Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

Li Long did not return to the mountains that day. Instead, he went for a stroll in the free market and then went to the Xinhua Bookstore to buy a box of small-caliber rifle bullets for backup.

The next day, I went to the supply and marketing cooperative to buy a fishing net and went to see Li Xiangqian by the way. Then I was kept by Li Xiangqian.

"Come over this afternoon to complete the formalities. The people who own this yard have already moved out. The leader actually wanted to negotiate the price, but I heard that you were so generous that you even kept some of the large furniture. Then we can complete the formalities this afternoon."

"That's great." Li Long said with a smile, "It's not urgent for me, but it would be great if I can get the formalities done now."

At that time, there was no real estate certificate, just a piece of paper. Li Xiangqian took Li Long on a bicycle to take over the yard and went to the street to complete the formalities.

The other party did not keep anyone, Li Xiangqian was entrusted to handle the matter. The street also knew about this matter, and they changed the name of the owner of the yard very quickly.

"You go and look after the yard yourself. I have some work to do at work. By the way, come back in a couple of days. There are some odd jobs during this period. See if you can do them."

"Okay." Li Long agreed with a smile.

Watching Li Xiangqian leave, Li Long pushed his bicycle and came to the yard with the bunch of keys given by Li Xiangqian.

The courtyard is on the south side of Wuyi Road, and the back wall is more than ten meters away from the road. Li Long remembered that when he cared about these things in his previous life, these courtyards all faced the road to the north, and most of them were storefronts.

I don’t know whether it was an added storefront or a door of a room in the yard was directly opened towards the road.

He remembered that the "property deed" given by the street just now stated that it was directly adjacent to the road, so there was basically no possibility that someone would build another house between his yard and the road.

The courtyard gate faces west and is considered a side door. This courtyard is the last one in this alley. Although it looks the same style, it is obvious that this family's courtyard is better maintained. In this era when ordinary walls are made of adobe, this courtyard wall is made of bricks and covered with cement. The courtyard wall is two meters high and has patterns on it.

The three walls of the house are painted white, and cement is applied half a meter from the ground. Is this to prevent alkali from forming?
The gate of the courtyard is smaller than the gate of Li Long’s big courtyard. It is two meters wide, a wooden door, and has a big lock.

Li Long opened the door, pushed the bicycle in and looked inside.

The first thing you see is the paved ground, and three meters inside is the vegetable garden. The vegetable garden is not large, about a few dozen square meters, half a meter lower than the ground, with a small step going down.

The vegetable garden was planted with common vegetables, peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, a row of coriander, two rows of shallots, and some traces of being dug up. Li Long guessed that this was where the garlic was. There was also a patch of red mushrooms near the east wall.

Between the main house and the vegetable garden on the north side is an iron grape trellis, on which there are grape vines climbing. Li Long can see that there are seedless white and mare's milk grapes, as well as a round grape that should be the local kind. It has seeds and is particularly sweet after the autumn frost.

To the right of the courtyard gate is the kitchen. There is a small pile of coal dust at the door. Li Long knew at a glance that a blower was used to cook.

There is a road about one meter wide between the vegetable garden and the side room of the kitchen, so the toilet should be on the south side of the kitchen.

Li Long walked over and took a look. There was a room between the toilet and the kitchen. He found the key and opened it. It was a storage room. There were shelves on three sides and an old round table. There were old newspapers and magazines on the shelves, which were placed neatly. There were also some odds and ends that the original owner had not taken away.

Li Long locked the door of the utility room and went to check the toilet. It was cleaned quite well. Although there was only one toilet for both men and women, there were no flies and a strange smell. It should be sprayed with pesticides frequently.

Returning to the main house, Li Long saw that there were two doors with hidden locks.

The door was a wooden door covered with iron sheets. Li Long opened the one in the middle. It was a room with one bright room and two dark rooms.

The main room is the living room, not very big, with a row of sofas, half-new and half-old, arranged horizontally, covered in brown fabric. There is a cabinet diagonally opposite, where a TV should have been placed, but of course it has been moved away now.

Opposite the TV cabinet is a stove, which is of course idle at the moment. The wall opposite the stove was dug out to make a fire wall, just right for warming up the inside.

The room on the left is the bedroom, with a large wooden bed, a wardrobe, and a desk by the windowsill. They all look half-new and half-old, so there is definitely no problem using them.

