yournovel Chapter 1438 Yushanjiang ultimately lived up to Li Long's expectations.
Chapter 1438 Yushanjiang ultimately lived up to Li Long's expectations.
At the end of October, the villagers of Team Four finally finished their work of the past six months and began to celebrate the harvest.
Almost all the villagers planted drip-irrigated cotton this year, and the price of cotton is also good. The first batch of first-class cotton can sell for three to four yuan, and even the first batch of average cotton can sell for three to five yuan.
The cotton harvest is good, and the overall cost is still relatively low, so every household has made a lot of money—some people even regret why they planted more grain and less cotton, resulting in a smaller harvest.
Regardless, after the farmland renovation, income has indeed increased.
Therefore, after taking the receipts from the cotton and linen company to the credit union for settlement, each family went to the county one after another to buy some things they had been wanting to buy for a long time but hadn't yet.
Many people made big purchases; some replaced their TVs with new ones, some bought motorcycles, and some even pooled their savings to buy a tractor.
Li Zhiqiang's courtyard is always packed with people and very lively.
Xu Chengjun had to shout through the loudspeaker every few days that gambling was prohibited, otherwise he would be arrested, taken to a detention center, and fined.
There was no way around it; the farmland renovation project in Team Four was too famous, and with the large amount of cotton sold this year, once the news spread, everyone knew that the villagers in Team Four were making money. Naturally, those who wanted to set a trap turned their attention to them.
Li Zhiqiang's barbecue became a hit, which also kept Uncle Luo and the others at Lao Ma's restaurant busy. Since everyone was making money, some people who didn't like to cook would eat at Zhiqiang's yard, while others preferred to cook mutton in their own yards.
Ma Jinbao's sheep weren't enough; people still preferred to go to Old Ma's shop to pick out sheep, slaughter them, and cook them for themselves.
Some people even took a liking to the young deer in the inner circle, but fortunately, the price quoted by Uncle Luo scared them off.
These antlers are harvested twice a year and sell for a good price, so you can't just slaughter them carelessly.
In Lu Yingming's new courtyard, two newly built stoves were blazing with fire, and a large pot of mutton soup was steaming and emitting a fragrant aroma.
Although it was already quite cool outside, even a bit cold, none of the people eating at the table showed any sign of leaving.
Lu Yingming, holding his cup, said to Li Jianguo with emotion:
"Old Li, to be honest, I've never dreamed of living like this before. Ten years ago, who would have thought that an old farmer could receive tens of thousands of yuan in dividends at the end of the year without having to cultivate his own land?"
Back then, if anyone had said that to me, I would have slapped them and told them to keep dreaming.
That's it... Your little dragon is amazing, incredible! It's a pity that I, Lao Lu, have been your neighbor for over ten years, but now, in the end, your neighbor has changed... I'm just not lucky enough to have you.
But we're old friends, and with winter coming, we should get together for drinks more often. Come on, drink up!
Li Jianguo smiled and clinked glasses with him. After drinking his wine, Lu Yingming refilled his glass and sighed again, "You know, your Xiaolong is really capable. Now everyone on our team is indebted to him."
"You can't say that," Li Jianguo hurriedly waved his hand. "How can that be considered a favor from him? He can't accept it, he can't accept it..."
“I’m not making this up. I haven’t done much farm work this year, but I’ve gone out to inquire and find out. Projects like this don’t just come easily to our team. The team leader said that without Xiaolong talking to the higher-ups and pulling strings, our team wouldn’t have been able to get this project.”
Li Jianguo smiled and tacitly agreed.
In the days since the cotton harvest, scenes like this have been playing out from time to time. Although the people in Team Four have their shortcomings, they're not stupid. Look at the surrounding Teams Three and Two, and even Team One, which is closest to the county town—which production team has the same standard of living as Team Four?
Who wouldn't be envious?
Once the busy farming season was over, the village was filled with young men and women, all coming to visit under the guise of looking for classmates.
