Chapter 232:
At 8:30 PM, an ordinary citizen, whom we shall call Mr. Citizen, dragged his weary body home and pushed open the door.
The cramped room no longer inspired him to muster the courage to change his situation as it once did in his youth; he had begun to feel increasingly numb.
"You're back?" Asked his wife, busy in the kitchen, where a slightly nauseating smell was emanating. Too tired to respond, Mr. Citizen merely grunted in reply and slumped down on the worn-out sofa.
A small section of the sofa had collapsed because one of the springs inside had broken, which soon affected the other springs. Eventually, that spot became an unwelcome place to sit, occupied only by Mr. Citizen's wife or their not-too-heavy children.
After the city hall reissued food stamps this time, people noticed a few problems. It was difficult to exchange the stamps for solid food at relief points; the previously criticized rock-hard food had been replaced entirely by liquid food.
It looked like something that had just been excreted, packed in tubes. Eating it was simple: just soak the whole tube in hot water for a while.
Then squeeze it out of the tube, like squeezing out excrement, onto a plate, and then eat it.
Many people were not used to this new food, but the city hall's explanation was that there were too many unemployed people, and the population affected by unemployment was too large. With extremely tight finances; they couldn't afford to let everyone eat their fill and eat well.
Of course, if they used two or three food stamps, they could still exchange them for the previous solid food, but this was clearly not cost-effective.