Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

Chapter 1064 Keyum is also capable of great things.
It was already afternoon, but there were still quite a few people on Shicheng Old Street. Only some vendors had left, leaving open spaces that made the old street less crowded.

Li Long left the jeep in the parking lot and strolled around the street. He didn't ask Keyum's brother-in-law, thinking he would wander around and look for it himself.

The offal soup was very flavorful, so Li Long quickly found a spot between the milk tea shop and Chen Xingbang's meat stall.

To Li Long's surprise, Keyum was now helping out at the offal stall. The person working there was a Uyghur woman wearing a headscarf, whom Li Long guessed was Keyum's sheep.

"Boss Li?" Keyum was surprised to see Li Long and exclaimed in surprise, then smiled and said, "Welcome, welcome! Come, come, have a bowl of offal soup?"

"Okay." Li Long smiled and walked over to sit down.

It wasn't mealtime, so there weren't many customers. One of the two tables in front of the offal soup shop was empty, so Li Long sat down at it.

Keyum quickly brought over a bowl of hot offal soup and placed it in front of Li Long, then set out a pair of chopsticks on the bowl.

It smells very good; you can smell the natural aroma of the offal itself, without any unpleasant odor.

Li Long picked up a piece of tripe and put it in his mouth to chew. It was very tender, not too salty, and very fragrant.

“Not bad, not bad,” Li Long nodded as he ate. “Well done. Is this your mutton soup?” Li Long asked Keyum, who was already sitting opposite him.

“Yes, that’s right.” Keyum said with some pride, “There wasn’t much going on at home, and the idea of ​​making offal soup came from her. I initially thought I’d let her try it, but it became an instant hit. At first, we set up a stall, but once we saw it was popular, we simply opened a shop in this storefront.”

It's clear that Keyum is quite shrewd in business, able to seize opportunities and grasp the moment.

Keyum's wife should also be able to understand Chinese. She glanced over, smiled, and continued with what she was doing.

Several vendors carrying baskets came over, speaking in the Gansu dialect. Each of them ordered a bowl of offal soup, and Keyum stood up to help.

When the group sat down at the table to eat, Keyum came over and spoke to Li Long again.

"Can you manage 500 kilograms of meat every day?" Li Long asked while eating.

"It's a bit difficult to say," Keyum said frankly to Li Long, knowing that Li Long liked to hear the truth. "I've already bought most of the cattle and sheep in the area. If we go to other places, firstly, the distance is far, and secondly, the cattle and sheep we buy aren't as easy to choose as they are in the area."

Moreover, at this time of year, cattle and sheep haven't fully gained weight, so the meat quality may not be as good as before.

Li Long had thought about this issue on his way back. To be honest, it was a bit unreasonable for him to force Keyum to increase his daily meat intake.

But business is still there, and it's been alright these past few days. There's a bit less meat, but Sister Yang and her team are just managing to process it manually.

When the dryer arrives, there might not be enough meat, which could affect the efficiency of production.

But if we force Keyum to increase the amount of meat delivered, what if some of the meat is of poor quality? Wouldn't that be penny-wise and pound-foolish?

Li Long then said:
"Then we must first ensure the quality of the meat. The daily supply should be over 300 kilograms, but the meat quality must be good, otherwise I will not accept it."

Keyum actually wanted to send more meat, but the distribution channels weren't fully established yet, so he couldn't guarantee anything. He also wanted to make this business last longer, and at least for now, he was considering Li Long's best interests.

“Send me some of your cooked offal every day, um, fifty kilograms,” Li Long said. “I’ll pay you at market price.”

“Okay.” Keyumu agreed without hesitation.

Li Long asked with some doubt: "Won't this affect your offal soup business?"

"No, no," Keyum said with a smile. "Actually, although this offal soup shop is very popular, it's impossible for them to sell all the offal every day. There's always a lot left over."

There's a fresh supply of offal every day. Any leftovers have to be given away or sold off at a very low price before nightfall, otherwise they just go to waste.

Mr. Li, you're looking for pure meat, but I sell offal, sheep's head and trotters cheaply here. It's just that there aren't any other shops around here, otherwise people would be cursing me.

