Reborn 92's Business Tycoon

Chapter 12: Going Home

Mei Qiuping had prepared lunch early today. When the sun was at its zenith and the father and son had not returned yet, she ladled some peanuts from the cupboard and poured them into a colander, ready to shell them. Most of the peanuts harvested this year were taken to extract oil. Apart from saving some for planting, she also saved a few litres for Feng Zhenchang to snack on with his wine. Of course, when there were guests, fried peanuts could also be served as a dish.

She sat in the main room, peeling the peanuts quickly, occasionally waving her hand to drive away the chickens that were prowling around, while keeping an eye on the movements outside. In the past, when Feng Yiping returned home from school, he would shout 'Mom' from the outside at the frame of the Emei beans. But today, after waiting and waiting, when she had peeled about a bowl of peanuts, there was a dark figure at the door. She looked up and saw that her son had returned.

She took her son's school bag and asked, while throwing his dirty clothes into the basin, 'Are you used to living at school? Are you used to the food?'

Feng Yiping sat down on a stool and started peeling the peanuts, but first he threw the shells into his mouth. 'I'm used to living and eating there. Just like in primary school, there are four people sharing one bed. The food is better than in primary school. The buns in the morning are steamed well, and the rice is also cooked with good rice, not the kind of yellow rice we often ate in primary school.'

When she mentioned this, Mei Qiuping cursed, 'Those heartless people at the primary school, they sent good rice home, and let you eat that kind of stale rice.'

In fact, it wasn't stale rice. After starting work, Feng Yiping realized that it should have been aged rice, with yellowed grains and a strong smell. When they were at primary school, they mostly ate this kind of rice.

'Don't peel it, I'm only doing it because I'm bored. You must be hungry, let's eat first.' Mei Qiuping added washing powder to the basin and poured in water to soak it.

'I'm not very hungry, let's wait for Dad to come home and eat together,' Feng Yiping said.

'That's fine, he'll be home soon anyway, so let's stir-fry the peanuts first, okay?'

'Okay,' Feng Yiping put down the colander and went to the utility room by himself. He scooped up a large ladle of peanuts from a bag on the floor and poured them into the large pot on the stove.

These peanuts are flat peanuts, which cannot be used to extract oil or as seeds. They are either small in size or have no kernels inside. They are usually stir-fried and served as snacks for children.

In the countryside, apart from the main meal, there was no money to buy snacks for children, and things like sugar, biscuits and fruit could only be seen during the New Year or when someone had a wedding. The usual snacks for children were fried pumpkin seeds, fried gourd seeds, flat peanuts, and dried sweet potatoes.

Feng Yiping is quite good at stir-frying peanuts, at least among the four families in the neighbourhood. There is really no secret to it. You just need to stir-fry them over low heat for a long time, let them cool down after they are done, and then temper them over low heat again.

He has just added some straw to the stove, and a delicious aroma is beginning to waft out. Feng Jiaseng's wife, a neighbour, comes in with a bowl of food and goes straight to Mei Qiuping. It's not unusual for neighbours to drop by with a bowl of food, and after a few words, she goes into the kitchen. 'Yiping, you're frying peanuts again. Why are you such a glutton?'

It's best to avoid these kind of jokes from the wife. 'Has Jiaseng come back?'

Her husband Feng Jiaseng works in the town hall canteen.

'No, it'll be in the evening,'

she says, lifting the morning gauze covering the food. 'Tsk, your mother really loves you, doesn't she? Look, the tofu was replaced the day before yesterday, but they didn't want to eat it and kept it until you came home,'

Feng Yiping says with a smile. 'Yes, you're the same with Sister Jinzhi. You save all the good food for her. We'll be able to repay you when we grow up!'

Jin Zhi is her daughter, five years older than Feng Yiping. After graduating from junior high school, Feng Jiansheng found someone to get her a job at the county textile factory.

'Haha, that's right, when we get old and can't work anymore, we'll have to rely on you!'

When Feng Zhenchang came home, the peanuts were already fried, so after dinner, they were reheated.

The vegetables were a little cold, so they were reheated again. Mei Qiuping complained to her husband, 'You knew that Yiping had the day off, but you came home so late!'

Feng Zhenchang said while washing his face, 'On the way home, I ran into Feng Mingzhi building a shed for chestnuts, so I helped.'

Chestnuts are the most valuable economic forest trees. Some households have many chestnut trees and can harvest thousands of catties of chestnuts a year, while most households only get a few hundred catties. However, in a good year, they can fetch a good price, such as two or three yuan, which is the largest cash income for farmers in a year.

Therefore, around the time when the chestnuts are ripe, there are often people carrying small baskets, walking around the fields, picking up the chestnut balls that have fallen to the ground early, and even when there is no one around, they will hit them directly from the trees.

When the chestnuts are ripe, some people even go out at night in the dark, armed with a bamboo pole, and hit the trees with lots of chestnuts. They will steal from several trees in one night. So, in the past two years, those with many chestnut trees in the village have built a shed and arranged for someone to watch at night.

