My Gold Rush Career Begins in 1984

Chapter 42 might be thinking about seizing territory.
Zhou Jingming's technique was skillful and his movements were swift.

The shallow silt in the water gradually diminished as he shook and kneaded it.

In less than two minutes, only a tiny pinch of fine sand remained inside the golden bucket.

As Zhou Jingming gently shook the container forward, the flowing water carried a small amount of fine sand to the bottom of the gold container, revealing some small, golden particles and some fine powder—that was the gold.

A man from Yuzhou stared wide-eyed: "After all this time, this is all you've got?"

Peng Yuanchao retorted directly: "What do you know! You still think this is too little? With all this mud and sand in the basin, if you wash it all out, based on this amount of gold, there should be at least two grams of gold. Do you know how much two grams of gold is? That's at least sixty yuan."

This sixty yuan is just what we've harvested in less than two hours; we still have the whole afternoon to go. Besides, the gold-bearing sand we've dug up so far isn't even the deepest, richest layer; it's just the surface. We'll find even more gold dust as we pan for more. You dare complain about it being too little? Tell me, where else can you find such a good deal?"

Upon hearing this, the few novices present immediately beamed with joy.

If you stay in the countryside, it's considered pretty good if you still have a hundred or so yuan in your pocket at the end of the year. Even if you go out to work, you'll only make a dozen or so yuan a month, and you have to have work to do every day.

Many people, when trying to get married, only dare to borrow a little over a hundred yuan from the bank.

It often takes several years to pay back just over a hundred yuan.

When you weigh it this way, one hundred yuan is indeed a considerable sum of money.

Peng Yuanchao gave Zhou Jingming a thumbs up: "Brother, you really are a prospecting technician. Even when panning for gold, you can talk about it in great detail. If you hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known that there are so many intricacies to panning for gold."

I'm a seasoned gold panner, so I could probably do the panning myself without any problems. All I know is to rock and shovel in the water, but explaining it to me is difficult!

Zhou Jingming chuckled: "Brother Peng, are you making fun of me again?"

"No, that's not true. I genuinely admire you. You're amazing at finding the golden seedlings, and you're even better at shaking the golden bucket than I am! Now that you mention it, I think about it myself, and it really makes sense. It's easy to remember and understand, and much easier to learn."

Peng Yuanchao turned his head to look at Xu Youliang: "Have you learned it yet?"

Xu Youliang nodded: "Understood!"

"Judging from your appearance, you don't know how. You and Wu Yang stay here and learn properly from Brother Zhou. From now on, the task of panning for gold dust will be handled by the two of you!"

Peng Yuanchao then looked at the rest of the group: "Stop looking. You won't find any gold by just staying here. Two of you go cook, the rest of you continue digging in the sand... I want to see how much gold we can find in a day."

In front of several novices, he casually assigned Xu Youliang and Wu Yang the task of panning for gold dust.

The newbies looked at each other, and finally let Sun Chenggui and a man from Yuzhou cook, while the other four went back to the sandpit to dig out the mud and sand.

Peng Yuanchao also followed, pulling a cart, and scooped up the mud and sand from the sandpit and loaded it onto the cart.

Zhou Jingming scooped water and poured the fine sand from the gold dipper into a small aluminum basin beside him. He knew that Xu Youliang knew how to shake the gold dipper, so he handed the gold dipper to Xu Youliang first, so that he could wash the mud and sand that had been cleared from the felt in the large basin into fine sand, so as not to hand it over to the complete novice Wu Yang, who might shake the gold out.

After Xu Youliang finished washing the mud and sand, Zhou Jingming asked him to help Peng Yuanchao transport sand. Only then did he hand the golden bucket to Wu Yang, asking him to scoop up some mud and sand from the riverbank and try washing it in the river to familiarize himself with the technique.

Shaking the golden bucket is neither difficult nor easy; it depends on one's understanding and hand-eye coordination.

Wu Yang was young and smart. By the time they called for dinner from the dugout, he had shaken the mud and sand for more than ten buckets and had gotten the hang of it. He was able to operate it without any major problems.

Peng Yuanchao called everyone back to their dugouts to fill their stomachs and rest for a while. Then he urged everyone to return to the riverbank to continue working.

What they did was repetitive, mechanical labor.

