Chapter 555: All Trouble Caused by Drafts

The tractor sped along; as Li Long pulled the Chen Chen Xingbang family toward Shicheng, Hongqin was still somewhat unhappy.

She had only met and played happily with her older sister and brothers yesterday afternoon, yet this morning she had to leave again; she truly could not bear to part.

Although she had playmates back in their hometown, she had no older brothers or sisters there, and occasionally she would be bullied.

Family affection is truly a mysterious thing; even though this was her first time meeting Li Juan and Li Qiang, Hongqin could feel the kindness her older sister and brother showed her.

Therefore, she did not want to leave, especially after hearing Li Qiang say that in two days he would water the vegetable plot one last time, catch fish in the irrigation ditch beside the courtyard, and if she stayed, he would take her to grill and eat them.

In winter, he could also let their youngest uncle take them to catch old sparrows to grill and eat, trap francolins to stir-fry and eat, and snare rabbits to stir-fry and eat...

Li Qiang had only spoken of eating, yet he had already enticed Hongqin so much that she did not want to go.

If Li Xia had not finally raised her hand to strike, Hongqin would have truly stayed behind.

Thus, even after the tractor had driven out of Maxian, Hongqin's lips remained pouted.

Chen Chen Xingbang could do nothing about it; indeed, there were few children near the courtyard where he lived, and his original plan was that after Li Xia brought Hongqin over, he would send Hongqin to the street's preschool class for two years before she started proper school.

At that time, the nature of some preschool classes differed from kindergartens in later generations; generally, children attended only one year before elementary school, during which they were taught basic knowledge equivalent to the first grade of elementary school.

At that time, there was also an institution similar to a kindergarten called a nursery, intended for younger children whose parents could not care for them; children could stay there to play together under supervision.

Of course, these existed in the city but not in the countryside; the countryside had only preschool classes, which generally did not accept younger children, though exceptions could be made if one wished to enroll, but that required payment.

Like Li Qiang, who attended a preschool class alongside Li Juan; after Li Juan started school, he was not yet old enough for the first grade, so he attended another preschool class, and had it not been for his own efforts plus Gu Gu Xiaoxia speaking on his behalf, he might have had to attend yet another preschool class.

After the tractor crossed the Ma River Bridge and entered the territory of Shicheng, the number of people and vehicles increased.

The scenery was obviously different from their hometown; watching it, Hongqin forgot her unhappiness, stood up, held onto the railing, and looked left and right.

"The wind is strong; do not open your mouth," Li Xia warned, fearing she would swallow cold air and suffer a stomachache.

The tractor drove to Shicheng Old Street, made a turn, and arrived at the courtyard where Chen Chen Xingbang lived.

Although it was not as large as the courtyard belonging to their eldest brother and youngest brother, it was much bigger than the one back home, and bright and spacious; Li Xia liked it at first sight.

Chen Chen Xingbang got off the tractor to open the gate; once the main gate was open, Li Long drove the tractor into the courtyard, turned off the engine, and disembarked.

Li Xia had already jumped down herself; Chen Chen Xingbang lifted Hongqin down, then carried the bags into the house.

"Come, come, come; look, this is our new home!" Chen Chen Xingbang said excitedly. "The house is big, the courtyard is big; there aren't many things inside, but enough for use. The weather here in the Northwest is good; we can air our quilts every day, and sleeping at night will be warm."

Upon seeing such a large courtyard, Hongqin happily ran back and forth, though she disliked the slight smell of blood in the yard.

Children, naturally, prefer cooked meat.

Li Long sat for a while, then prepared to leave; before departing, he took three hundred yuan from his backpack and pressed it into Li Xia's hand.

"Sister, your household still needs tidying up, so I won't stay; I must return. Take this three hundred yuan; when you have time, ask your husband to accompany you to buy a women's bicycle. It will be more convenient to take Hongqin out in the future..."

"I don't know how to ride yet; I cannot accept this money..." Li Xia knew that her younger brother Li Long had rented this entire courtyard for three years, and she felt she already owed him far too much.

"Sister, just take it; otherwise, I would have bought the bicycle and brought it over directly. Oh, and here is the bicycle coupon too," Li Long said, handing Li Xia the nationwide industrial coupon along with the money.

"My brother-in-law will be busy later, and you have to take care of Hongqin; there are many tasks. Having a bicycle will make things more convenient; that thing is very quick to learn."

A bicycle cost over one hundred yuan; the remaining money was for Li Long to give his sister as spending allowance. Whether man or woman, without a job, having money in hand meant one's heart would not panic.

