"Widow" is a term that is both pitied and despised.

When a woman first becomes a widow, her neighbors will help her lament her misery.

After a while, women will be wary of you, men will "miss" you, and old people will simply put an end to all social interactions with you.

If someone in the village gets married, you will never be invited to attend because they think you are unlucky. Those with good intentions will give you a handful of "happy melon seeds"; those with bad intentions will simply teach the new daughter-in-law not to associate with the widow.

Life is difficult for women, and it is even more difficult for widows.

The more widowed she is, the more she is "surveilled" by everyone. Even when she goes to cut rice in the fields, she is criticized: "Look at that butt sticking up so high, who are you trying to seduce!"

It doesn't matter if you are not doing well, the children will be implicated without the protection of their father: "Your mother is the broom star! Your mother is a scapegoat!"

Children always think that if they lower their voices, others will not hear them, but how can they really not hear them?

Chu Qing was very emotional when she heard the conversation between the brother and sister. These two children seemed to be more thoughtful than Xiaobao. They were so young, but they had such strong understanding and thought too much.

"Of course," Chu Qing said, "Whether you sell chickens or ducks has nothing to do with whether you are the commander or not. This commander is the job I give you;

However, I want to ask you, since you want to be the ‘commander’, can you make the children in the village listen to you?”

Wu Bing lowered his head and thought about the question Chu Qing asked. He held the bamboo whistle in his hand and held it tighter and tighter.

The bamboo whistle is his "tiger talisman" for commanding "duck soldiers and duck generals"; the reed pole is his command flag for commanding "duck soldiers and duck generals". If he can command ducks, he believes that he cannot command people.

There was only one bamboo whistle, and my mother said that my father made it for me when I was a child. Although he didn't remember it, he hung it around his neck all the time, and it turned red and translucent.

I don’t even have a younger sister. My younger sister directs the chicks, all by shouting.

Wu Bing raised his head with firm eyes: "Sir, I can make them listen to me. I have this!"

Wu Bing raised his bamboo whistle and said, "My dad made it for me!"

But he muttered again: "You...can you get a whistle for my sister? She doesn't have one."

Chu Qing didn't know why he thought he could command other children with a bamboo whistle, but since he wanted one for his sister, he might as well give one to each of the two children.

As for the one in his hand made by his father, Chu Qing felt that it should be treasured and kept as a memory.

Chu Qing turned around and reached out to Zhuo Yao and Xiangzi: "Whistle!"

The ones we make are all iron whistles, the kind that look like a "comma". They are not big and are quite laborious to make, but they make a loud sound and can travel far.

Zhuo Yao and Xiangzi were reluctant to take it out. They also liked it. They were the only ones with so many people in the family.

Xiangzi was particularly unhappy: "Master, don't you have it yourself?"

Chu Qing is not willing to give it up. If he is, can he have it from you?

Chu Qing said with a straight face: "I didn't bring any!"

Although it is not plated and not as shiny as modern whistles, the iron whistle is cleaned by these two people every day and is shiny black. In addition, the iron quality at home is good, and the entire whistle body is very smooth.

Chu Qing gave two iron whistles to the brother and sister and said, "Hey, this is the commander's special whistle!"

Wu Shi and Wu Ji happily took it, turned it over and over, and used their sleeves to rub it from time to time, as if this action would make the whistle shine.

"Don't worry, sir, I... my younger sister and I will definitely be able to take care of this matter!" Wu Bian said confidently.

Back at the fertilizer workshop, the foreman has sent people to simply enclose two areas for making chicken coops and duck coops.

Chu Qing asked someone to settle the duck money for the child.

After selling the ducks, and having money, and no illness or disaster, I chose not to ask for copper coins, but to ask for grain as wages, and offered to advance three days' wages.

Three kilograms of grain was not much, and the children did not dare to advance more for fear that "Lord Cotton" would think they were overreaching.

This is how Wu Bing applied for a food advance to Chu Qing: "Sir, I would like to have a three-day food advance;

I don’t dare to use the money from selling the ducks because my sister and I want to hire a doctor from a medical clinic in the city to treat my mother. If my mother’s illness requires expensive medicine, we can also have money to buy it.”

Chu Qing roughly calculated the price of the duck in his mind.

The price of ducks in the market now is about 150 to 160 Wen per catty. This is the price of ducks that are more than half a year old. Old ducks are even more expensive, about 180 Wen per catty or more.

A two-month-old duck like this costs about 120 yuan per catty, and few people buy it.

Modern ducks are fed with feed and can reach a weight of five or six kilograms in two months.

In this era, ducks were all free-range, and it depended on whether the owner was willing to feed them food, so a two-month-old duck weighing three kilograms was considered very powerful.

If the duck is not sick, it is more than two months old and only weighs three kilograms.

Even if all were calculated as three jins each, and thirty ducks were counted as 100 jins, each catty would be worth 120 fen, which is only 1,200 fen.

Twelve hundred cents sounds like a lot, but it's really not much.

The medicine in the medical center, even for treating colds and colds, costs 200 cents per medicine, one medicine per day, and a course of treatment lasts for seven days, that is, seven medicines, costing 1,400 cents.

For example, if you are not sick, the medicine prescribed by the village doctor in his village is not good, and the preparation is not good. Whether the village doctor's prescription is good or not is another matter. Just say that if you are not sick, their family boils a medicine for three days, and the medicinal properties are not good.

It’s all gone. It’s strange that it’s effective if you take it.

I'm not sick, but I just want to see a doctor and prescribe some good medicine so that my mother can get better quickly. The money from selling these thirty ducks is probably very tight.

Chu Qing understood his approach and agreed. He didn't advance much, just three kilograms of grain, just to feed his mother, so he wasn't too greedy.

Chu Qing got another finger-thick bamboo and made ten bamboo whistles for the brothers and sisters on the spot, telling them that they could give out bamboo whistles as rewards to their friends who performed well.

To be honest, bamboo whistles are pretty easy to make, but children in the Junhu District rarely have them, because although they live not far from the mountains, they are not allowed to go up the mountains to pick bamboo.

The nearby mountains are all occupied by villages in residential areas. It’s not that the mountains belong to these villages, but because the farmers are poor and don’t have much left after paying the grain tax, so they often have to go into the mountains to find food.

Military households are different. They usually do not have to pay taxes to the state for farming. Unless the war reaches a very desperate stage and even civilian households need to be drafted, they will pay taxes along with them.

The past few years have been peaceful and there has been no war, so military households do not have to pay taxes, which makes civilian households look down upon them.

They generally don't think about the fact that almost every family in the military household has less labor, because they think that their own family has also been drafted for military service, so why should military households not have to pay taxes?
Chapter completed!