Traveling back to 1977

Chapter 485 The Last Same

After chatting with them for a while in the office, I went to the broadcasting room in the backyard to give Zhang Cuie and Zhang Xiuyue souvenirs. Of course, the two souvenirs were slightly different.

Zhang Cuie is of higher value, after all, she is my first and only apprentice, so she is different.

After leaving the brigade headquarters, Chen Fan did not go to the livestock shed to get the horse, but instead went to Uncle Lu's house.

Master Lu still lives in his little shack. Some of the mud plaster on the walls looks relatively new, indicating that it was recently repaired.

Thatched huts are like that; the walls are thin and not very sturdy. Especially in old houses that have been lived in for a long time, the walls and roofs need to be patched and repaired all year round, and there are hardly any days when you can have a peaceful life.

A few years later, these houses were generally used as temporary shacks for duck herders, and no one would use them as their homes.

In fact, in the entire Lujiawan area, only Master Lu's house was a shack like this; the worst houses in the other households were all mud-walled huts.

Chen Fan walked to the doorway. The door was wide open, the stove and pot were cold, and the charcoal stove that Chen Fan had given him last year was also sitting unused.

He twitched his ears, then turned and walked towards the back of the house.

When they reached the back of the house, they saw Master Lu slowly standing on the ladder, carefully stuffing a small bundle of straw into the leak in the roof.

Chen Fan walked forward with his hands behind his back, looked up and said, "Fourth Master, why bother repairing this dilapidated house? Why not just pack your things and come to my place? Hey, I'm not bragging, but if you come to my place, you'll be waited on hand and foot all day long. Someone will add clothes when you're cold, someone will cook for you when you're hungry, and you won't have to do any work."

If you're ever restless, that's perfect. There's a livestock shed behind my house with two big spotted pigs that look really fat. In a few years, we can slaughter them for meat... Oh no, I mean, there are also two horses, two sheep, a flock of chickens, and three giant pandas. You can take care of the livestock.

If that doesn't work, I plan to cultivate two more vegetable plots behind the house in the spring.

Oh, you don't know, our village's college entrance exam results were pretty good this year, and wow, even this small thing has caught other people's attention. The educated youth who were usually impossible to get here, I heard, have been assigned 16 of them all at once, filling the educated youth settlement to capacity.

All the livestock I painstakingly raised and the vegetable garden I cultivated at the educated youth settlement (Jiang Lili, Yang Ju, Huang Ying, Liu Dan: ???) had to be given up, and I could only start cultivating new land.

Oh, old man, slow down...

He watched as Master Lu slowly climbed down the ladder, then quickly went forward to hold the ladder for him. Only after the man had reached the ground did he breathe a sigh of relief.

Master Lu clapped his hands, looked up at the thatched roof he had laid, nodded in satisfaction, then turned to Chen Fan and chuckled, "I'm not going."

Chen Fan pursed his lips, as decisive and straightforward as ever.

He carried the ladder and leaned it against the back wall. The eaves were a bit wider there, and there were quite a few farm tools hanging on the wall, which could barely provide shelter from the wind and rain. Of course, it was only for light rain; in strong winds and heavy rain, it would be no different from being left in the open.

While setting down the ladder, he kept saying, "Fine, if you don't want to go, then don't go. Why are you so stubborn?"

After setting up the ladder, he clapped his hands and turned to look at Master Lu. "How about I build you a small brick house next door?"

Grandpa Lu waved his hand, neatly arranged the straw under the eaves, and then walked forward with his hands behind his back. "No need. My house is quite good. It doesn't leak wind or rain. Back in the old days, many families in the village lived in houses like this."

Chen Fan quickened his pace to catch up with him, grabbing a handful of snow to wash his hands. "You're just being argumentative. When was 'old times'? It was at least before the founding of the People's Republic of China. What were the conditions then? What are the conditions now?"
All 12 water level observation points in the team have been built with brick and tile houses. If you include the slope below the embankment, it's a two-story building. But you're still living in a thatched hut. Isn't that making you a laughing stock?

It's only natural to try your best to live the best life possible. It's wrong to deliberately live a hard life when you have the means; that's just not reasonable.

Master Lu glanced at him and said, "Heh, you just want to say I'm being pretentious."

Chen Fan grinned and said, "It's not so much being pretentious as it is being stubborn."

Master Lu rolled his eyes, not wanting to pay him any attention.

Chen Fan's eyes suddenly lit up, and he took two quick steps, whispering, "Then tell me secretly, is it because all your treasures are buried under this house that you can't leave it unattended?"

Master Lu suddenly stopped, turned around and pointed at him. After a couple of seconds, he said, "You can try digging. Maybe you'll find it."

Chen Fan glanced at him a few times, then curled his lip. "Digging a hole is too tiring. I'm not going to do something so stupid."

