Spring Breeze Twenty Years

Chapter 356 To Stay or Not to Stay (Wishing You Prosperity)

Xiao Gang and his friend finished looking at those rooms and said, "They all have them, and there are quite a few windows here."

Xiao Wei said, "Open them all and put them on."

Once inside, Xiao Wei had calmed down considerably. Shining a flashlight into the toilet, he said, "We've completely dismantled this; just be careful with the pipes. I don't know if it'll still work." Xie Zhiqiang replied, "It's alright, we'll check later. It should be fine. If not, I'll go downstairs and reconnect it for you."

Xiao Wei nodded, and the four of them went up to the third floor. Xiao Wei said, "We won't tear down this wall, but we'll replace the door and make it bigger. Then we'll open all the windows inside. We need to check the roof frame here; it's tiled, so it probably needs to be replaced."

Xie Zhiqiang shone his flashlight on the awning and said, "The tiles don't need to be replaced, they've all been replaced before. This roof needs to be torn down and rebuilt. You can't see the roof frame now, but I'll fix it for you if it doesn't work out." Xiao Wei agreed, and the four of them went downstairs and outside.

Director Qin had already left, and Xiao Wei secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Liu Sui greeted Xiao Wei as he came out and drove away.

Xiao Wei said to Xie Zhiqiang, "That's it. The kitchen has been completely demolished, and the doors and windows have been replaced. Please check the sewer pipes from the beginning. Use what works, and reconnect what doesn't."

Xie Zhiqiang nodded and said, "Okay, don't worry. Is there a rush to get this done?"

Xiao Wei said, "No rush, let's settle it once it's all done. I'm usually in Longcheng, so once you're done here, lock the front and back doors for me. You can keep the keys with you, or leave them with Director Qin." He walked to the car, opened the door, put his bag inside, took out 10,000 yuan from the glove compartment, and handed it to Xie Zhiqiang: "Take the money first, we'll settle it all together once everything's done."

Xie Zhiqiang took the money and said, "Okay, then leave it to us. You can go about your business."

Xiao Wei stood there looking into the restaurant for a while, then nodded, got into his car, and drove back to the hotel.

After parking the car, carrying his bag, he went upstairs, opened the door, and entered the room. Xiao Wei became a little excited again; what man doesn't like guns?

I went to the bedside, put the bag on the bed, and took out the contents.

The bullets were wrapped in thin kraft paper with a plastic tray inside. There were fifty bullets in the box, but one row was missing five. In the holster was a Type 64 pistol. What Xiaowei didn't know was that this model of pistol only started mass production in 80. This one must have been a sample gun that he got from the factory through some channel.

The gun wasn't big, with two levers on the side. Xiao Wei didn't dare touch it. He held it for a while, looked at it, then put it back in its holster and picked up the dark brown leather bag, which he had mistaken for black because of the dim light.

The bag is made of cowhide, nearly 20 centimeters long and more than 10 centimeters wide. It was filled with things, and was about 5 centimeters thick. I picked it up and it was quite heavy, probably weighing 20 or 30 kilograms.

The bag has a flap with a drawstring, a style that has long since disappeared from history. Don't underestimate people from the 1950s and 60s; the things they used back then were no less luxurious than what we have today, and in some cases even better. How many people can afford a genuine leather bag now? Back then, every household had one.

Xiao Wei examined the leather bag for a while before deciding to open it. The straps had dried out and hardened over time, so he had to cut them with a knife. He carefully opened the bag, lifting the hardened flap.

There was a watch in the bag, wrapped in cloth. The leather strap was stiff and unusable, but the dial was fine, and the hands started moving when shaken.

The dozen or so photos were stuck together and couldn't be opened. One of the photos was also badly damaged, and you could only make out that there were three people in the photo, probably a family of three, but their faces were too blurry to see.

Besides the watch and photos, the leather bag was filled with handkerchiefs, eight of the larger ones standing close together inside, and a few flat ones placed in the gaps between the larger bags and the leather bag.

Before the 80s, handkerchiefs were a necessity of life, and most people would carry one with them. These handkerchiefs all have the same style, a simple checkered pattern, and are stained yellow from the cowhide.

Xiao Wei first took out the flattened item on the side: a small packet of national grain coupons, three packets of RMB, and a packet of green foreign currency. Although Xiao Wei didn't recognize it, he knew it must be foreign money. Next to the money was a passport, which was stuck together and couldn't be opened.

Then the remaining handkerchief packets were full of gleaming gold bars, probably melted down by himself. They were roughly square, slightly shorter than the width of the leather packets. There were two bars in each packet, sixteen in total. Each bar was over two centimeters wide and thick. Xiao Wei picked one up and weighed it; it was about two kilograms. He did a quick mental calculation: in 1991, the price of gold here was 130 yuan per gram, so this one bar was worth over 100,000 yuan. He was rich.

Xiao Wei's first thought was that this house was a worthwhile purchase, with an immediate sixteen-fold return.

Xiao Wei carefully wrapped the gold bar back into the leather bag, then picked up the watch and examined it. It was a fully automatic foreign watch with no words on the dial except for a row of English letters in the middle. The time markers were just twelve metal bars, each six or seven millimeters long. The dial was made of some unknown material and had a dark blue hue. There was a triangular indicator in the center, and patterns were engraved on the outer metal edge.

Xiao Wei is currently wearing a Swiss Titoni tourbillon watch, which is a fully automatic watch. It cost over nine hundred yuan in 91.

After removing the cracked watch strap, I shook the watch and the hands started jumping happily. The watch case was silver with a black rust, and the back cover was yellow with a serial number and was secured with screws. Although I didn't recognize it, seeing it wrapped so carefully and placed next to gold bars, even a fool would know that this thing must be very valuable.

The money and food stamps were fine, except for the obvious dampness, which was understandable given the special paper they were made of. As for the foreign currency, he didn't know which country it was from; the denominations were all one hundred yuan, but Xiaowei had never handled foreign currency before and couldn't identify it.

I recognized the grain coupons, but in 91, although they hadn't completely disappeared from people's lives, they were practically useless. The three stacks of RMB were all ten-yuan notes, which was the largest denomination at the time. I counted them and found I had over seven hundred yuan, which was a huge sum back then. At that time, an eighth-grade worker's monthly salary was only twenty or thirty yuan.

Should I not keep it? If I like it, there's always a voice in my head saying, "Keep it, keep it."

After thinking for a while, he opened his bag again, took out the leather bag, put the gold bars in his bag, put the photos, passport and pistol from the bed into the leather bag, thought for a moment, wrapped the stacks of RMB and national grain coupons in the still intact handkerchiefs and put them into the leather bag as well, then sighed, put his bag on his back, took the leather bag and bullets, locked the door and went downstairs.

Once in the car, he put the gold bars, foreign currency, and watch into the glove box, placed the tens of thousands of yuan in the glove box along with the bag on top, lit a cigarette, sat there thinking for a while, started the car, drove out of the hotel's backyard, and headed straight for the branch office.

At this time, the Binjiang branch was still using the old building from the time of the Manchukuo regime. Xiao Wei drove the car into the yard, got out with the leather bag and ammunition box, locked the car door, and turned to walk into the branch. The old building was very spacious, a two-room structure with a tiled roof.

(End of this chapter)