The Red Era: Starting from a Truck Driver

Chapter 209 Arriving at Zhang Yan's hometown, Jinan
The three people checked into two rooms at a guesthouse in Huangmei County.

Generally speaking, people who travel on business will save as much as possible, even if they are reimbursed. But many people will save for their company.

For example, many people go to the capital, Sijiucheng, on business trips, especially cultural workers and reporters from newspapers. When they go to Sijiucheng, it is normal for four or five people to sleep on the floor in one room.

When requesting a room, Song Wei initially wanted to book a room with two beds, thinking that since they were all men, at most they could just sleep together.

Jiang Cheng was a little uncomfortable. He could sleep with strange women, hug and chew them, but he didn't want to sleep with men. He would sleep with men only when he had no other choice. But let alone the fact that the company could reimburse him for staying in a guesthouse, even if it couldn't be reimbursed, Jiang Cheng didn't care about the few cents.

We booked a room at the guesthouse and watched Huangmei Opera on the stage built in the county town until about 8 o'clock in the evening. Many people came to watch the opera, not only people from the county town, but also many people from nearby communes came here to watch the opera.

The next morning, around five fifty.

"Lao Chen, Brother Song, get up, wash up and set off."

"Jiang Cheng, it's not even six o'clock yet, is there any need for us to rush like this?"

Jiang Cheng slept in a single room yesterday, while Song Wei and Chen Guodong slept together.

Jiang Cheng came knocking on the door early in the morning. Song Wei yawned and asked after he opened the door. Yesterday, after watching Huangmei Opera, they went back to the guesthouse and chatted for a long time. They also drank a little. The scattered dried bean curd they bought was just right for drinking.

Being a driver is just a job, just do your duty, no one would work so hard to drive a car. If you drive one more day, you can get one more day of long-distance subsidy. So even if Jiang Cheng is asked to be the lead driver and pay attention to the route, he would naturally have some objections to getting up early and starting work like this.

Jiang Cheng actually had to squeeze out some time for himself. Hong Kong needed capital investment in the early stages, and he planned to live a stable life once things were stable there. Then when China opened up, he would retire and live a leisurely and prosperous life.

"Brother Song, Sijiu City is next to Tianjin. Why don't you go to Sijiu City to buy some souvenirs when you go to Tianjin? I thought you would want to go to Sijiu City, so I wanted to hurry up and squeeze out some time to go there. If you don't want to go, just pretend I didn't say anything. I'll go farther and at most hurry when I come back." Jiang Cheng said.

"Go, I haven't been to Sijiucheng yet. If you hadn't told me, I really wouldn't have thought about it. Old Chen, are you going to Sijiucheng?" Song Wei's sleepiness disappeared immediately after hearing Jiang Cheng's words. He hadn't been to Sijiucheng yet, and he had always wanted to see Tiananmen Square.

"Of course I won't go. I've never been there either." Chen Guodong immediately got up and responded.

In this era, many people have the dream of going to the capital and seeing Tiananmen Square. But many people may never have taken a train in their entire lives, let alone going to the capital.

Many people have the desire to visit the capital, basically after the country opened up, when they no longer needed to get a certificate to go anywhere and could easily buy train tickets.

After hearing what Jiang Cheng said, the two of them got up and washed up immediately. Then they went out at six o'clock, had breakfast here, and drove off.

After leaving Huangmei County, if you go southwest, you will reach Anhui Province not far away. Anhui Province, like Jiangxi Province, is full of mountains and forests. Even if some cities and counties have roads, they are often very sloped.

There are many forests and birds, as well as pheasants. When taking a break, we can get off the car and shoot some birds.

All three of them had guns. Jiang Cheng had a gun mainly for hunting. The other two also hunted, but they were working people in the early 1960s. During the three years of natural disasters, the guns in the car were for self-defense.

It is already October, and you can shoot birds at the edge of the forest. After a while, when the weather turns cold, there will be no more birds to shoot.

In fact, there are many wild fruits in the mountains and forests in October, such as chestnuts, persimmons, hawthorns, etc.

When they were tired from driving, the three of them would take their guns and go to some woods to shoot some birds, find some wild fruits to eat and play with, etc. When they arrived at some county towns or cities, they would go directly to the supply and marketing cooperatives to ask if there were any special products that could be purchased without tickets.

