Daily Life in the Countryside After Being Reborn-Chapter 19 - 18 Little Steamed Buns Enter the City to Snatch Rice (Part 3)

The bag of Thai Fragrant Rice, when compared with the local grains drying on the ground, mixed with sand, was golden yellow as opposed to earthy yellow. However, spending a hundred yuan on a small bag of seed rice still needed careful consideration. A bag could seed an acre of land, and if one full bag could truly yield a thousand jin for the year, it would already be enough for the two-person household's yearly grain consumption.

Back then, the rice eaten by ordinary people was just over one yuan for a jin, and even the best North-East rice was only sold for about one yuan seventy-eight. That was after husking, not including labor and fertilizer costs.

Catching Xiao Xian's eye, regardless of whether it was Thai Fragrant Rice or not, "Thai Fragrant Rice, produced in Ayutthaya, Thailand, is a type of Japonica rice. The grains are long and slender with a soft texture when cooked. Each panicle has about a hundred grains, yielding about nine hundred jin per acre." The middle-aged woman exaggerated a little, but it was more or less genuine. Zhu Shijun had never mentioned where Thailand was, so Xiao Xian could only temporarily treat it as a place name.

However, the quality of such rice grains was simply unbearable in Xiao Xian's eyes. Yunteng was an Immortal Mountain, yet it also cultivated some agricultural crops. Take Immortal Rice as an example, any rice cultivated in a space above the copper grade must yield at least two thousand jin per acre.

Zhu Shijun reached out and pulled out some grain, which felt smooth and full, a good appearance to the touch.

"No need to look further, when I say it's good seed, it is good seed. The technician in the town also said that it will produce a good yield in any soil." The middle-aged woman was savvy too; the people coming and going in Bai Family Ancient Town were just poor villagers from around the area and tourists from other places.

Even though Xiao Xian and Zhu Shijun did not bring travel bags when they went out, the young girl was carrying a Disney backpack on her back, a trendy item among kids in the provincial capital. One backpack might cost the mountain people half a month of household expenses; if they don't get taken for a ride now, then when?

"Comrade woman, we don't want this type of rice. Do you have any better rice seed from the Yun Gui region?" Zhu Shijun's words were quite unpleasant to the middle-aged woman's ears. She snorted and started spitting out melon seed shells, unwillingly saying, "There are other kinds too, with several bags by the wall. Take a look, thirty yuan a bag. If you're buying, you have to buy the whole bag, no picking and choosing." Turns out it wasn't a fat sheep but a pauper.

On the other side of the procurement station were seven or eight burlap sacks of old cloth, and the rice grains inside, whether in fullness or color, were much less desirable compared to the earlier Thai rice.

Xiao Xian, pretending to be like Zhu Shijun, picked up some grain and shook her head.

"These are last year's old grains; they indeed don't look impressive," Zhu Shijun watched his granddaughter's mature manner with all his wrinkles smoothing out, like a late blooming old gold chrysanthemum.

"Grandpa, I'm not someone who judges by appearance. It's okay to look a bit ugly; it's meant for planting anyway. The issue is these grains have very low yields. I'll return five yuan to you, there's no need to buy any vegetables to take back. If you want to plant rice, we should pool our money for the more expensive ones." Xiao Xian didn't express it outright; she looked around and truly felt pity for the local farmers. Those so-called high yield rice crops included both Japonica and non-glutinous rice, but the panicle setting rate and yield were much less than the Thai rice, with the highest yield per acre being only five hundred jin.

Hearing Xiao Xian's words, Zhu Shi was temporarily choked up, his throat clogged with emotion. Xiao Xian had truly grown up.

"Silly child, Grandpa isn't being stingy with money," when Zhu Shijun stepped down from his position, all kinds of welfare and subsidies had been canceled, and all his assets frozen, leaving only the basic pension funds. Indeed, he did not have extra money nominally.

```

However, hearing such sensible words from the mouth of six-year-old Xiao Xian still warmed Zhu Shijun's heart.

"There's an old saying, 'oranges grown in the south of the Huai River are sweet, while those in the north are bitter.' If we apply this to our situation, kids who grow up in the country are different from city kids. While that bag of Thai Fragrant Rice is good, unfortunately, the climate and soil here are very different from Thailand. Even if it could yield more than a thousand kilos per hectare, planted behind our house, its taste would change and its yield would decrease. Plus, grandpa remembers that you never liked Thai rice before; you found it too soft." Zhu Shijun's words were filled with affection for Xiao Xian and an understanding of the local conditions, thinking she wouldn't understand. Little did he know, his granddaughter nodded emphatically after hearing him.

"Are you done? You've been droning on forever, pick one quickly, or it'll be noon soon," said the middle-aged woman impatiently, as she saw half a month's salary about to go without any result.

"Comrade, we'll take this bag," after examining seven or eight bags, Zhu Shijun chose one.

Xiao Xian secretly marvelled inside, wondering if her grandpa also possessed some sort of 'space', as what appeared to be a casual selection on his part was indeed the highest-yielding variety among those dozen bags, a variety that could produce five hundred kilos per hectare.

"This bag is the most expensive, fifty yuan," the middle-aged woman changed her tune, doubling the price on the spot. Zhu Shijun didn't haggle, instead, he took out his wallet, ready to pay.

"Grandpa, don't buy it yet," the woman's face fell, just about to start cursing, then saw Xiao Xian, like a rabbit, dart over to the cardboard boxes piled up at the outermost part of the procurement station.

Those boxes had been cleaned up from the very back of the grain warehouse, for the convenience of packing new grains, filled with all kinds of junk. There were novels left behind by the previous procurement staff, and several cans for tea leaves. After Xiao Xian called out for Zhu Shijun, she started fumbling around those tea cans.

"Sister," Xiao Xian sweetly addressed the middle-aged woman, who hadn't been called 'sister' for over a decade, and her cursing swallowed back instantly, squeezing a smile onto her face.

"These cans of rice can also be sold, right?" Xiao Xian had already opened several cylindrical cans, which were previously used to hold Huangshan Maofeng tea. The tea cans looked many years old, with a few rust-colored spots on them.

The middle-aged woman hadn't paid attention to those tea cans while tidying up. She came over to look and saw that the tea cans were brimming with rice.

Xiao Xian counted, there were three cans in total. Although the amount was a bit small, if all planted, it could still cover an acre.

But the color of that rice was even worse than the old grains in the bags, they looked almost moldy, missing only a few cat hairs sprouting out. Who in their right mind would buy such things? Children are just children.

"Selling," seeing the face of being called 'sister,' the middle-aged woman agreed very cheerily, after all, garbage had to be dealt with, and the waste cans weren't worth much.

"Grandpa, let's spend fifty yuan and buy both these iron cans and that bag of rice seeds," Zhu Xiaoxian blinked with a face full of expectation.

```

The source of this c𝐨ntent is freёnovelkiss.com.