Chapter 12 Chapter Eleven Into the Lair

There are several black cars in the village in the city—long-distance buses.These buses don't know where to stop during the day, but they stop at the entrance of the village around 8 o'clock every night.Half an hour later, I left the village in the city and drove to a small town in that county in Fujian.Almost all the counterfeit cigarette dealers in this urban village come from that small town. All the people on the bus spoke with a southern Hokkien accent. There is only one driver in the black car.The ticket office is in a village in the city. The ticket office is a rental house. There is no sign at the door of the rental house. Even if outsiders walk in, they don’t know what it does here; If you want to buy a ticket, the conductor will say: "You have gone to the wrong place." The conductor and the driver are husband and wife.

It was the first time to go to southern Fujian in such a black car, accompanied by Jiao Niang. There were dozens of seats in the black car, and they were filled up early.There was no sign in front of the black car to tell people that it was a long-distance bus. The black car drove away from the village in the city silently in the night, submerged in the rushing traffic of the city, and then turned onto the overpass and drove onto the inter-provincial highway. The black car drove into the ground in Fujian. It was already midnight, and several people in uniform appeared in front of them. In the darkness, it was unclear whether they were traffic police or road controllers. The driver went down with a bag.They talked at the headlights, and then the uniformed man checked the driver's ID and let him go.

I was always confused that night, why was this black car successfully released?Why was it not seized?I think there may be two situations. One is that all the procedures of the black car driver are fake, but they can be confused with the real ones; It was quiet all the way in the carriage, and few people spoke.Some people are looking out the window thinking about something, some people are dozing off with their eyes closed. This black car was going to pick up loose cigarettes in a small town in southern Fujian. I secretly asked Jiao Niang: "Why is it so troublesome? Why don't you pack the cigarettes and bring them to our city? Or just bring the shredded tobacco to our city for processing and packaging?"

Jiaoniang said, if it's really like what I said, she will be imprisoned. Every production link of counterfeit cigarettes is separated, just to avoid crackdown.One den was taken away, and the rest of the dens were still in operation, so the loss was not great.Moreover, what the law enforcement officers confiscated were only some counterfeit cigarettes, and the counterfeit cigarette merchants had already heard the news and escaped.Modern communication provided them with extremely convenient information. As soon as law enforcement officers appeared at the entrance of the village, they slipped away.Moreover, these family-owned counterfeit cigarette merchants are extremely vicious. If the law enforcement officers are wearing plain clothes and the number is small, they will fight violently.However, law enforcement officers will jointly suppress them, but they will be discovered again.

That time, I saw the raw material of fake cigarettes. In those villages, every house is brightly lit, and men, women and children are all in battle, and they are all processing counterfeit cigarettes in the dark.Jiaoniang took me into an independent yard, a cutting machine was rumbling, and two men were busy with their shirts off. They brought bundles of firewood-like things from the corner and put them into the cutting machine .I walked closer to identify them, and saw these firewood-like things, which turned out to be sweet potato leaves and banana leaves. Such things are worthless. On the side of the main road outside Nanfang Village, you can collect a cart of sweet potato leaves and banana leaves in one morning.

And how many boxes of fake cigarettes can be made with sweet potato leaves and banana leaves in this rack cart, and how much money can you earn? In order to make the fake cigarettes have a smoky taste, this place is rich in tobacco leaves, and the counterfeit cigarette merchants add tobacco leaves to these crushed sweet potato leaves and banana leaves.The quality of these tobacco leaves is very poor, some are moldy and degenerate, giving off a foul smell; some are rotten and dripping with black water.They stir these things together, and this becomes the raw material for making fake cigarettes.

