Chapter 377 Contracting the River and Pond

Xia Juanjuan smiled and said, "Okay. I'll send a telegram to Li Zhan and ask him if he can come back in the summer so we can go together."

Xia Shuangshan rode his cart slowly through the streets of Beijing in spring, heading towards the courtyard.

On the way, she passed a state-owned grocery store and saw cherries on sale, so she jumped out of the car to buy some.

This is a new product, so the price is not cheap. Xia Shuangshan felt a little bit painful, but then he thought again, the girl is a city dweller now, so it’s not too much for her to eat some cherries!

After returning home, Xia Juanjuan took out some more from the space while no one was paying attention and put them aside. When Xiaowen and the others got out of school, she secretly asked Xiaowen to deliver that portion to the Fu family.

Xiaowen agreed and went.

Xia Juanjuan fetched water from the well in the backyard and washed the cherries.

The triplets happily helped to wash, but they were actually making things worse by eating and playing in the water at the same time.

After dinner, everyone ate cherries. Lin Yuru asked her about her exam, and Xia Juanjuan told her that she ranked second in the department.

Although Lin Yuru didn't know what it meant to be second in the department, she knew that the second place was only one less than the first place, which must be very impressive.

The family chatted for a while and then went to sleep.

The next day, Xia Juanjuan went to the telegraph station and sent a telegram to Li Zhan, telling him that she wanted to go to Guangzhou in July.

She estimated that Lizhan would go to military school in September, and the official order for transfer should come down around July or August.

However, before going to Guangzhou, I had the opportunity to conduct research in Shanghai and the nearby provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

This was a field research project of the Economics Department. Xia Juanjuan ranked second in the department in the midterm exam. Although they were still freshmen in the school, it was also the only class of students. Professor Wang, who was in charge of this project, took the top three students in the department with him.

The research lasts for a week and we will visit not only cities but also rural areas.

According to Professor Wang, the economy is an integrated whole. It is not just a store in a city selling things or a factory producing goods that is the whole of the economy.

Agriculture is also a very important part, so we need to look at it.

Among the top three, the first one is a boy and the third one is a girl. Together with Professor Wang, two boys and two girls are just the right fit and it is easy to arrange for them to stay in a guesthouse.

Xia Juanjuan was still thinking about the river clams that produce freshwater pearls.

Previously, she asked Luo Cheng to help her get some river clam seedlings, which she placed in the space to continue cultivating. Now there are enough clam seedlings.

That is, the north is too cold, river clams will be frozen to death in winter, and they can only be raised in the south.

Before I crossed over, the Zhejiang area was a famous place for cultivating freshwater pearls. It had a vast area and clean water.

The only difficult thing is that the place is probably also a commune model, so it would be a bit tricky for her to contract it privately.

However, after arriving in Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu provinces, Xia Juanjuan found that the place was much more lively than she had expected.

For example, there is a city called Wen in Zhejiang Province. In the 1980s and 1990s, enterprises were built all over the city. Individual industrial and commercial sectors were extremely developed. It is also one of the few cities in the country that became rich ahead of time.

When Xia Juanjuan and her friends went to Shanghai, Zhejiang Province, they had already met some people from Vancouver who were secretly doing small businesses outside!

As for the rural areas here, they are much richer than those in the north and inland, but the low enthusiasm caused by the communes is similar.

In addition to completing the research tasks assigned by the professor, Xia Juanjuan also went to talk to the local villagers.

There are many mountains and waters here, and the waters are very suitable for raising clams.

However, most of the ponds are now deserted, and buying fish fry requires money, so only a small number of them raise fish.

Xia Juanjuan secretly took note of it and did not mention anything about contracting.

The one-week investigation ended quickly, and Professor Wang took Xia Juanjuan and others back to Beijing.

After a few days, Xia Juanjuan used the space to secretly teleport to a mountain near the farmland that she had observed before, and then came down from the mountain, taking out a lot of special products from Beijing from the space in advance, and then went to the village.

Because she had been here with Professor Wang, the villagers all knew her and were not on guard against her.

"Isn't this a student from Xia University? Didn't you go back with your teacher? Why did you come back? Do you have anything else to ask? Come on! Let's go home and sit down and talk." The village party secretary said enthusiastically.

Xia Juanjuan did not refuse and went home with the village party secretary.

Xia Juanjuan took out the special products of Beijing City and handed them to the village party secretary, including sesame candies, donkey cakes, five-flavor beans and the like. She asked the village party secretary to take a look and distribute them to the villagers.