The two walked to the front of the house, and without warning, he bent down and picked up a rooster that was foraging for food, chuckling, "Xiao Ming, I'll eat you for lunch today."

Master Lu washed his hands at the tap in the corner without looking up and said, "Xiao Ming was eaten by you half a month ago. This is Xiao Hong, which you brought two months ago. It's still a young chicken."

Chen Fan looked at the little rooster's feathers. "Why do you look so much like Xiao Ming?"

The little rooster crowed, "Cock-a-doodle-doo..."

Chen Fan went into the room, first took a large bowl, then picked up a kitchen knife, turned around and went back to the door, immediately wielding the knife and saying, "Stop 'oh,' I don't understand anyway."

Then soak it in hot water for a complete hair removal treatment.

At the same time, he didn't forget to chat, saying, "To be honest, your stuff isn't worth much money, it doesn't attract me anymore."

He turned to look at Master Lu, who had pulled up a chair and was sitting on the threshold, and chuckled, "Do you know how much the brigade's work points are worth this year?"

Master Lu slowly rolled a cigarette on his lap, shook his head and said, "My work points are in the squad. How much work points are worth in the brigade headquarters has nothing to do with me."

As mentioned earlier, the current system is to distribute production to groups, which means that the team is the accounting unit.

Therefore, the work points for a squad and a brigade are different, and there are even some differences between squads.

However, before Chen Fan caused trouble, the production situation of the entire Lujiawan Brigade was about the same.

With comparable land area per capita, comparable yield per mu, comparable total agricultural output, and comparable sideline occupations (which are practically nonexistent), the value of work points is not significantly different between different teams.

This year is different. In addition to agriculture, side businesses are thriving, and this increase in income will inevitably widen the gap.

Of course, given the current situation in Lujiawan, this gap, however large, is still limited.

But the brigade headquarters is different.

Aside from the assets and property handed over by each squad, all the side businesses are registered under the brigade headquarters. Since profits have already been divided among the various stages, the profits don't need to be distributed to the squads again. Therefore, after deducting all costs, expenses, and reserves, and paying the superiors for the assigned tasks, the remaining distributable profit is quite substantial.

Chen Fan quickly plucked the feathers, turned to look at Master Lu, and laughed, "You really are without desires, you don't even care about this."

He lowered his head and said, "This year, the brigade's work points are about 3 yuan per point."

Upon hearing this, Master Lu was stunned for a moment. After a couple of seconds, he reacted and quickly asked, "Let's make it clear first, is it 3 yuan per work point or 3 yuan per work share?"

The value difference is 10 times; we must find out!

Without looking up, Chen Fan said with a smile, "You heard me right, one work point is worth 3 yuan, so one work point is worth 30 yuan, which is more than a junior worker's monthly salary."

Master Lu was dumbfounded. "That side business you're doing, is it really that profitable?"

去年大队部的一个工才值6毛5分钱，也就是一个工分只值6分5厘，相当于半斤米，今年却一下子增加了4、50倍？
Isn't that a bit too much?

Chen Fan quickly prepared the chicken and then started cleaning the giblets. He picked up a stick and skewered the chicken intestines, saying, "Actually, there's nothing strange about it. In the entire price system, the lowest prices are for grains and vegetables. In the past, Lujiawan relied solely on what the land produced to make a living. Although it wasn't a problem to have enough to eat, money was out of the question."

As he spoke, he turned to look at Master Lu, his smile gradually fading, and said softly, "These side businesses, such as breeding farms, cooked food processing, and cooked food shops, seem to be closely related to agriculture, but in fact, the income gap is particularly large."

Take chickens for example. A mature chicken can be raised for half a year, and with just a little rice bran sprinkled on it every day, it can be sold for 2.5 yuan. If it is made into roast chicken or braised chicken, it can be sold for 5 yuan. This is equivalent to doubling the price in the time it takes to cook a meal.

"This is still before we can open a restaurant directly. Otherwise, if we trained a few chefs, they could chop up a 2.5 yuan chicken, stir-fry it, and sell it for at least 8 or 9 yuan. If we added more side dishes, divided it into two or three plates, or made it into a stew, then we could sell it for 12 to 15 yuan."

After a short while, he cleaned the chicken giblets, stuffed them into the chicken's cavity, rinsed them thoroughly with half a basin of clean water, and then poured out the dirty water. Chen Fan carried the basin inside and continued speaking.
"Look, from raising a chicken to eating it, the chick is only worth a few cents, but it can be worth up to ten or twenty yuan by the time it's in your mouth, while we farmers can only earn the first two yuan. So, how did the brigade headquarters get such high work points? That's how it came about!"

