Material Empire

It was already past six o'clock in the evening, and a middle-aged man in his 40s was walking slowly in the sparse winter rain with an oil umbrella on No. 2 Chemical Industry Road in the suburbs of the city. When the north wind hit, the man shivered uncontrollably. He looked up at the sky, then tucked up his clothes, and continued to walk forward, not knowing where the target was.

The man's name was Yu Lihong, and he was a process engineer at the No. 7 Pujiang Plastic Factory. Just an hour ago, he and his wife had another big fight over sending money to their hometown. With a clumsy mouth and cheeks, he was cornered by his eloquent wife in just a few words. Annoyed, he could only run out of the house to calm his mind like he did after every quarrel.

Yu Lihong was born in a farming family, and like all enterprise employees whose families were in the countryside at that time, they often sent money to their families to subsidize their living. His wife, Li Hongmei, is a native of Pujiang, and she does not discriminate against her husband from the countryside. It is just that there is a bottom line that cannot be violated when sending money to his hometown, that is, 10 yuan per month. Increase.

Yu Lihong is a dutiful son. Every year and festivals, he always wants to send a few extra dollars to his parents so that they can go to the market to cut some meat and make dumplings. Every time he made this request to his wife, Li Hongmei, who has always been virtuous and considerate, would be furious and spread out all the bills for his son's purchase of sneakers and his daughter's rubella, and asked her husband how could he have spare money to squander like this.

Yu Lihong was powerless to quarrel with his wife, because the reasons given by his wife were always valid. Over the years, my wife has given full play to her talent of making dojos with snail shells and used the husband and wife's modest salary to build a decent house. At least the whole family can go out without patches on their clothes, which is very It is rare. If Yu Lihong wanted to say what his wife did wrong, he really couldn't say it.

In desperation, Yu Lihong could only save pocket money from himself, accumulating little money, and occasionally secretly sending an extra five or ten yuan to his family as a show of filial piety. I don't know if Li Hongmei really didn't know about these things, or if she was pretending to be confused. In short, the couple have not fought because of such things for at least a while.

This time, Yu Lihong received a letter from his mother, saying that winter was coming and his father's asthma was severe. Yu Lihong was worried, so he went home to discuss with Li Hongmei, and wanted to send an extra 20 yuan home so that his father could go to the county to have a look and prescribe some western medicine. Hearing this, Li Hongmei was furious, took out the envelope containing the family's living expenses from the drawer, threw it on Yu Lihong's face, and shouted: There is only so little money at home, take it, and send it back. , let the whole family drink the northwest wind tomorrow!

After a quarrel, the final result was that Li Hongmei went into the room crying, talking to herself about the hardships of running the family for more than ten years, while Yu Lihong could only carry an umbrella and escaped in the rain .

Alas, useless!

Yu Lihong was tired from walking, and stood under a tree, looking at the dense rain and fog in front of him, and sighed in frustration.

After all, the income is still too low. After so many years of hard work, I became an engineer with a salary of 130 yuan a month; my wife is a worker with only 60 yuan a month. In the past, the couple had nearly 200 yuan, which was considered a high-income family, but now, what is this money enough for?

The supply in the market is much better than in the past. As long as you have money, you can buy meat, eggs, fish and shrimp, but the price is indeed staggering. On Sundays, the family can add a meal casually, and 10 yuan will disappear. There are more household appliances than in the past, and the quality is better, but a color TV is more than 1,000, a washing machine is more than 400, and there are electric fans, tape recorders, rice cookers, electronic clocks... Every household has them. If you don’t have one at home, you can justify it ? But if you want to buy these things, you have to quickly save a sum of money after the monthly salary is paid.

Also, the son and daughter are grown up and want to make friends. As parents, can we not give some money? I heard from my son that if I invite my girlfriend to eat ice cream balls in a small shop next to the People’s Square, each one costs more than 1 yuan, and my girlfriend will eat three at a time, and I have to bring a girlfriend to eat, and there are three more... like this If you dare to save the money, just wait for your son to become an old bachelor.

With such a big family, can you save 20 yuan to see a doctor for your father? The answer is of course yes. But what Li Hongmei said also makes sense, that is, there is no shortage of 20 yuan in my hometown, so why do I have to wait to send it back from Pujiang? Yu Lihong can also imagine the situation at home, 20 yuan is definitely available, but his frugal old father is reluctant to spend the money on himself...

If I have more money, I can go back to my hometown, bring my parents to Pujiang, find a hospital for them, and have a good physical examination. The old man has suffered all his life, and the son has the responsibility to let them live a happy old age.