The village party secretary's surname is Yang, and the village is called Yangjia Village.

Secretary Yang took it with some embarrassment and said, "Look at you, you are so polite. Just come here, what else do you want to take?"

Xia Juanjuan smiled and said, "It's not something valuable, Secretary Yang, please don't mind it. Besides, I didn't pay for it, it was the school's idea."

Secretary Yang listened, nodded, and said with a smile: "Is there something you forgot to ask, so I sent you here again? If you have anything, just ask."

Xia Juanjuan said, "It's not a problem this time. The last time our Professor Wang came here, didn't he talk about the household contracting? Old Party Secretary, our professor said he wants to hear your opinion again."

After hearing this, Party Secretary Yang hesitated for a moment and said, "Student Xia, isn't this not allowed? The land is collectively owned by the state."

Xia Juanjuan smiled and said, "Old Party Secretary, don't worry. We have visited many towns and villages this time. For example, in Anhui Province, some towns and villages think this plan is very good. I came here to ask questions. Our words will never be leaked."

After hearing this, Party Secretary Yang said, "Well, if you say so, I will tell you something from my heart, Student Xia. If we can really implement the household contract responsibility system, the grain harvest will definitely increase! Everyone will work on their own, do as much or as little as they want, and leave the rest to the collective. The rest will be their own, and they will definitely be happy with that!"

After hearing this, Xia Juanjuan lowered her voice and said:

"Secretary Yang, if you think this way, I will dare to say what I am going to say next.

It's the river pond in Yangjia Village. I see there's no fish being raised there now, it's a pity to leave it alone.

I want to see if we can rent it out for a year. We can pay the village 20 yuan for one mu of river pond. The village collective should have 10 mu of river pond, right? That’s 200 yuan a year. What do you think? "

Secretary Yang widened his eyes in shock.

The villagers didn't have much money to buy fish fry from the river pond. Even if they did, they would be secretly taken away before they even grew up. Therefore, the villagers simply stopped buying or raising fish.

Now, can we harvest two hundred yuan a year from the abandoned river pond?

"Xia...Xia University Student, are you kidding? That river pond is just a pool of water. Can it have 200 in a year?"

Xia Juanjuan said, "This is not my personal money. This is a project of our department. Professor Wang gave me the task. If Secretary Yang agrees, the money will be paid by the school."

As Xia Juanjuan spoke, she apologized silently in her heart.

If you use your personal capacity to negotiate for a contract now, people will definitely not agree easily.

However, if I bring it up in the name of Kyoto University, the other party might still consider it.

When she makes money later, she can show her identity as an individual, and the other party will probably be happy to continue cooperating.

After hearing that it was a Peking University project, Secretary Yang no longer had any doubts.

"So that's how it is? But, Xia University students, why did your school rent the river pond? Are you going to raise fish?"

Xia Juanjuan smiled and said, "That's about right. It's used to raise clams. However, the ten mu of river pond is far away for our school students, so we may need help from the village. When the time comes, we will pay the village separately.

Secretary Yang, please discuss this with the village first. If everyone agrees, I will bring the deposit over in two days. Our school has also prepared the seedlings, so I will also bring them over, and we can plant the seedlings right away."

Secretary Yang really didn't dare to make such a big decision on his own, so he nodded and agreed, saying, "Okay. Let's discuss it first."

Xia Juanjuan said goodbye and left.

Two days later, she came again. As soon as she arrived at the village entrance, she saw Secretary Yang with his hands behind his back, looking towards the path outside the village.

Upon seeing Xia Juanjuan, Party Secretary Yang was overjoyed: "Student Xia, you are finally here. After you left, I immediately held a meeting. Everyone in the village agreed! I sent people to chase you, but they couldn't catch you. I have been hanging around the village for two days."

Xia Juanjuan heard this and said with a smile: "Secretary Yang, you are too impatient."

As he said this, he and Secretary Yang went to the brigade’s house in the village.

Xia Juanjuan wrote a document to borrow the river pond. Secretary Yang was illiterate, but there were village cadres who could read. After they checked and confirmed that there was no problem, both parties signed and put their fingerprints on it.

Xia Juanjuan directly rented it for five years. For better freshwater pearls, five years is just the maturity period.

Of course, after a year, you can open the clams and get the pearls.

