1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 363: Time Deposit Certificates that Can Win a Prize

The middle-aged female employee sitting inside was probably a little tired after working for so long, so she stood up and stretched her waist. However, she saw the buckets in the hands of Liang Ziqiang and the other man through the gap in the iron fence.

Two big buckets of sweet potatoes...

She looked puzzled for a moment and asked, "This is a bank, what are you doing..."

"Please wait a moment, it will be ready soon!" Liang Ziqiang said as he took the sweet potato on the surface and put it on the ground aside. Then, bundles of banknotes tied with rubber bands appeared in the bucket.

The female employee's original strange expression disappeared.

It became surprising...

"We have bundled them all. Each bundle contains one thousand yuan. Please count them carefully and deposit them into a fixed deposit for me!" Liang Ziqiang said as he picked up two bundles of money and put them on the counter.

Chen Xiangbei was responsible for helping him count.

"One bundle, two bundles..." Every time she took up a bundle, she would read out a number.

Liang Ziqiang had just taken the two bundles of money when suddenly, his eyes went dark and he couldn't even see the two bundles of money on the counter.

The figures of the employees who were sitting in front of him suddenly became blurred.

For a moment, Liang Ziqiang felt something inside his ribs thumping twice, and he thought it was a robbery scene from a later blockbuster. Subconsciously, he quickly turned his head towards the door.

His wife was even more nervous than he was. She immediately moved the two buckets of money over and placed them at her feet. She felt that it was not close enough, so she squatted down and held the buckets tightly with her hands. It was as if she was afraid that the buckets would grow legs and run away in the dark...

"Don't panic, don't panic, it's okay..." The staff on the other side of the fence saw their big reaction and quickly explained, "It was a sudden power outage. This has happened before. It's not the first time."

In fact, after Liang Ziqiang was stunned for a moment, he realized in the dim light that there was a power outage in that area.

He suddenly felt frustrated and reached his hand under the iron bars:

"Then you should return the two bundles of money to me first. It seems that I can't deposit the money in a short time!"

He had never expected that a power outage would happen when he was saving money! The key is that he didn't know how long the power outage would last. He was squatting here guarding two large buckets of money. The scene was quite interesting...

Unexpectedly, a puzzled voice came from the staff inside:

"Can't save it? Why can't I save it? It doesn't matter. The candles will be lit soon!"

The next moment, Liang Ziqiang was stunned. He saw the staff inside placing candles on several tables, then lighting matches, and then four or five candle lights began to flicker...

In his mind, if the bank loses power, it will definitely not be able to operate normally for a while! Even if he doesn't have much money in the future, he has been to the bank before, so at least he is clear about this.

But the situation before us seems to be completely different.

The candlelight illuminated several brown desks, as well as the wooden ticket boxes, seals, account books, ink bottles, dip pens, and of course, the abacus neatly placed in front of the clerks.

Seeing the abacus, Liang Ziqiang suddenly realized it. Yes, banks now don't have computers, everything is done with paper, pen, and abacus, and it seems that there is really no difference whether there is electricity or not!

It seems that pure manual operation is a bit slow, but it is not without advantages. At least, it is not affected at all when there is a power outage.

"Three bundles, four bundles, five bundles..."

Then, Chen Xiangbei's clear voice rang in my ears again.

Liang Ziqiang passed money in bundles by candlelight, and people inside took the money in bundles.

As the number of knots increased, the tone of voice inside became more and more surprised, but also more and more polite.

In recent years, several banks have been competing to encourage residents to save and launch "rewarded deposits", so banks' attitude towards depositors is quite good, at least more polite than sales clerks in department stores.

Not only the middle-aged woman who handled their business was surprised, but the other employees behind the counter were also amazed and looked over at Liang Ziqiang and his wife from time to time.

"He doesn't look like someone who came here from Hong Kong Island. This amount of money is...too much!"

"No matter if he dresses like her or not, I think she is from Hong Kong! Can the local workers in Yanghai save so much? Ten or twenty dollars a month is the best!"

There were two very young employees nearby, who were already talking in low voices.

"Come on, two more people come over and count the money together! A resident here wants to deposit 30,000 yuan, and I'm afraid we won't be able to count all of it in a short time!" The middle-aged woman interrupted the conversation of the two young employees, called them over, and asked them to sit around her table.

Immediately, she looked up and asked Liang Ziqiang: "Under whose name are you two going to save it? Please give me your ID card." Liang Ziqiang quickly handed in the ID card he had in his hand.