Ironically, the Fourth Production Team, the one furthest from the county seat, became the place that nearby farmers most wanted to visit.
It is said that from the end of October to the beginning of November, four girls from outside the village had already been arranged to marry into the fourth team.
Those who host a feast at home, regardless of their usual relationship with the Li family, will at least take the initiative to invite the Li family at this time. Even if the Li family has something to do and cannot go, they will usually bring out a separate pot of meat and serve it to the Li family.
I won't say thank you, but this is my way of expressing my gratitude.
As a result, Li Junhai and his other newly arrived relatives from the Li family also had a much better time in the fourth team.
Aside from attending cooperative meetings and receiving dividends, Li Long hasn't been around much lately—he also has things to do in the county.
Yushanjiang, who had been so busy these past few years that he was rarely seen, has returned. Halimu and the others also moved down the mountain ahead of schedule, and Li Long and the others are also gathering together.
Today, in the courtyard of Yushanjiang, the three of us sat on the wooden kang (a heated brick bed), eating meat, drinking wine, and talking about the past few years.
“In the past few years, I’ve traveled to the south, the north, the west to Yili, and the east to Mulei and Hami. I’ve bought cattle and sheep everywhere, but in the end, I still think the meat here is the best.”
Yushanjiang sighed as he recounted how he had already built four large cattle and sheep pens in northern Xinjiang, located in Hoboksar in Tacheng, Nileke in Yili, and Mulei.
“Each pen has several thousand cattle and sheep. They were all bought in large quantities when they were being moved to other pastures for culling, and then fattened up with feed. They will be slaughtered and sold slowly as winter approaches.”
Li Long never expected that Yushanjiang, who had kept a low profile, had made such a big splash!
“There are quite a few people doing this business like me, but not many can make it big.” Yu Shanjiang smiled slyly and said, “To do this, you need money, you need to know about cattle and sheep, and you need to be bold! I’ve met three people in total, two in southern Xinjiang and one in northern Xinjiang.”
Upon hearing this, Li Long thought of his brother-in-law, Chen Xingbang.
Chen Xingbang was quite bold and knowledgeable about cattle and sheep. He could tell how much meat could be obtained after slaughtering a cow or sheep just by looking at it.
It's just that my brother-in-law lacks vision and hesitated for a long time, unwilling to give up his position at the state-owned food factory. So, let it be.
“If a few of us wanted to cause trouble, we could easily raise the price of beef and mutton in Xinjiang all at once. Not to mention how much, it would be no problem to raise it by one or two yuan per kilogram.”
Halim, who had been listening from the sidelines, shook his head and said, "No, no, we can't just raise prices arbitrarily. The price of beef and mutton has already gone up a bit; if it goes up any further, some people won't be able to afford it."
He did not demand a price increase for Yushanjiang just because he was a large-scale aquaculture farmer, for his own benefit.
At its core, it is not greedy.
I will strive to become a successful large-scale farmer, but I don't want to make quick money.
Li Long looked at Yu Shanjiang's belly and said with a smile, "It hasn't been that long, has it? You're already twice your old weight, aren't you?"
Yushanjiang looked down at his stomach, smiled wryly, and said, "What should I do? Where can I buy cattle and sheep? I'll definitely have to eat first. Those people on the grasslands are so hospitable. I bought their cattle and sheep, and the one they slaughtered was for me. I can't refuse... I eat so often, and I don't even herd sheep, so this is what happened."
"Who manages all those venues of yours?" Li Long asked again.
“Beike, Talihar, Yersin… these young men are all very capable. I left them there, and they hired some local lads, and they got things started,” Yushanjiang said.
"We didn't know much when we first came down from the mountains. After coming down, we built it up little by little. As long as you do business honestly, you can definitely succeed, and you can grow it bigger and bigger..."
As he spoke, he picked up his cup and said to Li Long:
"Li Long, if it weren't for you, we wouldn't have been able to get this business started, and it wouldn't have grown this big. You deserve a lot of credit for our business partnership... Without you, I would never have thought of doing this before. Without the money you invested, we wouldn't have been able to grow this big. Come on, have a drink!"
