At this point, Yu Li paused for a moment, then continued, "We feel that you have more experience, so we would like to hear your opinion."
Yu Li felt much more comfortable speaking when she didn't say anything.
Yan Bugui nodded: "How much have you earned in the past few months?"
“Dad, who asks how much you earn right away?”
"Go play somewhere else." Yan Bugui didn't give his son a friendly look, but turned to Yu Li and explained, "Things are getting better every day now. We're not lacking in supplies anymore. If we earn enough, we could consider setting up a stall. I think your main concern is that something might happen to Qin Family Village, right?"
“That’s right.” Yu Li nodded: “We’ve been very busy these past three months. After get off work, we’d eat dinner and then start preparing for our stall. We’d go out and set up our stall, and we wouldn’t get back until after 11 p.m. We did make a lot of money, though. At first, we only made about 30 yuan a month because we didn’t sell much. But later, as we got to know each other better, we were able to make about 100 yuan this month.”
"Besides, our factory isn't doing well right now. We do have work, but prices are getting higher and higher. It's a problem."
Yu Li didn't elaborate, but Yan Bugui knew that economic take-off didn't come without a price.
The price will be that many people will be left behind in this era.
This trend is already emerging.
Yu Li herself didn't go into details about what happened at the factory, but Yan Bugui could imagine it.
In Beijing, many people have already gone south to buy clothing to sell here, which will inevitably impact textile factories. If these factories don't adapt, their decline is only a matter of time.
"If you can make a hundred or so yuan a month, then there's nothing to say. Jiecheng, you should quit too."
“No…no?” Yan Jiecheng’s eyes widened. “Dad, what do you mean? What do you mean I should quit too? I was doing just fine at the steel rolling mill.”
"Heh." Yan Bugui gave a forced smile: "You're doing well? More than ten years have passed, and you're still stuck at the second-level worker level. Liu Guangtian, who entered the workforce in the same year as you, has already become an engineer. Do you think you're doing well? If you were really doing well, you wouldn't have to ask your old man for help just to set up a stall."
"No, it's my colleague."
"Don't mention your colleagues to me. I'll just ask you one question: do you want money?"
"want……"
"Can we make money from this Qin Family Village project?"
"able……"
"So, are you going to quit or not?"
"No, Dad, these are two different things!"
“What are these two different things? Tell me, let’s lay it all out step by step. To be honest, if it weren’t for the fact that this business needs someone reliable to look after it, I think Yu Li would be fine staying at the textile factory. Putting aside everything else, she can bring home a lot of fabric every year. As for you, ha…” Yan Bugui didn’t finish his sentence, but the obvious sarcasm made Yan Jiecheng feel a bit overwhelmed.
"No, Dad, what if something happens in Qin Family Village?"
"Even if something happens to you, nothing will happen to Qin Family Village. Their poultry farm will have tens of thousands of chickens by next year, and do you know how much value they can produce in greenhouses every day? Just based on that, they won't go bankrupt! Besides, the money you make from your spicy hot pot business every day also goes towards buying raw materials, right? It's a virtuous cycle."
"Then, doesn't that count as that over there?" Yan Jiecheng's voice became a little softer.
"What a load of rubbish! They farm their own land and raise their own livestock. Besides, it's a village cooperative, not an individual's business. Every profit will be recorded. Most importantly, with Wang Shouren backing them up, Qin Family Village will be fine."
"Hasn't Wang Shouren already resigned?"
Yan Bugui: ...
“Sometimes I really want to open your blockhead and see what’s inside. Do you know what position Wang Shouren held before? In ancient terms, if he had been sent down to a lower level, he would have been a high-ranking official in charge of a region. After a few years of training, he would have been able to take over. He took a different path, and the higher-ups agreed. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know, how many twists and turns there were in all of that. All you need to know is that he had a lot of influence.”
In the end, the father and son parted on bad terms.
The old woman complained, "Why do you have to say such things to him? It's ruined his mood for the whole day. It was a perfectly good thing, wouldn't it have been better to let Yu Li go out by herself? Anyway, the textile factory isn't doing so well these days."
Yan Bugui rolled his eyes at his wife: "What do you know? Yan Jiecheng has been stuck at level two for over ten years. He's just not cut out for this job. Go ask Lao Yi. People like him, even if they hadn't been in the factory for years, could have gone up to level three or four. As long as they weren't being bullied by their masters, getting to level three or four wouldn't be a problem if they were a little clever. People like him who can't get up there are just wasting their time staying in the steel rolling mill. They might as well leave sooner."
"Then why can't you speak properly?"
"Speak nicely, and he'll listen, won't he?"
"You really are something."
Yan Jiecheng and Yu Li were walking home. Yan Jiecheng had been very silent the whole way. After walking for a while, he suddenly asked, "Wife, am I really that useless...?"
Yan Jiecheng rarely took responsibility for his own problems throughout his life. He was far worse off than Wang Shouren, and even Sha Zhu was in a worse situation. At least Sha Zhu was doing well at the factory, had become the canteen manager, earned forty or fifty yuan a month, and could even bring home some stuff. Yan Jiecheng, on the other hand, had been a level-two worker for over a decade.
Of course, there were others who entered the steel rolling mill in the same year as him, but were not as good as him, and some were even just lingering at the first-level worker level.
Actually, you can't really blame Yan Jiecheng for this. After all, during those ten years, nobody was interested in working; everyone was busy exercising. Even if he wanted to, the people around him wouldn't let him.
The problem arose with Liu Guangtian, who joined the factory in the same year as him.
Good heavens, everyone entered the factory at the same time, but Yan was promoted to a level 2 worker, while Liu Guangtian went straight to become an engineer.
A fitter who went straight to the level of an engineer—the difficulty of that is something Yan Jiecheng himself knows all too well, without needing anyone else to explain it.
People are afraid of comparison, especially comparison with their peers.
This left him feeling utterly defeated.
"Perhaps you really should resign."
Yu Li's words startled him. He looked up at his wife's face, but couldn't bring himself to get angry. For a moment, he didn't know what to say.
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