Chapter 224 Happy New Year
Time has marched forward into 1994.

With the arrival of a large-scale cold wave from Siberia, the first snow fell in the small town of Jiangchuan.

It snowed all night long. On the early morning of New Year's Day, there was no wind. The ground and houses were covered with thick snow. The streets and alleys that had been bustling all year suddenly became silent.

At such times, if there was no urgent matter, people would close their doors and sit around the stove, eating fried peanuts and chewing dried sweet potatoes, leisurely playing Jiangchuan mahjong for a few cents a round. Children began to play with firecrackers on the streets, and their childish laughter added a bit of childishness to this pure white world.

Zhang Yunqi was awakened by the laughter of children outside the window.

He stayed in bed until ten in the morning. Last night he booked a private room at the Yang Laoguan Hotpot Restaurant, where the whole family celebrated the New Year in a lively manner. He was in a good mood and drank a little more.

Zhang Yunfeng also brought Zhang Xiaonan with him last night.

Zhang Guorui returned to Yunxi Village on the day he talked to Zhang Yunqi. He didn't say anything and didn't talk to Zhang Yunfeng again. As for whether he talked to his daughter Zhang Xiaonan, Zhang Yunqi didn't know and didn't want to know. He just needed to know that he had shown great sincerity to Zhang Guorui and did what he should do.

After getting up and eating something, Ma Shi drove over to pick him up and took him to Liansheng.

It was a holiday and no one was in the company. Snow was falling outside the window. Between the white sky and earth, there was a spring river with endless flow. Zhang Yunqi stayed in the warm office, holding a cup of Dahongpao and looking at the calming scenery outside the window. Then he returned to his desk to look through the report materials submitted by Li Jilin and the work reports of each section chief.

Regarding the situation of Longjingyuan, he has already determined the general direction and strategy. Now and for a long time to come, he will only focus on the sales performance summary of Longjingyuan canned food in various lines, the number of cans sold, the promotion situation, and how much funds are recovered. The rest should be thought about by Li Jilin.

After working in the office until noon, Zhang Yunqi drove to Shuixie Yundu to pick up Ji Ling.

Ji Ling knew that he had bought a car and asked him to take her out for a ride.

Today was New Year's Day and Zhang Yunqi had nothing to do, so he drove her to the outskirts of Jiangchuan. There was no one along the way, and the surroundings were all low-rise buildings and bare fields. The sky was high and blue, and there was no wind. The snow had stopped. Ji Ling, who was sitting in the co-pilot seat, was particularly happy and kept talking to Zhang Yunqi. She said, "Comrade Zhang, you are so rich now, will you not recognize me as a poor man one day?"

Zhang Yunqi said: "No matter how luxurious it is, the co-pilot seat belongs to Ji Ling."

Ji Ling smiled with her eyes narrowed. She reached out and ruffled Zhang Yunqi's hair: "I heard my old comrade Ji chat at home and said that you bought a canning factory?"

"Yeah, I didn't pay a penny."

"Comrade Xiao Zhang is really amazing!"

"It has nothing to do with how powerful I am. There is no fool in this world. For the city, the cannery is a hot potato. No one dared to take it, so it was my turn to take it over for free. Moreover, I have tens of millions of debts for this. So, I am not a rich man. There are definitely few people in Jiangchuan City who are poorer than me."

Ji Ling said: "That's not quite right. It's said that people who can owe money are the ones with great abilities."

Zhang Yunqi laughed. Ji Ling's words reminded him of a joke.

In an economics class, a professor was talking about "Finance and Credit". He asked the students in the audience: "Students, please tell me what is finance? What is credit?"

Xiao Wang said: "My grandmother taught me since I was a child, 'If you borrow, you must pay it back, and it will not be difficult to borrow again.' This is finance and credit."

Xiaohong said: "Finance is the exchange of cash flows between different people at different times. To exchange, we need to trust each other."

The professor concluded: "Neither is comprehensive. The great economist Keynes taught us that if I owe you 1 dollar, then I am in trouble. If I owe you 100 million, the trouble is yours. This is finance and credit!"

"I don't think what Keith said is comprehensive." At this time, Xiao Ming raised his hand.

"Oh? What else do you want to add?" the professor wondered.

Xiao Ming said word by word: "Professor, if I owe you 300 billion, the trouble will belong to the country."

Ten years later, Xiao Wang became an editor at Vanke Weekly, Xiao Hong became a customer manager at Bank of China, and Xiao Ming became the famous gold medal trader of the "Delong Group"!

Thinking about this joke, Zhang Yunqi drove around for a while and felt a little hungry, so he asked Ji Ling what she wanted to eat.
Ji Ling said fish meal: "Zhangji's!"

Zhang Yunqi was very happy and turned around to drive to No. 1 Middle School. When they arrived at the fish meal shop of No. 1 Middle School, Zhang Yunqi stopped the car and went in with Ji Ling. They saw a boy. There were many customers in the fish meal shop and there was no seat. The boy squatted at the door with a big bowl in his hand and wolfed down the steaming rice.

