A doctor who travels through two eras

Wang Jin quickly explained:
“Village chief, my boss is not only a wealthy man in Hong Kong, but also a high-ranking official. He came to visit me and also to conduct research in the countryside.”

The old village chief's mind was no longer functioning properly at this point:
"Ah, aren't Hong Kong people just foreigners? Foreigners can hold official positions in China? Don't lie to me."

Lin Sanqi smiled and said in Cantonese:
“Uncle, I am originally from the mainland. My father mainly manages the businesses in Hong Kong, while I am responsible for the work in the mainland.”

The commune and county officials standing nearby nodded repeatedly, which finally convinced the old village chief that it was true.
"Then, leader, please have a seat in the village. Our conditions in this poor mountain village are too bad."

Lin Sanqi glanced at the village a few times. It was a village built on a hillside, with houses constructed from the foot of the mountain to the middle of the mountain.

As you can see, the vast majority of houses are mud houses or stilted houses made of wood, but there are also a few brick and tile houses that are very eye-catching.

Wang Jin proudly said to Lin Sanqi:
"Boss, those are the best houses over there, that's where the 10 of us will live."

As the head of the hall, Wang Jin earns HK$10,000 a year, while the other nine people earn HK$6,000 a year.

Building a brick house in the mountainous area of ​​Andu County only costs 300 yuan, which is nothing to these veterans.

Huang Xiaoji then happily introduced:

"Boss, we mostly keep the Hong Kong dollars you give us in banks in Hong Kong, and then send HK$100 back every month. However, the county will exchange it for RMB and send it back to our families."

With just over 100 yuan a month, our family is practically the richest in the county now. Even the county magistrate doesn't have as much money as us, haha. We have to thank our boss for this!

Lin Sanqi laughed and scolded:

"Look at you guys, you should learn from Xiaoji, how good he is at flattering the leader."

hahaha~~~
These veterans couldn't help but be excited. Just by looking at the other villagers dressed in tattered clothes, while the veterans' families were all wearing new clothes, they could see the difference between them.

Rural areas are very realistic.

If your family is poor, many people will bully you. Even when the village distributes fish, your family will only get the smallest, miscellaneous fish.

But if your family is rich and powerful, there will be plenty of people in the village who come to curry favor with you. Your whole family can be superior to others, and you can even walk with your legs spread wide.

Back then, Wang Jin and his comrades risked their lives to "escape to Hong Kong" precisely for this day.

After Lin Sanqi entered the village, he stayed at Wang Jin's house.

Wang Jin's family built five brick houses, where his parents, wife, and two sons all lived together.

Even Wang Jin's siblings benefited from this; whenever any family was short of money, they would come to Wang Jin's house to borrow.

Poverty-stricken couples face a hundred sorrows, but if they have money, the sister-in-law will naturally be more generous and willing to help her relatives, thus making the family and relatives more harmonious.

Lin Sanqi gave the other nine people a holiday so they could spend time with their families.

With four bodyguards from the South China Sea protecting him, Lin Sanqi felt safe enough and began to eat and drink heartily with Wang's father and the old village chief.

After the meal, Lin Sanqi, the old village chief, and other village officials sat together and began a discussion around the fire pit.

Lin Sanqi sipped the local tea and asked:
"Village Chief Huang, how many people live in your village now? How do they make a living?"

The old village chief quickly replied:
"Minister Lin, our Dizhu Village currently has 120 households and 410 people. The whole village relies on farming for a living. When the fields are not busy, the village also organizes villagers to go up the mountain to hunt or collect some mountain products, and then carry them to the county town to sell."

(These should be production brigades and teams, but for convenience, we'll still call them villages.)
Lin Sanqi then asked, "What about the income? How much is the village's annual dividend?"

The old village chief smiled wryly:

"The greatest victory is that no one starves. Where would we get dividends? After a year of hard work, the grain isn't even enough to share with the whole village."

However, our mountainous areas are better off than other places. The villagers secretly cultivate some wasteland deep in the mountains, grow their own crops, and the harvested grain belongs to them personally, without having to pay public grain taxes.

In our village, everyone turns a blind eye. We're all neighbors, we can't just watch someone starve to death, can we?

Lin Sanqi was somewhat surprised:
"Hey, how dare you tell me, a high-ranking official, about such a secret matter? Aren't you afraid of making a mistake?"

