Chapter Ninety-Three: Plans for the Future

Compared with her love of good food, Chen Xi knew very little about the craft of embroidery; before coming here, she had only done a little reading to prepare herself. But the books gave no very detailed account of this tribe’s distinctive clothing and stitching techniques, and Bajia was only a boy, unfamiliar with such things as well, so he could speak only in broad strokes.

Bai Mengqing was the opposite of Chen Xin. When it came to food, she knew only the difference between delicious and not delicious; if asked precisely what made one dish different from another, she could not have said. Yet because her mother worked in a field closely tied to art and aesthetics, she felt an extraordinary fondness for the tribe’s handicrafts that Puga introduced to them.

During their three days in the stockade, Bai Mengqing was in excellent spirits. Every day she followed Puga’s little sister to learn embroidery, and at night she went to the open square to join their gatherings. Before she knew it, the day of departure had arrived, and she was quite reluctant to leave. She took with her many embroidered pieces and ethnic ornaments from Puga’s village, intending to go back and discuss with the people at her mother’s company whether they might open up a channel of cooperation.

The foods of the village were rather unusual and likely not very marketable, but the mountain produce was excellent, especially the dried bamboo shoots. Smoked over fire, they carried a fragrance all their own; whether stewed with meat or soaked through and stir-fried with little hot peppers, they drew endless praise. When they left, both Yi Bai and Zhou Hao bought plenty, planning to take some back as gifts.

Chen Xin bought some too, but her shop did not have much demand for smoked ingredients, so she thought that once she returned she would contact other restaurants to see whether any of them needed such goods. If she could help Puga and the others establish a sales route, then the trip would not have been wasted.

On the way back, Bai Mengqing suddenly said that she had decided what she wanted to do in the future.

“You once told me about volunteers. I’d never come into contact with anything like that, and always thought volunteers just went to nursing homes or orphanages to lend a hand or something. But now I feel that if what I do can help people in need, then that is the way I can realize my own value.”

“Being a volunteer is hard and exhausting. Sometimes people won’t even understand what you’re doing. Can you really keep it up?”

Bai Mengqing was a warmhearted girl; otherwise she would not have stood up for Chen Xin before. But all her previous actions had taken place under her parents’ protection. Once she left that shelter, she was like a young bird newly learning to spread its wings, bewildered by the sky. Fortunately, now she had found the sky that belonged to her. Perhaps she could not be the master of it, but she could fly freely beneath it.

“Then what do you think?” Chen Xin had also taken part in collective poverty-alleviation volunteer work before. Though she had no experience independently planning an event, she had seen and lived through more than Bai Mengqing, and could offer some advice.

“I might be able to help a little with that,” said Yi Bai, turning around from the front seat. “Our unit has aid projects every year. The colleague in charge of that is the wife of my best friend. I can ask her what conditions are needed, or see whether she can introduce you to an existing project first.”

Chen Xin also thought that was better than Bai Mengqing charging in on impulse and stumbling back bloodied and bruised. Taking part in a specific project, from its initial planning to its final summary, was the surest way to feel the hardship involved. Through such experience, Bai Mengqing could also find out whether she truly had the strength for it.

After they reached the county town and settled in, a friend of Zhou Hao’s came to collect the car and, in passing, treated them to a meal. Over dinner, the matter came up again. Their military unit also had a beneficiary it supported, but this year the person in charge seemed to have misplanned things, and the aid effort had ended in failure. Everyone had been worried about it lately. Hearing that Bai Mengqing wanted to do this sort of work, the man repeatedly urged her not to touch it, saying that if things went well, the credit would not go to them, but if anything went wrong they would absolutely be the ones to take the blame.

Bai Mengqing smiled and nodded, but in her heart she still wanted to try. She was still young; she still had time to fall and rise again. What she feared was not falling, but lacking even the courage to fall, and then living out her life in emptiness and mediocrity.

The man could probably tell that Bai Mengqing was not very willing to be persuaded, but for Zhou Hao’s sake he still left her a phone number, saying that if she ever ran into trouble she could call him, and he would at least be able to help a little.

They took the bus from the county town straight to the area near Zhangjia Village. Zhou Hao and Yi Bai did not continue accompanying them; both had to hurry back to work, while Chen Xin and Bai Mengqing were heading to Zhangjia Village to attend Brother Zhang’s wedding.

Rao Bang came to meet them outside the station. Chen Xin knew he was a glutton, so she had specially brought him plenty of local specialties. Fresh tofu was impossible to carry, but she had brought a lot of dried bean curd and green beans, along with mountain produce from the village and ingredients for making medicinal liquor, all fine things Puga had helped her gather.

“Not bad at all. I was just wondering what to give my grandfather’s old comrade for his birthday when I got home this time, and you’ve solved my problem.” Rao Bang happily put away the rare medicinal ingredients and directly handed Chen Xin an envelope. “This is the money for these things, and another two thousand for your Brother Zhang. Wish him a happy marriage for me. I won’t go over there; I have a train to catch tonight and won’t make it.”

In these years, in the county town, even a wedding or birthday red envelope of a hundred yuan was already considered quite a generous gesture. Up in the mountains, ten or twenty was the norm. Someone like Rao Bang, who casually handed over two thousand, even startled Chen Xin; the envelope felt in her hand like a piece of red-hot charcoal.

“Keep it. If you feel awkward about it, then before next year’s Qingming Festival, get me some good tea from your mountain. I want to give it away as gifts.”

The tea trees on the mountain were not any rare variety; at best, a catty could fetch fifty or sixty yuan.

Chen Xin thought it over and agreed. She planned to make a special trip back then to personally pan-roast tea for Rao Bang, and bring him some top-grade snow bud tea as well. In any case, she would make up roughly a thousand yuan’s worth, which could count as repaying some of the favor.

Rao Bang was busy and had no time to see them off himself, so he found a driver from his unit to take them instead, and two packs of cigarettes were enough to settle it.

Liu Chunyan had gone up the mountain early that morning to help out. She had been here for more than two months, and in the meantime Brother Zhang had come down to lend a hand for several days. Later he even introduced a few local people, hardworking and honest, to come work there. Since people from Zhangjia Village were involved, the local laborers were somewhat less bold about bullying the boss for being from out of town, and the factory’s operations ran much more smoothly than they had down south.

Though Liu Chunyan’s little factory was not large, for the county it was still an example of attracting investment. Because of her lead, the economic zone established by the county had already brought in several private enterprises: a sugar factory, a pastry factory, and a meat-processing plant.

The meat-processing plant was the largest in scale and had the highest investment. Its boss had come from the provincial capital. He had originally studied animal husbandry, but after graduation, more than ten years later, he was no longer raising livestock; instead, he had turned to the specialized business of meat processing.