Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

The task force used this key to open Tang Weidong's safe deposit box at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

There was no cash or bankbook in the cabinet, only a metal file box.

Inside the box was a stack of notebooks bound together with rubber bands. The covers were the most ordinary kind of kraft paper work notebooks, and each one had the year written on it, from 2003 until the time of the incident.

The notebook was filled with detailed records of every irregular approval and internal profit distribution handled by Tang Weidong during his tenure: mine name, mining rights holder, actual controller, approval date, name and organization of the person making the request, method and amount of benefits received, who in the mining management system received how much money, and details of the revenue from sand and gravel mining rights that he and You Chuanfu had resold over the years.

Some of the entries also had records of physical delivery marked in red pen at the end, such as "a house was given as a gift (registered under Tang Lin's name)" and "the purchase price of a vehicle was paid on her behalf".

Many of the records in these notebooks perfectly matched the bank transfer records obtained by the task force.

During subsequent interrogations, Tang Weidong confessed to his crimes.

He confessed that before 2013, he was still somewhat hesitant and only dared to "do favors" for acquaintances during the approval process, but dared not directly accept large sums of money.

After 2013, as Shen Wangshan's black gold empire in Yi'an continued to expand, he witnessed firsthand how Shen Wangshan used money and women to corrupt his colleagues in other positions in the mining management system, and his own defenses gradually weakened.

He began to proactively reveal to You Chuanfu which river sections would be listed for sale, what the reserve price would be, and even personally modified the technical parameters in You Chuanfu's tender documents.

A tacit chain of interests later formed within the Mining Management Section—superiors turned a blind eye, lower-level staff received extra subsidies every month, and Tang Weidong was responsible for the overall operation and smoothing things over with higher-ups. The entire chain of approval and supervision of sand and gravel resources in Shiqiao County was layered and entangled by this network of interests.

Based on the records in Tang Weidong's notebook, the task force conducted a thorough investigation of the relevant personnel within the mine management system.

On the day Tang Weidong was transferred to the detention center, Jiang Ruolan went to Xiahe Town.

She wanted to personally tell the progress of the case to those who had cried on the ruins, squatted by the tricycle, and remained silent on the doorstep.

The car stopped at the entrance of Fanjiacun Village. She walked across the dirt road, which was riddled with potholes from the sand trucks. Along the roadside were patches of withered corn stalks, and a few crooked old locust trees were shedding their leaves in the autumn wind.

Fan Zhixing stood at the entrance of his rebuilt pig farm waiting for her, wearing a faded blue work uniform with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing his two arms tanned dark by the sun.

Behind him were two newly built pigsties with red brick walls and asbestos tile roofs. Although they were much smaller than the old ones, they were very clean. The pigsties were covered with freshly replaced straw, and several piglets that had just been weaned were rooting around in the straw pile, making soft grunts.

A brand-new Spring Festival couplet was pasted on the door, with the words "Peace is a blessing" written in black characters on red paper. The ink had dried and gleamed slightly in the afternoon sun.

Fan Zhixing grinned, revealing a missing front tooth, which had been broken off by fragments of brick that flew out when the bulldozer pushed the wall.

He didn't say anything to express his gratitude, but simply rubbed his hands vigorously on his pants and then reached out to shake hands with Jiang Ruolan.

Jiang Ruolan looked down and saw that the palm of her hand, which had held a shovel and a pig feeder for more than 20 years, was covered with hard calluses, as hard as a piece of dried tree bark.

Grandma Jiang was sitting in her yard husking corn, an old cloth spread on her knees. Golden corn kernels rolled one by one from her withered fingers into the enamel basin with a crisp pattering sound.

Seeing the police officer approaching, she put down the corncob in her hand, slowly stood up from the chair, patted the corn silk off her knees, and moved with composure and serenity.

She pointed to the hens pecking at the ground in the corner of the yard and said that the speckled hen had been laying eggs a lot lately, one a day, more punctual than an alarm clock. Once she had a basketful, she would send it to Fan Zhixing to help him recover, as he had lost a lot of weight from building the pigsty.

Jiang Ruolan asked her if she would still be willing to testify in court if someone needed her to in the future. Grandma Jiang tossed the corncob into the basin and said one word in an extremely serious but slightly displeased tone:

"go."

After she finished speaking, she bent down and picked up a fallen corn kernel from the ground, looked at it in the sunlight, and carefully put it into the basin, as if she were putting in something very precious.

After leaving Fanjiacun, Jiang Ruolan went to the Xiahe Town Farmers Market.

Liu Cuifang was weighing vegetables at her stall. A bunch of fresh bok choy was piled on the electronic scale. She looked down and pressed the meter, muttering, "Three jin and two liang, I'll give you three jin."

Her stall was in the worst corner of the market, and the awning above her head had a hole in it, patched up with a snakeskin bag, which rattled loudly in the wind.

But the vegetables on her stall were neatly arranged, with greens, radishes, potatoes, and peppers placed separately in bamboo baskets, each one washed clean.

She got a new tricycle, bright blue in color, with tires still covered in unworn hairs, and a clean plastic sheet lining the cargo bed.

Seeing Jiang Ruolan approach, she paused for a moment, then emerged from behind the electronic scale, wiping her hands repeatedly on her apron. She then tightly grasped Jiang Ruolan's hand, holding it for a long while, her eyes reddening, but a smile lingering on her lips. She spoke in a tone as if she had finally managed to say something she had been holding back for a long time:

"Director Jiang, I sold eighty jin of vegetables this morning. I rode here from the wholesale market, it's three li, and the tires aren't punctured."

Jiang Ruolan returned to the car, and it was already dark outside the window.

The last light at the Xiahe Town farmers' market slowly shrank into a blurry halo in her rearview mirror.

She started the engine, but didn't drive off immediately. She sat quietly in the driver's seat for a while, then took out her phone and sent Zhou Pei a message:

"Tang Weidong's notebook records multiple chains of interest within the mining management system, involving several illegal operations in the approval of mining rights in Shiqiao County. We need you to coordinate with the Provincial Department of Economic Investigation to follow up simultaneously and include all relevant personnel along the entire line in the investigation and deal with them together."

Less than half a minute after the message was sent, Zhou Pei replied with two words: "Received."

She started the car and turned on the headlights.

Two beams of light cleaved through the night, illuminating the dirt road ahead, riddled with potholes from gravel trucks.

In the near future, this road will be repaved with asphalt, crops will grow again in the farmland on both sides of the road, the river embankment in Xiaohe Town will be reinforced, and the collapsed riverbanks will be repaired little by little.

Grandma Jiang's speckled chickens will continue to lay an egg every day, Liu Cuifang's tricycle tires will no longer be slashed, and the piglets in Fan Zhixing's new pig farm will grow up by rooting around in the straw pile.

But Ding Dazhuang still doesn't dare let people in police uniforms into his house. His daughter has just learned to laugh, and he will have to waver between fear and trust for a long time.

But it's alright—justice requires patience, she has plenty of time...

...........