Yushanjiang's business is a collaboration with Li Long, with the profits split 50/50. Every year at the end of the past two years, Li Long has received a share of the profits from Yushanjiang, increasing from tens of thousands of yuan at the beginning to hundreds of thousands of yuan later. However, both of them are busy and haven't had time to discuss it in detail.
After finishing his drink, Halim asked from the side, "How are Talihar and Bek doing over there? Have they gotten married yet?"
“Not yet,” Yushanjiang shook his head and said, “They don’t want to look locally, so I plan to have them rotate back after this winter to find Yang Gangzi here. Actually, Buick has already found someone and they’re preparing to get married.”
Talihar has very high standards; he wants to find a job. As for the young people's affairs, let them figure it out themselves. I'll give each of them a salary of 10000 yuan a year, plus a bonus at the end of the year if they do well. They have money to spare.”
In 95, the average worker's salary was only two or three hundred yuan, and at the end of the year, they could only earn three or four thousand yuan.
Yushanjiang gave Talihar and the others a basic salary of 1 yuan each, plus a year-end bonus, which adds up to quite a lot.
“To make it easier to transport sheep, I bought four of those double-decker trucks,” Yushan continued. “There’s no other way. You can usually only buy cattle and sheep in pastoral areas. The pens I set up are all on the outskirts of the county town. I need to transport cattle and sheep into the pens, as well as hay. I can’t do it without vehicles.”
He told Li Long, "I didn't buy the car from you back then because I needed it urgently. I know you have cars here, and they must be cheaper, but I was afraid I wouldn't have enough time then. Don't get too excited when you hear that."
Li Long laughed and said, "How could my stomach be bloated? I'm overjoyed. What I like most is this kind of day where I don't have to do anything and just wait for the dividends. You guys are experts and professionals at these things, so you can definitely do it better than me."
When he said that, both Halimu and Yushanjiang laughed. Halimu raised his glass and clinked it with his, saying, "When we first met, you weren't like this. In the dead of winter, when it was more than 30 degrees below zero, you would drive a horse-drawn carriage into the mountains."
Back then, you seemed so diligent, hardworking, and resourceful. How come you're so lazy now?
Li Long clinked glasses with him, twirled his cup in his hand, and said, "Given a choice, who wouldn't want to live a comfortable life?"
Those were truly tough times. Let me tell you, if I hadn't gone up the mountains to haul timber, I probably would have frozen to death that winter. Life was hard for you in the mountains back then, but we weren't comfortable even on the plains. We didn't eat well, and we didn't have enough money to buy coal.”
Halim suddenly realized: "No wonder you were so excited when we told you there was an open-pit coal mine in the mountains."
The three of them reminisced about the hard times they had gone through, how everyone was working hard to make a better life. Now that life is better, they felt that people weren't as pure as they used to be.
“Let me tell you,” Yu Shanjiang sighed, “I’ve encountered some scoundrels when I went to buy sheep. They tried to fool me with sick sheep, and I told them upfront that I’m a shepherd too, and they shouldn’t try to fool me.” “Back then, we were poor, and we didn’t think about those messy things. Later, when we wanted a better life, some people started resorting to crooked means.” The three of them shared the same thought: life had improved, but people’s hearts had become more complicated.
They were talking about some acquaintances, about the lives of other people in the tribe.
Some of the elderly have passed away, some have moved to Kazakhstan and disappeared without a trace, and most are still living in the countryside, in the large courtyards built for them by the authorities, living their own little lives.
Those families who moved to the county will have a better life; the elderly will visit each other more often, and their relationships will become closer.
Yushanjiang sighed and said, "It's a pity that the water pipes and the road you repaired for us in the winter huts are gone."
Halim hurriedly said, "What's the pity? I'm using them now. After you left, I hired young men to herd cattle and sheep for me. All those winter shelters are still in use, and people live in them now. The only problem is that we don't have guns anymore. We can only use the crossbow that Li Long gave me to shoot wolves and protect the cattle and sheep."