There was also a sack of rice and a sack of flour on the tractor, brought from Li Jianguo; the rice was old rice since the new harvest had not yet come in, but the flour was this year's new flour.

According to Li Jianguo, he would cover all the grain supplies for his younger brother and sister's families.

Li Long drove the tractor out of the large courtyard; passing by Old Street, he waved but did not get off, instead driving straight back.

The household lacked nothing for food or use; at this time, one could not act like in later generations, opening certain online shopping platforms, seeing a dazzling array of items, clicking to buy, and then discovering upon receipt that they were useless burdens.

Although he now had over twenty thousand yuan, this money had to be spent where it mattered most; lessons from his previous life taught Li Long that unnecessary items, those that could be bought or not, need not be purchased, otherwise when tidying the house, one would find them neither worth discarding nor worth keeping, merely occupying space.

Zhang Qiang was still selling large brooms on Old Street; in recent days, the large brooms had become increasingly difficult to sell. The Achnatherum grass in various regions had grown old, and many people had come to sell large brooms made from it; others brought only five or six bundles, while he had brought a huge pile, yet when others lowered their prices, he was unwilling to reduce his.

Consequently, they were very hard to sell.

Zhang Qiang, however, did not wish to give up; he thought that once it snowed, more people would need brooms, and by then they should sell better.

Of course, he did not know that at that time, various units would distribute a batch of brooms to their members.

Li Long drove the tractor back to Maxian; seeing that it was nearly mealtime, he went to Big Sister Yang's home.

Neither Gu Gu Xiaoxia nor Gu Gu Bo Yuan had arrived yet; Big Sister Yang was stir-frying dishes, and the noodles, already cooked, were soaking in a basin of water.

"Big Sister Yang, your hand-pulled noodles are getting better and better," Li Long said with a smile as he peeked into the basin of noodles. "By the way, has any letter come from our hometown?"

Big Sister Yang's husband was stationed somewhere in Northern Xinjiang; when she brought Han Fang over to find him, she had lost her husband's address, so she relied on her memory to locate Maxian, which naturally turned out to be the wrong place.

After Li Long helped Big Sister Yang settle down, she sent a telegram and wrote letters to her hometown, requesting her husband's address.

However, although her family back home replied, they talked about everything except the address, failing to provide it.

This left Big Sister Yang quite puzzled.

Yet it was inconvenient to rush back to her hometown immediately, so she decided to stay here for now.

But ultimately, hanging in limbo without finding her husband, the purpose of Big Sister Yang's journey remained unfulfilled.

"A letter came, but it didn't include the address; I just can't figure it out. How could the family address be lost? Even if it were lost, Han Fang's father must have written home during these days; why hasn't he written to me?" Big Sister Yang was also quite worried.

Li Long was a monster who had lived an extra forty years; he did not hesitate to speculate with the utmost malice about the people in Big Sister Yang's hometown.

Not writing the address boiled down to two possibilities: either they were hiding it from Big Sister Yang, or they were hiding it from Han Fang's father.

As Big Sister Yang said, unless something had happened to Han Fang's father, he would surely have written letters or sent telegrams to his hometown by now after such a long time.

Even if the family had not kept the address, would it be difficult to ask for it?

Looking at both ends with the worst assumptions: either they were hiding it from Big Sister Yang, most likely intending to embezzle the money Han Fang's father sent home.

Such incidents were not uncommon; ten years later, Li Long had heard of similar cases within his production team, where someone returned to their hometown only to discover their father and mother had been dead for five years, yet the relatives stubbornly refused to tell them or let them return, demanding only that money be sent.

As a result, all the money sent back had been divided up among the family relatives.

It was not impossible that people in Big Sister Yang's hometown were doing the same.

The second possibility, thinking even worse, was that they were hiding something concerning Han Fang's father; either something had happened to him, or he was in trouble.

If something had happened, it meant he might be dead; if he was in trouble, it meant he might be alive but unable to acknowledge Big Sister Yang and the others.

These were thoughts arising from Li Long's shadowy speculation, but he could not tell them to Big Sister Yang.

"Then let's steady things a bit longer. Once Han Fang gets a holiday here, you two can actually return to your hometown—you do have money for train tickets, right?"

"Yes, yes, yes, we have money for the tickets. Uncle, you hardly charge us any rent, so we've saved quite a bit." Sister Yang sounded quite happy speaking of this.

With money to rely on and having engaged in business, one's mind becomes clearer, and one is no longer so easily deceived.

As for why her folks back home didn't tell her the truth, Sister Yang might have guessed, or perhaps she was simply too close to the situation to see clearly.

