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Chapter 65: Good People Pointing Guns at Each Other

The weather has gradually turned cooler. Yang Liming is leaning over the table in the headquarters of Production Team 3, writing a summary of his work and personal thoughts during his stay there.

"Where is Ermianfei? I'm still waiting to talk to him about the brick kiln." Xie Hushan walked in from outside and asked Yang Liming inside.

Yang Limin looked up at him, then lowered his head and continued writing:

"Secretary Han took all the production team leaders of the brigade to cause trouble at the commune. The commune originally wanted us, the cadres who were stationed there, to go and help mediate. But not long after I arrived, I said I had a stomachache and needed to go to the health center to get some medicine, so I slipped out."

"It's been going on for a few days, and it's not over yet? It's delaying the development of the sideline group. No matter how much trouble they make, they will definitely have to pay the public grain in the end." Xie Hushan said as he sat opposite Yang Limin:
"Why don't you go to the hospital and lie down to pretend to be sick? What if someone from the commune happens to come to the team headquarters and sees you? What if they tell Secretary Yin that you are lying? Come on, take out the reception cigarettes and give me one. I won't smoke it for nothing. I'll give you a Mudan."

Yang Limin took out the key from his belt, opened the locked small drawer, fished out Beidaihe, took out a cigarette and threw it to Xie Hushan, then put the cigarette box back into the drawer and locked it, saying:

"Secretary Yin's impression of me is probably not going to be good anymore. When I went to the clinic, I happened to see Secretary Yin of the commune bowing to the doctor, begging the doctor to let him stay in the clinic for a while and wait for Han Laogou to calm down before going back. Then we met in the doctor's room and won victory."

"My goodness, the people asking for help and the reinforcements met halfway while they were fleeing? With this fighting ability, Secretary Yin always wants to fight with Han Laogou every year. I don't know what he is thinking." When Xie Hushan heard that Yang Liming and the commune secretary both pretended to be sick and went to the health center, he laughed out loud on the spot.

Yang Limin also laughed: "Secretary Yin asked us to go to the commune to help mediate, but he went to the health center and pretended to be sick. How do you think we should greet each other? So in the end, we decided to just pretend we didn't know each other, and I came back first."

"The countryside is really a melting pot for reforming people. Look at you. You were such a kind person in the county committee. You used your meal ticket to buy meals for the children of your fellow villagers. Now, you hide away in advance, fearing that you will be implicated. You act like a troublemaker." Xie Hushan lit a cigarette, then threw the Peony cigarette that he had just taken from the Minister of Armed Forces Zhang Cheng to Yang Limin and said:

"I said, are you going home soon?"

"Well, it will be soon. Once the amount of public grain is finally determined and the grain is stored in the warehouse, I will help you talk to the brigade about opening a kiln and a small furniture factory. I estimate that after staying here for a while, I will be able to return to my original unit to work." Yang Limin took the cigarette and smiled with emotion:
"In the blink of an eye, nearly two months have passed. It seems fast now, but it seemed too slow when I went to work in the fields. No wonder all units require young comrades who have just joined the workforce to go to the countryside more often and stay there longer. If you don't go to the most grassroots production teams and read documents in the county, you can't really understand the feelings and needs of farmers."

"Take our brigade for example. It is considered a large grain producer in the whole county and even in the Yaoshan area, but how well do people live? We eat steamed bread with mixed flour and pickles every day. If we have a bowl of cabbage and tofu on the table at home, that's considered an improvement in our diet. But how hard is it for those poor farmers in the brigade who have poor harvests to live? I dare not imagine."

"Also, let's talk about the incident where Secretary Han led people to cause trouble in the commune because of the public grain payment. If I hadn't been there and only read the text, I would definitely think that Secretary Han was a troublemaker who mobilized the masses to deliberately cause trouble. But what's the truth? He is an old party member and an old revolutionary. Why did he cause trouble? He made trouble every year because he felt that there was a problem with the public grain payment. But was the commune wrong? It was not wrong. Was Secretary Han wrong? It was not wrong. So what was the problem?"

Holding a cigarette, Xie Hushan looked at Yang Liming and talked about how Han Laogou had led all the production team leaders to make trouble in the commune in recent days. Every year when the grain was harvested and the public grain payment was due, Han Laogou would lead people to the commune to cause trouble.

He never let the young people in the team get involved in such things, even if the production team leaders of each team went to the commune to argue with him.

The reason for the quarrel was paying the public grain tax.