Even so, I can't sell them all, so don't even mention buying them, I'd give them to you for free. After all, you buy meat from me every day, and I make a lot of money from it!

He pointed to his sheep's broth shop and said, "She keeps all the money from this offal soup shop. Look at the smile on her face—let me tell you, in our ethnic group, women generally don't manage money; they ask the men for it when they need it."

She now has more money than some Uyghur leaders, so she's very happy to have opened this shop!

"I'll still pay you," Li Long said with a smile. "I can't let you work for free. Of course, please do your best when cooking, make sure it's well-cooked, and I'll use it to exchange for something."

"Okay, okay, definitely no trouble!" Keyum was quite happy; at least the extra scraps could be dealt with. He added with a smile:

"Mr. Li, to be honest, ever since you started this business, the prices of beef and mutton in the area have changed. Whenever you want beef or mutton, the market prices go up as well."

Li Long thought to himself, "Surely not? How much beef and mutton did I even order?" He figured that Keyum was probably just bragging and exaggerating his abilities.

If I could really influence the price of beef and mutton in the surrounding area, I'd be considered a big shot, right?
After finishing the offal soup, Li Long insisted on paying and then left with dozens of kilograms of cooked beef and mutton offal. Just as Keyum had said, there was a large pot of offal cooking in the back of their shop, a pot with a diameter of over a meter, and the offal had a very strong smell.

Li Long brought the scum back to the county, and without stopping, went straight to the Fourth Team to pick up the people, and also left some of the scum at his elder brother's house.

Li Qingxia complained:

"Didn't you take it this morning? Why are you taking it again now? How are we going to finish it in this heat?"

"Eat up, this stuff is oily and good for filling your stomach," Li Long joked. "We can eat more later."

For at least a while, our family won't be short of this.

After taking Mingming and Haohao back to the county, Li Long also set aside some of the leftovers to send to Sun Jiaqiang and Liang Shuangcheng, because good things should be shared.

The rest has to be stored in the storage room at home. It's still relatively cool at night, so it can be stored there. If you need to pick up the leftovers after a while, you have to go get them the next morning, otherwise they will most likely spoil overnight.

The next morning, after sending Mingming and Haohao to the team, Li Long arrived at the wooden house with a large basin of miscellaneous items and other things. He was relieved to find that everything was normal.

He was genuinely worried that Abulikmu might go crazy and come back to retaliate, burning down the cabin, which would be quite troublesome.

Fortunately, that did not happen.

As soon as the items were unloaded and the scraps were placed on the table, someone came to exchange them.

Li Long opens for business.

At lunchtime, dozens of kilograms of offal were exchanged again. This kind of offal, which would be considered cheap waste in Keyum, could be exchanged here for almost two kilograms of offal for one kilogram of fritillaria!
There was no other way; when digging for medicinal herbs in the mountains, almost no one could hunt and eat meat at the same time. In fact, if it weren't for Li Long occasionally exchanging items at the cabin, they would rarely have the chance to eat cooked food.

Normally, mushroom soup and wild vegetable soup are the most common.

This is one of the reasons why Li Long's ordinary food can fetch a high price.

After all, resources are scarce in the mountains. After the herders move to other areas, these herb gatherers can only consume the supplies they carry. With limited manpower, they can't carry much, and those supplies will likely be used up within half a month. Even if they aren't used up, they'll be almost inedible.

The probability of someone like Li Jianguo catching a roe deer in the mountains with his bare hands when he was young is extremely low.

Most people, like those who come to Li Long now to exchange their offal for meat, no longer care about cost-effectiveness; they're happy just to get a bite of meat.

Although I know that this kilogram of fritillaria bulbs can be exchanged for tens of yuan, or a large piece of meat, I can't leave now, and I don't want to. If I can exchange it for some meat now, I can stay here for a few more days and dig up even more fritillaria bulbs.

To Li Long's surprise, some people had actually started accepting 100-yuan bills.

“Before I went into the mountains, I heard people say that a hundred-yuan bill was coming out,” the first person to exchange the money believed Li Long. “This money is our country’s money, and you can’t print it yourself, boss. It’s easy to carry around a hundred-yuan bill and it’s easy to hide.”