“It’s fine as long as it works,” Yushanjiang said. “I was just thinking that it would be a real shame to waste all the hard work we put into building it up.”
After meeting with Yushan Jiang Halimu, Li Long had some free time again.
The cooperative distributed 800,000 yuan in dividends this year, my elder brother's agricultural machinery cooperative distributed 300,000 yuan, and Yushanjiang brought in another 200,000 yuan. Compared with Li Long's monthly income from selling leather, these are nothing.
But for the rest of the village, it's a huge source of income.
At the cooperative's profit-sharing meeting, the new members truly experienced the benefits of having more land. More land meant more money, but unfortunately, they could no longer cultivate new wasteland, and the entire team didn't have much land left to cultivate.
After the profit-sharing meeting, the founders of the cooperative held a small meeting. Li Long raised a point that with all cotton cultivation now done through drip irrigation, the 10,000 yuan reward for individuals like Tao Daqiang and Xu Haijun, who manage their own plots of land, was a bit too little.
Li Long's idea was that if the yield per mu reached 100 kilograms before the drip irrigation was switched, he would be rewarded with 10,000 yuan.
After switching to drip irrigation, the yield per mu reached more than 300 kilograms, so the reward should be increased.
Everyone else agreed on this point, and after discussion, the prize money was changed to 15,000.
Furthermore, we will hold another meeting later to determine the specifics based on the circumstances.
This also serves as an incentive for those who manage the land outside the area.
Since it has been decided that all cotton next year will be planted using a planting pattern suitable for cotton harvesters, Li Long proposed at this meeting to set aside 500 mu of land for a machine harvesting experiment.
Of the more than seven tons of cotton harvested from the experimental fields in the township, less than three tons of lint were ultimately packaged and sold to a cotton and linen company through Li Xiangqian's introduction, earning nearly 28,000 yuan.
If converted to seed cotton, it costs a little over 3.7 yuan per kilogram, which is a pretty good price, and most importantly, it's quite convenient.
Li Long had explained these details to the people in the cooperative, so they all agreed to introduce cotton harvesting machines to reduce the burden of manual cotton harvesting.
Over the years, following Li Long, the people in the cooperative have seen many new technologies and machines. They are very receptive to new things, and even Tao Daqiang has suggested that some plots of land should be added for mechanized mining.
Li Long's idea was that 500 mu would be enough, mainly to give everyone an adjustment period, and not to take too big a step.
Of course, he wouldn't tell anyone, because he was too lazy to put his mind to it.
Although there was an embossing factory there, and it wasn't profitable, the government still had strict controls on cotton and linen, and he didn't want anyone to find fault with it.
His idea is to gradually expand the area of machine-harvested cotton now, and when the country opens up the cotton market, a large amount of capital will enter and private ginning mills will be set up, at which point someone will buy the machine-harvested cotton.
Even if no one buys them, his own cotton ginning factory can still operate.
Now every region has its own cotton mills, and the demand for raw cotton is very high, so Li Long is confident that he will not have to worry about selling the raw cotton he packs.
With the arrival of heavy snow, snowplows came in handy again, and large brooms made of reeds were everywhere.
In early November, Jia Tianlong, unusually, came to the county to find Li Long, even in winter.
Although he already has both a son and a daughter, every time he comes over, Jia Tianlong will go to the Li family's courtyard to pay respects to the jade doll.
After the prayers were finished, Jia Tianlong followed Li Long into the living room, took off his leather coat, and drank hot tea. He said to Li Long, "Old Li, tell me the truth, how many antelope horns do you still have here?"
"Why are you asking this?" Li Long picked up his cup and slowly sipped his tea. "What's wrong? Do you need a lot of emergency medicine?"
The two had agreed long ago that if Jia Tianlong wanted to buy antelope horns, he could get them from Li Long, but usually not in large quantities.
