Chapter 48: The Second Annual New Year's Eve Tea Party

  "Everyone, elders, brothers and sisters, good evening. Tiger is here to wish you a happy new year in advance. Happy New Year! To pay respects to the elders, Tiger is kowtowing to everyone."

  As he spoke, Tiger knelt down on the table with both knees and kowtowed three times. "These three heads have a certain connotation: the first head wishes all elders good health in the coming year; the second head wishes all elders a harmonious family; and the third head is for us kids ourselves, wishing we all grow one year older, healthy, happy, and free from being scolded by our elders. Alright, let's not waste words. Last year, although our tea party didn't go as smoothly as desired, everyone agreed it was a perfect and harmonious gathering. So, in response to everyone's requests, we're continuing the tradition this year. According to Brother Heng's words, last year's food was too scarce - there wasn't even the main dish for Chinese New Year, dumplings! How can that be? Therefore, our first activity this year is making dumplings. Let's all make dumplings together! And while we're at it, you can also listen to me ramble on a bit."

  Hu Zi, indeed has a set of organizational skills for this public matter. Looking at what he said, it's all well-organized and even if no one knows he said that, Yang Heng just arranged the order for him.

  For this dumpling, Yang Heng has made a lot of effort in the second half of the year, and even wasted a lot of seasonal vegetables. However, this is not considered wasteful, mainly because they planted too many. Not only his family planted them, but also his uncles' families did, and the harvested vegetables were not only eaten by themselves, but also sent back to their hometowns for their parents and siblings to eat. There were still many leftovers, and Yang Heng's approach was to simply process some of the uneaten vegetables and dry them in the sun. However, he couldn't predict the weather, and out of ten times, only once would the weather cooperate. The other nine times, although they could be retrieved in time, were no longer suitable for storage. What Yang Heng needed was quickly dried vegetables, a method he had used before in his past life. These processed vegetables, when eaten, only need to be soaked in warm water, and are basically indistinguishable from fresh ones, with only a slightly worse taste. However, they are much better than those that were boiled and then dried.

  Apart from these quick-drying vegetables, there are also some storage-tolerant and winter-resistant vegetables like Chinese cabbage and radish, so this batch of dumplings can have a lot of fillings.

  Everyone quickly put the dough in place, and it was already alive by this afternoon. Now it's just a matter of wrapping them up to make dumplings for New Year's Eve. It's only natural that everyone lends a hand, so now adults and children are all working together without anyone idle.

  "Let's take advantage of the time we're wrapping dumplings to give our elders a report on our studies this year. Come on, Egg Brother, you start."

  When everyone was busy wrapping dumplings, the children's learning report began. Why start with Egg? Because as a subject, Egg is really the worst at it. His best subject is arithmetic, but he can't show it off now. If you ask him to do some simple addition and subtraction, this isn't like Yang Heng's past life where he could calculate quickly in his head. Now, there are computers that can instantly determine whether his calculations are correct or not, so on this evening, arithmetic is useless.

  "Heaven and earth are mysterious and vast, the universe is immense... Hey, I've memorized it all, how's that?" "Hmm, not bad, Egg has already memorized this entire Thousand Character Classic, worthy of praise. Tiger, you continue."

  "The next program is a calligraphy performance by Xiaochong and Niu Zi. They will write on paper with brushes. The paper and brushes were specially purchased by their father for the children, each set including an inkstone, brush, ink block, and several sheets of paper. Although no one usually uses these papers and inks, the brushes are still used. Xiao Shu made some wooden boards that change color when exposed to water and return to their original color after drying. So, during this time, the children have abandoned the sand tray and started using the wooden boards and brushes instead. The characters written with these tools are almost the same as those written with ink. Each child has several wooden boards, writing on one board while drying another, making it the best time to practice calligraphy in fine weather."

  But using ink to write on paper, it's just that a few days ago, the little bug and Niu Zi practiced writing on a few sheets of paper, but haven't let all the children write yet. This is mainly because Little Bug and Niu Zi are the best at writing, so they were chosen to perform the writing show.

  This newcomer is Yang Heng, of course. The others are all wrapping dumplings, while only Yang Heng is patrolling around, so Yang Heng can only do odd jobs.

  "Good, good, good handwriting." When Niu Zi and Xiao Chong showed off their handwriting in front of everyone, a round of applause erupted. To be honest, no one really knew if the handwriting was good or not. The adults thought that the fact that these children could write neat and tidy characters was already impressive enough. Yang Heng, on the other hand, felt that what they wrote was identical to the characters in their textbooks, and it was impossible to tell whether they were good or bad. Naturally, if they could write exactly like the textbook, then that was good enough, proving that their imitation skills had reached a high level. As for the details, Yang Heng just didn't get it.

  When the words were finished, the dumplings were also wrapped up. The night had entered the hour of Xu, and last year at this time, the children were all asleep. But tonight, they were still excited because there would be some performances by them next.

  "The next program, Yang has a poem from the Book of Songs, 'Guan Ju'," "'Guan Guan Ju in the river islet, elegant and virtuous girl...'" "Stop, stop, stop," San Shu was anxious on one side, "Heng nephew, what are you teaching? What's this about a virtuous girl, what's good to seek? Is this something that can be said to children?" Yang Heng couldn't help but smile wryly. This is a poem from the Book of Songs, how could San Shu oppose it? It's mainly because his uncles don't associate with scholars, so as soon as there are sentences involving men and women, their first reaction is that it's not good. Yang Heng even had to explain some things to San Shu, it seems that in the future, he can't just teach children, adults should also be taught something, otherwise, after a few more years, they might move into the city, who knows how many jokes they'll make then.

  So, Third Uncle's opposition led Yang Heng to make a decision: from now on, the adults would have to learn everything, even if they couldn't reach a very high level. They had to understand some knowledge of various kinds so as not to make fools of themselves in town. It wasn't that Yang Heng was afraid of being laughed at, but rather he wanted his uncles to be able to interact well with others in the future.

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