Chapter 7 Chapter Six

Zhou Liyan, the third son of Mingdetang, also came back, and it was Zhou Kewen who sent a message to call him home.The Zhou family is going to discuss important matters. Mingdetang was robbed twice, and two people died, all because of opium, should we continue to grow opium this year?If not, then what?This made Zhou Kewen difficult.The land has been vacated, and the season waits for no one. What crops to plant must be decided quickly.In this matter last week, Ke Wen paid more attention to the opinion of the third child.The eldest child likes to play with guns and sticks, but doesn't care about crops; the second child is a scholar, and farming is even more of a layman; only the third child has always had a special liking for the land, and Zhou Kewen thinks that the third child is the most like him in this regard.Although the third child is in business, his business is directly related to crops.Zhou Liyan runs a shaofang in Fengxiang. The shaofang needs to make wine, and grain is the raw material.

It was Zhou Kewen's idea to open a burning workshop. The purpose was to produce and sell by himself, turning his surplus grain into commodities and earning more money. It is also about making a fortune, but Zhou Kewen is different from his father.Zhou Niuwa just guards the field, works hard, is diligent and thrifty, he picks and searches all his life, and his fortune in Zhoujiazhai is above average.When the family business was passed on to Zhou Kewen, his approach changed.Zhou Kewen never forgets his old roots, and takes good care of his fields and crops, but he is a educated person after all, so he must have a wider vision and a more flexible mind.Although he strictly abides by the social order of scholars, farmers, businessmen, and insists on supporting his second son to study in order to become an official, Zhou Ligong gave up his official career after graduation and voluntarily returned to his hometown to engage in rural construction. Unexpectedly, this is what he has experienced the most. Who can say that the second child's current choice must be wrong?Besides, rural construction is for the benefit of Zili. As a member of Zhoujiazhai, it is also right to do something for his hometown. Hasn't he always done this?The second child is no longer in politics, and he doesn't have too many regrets.He doesn't reject businessmen. Although businessmen rank last and their social status is not high, every dynasty and every generation has great merchants who are invincibly wealthy. Lu Buwei, Tao Zhugong, and Hu Xueyan don't live more comfortably than princes and generals ?The ancients even knew the principle of no business, no wealth, but now that the Republic of China is in place, the old rules must be changed.Zhou Kewen saw that the youngest was meticulous and a businessman. After finishing elementary school, he sent Zhou Liyan to Fengxiang's largest shop, Tianyi, to learn from him. After finishing his studies, he founded his own Fenglaichun Shaofang. During the time, Zhou's shochu won a good reputation, and the business was booming.Zhoujia Shaofang not only brews wine, but also makes vinegar, and even soaks pickles in water.Zhou Kewen made money quickly by doing this. The money he earned was used to buy land, build houses and buy livestock.In this way, a virtuous circle was entered. After a few years, Zhou Kewen doubled the family property left by his father several times and became the largest family in Zhoujiazhai.

Although Zhou Kewen has the flexibility to change, he also has the same stubbornness. He believes that things can have new things, but the truth can only be the old truth.The sky does not change, and so does the Tao. Loyalty, filial piety, propriety, righteousness and shame are the rules that will never change.This is the foundation of being a human being, no matter what you do, you must take this measure, if you cooperate, you will do it, and if you go against it, you will give up.As far as making money is concerned, it is human nature to seek profit. If you are right, you can make a lot of money; if you are not right, you can't get a penny.

Because of this, Zhou Kewen has always had doubts about growing opium.Everyone knows that opium is worth a lot, and one mu of cigarettes is worth ten mu of grain.Moreover, the government encourages planting, and forcibly stipulates the planting area of ​​each household. Those who fail to do so will be fined, and those who do not want to plant will be fined even more. This is called paying "white land payment".Although growing opium is legal and beneficial, Zhou Kewen feels that it is not a good thing when he sees that there are heavy smokers everywhere in and outside the village.Planting this thing is a crime.Lin Zexu in the Qing Dynasty even burned cigarettes, and the Qing government even started a war with foreigners for this matter. Why does the government still encourage farmers to grow tobacco?It has been fifteen years since the Republic of China, why is it even worse than the Qing government?