But... this is just a beautiful dream. To take over his parents, at least 500 yuan will be spent, which is an astronomical figure that he cannot afford.

It would be great if I can be rated as the deputy chief engineer. The salary of the deputy chief engineer can be forty or fifty yuan more than the current one. In this way, the hand can be much more relaxed...

Yu Lihong's thoughts drifted to another direction. In these years, he has never relaxed his research for a moment, and has achieved some research results in several resin formulations, and once published a paper in the Synthetic Resin magazine. According to his conditions, in fact, he can already be rated as the deputy chief engineer, and even if he works harder, it is possible to be rated as the chief engineer.

However, this is just a beautiful dream, because when he applied for promotion to the factory, he realized that academic achievements alone are not enough. Relationship, otherwise your achievements will not be able to enter the field of vision of others. Yu Lihong himself is not good at communicating with leaders. Although his wife Li Hongmei is capable, she is only a worker after all and cannot reach the level of being able to talk to leaders.

So, the evaluation of the deputy chief engineer was delayed again and again until nothing came to light...

Father, Li Hong is incompetent, Li Hong is not filial...

Facing the direction of his hometown, Yu Lihong murmured such a sentence, and two lines of hot tears overflowed from the corners of his eyes unconsciously.

dad!

In the rain, someone was calling loudly. Yu Lihong turned his head and looked. There were no pedestrians behind him, only a small car driving slowly with double flashing lights. Yu Lihong didn't think that someone in the car would greet him, so he took the call just now as his hallucination, shook his head and continued walking forward.

dad!

This time, the sound was closer. The car that Yu Lihong saw just now had already driven to a position parallel to him. The window facing him in the back row was rolled down, revealing a pretty face of a girl. Yu Lihong wiped his myopia glasses with his hands, and finally saw clearly that the girl was his daughter Yu Xiaojuan, who had just graduated from high school and was still unemployed at home.

Xiaojuan, whose car are you riding in? Yu Lihong asked in surprise. Yu Lihong knew the car his daughter was riding in. It was a Pusang sedan produced by the Pujiang Automobile Factory. The car is just an old Pujiang car.

It's Tingting's unit's car. Yu Xiaojuan said happily in the car, Dad, come up, Tingting's unit's leader wants to talk to you?

Which Tingting? Why did the leader of her unit seek me? The second monk, Yu Lihong, was puzzled. Before he could understand, the car had already stopped, and Yu Xiaojuan opened the door in the car, beckoning her father to get in the car. Seeing the rain continuously drifting into the car from the open door, Yu Lihong felt that it was not the time to be polite, so he put away his umbrella and awkwardly got into the car.

The car started moving again, and a girl sitting on the other side of Yu Xiaojuan poked her head over and said to Lihong, Uncle Yu, do you remember me, I'm Peng Tingting.

Oh, Tingting, you haven't come to play at home for a while. Yu Lihong recognized that this girl was his daughter's high school classmate, who once came to play at his home. It is said that the girl's father was the manager of a construction company, but Yu Lihong never felt that there would be any intersection between him and her.

Are you Yu Gong? A young man sitting in the front passenger seat turned his head and greeted Li Hong warmly, We came to your house to look for you. I heard from Yu that you went out for a walk, so we I took the liberty to follow.

Yeah, yes, it's too stuffy at home, so go out for a walk. Yu Lihong replied awkwardly, completely forgetting that it is deep winter now, and those who go out for a walk because they think the house is hot can basically be classified as nervous It's normal.

Xiao Yu, when we came here just now, we saw a western restaurant on the side of the road. You drive there, and let's go to the western restaurant with Yu Gong. The young man ordered the driver like this.

Understood. The driver agreed, the car slightly increased the speed, rolled over the stagnant water on the road and drove towards the direction pointed by the young man.

Are you... Yu Lihong looked at the crowd in surprise and asked hesitantly.

Oh, let me introduce myself. My name is Xia Yangjie, and I am the chief engineer of Haijie Technology Service Company. This is our deputy manager, Yu Haitao. By the way, Xiao Peng is also working in our company now, and he is in charge of administrative affairs As for the purpose of our visit to you, it’s not convenient to talk about it in the car, let’s go to the western restaurant to order some food and talk while eating, what do you think?” the young man said politely.

Haijie Company? Yu Lihong was even more confused. He turned to look at Peng Tingting, wanting Peng Tingting to give him an explanation. Peng Tingting just smiled secretly at him, and then took Yu Xiaojuan's arm, whispering something among the girls.

This seems to be the fourth episode... Everyone recognizes Chengzi's character now, right? That's not so good! Don't you want to vote a few monthly tickets to express your love for oranges?