Chapter 2: All talk is empty; find a way to make money!
The father and son chatted for a while longer, and soon the sound of his mother pushing the wooden fence gate came from the courtyard entrance.
Hearing the noise, Yue Feng got up and left the house, and soon saw his mother, full of joy, carrying several oil-paper packages, and his elder brother and sister-in-law following behind her.
"Mom! Brother, Sister-in-law!" Yue Feng stood at the North House entrance and called out in a deep voice.
"Xiao Feng is awake! Hurry, go lie down inside!" His mother, Meng Yulan, seeing that Yue Feng was awake, immediately came over, scrutinizing him from head to toe, and even felt his forehead.
Feeling the slightly rough caress of his mother's fingers on his cheek, Yue Feng's heart sank again.
"Brother, how do you feel now? If you don't feel well, your sister-in-law and your elder brother will take you to the Town clinic for a check-up when we have time! Oh, by the way, I bought you your favorite rice cakes this time!" His sister-in-law, Chen Hong, also walked up to Yue Feng and asked with feigned concern.
"Thank you, Sister-in-law and Brother, I'm fine, a few days of rest at home will do! You must be tired from such a long journey, come in!" Yue Feng did not expose his sister-in-law's 'kindness' and led them into the North House.
The house only had three adobe rooms; the kitchen was directly inside the main entrance in the middle, with a half-kang layout on both the left and right sides. Yue Feng led his brother and sister-in-law into the room where his father was recuperating. Another round of pleasantries ensued.
Why describe it as pleasantries? Because what was said was truly insubstantial. His elder brother, Yue Shan, was not good with words to begin with, so after entering the room, it was mostly his eloquent sister-in-law performing.
Both of them were double-income earners and had no children. Their monthly salary alone was fifty to sixty yuan, yet after traveling such a long distance to return home, they only brought two packages of rice cakes, priced at twenty-five cents per jin, and this was knowing that their father had a broken bone and their brother was unconscious and recuperating at home.
From the moment his elder brother and sister-in-law entered the house, Yue Feng behaved extremely quietly.
In his previous life, his elder brother and sister-in-law, ever since they moved to the city and started eating commercial grain, their contact with the family was limited to holidays and festivals; they were almost never seen on ordinary days.
The reason Yue Feng had a bad impression of his sister-in-law was from when Yue Feng got married in his previous life.
At that time, according to the village customs, for an ordinary family's wedding, a bride price ranging from 60 to 200 yuan was required. The family had just renovated the new house and did not have much spare money, so the expenses for the wedding were all borrowed by Yue Feng.
Seeing this, some might ask, aren't his elder brother and sister-in-law both working? His father had passed away, and his mother was not well. Since the elder brother is like a father, logically, his elder brother, Yue Shan, should have helped his own younger brother, as marriage is a major life event.
But the reality was that his elder brother, Yue Shan, only brought back 12 yuan. When Yue Feng inquired, his elder brother stammered out an explanation: his sister-in-law's younger brother had just borrowed money to buy a bicycle and a sewing machine, so the family had no money!
From that moment on, Yue Feng saw through the characters of his elder brother and sister-in-law. Although they were biological brothers, his elder brother was his true elder brother, but his sister-in-law was not his true sister-in-law.
Later, when they encountered problems in life, including his mother's death and a series of other family changes, his elder brother and sister-in-law's attitude remained subtly consistent. When it came to money matters, his sister-in-law's repeated actions never 'disappointed' Yue Feng.
The family had a meal at noon, and by around three in the afternoon, his elder brother and sister-in-law left that same day, not even staying overnight at home.
Yue Feng, full and content, lay on the kang, staring at the newspaper-covered ceiling, his mind filled with myriad thoughts.
It was certainly impossible to get rich relying on the meager work points from the production team. To rise above, he had to make changes.
All talk is empty; find a way to make money!!
In that social context, ordinary farmers actually had no channels for earning money.
The entire Xing'an Village brigade, with a total of six production teams, primarily engaged in farming as its main business. A strong laborer, working diligently all year, even with full attendance of 360 workdays, at a few cents per workday, could at most receive ten or eight yuan in year-end dividends.
If the harvest was poor due to bad weather, after a year of hard work, they might even end up owing money or grain to the brigade.
Of course, relying on the mountains, being close to Changbai Mountain, there were other ways to earn money besides farming.
For example, the Xinghua Brigade at the foot of the mountain organized villagers to enter the mountains to collect ginseng, mushrooms, edible fungus, and other mountain products.
Furthermore, in Kaoshan Village, located at the foot of the mountain and inhabited by a mix of Manchu people, some organized hunters with hunting dogs to go into the mountains to hunt wild boars, Black Bears, and other game to improve their lives or sell them to the Supply and Marketing Cooperative for money.
In that era, there were no wildlife protection laws, no gun bans, and the wild animal resources in the mountains were extremely abundant. Every autumn, even the farmland at the foot of the mountain would have wild boars or Black Bears coming down to fatten up, requiring villagers to organize protection teams. Seeing Lynxes, wild boars, Great Eagles, and the like at their doorsteps was almost commonplace.
The Yue Family had a tradition of hunters passed down from their great-grandfather's generation. By the time it reached Yue Feng's father, Yue Lei, the family's inherited hunting skills had not been lost. During the farming off-season, Yue Lei could supplement the family's meat supply by setting traps in the mountains to catch Roe Deer, wild rabbits, and other mountain products.
Yue Feng had been very keen on hunting in the mountains since he was a child. In his previous life, he not only practiced Falconry but also raised several hunting dogs, earning him the nickname 'Yue Paotou' in the surrounding villages.
In his previous life, Yue Feng's hunting skills were good, but his business acumen was almost zero. Yue Feng was also a person who cared about face. Regardless of how close or distant the relationship, when villagers saw Yue Feng dragging a mountain animal home after hunting, they would come over shamelessly to lend a hand with whatever help they could offer. When they left, Yue Feng would give them a piece of meat, weighing one or two jin, or three to five jin, depending on the closeness of the relationship.
The family's life was passable due to hunting in the mountains every autumn, but they didn't save much real money. After a few years of marriage, when they found out they couldn't have children, Yue Feng's temperament subtly changed, and he developed bad habits of alcoholism and gambling, making their lives even worse.
Now, since Heaven had given Yue Feng a chance to be reborn, this life, he would certainly not follow the old path.
Having cleared his thoughts, Yue Feng got up from the kang, put on his coat, and left the room.
"Mom! Where are the netting shuttle and the old Falconry tools passed down in our family?" Yue Feng asked his mother from the courtyard.
"Shuttle? In that broken box in the southwest corner of the storeroom. What do you need that for?"
"I have a use for it!"
After getting the answer, Yue Feng slipped into the storeroom and began rummaging through it.
Soon, Yue Feng found the wooden netting shuttle. Besides that, he also found a riding cage net measuring six meters long and three meters wide, with a three-finger wide mesh, plus several pure copper swivels of various sizes and several sets of ox bone plates and ringing copper Great Eagle bells passed down from the elders.
Yue Feng's idea was simple: if he continued to muddle along, he still wouldn't be able to change his family's fate.
At this stage, the family certainly didn't have the money to buy a gun. A 16-gauge shotgun would cost at least several hundred yuan, and a brand new 56 Half at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative would be over a thousand.
Raising dogs had too long a return cycle; good hunting dogs were rare and hard to come by, and currently, the family's grain supply was not abundant, making it equally difficult.
For Yue Feng, the shortest path to starting from scratch and making money was to take advantage of the autumn season, when eagles begin to migrate, to set nets to catch eagles, then train them for hunting and small-scale Wai.