The risks in the mountains are high, and some people are well aware of this. Carrying a large bag of fritillaria bulbs makes them too conspicuous. After all, those who eventually start exchanging them usually do so in quantities of tens of kilograms or more, amounting to thousands of yuan at a time.

My income for more than a month is all here.

Li Long went home early again, firstly because he had almost finished changing his things, and secondly because his jeep was full. Today, he unusually changed about 500 kilograms of fritillaria bulbs that were 70-80% dried.

In other words, the drier the fritillaria, the heavier it is; otherwise, his jeep really wouldn't be able to fit it all.

Li Long thought he really should get a bigger car.

A minivan is the first choice; if that's not possible, an eight- or ten-seater vehicle that the Russians imported back then will also work. That vehicle is actually a variant of the Jeep, with a Jeep-like front and an extended body in the back, like a small truck, with two rows of seats on both sides, which can seat six to eight people.

Of course, the cargo compartment was also covered with tarpaulin, making it a long jeep.

These kinds of vehicles are relatively rare in Beiting, and the ones you can buy are mostly second-hand. In his previous life, Li Long had seen the military's discarded models in Yili. In fact, until the early 20th century, the border troops in Yili were still using these vehicles.

I don't know if we can get it. We'll have to ask Li Xiangqian or the Ethnic Affairs Commission.

Of course, a minivan is the best option; it's a new car, convenient and durable.

Before going to Shicheng to collect miscellaneous items, Li Long went to the supply and marketing cooperative to ask Li Xiangqian a question.

"An eight-seater car? A ten-seater car? Let me think, I haven't seen many. I can ask around for you though." Information flows much more easily now than it did a few years ago, and many units in the county now have their own cars.

Actually, given Li Xiangqian's current status, it's not impossible for him to own his own car. The main problem is that he hasn't done so, and he doesn't care about used cars.

Li Xiangqian thought for a moment, then picked up the phone and dialed a number while saying to Li Long:
“I had a meeting a while ago and chatted with some leaders from the supply and marketing system of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. They need some things from us, so we started exchanging supplies. That’s why we got in touch and I asked them if they had any.”

They said they had to ask, and told us to wait.

Li Xiangqian hung up the phone and then asked about Li Long's current situation, while also telling him some news.

"Really? Someone in Shicheng really dug up tons of jade?"

Li Long was a little confused. He had never heard such news at this time in his previous life.

That makes sense when you think about it. What was I doing at this age in my previous life? I was doing farm work at home. Even if there was news like this, I wouldn't know about it!

"How big and heavy?" Li Long asked, looking interested.

“It must weigh over three tons.” Li Xiangqian gestured. “It’s really big! They say it took a crane to transport it back, and not only a crane, but also more than a dozen young men.”

"Who did this?"

"It is said that he was a retired worker who liked to wander around the Ma River when he had nothing to do after retirement. A few days ago, he went up the river along the west bank of the Ma River. When he was resting, he sat by the river and looked at the scenery. He found that the rock he sat on was quite beautiful."

"When we got back and told someone, they said it might be jade, so they took people to look for it, confirmed it was, and then started transporting it back," Li Xiangqian said with envy. "They say this piece of jade alone is worth over ten thousand yuan!"

"The shipping costs must be quite high, right?"

"Yes, of course it's quite a lot. The labor and machinery transportation costs combined are over ten thousand." Li Xiangqian nodded. "That's enough to make a profit. Such a big piece of jade! Hey! This person's butt is really clever!"

Li Long thought to himself that such rumors are rare now, but will increase in later generations.

He had heard of a businessman who went bankrupt and got lost while off-roading in the Gobi Desert. When he was about to die, he got out of the car to urinate and ended up urinating on a rock. The urine washed away the dirt and sand on the rock and revealed a huge piece of mutton fat jade weighing over ten kilograms.

They escaped a desperate situation, loaded the jade into the car, continued driving and found the road. Thanks to this piece of mutton fat jade worth tens of millions, they turned their fortunes around and became rich again.

A hiker went on an adventure in the Kunlun Mountains, got lost and was running out of supplies. While resting, he pitched his tent. The next day, when he was packing up his tent, he discovered that the spot where his tent was pitched was a huge, flat piece of Hetian jade.

