Mixed in 1980

Chapter 18 Dating again
From a businessman to a trader, Li Hongbing easily adapted to the change of identity. After all, his family used to be in business and he had been influenced by it since he was a child.

"Brother Bingzi, that's pretty fast. Are you halfway done?"

Chen Fan returned to the backyard and looked at the empty pickle jars. There were only eight left.

"Almost half of it is done. It will be finished in a few days. The two jars pickled the day before can be sold at the weekend." Li Hongbing took out a cigarette and gave one to him.

"Your store is a time-honored brand, so it must be selling well."

Chen Fan lit up the cigarette and took a puff: "You don't have to go far to sell. Just run the business in Nanluoguxiang and you'll have enough to do."

"I am really confident about this." Li Hongbing lit a cigarette and laughed.

More than a decade ago, Li's pickles were well-known and sold all over Beijing. They employed more than 30 workers. The most famous of them was the sweet pickled cucumbers.

"It's just that we are out of materials. We have to go to the countryside to collect goods tomorrow. Your brother-in-law is also going to the countryside to collect goods tomorrow. It's just right to go with him. I can take care of him."

"Brother Bingzi, if you don't mind your rural household registration, you can go to the countryside and ask around. Maybe you can find a wife and bring her back." Chen Fan joked.

"Is it possible?" Li Hongbing asked anxiously.

Chen Fan was stunned. He was just joking, but did Li Hongbing take it seriously?

It's not surprising. Li Hongbing is already in his early thirties and a bachelor. If he didn't want to get married, people would suspect his sexual orientation.

Li Hongbing had trouble finding a wife before. Work was one reason, but the main reason was his identity.

Now that things have been reformed, who cares about his petty bourgeois status? The difficulty in finding a wife now lies in his age and job.

A self-employed person in his early thirties!

In the city, if you have any of these characteristics, it will be difficult to find a wife. If you have both of these characteristics, you have to be prepared to be single for the rest of your life. But in the countryside, this is not a problem.

Life in the countryside is so hard these days.

Even in the suburbs of Beijing, people can just barely make ends meet. They don't have the various benefits that people in the city have, so there aren't many girls who want to marry into the city.

Li Hongbing's conditions are not bad either. He has a Beijing household registration, is in good health, and owns two large houses.

Chen Fan analyzed it carefully: "As long as you don't mind rural hukou, and just want to find a good-looking 18-year-old, you can find one."

Li Hongbing blushed.

Old boy!

It's normal to be unable to wipe your face.

"Tomorrow, ask someone in the village to find out, or find a matchmaker in the village and make an appointment. Next time you go to pick up the goods, you can go on a blind date directly."

"Listen to you!"

Li Hongbing blushed and grinned.

"Remember to change into new clothes so that people won't look down on you. Also, prepare a red envelope for the matchmaker in the village and promise more gifts so that it will be easier to find a good partner."

"Yeah!" Li Hongbing took note of it carefully.

"Take your time to figure it out."

Leaving Li Hongbing in a daze, Chen Fan went back to the house and took out four snakeskin bags.

I opened one at random and took out a letter and tore it open.

"Comrade Chen Fan: Hello, I used to work in the Great Northern Wilderness and only returned to the city last year. Some people used to say that working in the countryside is just suffering and meaningless. I have never quite agreed with that. Just like what you wrote in your novel, we also made contributions..."

It’s okay to praise us.

After putting the letter away, Chen Fan took out another one and started reading.

"Comrade Chen Fan: You have covered up too much pain regarding the educated youth going to the countryside. That period was like a nightmare to me..."

This is a criticism of us, I won’t read it.

Throwing it aside, Chen Fan took out another one. This one was too much and started cursing directly.

Chen Fan tore it up and threw it aside.

After reading more than twenty letters in succession, Chen Fan summarized them and found that there were both good and bad ones. There were as many criticisms as there were praises. The problem still lay in the suffering and dedication of the educated youth.

There is a reason why scar literature is popular. Many educated youth return to the city with trauma in their hearts and need scar literature to soothe their souls.

But these questions are too advanced.

Chen Fan always believed that he was just writing something to earn some royalties and was a writer, as he could not afford to get involved in the discussion and could not understand it.

I looked at the time and it was already past four o'clock.

Chen Fan stopped worrying about it, put the letter away, and went straight to Courtyard 45. He asked Uncle Ma to go in and call for help. After a while, Xu Jinqiu came out. "We saw a lot of potholes on the road today. Let's do some good deeds and rub the road?"

"Why are you so poor?"

