Chapter 24: Driving the Wolf into the Flock

Saving a life is still a matter of principle.

Just at that moment, Erfeng carried the young woman up the steps, and Weidong went to the nearby market to buy her a fashionable overcoat, the kind popular with city folk. She happily dressed the patient in the flowered cotton jacket. But when they were about to look for a nearby hospital, the older child quietly confessed that they didn’t dare go—the hospitals nearby had their records, and she mimed holding tongs in two fingers. Weidong nearly cursed aloud. Just how much life-saving money had they stolen from others at those hospitals?

He looked at the two children, one around seven or eight, the younger barely school age. Despite their youth, their eyes were shrewd and cold, a callous amusement flickering as if such matters meant nothing to them. With a crack, he slapped the younger one: “Now you know what it feels like when your family can’t afford to save your life? Did you ever think of that when you stole from others?”

The younger, more quick-witted, fell to his knees without a word. “Brother, you saved our third sister. From now on, we’re yours. Whatever you say, that’s what we’ll do!” What use are you, he thought, to steal client data? They couldn’t even haul a titanium ingot, let alone carry slabs of cured pork. Seeing their hardened, unrepentant faces, Weidong had no interest in keeping them around. Still, he remembered a military hospital farther away that likely hadn’t been plagued by these thieves. And certainly, no one would dare cause trouble at a military hospital.

He decided to treat it as a chance to visit a new place. It took three transfers to get there. On a crowded mainline bus, Weidong noticed the younger child clinging tightly to the elder’s arm, restraining her from preying on the unsuspecting passengers. Clearly, witnessing the severity of the recent crackdown had left an impression—perhaps enough to scare them straight.

Saving their “third sister” was as much about teaching these two underage thieves a lesson as it was about mercy. Weidong didn’t linger at the hospital—he helped register, paid the fees, and got her into the emergency room. The doctor said she already had acute pneumonia and appendicitis; any later, and she’d be dead. Sixty yuan covered admission and surgery, and he left another ten for good measure.

On the way out, he told the younger child, “Stop stealing. Here’s an idea: take this money, buy marbles, stickers, or trading cards from the wholesale market, and sell them at double the price outside an elementary school. You won’t starve.” With that, he left.

The little thief dropped to his knees again, kowtowing. The older girl, who’d been tending to the patient’s IV, heard the commotion and immediately knelt too—a duet of bowed heads, as if by reflex. Heaven knows what they had been through.

Back at the tax bureau compound, even the old security guard, who was forever chasing off petty vendors and breaking up fights among schoolchildren, could only shake his head in resignation. But none of this diminished the rural trio’s excitement at exploring the big city.

Erfeng strutted, chest out, showing off her new city-style coat—though it wasn’t nearly as warm as the flowered cotton jacket. Goudan cared only about where the next meal was coming from. The two of them gaped in awe at the rising skyscrapers, so different from anything in their county town of Shangzhou. This was technically still the city’s outskirts, yet it was newer and more advanced than the crowded old center, with modern buildings everywhere.

Weidong, however, was focused on the car factory nearby, where a row of blue double-cab trucks stood at the gate. Learning to drive and repair vehicles himself, he was naturally more interested in these tools of the trade. With a one- or two-ton truck like that, hauling titanium ingots to Jiangsu and Zhejiang would be a breeze—one trip could net tens of thousands!

Lost in admiration, he reached out to touch a truck, only to be rebuked: “Don’t touch! These are new vehicles, headed to the freight company for long-haul runs!”

Wait, what? Weidong realized his own thinking was a bit muddled.

He’d only thought of there being no express deliveries in this era, but of course there would be freight needs and long-haul transport companies. Even if hiring a whole truck for a ton of goods wasn’t cost-effective, it was worth investigating. Skillfully, he handed out cigarettes and asked about the freight company.

Unlike rural transport outfits that handled only local jobs, a metropolis like this had long-haul freight stations of every kind. Not just trucks, but trains with dedicated freight cars, and even passenger trains with luggage compartments for cargo. Cigarettes, especially the “Mountain City” brand, worked wonders—everyone was eager to offer directions and advice.

Heading back toward the city center, he was told to take the cable car down to the train station, where he could inquire at the freight department. Along the riverside between the station and the docks, there were several state-owned and collective transport companies, and at the docks themselves, shipping firms. Big cities had everything organized into systems.

It struck Weidong, whose thinking had been shaped by the private car culture of later years and who had little experience with social change outside the compound, that he’d never considered this before. Gratefully, he set off with his companions.

Only when seated in the sloped, parallelogram-shaped cable car did Erfeng think to ask when the woman with the children would repay their money. Weidong scoffed, “If you hadn’t touched her forehead, I’d have walked away. Go ask for your money back if you like—see if you can even find her.”

