Witty Wife, Better Life

Chapter 24: Chapter 24 Going to the Market (Part 2) Chapter 24: Chapter 24 Going to the Market (Part 2) “Oh my, I think this child really hasn’t been out much, how on earth have you been living all this time?” Wang Jianjun’s wife laughed.

Brother Dashuan’s wife hurriedly filled her in with the basics, “Let me tell you, the people selling things here are all government workers, so when we buy things, we’re still buying from the government.”

Thanks to Brother Dashuan’s wife’s explanation, Shen Yunfang finally understood that the market now wasn’t the kind of farmers’ market she knew from the future, but rather one organized by the commune that gathered all the nearby production brigades to sell their surplus output.

Now, those selling goods were reliable and honest folks chosen by the production brigades, and anytime a supply and marketing cooperative sent people to sell, they sent at least two to keep an eye on each other to prevent mistakes.

For instance, some production brigades had public vegetable plots, and if there was a surplus, it would be brought to the market to sell to members whose households had little land and nothing to eat. Her own family, for example, hadn’t planted mustard greens or carrots, so she could buy them at the market if she wanted to.

If a production brigade was raising pigs and had a sow that had piglets, but the village couldn’t consume all of them, they would bring the unsold piglets to the market to see if any members from other villages needed them. The same went for lambs, chicks, ducklings, and goslings most of the time.

Then there were grocery items like tofu, bean sprouts, and vermicelli made by the factories under the commune—members could buy them at the market with cash or exchange them for grain—like tofu, where one and a half pounds of soybeans could be exchanged for one pound of tofu.

Each commune had multiple factories, such as tofu workshops, oil pressing workshops, and rice milling workshops, etc. If the members needed processing services, they could pay a small manual processing fee here.