She Only Cares About Cultivation

By the end of March, more and more people were joining the lines to exchange new coins. An Yi took advantage of her time after work, spent about a month, and managed to exchange 60 million into six thousand three hundred yuan. By the mid-1950s, having this much money meant her standard of living was destined to be a notch above others.

Of course, the space also preserved more than thirty complete sets of old coin collection books. No matter how much they could be exchanged for in the future, leaving them to An Ran and An Xin was her way of contributing her share.

After receiving over six thousand yuan, the first thing she did was conduct a full collection and categorization. Since the newly-issued money was all new, she sorted out forty sets, encompassing 11 denominations, 15 categories, naturally including the Soviet Three Coins printed by the Soviet Union, namely three yuan, five yuan, and ten yuan. These three types of coins ceased circulation in 1964, while the rest printed by China stopped around 2007.

The reason why the circulation time of three yuan RMB was relatively short was mainly due to the limitations of the economic environment at the time. People’s awareness of collecting RMB was still quite weak. Most were already collected by capable institutions or consumed through binding and gift-giving or by banks reclaiming them.

Therefore, the market’s inventory was very scarce, and the value in later generations had been hyped to more than 10,000 times, giving the three yuan paper money extremely high collectible value and investment appreciation space. An Yi looked at the pocket money she had left and planned that whenever she encountered any three yuan in the future, she would find ways to exchange and collect them.

The circulation time of the second set of RMB paper money was about 10 years, the 53-year version from March 1, 55 until banks began to accept but not pay out around 64; the 56-year version approximately issued in 62 and reclaimed in the 70s.

With this timeline, An Yi didn’t feel like the six thousand yuan in the space appeared too much.

What is collection? Collection means it can’t be moved. If it weren’t for the staff refusing to convert all her money into three yuan bills, she wouldn’t have later gone through such trouble to find various ways and people to exchange them.

Luckily, she had plenty of time left for herself because the second set of RMB had just started being used. All she needed to ensure in the future was to keep her wallet flowing.

After An Yi prepared the house in the county, she took Anna and Angel over. A house needs people living in it to have life; if left idle over the years, it would deteriorate quickly. The hall had three rooms; she occupied one, the middle was a living room. She thought her sisters would choose another room, but no, they opted for the two rooms in the west wing.

After tidying up over these days, each room had already been furnished. Everyone was the same; the warm kang bed was ready. There’s no need to place a bed since there’s a spot for blankets on the kang, and there were also bedside tables. All she needed to add were small items like wardrobes and desks and stools, making it easy to organize.

Even her own room was much the same because knowing that placing anything too valuable wasn’t safe. Thus, managing to repaint and repair these old pieces of furniture was already quite good.

Because the sisters said the meals at school were not worth it, terribly expensive and didn’t taste good, and the living conditions were poor, with many people not keeping clean, An Yi, after tidying up, took them directly over: "From now on, you two will live here, come here after school to start a fire and cook. It will be on time for dinner."

The location of the school wasn’t as good as the house’s; the distance was still a bit far. But An Yi gave them her old bicycle.

"You’ll get to school quicker riding a bike. If you don’t know how to ride, I’ll find time to teach you this weekend."

An Yi’s maneuver left both of them in shock: "This house...?"

"It’s rented. The family went abroad. I pay thirty yuan a year. I’ve paid for five years, so we can live here as freely as we want for those five years."

"You gave us the bicycle; what about you?"

Having individual rooms in a place where space is precious, being able to have a private room, to be honest, Anna felt a bit unreal.

Their dormitories housed twelve people. Even this was a small room, while the bigger ones housed thirty people. Though all were girls, the smell...

Because everyone didn’t bathe in the winter, only going to the bathhouse once spring arrived to soak. Even they only bathed after arriving in the county at the start of school.

Although the general environment was like this, usually at night one had to soak their feet, wash up, and rub down. But for younger kids, they weren’t so particular. Most would not wash their feet at night, and brushing teeth was rare. Honestly, in those kids, they saw their past selves. If it weren’t for An Yi, they wouldn’t even know about the existence of items like soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and toothbrush.