In 1992, a small village owner became the richest man in the village by owning a car.

Chapter 253 On the eve of the Lunar New Year, I took Han Jingfan to the oil city to buy hardware.

"Big sister, I heard that we're having a beer discount for our new store opening. Could you bring us extra beer later?" Yu Dawei stopped discussing the excavator with Lao Liang and Brother Duan and looked up at his sister-in-law.

Actually, he saw her as soon as she came in. But when he thought about how she and her brother-in-law had brought their employees to demand their wages when their company was going through its toughest time, even a saint would have a temper.

After making money, Yu Dawei's first thought was to help the relatives who had taken care of his family to get ahead. Of course, the so-called care was nothing more than giving the child a few clothes and occasionally visiting the mother and child when passing by the village.

But Yu Dawei remembers even the smallest favors and is willing to repay them with more.

Unfortunately, human nature and the human heart are not so easy to judge.

The only reason he spoke up was to save face for his wife. After the woman spoke, she stood there, and everyone in the room felt a little awkward.

It's one thing for a waiter not to serve tea or water—after all, the younger sister took over for you—but you don't know to leave when you're done working? What? You want to sit down and eat something?

“Okay, all the beer in our store is good beer. I’ll go tell them right away.” Han Jingping was originally thinking about how to chat with her brother-in-law, but he immediately mentioned this great benefit.

There's a commission for collecting beer caps after drinking beer; each cap earns two cents. This place has the highest commission rate in town. If Han Jingping can serve a large table of guests well, it will be a considerable income for her.

Yu Dawei often drank with Lao Liang and Duan Dahai, so he naturally knew the ins and outs of the situation. He just wanted to get rid of this clueless older sister by talking about beer.

After the eldest sister Han Jingping left, Han Jingfan took the initiative to pour water for everyone from the teapot. When her gaze swept over Yu Dawei, a look of gratitude appeared on her face.

Xiao Agui got up to help, but Yu Dawei stopped him.

Today I'm sitting in the main seat, and Xiao Agui, being the main character, is naturally sitting next to me. I don't need to get up to help him or anything; I can just eat and drink well.

"Dawei, was that lady Han Jingfan's older sister? She doesn't look like her at all." After finishing their conversation about the excavator in Lao Duan's yard, Boss Liang turned to Yu Dawei and started talking about Han Jingfan's older sister.

“Genes are a very mysterious thing.” Yu Dawei smiled. “Look at my older sister’s appearance, she actually looks like my father-in-law and mother-in-law, but she doesn’t have the same good features as Han Jingfan.”

Han Jingfan added some boiling water to the kettle, placed the teapot next to the dining table, and rolled her eyes at Yu Dawei: "My older sister isn't bad-looking either, it's just that she suffered a lot when she was young with her parents, and she was tired from doing a lot of work."

Han Jingfan remembers that when she was a child, her eldest sister helped her parents take care of the children while also tending the fire and heating the kang (a traditional heated bed). She also remembers that her eldest sister cried very sadly when her younger brother died young because there was no food.

Seeing that his wife was praising his sister-in-law, Yu Dawei stopped talking to her.

But then he suddenly remembered that it wasn't just his eldest sister who worked at this restaurant; his second brother's wife also seemed to have worked there later. He just didn't know if she was still working there now.

In short, it was just a minor incident. As one of the main characters today, Yu Dawei also asked Xiao Agui to talk to everyone about his feelings about becoming an apprentice, as well as his initial impressions of the Northeast after being here for so long.

Ever since Xiao Agui learned to speak, he recites rhymes every day. At first, he didn't know how to say them, so he first performed an upgraded version of the rhymes by Grandma Liu, which Yao Jinfu taught him when he had nothing to do.

Everyone was somewhat delighted that A-Gui could speak. Boss Liang's wife had previously heard Old Liang lament at home, saying that A-Gui was a good kid, but it was a pity he couldn't speak, and that he would likely face prejudice when he entered society.

But now, seeing the little guy speak so eloquently, Sister Liang is naturally happy. Moreover, when he's not repairing cars and is wearing clean clothes, Xiao Agui's features are naturally beautiful.

She wasn't like Yu Dawei, with his thick eyebrows, big eyes, and robust physique; instead, she was delicate and graceful like a girl, naturally arousing the maternal instincts of these women in their thirties and forties.

Even though Aunt Liang was two feet away from Xiao Agui, she would occasionally give the child meat to eat. Sometimes she would see the child's face turn red with embarrassment, and she was really happy to see it.

After dinner, everyone stayed at Fanfan's Repair Shop for a while. Although the small room was not big, the kang (heated brick bed) was warm and the small stove was burning brightly. Several decks of cards were laid out on the kang, and the group had a great time playing.

Yu Dawei and his apprentices became the ones serving tea and water, busy taking care of these people.

