industrial overlord

Chapter 22 Yunnan educated youth
When the footsteps of the farmers faded away, Lin Zhenhua squatted down and asked the thief who was still holding his head, "How is it, brother, can you get up?"

The thief let go of the hand holding his head and sat up slowly.With the light of Yang Chunshan's flashlight, Lin Zhenhua could see that the muscles on the thief's face were twitching continuously as he sat up. It was obvious that the place where he was beaten was very painful.However, he still gritted his teeth and did not utter a single moan.

"Thank you two big brothers." After taking a breath, the thief bowed his hands to Yang Chunshan and Lin Zhenhua.Of course he knew that if these two people hadn't intervened, he would have been beaten much more severely.

Lin Zhenhua carefully highlighted the thief, only to see that he was about seventeen or eighteen years old, and his childishness was still on his face.He has a thin face, his hair seems to have been uncut for a long time, and the clothes on his body are also patched and patched, obviously from a poor family.However, from his face, Lin Zhenhua could not see a trace of shame or fear, nor any resentment. It seemed that he felt that it was only natural for him to steal things, and it was also natural for others to beat him.To the two saviors in front of him, the thief just thanked him lightly, as if he didn't have any emotions and desires that human beings should have.

"Why steal?" Lin Zhenhua asked again.

"I'm hungry." The thief still replied in two words. He groped around and found the half-cut turnip that the farmer dropped just now. He picked it up, wiped it with his sleeve, and eagerly took a bite.

"Xiaohua, let's go." Yang Chunshan said to Lin Zhenhua. For a thief, all he could do was save him from the peasants, and he didn't care about other things.If Lin Zhenhua hadn't been present at the time, Yang Chunshan wouldn't have cared about these things.

"Okay." Lin Zhenhua nodded, and asked the thief again with concern: "Brother, are you really okay? Can you go home by yourself?"

"It's okay, brother." The thief replied, and just after he finished speaking, he suddenly turned his face to the side and spit out a mouthful of clear water with a wow.He ate half of the radish on an empty stomach, and his stomach felt as if it was overwhelmed.

Lin Zhenhua suddenly felt compassion. He remembered that he still had two pieces of rice cakes from Factory Manager Mao in his pocket to take home for Xiaofang to eat, so he took them out and handed them to the thief: "Brother, I'm hungry." Don’t eat raw radishes. Here are two rice cakes, here you go.”

The thief froze for a moment, reached out to take the rice cake, opened the paper bag, and a scent came out.This kind of rice cake is made by peasants in the countryside by pounding together green vegetables and glutinous rice. It is fried with tea oil when eating, and it is very fragrant.The thief was not polite either. He picked up a rice cake and ate it in three mouthfuls. His eyes began to regain vitality, and he was no longer the indifferent look just now.

"Oh, you are young, you should do something, how can you steal something." Yang Chunshan also squatted down, and said to the thief in an elder tone.Seeing that Lin Zhenhua took something for the thief to eat, he left in no hurry and simply had a chat with the thief.

"I'm a black household and I don't have a job," said the thief.

"What about your household registration?" Yang Chunshan asked.

"I'm an educated youth with a registered permanent residence in Yunnan. I ran back here," said the thief.

Lin Zhenhua knew a little about the educated youth in Yunnan.Since 1968, Yunnan’s agricultural reclamation system has been accepting and resettling educated youths from all over the country. A total of more than 10 people have been accepted, mainly from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Kunming and other places.The educated youth in Jiangnan Province were not resettled to Yunnan in the first place, but one year, a leader of Jiangnan Province had a sudden idea and sent some of the educated youth in the province to Yunnan. It seems that Lan Wufeng It should be one of those unlucky experimental subjects.Based on time, when Lan Wufeng went there, he should have been only fourteen or fifteen years old, that is, he had just graduated from junior high school.

In later generations, the educated youth in Yunnan is a very famous group. The reason is that a large number of cultural celebrities such as Wang Xiaobo, A Cheng, and Chen Kaige were born among the educated youth in Yunnan. of.

The turmoil of educated youth returning to the city first appeared in Yunnan, and there is also a specific reason, that is, the living environment of Yunnan educated youth is very harsh, which has exceeded the bottom line that young people can bear.

Of course, there is another legendary story about the educated youth in Yunnan, which we will talk about later.

"The central government has a policy that the educated youths have already begun to return to the city. In fact, you don't have to run away." Yang Chunshan said.

The thief said: "I ran back last year. At that time, my mother was sick and had no one to take care of me. I couldn't ask for leave. I couldn't help it, so I sneaked back. Now I have no household registration and files. I want to work. There is no place for me."

"Is there no one else in your family?" Lin Zhenhua asked.

"My dad died early because of a work-related injury. I was only three years old at the time, and I was the only child."

"Oh." Yang Chunshan responded softly, and couldn't help turning his head to look at Lin Zhenhua. Lin Zhenhua's parents also died of work-related injuries, but Lin Zhenhua's fate was better than that of the thief, mainly because the factory where his parents worked was a big business. Pensions for family members are relatively generous.