Gu Gu Xiaoxia rushed back on her bicycle; after dismounting and seeing Li Long, she smiled and said:

"You're in the newspaper again, this time the Autonomous Region Daily! That Jiang clerk from the township wrote it, talking about how you and your elder brother each have a tractor, saying you harvest wheat while your elder brother grows cash crops..."

Li Long took the newspaper from Gu Gu Xiaoxia's hands and saw an article on the middle section of the second page marked with a pen stroke.

Indeed, Jiang Jiang Zhiyu's name was listed there as a correspondent; Li Long guessed that after two or three more such pieces, this correspondent could become a special reporter.

Articles at this time focused mainly on realism without much exaggeration; Jiang Jiang Zhiyu had a good way with words, and from the text one could imagine how impressive the two tractors looked at the brothers' homes, with one brother farming and the other engaged in "flexible employment," each following their own path to prosperity. The piece particularly highlighted the characteristics of the seed melon as a cash crop.

Easy to plant, large harvest, high price.

After finishing reading, Li Long sighed:

"I reckon my elder brother's household won't have any peace these days?"

"Why won't your elder brother's household have peace?" Gu Gu Bo Yuan pushed his bicycle into the courtyard and asked, "What happened?"

"The Jiang clerk from the township wrote about me and my elder brother in the Autonomous Region Daily. I estimate that now, everyone in the entire region who wants to grow seed melons will be thinking of going to my elder brother's place to find seeds."

"That's true; if all the farmers in the region know growing seed melons is profitable, they'll really be searching everywhere for them. It's just that seed melon seeds aren't easy to find."

Gu Gu Bo Yuan hadn't been running his agricultural supplies store for long, but he was at least an insider, and after dealing with relevant personnel, he knew much more.

Li Long felt it necessary to go tell his elder brother; even if it meant diverting trouble elsewhere, they couldn't have people coming to their home to cause a disturbance every day.

The Shicheng Roasted Goods Factory was not large in scale and could not purchase many seed melon seeds.

Judging by the quantities of seed melon seeds purchased by various households from the Li family this year, next year's seed melon planting would be around one hundred mu; the yield couldn't all be two hundred kilograms per mu, so with slightly less, the final total would be at most ten-plus tons.

!.

If the roasted goods factory couldn't consume them all, a batch could be sold to the seed company.

However, if planting continued like this, no one knew how long the price of two yuan eighty could be maintained.

After lunch, having chatted for a while in the courtyard, Li Long told Gu Gu Xiaoxia that his sister Li Xia had already returned to Shicheng; Gu Gu Xiaoxia suggested they could visit them when they had time.

Li Long naturally had no objection.

Gu Gu Xiaoxia went off to work, Gu Gu Bo Yuan went to open his shop, and Li Long drove his tractor directly toward the team, going put-put-put.

Sister Yang cleaned up the kitchen, but upon coming out, she did not, as usual, prepare the food to sell from her cart that afternoon.

Leaning against her usual food-selling cart, she slowly squatted down.

In her pocket was a letter just received from her hometown; the letter did not write out her husband Han Xincheng's address, but instead said that the Eunuch was advanced in years, had fallen ill twice, and that the family had no money, asking her to send some back.

The handwriting was clearly that of her younger brother-in-law, Han Xinren.

Sister Yang distinctly remembered that when she left, the Eunuch was fifty-eight years old, very robust, and working in the fields better than some young people in the village.

Furthermore, her husband would send money back every quarter, sometimes twenty yuan, sometimes fifteen.

This amount was considered quite substantial in the rural hometown. The money was sent to the Eunuch, Han Dazhuang—though the Eunuch Han Dazhuang's parents were farmers, the Eunuch himself had attended school for a few years, so the names he gave his children all carried a scholarly air.

Each time money arrived, Han Dazhuang would take out a few yuan to give to Sister Yang as school fees for their daughter, Han Fang.

Sister Yang remembered very clearly that her husband, Han Xincheng, had said during the New Year that their daughter must attend school. Yet, before she came here to search for her husband, the Eunuch, having heard who-knows-what advice, stopped giving Sister Yang money.

The Eunuch told her that girls attending school had no future, that Han Fang was old enough to work, and that after working at home for a few years, she would be about the right age to arrange a marriage.

She guessed these words came from her younger brother-in-law, Han Xinren, but had no evidence; yet that didn't matter. What mattered was that she did not want Han Fang to drop out of school, so after much deliberation, she decided to bring Han Fang to Northern Xinjiang to find her husband.

