Time Travel: Volume 1! Starting from a Small Mountain Village

That day, Long Lifan was preparing to go up the mountain when the brigade notified her to go to a meeting.

Long Lifan was a little confused. Logically speaking, she was just a mascot in Dongwan Brigade, only responsible for handling minor conflicts between villagers. Why did the village committee ask her to go to the meeting?

Although she was very puzzled, she still went to the brigade headquarters. When she arrived, she found that, apart from Lin Guodong and his two companions, the other team leaders were all in the village committee office.

"Youth Long is here!" Lin Guodong greeted her with a grin. "This is the desk we prepared for you. Take a look and see what you think." He then pointed to a brand-new chair not far in front of him.

"Now that you are the women's director of our Dongwan Brigade, we should at least get you a position."

A bright red flag hangs in the village committee office; Long Zhiqing is the recipient of this banner. Placing her in this position within the village committee is not only reasonable, but also perfectly logical.

That way, others won't go around saying that their village committee stole Long Zhiqing's glory, since Long Zhiqing is now also a member of their village committee.

"The tables and chairs are nice," Long Lifan nodded with a smile, quite satisfied. It was clear this was the work of carpenter Wang; he was the only one in the Dongwan Brigade capable of making such exquisite tables and chairs.

As if the carpenter knew this was prepared for himself, he added many patterns to the edges of the table and chairs.

“When we village cadres have meetings in the future, Long Zhiqing can come and listen if he has time.” After a moment of contemplation, Lin Guodong continued, “I know that you are a capable person, Long Zhiqing, and I hope that you can offer more suggestions for the development of Dongwan Brigade.”

"Captain, you're too kind. I'm just a sent-down youth, and I've only read a little more books than you," Long Lifan said tactfully.

“It’s good to read more books. Look at those children in the village now, they follow you around all day, telling you what stories they’ve heard and what words they’ve learned.”

"You got those new farm tools because you read so much, didn't you? There's a saying that goes, 'What gold and jade are in books?'"

"Uh," Long Lifan said awkwardly, then corrected herself, "Captain, you can find a golden house and a beautiful woman in books."

"Yes, yes, yes!" Lin Guodong grinned and said, "That's why people still need to read and write. Look how different these words sound coming from your mouth."

“I’m very happy that you can teach the children to read, but I also hope that you can offer some valuable suggestions for the development of our Dongwan Brigade,” Lin Guodong said sincerely.

"Actually, I do have some suggestions for the Dongwan Brigade, but I don't know if you'd like to hear them." Seeing that the brigade leader was speaking so sincerely, Long Lifan felt embarrassed to refuse.

Now she is the women's director of Dongwan Brigade, which is considered a brigade cadre. That's just how she is; if she's going to do something, she wants to do it to the best of her ability.

"Um"

Lin Guodong didn't react for a moment. He had just told Long Zhiqing to give his opinions in future meetings, but he didn't expect Long Zhiqing to have an idea so quickly.

"What's your opinion? Tell us!" The others were also curious; they wanted to hear what this educated youth, Long, had to say.

"To be honest, although I've only been in the countryside for less than two months, I've discovered a very real problem in Dongwan Brigade: too many people and too little land," Long Lifan pointed out incisively.

The others nodded in agreement. It wasn't that secret; they could find out if they stayed long enough.

"With a large population and limited land, there will inevitably be idle land. Take Lin Weibing for example, why is it that he only grows 40 centimeters a month, but the brigade doesn't care? The root cause is that there is a surplus of personnel, so adding or removing one person won't make a difference."

"So, Young Master Long, do you have any good suggestions?" Lin Guodong blushed, remembering the day he spoke up for Lin Weibing. It was indeed true; if there weren't enough people to do the work, how could they tolerate Lin Weibing slacking off like that?

As far as they were concerned, since there were other people in Lin Weibing's family working and earning work points anyway, they would all choose to turn a blind eye as long as he didn't borrow grain from the brigade.

As for why the educated youth were required to work, it was obviously to prevent them from borrowing grain. These educated youth were all alone when they went to the countryside, and if they didn't work, where would they get work points to exchange for grain?

If grain were lent to the educated youth, the villagers would definitely object and cause trouble. But if they didn't lend it, the Dongwan brigade would also be held responsible if the educated youth starved to death. Therefore, he was much stricter with the educated youth than many other villagers when it came to working in the fields.

“I think we can definitely develop a side business,” Long Lifan suggested.

For example…

“I think raising pigs or chickens is fine. This can not only increase the income of the commune members, but also free some people from the fields.”

“I don’t like what you’re saying, Long Zhiqing. What do you mean by liberating commune members from the fields?” Miao Dashan immediately stood up and criticized Long Lifan after hearing her grand pronouncements. “We farmers shouldn’t be tending to our crops, but instead we’re doing sideline work. Isn’t that putting the cart before the horse?”

"Long Zhiqing, you're from the city, you probably don't know how precious the crops in the fields are to us!"

At this point, Party Secretary Miao paused for a few seconds before continuing, "That's right, how could someone like Long, who eats fine grains every day, understand these things?"

"Secretary Miao, what do you mean by that?" Long Lifan's expression immediately changed upon hearing this. Secretary Miao's words were not simply a rebuttal to what she had just said, but rather an accusation that she was living a life of extravagance.

Seeing that the two were about to argue, the brigade leader quickly tried to mediate between Secretary Miao and Long Lifan. Wasn't the goal to get Long, the educated youth, to offer her opinions? Why did they suddenly become so hostile?

Miao Dashan realized he had misspoke and softened his tone: "I just wanted to tell you that we should carry forward the spirit of hard work and frugality now. Long Zhiqing, you are still young and don't know about the past. People used to live hand to mouth, and many survived by eating grass roots and tree bark."

“I came from a life of hardship, and no one understands that feeling better than me,” Secretary Miao advised with the air of an elder. His expression grew solemn, as if recalling the hardships of that period.

He was a refugee from the Dongwan Brigade back then, and he witnessed too many human tragedies along the way. That's why he cherishes his good life now.

"Then I saw that Secretary Miao ate quite a bit that day at Hefang, didn't he?" Long Lifan knew that Miao Dashan wasn't a bad person at heart. It was just that he had some deep-rooted old ideas that made him think that farmers should just guard their own land.

With current agricultural productivity, feeding such a large population as Dongwan Brigade was simply wishful thinking, not to mention the annual grain tax they had to pay to the state. The village children were all emaciated, even the brigade leader's sons were extremely thin, clearly suffering from malnutrition.

"What do you mean?" Upon hearing this, Secretary Miao's face immediately turned bright red. Well, he knew this young educated youth was cunning; she brought up what happened that day.

“Secretary Miao keeps saying that he came from a hard life, but I wonder if you can not only endure hardship, but also swallow sweetness?”

Long Lifan smiled and stared at Secretary Miao. The Dongwan Brigade wanted to develop, and certainly couldn't cling to old ideas, so she had to take strong measures against Secretary Miao.