Returning to 1949, I decided to hand it over to the state.

In 1949, what exactly did they need to do to completely change the fate of their entire family?

My grandfather joining the army was indeed a good career path in those days.

After being discharged from the army, he entered a machinery factory in Shenyang, where he had a secure job and lived a stable life for decades.

But that's just enough to keep you from starving or getting too full.

When my parents' generation came along, they were caught in the wave of layoffs in the 1990s, and their family struggled to make ends meet.

As for my generation, although I worked my hardest to get into university, I still ended up as a wage slave in Shenzhen after graduation. Looking at the housing prices that were tens of thousands per square meter, I felt waves of despair.

Therefore, if you want to get rich, simply working a regular job is definitely not enough.

Fortunately, my great-grandfather was able to settle down in Beiping and buy a courtyard house, which was a perfect shortcut.

Unfortunately, my great-grandfather didn't listen at all.

But you can't really blame him for this.

After all, in those days, moving to Beiping meant leaving one's hometown for ordinary Northeastern workers, abandoning the secure job they had worked so hard to secure, and starting over in a completely unfamiliar place.

Moreover, my great-grandfather had gone through a lot of trouble to "venture into the Northeast" from Shandong and settle down there. In addition, his generation had an almost obsessive sense of belonging to the land and the factory.

"Born to be a member of Ansteel, die to be a soul of Ansteel"—this simple belief has long been their creed.

Asking them to leave the blast furnace and move is harder than taking their lives.

So what should we do?

Jiang Fan scratched his head until it looked like a bird's nest, but he couldn't come up with a perfect solution.

Finally, he could only resort to the old method: posting another question to ask the all-knowing netizens.

After all, these days, some hilarious and quirky netizens are sometimes more reliable than experts.

He opened his backend again and typed out a new idea post:

If you could travel back to Northeast China in 1949, what would you do to become wealthy and change your family's fate?

As a science popularization blogger, posting these kinds of imaginative and time-traveling posts is just part of his daily routine.

But after posting two messages today, the fan group and comment section quickly became lively.

"Wait, UP, did you really time travel? Why are you posting these kinds of things all day?"

"Did your procrastinator take the wrong medicine today?"

"I just finished reading the last post, and those experts' analyses were quite insightful. Why are they posting about getting rich again? Blogger, why don't you hurry up and work on the script for the next video? What are you doing posting updates here?"

Normally, it takes Jiang Fan two or three days to research and write a script to make a hardcore science video. If he can only upload two videos a week, he's considered a donkey in the production team.

Jiang Fan ignored the teasing from his fans.

After all, they were right, they really had time-traveled!

Moreover, the more he tried to prove himself, the easier it was to fall into a trap, so he simply ignored them and focused on reading the truly useful comments.

Soon, a reply that seemed quite experienced was pushed to the top:

"Have you ever read any period drama novels? In Northeast China, the starting point is always fishing, farming, and going up the mountain – the three essentials to getting rich! Go back to the countryside to raise livestock, lease mountain land, save up your first pot of gold, and then when the reform and opening-up policy kicks in, you'll take off!"

Jiang Fan's lips twitched; this idea looked extremely unreliable.

Go back to Northeast China in 1949 and get these three items?

Fishing? The Northeast does have the Songhua River and the Heilongjiang River, but back then there was no internet, no electricity, and no cold chain logistics. Who would buy all the fish you caught?

The only thing we can do is pickle salted fish. How much can you earn from pickling salted fish?

Farming? The black soil of Northeast China is indeed so fertile that you could squeeze oil out of it, but that was in 1949. The land reform had not been fully completed yet. They might not even have enough to eat, let alone get rich.

As for going up the mountain...

"Passing through forests and crossing snowfields, their spirit soars to the heavens."

That would require the skills of a lone hero like Yang Zirong.

In 1949, in the deep forests of Northeast China, the remnants of bandits and the Bearded Ones had not yet been completely wiped out, and the hilltops were still connected.

If a modern person who is unable to carry anything goes into the deep mountains and forests, they might be kidnapped and torn apart by bandits on the very first day.

These online novel tropes are completely unreliable.

Jiang Fan scrolled down again and finally found something that was slightly more serious.

"In 1949... I felt the most promising path was to join the army, follow Fourth Master south, fight Chiang Kai-shek, then go to Korea to fight the Americans. If you survived, you would be a hero, and after being demobilized, the state would arrange a job for you. You would definitely be a member of the first generation of the Red Army."

Jiang Fan knew, of course, that this path led to a bright future, but his grandfather had already taken it.

Another comment was even more outrageous.

"That's easy, just go and arrest Chiang Kai-shek, and you'll be the number one hero in rebuilding the republic."

"They had hundreds of thousands of troops, and you went and arrested him all by yourself. Why didn't you just go to Chongqing and arrest Mao Renfeng?"

"Why are you arresting Mao Renfeng? He was still in Taiwan back then."

"That's even more impressive, you swim across the Taiwan Strait to catch him."

The comments section completely veered off course, with discussions turning into absurd topics like whether it would be possible to solo the Presidential Palace if one traveled back to 1949.

Jiang Fan was at his wit's end. He sighed, locked his phone screen, and leaned back in his gaming chair, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Honestly, if you think about it carefully, back in 1949, as an ordinary modern person, there really wasn't any fertile ground for him to make a fortune by going it alone.

work to earn a living?

The whole country was about to adopt the system of communal dining and the issuance of grain and cloth coupons, and the purchasing power of money was extremely limited in those days.

Going abroad to trade goods?

The new China was not yet widely recognized by the international community, and it did not even have a legal identity. How could it go out and do business with foreigners?

Therefore, after much thought, the only feasible and safest approach is to hand it over to the state.

Make the blueprints and samples of the product, and then have the government or large state-owned factories mass-produce them for export to earn foreign exchange.

As an "overseas returned technical expert," I would like to receive a reasonable bonus or share of the profits.

The country earned much-needed foreign exchange and industrial machinery, the factories made profits and achieved political success, and the government itself reaped tangible benefits.

A win-win-win situation.

As for the money or receipts he earned, he didn't keep a single penny for himself; he left it all to his great-grandfather's family.

As long as my great-grandfather could live a comfortable life in that era of scarcity, and my grandfather and parents could no longer have to struggle for a living, and the family could support several college students, then my modern life trajectory would surely rise accordingly and be completely changed, right?

"This is probably the only way we can go."

Jiang Fan mentally prepared himself.

He turned his head and looked again at the newly drawn sketch of the folding entrenching tool on the table.

When we get back to 1949, we'll rewrite this diagram and show it to Director He and Zhou Chunsheng for their opinions.

Once the news of Daqing Oilfield producing oil reached Ansteel, proving its strategic value, it would have enough leverage to have a proper discussion with its superiors about exporting gas cylinder mortars to the Middle East to earn foreign exchange.

His gaze then fell upon the mysterious watch face lying quietly on the table.

The countdown was still ticking on the ground.

There are only ten hours left until the next teleportation.

"Next, get a good night's sleep, have a good meal, and be fully refreshed to get back to work!"

Jiang Fan stood up and walked to the bed. Just before closing his eyes, a thought flashed through his mind:

"Speaking of this trip back... on which day of the timeline will it fall?"