Xu Jinqiu smiled, rolled her eyes at him, and walked forward: "Come on, what are you doing?"

Chen Fan hurriedly caught up and after turning a few corners they arrived at Beihai Park.

Sitting by the Beihai Lake, looking at the White Pagoda opposite, Chen Fan casually found a topic: "The Erhai Lake in the book is like a fairyland on earth. How do you think it compares to here?"

"There's no way to compare them. One is natural scenery, the other is a royal garden. If I had to choose, it would definitely be Erhai Lake. Whenever we go to the countryside, we like to go to Erhai Lake during the slack season."

"Can you do farm work?"

"How refreshing! If I go to the countryside and don't do farm work to earn work points, will I starve to death?"

Xu Jinqiu rolled her eyes at the man and said unhappily, "There's nothing you can't do when it comes to farm work, such as transplanting rice, harvesting, threshing, and herding cattle."

As he said this, he couldn't help but sigh: "There's a lot of farm work to do in the countryside, and Yunnan has plenty of sunshine. I've been tanned like a black girl. If you had met me last year, you would definitely have looked down on me."

Chen Fan teased: "Meeting the right person at the right time, this is called fate."

Xu Jinqiu covered her face and said, "Why do you always say things in a set way? Is this how you behave when you meet a pretty girl?"

"Am I that kind of person?"

"Yes!"

Xu Jinqiu nodded. She could tease people with anything she said. This ability was not something most people had.

"No, I can only say this to you. If you tell other girls, you will be sent to jail as a gangster." Chen Fan joked.

"..."

Xu Jinqiu was speechless. So he was being rude to me?

He was so angry that he slapped Chen Fan.

Chen Fan smiled, stopped teasing the girl, and changed the subject: "Tell me about your experience of working in the countryside. I'm quite curious about how the educated youth in Dali lived."

“It’s just farm work.”

Xu Jinqiu recalled that life was extremely hard back then. They ate simple meals with almost no oil or water, lived in a simple thatched hut, and in the summer there were so many mosquitoes that they could kill people.

During the busy farming season, I had to get up at five in the morning and walk a long way to work in the fields every day. When I came back, I felt like I had lost half my life.

There was not much entertainment at that time, so when the educated youth got together, they could only find joy in the midst of hardship by singing songs under the starry sky, telling stories, or reading books.

"If there's anything interesting, it's the Torch Festival. The educated youth would also participate. It's a real carnival, but it only happens once a year."

"Also, we go up to the mountains to pick mushrooms during the slack season. There are so many mushrooms there, and we can sell them to recycling stations after drying them. We don't want to eat anything good at that time, so we rely on picking mushrooms to make some money."

"Generally speaking, those two years were a happy time amidst hardship. Sometimes it's quite interesting to think about it, but if I were to choose again, I would definitely not go."

"Two years? You came back last year, and you were also the last batch of educated youth who went to the countryside in 1977?"

"The same to you?"

"Well, it seems that we are indeed a good match. We are both not very smart. We were instigated and went to the countryside on impulse." Chen Fan joked.

"Who is worthy of you? You are acting hysterical again."

Xu Jinqiu blushed again, and pinched Chen Fan angrily: "What about you? When you went to Saihanba Forest Farm, was it the same as what you wrote in your book, with yellow sand blocking the sun in summer and autumn, and ice and snow in spring and winter?"

"The timeline in the book is the 1960s. When we went there, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest had been planted, and the environment was slightly better, but the work was still just as tiring."

Chen Fan also talked about some things about queue-jumping. Compared with Dali, the environment in Saihanba is undoubtedly much worse, especially on the dam in winter, which is not suitable for human survival.

After chatting for a while, only the afterglow of the sunset remained.

It was already time for dinner, so the two started walking back. By the time it got dark, the state-owned restaurant would have kicked everyone out.

This is really no joke.

Those working in state-owned restaurants have stable jobs and good pay. The waiters all think they are superior to others and if they are not happy about something, they will slam the table and say: I won't serve you anymore.

If you go too late, or it's close to the end of the working day, the waiter will definitely roll his eyes and say to you: "There are only tables and chairs left, do you want to eat?"

The two men quickened their pace and ran into Zhang Jianjun when they passed Courtyard 46. However, this time, Zhang Jianjun had a bruised face and nose and was limping as he walked.

"Jianjun, were you beaten? Who was the idiot who beat you so hard? How do you feel now? Do you want me to take you to the hospital?"

　Cold, headache~A day of pure consumption of saved drafts~Please support with monthly tickets~
　　
　
(End of this chapter)