Zhang Yunqi was a little confused. The boy didn't look like a customer and his family didn't sell food. He walked into the store and asked his mother, "Who is this guy?"

Zhang Ma, who was busy, responded casually: "He is from another place. He said he came to Jiangchuan from Qingchuan to play and lost his wallet."

Qingchuan is a long way from Jiangchuan. Zhang Yunqi didn't quite understand why a boy who was slightly older than him would come here to play. However, there was no mobile payment at that time, and telephones were not popular. The society was not very stable, and there were all kinds of monsters. It was not surprising that a person would lose his wallet in a strange city, and it was indeed difficult to deal with. It was probably that his mother felt sympathy and gave him a bowl of rice. It was nothing. For a shop like his family, people would come to beg every now and then, and his mother would give as much as she could.

After Zhang Yunqi entered the store, he helped serve noodles to the customers.

Zhang Xiaoxiao and Chu Xin were both in the fish meal shop, drawing on a bench in the inner room. Ji Ling took them to make a big snowman on the street in front of the shop, which made the two little kids very happy.

After the boy finished his meal, there were still many customers in the restaurant. He stood at the door with his empty bowl, not knowing what to do. He did not dare to disturb Aunt Zhang who was busy. It was not until Aunt Zhang saw him that she asked him, "Are you full?"

The boy nodded hurriedly and said in Mandarin: "I'm full, thank you, Auntie." Then he wiped the oil off his mouth and ran to the sink to wash the dishes clean.

When Zhang Ma saw this, she sighed and said to Zhang Yunqi, "You just happened to be here by car, so take him to the train station." After a pause, she added, "Buy him a train ticket."

When the boy heard this, his eyes turned red and he asked Zhang's mother for her home phone number.

Aunt Zhang, who was too busy to handle the situation, waved her hands and said to Zhang Yunqi, "You can send him off now."

Zhang Yunqi picked up the car keys and led the boy out. Ji Ling saw this and wanted to go too, so she took Xiao Xiao and Chu Xin to the back seat.

The train station was not far away, or rather Jiangchuan was not that big, and it took about ten minutes to get there. After Zhang Yunqi parked the car, he led the boy to the ticket hall and bought him a train ticket back to his hometown Qingchuan. Finally, thinking of his mother's advice, he stuffed another fifty-yuan note into the boy's pocket: "Be careful on the train, don't lose your money again."

The boy cried when he took the money.

On the way back, Zhang Xiaoxiao held Ji Ling's arm and asked curiously, "Sister Ji Ling, why did that big brother cry just now?"

Ji Ling pinched the little chubby face and said, "You'll understand when you grow up."

Zhang Yunqi, who was driving in the front, wanted to laugh when he heard this, but when he thought about his situation many years ago, he felt strange.

It should be the New Year's Eve at the turn of the century. He lost his job, had no money, and was very depressed. Others were busy going home for the New Year, but he was wandering alone in the streets of a foreign land. What impressed me most was that on New Year's Eve, it was snowing heavily. He hid in front of the shutter door of a shop that was closed for the New Year. He received a call from his mother in a remote mountain cave. She lied to her that it was difficult to buy tickets, and that he was spending the New Year at the company, eating hot pot and making dumplings with his colleagues. After hanging up the phone, he looked at the empty streets, the firecrackers in the distance, the cold snow, and the song "Go Home Often".

I really wanted to cry at that time.

Life is like a journey against the odds, you and I are both traveling together.

When I was young, I had many extravagant hopes and dared to take risks. No matter how big the setbacks were, I could still persevere. I wanted love, dreams, freedom, and the realization of my self-worth. When I got older, I realized that life is a slow process of being hammered. As people get older, their extravagant hopes disappear day by day, and finally, they become like an old cow that has been hammered.

Zhang Yunqi likes Kafka's words very much, "I am free, that is why I am lost." Some young people are lost in freedom; some young people feel freedom in being lost. Zhang Yunqi looked at the snow falling in the evening, with the familiar laughter of Ji Ling behind him. On the evening of New Year's Day in 1994, he suddenly felt that his extravagant hopes were increasing. He also felt that he would definitely live in the freedom he wanted. He also felt that he would never get lost and would live on.

Now that he has a chance to start over, life can no longer punish him.

******
2020, love you!

Sorry for the late New Year greetings.

I'm really sorry for my slow updates, and I want to especially thank every book friend who has given me tips and subscriptions. This year has been very difficult at work, and it's your tips and subscriptions that have kept me going until now, and have kept me treating each chapter with my best ability and polishing it over and over again.

Although I am exhausted as a dead dog when I get home after work every day, I can assure you that I am thinking about how to write this book every day. It is common for me to stay up until two or three in the morning to write, because I cannot let you down.

In the new year, I will work hard and write better. The fourth volume "Blue Sky" is about to be finished. I will repay your support along the way with a perfect plot!

(End of this chapter)