Almost every place has local specialties, but they are not necessarily suitable for purchase.

Just like Jiang Cheng and his friends arrived in Lu'an City at around 11 o'clock. After driving for a whole morning, they planned to have a meal here and go to the supply and marketing cooperative to see if there was anything to buy.

The city of Lu'an does have quite a few specialty products, but people may not want to buy some of them, or cannot find the things they want.

For example, there are the famous Yipinzhai brushes and wicker handicrafts here, but there is nothing good to buy for Jiang Cheng and his friends.

In addition, what Lu'an City was most famous for at that time was actually the cultivation of marijuana. There were special factories making hemp ropes and sacks, but ordinary people would not buy this.

Jiang Cheng and his friends’ main goal was to eat, and then buy some souvenirs at most.

In Lu'an, there is a famous pastry. However, its production materials are in short supply, so like other pastries, you need to buy it with food coupons, and even food stamps.

The name of this snack sounds a bit festive, or a bit funny, it is called "Shou County Great Rescue". If you don't see the snack, just the name, no one would know that this is the name of a snack.

After having dinner in LA, Jiang Cheng bought a lot of chestnuts, which were produced in Shucheng County under the jurisdiction of Lu'an City. Shucheng County is known as the 'Hometown of Chestnuts'.

The chestnuts I bought were raw, which can be stored for a long time. The supply and marketing cooperatives generally do not sell cooked chestnuts, mainly because they cannot be stored for a few days after being fried, and people today are not rich enough to buy chestnuts as snacks at will.

The supply and marketing cooperatives only provide roasted melon seeds and peanuts that can be stored for a long time. As for chestnuts, it is not to say that they do not provide roasted ones. Generally, they will only roast some of them and sell them during festivals and the New Year.

Song Wei and Chen Guodong thought that the chestnuts Jiang Cheng bought were in large quantities. For Jiang Cheng himself, if he had not traveled with others this time, he would have bought a large number of chestnuts just like he did last time when he bought Shaoxing Huadiao wine, even if he had to take the time to go to Shucheng County.

This time he only bought a small sack, a few dozen kilograms. It was not enough for him to keep at home for a long time. The chestnuts are also soft, sweet and crispy when eaten raw. They can be used as snacks when fried, and can also be used in cooking, such as stewing chicken with chestnuts or stewing pork ribs.

Song Wei and Chen Guodong also bought some chestnuts, but they didn't buy many, they just wanted to bring them back for their families to try. And it's not that there are no chestnuts for sale in Changcheng, but they are not as big as here, and the taste may be a little different.

The three of them stopped at the supply and marketing cooperatives in some cities for a while, bought something if they found something suitable, and left immediately if they found nothing suitable. They arrived in Jinan in the evening two days later.

To be honest, to get to Jincheng from Jinan, you have to go to Dezhou City, and to the southwest is actually Zibo. In later generations, due to humanistic reasons, it became a popular city on the Internet.

Jiang Cheng had never been to Zibo in his later years. He only read the news about it on the Internet. He wanted to see what kind of city Zibo was like in that era.

But I think later generations became famous because of the contrast. Zibo is not famous for its scenery, nor does it have any industry or special urban culture. If it were not for the contrast of later humanized cities, it would even be worse than Huangmei County by the lake. At least Huangmei County is the birthplace of Huangmei Opera.

Arriving in Jinan today, Jiang Cheng had to separate from Song Wei and Chen Guodong tonight. Zhou Lingying's female educated youth friend Zhang Yan's hometown was in Jinan. When he was doing transportation at the bus station, Zhou Lingying asked those friends to help carry things.

Zhou Lingying had said so, but she had not helped her friend deliver anything until now. Zhou Lingying used a small notebook to record the locations of many educated youths' homes where Jiang Cheng needed to deliver things, and Jiang Cheng would help if he passed by.

Zhou Lingying also took photos of some of her close friends, although many of the photos were ruined due to exposure of some corners due to shooting light problems, and some of the surrounding scenery was not clear. But the photos that can be seen clearly are fine.

(End of this chapter)