The main reason Zhou Jingming and Peng Yuanchao chose to transport mud and sand was that this job was easier than digging mud and sand in sand pits or carrying water and shoveling sand into sluices, and they also had more time to pay attention to the surroundings.

That very morning, three more teams entered the river. One team of ten went upstream, while the other two remained downstream.

The two teams downstream, one with only eight people, went upstream once and then turned back downstream. It's unclear whether they hadn't scouted the area or if the scouted area had been taken by someone else.

Judging from the way people were cutting timber on the downstream hillside, they should be camped about 300 meters downstream. The other team, which was larger, numbered about twenty people, and they were camped about 60 or 70 meters below the small peninsula where Zhou Jingming and his group were located, at a bend in the river. There was a large stretch of riverbank there, which was the gold panning site they had chosen.

They were standing very close together, and I could see clearly what they were doing at a glance.

The team brought two canvas tents coated with tung oil for waterproofing, saving them the trouble of digging dugouts.

In addition, they did not go up the mountain to cut down trees to make chutes, but instead used the sheet metal chutes they brought with them.

A large group of people spent just over two hours setting up the tents and the chute just before noon.

After preparations were complete, they did not rush to pan for gold. Instead, they slaughtered one of the two Altay sheep they had brought into the mountains, ate and drank and made merry for a while before starting to remove the surface mud and sand of the riverbed and transporting the excavated mud and sand, truckload by truck, to the chute built on the side of the riverbed.

What Xu Youliang envied most was that the team also brought out a diesel-powered water pump, connected it to the river, and directly pumped water to flush away the sand, saving time and effort.

Listening to the whirring of the diesel engine, he stopped carrying water when Peng Yuanchao and Zhou Jingming delivered a truckload of sand: "Brother Peng, when will we be able to use a water pump too!"

Peng Yuanchao looked at the group of people and said, "What's the use of having the best things if you can't find gold? Instead of wasting time thinking, you should hurry up and get to work. All of that is money."

When you came, you all saw the collapsed dugouts and the remaining broken tools on the riverbank. That was a place where people panned for gold before.

Brother Zhou passed by without stopping; it definitely wasn't a good place.

Clearly, these people have a much larger financial backing than Peng Yuanchao.

Peng Yuanchao's words had a hint of sour grapes.

Zhou Jingming glanced at him: "Brother Peng, just because I didn't stop doesn't mean that place isn't good! There's no end to the gold. People pan for it every year, and there's gold every year. This ditch has been panned for countless years."

Just like our little peninsula, after we've panned for gold, people will come again next year, and we'll find gold again, it's just a matter of how much.

Moreover, they have water pumps. With these, the efficiency of washing away sand and mud will be greatly improved. Even if the gold grade is lower, the increased speed will likely result in a significant increase in gold production.

Peng Yuanchao scratched his head: "You think I don't want to? It's just that I don't have the money!"

Zhou Jingming's expression turned serious: "That's not what I wanted to say!"

Peng Yuanchao glanced at Zhou Jingming, then looked towards the gold-mining team working enthusiastically: "So what do you want to say?"

"I think we'd better pray that the gold dust there is of high enough quality and that they can pan for a long enough period of time!"

Zhou Jingming emptied the mud and sand from the cart and pulled it back: "With such a huge initial investment and so many people involved, if they don't find any gold, they'll be thinking about taking over territory... This is just the beginning."

Upon hearing this, Peng Yuanchao's expression also turned serious.

He knew that more and more teams would enter the valley in the future, but the number of good gold panning spots would be very limited. This meant that the situation in the gold panning valley would become increasingly severe, and territorial disputes would occur frequently.

The law of the jungle prevails, and this is vividly demonstrated in the river valley.

Having a large number of people is a manifestation of strength.

Zhou Jingming meant that this small peninsula, rich in gold dust but untouched for many years, was very likely to become a target for other teams to seize.

Peng Yuanchao followed, without saying much, but when they reached the edge of the sandpit, he began to urge everyone to work faster.

After a long day of work, it was almost evening when we finished and returned to our dugout.

Wu Yang and Xu Youliang also gathered the refined sand collected by shaking the golden bucket and brought it back to their dugout.

　Thank you to readers Hei A Niu Ge and Que N de ight for their generous donations!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)