Hard times: I worked as a truck driver in the county town

Inside the rest room at the county transportation station.

Jiang Cheng drank hot water and looked at the newspapers he had ordered from the station.

There are only two people at the entire transportation station: Jiang Cheng and Chen Minggang, the station manager.

Chen Minggang is 46 years old this year. He used to be a clerk at the tractor station. The tractor station didn't have many tractors. He was in charge of things like farm reclamation.

After the townships were established as communes the previous year, the rural areas of the townships became collectively owned, and the tractor stations added new services to also serve some communes.

After the transportation station was established, Chen Minggang, a tractor station clerk with some experience in external liaison, was recommended to become the station manager because of his conscientiousness and responsibility.

There are no station staff or loading/unloading workers yet. The transportation station has just been established and has no business. Why would we need station staff or loading/unloading workers?

In the two rooms of the transportation station, Li Minggang was sitting in his office, drinking tea, reading the newspaper, and waiting for transportation orders. Jiang Cheng was in the break room, also quite relaxed.

Twenty-one-year-old Jiang Cheng became the only car driver in the county, which many people envied.

Of course, many people thought he was lucky to be selected by the motor transport unit after joining the army. His current status as a truck driver is largely due to luck.

Luck was indeed luck for Jiang Cheng. But only he knew that his luck wasn't in becoming a truck driver, nor in becoming the county's only driver after his discharge. His luck lay in obtaining the "Opportunity Selection" system at the age of ten; acquiring the system was his greatest stroke of luck.

As for everything that happened afterward, Jiang Cheng didn't think it was luck, but rather the result of a choice made by chance.

When Jiang Cheng was transitioning from elementary to middle school, his grades were just average. At that time, the system gave him a choice. It was a very simple choice: choose a direction for his studies or give up on that direction.

Different choices yield different rewards, plus a luck bonus.

Choosing to pursue education will bring Jiang Cheng a boost in fortune. Choosing to abandon the path of education will not bring any boost in fortune.

Jiang Cheng's academic performance was average, but he didn't dislike reading and chose to continue down the path of studying. The system then rewarded him with a beginner-level learning specialization.

The basic learning specialization and the luck bonus are both invisible and intangible things. However, after Jiang Cheng made his choice, he felt that learning became easier, and he was more focused on learning anything.

From elementary school to junior high school, Jiang Cheng only triggered the opportunity system a few times, and the rewards were mostly small and there was no luck bonus.

It wasn't until he was about to take the high school entrance exam after graduating from junior high that the system presented Jiang Cheng with a major choice.

Jiang Cheng had good grades at that time, and he would have no problem getting into high school or vocational school.

Normally, people preferred to attend vocational high schools because they guaranteed job placement, while high schools did not. In those days, the required scores for vocational high school were higher than those for high school.

However, the system gave him a greater boost in luck if he went to high school than if he went to vocational school. At that time, Jiang Cheng guessed that it might be because if he did well in high school, he would have the opportunity to take the college entrance exam. If he could become a college student, he would be a prodigy in this era.

However, the Opportunity System offers a third option: join the army, which provides an even greater boost to one's luck.

The year Jiang Cheng took the high school entrance exam, he failed and didn't get into high school. Actually, it was intentional on his own, because he chose to join the army.

When you join the army, you don't have the right to choose where you'll be assigned to the military. Instead, the recruiting officer will come and you'll be assigned to that location.

Jiang Cheng gave up his studies to join the army, which puzzled him at the time. With his grades, he should have been better suited for vocational school or high school than for military service, and he also had a "talent" for learning.

Later, Jiang Cheng joined the army. When he boarded the train, he learned that he had been assigned to the Suzhou-Wuxi area. Not long after arriving there, he was selected to join the motor transport unit.

It was then that Jiang Cheng realized that giving up high school or vocational school and choosing to join the army that year would bring him better luck than studying. Because joining the army a year earlier or later would result in different military units and local authorities coming to pick him up in the county.

Different people, at different times, make decisions that lead to different results.

Jiang Cheng served as a motor transport soldier in the motor transport unit for three years, meeting the requirements for discharge. However, he still had many options, because motor transport is a technical branch of the military, and he could apply for extended service or promotion to officer after completing his term to continue his career in the military.

Even if a soldier returns to civilian life after being discharged, the resettlement office will try its best to find a job according to the soldier's wishes.

Jiang Cheng is a soldier in the army who drives trucks, and the city is short of drivers. The career development opportunities are completely different between working in the city and working in the county.

Take residents' welfare as an example. The average resident in the city is allotted five ounces of cooking oil per month, while residents in the county town are only allotted three ounces. There are also discrepancies in the rations of grain and non-staple foods.

Other items like eggs, sugar, and tofu are generally available in rations for city residents. However, in the county towns below, supplies are frequently interrupted, and some items require queuing.

The salary for a driver in the city is the same as in the county, but the difference in status between a county resident and a city resident is huge. For Jiang Cheng alone, the difference isn't too significant, but if he works and registers his household in the city, and then has a wife and children—a family of several people—the cumulative difference will be enormous.

However, the system's choice for Jiang Cheng was to stay in his hometown county and become a driver, which would give him the greatest boost to his luck. Therefore, Jiang Cheng became the only driver in the county at present.

"This opportunity system has been around for over ten years, and the choices we made back then weren't necessarily the right ones. If we keep making choices based on how much the system's fortune bonuses, it feels a bit like we're being manipulated."

Jiang Cheng put down the newspaper in his hand and stared out the window, lost in thought.

Eleven years have passed. With age and maturity, my perspective on issues has changed, and I can see things more deeply now.

Jiang Cheng had this idea because he felt that the luck bonus given by the system was only a luck bonus at that time.

For example, the reason Jiang Cheng chose to join the army as a truck driver, with higher transport bonuses, was because it was compared to attending high school or vocational school. But what if Jiang Cheng had chosen to attend high school, graduated, and then gone on to university?

If you're a college student, you'll have more options and greater luck bonuses when you trigger a choice at that time.

Furthermore, after completing his military service, Jiang Cheng felt that the opportunities provided by the system were appropriate for the circumstances at the time, and that staying in the military long-term might not necessarily be a bad thing.

Another option is to stay in the county town, which might bring many short-term benefits, such as being better off as a driver in the city. However, in the long run, is working in the city really worse than staying in the county town?

Jiang Cheng is currently unaware of what opportunities await him if he stays in the county as a truck driver, just like when he joined the army and didn't know he would be selected by the automotive department.

But Jiang Cheng knew that choosing to become a truck driver in the county was just the beginning.

"If the opportunity system is triggered again in the future, we can try other options."

Jiang Cheng muttered to himself again, although the past ten years or so had been incredibly smooth thanks to the choices provided by the system. Now, as a car driver, he was the envy of most people in the county and one of the so-called "eight high-ranking officials" of this era.

However, Jiang Cheng still felt like he was being led by the nose by consistently choosing the best option based on the system's fortune bonus. Even though it was his own choice, he kept doing it.