In addition to the pimples on his conscience, Zhou Kewen also has the heart disease of bandits.Bandits specialize in robbing opium. The family meeting that day was held under the grape trellis in the courtyard.A square table, four chairs, Zhou's father and son sat facing each other.The sunshine in May is strong and fragrant, rendering a faint green mist through the crystal grape leaves, permeating everyone's body.Zhou Kewen was in a trance.For many years, their father and son have not been reunited like today, and how many times they woke up from dreams, and what he and his wife described was today's scene.The sons have all grown up, they are separated from each other, the news is sparse, and they have never been together.He and his wife thought about them every day and prayed for them. Today they suddenly came back safely and sat in front of him.He felt that this was a bit unreal. When his wife brought the food, he actually said to her, "My eyes are blurry, please help me to watch, my name is Doll, do you think it is right?"

Mrs. Zhou Liang said with a smile, your eyes are not dazzled, but there are tears in them, son three, hold out your head to your father and ask him to count.The three brothers of the Zhou family obediently put their heads in front of his father. Zhou Kewen nestled his thumb and middle finger, and flicked one, two, three brain blasts on their foreheads according to their ranking.When the sons were young, when they saw their father coming back from working in the fields, they would immediately throw themselves into his arms. Zhou Kewen always played this kind of game on their heads. He called it a dot.Looking at his sons who were pouting and rubbing their foreheads, Zhou Kewen felt a sense of happiness spontaneously, and his fatigue disappeared immediately.But today's dot number is different, and he is always in tears.

Zhou Kewen knew that this was both a party and a farewell party. After the meal, the boss was about to go out.He is in the army, and he is in the middle of a hail of bullets. This time, after a farewell, I don't know when the whole family will be able to get together again! Mrs. Zhou Liang brought all the food, and the square table was filled with dishes and bowls.They are all self-produced vegetables and fruits, blue, white, red and green, dazzling, the most conspicuous is a large pot of clear chicken soup in the middle.The rooster that caused the trouble was slaughtered, which is considered a crime.Zhou Kewen said to the boss, Lide, look at this table, our house is full of everything, and father will persuade you one last time, you don't want to be a soldier.Zhou Lide said, Dad, this is a mess. What we have today may not be there tomorrow. You should let me go. People often say that a dog protects the three families. I am better than a dog if I get along well. It's not too late for me to come back, there are always two younger brothers in the family.

Zhou Kewen said to the third child, Li Yan, pour the wine for your elder brother.The wine was brought back by Zhou Liyan, the famous wine Fengxiang Daqu brewed by Zhou's Shaofang.Zhou Liyan poured it for everyone, and even asked his mother to pour it. Zhou Kewen said that it is a rule for women not to attend the banquet, so let your mother drink it by herself in the kitchen. Zhou Kewen picked up his wine glass and said, Lide, you have ambition, and my father won't stop you.Father borrows this wine to recite a poem for you.Zhou Kewen chanted loudly: With a solemn expression, he raised his head and gulped it down.

The second and third child said to Zhou Lide, elder brother, take care!The boss told the two younger brothers that the family will be entrusted to the two brothers!They touched each other and drank a full glass with a clang. Mrs. Zhou Liang came out to feed them, saw the serious expressions of the father and son, and said, look, what are you doing? It's like mourning a funeral. Zhou Kewen said, I don't have any, I just have bad eyes, and I cry when I see the wind. Mrs. Zhou Liang said, even if you have bad eyesight when you are old, will your three sons have bad eyesight when they are young?Do you want me to get you eye drops?

They all burst out laughing. Next they started discussing planting plans.The boss first said that you can grow anything, anyway, you can’t grow opium, and once I leave, the bandits will have no fear. The second son echoed and said, the elder brother is right, we must not grow opium, it will bring disaster to the country and the people!The rural construction movement is to break the old rules and customs and advocate a new life.Smoking opium is a deep-rooted ugly habit. If we want to change it, we must start with our family. Zhou Kewen looked at the third child, but the third child did not express his opinion immediately.Zhou Kewen knew that this baby was thoughtful and had to weigh everything over and over again, so let him think about it again.

