Official title: Refused to stay at the university, started his career in a rural town.

Yang Fan arrived home around noon on the 30th of the twelfth lunar month.

From Qingping Township to Yantai City, then by minibus to the county, and finally by tractor into the mountains.

The mountain road was so bumpy it felt like his bones were going to fall apart. He was carrying a large sack filled with Qingping apples and small cans of tea for his neighbors. He got off the bus at the village entrance.

The village is called Yangjiayu, with dozens of households scattered in the mountain valley.

It was already getting dark, and smoke was rising from the roof of the mud-brick house, mixed with the smell of firewood and the sour smell of pig feed.

Yang Fan stood there for a while.

Nine years! Starting from the year I was admitted to Handong University.

The road is still the same dirt road, the houses are still the same stone houses, and the old locust tree at the entrance of the village is still bare; nothing has changed.

A hunched figure emerged from the alley, carrying a winnowing basket. He looked up, saw him, and paused for a few seconds.

"Mortal baby?"

"mom."

His mother put the winnowing basket on the ground, wiped her hands on her apron, her lips trembled a few times, but she couldn't say a word.

Yang Fan went over and helped her walk home.

At home, his father, Yang Degui, was squatting at the entrance of the main room chopping wood. When he saw Yang Fan, he almost missed with his axe.

The old man dropped the axe, rubbed his hands on his knees, and took the things Yang Fan was carrying.

"Why bring all this? There's food at home."

Yang Fan didn't reply. He put the apples and tea leaves on the stove. His mother was already busy adding firewood to the stove, saying that she was stewing chicken. "Your dad raised an old hen for a year, just waiting for you to come back."

Lunch consisted of two dishes: stewed chicken and pickled cabbage with glass noodles.

Yang Degui ate his rice silently, while his mother kept putting food into his bowl, barely touching his own chopsticks.

"How's it going in Qingping?" Yang Degui asked.

"Not bad, the average income per person in the township this year is 4,800 yuan."

Yang Degui paused for a moment.

"Four thousand eight?"

"Um."

The old man didn't say anything more. Yang Fan knew what he was thinking. Last year, the per capita income in Yangjiayu was less than 400 yuan.

After dinner, Yang Fan sat in the main room for a while.

His mother was washing dishes in the kitchen, and the clattering of the dishes and chopsticks could be heard. Yang Degui was squatting at the door smoking a pipe, the cigarette butt glowing and dimming in the darkness.

"Dad, isn't Uncle Dehou still the village secretary?"

"Hmm, who else could it be?"

I'm going to the village committee.

The village office was a stone building with the door ajar. Yang Fan pushed the door open and went inside.

Yang Dehou was hunched over the table flipping through an old account book. His reading glasses were perched on the bridge of his nose. He was almost sixty years old, and the wrinkles on his face resembled those of a walnut shell.

Hearing the noise, he looked up and squinted for a long time.

"Mortal baby?"

Uncle Dehou.

"Why are you back? Didn't your dad say you became the township head in Qingping and were so busy you didn't even come home for the New Year?"

Yang Dehou closed the account book, looked him up and down, and clicked his tongue twice: "You're dressed worse than an old man like me."

Yang Fan pulled up a stool and sat down.

"Uncle Dehou, how's the harvest in our village this year?"

Yang Dehou took out a pipe and lit it: "Not very good. We harvested about 80,000 jin of corn, but after deducting food and feed, we can only sell about 50,000 jin. At 4 mao per jin, after deducting the cost of seeds and fertilizer, we won't make much money."

He paused for a moment, then added, "But the old walnut grove on the back hill bore fruit this year, about 10,000 jin (5,000 catties), but trucks can't get in, so there's nowhere to sell it."

"It costs thirty yuan for diesel to haul it to town. A pound of walnuts doesn't even sell for forty cents. I lose money on every load I haul."

Yang Fan didn't reply, but took a walnut out of his pocket and placed it on the table.

"Uncle Dehou, feel me."

Yang Dehou picked it up, glanced at it, and squeezed it hard. *Crack*. The shell was thin, and the kernel fell out intact.

"Are these walnuts from Qingping?"

"Yes, it's called Thin-shelled Fragrant. The cooperative buys it all at 1.2 yuan per jin. With the final dividend, it can reach 1.4 yuan per jin."

Yang Dehou's eyes nearly popped out: "How much? How much?"

"One yuan and two jiao, and you can't even get your hands on one in the provincial capital."

"Fanwa, you mean... walnuts from our village can sell for this price?"

"The quality is probably not up to par and needs to be improved, but we can still extract oil from them."

