Chapter 1475: Letter

"You're still the one who dares to think and dare to act, Brother Yan."

Coming out of the post office, Li Kuiyong sighed endlessly. This kind of thing was something he really hadn't even thought of, let alone done.

Wang Yan smiled: "Anyway, idle is idle, just write it and send it. If they happen to use it, then we'll have many benefits. Like getting some offal and bones at the slaughterhouse, once the article is published, let alone offal, we could even get meat."

"It would be great if we really had a stall of our own."

"What kind of beautiful dream are you having? Even if you had a stall, they wouldn't let you drink dry and recklessly all day." Wang Yan glanced at him and said, "And even if this stall was approved, it would probably be a sideline business of the commune, not related to our brigade."

"Why?"

"The people in our brigade are people, and others aren't? It's the same principle as national governance. If there's a crop failure here, it has to be supplemented from other places. That's just how it is. Our brigade is poor, but there are even poorer ones."

Wang Yan was willing to explain the reasoning to Li Kuiyong, to let him activate his brain, broaden his horizons, and consider more problems.

As the saying goes, those who do not plan for the whole situation are not enough to plan for a region, and those who do not plan for ten thousand generations are not enough to plan for a moment. This sentence has another more modern and incisive explanation, called "looking at problems with a developmental perspective."

The two chatted and laughed as they left the post office, joined Old Liu and the others, and embarked on the return journey.

After walking about three li, they saw dozens of ruffians gathered ahead. Some were sitting on bicycles, more were squatting or standing, and some were even smoking.

"Brother Yan, don't say, these people are all the same." Li Kuiyong laughed.

However, Qin Ling and the other female educated youth were very panicked, not daring to look around. Old Liu and the others dismantled their baskets again, tightly clutching their shoulder poles.

"Wang Yan!" Old Liu whispered.

"It's okay." Wang Yan returned a reassuring smile, continued walking without stopping, and Li Kuiyong also didn't stop, firmly following. Yu Ming hesitated for a moment, but also followed.

This time, Old Liu and the others didn't hesitate at all, told the female educated youth not to run around, and followed Wang Yan up.

Zhong Yuemin and Zheng Tong, who were walking together, didn't hesitate either and followed directly. As for the other educated youth who were with them, no one moved.

Zhong Yuemin and Zheng Tong knew Wang Yan too well. Except for the battle with the Beijing "Buddhas" (gangsters), they had watched Wang Yan fight all the other times. With dozens of people like this, it was really a small scene. They firmly believed that Wang Yan would definitely solve the problem easily...

A person sitting on the back seat of a bicycle, who should be relatively young, under thirty, but looked mature, stood up.

"You beat my people, their arms are broken, it's hard to live, give me an explanation."

This was said with quite a bit of "big brother" style, clear goals, straight to the point. At the same time, he pulled a short gun from his sheepskin coat.

Wang Yan took a look, snatched the gun, and kicked out. Only a "crack" sound was heard, and the man's tibia and fibula were broken.

The man screamed in pain and couldn't stand. Wang Yan swung his arm and slapped him, sending him flying. Teeth and blood splashed onto his little brother's head.

The little ruffians who were originally showing off with various knives, guns, and sticks scattered in an instant, looking at Wang Yan vigilantly, and some even wanted to run away.

"Run? I've fired the gun!"

Wang Yan held the gun and fired a shot diagonally into the sky.

So they all stood back, shivering under Wang Yan's muzzle.

"Today I'll make it clear to you. I'm a very reasonable person. You tried to bully people but failed; that's not my fault. I'm new here and don't want to cause trouble. But there's a limit to everything. This time, give me all the money and tickets you have, and I'll take the bicycles too, and that'll be the end of it.

If there's a next time, one by one, I'll break all your legs. Come, you tell me, am I right?"

Wang Yan lightly tapped the leader's short leg, making him howl in pain.

"I'm asking you!" Wang Yan increased the pressure in dissatisfaction.

"Right, absolutely right. There will definitely not be a next time, we'll mind our own business."

Wang Yan nodded with satisfaction: "Dayong, go, collect the money."

"Got it." Li Kuiyong responded, then shouted, "Line up, one by one."

"What are you standing there for?" Zhong Yuemin walked up and urged them to hurry up and take out the money.

Wang Yan stared fixedly at the leader lying on the ground panting heavily. The latter was very panicked, not knowing why Wang Yan was looking at him.

Seeing him so clueless, Old Liu couldn't bear to look: "You idiot, take out the money."

"Oh, oh, oh..." The leader responded repeatedly, enduring the pain and taking out all the money and tickets on him.

Wang Yan took it with satisfaction and counted it roughly; there were over two hundred yuan, which obviously wasn't all his assets.

"You've done quite a few bad things..."

"No, I..."

Wang Yan waved his hand, interrupting his self-justification, took out a cigarette from his pocket, lit one for himself, and distributed the rest to Old Liu and the others.