Erfeng bit her lip, weighing whether losing contact with that skinny woman was worth the sixty or seventy yuan. That’s the price of a whole pig!

But there was no use dreaming—freight train wagons, these strategic transport resources, were a lucrative, highly sought-after commodity in the 1980s. Ordinary people who managed to get a freight wagon allocation could resell it for cash; their value fluctuated like stocks on the black market. The freight department couldn’t be bothered to give a second glance to a few rural kids.

Scratching his head, Weidong diligently copied the official price lists posted on the wall. Even if no one actually followed them—you needed a leader’s note or a special permit to get wagon allocations—he wrote them all down. The train timetable also listed rates for parcels and luggage: up to 100 kilograms cost seventy or eighty yuan. If it hadn’t been for the two young men’s ease in carrying their load last time, and their red-letter introduction from the Ministry of Metallurgy, they’d have been charged extra for excess weight.

Having grasped these logistics basics, Weidong continued down the riverside from the train station to the docks, observing all the way. Only now did he truly understand the role of a metropolis as a transport hub—a scene utterly foreign to a county-level city like Shangzhou. For several miles along the road, long-haul trucks lined up outside the various collective freight companies, laborers stripped to the waist hauling loads, goods heaped in roadside yards. Each region had its own designated area—short-haul, in-province, northbound, southbound, east China, even northwest—all clearly distinguished and efficiently run.

Most jobs were assigned by state enterprises, with very few private shipments allowed, though not impossible. But shipping from Jiangzhou to Shanghai and Zhejiang took over ten days! This stunned Weidong. He remembered Shi Linyan’s son once drove back from Shanghai, a journey of over a thousand kilometers, in just two or three days, and that was taking it easy. But with no highways now… it made sense. Even the 300 or 400 kilometers to Shangzhou took two or three days, given the poor road conditions and time needed for repairs and rest. Actual average speeds were only thirty or forty kilometers per hour.

No wonder freight wagons were so highly prized.

Before the advent of highways, trains were truly the arteries of national transport. This route was nearly a dead end; Weidong, intent on sending titanium ingots from the southwest to Zhejiang and Jiangsu, frowned in frustration.

He didn’t realize that his thorough, methodical investigation of every possible means of shipping was building his business skills. He was, in effect, mapping out the nation’s logistics. All he lacked was experience with air transport, which was practically nonexistent at the time.

His thinking was shaped by the open horizons of the future. Even most salesmen with products in hand, or manufacturers, wouldn’t dare attempt such far-reaching ventures.

By now, Erfeng had long since stopped trying to understand, trailing behind him with an expression of perpetual amazement. She watched Weidong buy two more packs of cigarettes, chatting and handing them out all along the way. They spent nearly the entire afternoon covering the seven or eight li along the riverside.

At the docks, they finally received a delightful piece of news: water freight to Shanghai cost thirty-seven yuan per ton. If the owner traveled with the goods, it was about forty yuan for one person, but those big freighters had only a handful of berths for shippers.

Once again, the phrase “the Yangtze is the great artery of national freight” flashed through Weidong’s mind. He was so thrilled he nearly jumped for joy. At the shipping company, they discussed how to transfer goods from the Yangtze to Zhejiang, and were told they’d need to disembark at Zhenjiang, then transfer to the Grand Canal, where waterway logistics were highly developed and convenient. With titanium ingots broken down into ten-kilogram pieces, loading and unloading would be easy.

Weidong handed out half a pack of cigarettes—mainly because people were happy to keep talking as long as he kept the smokes coming. Even Erfeng noticed how effective the one-yuan packs of Mountain City cigarettes were, though she decided she’d only buy the twenty-cent packs for her father. Her loyalties had shifted entirely.

Weidong paid no attention to such matters, delighted as he led his companions to the city center for dinner. The famous Bayi Road food street, now renowned on social media, already had its beginnings here, with restaurants, hot pot shops, and medicinal cuisine in abundance. The two country bumpkins gawked in wonder.

Even Weidong, who had only seen it in short videos before, became determined to stake his future in Jiangzhou. In Shangzhou, a place where even the new commercial reforms were under attack, wasting a year or two could cost tens of thousands. Worse, a misstep could land you in prison.

Old You and the others had already been locked up for almost three months, with no news at all.

A hot pot dinner was the obvious choice—Erfeng and Goudan danced with joy. Weidong, however, quietly noted that lunch had tasted better, even if this place offered more variety—duck intestines, eels, loaches, kidney slices, all manner of dishes—but none as rich in flavor as the smaller spot. His palate had grown discerning.

Naturally, they spent the night at a guesthouse on this street—they had an introduction letter, after all. But this stay further curbed Erfeng’s later involvement: damn it, just having one more woman along meant that much more in lodging expenses. Trying to pass off a mixed-gender group as a business delegation could easily land you in jail!