The main reason is that Li Long had previously told Jia Tianlong that he was certain the price of antelope horns would continue to rise, so they needed to stockpile them and wait for the high price.
“The price of antelope horn is now over 700 yuan per kilogram,” Jia Tianlong said. “A friend of mine works at a newly built pharmaceutical factory, and they’re in dire need of it. They offered me 800 yuan per kilogram, saying they’d take as much as I had. I think this is a great opportunity; this price is really rare! Just think, three to five years ago it was only a few dozen yuan per kilogram. Things have changed so fast!”
Li Long's stock of antelope horns is growing larger and larger. Although Jia Tianlong takes away a batch every year, the amount he takes away each year does not exceed three tons, but Liu Gaolou and his group take away no less than twenty tons of goods every year.
Over the years, Li Long now has a stock of over 100 tons of antelope horns.
It accounts for almost one-tenth of the antelope horn production in Kazakhstan.
This production figure refers to the total number of saiga antelopes that have shrunk. Many locals slaughter saiga antelopes and then leave the horns on the grasslands; they don't want them.
Therefore, Li Long's inventory is actually quite large.
Li Long thought for a moment and said, "Then ten tons? Is that enough?"
Jia Tianlong didn't know how much stock Li Long could store each year. He knew another person who traded antelope horns from Kazakhstan, whose output was much larger than Li Long's, selling at least ten tons a year.
So Li Long gave such a number directly, which startled Jia Tianlong.
"What? Can't you finish it?" Li Long asked, noticing Jia Tianlong's expression. "Then how about five tons?"
"Ten tons, ten tons! We can handle it all!" Jia Tianlong exclaimed, overjoyed. "I knew you had some goods! Hehe, we're going to make a fortune this time!"
"Is 800 the price he gave you? You can't possibly give me all of it, so how much do you take?" Li Long asked. "What's the standard commission rate in your line of work?"
“Ten percent,” Jia Tianlong said. “I’ll take eighty percent per kilogram.”
Li Long thought for a moment and said, "One hundred, that'll be easier to negotiate. Let's not be formal with our relationship. If the price goes up again in the future, I'll definitely need to use you to ship my goods."
Jia Tianlong shook his head and said, "The government is tightening its control in this area, and some pharmaceutical companies have already started using alternative drugs. How can this stuff still go up in price?"
Li Long smiled and said, "Things are valued for their scarcity. Why are Tongrentang's medicines so expensive? Isn't it because they always say they pursue genuine ingredients? With the same formula, their prices are one-third to one-half higher than others. People buy their medicine because the ingredients are real, not substitutes."
Jia Tianlong pondered.
"Besides, even if it's not allowed on the surface, the products are compliant, legal, and genuine. How could they not use them? Even if they don't say it, they could at least sell the medicine at a higher price so that people who buy it can see the effects."
By making this trip, Jia Tianlong achieved two goals. One was to haul away ten tons of antelope horns, and the second was to learn that Li Long definitely had many more antelope horns.
If we hoard this stuff, how much could the price increase per kilogram if it continues to rise?
As Li Long watched Jia Tianlong's car drive away, he wondered if he would regret his actions today if Jia Tianlong later found out that this thing was priced by the gram.
Li Long has no regrets.
Now that he has so much money, it's just a number to him. Some things don't necessarily have to be sold at the highest price; doing so at that point will only bring trouble.
He just wanted to live a peaceful life, staying in the fourth team and the county, occasionally going on a trip to relax.
So even if he had a lot of money, it wouldn't mean much to him.
At the end of November, Li Long received a rare phone call from Engineer Liu.
Mr. Liu said he had retired and had handed over the small shop in the jade carving factory to other people in the factory. He asked Li Long to take some time to go over and take some things he was leaving behind.
Li Long hurriedly drove over, and along the way he was also thinking that Old Wei had retired and Engineer Liu had also quit. It was like the journey of life, where one by one the people he knew had stopped to rest, while he was still striving to move forward.
Of course, there are many more people who accompany you on your journey. Isn't that what life is all about? (End of Chapter)