Patiently waiting for Li Kuiyong to finish collecting the money, Wang Yan unloaded the bullets from the short gun in his hand, threw it on the ground, stepped on it to bend it, and kicked it toward the leader.

"Last time, behave yourself."

Then Wang Yan took Li Kuiyong and pushed away all three bicycles at the scene.

"Wang Yan, isn't this bad?" Old Liu wasn't a person who didn't know how to adapt, but no matter how adaptable, this was robbery, and he felt something was wrong.

"It's okay." Wang Yan returned a reassuring smile. "Their money isn't clean either, so what if they find the police? Once something is in our village, can we let it go? I don't want these bicycles; the villagers are reluctant to use donkeys to pull water, and using these bicycles can save effort. It's also more convenient to go out for anything. Consider it my contribution to our brigade."

Old Liu understood Wang Yan's meaning and also understood this principle, so he didn't object, just saying: "Then you keep one, and the remaining two count for the brigade. You made them, the brigade can't take them all, that wouldn't look right."

"Done." Wang Yan nodded.

Over there, Zhong Yuemin and the others had already started popularizing Wang Yan's awesome battle record to everyone, giving everyone a new understanding of Wang Yan, so everyone started praising him together.

Facing their praise, Wang Yan responded with a smile and courtesy.

The female comrades wouldn't say anything, but the educated youth on Zhong Yuemin's side were a bit lacking. He had already treated them to two meals in the county seat; the last time was his money, and this time was Li Kuiyong's money. Li Kuiyong's money was naturally his, Wang Mou's money. Under such circumstances, those people didn't stand with him, which was really lacking.

Yu Ming, this self-interested person who was full of complaints and didn't remember people's kindness, followed, but those educated youth who talked about brotherly loyalty with Zhong Yuemin were far behind...

Returning to the village, everyone naturally cheered enthusiastically for the bicycles, because the Baidian Brigade didn't have a single bicycle, but now they had two public vehicles directly, and Wang Yan had one of his own.

Throughout the twelfth lunar month, besides driving the donkey cart to deliver furniture, the brigade members were practicing riding bicycles on the flat ground of the village. This one rode for a few minutes, that one rode for a few minutes, and every day was full of laughter.

Wang Yan was still comfortably leading his apprentices, working diligently.

Carpentry is easy to learn but difficult to master, but Wang Yan didn't want these people to have very strong abilities; after all, it takes time to accumulate technical foundation. It was enough for these apprentices to be able to make decent-looking furniture, which wasn't difficult.

After a month, with mutual cooperation, they were already able to process wood into the appropriate shape. At the same time, during this process, Wang Yan also screened out those with more talent, letting them be responsible for more delicate work, such as the connection points of various mortise and tenon structures, which required higher precision and also required a certain understanding of the structure—all advanced knowledge.

With the constantly increasing number of apprentices, Wang Yan was freed from basic labor. From the rough processing of wood to the process of becoming a furniture embryo, he could be considered liberated.

Of course, they were a group of young people who had just started learning, with jumpy personalities and absolutely no technical experience. Even if they were asked to do it mechanically, it was inevitable that many problems would arise, which was very emotionally draining.

For example, a little policeman becomes an old policeman, a little doctor becomes an old doctor, a little teacher becomes an old teacher—their emotions were consumed, so a considerable number of people had bad attitudes. Whenever someone asked a question, they always showed impatience.

If Wang Yan were still thirty, he would scold them, and if he got anxious, he might even use his hands, but he was already heading toward two thousand years old, and he really had a lot of patience...

On the other hand, he had also worked as a teacher and knew how to teach people.

His emotions were not consumed at all, and he was still very comfortable. In Baidian Village, he checked the progress every day, and according to the problems of various finished products, he would pull the apprentices over to teach them, and then he would leisurely drink canned tea and handle the final shaping work of various furniture.

Under his leadership, by the twentieth of the twelfth lunar month, they had sent out forty-six new cabinets of various sizes, twenty-three refurbished cabinets, and one hundred and thirty-eight small kang tables.

Up to this point, it had only been a month, and the total profit, including labor fees and the price difference of the wood, was over three hundred yuan.

This was just the beginning. With the fermentation of time, the display of the families who received the finished products, especially when it was almost the New Year, everyone went to visit relatives, and when the time came, there would be a wave of word-of-mouth, and the number of orders would definitely increase further.

This three hundred yuan was pure profit. The advantages of the planned system were fully reflected here, which was that everyone worked in one direction and labor wasn't counted as money.

What Wang Yan made with a group of half-grown boys, the men of the brigade who were the pillars of the family had to walk at least fifty li every day to deliver the furniture to every household.

Especially when the wood was first delivered, it was first sent to Linping, ten li away. The men, women, old, and young of the Baidian Brigade, plus the livestock, really carried and pulled the tens of tons of wood from Linping to the brigade.

None of this counted as money, and everyone worked enthusiastically.

Of course, the brigade's public account belonged to all the people of the Baidian Brigade.

