliang started driving carts in the production team when he was young, and he has basically been driving carts his whole life. He can tell with his eyes closed whether the cart is going the wrong way or whether anything on the cart has fallen off.

After being flattered by Zhao Da'e for a while, Zhao Tingliang felt a little better: "I won't be back until 2 pm. I'm going to town to pick up some coal. I wonder if the coal station is crowded? I'll also pick up two bags of cement. The village gate has collapsed and needs repairing. I told them that cement would freeze in the dead of winter and be useless. But the village insists on repairing it, saying there will be an inspection in a few days. Heh, I think... that's pure nonsense. What's there to inspect about our village? One word: poor. Two words: really poor. Three words: damn poor."

Zhao Da'e chuckled: "There are also wealthy ones, like Liu Guangcai."

Zhao Tingliang scoffed: "His money came from illegitimate means. He got rich from being the brick factory manager, but while he's rich, the brick factory is almost bankrupt. Alright, I'm going to catch the carriage."

Then Zhao Tingliang hitched up the horse-drawn carriage, with two horses, one on the left and one on the right, one pulling the main horse and the other pulling the side horse.

Zhao Tingliang snapped the whip and made a loud noise.

Snapped…

The carriage then set off.

It's getting colder and colder this morning. We're already on the eighth or ninth day of the eleventh lunar month, and the Great Snow solar term will begin on the sixth day. The weather is getting colder and colder.

The temperature had already dropped to below minus twenty degrees Celsius. Zhao Da'e remembered a long-standing debate in her past life: was it colder in the South or the North? Zhao Da'e pondered this, and the answer was obvious. A construction team had come to their village a year ago—they were called "southern barbarians." Of course, this was just a common way of referring to them in Dongtaizi Village, without any real connotation, much like how people from the Central Plains called northern nomadic tribes "barbarians." They seemed to be from very, very far south, installing high-voltage power lines. Even on such cold days, at night the villagers would say: "Friends from the South, come stay at our homes, it's warm. It's too cold outside."

The construction team didn't want to trouble the villagers, so they refused all invitations and just set up tents in the field to sleep.

Then, two were carried out the next day.

Therefore, the cold in the north, especially near Dongtaizi Village, can really freeze people to death.

Even though the sun was out, the roads were covered in frost. And the frost and snow were clearly distinct; frost was frost, and snow was snow.

The carriage slowly emerged from the mountain path and reached the flat road outside.

Zhao Da'e wrapped himself up tightly, only his two big eyes showing. His family was poor; in fact, Zhao Da'e's hands were frostbitten and covered in chilblains. His ears were also chilblained. His feet weren't much better either. Fortunately, he was dressed much warmer now, but the chilblains were still hot and intensely itchy to the touch, making him very uncomfortable.