The room on the right is the dining room, with an eight-person table and a few chairs placed next to it, a sofa against the north wall, a writing desk by the south window, and a large mirror on the east wall.

There were a few pots of flowers on the windowsill that he hadn't taken away. Li Long recognized that they included Clivia, Cyperus rotundus, Fuchsia, etc. They were not very expensive.

The room on the east side was also a bedroom, with a single bed, a wardrobe, and a desk. Li Long guessed that this should be the child's room, and there were some old textbooks left on the desk.

There were old beddings on the single bed, and Li Long left without tidying it up.

He locked the wicket, picked a few ripe tomatoes, and left the yard.

For the time being, I don't need this yard, so I'll just eat the vegetables. Anyway, there's nothing valuable in the yard, and this was originally my neighbor's home, so I don't think thieves would come here, right?

Li Long rode directly back to the big yard and decided not to go up the mountain today.

When Gu Xiaoxia came back in the evening, Li Long had already cooked the soup and told her about the small courtyard.

"You bought another small yard? What's the point of buying that?" Gu Xiaoxia obviously didn't understand, "It's enough for us to live in this big yard."

"That small courtyard is close to your workplace, and the decoration is pretty good," Li Long explained. "I thought if you feel like running too far every day, you could live there. Of course, it's up to you where you live. You can live in both places - and I thought if my family comes over later, they can live there, too."

As for investment, it is too early to talk about it now, and no one will believe it even if you say it.

In fact, this investment in this era, as far as Li Long knows, is the least valuable, or the slowest to appreciate. After all, even in the 1910s, when housing prices were at their highest, the county town's housing prices were only 5,000.

So if you really want to stock up on houses, Shicheng or Wucheng are better than here.

Li Long bought the yard simply out of habit as a farmer who is close to the land.

"I'd better live here." Gu Xiaoxia thought for a while and said, "I'm used to it and don't want to move again. Besides, this place is pretty good. Although the yard is a bit old, it looks grand. I like it very much!"

"If you like it, live here." Li Long said with a smile, "Put that aside for now. If it doesn't work out, rent it out. There's always room for it anyway."

The topic has been brought to a halt.

After dinner, Gu Xiaoxia and Li Long cleaned up and went to study. Li Long was there these days and knew that Gu Xiaoxia basically didn't bring work home, so she mainly studied at TVU at night.

She was very interested in Li Long's proposal. After entering the Education Bureau, she also found that there were many people with high school education, but very few with undergraduate or college education. If she wanted to stand out among these people, she not only had to be capable, but also had to have a high level of education.

After working for a few months, Gu Xiaoxia is no longer a rookie, and she has realized the importance of academic qualifications. To give a simple example, when teaching in a middle school, if there are two teachers with similar teaching experience, the one with a college degree will have a higher salary than the one with a high school degree.

Even if this college is a correspondence course or a TV university! At this time, TV universities and night universities are still recognized.

Li Long did not disturb Gu Xiaoxia from studying. He poured a glass of water for her, cut a few pieces of watermelon and placed them in front of Gu Xiaoxia's desk, then went to his room to read.

When Li Long returned to the house, he realized that something was wrong. Why did he and Gu Xiaoxia feel like an old married couple? Shouldn't they have the passion of young people?

After thinking about it, I decided to give up. I guess Gu Xiaoxia is too shy at this time. After all, they are just engaged and not married yet. The measures are not perfect these days. If something really happens, it will be easy for people to point fingers at them.

So I ate watermelon and read a book.

Gu Xiaoxia made breakfast the next day. After breakfast, Gu Xiaoxia went to work. Li Long rode his bicycle to a naan shop on the edge of the county town, bought two naan, rolled them up and put them in his bag, and rode into the mountains.

After the rain, the weather became hotter and it wasn’t until we rode into the mountains that the weather got better.

Arriving at the wooden house, Li Long took out the few remaining mushrooms spread out in the house to dry them in the sun, then picked up the sack and went to the nearby ditch to look for them.

Sure enough, after the rain, mushrooms grew again, and there were quite a few of them.

By noon, he had collected most of the sack. After Li Long came back to dry it in the sun, he took out the naan and cut half a watermelon. He ate a simple meal and went to sleep. It was too hot at noon, and it was uncomfortable to go out now.

In the afternoon, Li Long got up and once again started searching in the nearby ditch, carrying a sack and a gun.

