Chapter 2: Moving in Reverse

Even without dinner, Wei Dong remained strong and vigorous.

He was a high school graduate, indeed the rare scholar often discussed by the villagers. Yet, his passion for basketball and frequent labor in the fields, coupled with hardworking parents who never let him go hungry, meant that at eighteen or nineteen, he could play ball for hours after class, sweating profusely without feeling tired. At school, he was famously robust.

Kicking over his uncle, the habitual smoker, was as easy as poking through a paper window. The uncle landed against the wall nearby and sat on the ground in embarrassment. The relatives around, especially his mother, were stunned, while a bundle of large-denomination bills scattered from his uncle’s hand.

In modern terms, his mother could be called a “brother-supporter,” always covering for her brother with the help of her two sisters. The money just paid to his father for medical expenses was once again swindled away. So without hesitation, Wei Dong bent down to pick up the bills, even snatching away the few notes his mother still held.

“I’m going to earn some money. All the medical expenses here are covered by the construction company. Wait for me to come back in a few days…”

Then, before the astonished eyes of dozens of people, he strode away!

Youthful vigor gave Wei Dong a long-lost fighting spirit, his heart burning like a furnace. There must be a way—there is always a way! Even without relying on the local tycoon, he could find his footing.

Though still uncertain, as he ran and jumped, some idea struggled to break free in his mind. The 1980s—an era where anyone could start a business from scratch! Everything was in its infancy; the tax bureau claimed that only in the early eighties did people start earning enough to be taxed. It was a wild age where the bold thrived and the timid starved.

Now, he needed something to eat.

Leaving the county hospital, his stomach rumbled. The state-run restaurants and food shops had closed for the day, leaving only a few vendors by the roadside, illuminated by oil lamps, selling tofu pudding, dan dan noodles, fried cakes, and wontons.

As a student, Wei Dong had never spent money eating out, always bringing rice to steam at school. But the lonely old man living in the tax compound’s gatehouse, never failed to order some food and sip a little wine. It became a habit.

Now, sitting down and ordering noodles, he cast his gaze into the distance. In the darkness, the next patch of light was the cinema—the county’s only evening entertainment. Beyond that, from day to night, everywhere was an atmosphere of serious vitality.

Everyone’s role was clear: workers were workers, farmers were farmers. Anyone who tried to act freely was seen as an oddity.

Take his uncle, for example. His plan was simple: bring his strong nephew to buy a sack of the most popular chocolate-coated sunflower seeds from the provincial capital, and sell them retail in the towns. One hundred yuan could buy two hundred pounds at fifty cents a pound, five cents per ounce. Retailing at twenty cents a packet wrapped in newspaper, less than an ounce per packet, it was a huge profit.

Villagers could casually plant sunflowers, and after drying and roasting, enjoy fragrant seeds. Careful families even added sugar and salt for extra flavor. Some brought them to town on market days to sell, one of the few snacks available in city and countryside alike.

Yet, once the supply cooperative stocked Guanshengyuan chocolate sunflower seeds, all homemade seeds were outclassed. Plump, sweet, almost magical—like only owning a fruit-brand phone in later times to be considered stylish. Young people without a few chocolate seeds in their pocket felt embarrassed to gossip.

On first glance, his uncle’s plan sounded right, even reminiscent of the direct-sales model familiar in later years, skipping all middlemen.

So, in his previous life, Wei Dong, eager to act grown-up, agreed immediately, taking his mother’s two hundred yuan and traveling by boat with his uncle three hundred kilometers to buy seeds from a famous provincial brand.

In truth, his uncle just wanted free labor. But the sales went well; demand was high, and they easily sold twenty or thirty pounds a day in different towns.

Yet, after only a few days, just as money began to roll in, they were caught by the authorities on a tip from the public—charged with “speculation and disrupting economic order”!

His uncle, who always hustled for customers, ran off at the first sign of trouble, leaving Wei Dong, who did all the work, to be detained for three months.

Had it not been 1983—a year of both crackdowns and economic reform—Wei Dong would have suffered worse.

Still, being handled by the authorities left a permanent stain, forever barring him from university, factory jobs, or any state rations. His decade of schooling was rendered useless; like his father, he could only work the fields or mix cement on construction sites.

His father’s accident ended his academic path. Desperate to prove he could change his family’s fate, he fell straight into a trap.

No wonder he bore such hatred for his uncle, whose troubles only multiplied over time.

The thought flashed through him, making Wei Dong’s burning resolve waver. What could he do now?

He was simply too unskilled at thinking, the old security guard’s mind ill-equipped for strategy.

Just then, steaming dan dan noodles were served. The hunched old vendor, wearing an apron, grumbled as Wei Dong paid with large bills.

Someone came to the neighboring stall and said, “Slice two ounces of pig tongue, a plate of peanuts. We brought our own wine!”

Everyone was poor, but this was already considered quite lavish, a reason so many nostalgically remembered this era of equal poverty.

Wei Dong slurped his noodles, listening to the conversation next door: “Is that pig tongue fresh? Swap it for pig ear, or pig tail? The flavor’s not as good—maybe some sausage or cured meat instead…”

Suddenly, his mind lit up—pig tongue, pig ear, pig tail, sausage, and cured meat! Hearing them all together, he realized the elusive idea he'd been searching for.

Since kicking his uncle, he'd had an inkling, which drew him here for food.

This was a national-level poverty county in the mountains, forty kilometers from the Yangtze city, three hundred from the provincial capital. It had no special local produce, but every household raised pigs, making the slaughter tax a major revenue source.

Farmers rarely ate pork themselves, selling almost all to the slaughterhouse for the city—nearly their only cash income. School fees, clothes, shoes, women’s wants for fabric or powder—all depended on this.

Yet, they needed some meat, so kept pig tongue, pig ear, tail, and offal, eating them during good harvests or at New Year. Sometimes, several families pooled together to slaughter a pig, curing most of the meat to hang up, enough to last years. Slicing off a piece for a child was the greatest nutrition.

This was already a privileged rural life in the land of abundance.

But the tax bureau often mentioned that the first ten-thousand-yuan or millionaire in the neighboring poor counties made their fortune by collecting cured meats and selling them in the city—crossing mountains to do so. Even after serving time for it, he persisted, leading others to raise pigs and sell cured meats.

When everyone started raising pigs and selling cured meat, this pioneer shifted to buying up the pig tongue, heart, liver, ear, tail, and other offal that nobody wanted, processing them into finger-sized vacuum-packed snack foods, and suddenly generating tens of millions in annual output.

When others found the cured meat market oversaturated and profits thin, they could only look up to the pioneer, whose half-mechanized factory had become a high barrier to entry.

He was the tax bureau’s model taxpayer every year!

Wei Dong resolved to try this path for a quick rescue!

And he would go further—he would sell cured meat directly to the provincial capital, cutting out all middlemen!

He knew this term well.