Old Ji was a skilled card player. As long as you teamed up with him, you didn't care whether you would be carried to victory or not. Old Ji's impression of the group of people sitting cross-legged on the kang was refreshed once again.

It was past 2 p.m. when everyone left. Some people rested for a while on the kang (a heated brick bed) in Yu Dawei's small room, while others continued playing cards.

Brother Duan and Lao Ji are both heavy smokers, and because there are women around, they're both a little embarrassed to smoke in the house. Mainly, the house is too small and poorly ventilated; smoking there would easily choke everyone.

The two put on thick clothes and ran outside, enjoying the overcast sky while blowing smoke rings to make it even more gloomy. When Yu Dawei had nothing to do, he would study the old calendar hanging on the wall. It was a palm-sized calendar with a red carp on the first page, clipped with a large iron clip and hung on a nail on the wall. He would tear off a page every day.

Usually, after the night is over, the calendar pages from the previous day are torn off the next day. After tearing them off, the paper is kept to start a fire in the stove pit or furnace.

Yu Dawei flipped through the calendar. This year's Chinese New Year was a little later than last year, falling on February 9th in the Gregorian calendar.

However, Yu Dawei plans to give everyone a holiday after January, and they will return to work around the sixth day of the Lunar New Year.

The main reason is that there are many cars in the factory that need to be picked up after the New Year, and the earliest one, the Xiali sedan, will be picked up on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year.

At the dinner table today, he mentioned to Boss Liang about his van's bodywork and painting. Boss Liang suggested that he go to Sui City and find that "Little Prince of Modifications," who has a place that specializes in bodywork and painting.

Otherwise, it would be unwise to leave the van in the factory indefinitely just because it can't be painted.

Yu Dawei naturally had no objections. He asked Boss Liang for the address and planned to send the van to Sui City for a paint job first, then work on it for a couple more days at the end of the year to test its performance. He estimated that it could still be used for a while after the New Year.

Overall, Yu Dawei felt that modifying the van at this time was not cost-effective. If it weren't for the fact that Brother Duan happened to have a suitable engine in his yard, he wouldn't have thought of modifying it.

At most, they would weld a frame inside the van specifically for storing oxygen, acetylene, and other miscellaneous items.

Two days later.

Yu Dawei and his wife drove from the village to the neighboring oil city early in the morning. When they left, they entrusted their child to their parents' care.

Yu Dawei wants to fulfill a promise he couldn't keep in two lifetimes: to buy hardware for Ms. Han Jingfan.

In Northeast China, the term "five metals" refers to gold rings, gold bracelets, gold necklaces, and two gold earrings.

The earrings are round in shape and don't have the various styles of the future, but they are heavy enough to weigh at least two or three grams each.

It was Han Jingfan's first time traveling to a big city, and she couldn't help but feel excited. While sitting in the passenger seat, she would always look around through the window, carefully observing everything, whether it was the endless white meadows or the rugged roads covered in cow and horse manure, as if she wanted to memorize everything she saw.

Han Jingfan said that her father, who was also Yu Dawei's father-in-law, often drove a horse-drawn cart to the oil city to pick up things when he was young. Back then, he worked for the production team, but in winter, he would also use a horse-drawn cart to pick up some things that could be burned.

The thing was black and in irregular blocks; some were as big as a bucket, while others were as small as pebbles.

The old man of the Han family somehow managed to get a horse-drawn cart and bring it home. Once home, they used something black to start a fire, which helped them get through half the winter.

Later, Han Jingfan learned that, in today's terms, that stuff is called asphalt, and you have to be careful when it's burned because the thick smoke it produces is poisonous.

Therefore, before lighting the stove, the old man of the Han family would always open the door of the house, even if the stove pipe was directly connected to the chimney. He was afraid that the smoke from the burning stove would blow out at the beginning and choke the whole family.

Of course, these are all things from Han Jingfan's childhood. Nowadays, every household can buy some coal in winter, which, along with corn kernels and wooden bundles, can help them get through a warm winter.

The car drove slowly. Even if Yu Dawei wanted to drive faster, it was impossible. The Fiat's two-cylinder engine was barely enough to keep it moving. After all, it was still a new car, and this was already quite good.

When the nodding donkeys came into view in the distance, Yu Dawei and Han Jingfan had truly arrived in the oil city.

Without delay, Yu Dawei drove straight to the Sa District, the heart of the oil city.

The department store in the oil city is located there. It used to have a state-owned background, but it gradually became a private enterprise around the 1980s. The real controlling company behind it is called Taishang.

When Yu Dawei parked his car in front of the department store, passersby cast envious glances at him.

In the early 1990s, there were certainly more and more people in the city who owned cars, but there were also many more who didn't own a car or whose families couldn't afford one.

Yu Dawei didn't care about other people's opinions. After locking the car, he boldly took his wife's hand and stepped into the department store.

(End of this chapter)