In this era, for most production brigades, the payment of public grain was divided into two types: one was collection and the other was purchase.

Grain collection means that each production team must hand over grain free of charge in accordance with regulations and complete the task of paying agricultural taxes to the state. This is normal. For thousands of years, farmers have had to pay grain to the state for growing crops.

Purchasing grain means that the state issues a paid grain purchasing quota and purchases a batch of grain from the production team. The state will pay the production team for this batch of grain according to the designated purchase price.

These two types of grain are called public grain. Every year, the production teams carry grain to the grain depot, first paying part of the grain to the state, and then selling part of the grain to the state. Whether paying or selling, farmers call it public grain. But for high-yield and bumper-harvest brigades like Zhongping Production Brigade, there is a third situation, called "purchasing bumper-harvest grain."

The so-called purchase of bumper grain is because Zhongping Brigade has a high grain output. After paying the public grain and distributing grain to members according to the quota, there is still a large amount of surplus grain left in the brigade granary. The state also wants to purchase part of the surplus grain in the brigade granary. Of course, the price paid will be slightly higher than the purchase price of ordinary public grain.

The state stipulates that the sale of harvest grain is voluntary and not compulsory, and each brigade decides whether to sell it.

When they heard that it was a voluntary act, even the most productive brigades stopped selling their harvested grain. Everyone was afraid of starving. As long as there was grain in the warehouse, they were not worried. But if a large amount of grain was missing from the warehouse, what would they do if they really encountered a disaster year?
However, the country collects this grain in order to distribute relief grain to farmers in poor areas. If the grain cannot be collected, the relief grain cannot be distributed.

However, no matter how the commune explained to the Harvest Brigade that the grain was to help the poor in other brigades, the brigades remained indifferent.

The attitude of each brigade is that even if the grain is kept in the granary and becomes stale, infested with insects and mold, it must rot in their own brigade granary, because only when the members see this grain can they feel at ease.

Who cares whether the people in other communes have relief food to eat? If they make a scene and cry a few times because they don’t have food to eat, the government will spend money to buy the food they have worked so hard to save and give it to them for free? Why?
So even though the state stipulated that it was voluntary, it was unable to collect grain, so the counties below began to make adjustments.

Faced with the fact that Zhongping Production Brigade had a bumper harvest but was unwilling to sell grain voluntarily, the government simply made it clear that if Zhongping Brigade did not sell the bumper harvest grain to the state according to the amount estimated by the commune's survey, the granary would not accept the public grain from Zhongping Brigade. If Zhongping Brigade could not pay the public grain, the production teams below would not be able to distribute grain to their members.

After it became compulsory, the members were waiting to get their share of grain, and they had to sell it even if they didn't want to, so Han Laogou was making trouble just to bargain.

For example, this year the commune, based on the results of the autumn harvest survey, gave a figure that Zhongping Brigade will sell 20,000 kilograms of bumper grain this year.

Han Laogou brought people to block the commune secretary every day, just to cut the number of 20,000 jin down until it reached a number acceptable to both parties, such as 10,000 jin or 8,000 jin, and then pay the public grain.

"We must find a way to help those production teams with poor harvests and insufficient arable land to find a way out, otherwise this problem will never be solved." Yang Limin said a lot to himself, and finally looked at Xie Hushan:

Xie Hushan shrugged: "The only way to make a living is to do sideline business. Agriculture as the primary industry cannot meet the people's basic needs, so we can only rely on other sideline businesses to solve the problem."

"What do you think of the brick kiln..."

"That's all you can say, but don't set your sights on my brick kiln. The brick kiln belongs to production team three." Xie Hushan interrupted Yang Liming as soon as he opened his mouth.

"With your brain, it would have been great if you were born in one of those production-deficient teams, the poorer the better. Then you would definitely be able to come up with a lot of side jobs to help them improve their lives." Yang Liming sighed and said regretfully.

Xie Hushan glared, "Mr. Yang, listen to yourself, are you talking like a human being? Just because I have a good brain, do I deserve to live in a poor place? Do good people have to be pointed at with guns?"

Yang Limin smiled bitterly and asked Xie Hushan:
"You always say that good people shouldn't be pointed at with guns, but what about the grain harvest incident? In this incident, the poor harvest brigade, the good harvest brigade, and the commune cadres, there were obviously no bad people among the three parties. They were all good people, but why were the three good people pointed at each other's guns?"

(End of this chapter)