The old village chief and the other village officials chuckled:
“Minister Lin, Ah Jin and the others wrote to us long ago that you, as a high-ranking official, are different from other officials. You are more open-minded and more sympathetic to the common people. So when you went to the countryside for research this time, we will tell you the truth and will not hide anything.”

Lin Sanqi nodded, thinking that he should do more good deeds in order to gain the trust of the masses. "So, in addition to the collective land in the village, you also have private land. These lands in the deep mountains do not need to pay grain taxes, so your lives should be quite good."

The old village chief shook his head and denied it:

"Minister Lin, things are different here in Guangxi compared to the plains. There, the fields stretch as far as the eye can see, and the yields are high. Here, we only have small plots of land on the edge of mountains or along streams, and the soil is barren, so we can't grow much grain."

Sometimes, all the hard work we put into cultivating the land is washed away by a flash flood, and we can't even recover the money spent on the seeds. That's why life in the countryside is so tough.

"The pork and chicken we're having tonight is only because Ah Jin and his family made a fortune in Hong Kong. For ordinary villagers, we rarely see meat; we eat potatoes every day. If we want meat, we have to catch field mice ourselves."

Lin Sanqi thought to himself, "The lives of ethnic minorities in the mountains are not bad."

At least the dried goods and wild game produced in the mountains can be sold openly, and you can always make some money.

If it were a Han Chinese, who would dare to sell it? Wouldn't they be afraid of having their tails cut off?

With that in mind, Lin Sanqi prepared to get back to the main point:
"Today, it took me a whole day to walk from the county town to your Rendizhu Village, which was very inconvenient. Village Chief Huang, let me give you an example: how do you handle it if someone in your village gets sick?"

Village Chief Huang chuckled and pointed helplessly to the opposite hilltop, saying:
"Those with acute or serious illnesses are buried on that mountain."

Don't say that we can't get treatment in our village. Even if we send the patient to the county town, what good will it do? With just a few traditional Chinese medicine doctors, it's still a dead end. Nobody will waste their money on that.

As for minor illnesses and ailments, that's fine. Minister Lin, look, there are Chinese herbal medicines drying in the open space in front of Ah Jin's house. If he has a headache or fever, he just boils some herbs and drinks them himself. Whether they work or not is up to fate.

Lin Sanqi suddenly asked:
"Would you like to have a doctor in the village?"

Village Chief Huang and the other village officials were delighted to hear this:

"Of course we want one! We dream of having a hospital in our village, but is that even possible?"
Our Andu County is so big (4000 square kilometers), but we only have one hospital and a few doctors. It's impossible for us mountain folks to get a turn.

Lin Sanqi chuckled and asked in return:
"Let me give you an example. If our superiors assign a village doctor to your village, how would your village plan to support him?"

Old Cun was stunned and fell into deep thought along with the other village officials.

At this moment, a squad leader spoke up:

"If a doctor is assigned to our village, we will cherish him like a treasure. We are willing to provide anything that our village has."

Another village official chimed in:

"One more doctor means one more life for all four hundred villagers in our village. We definitely value this very much."

"That's right. Anyone who opposes the doctor is going against the whole village. We'll beat him to death."

Upon hearing this, Lin Sanqi felt much more at ease, thinking that the barefoot doctor system could indeed gain strong support and endorsement from the masses.

With a solid foundation of public support, many things become easier to handle.

So Lin Sanqi stopped keeping them in suspense and said seriously:

"Village Chief Huang, I came here specifically to solve the problem of difficulty in accessing medical care in rural areas."

Our idea is to select a literate young man from each village, give him a short medical training course, and then have him return to the village to become a village doctor.

As for medical equipment and medicines, the county will arrange them uniformly, so you don't need to worry about them. You just need to prepare the people and housing. What do you all think?

Upon hearing this, Village Chief Huang became excited and jumped to his feet.

"Is this true? That's wonderful, there's nothing better than this. But this matter must be extremely difficult to implement, right? Otherwise, why hasn't anyone done this in the past few thousand years?"

Lin Sanqi smiled and gestured for the old man to sit down:

"It's difficult in some ways, but not difficult in others. Without the money, everything is difficult; once the money arrives, all difficulties are easily resolved."

As I mentioned before, the first question regarding the support the village can provide is whether your village has any literate young people. Is the entire village illiterate? (End of Chapter)