The brigade cafeteria where Technician Li lived had closed, so everyone went home to eat their own meals. The Li family didn't have much food in stock, so for New Year's Eve they only had one extra loach stew, which the third son had caught overnight.

Technician Li didn't want to go home. There was nothing to eat at home, and his older sister-in-law kept causing trouble. He was just worrying about how to spend New Year's Eve when Goudan's father from Wangjia Village rode his bicycle to their dormitory and took him back to Wangjia Village.

I don't know who told the team leader that Technician Li had no home to return to. When the team leader told everyone, the whole village extended a warm invitation, asking Goudan's father to bring Technician Li to Wangjia Village to celebrate the New Year no matter what.

Technician Li really had nowhere to go, so he packed up the tickets in his hands and went to Wangjia Village with Goudan's father.

Fortunately, he had fulfilled his promise to Jiaojiao years ago and bought her two bags of sesame seeds and two bags of fruit candies. Otherwise, he would be too embarrassed to go to Wangjia Village now!

Technician Li did have a way to make money. He traveled back and forth between the county and the city every day and discovered that rural residents were in great need of various industrial tickets. Meanwhile, urban residents were rationed and often didn't have enough to eat.

He helped his friends get industrial tickets to exchange for food or other things with his fellow villagers in the countryside.

Technician Li earned his first pot of gold by exchanging a radio ticket for money from a fellow villager. He divided the money into two parts: one part was used to pay for his younger siblings' tuition, and the other was saved as capital.

However, the food exchange was a few years ago. In the past two years, the villagers have had no food to eat and are not pursuing other things. They are lucky to have something to eat.