Reborn in Changbai Mountain, I rely on my divine eyes to dig ginseng and hunt

When Liu Xia Lian arrived at the greenhouse, she saw the owner Shui Qin collecting the prickly ash seedlings sent by the villagers. Liu Xia Lian took a look and saw that it was the elementary school principal, Principal Cheng.

"Principal Cheng, why are you here?"

Principal Cheng is in his forties and used to be Liu Xia Lian's teacher.

"Well, the students dug up thousands of prickly ash seedlings, and I came here to sell them for a hundred dollars, which was just enough to buy some things for the school and repair the tables and chairs."

Liu Xia Lian's home is in the south of the village and the school is in the west of the village. Even though the distance is only three miles, I have never been there.

"What does the school look like now? I haven't been there for several years. I just happened to go and take a look today."

Liu Xia Lian followed Principal Cheng to the primary school where she had once attended school.

The courtyard wall is made of gravel, and there is a large iron gate welded with steel bars. Inside are two rows of tiled houses with a total of six classrooms, one for the Yuhong class and one for grades one to five.

Familiar playground, familiar courtyard, Liu Xia Lian carefully searched the depths of her memory. She had grabbed stones under that tree, jumped rope under that tree, and that was the place where she used to play with sandbags. The carefree childhood was gone forever.

In the classroom, there are solid wood tables and chairs, and the children are reading.

It looks okay at first glance, but upon closer inspection, it's really not that great.

The front and back windows of the classroom are not inlaid with glass, but are covered with plastic sheets, which make crackling sounds when the wind blows.

Not to mention floor tiles, even red bricks are not laid on the ground, it is directly rammed earth, which has formed a bumpy surface over the years.

The blackboard was a simple cement blackboard and the wooden podium was also damaged.

The wooden door was not tightly secured and had to be left open during class to keep light in the classroom.

These days, the number of babies has exploded, and every household has several. The environment here is really not good.

"Principal Cheng, this classroom is in such a mess. Report it to your superiors and have it repaired."

Principal Cheng smiled and said, "Xia Lian doesn't know the situation. Schools in cities and towns are under the jurisdiction of the Education Bureau. Ours is a village-run school, and the village pays for teachers' salaries and school buildings. Now that the village is not in arrears with salaries, it's much better than before. How can I dare to hope to ask the village chief to repair the school building?"

Liu Xia Lian was speechless for a while. She had money in her hands and forgot about other people’s poverty.

"Yesterday, we organized students to dig up about a thousand prickly ash buds from the nearby hillside and sold them to your greenhouse. We earned a hundred yuan, which we used to buy chalk, brooms, and blackboard erasers for the school. But I feel that you will lose money if you grow this stuff. It's everywhere in the mountains. Do you really need to grow it in a greenhouse?"

Liu Xia Lian nodded: "Principal Cheng is right, I'm just planting some as a sample, and then I'll deliver them to restaurants and markets in the city. When the quantity is large, I'll definitely collect wild vegetables from the mountains. Otherwise, I think the school is too simple, not to mention that with so many children being born now, it will soon be insufficient. You calculate how much it will cost, and I'll pay for a new one."

Principal Cheng scratched his ear and looked at Liu Xialian: "I know you made some money, but you risked your life to earn money from fishing in the mountains. Are you really willing to spend real money to build a school?"

"Look at what you said. Isn't it all because of your teaching? In order for people to live a good life, the older generation didn't even frown when they risked their lives. It's a small matter for me to spend a little money. If you don't spend money, what's the point of earning it?"

"Well, then you come to the office. The math teacher did the calculations some time ago and reported it to the village chief. The village chief said that the villagers are suffering and most of them have just had enough food to eat. If he lets everyone go out to build a school, he is afraid that the villagers will shoot him in the back."

This is not just talk these days, it is really possible. Most families still have an old cannon barrel.

The math teacher is quite young, a handsome guy in his mid-twenties, with a scholarly air, wearing glasses and a fair complexion. It is obvious at first glance that he is not from the village but should be a teaching volunteer from the city.

"Teacher Xu, this is Comrade Liu Xialian from the village. She wants to invest in building a school. Can you tell her how much money she needs?"

Teacher Xu quickly stood up from his workstation and said, "Hello, Comrade Liu. I am Xu Yi, your math teacher."

"Yeah, I heard you calculated how much money it would cost?"

"I've calculated it. Look here." Xu Yi took out a piece of paper and spread it on the table, pointing with a pencil: "The new school building needs at least ten classrooms. Each classroom is 60 square meters. Thirty yuan per square meter of reinforced concrete, red bricks, windows and glass is enough. That's 1,800 yuan per classroom. A total of 18,000 yuan. The wall is a little damaged now, but it can still be used. Let's keep it."

Liu Xialian took a chair and sat across from him, shaking her head. "You are quite professional. Let's make a new budget. Lijiatun, Mangcun and Zhangjiatun are three villages next to each other, and the schools in the three villages are not very good. Choose a place close to the three villages and build a school. There will be three classes for each grade, a total of 18 classrooms. The office will occupy two classrooms, and there will be a boiler room and radiators. In addition, there must be a teachers' cafeteria, after all, the teachers still need to eat."

Teacher Xu was a little bit unbelieving and didn't calculate it immediately.

"A school this big would cost at least thirty or forty thousand. If you can't get the money, forget it, forget it."

"No, you don't have to worry about the money. There's a saying that goes, if there's no difficulty, we have to go, if there's a difficulty, we have to go and solve it. You do the math, it's mainly the cost of materials, the labor cost is mainly from the villagers, and the land doesn't cost much."

"Okay, let me calculate it. It should be ready in the afternoon."

"Okay, Mr. Xu, you are busy, I am leaving now."

Liu Xia Lian went back to grow greenhouses, and has now built the eighth greenhouse.

The green peppers in the first shed are already in the peak production period, and we can easily pick 50 to 60 kilograms every day. The prickly ash seedlings in the second shed are all small seedlings transplanted from the mountains. In the third shed, the watermelon seedlings have just been planted and have only three or four leaves. The tomatoes are planted in the fourth shed. The chives planted in the fifth shed are not seeds, but buried chive roots. The cucumbers in the sixth, seventh, and eighth sheds are particularly easy to produce. Now there is one supervisor and eight shed owners. Today, I planted tomatoes in the fourth shed and hired three extra temporary workers to help, each of them paid one dollar a day.

When Liu Xia Lian came over, everyone was working.

Among them was a woman with a particularly big belly. She was in charge of digging the pit and worked quite quickly. It was obvious that she was seven or eight months pregnant.

After all, there were many people in the village, and Liu Xia Lian really didn’t know anyone, so she called Chun Lan out.

"She's already seven or eight months pregnant. Why would she want him when she's about to give birth?"

"She is such a poor person. Last winter, her husband broke his foot in the mine. The boss gave him 20 yuan and never took care of him again. He spent all the 50 yuan that was reserved for his wife to prepare for the birth and confinement period on her hospitalization. Last autumn, we paid the public grain tax, and there are only a few hundred kilograms of corn left at home. Now she is about to give birth, and she has nothing to ask for. But she insisted on coming to work. I didn't agree, but she refused to leave. I really had no choice but to let her do something that doesn't require her to bend over."