There were three dishes at noon: one was stir-fried tofu, which had been left out for a few days and had gone a little mouldy, so a lot of chilli was used, along with home-sun dried bean paste; one was stir-fried celery, which was wild celery picked by the river; and there was also a cucumber.

His parents put half the tofu in Feng Yiping's bowl and watched him eat three big bowls. Mei Qiuping said, 'How can you get full on the four-tael school meal?'

'You can eat your fill at school, Mum. I just ate a lot today because I was hungry after lunch, which was late.' Feng Yiping poured himself a bowl of boiling water, which was still hot, and blew on it as he spoke.

Without waiting for his parents to finish eating, he changed his clothes, grabbed handfuls of peanuts, put them in his pockets, put on his straw hat, picked up his sickle, asked where the cows were tied up, and went back to being a cowherd.

At dinner that night, his father asked him how his studies were going and whether he could be among the top students, as he had been in primary school. Feng Yiping said that of course there was no problem.

After dinner, he tried to discuss it with his parents. 'Father, mother, this week I went over the textbooks for the main subjects and didn't find them difficult. I don't think it will be a problem getting into the county's No. 1 middle school, and I'll definitely get into university in the future, too. It's just a question of whether it'll be a good university or an average one.'

Feng Zhenchang had a drink in the evening and was very happy to hear this. 'If you get into university, you'll be the first person in the village to do so!'

Mei Qiuping was wiping the table when she sat down and said happily, 'In primary school, you never let us worry, your grades were always the best. At the time, Principal Chen told me that you would certainly have a bright future.'

Principal Chen was the principal of their elementary school. Once, when the villagers were celebrating a happy event, they invited him along, and he met Mei Qiuping, and praised Feng Yiping a few times, which she still remembers to this day.

'Father, mother, what I want to say is that the family still owes external debts, and now tuition fees are rising every year. This semester it's 45 yuan, and it's estimated to be hundreds of yuan by the third grade. It's even higher in high school. In the future, if you get into university, it will cost at least several thousand yuan a year,'

Feng Zhenchang interrupted him, 'Don't worry about that. You just study hard, and your mother and I will worry about the tuition fees. Not to mention going to university, even if you want to study for a doctorate in the future, we will support you.'

Feng Yiping said, 'I know that if I get into university in the future, you will definitely try your best to let me continue studying. I know.' He looked at his parents seriously.

'I've been doing some calculations over the past two days. Although my sister is working, she doesn't even have a junior high school diploma, and she's still young. She can't earn much money a year. She's a young woman, and she has a lot of expenses of her own. I'm afraid I can't count on her.'

Feng Zhenchang became a little angry when he heard this: 'The girls who went out together all had money sent back from other families, but Yuxuan didn't have a penny.'

Mei Qiuping knew that her daughter had gone elsewhere, and she was afraid that her husband would be angry, so she didn't tell him. She whispered, "Yuxuan went out to work when she was 15, and it wasn't easy.'

Feng Yiping took over the conversation: "I've done some calculations. The family's annual income is just a little over 1,000 yuan, and every year we have to pay off some debts, plus the daily expenses, so there's not much money left every year.'

Mei Qiuping sighed, 'If it's a bad year, the pigs get sick, the chestnuts are cheap, and maybe we'll have to declare bankruptcy again.' Feng Zhenchang sat on a stool, his face solemn, smoking and not saying a word.

'So I think we should think of something soon, otherwise it'll be too difficult.' Although the topic was a heavy one, Feng Yiping had to continue.

Feng Zhenchang still didn't say anything, and Mei Qiuping said, 'It's hard to make money. I'm not in good health, and your father is getting old. It's hard to find a good job these days. You can't really make much from the land, the trees, the pigs, or the chickens. It would be great if we could find a factory where you could earn more than a hundred yuan a month.'

At this time, most of the migrant workers in the village and nearby villages were girls, and most of them worked in industries such as clothing and textiles. It was difficult for strong labourers to find opportunities to work as odd jobs on construction sites. Often, they would go out and bump into each other for a month, spending hundreds of dollars on living expenses and round-trip fares, but they couldn't find anything to do. Geographically, they were all concentrated in the province. For the time being, there was no major trend of going to work in the coastal provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Fujian.

Feng Yiping continued, 'I think the chestnuts have all ripened well this year, but I don't think we'll get a good price for them.'

Feng Zhenchang flicked the ashes off his cigarette and said in a low voice, 'Zhi Ming and the others have already checked, and they don't think it will be more than two yuan.'

Everyone was silent for a moment. Their family usually only gets 300 to 400 catties of chestnuts, so they won't get more than 800 yuan at the most.

Feng Yiping said, 'A classmate of mine from the town told me that his father took him to the provincial capital for fun and bought him some very tasty fried chestnuts. They cost 6 yuan a catty. I paid attention to this and asked him how those chestnuts were fried. Then I asked other classmates and a teacher who had graduated from the provincial normal college, and I roughly figured out how to make fried chestnuts.' He took out a piece of paper and handed it to his parents.