Zhou Kewen spoke up by himself.He said that it is easy not to grow opium, and I don’t want to grow it anymore. At worst, we will pay a little land money.But what shall we plant?Do you grow food?Zhou Kewen calculated the accounts for them. The average yield per mu of land was only more than one load of wheat, and two loads of corn, which could be sold for more than five yuan. The apportionment adds up to three pieces and may increase at any time. What kind of taxes are there, so much?Zhou Ligong asked.Although he has been studying in college these years, he often goes to the countryside to do research. It seems that there are not so many exorbitant taxes. Zhou Liyan smiled and said, second brother, where are you running?Around Beijing, it is at the feet of the emperor, and here we are, the sky is high and the emperor is far away.He counted with his fingers for Zhou Ligong, there are city labor donations, river defense donations, bank stock donations, grade donations, provincial government donations, northwest water conservancy award donations, wealthy household donations, miscellaneous support donations, shoe and socks donations, village donations, and car donations , Grass donation, temple donation, house donation, house number donation, street lamp donation, animal tax, stamp duty, bandit suppression public loan fee, registration fee, security team fee, departure fee, aftermath fee, food and fodder fee, maintenance fee, travel expenses...he I broke my fingers so much that I didn't finish counting. baffling!Zhou Ligong asked, are there street lights in our village?Do you have a car? In addition to these, you have to pay for free land. You have obviously planted crops in the land, as long as it is not opium, it is considered free land!Zhou Kewen said angrily, isn't this forcing her into prostitution?Another two yuan has to be spread per mu.In this way, the food grown for one year is just enough to fill these holes, which is basically nothing! Both the boss and the second uttered an oh.Zhou Kewen said, you are not in charge of the family and do not know that oil and salt are expensive. What does that dad mean, we still grow opium?Zhou Liyan asked. Do not plant!Zhou Kewen said, we don't earn money that is immoral.I did the calculation for you just now, have you thought it over yet? After thinking about it, Zhou Liyan said, grow food.Dad's calculations are all right, but what can be calculated is selling raw grain.We don't sell raw grains, we do processing, I forget it, expand the burning workshop, increase the production of wine, open another oil workshop to press oil, and buy another restaurant.In this way, the price of raw grain can be quadrupled. Is the stall too big?Zhou Kewen asked. It's a bit difficult, Zhou Liyan said, but I'll forget it, we can take it down, and doing business is always risky. I have a risk-free idea, Zhou Ligong said, grow cotton! Why did Zhou Ligong suddenly think of growing cotton?It turned out that he had received a letter from a classmate a few days ago. This classmate was Zhao Danna, his prospective girlfriend, whose father was Zhao Ziang, a famous capitalist in Shanghai.She said in the letter that her father was about to relocate the textile factory in Shanghai to Xi'an. The high cost of raw materials and labor in Shanghai, coupled with the Communist Party's strikes, made it difficult to continue to do business.Her father has already investigated that the Northwest has long sunshine hours and large temperature differences between day and night, making it a good place to grow cotton. What's more commendable is the low labor cost. The profit of opening a factory here is several times higher than that in Shanghai.She hoped that Zhou Ligong would take the lead in promoting cotton planting in his hometown and serve as a front for his father's factory, and hinted that this was a key move for him to win her father's trust.The letter also mentioned an important piece of information. According to Zhao Ziang’s friends at the top of the Southern Revolutionary Party, the National Revolutionary Army has already started the Northern Expedition, and will surely win a complete victory within a year. After defeating the Beiyang warlord government, smoking will be banned in the whole country immediately. .This is the inevitable result of responding to the voice of the people internally and responding to international public opinion externally. Zhou Ligong told everyone this information, of course he concealed his relationship with Zhao Danna, because Zhao Ziang looked down on him, the son of a rich man from the countryside, and he was actively trying to win his favor.Zhou Ligong emphasized that as long as the cotton mills in Shanghai are relocated to Xi'an, the price of cotton will inevitably rise.This is a sure-fire business. Zhou Liyan smiled and said to Zhou Ligong, "Second brother, you