He took out a cutting board, put the chicken on it, and began to chop it up. "That's why Mr. Li wanted to eliminate the exploiting class and turn all the profits from each stage into public property. Now that the sideline businesses are all in the hands of the production team, the profits naturally belong to the production team. No matter how much money we make, it's all for the benefit of the commune members."

Chop chop chop chop chop…

Soon a chicken was turned into chicken pieces.

I rummaged through a bag in the corner and found a few potatoes. I washed them, chopped them into chunks, and soon a pot of braised chicken with potatoes was placed on the charcoal stove. Then I washed the pot, lit the stove, and cooked half a pound of rice.

After finishing all that, Chen Fan clapped his hands and said, "Alright, let it simmer for half an hour and it'll be ready to eat."

Master Lu was still sitting at the door, smoking his pipe. He pulled up a chair and sat on the other side of the door frame, grinning as he said, "Master Lu, if you had supported the tenants in raising chickens back then and then opened a roast chicken shop in Yunhu, you might have earned more than collecting rent."

Upon hearing this, Master Lu couldn't help but roll his eyes. "Get lost."

You brat, you always bring up the very thing you shouldn't say.

Although the storm has passed, he still doesn't want to bring up what happened back then.

However, after a two-second silence, Master Lu let out a long sigh, shook his head, and said, "It's different. As the old saying goes, wealth doesn't count if it's all animals. A chicken plague can wipe out all your hard work, not to mention the risk of infecting people."

Another point is that back then, people believed that "rivers had their own channels and mountains had their own paths," and each industry had its own "masters" in charge. It wasn't like you could just do whatever business you wanted.

Even the smallest stall at the docks had to pay money to the local bullies, who were notorious for their ruthlessness. The big bosses had to pay homage to the local guild leader. I think the former owner of Wangjianglou was the guild leader of the restaurant industry back then.

It was incredibly complicated back then. Even if you could open a business smoothly, there were all sorts of restrictions and obligations from various parties. Unlike now, where you can just submit an application and get started.

He looked up at Chen Fan and laughed, "Moreover, compared to the big landlords, the five or six thousand acres of paddy fields that the Lu family had back then were really nothing."

"We're only really influential in the grain guild of Gufeng County. Yunhu City is dominated by big grain merchants from the provincial capital, even Beijing, and local grain traders. Forget about opening a roast chicken shop there; you'd be lucky if you could make a few extra bucks selling your grain."

Chen Fan blinked, thinking to himself, so what Zhang Wenliang and the others said about how difficult it was to open a shop is much better than in the old society, right?

After chatting for a few minutes, Master Lu began to examine Chen Fan's "studies" as usual.

He learned a wide variety of things himself, and so he taught a wide variety of things as well. From music, chess, calligraphy and painting to opera and dance, from Go and chess to mahjong and dominoes, he could learn many things that Chen Fan had never been exposed to before his transmigration from Master Lu.

The two played two games of blindfold chess and then discussed two cases of traditional Chinese medicine. When the room was filled with the aroma of stewed chicken, Chen Fan was about to get a bowl and chopsticks to eat when Master Lu stopped him.

"Xiao Fan, you learn things too fast. You've almost drained my meager skills."

As he spoke, he gripped the back of the chair with one hand, struggled to stand up, and slowly walked into the room. "There's only one thing left. If I teach you this little bit, then I'll have nothing more to teach you."

Chen Fan blinked and quickly followed behind, asking, "What is that?"

Master Lu didn't say anything. He walked to the desk in the room, opened the drawer, took out a few old books, and placed them on the table.

The old man's books are quite old, but they are well-preserved and of collector's quality.

Chen Fan stepped forward, picked up a book, flipped through it, and looked up at Master Lu. "The Antiques Guide?"

What do you mean? You want me to learn how to appraise antiques from a book?

Isn't that a joke?
In the antique business, no matter how much book knowledge you learn, it's all in vain. If two identical ornaments are placed in front of you, even if you've read a few books, you won't be able to tell which one is real and which one is fake.

To be honest, one must go through thousands of "hands-on" experiences to turn knowledge into experience before one can even step onto the appraisal stage.

Moreover, even if one is right, it can only be considered a superficial opinion, and one cannot easily make a judgment.

Otherwise, you'll be taught a lesson by the sheer number of counterfeit goods—dozens or even hundreds of times more—that outnumber the genuine articles!

Master Lu sat down, leaning on the chair, and nodded with a smile. "Antiques are valued in prosperous times, and gold in chaotic times. Now that the storm has passed, as long as the wind doesn't change, I estimate that we will soon usher in a golden age for the antique trade."

In recent years, many antiques have circulated among the public, most of them ending up in the hands of people who don't recognize their value. Wouldn't it be a shame if they appeared in front of you one day and you didn't recognize them?

(End of this chapter)