Smokers know that the standard for judging the quality of cigarettes is the color of the shredded tobacco. The shredded tobacco of high-end cigarettes is yellow and shiny, while the shredded tobacco of inferior cigarettes is black.Counterfeit cigarette merchants generally produce expensive high-end cigarettes, so they need yellowish shredded tobacco. To make these rotten and deteriorating leaves turn yellow, it is difficult for these unscrupulous businessmen to smoke them with sulfur. There is a small house in the corner of the yard, the doors and windows are closed, and these smashed sweet potato leaves and plantain leaves are piled up at the door.Taking advantage of no one's attention, I sneaked to the door of the small room, looked in through the crack of the door, and it was pitch black inside.However, there was a cloud of smoke coming out of the door. This cloudy yellow smoke made me sick and almost passed out.

I don't know what secrets are hidden in this house. A man came over pushing a cart full of leaves, and I quickly got out of the way.I went to another room, where Jiao Niang was slowly tasting Kung Fu tea. I quietly asked, "What's in that room?" Jiao Niang looked at me suspiciously: "Why do you ask everything?" I pretended to be innocent and said, "I'm curious." Jiao Niang said lightly: "Sulphur." Those rotting leaves were poured into the small house, and after being pulled out, they were yellowed by sulfur. Sulfur is extremely harmful to the human body and can cause cancer in severe cases.

We stayed in that small village for a day. On that day, I saw that this village, like the urban village in my city, was quiet during the day and full of heat at night.Every counterfeit cigarette factory will start work quietly at night.And at the intersections of the villages, there are also dark whistles ambush by the side of the road, and if there is any trouble, they will report the news.Every household in this village also has a dog, not the pet dog that is often held in the arms of a girl in the city, but a very ferocious big dog with a blood-red tongue.They are loyal defenders of counterfeit cigarette merchants, and they will pounce on strangers when they see them.

The next morning, the door of that small house was opened, and the shredded tobacco, banana leaves, and sweet potato leaves in the room were fumigated with sulfur and turned brown. Worthless broken foliage in the dirt. The processing of shredded tobacco is not over yet.After the sulfur smell in the small room dissipated, a man walked in with half a bucket of cloudy liquid, and sprayed the liquid evenly on the charred shreds of tobacco.Jiao Niang told me that these dark cloudy liquids are industrial flavors. Industrial flavors are extremely harmful to the human body. Like sulfur, they are extremely carcinogenic.