have never done business, so you don't know the tricks. To open a factory, you must have a lot of raw materials, just like our home. There are wheat everywhere around. It's just that we One grows cotton, and other cotton mills do not come. Zhou Ligong said, you are right, but I guarantee that they will definitely come next year, because when smoking is banned next year, cotton will be the most valuable crop, and everyone is rushing to grow it. Zhou Liyan said, this is even more likely. How can you guarantee that smoking will be banned next year?You are not a Southern Revolutionary Party, besides, it is hard for anyone to say about the war, winning or losing is like throwing dice.Besides, even if the Southern Revolutionary Party wins, opium smoking will definitely be banned?From the Qing Dynasty to the current Beiyang yamen, which one can't stop smoking?But isn't the big smoke right now? Zhou Ligong said, third child, you are just a businessman and don't understand politics!He originally wanted to say that you are a country bumpkin living in a valley with short-sightedness, but he was afraid of hurting his brother's heart.Zhou Ligong then opened up his posture and gave a long speech, from Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles to the Kuomintang's alliance with Russia and the Communist Party, from the Soviet-Russian Revolution to the global hegemony of Britain, the United States, Japan and Germany, retelling almost all the speeches he heard at Peking University. The final conclusion is that the revolution must win and opium must be banned. Everyone was taken aback by him. Zhou Kewen said, let's grow cotton.He trusts the third child in the matter of growing crops, but he has to trust the second child in his grasp of the current situation. Since planting crops is now tied to the current situation, he can only listen to the second child. Zhou Liyan said, I always feel a little uneasy. Zhou Kewen said, no matter what you say, cotton is always more valuable than grain, but it is difficult to handle and takes a lot of effort, so we just need to be more careful. Not hard to do!Seeing that his father agreed to plant cotton, Zhou Ligong was overjoyed. He said that there is a new variety called deseed cotton. I have a classmate at the Xi'an Agriculture and Forestry Bureau, and I will get some. Zhou Lide said, let's try it, we have been growing food for a lifetime, let's change the pattern. After confirming the matter of planting crops, the last thing was to see Zhou Lide off.Mrs. Zhou Liang said, you guys have bad eyesight, so don't go out to send them off. I'll send the boss off, you've all talked a lot, and we haven't said a few words of decency yet. After leaving the house, Mrs. Zhou Liang asked her son, were you and your wife...well last night? Mom, Chun'e's body is... a little weak.Zhou Lide said. Mom knows, Mrs. Zhou Liang said, Mom is asking... Look at your walk... Mom, it's all right.Zhou Lide said with a blushing face. It's fine!Zhou Liang's hanging heart was relieved.Although the Zhou family has three sons, only the eldest has married a daughter-in-law, and the Zhou family's incense depends on him.Mrs. Zhou Liang was glad that he had the foresight to block his daughter-in-law at home and not let her see him off. How could the young couple not be sad when they parted?If she gets sad and gets pregnant, she will be in trouble. After leaving the gate of Zhoujiazhai, passing the stone arch bridge in the moat, and seeing no one around, Zhou Liang took out an object from his bosom and stuffed it to his son, and whispered to him, put it away, and wear it on his heart when fighting , invulnerable. Zhou Lide took it over and saw that it was a silver collar with a palm-sized cross on it, and a person was supported on the cross.He didn't know where it came from. Mrs. Zhou Liang said, "It's a foreign Bodhisattva. Your grandfather had long hair and snatched it from a foreigner. It was very effective. No matter how many battles your grandfather fought, he never lost his hair. It was blessed by this foreign Bodhisattva." Why haven't I seen it before?Zhou Lide asked. Don't say you haven't seen it, and your father hasn't seen it either. This is the dowry that your grandfather gave me, and I have been hiding it.Zhou Liang said, Mom will put it on for you now.She put the foreign bodhisattva around her son's neck, but felt that the chain was cool, so she lifted up the front of her clothes, and put the thing against her belly to warm it up for a while, and then put it on her son. Zhou Lide knelt down to his mother with a plop, kowtowed three times, got up and ran away without looking back. Until he could no longer see his son, Zhou Liang, who had been supporting him all the time, burst into tears, sat on the ground like a doll, kicked his legs and slapped the ground, tears and snot like a rainstorm.