Then a chance for survival was sparked. They went down the mountain, found a herdsman's home, had a hot meal, and finally contacted a friend. They called in machinery, dug out that huge piece of rock, and made a fortune.

and many more.

Li Long didn't know if what he heard later was true or false, so he guessed that what Li Xiangqian heard was probably also embellished.

Of course, the facts should be pretty much the same. There must be a giant jadeite rough stone. The quality of the jade is unclear, but this person has definitely made a fortune.

There will be many more such incidents in the future, after all, there is a jade mountain in the upper reaches of the Ma River, and no one can say how much jade has been washed down over the millennia.

Some have even argued that the Jade Mountain of Mahe is actually the Jade Mountain mentioned in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, but whether this is true or not is unknown.

Of course, it could also be a fabrication or far-fetched interpretation.

Li Long didn't stay at Li Xiangqian's place for long before going to Shicheng to get offal. Keyum wasn't there, but Li Long told his sheep keeper, Ruxianguli, that he would come to get offal in the morning starting the day after tomorrow.

Anyway, the offal at this shop is cooked in a big pot every day, and you can get it fresh every morning.

When Li Long was hauling the junk back to the county, he wondered whether he should bring back the giant jade stone he had found in the mountains.

There's already one blocking the way, so if I bring back another one, it shouldn't be so conspicuous, right?
But after thinking about it, I decided against it. Most of the jade from the Mahe River has black spots, and my piece doesn't. It wouldn't be suitable to put it in the yard, nor would it be suitable to put it anywhere else.

Let's wait and see if we get a few more similar messages. After all, jade of such high quality is easily coveted.

In the following days, what Li Long had been worried about did not happen. Bolati brought news that Abulikmu was honestly herding sheep on the mountainside across the Tashi River. His father was with him, afraid that he would take the family's sheep to gamble on stones again.

With his elderly father watching over him, this young man can't do anything he wants.

Each time Polati brings some fritillaria, and the people who come to exchange fritillaria every day are basically not the same old faces.

Some people exchanged their money and, like that sturdy man from last time, left the mountain immediately. Others would dig up some more before the fritillaria flowers bloomed in large quantities.

Occasionally, some of the people selling fritillaria bulbs will also bring some morel mushrooms, since it's currently the peak season for morel mushrooms, but not many.

However, they couldn't bring much with them; they just picked what they happened to find. After all, digging for fritillaria bulbs was their main job, and these people could tell the difference.

Around May 20th, Li Long didn't go to the mountains for three consecutive days. He first went to the forestry team in his county and received the fritillaria from Captain Aili. Then he went to Captain Abulaiti and took away the fritillaria from the neighboring county.

Jia Tianlong arrived before most of the two batches of fritillaria bulbs had been cleaned. This time, he was in a hurry, saying that a new customer had contacted him and urgently needed a batch of fritillaria bulbs at a very good price. So, Jia Tianlong, who had originally planned to come at the end of the month, came here early.

In the backyard of the purchasing station, Li Long watched as the people on both sides inspected and weighed the goods, while asking him about his last trip to Yili.

"Sigh, it didn't work out." Jia Tianlong said dejectedly. "I went there once, and the supply and marketing cooperative there has a very good relationship with the herdsmen. The cooperative directly bought some of the supplies and medicines."

Furthermore, those who go out to collect medicinal herbs mostly sell directly to locals, so it's difficult to obtain large quantities. The prices offered by the supply and marketing cooperatives are quite high, which I couldn't accept, so I didn't do it.

Li Long thought to himself that someone had come all the way from Yili last year to give him fritillaria bulbs to support his road construction project.

It's just that I haven't been staying at the purchasing station, otherwise I could have pulled this line a little tighter.

"It's only because you have enough fritillaria bulbs that I'm in trouble," Jia Tianlong said with a wry smile. "I was too arrogant, thinking I could do it. As a result, after they took the deposit, I called them and found out that everyone's fritillaria bulbs weren't that plentiful."

"If it weren't for your ample inventory, I would have suffered huge losses this time!"

(End of this chapter)