The majority of smokers only know that there are fake cigarettes, but they don’t know that buying fake cigarettes is equivalent to buying poison; smoking fake cigarettes is equivalent to taking poison. Unscrupulous businessmen are greedy for profit and never care about the lives of consumers.Clenbuterol, melamine, Sudan red, diabolite, formalin, malachite green...these chemical substances that were not related to food actually appear on our dining table, endangering our health. healthy.Preservatives, antioxidants, pigments, flavor enhancers, spices... These chemical terms that sound awkward to pronounce are the creators of all this.It appeared many years later that melamine was added to milk powder just to increase the protein content.Carcinogens are added to fake cigarettes just to pretend to be high-end cigarettes.And these are actually unspoken rules in the industry. I remembered the thinker's words: Chinese people have no faith.Because they have no faith, these unscrupulous businessmen do all sorts of crimes. Their crimes are heinous, and murdering them for money is tantamount to killing people with a knife.For money, they can do anything unconscionable.I hope there is retribution in this world. During the entire production process of counterfeit cigarettes, the only machine is an iron lump called a cigarette rolling machine, which is similar in size to a threshing machine commonly used in rural areas.This kind of cigarette machine has no trademark and should be a three-no product.Later, according to the staff of the tobacco monopoly, all the cigarette making equipment is also a monopoly, and counterfeit cigarette factories cannot buy such machinery and equipment.Therefore, the iron bumps of this fake cigarette workshop should also be fakes. This iron lump has been used for a long time, the outer skin is rusted, the paint is peeling off, all the parts are smeared with too much engine oil, and the shredded tobacco is rolled through the oil, processed by the iron lump, and after coming out of the other end, it becomes It has become a cigarette that has not yet been fitted with a filter. That day, I didn't see a filter making machine, and I didn't know how filters were made.I only saw piles of filter tips in one room, wrapped in white paper, and a woman cut them into four evenly with a small guillotine, which became what was behind the cigarettes. I also encountered an unforgettable event at noon that day in my memory. It was a counterfeit cigarette merchant who was marrying a daughter. After twelve o'clock at noon, the firecrackers sounded continuously, shaking the sky and shaking the earth.I asked Jiao Niang what happened, and Jiao Niang said, go out and have a look, there is a big happy event in the village. When we came to the entrance of the village, we saw twenty or thirty high-end cars lined up on the only road leading to the outside world. The black ones were Mercedes-Benz and the white ones were BMWs.The ground at the entrance of the village is covered with a thick layer of red confetti, which is the confetti after the firecrackers went off.A middle-aged man with a dark complexion, wearing a crisp suit, the suit is draped over his thin body, looking baggy, as comical and unreal as a scarecrow.He held a tray in his hand, and the tray was full of red envelopes. He would give out red envelopes to anyone he saw, whether he knew him or not, regardless of men, women, or children. Jiao Niang and I also got a red envelope, and when we opened it, there was 100 yuan in it. I was stunned, why is this scarecrow so generous?Why does he give 100 yuan just to meet someone? After asking others, Jiaoniang found out that the scarecrow was going to marry a daughter today. The scarecrow is a counterfeit cigarette merchant, who pulls scattered counterfeit cigarettes from this village to the urban village, where they are processed into whole pieces of counterfeit cigarettes, and then counterfeit cigarette dealers from all over the country gather in the urban village, pick up the goods from here, and then post them on the Internet In this way, a very healthy sales system with a pyramid structure has also been built."First-level dealers" from other cities wholesale fake cigarettes from urban villages, and a box of Zhonghua cigarettes costs 5 yuan; Distribution, to customers, a box of Zhonghua cigarettes is 45 yuan. The later first-tier dealers seldom drive to the villages in the city to buy goods, because the danger is relatively high, so they turn to logistics companies.For logistics companies, as long as there is a source of goods, they dare to pack and consign the living and dead, not to mention the fake cigarettes packed in the cardboard boxes of Master Kong.The logistics company only recognizes money, and it doesn't care what is consigned. The scarecrow is just an ordinary family in this village. However, I only saw the scene of him marrying a daughter a few years later when the Shanxi coal boss married his daughter. That day, the villagers told Jiaoniang that the scarecrow had given her daughter a dowry of several million yuan, a BMW worth nearly one million yuan, a high-end house in Xiamen, and many other miscellaneous things. Jiao Niang said that this phenomenon is very common in southern Fujian. People here have a mentality of comparison.Previously, this custom was very popular in Shishi and Jinjiang areas, and later, it became popular in the rural areas of southern Fujian. Counterfeit cigarette dealers have plenty of money, and a few million is just a piece of cake for them. How high is the income of counterfeit cigarette merchants?Jiao Niang said that they can buy a Honda in one month, an Audi in half a year, and a Mercedes-Benz in a year. Jiao Niang's home is not in this village, she was born in a tea-producing county in southern Fujian.In the 1980s, Jiaoniang's mother married a farmer in this tea county, earning several thousand yuan a year, which is enviable.Two years later, Jiaoniang's aunt married to the county where counterfeit cigarettes were produced. At that time, there was no large-scale production of