On the sixteenth of the twelfth lunar month, Old Old Liu presided over a brigade meeting. Everyone calculated the accounts together, and then Old Old Liu delivered an exciting speech.

To summarize, the current situation was difficult, but the future was bright. Because they had to reserve funds for spring plowing and pay off the debts for purchasing wood from the commune, there wasn't much money to spend. But after working for so long, they finally saw hope, and this New Year still had to be celebrated well.

After the unanimous vote of all the people, in addition to the brigade's two pigs, they would buy two more pigs, and also slaughter four sheep.

Because the good life was brought by Wang Yan, and one shouldn't forget the well-digger when drinking water, Wang Yan was given a pig's hind leg and a sheep's offal. After the remaining meat was weighed, the entire brigade of two hundred and sixty-three people, regardless of age, shared it equally per capita.

It was divided like this in previous years, but there were only two pigs...

Also on the twentieth of the twelfth lunar month, the postman came to deliver the last batch of letters before the New Year.

The postman's surname was Chen, in his thirties, responsible for the Hechuan Commune area, riding or pushing every day, walking a long way. It was like "The Mountain, the Man, and the Dog," he took over his father's shift, only northern Shaanxi wasn't as beautiful as in the movie.

"You're something, Wang Yan, the People's Daily even wrote to you?"

My name is Wang Yan, an activist, originally a second-level carpenter at the Fengtai Furniture Factory in Beijing, voluntarily accepting re-education from the poor and lower-middle peasants.

I believe that since it is accepting education, there must be learning insights and learning reports, so I am making a report to the Party on the Loess Plateau in northern Shaanxi!

I was born on the black land of the Northeast and grew up in the hutongs of Beijing. When I was young, I studied history and geography, and only then did I know the old land of Sanqin and the Loess Plateau.

The train passed Tongguan, transferred in Changan and headed north, the trees became increasingly sparse, and the endless yellow land gradually occupied my vision...

We got off the train in Lin County, and the county educated youth office picked us up... The last one to pick us up was Liu Hanwen of the Baidian Brigade. His skin was rough, black and red, his voice was like a bell, and he was an upright man from northern Shaanxi. He is my guide here and my teacher.

We arrived at the Baidian Brigade and were assigned to the cave dwelling at the entrance of the village. According to Brother Liu, this used to be the landlord's home here...

Went to the county seat, saw the local excitement...

Also discovered the booming sideline business. Compared to the hunger and cold of my Baidian Brigade, I wanted to do something and contribute my strength to this yellow land to the best of my ability.

The goal starts with digging a well for the Baidian Brigade, so that the villagers of our brigade can be spared the twenty-li mountain road back and forth.

I am a carpenter. Although I am only second-level, the people at the furniture factory all think I am seventh-level, saying I have some carpentry genius and was born to be a carpenter. After studying with my master Zhang for more than half a year, I was able to be solely responsible for the production of some export furniture, and later I could complete it all by myself.

So I proposed to make furniture for the brigade, let Brother Liu make a name for me, and introduce more people. As the saying goes, no hair on the mouth, things are not firm. Brother Liu was naturally suspicious of me, but he was finally willing to waste wood and chose to believe.

I made a kang table... With the strong help of Secretary Zhang of the Hechuan Commune, the county...

By the time I sent the letter, there were already ten young men of my age in the brigade learning carpentry from me, and the villagers in the county ordered...

The above is my report for the half month since I came to northern Shaanxi. Photos were sent with the report, which is the strength of my struggle.

I will continue to report, please Party supervision and instruction.

1969... Baidian Brigade, Hechuan Commune, Lin County, Yan City

Editor Little Wang held this article turned out from a sack, feeling a lot of emotion. He really found a treasure.

"But... why is this name so familiar? Carpenter?"

After thinking for a while without result, he looked at the photos that came with the letter, clicked his tongue in wonder, and then took the letter to find his superior leader.

"Leader, look at this submission, it's the voice of the educated youth, and the ideological awareness is very high."

The leader took the letter paper, looked at the dragon-flying and phoenix-dancing characters, and finally looked at the photos, shaking his head with a smile: "This kid can really toss."

"Leader, do you know him?"

"Wang Yan... the one who specifically broke legs two months ago."

"Ah? Him..." Little Wang curled his lips. "Then why does he say it's voluntary?"

"Hey, he really is voluntary. That's what's impressive. Didn't you say the ideological awareness is very high? Just tell me if it's high or not."

"High, how could it not be high? I heard he took a string..."

Little Wang didn't say much, then asked, "Then do we want this report he wrote?"

"I can't make the final decision either. This kid's involvement is too big. Don't say, he really is a person who does big things... Wait for me to ask the editor-in-chief..."

The leader took the letter paper and photos and hurried away...

?? Daily thanks to the good brothers who tipped, voted for monthly tickets, recommended tickets, and silently read the book for their strong support! ===== CHAPTER 1476 =====