She paid 100 yuan first, and agreed to pay the remaining 100 yuan after one year. The next four years also followed this pattern.

After signing the document, Xia Juanjuan took out the river clam seedlings from the space in advance. These clam seedlings had already been implanted with bead nuclei.

However, compared with the artificially bred pearls sold through live broadcasts later, she implanted very small grains of sand, etc. In this way, the resulting pearl layer would be much thicker, and was actually not much different from wild pearls.

Of course, in this case, the growth period will also be extended to several years.

Then we found someone to transport the water to the village entrance. We also brought ropes to tie up the clams and nets to catch the clam seedlings in the water. We asked the villagers to row their boats and drop the clam seedlings into the pond one by one.

There are already fish, shrimp and organic matter in the lotus pond, so there is no need to feed them specially.

Xia Juanjuan took out another hundred yuan as money for the villagers who were helping to plant clam seedlings in the village.

Naturally, everyone was very happy.

This hundred yuan, after being distributed among the people doing the work, each person can get two or three yuan. It only took half a day to do the work, so it's really a lot!

The villagers were all very puzzled. In fact, there were wild clams in their ponds, and they would catch them and eat them when they were hungry.

However, it takes a lot of effort to pry this thing open, and because it survives on floating organic matter, it has a fishy smell and is really not tasty. Unless you are really hungry, no one would be willing to eat it.

How could this university student from Kyoto University think of cultivating ten acres of river pond?

Secretary Yang asked with some surprise.

Xia Juanjuan naturally would not reveal the fact that she was raising pearls right now, so she smiled and said, "I'll keep this a secret for now and tell you later."

Secretary Yang listened and didn't ask any more questions. He smiled and said, "That's fine. Anyway, the river pond is lent to you. You can raise whatever you want."

After finishing this, Xia Juanjuan went to a deserted place and came back through space.

In fact, the cultivation of saltwater pearls and freshwater pearls in her space is much faster than in reality.

But if you really do this business in the future, people will definitely ask you about the source of your pearls.

The purpose of building Yangjia Village is just to lay the foundation for this.

Lizhan quickly sent a telegram back, saying that he had received the transfer order and should be able to return in mid-June.

Xia Juanjuan was fine, after all, she had to travel through space to the island once in a while. The others, especially the little ones, were very happy.

"Dad is coming back! Dad is coming back!" Yanyan said.

"Mom, ask Dad to bring back some chicken legs to eat!" Ye Ye said with drooling.

"Mom, I want to eat chicken legs too!" Yaoyao said when he heard it.

Yanyan got anxious when she heard this: "Mom, I want chicken legs too!"

Xia Juanjuan: “…”

They haven't seen their dad for half a year, and now he's finally coming back, but these three heartless kids are just remembering the chicken drumstick?

Xia Juanjuan sighed and said unhappily, "Do we have to wait for your dad to come back if we want to eat chicken legs? Let's eat it tonight."

The triplets' eyes lit up: "Really? Mom, go buy some chicken! I want to eat chicken legs!"

Lin Yuru said she wanted to eat chicken tonight and said with a smile, "Hey, why are you like a child, believing everything you hear? There is no chicken prepared for tonight. I'll go to the market to buy some now."

Xia Juanjuan held her back and said with a smile, "I'll go. It's a good opportunity to go out for a walk."

After hearing this, Lin Yuru let her go.

Xia Juanjuan walked out of the yard and strolled for a while before coming to a secluded dead end. After making sure that no one was around, she went into the room, got out two chickens, and then went back home.

Lin Yuru saw that she was holding two chickens and said with a smile, "Why are you holding two chickens?"

Xia Juanjuan said, "All three of them are clamoring for chicken legs. One chicken leg for each one, and they'll start fighting soon. Besides, there are so many people at home, so there's no need to worry about leftovers if we have two chickens."

As he spoke, he and Lin Yuru boiled some water and asked Xia Shuangshan to kill the chicken and drain its blood. Then they scalded the chicken's feathers with hot water, plucked the chicken, and started to clean up.

Two chickens, one was made into chicken soup and the other was made into salt-baked chicken.

There was also a dish of scrambled eggs with tomatoes, a dish of steamed pork with rice flour, a dish of cold cucumber, and a dish of stir-fried vegetables.

Each of the three triplets got one chicken leg, and the remaining one was for Beibei.

Xiao Wen and Xiao Wu each got a chicken wing, and the remaining two were given to Xia Shuangshan and Lin Yuru.