This decision required immense courage for a rural woman who had barely ever been to the county town.

With no experience and never having traveled far, while trying to care for Han Fang and inquire about directions, she became a target, and her wallet along with that important letter were stolen.

She never dared to think deeply about why the Eunuch and his wife, along with her younger brother-in-law, back home did not tell her her husband's address. Had something happened to her husband, or did they simply not want her to meet him?

Previously, Sister Yang had thought to pretend ignorance, but with this letter arriving and Li Long inadvertently asking about it this time, she felt she needed to seriously consider how to resolve this matter.

Her husband's specific address—was it some Division? Which Division? Or some Si? Sister Yang could not read; Han Fang could read, but she couldn't make out the handwriting her husband, Han Xincheng, had used very clearly.

Sister Yang decided that she and Han Fang should think this over carefully; she herself needed to ponder seriously, for even if they had to return, they needed a solid plan.

Otherwise, upon returning, they might not only fail to find her husband's address but also find themselves unable to leave again.

As Li Long drove his tractor toward the team, he saw people walking and others riding bicycles, all hurrying in that direction.

He wondered, so fast? The newspaper had just come out, yet people had already seen the opportunity and were thinking of getting some seeds?

The tractor was fast; someone shouted, but Li Long paid no heed, wanting to reach his elder brother's courtyard as quickly as possible to see if things were as he imagined.

Indeed, upon arriving at Li Jianguo's courtyard, he found four bicycles and one unfamiliar tractor parked at the gate—not the one Wei Tianxing had last time. People inside the courtyard were talking about something.

"Brother Lao Li, I say you're an old farmer; now that you've earned money and become prosperous, according to the state's words, those who get rich first should help others get rich! We're just seeking a path to wealth; we're not saying we want it for free, we'll buy it! Whatever price others offer, we'll offer the same!"

"Exactly, exactly," someone immediately chimed in, "we also want to get rich; we've brought money with us!"

"Sell us a little, even just for three or five mu would be fine!"

Li Long hastily cut the engine and hurried into the courtyard.

Seven or eight people surrounded Li Jianguo; nearby, Li Li Qing Xia, Liang Yuemei, and Chen Chen Li Rong wanted to help Li Jianguo but couldn't squeeze in. Du Chunfang was holding a stick, ready to strike someone.

Li Jianguo, usually so kind-faced, was now annoyed by these people, yet he knew he still had to reason with them; if he really drove them away and they spoke to the newspapers afterward, the Li family's reputation might be ruined.

Although he held considerable prestige in the team, he had never handled such a situation; he wasn't afraid for himself, but mainly feared affecting Li Long.

"Everyone shut up!" Li Long climbed onto his elder brother Li Jianguo's tractor and roared, drawing everyone's attention.

Seeing Li Long arrive and silence the others with a single sentence, the Li family suddenly felt that resolving this matter depended on Li Long.

Li Jianguo's method of explaining seemed ineffective.

"My name is Li Long!" Li Long shouted loudly while everyone was still bewildered, "You've come to the wrong place!"

"Your name is Li Long, his name is Li Jianguo, your family has two tractors; how could we possibly be in the wrong place?" A short man in his thirties, actually holding a copy of the Autonomous Region Daily, shouted loudly.

"Exactly, how could it be wrong?" another person chimed in.

Seeing the others about to follow suit, Li Long shouted loudly:

"We did indeed make money growing watermelons, but think about it: two point eight yuan per kilogram for watermelons is twenty times more expensive than wheat; would you sell or not?"

"Of course we'd sell! Only a fool wouldn't sell!"

"Naturally, let alone two point eight, I'd sell even at one point eight!"

"So, our family planted ten mu, harvested over eighteen hundred and ninety kilograms, and sold it all; we sold everything to the roasting factory." Standing on the tractor, Li Long was naturally taller than the others, and that presence alone was enough to intimidate many:

"Who wouldn't do something that makes money, right? This tractor was exchanged for watermelons. If it were you, would you still keep one or two hundred kilograms?"

These people looked at each other and fell silent.

"If you want seeds, go either to the seed company or to the roasting factory. They might not be able to roast that much immediately; if you wait too long, there really won't be any left!"

As soon as Li Long said this, three or five people immediately left the courtyard and hurried away.

The remaining people, however, still did not believe him:

"I went to the seed company, and they said they had none..."

"Exactly, I went too. Your family definitely kept some seeds; even sharing three or five kilograms with me would be fine..."

These people were trying to act shamelessly.

Li Jianguo felt somewhat worried; if there was truly no other way, he would just chase them out. (End of Chapter)