The middle-aged woman picked up a pen and wrote down Liang Ziqiang's name in an account book.

"Chaoyang Town, Pomwang Village".

Seeing this, the two young employees who had mistaken Liang Ziqiang for a Hong Kong Islander suddenly fell silent, and remained silent for a long time...

When he looked at Liang Ziqiang again, he was already looking at him with the look of someone who was smuggling...

The manual counting of the bills began. Several staff members untied the rubber bands that bound the bills and counted the bills one by one.

In later times, one only needs to start the money counting machine, and the work can be completed in a few minutes, but now it is enough to make several employees sweat.

Moreover, manual counting of money has another problem: it is easy to make mistakes. Once a mistake is made, the counting has to be done all over again. Therefore, counting money, reconciling accounts, and balancing accounts consume a lot of energy of the staff. In particular, after the end of business every day, they have to "balance the accounts" to balance the general ledger and detailed accounts. If the balance is not balanced, they have to work overtime at night to check the accounts and find loopholes until the accounts are completely balanced.

Since the largest denomination in circulation on the market is the ten-yuan note, Liang Ziqiang's thirty thousand yuan is three thousand Great Unity notes. It took him a while just to count the money, which was much longer than the time taken by the previous depositor.

"How long do you plan to save it for, half a year, a year, or several years?" After counting the money, the middle-aged woman looked at Liang Ziqiang and asked.

"How much is the interest?" Liang Ziqiang did not answer first, but asked the other party.

"For half a year, the annual interest rate is 4.32 cents, for one year it is 5.76 cents, and for three years it is 6.84 cents."

(To prevent fraud: The above refers to the annualized interest rate, which is the average annual interest rate after the deposit is fully paid. The data is real and unified across the country.)
Liang Ziqiang thought about it and decided:

"Please make two deposits for me, one for six months and one for one year!"

The reason for this decision was that he considered that something big would definitely be done within a year.

If he wants to make large-scale use of the wintering fishing grounds, he will have to invest first. And according to the plan he currently has in mind, the investment cost will be quite high.

Some of it might have to be invested in half a year, and some in a year. So, he planned to save all the money he could save in half a year or a year.

The middle-aged female employee nodded when she heard this, picked up two deposit slips, dipped her pen in ink from the ink bottle, and then filled in Liang Ziqiang's name, deposit time, amount, and deposit period.

You read it right, it's just two thin pieces of paper, not a folded paper. And it's impossible to print it, the deposit slips are all handwritten with a pen.

"No passbook?"

Liang Ziqiang had never saved money in this era, and he couldn't help wondering. Bank cards naturally didn't exist, but shouldn't there be passbooks?

"Passbooks are used for current deposits. Yours is for time deposits. Time deposits are made of this kind of paper, called certificates of deposit!" the other party explained.

After filling out these two, she picked up two more deposit slips and filled out another one.

There are two copies. One copy goes to the depositor, and the other is kept inside the bank. When you want to withdraw money, you can only use the two copies to match.

In addition, she took out one of the pile of account books and recorded Liang Ziqiang's two regular transactions in it as a record.

After the deposit certificate was ready, she handed it to another person to review, sign and stamp.

After everything was ready, he handed the deposit certificate out from under the iron fence and gave it to Liang Ziqiang.

Liang Ziqiang carefully looked at the two deposit certificates in his hand, one for a six-month term deposit and one for a year, each with an amount of 15,000 yuan, and stamped with the bank's seal. He checked it twice and found that the details were correct.

"A Qiang, look, why is there a prize redemption slip on it? What is it for?" Chen Xiangbei also came over to take a closer look, and asked curiously.

Indeed, on the right side of the deposit certificate, there is a dotted line that can be torn off, with the words "Prize Redemption Coupon" printed on it.

"Well, we are all saving with bonuses now." The middle-aged female employee heard Chen Xiangbei's muttering and explained to the two of them:
"In addition to the interest, you can also participate in the lottery. The grand prizes will include sewing machines, televisions, tape recorders, bicycles, refrigerators, and small prizes are daily necessities and cash. The lottery will be drawn on New Year's Day, and you can just come and draw the prizes on that day!"

"Even a sewing machine?" Chen Xiangbei's eyes showed a hint of excitement.

Liang Ziqiang was also a little surprised.

In his previous life, he had more or less heard of the "prize-winning savings" program that was very popular from the 1980s to the 1990s and was very unique.

But I have never participated, so I didn’t expect the prizes to be so big…

(End of this chapter)