Yang Dehou was silent for a moment, then put the walnuts on the table and stood up: "I'll go call someone."

"Uncle, it's New Year's Eve—"

"Who cares about thirty or not!" Yang Dehou tucked his pipe into his waistband. "You wait here."

Less than an hour after Yang Dehou left, the door to the village office was pushed open.

Seven or eight people came in.

There was Yang Dewang, the village accountant; Liu Cuifen, the women's director; Yang Dajun, the cadre; and several elderly villagers—Yang Defu, Yang Degui, and the oldest, Yang Qingshan, who was over eighty years old and using a cane.

Yang Dehou repeated what Yang Fan had just said. The old men passed the walnuts around, hand in hand, and each one paused for a moment after cracking one open.

The kernels are full and the shells are thin. They've grown walnuts all their lives and have never seen such high-quality fruit.

Liu Cuifen stared wide-eyed at Yang Fan: "Little Yang, you're saying our village's walnuts can sell for this price?"

"Last year, Qingping Township sold over 300,000 yuan worth of walnuts. The good quality ones were packaged separately, and the price went up. The lower-quality ones were pressed for oil, and the oil sold for over seven yuan per jin (500 grams)." Yang Fan looked at her. "How many acres are there in that walnut grove behind our village?"

Yang Defu counted on his fingers: "It's about seventy or eighty mu, all old trees, they rely on the weather to survive, and they produce about ten thousand jin a year."

"The variety is pretty good. As long as pruning and fertilization are done properly, the yield can double in three years."

"For the good quality oil, Qingping Township's channels can help us sell it—but there's one condition: we have to follow their standards and grade it by size. For the lower quality oil, we can extract the oil and sell it to the cooperative to make a lot of money."

"It's too late for large-scale production this year, but each household should still have a lot of stock. We'll try to get it to the town to be pressed for oil, and then send it to Qingping Township to be packaged and sold."

The old men exchanged glances, and Yang Dajun spoke first: "No problem, they're willing to help, would we possibly take advantage of them?"

Yang Dehou slammed his pipe on the table: "Let's get to work! Go door to door and count how many walnut trees each family has, how much they produced this year, and what the quality is like. We'll have a report tonight."

Before nightfall, a group of people had already run back.

Several people sat around the table and worked separately. Yang Dehou called out names, Liu Cuifen registered the information, Yang Dewang checked the numbers, and Yang Dajun and several old men took the slips of paper in their hands and reported the situation of each household.

"Yang Degui's family has two mu of walnuts. Last year, they produced about 300 jin, and this year they still have about 130 jin left."

"Yang Dajun's family has more than three mu of land. Last year they produced 400 jin of grain, and they still have more than 200 jin left."

"..."

He reported to each household one by one, and if there were any inaccuracies, Yang Dayong would go door-to-door in the dark to verify them, his footsteps crunching loudly in the snow in front of the door.

The people who were woken up, wearing cotton-padded coats, immediately woke up when they heard it was about counting walnuts. They poured out their family's information like beans spilling out.

The sound of firecrackers outside the window grew louder and louder. Someone had set off a string of firecrackers in their yard, which crackled and popped a dozen times before falling silent again.

Yang Fan sat under the lamp, looking at the densely packed numbers on the paper; the entire village's walnut grove was represented on this piece of paper.

Area, output, quality, and each company's plans.

His mother came to deliver dumplings once, but only looked through the window and didn't come in.

Yang Fan ate half of it, leaving the other half on the table. Liu Cuifen insisted on giving him two more eggs.

The clock came out late at night.

Yang Dehou held the paper, his hand trembling.

He did the math—based on the purchase price in Qingping, the whole village could earn an extra 10,000 yuan just from walnuts.

Ten thousand yuan! That's three or four hundred yuan per household! But that's enough for the children to go to school, for the elderly to see a doctor, and for buying two more bags of fertilizer next year.

"Fanwa," Yang Dehou's voice was a little hoarse, "do you really think this can work out?"

"The goods from Qingping are already in short supply, and they are preparing to expand their scale. As long as the quality meets the standards, we will definitely buy them."

Yang Dehou looked at the paper again and again, then handed it to Yang Dewang: "This doesn't violate your cadre code of conduct, does it?"

"What's the big deal! Our village is supplied with goods according to standards. What does it have to do with me, the township head?"

Yang Fan waved his hand and said.

In Qingping Township, it doesn't matter whose walnuts are purchased, and the payment is based on quality, so there's no issue of buying high and selling low.

Once the walnut planting scale in Yangjiayu is established, they can also create their own small brand and develop in Handong!