Now is the last season for the black tiger's paw mushroom. It can still grow for ten days or half a month. After that, the grass will turn yellow and the ground will dry up, and it will basically be gone.

Li Long clearly remembers that there was a period of time when the mountains were relatively humid, or when the climate was quite good, these mushrooms could be picked until August.

And it seemed that in the two years after he left his previous life, black tiger paw mushrooms could only be picked up until July, and then it was the end of the season.

Is the weather getting hotter?
Li Long didn't know.

The harvest in the afternoon was more than that in the morning, perhaps because of the location, or because the plants were still growing in the morning. Before the sun set, Li Long picked up another sack and returned to the cabin.

It was cool in the mountains at night, and one advantage was that there were few mosquitoes at this time, so the stars could be seen clearly. The Milky Way stretched across the sky, and Li Long easily found Altair, Vega, the Big Dipper, and the North Pole.

Thinking about the Qixi Festival story, which seemed reasonable at the beginning but was later changed into a mess and no longer conforms to modern values, Li Long shook his head. Kids nowadays are happier. It is easy to learn and memorize, and they can find jobs when they graduate.

The next day, Li Long picked and dried mushrooms as usual. On the third day, he had to go down the mountain - the dried mushrooms could fill a sack again.

He filled the sack with the dry ones, and then took some fresh ones and rode down the mountain. There were still some dried on the wooden floor in front of the wooden house, but the amount was not large, so Li Long didn't care much.

After selling the mushrooms at the purchasing station, Li Long placed some of the fresh mushrooms in the large yard, and then carried a few kilograms to find Li Xiangqian.

"I just wanted to look for you. See if you can take on those small tasks I mentioned last time." Li Xiangqian didn't even mention the mushrooms that Li Long brought. He just kept it, and it didn't count as bribery.

"What good job is there?" Li Long said with a smile, "I will definitely do it if I can."

"Collecting wool. Don't you have friends who are herders? They must have sheared the wool this year? Can you collect a few tons of wool?"

"We can't collect them." Li Long thought for a moment and said, "They have already gone to the summer pasture. It's deep in the mountains and it's too inconvenient to transport the wool down. If they still collect them next year, they can shear the wool before moving on. It's definitely not possible this year..."

The main reason was that the road was long and deep in the mountains, and Li Long didn't know the exact location. He couldn't just go looking for it blindly. If he got lost, he would be dead.

"Well, that's it. Another one is to harvest safflower. I remember you said you grow safflower there, and now it's time to pick it. I have a small order here, 300 kilograms, can you take it?"

"No, no." Li Long waved his hands hurriedly. "Our group of villagers planted it directly on the wasteland. We can harvest dozens of kilograms from that piece of land at most... It seems that other villages nearby don't plant it either."

"Forget it then. There's nothing else you can do for now." Li Xiangqian waved his hand, "We'll talk about it later."

"Well, I'm not in a hurry. I've made some money from selling mushrooms these days," Li Long said, "enough to last for a while."

"Have you cleaned up the yard?" Li Xiangqian asked casually, "How does it look?"

"Very good. I haven't cleaned it yet. There's not much to clean inside, just a simple cleanup will do." Li Long said, "My partner said she still wants to live in the big yard. I'll clean it up when the time comes. If someone wants to live there, they can live there. If no one wants to live there, we'll rent it out."

"You... Hey!" Li Xiangqian really didn't know how to say good things to Li Long, "You are not a spendthrift!"

"That's not the case." Li Long said with a grin, "More courtyards means more places to stay. When I do any procurement in the future, I can put it in there."

"You're using it as a warehouse? That's a waste."

The two chatted for a while, and then Li Long got up and left. He had been in the mountains for a few days, and he wanted to go back and take a shower.

I walked to the carport in the yard and just unlocked the car when I heard Li Xiangqian shouting from the office window:

"Xiaolong, Xiaolong! Come over here and answer the phone. It's for you!"

"Looking for me?" Li Long was a little surprised. Who was calling him? Was it from the team? Was there something wrong?

He parked the car in a hurry, without even having time to lock it, and ran inside to answer the phone.

"Hello, Li Long? I'm Yusup!"

Yusup?
Li Long was stunned for a moment, and then he thought of the ethnic man who sold jade.

Him?

"Adasi, Aximuses..." Li Long also said to him, "Where are you now?"

This person is looking for me, is he going to sell jade again? (End of this chapter)