counterfeit cigarettes here, and the annual income of local farmers was barely sufficient.Every year when Jiaoniang's aunt returns to her natal home for New Year's greetings, when she meets Jiaoniang's mother, she will complain bitterly, "Back then, why didn't you introduce me to someone near you?" After entering the 1990s, this county started to manufacture counterfeit cigarettes on a large scale. The huge profits from counterfeit cigarettes made these farmers rich overnight. There were many high-rise buildings and cars everywhere, and people didn’t know how to spend the money. Jiao Niang said that there was a village where two neighbors had conflicts for many years, but they both made a living by making fake wigs.The one on the east side built a three-story building, and the one on the west side built a four-story building.Looking at the east side, the uninhabited building that had just been built was immediately demolished, and a five-story building was built on the original foundation.Those in the west were not convinced, and demolished the four-story building with wet paint, and built a majestic three-story villa. The spire of the villa was higher than the roof of the neighbor's building.The people in the east were very angry when they saw it, so they sent people to remove the spire at night.As a result, the conflict between the two families escalated, from verbal abuse to brawls, and from fights to group fights. Later, the clan members of the two families participated, killing and injuring more than a dozen people.After the public security organs intervened, the two families stopped fighting.Later, neither of the two families wanted to live in the village, so one family moved to Quanzhou and the other to Xiamen. Since then, every year when visiting relatives during the Chinese New Year, Jiaoniang's aunt's family drove a Mercedes-Benz.When my aunt saw Jiaoniang's mother, she no longer complained in her tone, but became arrogant and domineering.All the relatives became submissive when they saw my aunt's family. It was also at that time that Jiao Niang, who graduated from junior high school, made fake cigarettes with her little uncle. The counterfeit cigarettes had been cracked down by the local authorities, so Jiaoniang followed her uncle and left southern Fujian, traveling to other provinces.In the following years, every time there was a blow, they would relocate collectively.The more they moved, the farther away they were from their homes. At the beginning of this century, they finally came to the city where I live, this urban village where fish and dragons are mixed. Now, the counterfeit cigarette dealers in this county are all over the country's coastal provinces. Jiao Niang also said that because of their wealth, these counterfeit cigarette dealers are very capable. Some vehicles carrying fake cigarettes were stopped on the road and were inspected. The counterfeit cigarette merchants made a phone call, and within half an hour, the fake cigarette vehicles would be released.The profits of counterfeit cigarettes are so lucrative that counterfeit cigarette dealers spare no effort to hit corrupt elements in law enforcement agencies with huge sums of money. Besides, the counterfeit cigarette dens are divided into several places, and even if the car of fake cigarettes is confiscated, their production will not be affected at all; even if law enforcement officers destroy one den, the rest of the dens can still start working. Compared with the flamboyant coal bosses in the north, the counterfeit cigarette dealers in the south are very low-key, which may be related to the illegal business they are engaged in.From the outside, these rich black-hearted businessmen are plainly dressed, friendly and humble, but no one can guess how much money they have in the bank.Jiao Niang said that many counterfeit cigarette owners have multiple properties in provincial capitals. The counterfeit cigarette merchants are all smoking, but they never smoke the cigarettes produced by their own workshops. They only buy cigarettes in designated tobacco monopoly stores. Facing these counterfeit cigarette dealers, Jiao Niang has a strong sense of resentment. This may be because she was born in a wealthy rural area 20 years ago, and 20 years later her birthplace was far away from the unscrupulous merchants who produced and sold counterfeit cigarettes. Left behind, and she had to work for these unscrupulous businessmen. I learned many stories about counterfeit cigarette dealers from Jiaoniang.Jiaoniang said that some counterfeit cigarette merchants gave up this dark business after making huge profits in a few years, and turned to invest in other high-profit industries, such as real estate, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and some people invested in mines. Dress legally. I was thinking, such a large-scale clan-style counterfeit cigarette workshop has long been an open secret, why hasn't it been completely shut down?Why do they always revive after being seized?Is it insufficient punishment for counterfeit cigarette dealers? A law enforcement officer later told me that all they could do was destroy the counterfeit cigarettes.As for counterfeiters, because the number of fake cigarettes seized is too small, they can only be criticized and educated before they are released.After they were released, the counterfeit cigarette merchants changed places and revived, and the old tricks were repeated.Counterfeit cigarettes have been banned repeatedly because the punishment is too light. I returned to Chengzhong Village from the village in southern Fujian the next night, and it was already dawn when I came back. Back to the rental house covered in exhaustion, just after taking a shower, lying on the bed, suddenly there was a knock on the door. I looked out through the crack of the door and saw Jiao Niang standing outside the door, looking vigilantly at both sides of the corridor.Before that, she had never been to my place, nor had I told her that I lived here, so how could she come alone?How could she know the path?What exactly happened?