In 1959, what's wrong with me pedaling a tricycle?

The New Year's Eve dinner was ready, and everyone started to tidy up the table, set out the bowls and chopsticks, and serve the dishes. Wang Xingguo opened a bottle of wine and poured wine for everyone; those who couldn't drink alcohol could drink soda.

This year's New Year's Eve dinner was a bit worse than last year's. Given the current economic climate, Wang Xingguo didn't want to be too ostentatious, so he didn't bring back a lot of ingredients.

Anyway, although the ingredients prepared by the several families for the New Year's Eve dinner were ordinary, the total amount was quite large, making it a very sumptuous New Year's Eve dinner.

After a lively New Year's Eve dinner, everyone started making dumplings. It's so convenient to live in one place; everyone except Li Wenbin and his wife lives here, so making dumplings and staying up all night together is perfect.

While we were making dumplings, firecrackers started going off in the yard. The young kids couldn't sit still, so they took the firecrackers, broke them apart, and ran out to set them off.

The firecrackers were so loud that they frightened Wang Jianhua and Wang Chengan into tears. Their mother quickly picked them up and comforted them, and it took her a while to calm them down.

Right after midnight, the dumplings were put into the pot on time, and everyone ate their first dumplings of the new year.

Then, those who stayed up to welcome the New Year stayed up, some set off firecrackers, and others went to sleep.

Wang Xingguo wouldn't let Li Xiuping stay up all night to celebrate the New Year. He said he was enough and there was no need for her to suffer through the night.

Taking care of children is never an easy task, especially now that it's time to sleep. When the child starts crying, it's like triggering an alarm, instantly waking the couple up.

Otherwise, Li Xiuping wouldn't have gone to sleep with Wang Xingning. It's just that the child's constant fussing would make it hard for Wang Xingguo to sleep or eat properly.

The night market's holiday will still last until the third day of the Lunar New Year, and it will resume business on the evening of the third day. However, there are not many goods to sell during the Lunar New Year period.

Right now, the warehouse only has some dried seaweed and grain; there are no other supplies. We need to go back to Gaobeidian to purchase more, or Wang Xingguo can release some items from his spatial storage so we can bring them back to the night market to sell.

Inside Wang Xingguo's space, there are probably several thousand cans of various kinds of food, with grains being the main component. There are estimated to be 40,000 to 50,000 jin of rice and more than 30,000 jin of flour.

Unfortunately, he was unlucky. When he was staking out the dock warehouses, one of them turned out to be a grain warehouse, and it only had one-fifth of its contents left.

Canned goods and similar items were mostly obtained from the warehouses of foreign trading companies. The Japanese trading companies had a lot of general merchandise, and Western medicines were all obtained from the Japanese side.

The reason why the batch of items left in Guangzhou were so valuable was largely due to the various hard-to-obtain instruments and equipment, but medicines also accounted for a significant proportion, while grain was actually the most abundant but also the least valuable item.

On the evening of the third day of the Lunar New Year, people gathered in twos and threes to chat at the night market. Occasionally, a customer would come in, but there was nothing to buy, so they would leave disappointed.

It wasn't until the fifth day of the Lunar New Year that Wang Xingguo returned with a truckload of goods. The night market returned to its usual bustling state, with a constant stream of people rushing to buy things.

February passed quickly, and mid-March arrived. Temperatures began to rise, and everything came back to life.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, because winter was the hardest time to get through. After getting through winter, at least there would be wild vegetables and green vegetables to supplement their diet, so they wouldn't go hungry all the time.

Edema has already appeared quietly, but it is not obvious yet. However, the sallow complexion of people's faces is already very obvious after they lose weight.

The shortage of supplies persists; pork and eggs are still unavailable at the market, and occasionally some frozen miscellaneous fish can be managed to be found.

However, with oilseeds in short supply, people are hoping to buy pork to supplement their diet.

Animal fats are different from vegetable oils, and the same is true for fish fats.

At this time, canned luncheon meat was the most popular nutritional supplement.

Those rich people no longer treat money like money; five cans of luncheon meat can be exchanged for a small yellow croaker.

In fact, due to information asymmetry, ordinary people do not know how to supplement nutrition to help their malnourished bodies recover. They can only think of feeding meat to their family members who have edema.

Most wealthy people know that grains combined with animal fats are the most effective way to supplement nutrition.

So they also drove up the price of grain; a small yellow croaker could be exchanged for just ten kilograms of rice or ten kilograms of flour.

Wang Xingguo quietly hauled four cartloads of grain back. He took two cartloads that night to exchange for small yellow croakers, refusing cash. During the day, he sold the other two cartloads at a low price to families suffering from edema due to malnutrition, based on certificates issued by the neighborhood committee.

They also gave Grandpa Li two more cartloads of grain, one cartload of flour and one cartload of rice.

Everyone assumed it was the grain from last time, since the amount of grain last time was not small.

However, Minister Liu received a report that there was too much grain at the night market, exceeding the amount they had obtained last time. The relevant personnel asked Minister Liu whether to investigate further.

After Minister Liu called Wang Xingguo to inquire about the whereabouts of so much grain, he personally came to find Wang Xingguo and wanted to reconcile their account books before burning the old ones.

Minister Liu only said to Wang Xingguo, "Do whatever you want. I'll cover for you. Prepare the application for the night market's restructuring in advance. Once this period is over, immediately carry out the restructuring and settle the accounting matters. I don't care how you got the grain. What you're doing is good, especially for Director Li's side. They are very short of this grain. As long as you don't do anything wrong, I can handle this. Just go ahead and do it with confidence."

Wang Xingguo wasn't too worried about being suspected regarding the grain issue, because he had his old leader with him!

Even if Minister Liu and Director Li can't cover it up, the old leader can not only cover it up, but will definitely be able to send him to the army to get out of trouble.

Since his trip to Guangzhou, Wang Xingguo knew that as long as he didn't do anything that would betray the country and harm the people, his old leader would protect him.

That's ten train cars full of goods, nearly 600 cubic meters in volume!

If the stack is two meters high, it would require an area of ​​nearly 300 square meters! If the stack is three meters high, it would require an area of ​​nearly 200 square meters to hold all these goods.

And so, it was quietly transferred to a warehouse at Huangpu Wharf. Such a big thing, yet the old leader was able to suppress and smooth it over.

The grain issue in the capital is nothing!

Nobody would think of such a thing as a spatial device; they would only think that Wang Xingguo was colluding with someone to smuggle supplies—there have been far too many such cases!

Not everyone is like Li Zhong, who puts the greater good before his own family. Pests are always around, and there are quite a few at this time.

So Wang Xingguo wasn't afraid at all. At worst, he'd get a scolding from his old boss and be sent to the army for a few years of training!

After seeing Minister Liu off, Wang Xingguo said to Gan Ping, "Old Gan, you've gotten a great deal. You don't have to pay back the more than 300,000 yuan you owe us."

Gan Ping couldn't help but burst into laughter, "Thank you, Director Wang, thank you, Minister Liu! I've been so stressed out, but now I can finally breathe a sigh of relief, hahaha..."