"Isn't the only son not required to be an educated youth?" Yang Chunshan asked suspiciously.

Lan Wufeng smiled lightly: "It's just a policy, whether to go or not, isn't it just a word from an official?"

For a moment, Lin Zhenhua felt some sympathy for the thief, and he continued to ask, "Then what do you and your mother do for a living?"

"My father's work unit gave my mother a pension of 10 yuan a month. It turns out that my mother can still work as a temporary worker, which raised me up. She fell ill last year and couldn't do the temporary work. Now I and My mother lives on this 10 yuan a month."

"Only 10 yuan to live?" Lin Zhenhua was shocked.

The thief showed a self-deprecating smile: "Of course I can't live on the 10 yuan alone, so I had to tell my mother that I can go out and do a small job to earn some money."

"What kind of work do you do?"

The thief smiled without saying a word, and there was a teasing look at himself in his smile.Lin Zhenhua understood that what he was referring to as a small worker was actually stealing.

"I was arrested by the police station more than a dozen times. Every time I went in, I was locked up for two hours and then released. The police also knew the situation in my house. If they locked me up, my mother would die of starvation, if not illness. Sometimes, someone caught me stealing something, like this, and I beat him up, and there were times when the beating was worse than this." The thief seemed to be talking about other people's affairs, calmly.

"What's your name?"

"My name is Lan Wufeng. When I jumped in line, everyone called me Fengzi."

"Crazy?" Lin Zhenhua didn't respond, "What do you mean?"

Lan Wufeng corrected: "It's the peak in my name, the peak of the mountain. However, after calling it for a long time, I can't tell which peak it is. It's okay to say it's a madman's madness."

"why?"

"I fought hard and dared to fight desperately, so my friends in the educated youth spot called me crazy. In fact, if I really wanted to fight, those fellow villagers just now couldn't stop me at all. However, I stole their things, They deserved to hit me, I can't fight back."

"There is a way to steal." For some reason, Lin Zhenhua remembered such a sentence.

"There is a way of stealing." Lan Wufeng asked.

"That is to say, even a thief has a thief's moral standards, what should be done and what should not be done. Being a thief is not a shameful thing, what is shameful is not following the rules of a thief. You can think of stealing things You should be beaten, which shows that you are a thief who strictly abides by the rules."

Lin Zhenhua's words were a bit shocking at the time.In those days, everyone judged a person with only two values, good and bad, either one or the other.In later generations, people's understanding of the world has become diversified, and they have new evaluation standards for various things.Lin Zhenhua remembers that there was a story like this circulating on the Internet. A prostitution woman said to a corrupt official: Although I am here to sell, what I sell is my body. I am cleaner than you.

"Thieves have their own way..." Lan Wufeng muttered the word, and couldn't help thinking.For more than a year, he was used to listening to the insults from everyone, and he had already given up on his own destiny.If he hadn't been concerned about his sick mother, perhaps he would have chosen an even more absurd path of no return.However, the young man in front of him, who was not more than one or two years older than himself, called him a brother over and over again, and even said the truth that a thief has a way.It's true that Lin Zhenhua's Tao refers to morality, but in Lan Wufeng's mind, another word comes to mind, that is morality.

"Okay, go home early after eating, don't let your mother worry about it." Lin Zhenhua said, he took another look in his pocket, took out the two yuan he just earned, and stuffed it into Lan Wufeng's hand , "Take it, and buy some nutrition for your mother. My name is Lin Zhenhua, and I work for Hanhua Machinery Factory. When you are really in trouble, you can come to the factory to find me."

Lan Wufeng took the money without refusing or saying thank you.His education level is not high, and he doesn't know that there is such a polite saying in the world as "no thanks for a great kindness", but he also knows that it is too light to say thank you at this time.

"Brother Lin, my family lives at No. 16, Lujia Lane. If the elder brother has anything to do for the younger brother, just ask, and the younger brother is willing to do anything." Lan Wufeng promised emphatically.He has nothing now, only his own life, and if he wants to repay Lin Zhenhua, the only way is to put a knife in his ribs.

Lin Zhenhua looked at Lan Wufeng's childish face and heard the promise full of vicissitudes. He didn't feel a little emotional. He patted Lan Wufeng on the shoulder and said, "I don't have anything for you to do now, but I will I hope you don't do this kind of thing in the future, and do something more serious."

"It's not so easy to do serious things." Lan Wufeng sighed, "Actually, my mother also knew that I was stealing things outside. She beat me at first, but then she could only hold me and cry. I want to promise her, Said that I would never do this again, but I couldn’t do it. If I didn’t do this, the whole family would starve to death. I couldn’t bear to let my mother starve to death, and my mother couldn’t bear to let me starve to death.”

Lin Zhenhua said: "Fengzi, you can go home first. I will go to you in a few days when I have some free time. We will discuss it and see if there is any way to earn some clean money."

"Thank you, big brother." Lan Wufeng clasped his fists at Lin Zhenhua and thanked Lin Zhenhua with Jianghu etiquette.

(End of this chapter)