Chapter 12: The Black Gold Incident
Some people are like the dragons in Western legends. Once injured, they don't go to the hospital for an IV drip or let a nurse bandage their wounds. Instead, they rely on sleep to slowly recover. Ma Fei is this kind of physical constitution.
Back at the village committee's courtyard, he soaked his feet in the hot water brought by Weibei, and within a few minutes, Ma Fei fell asleep on the bed with his feet still in the basin.
Wei Beibei slipped in quietly and saw Ma Fei's disheveled appearance, feeling both annoyed and amused. Suddenly, she noticed that this guy was wearing a very high-end dress shirt! Ma Fei's usual attire was shabby, and Wei Beibei had seen it all when cleaning up after him - he looked like a poor college student. Where did this come from? Earlier on the tractor, he said he had accidentally done a good deed and regretted wasting time on it. His expression didn't seem to be lying. Could it be a reward for his good deed? It was unlikely that his university friends would buy him clothes as a gift. Wei Beibei's judgment was correct, but she hadn't broken up the sentence - if you separated the three words "very regretful" into another paragraph, it would make more sense.
Wei Beibei rolled her eyes and quietly exited. She lived in the east village by the river, so she needed to hurry back. No way would she help him with his feet or pour water for him! This guy was as heavy as a mountain, his bone and muscle density were definitely off the charts - even professional basketball players over 2 meters tall might not be this heavy. He was only 188 cm tall, but weighed over 230 pounds! He was basically a beast man.
The next day, the Lao Ye Miao Village Committee held an enlarged meeting. Ma Fei sat beside Director Han Jinshan in the office, stifling a yawn. Han Jinshan, with his slender southern build, looked like a miniature mummy next to Ma Fei, and this mismatched beauty led several village cadres to make jokes about Han Jinshan's wife, causing both sides to erupt into laughter.
Suddenly, everyone fell silent. The village branch secretary Han Dagen's hunched back and sturdy figure appeared in the luxurious conference room. Village head Han Hu had a somewhat gloomy face and an uncertain expression as he followed him, several village committee members began to exchange glances, whispering to each other. Because Secretary Han came down from the mountain, there must be something big!
Han Da-geng is a veteran branch secretary of Lao Ye Miao Village, over 50 years old, and the orphan of a martyr who volunteered to resist US aggression and aid Korea. He usually stays in the mountains to recover from illness and rarely comes down, but he has a great reputation in the village, township and county. After the reform and opening-up, he once held a hunting rifle and risked his life to intercept a group of people who came to the mountain to steal wood and hunt. He stood alone against dozens of people for a day and night until the county public security bureau and forest rangers sent troops to rescue him. Since then, he has served as village head and branch secretary until now.
Although after that, the county and township governments very much hoped to promote Han Dagen, he refused, saying he wanted to "spend his whole life guarding this mountain forest." After repeated attempts at persuasion were unsuccessful, he served as the village branch secretary of Lao Ye Miao Village for over a decade, with no one daring to take control of this position. In recent years, his cousin Han Dashun served as the party secretary of Lao Ye Miao Township, and the Han family's influence reached new heights.
He has been in poor health in recent years, and is often on the mountain receiving treatment for severe rheumatoid arthritis. Occasionally he comes down to say hello to the old brothers in the village, buys some things and leaves, and most of the big and small matters are left to the village chief to handle. The current village chief, Han Hu, is the father of Han Xiaoxue, the owner of Gaomiao Coal Mine.
By 2000, the living conditions of the villagers in Lao Ye Miao Village had not improved significantly. Due to the large number of mountains and forests, thin soil layer, and few arable lands, many villagers left their homes. A large proportion of young and middle-aged people went to cities to become migrant workers, leaving behind mostly elderly and weak laborers who could only maintain basic food supplies, without any extra energy to help Lao Ye Miao Village achieve complete poverty alleviation.
The whole administrative village governs 21 natural villages, with a total of 753 households and 3552 people. However, the total arable land is only 8500 mu, and there are 2100 mu of suitable forest wasteland that is not suitable for planting crops. Agricultural products can only be mainly corn and potatoes.
The village of Lao Ye Miao has a vast territory and a large population, with dense mountains and forests. After surveying, the reserves of coal and oil are almost zero. This makes it impossible for agriculture to develop in this area, and forestry is not convenient for mining. The small coal mine that was discovered two years ago has very low surface reserves, and the underground structure of the coal package and thick and thin coal belts have not been thoroughly surveyed. Fortunately, the current mining is an open-pit coal seam, and the mining technology is not difficult.
Lao Ye Miao Village can be said to be the most backward administrative village in Lao Ye Miao Township in terms of production and living conditions, as well as economic development. In response, Jingkou County has implemented a relocation project for four consecutive years, building nine new migrant villages along the Beijing-Hai Highway, resulting in 70% of the villagers who originally lived scattered in the gullies moving to the new village by the highway. However, due to the relocation form that separates residential and production areas, the fundamental situation has not changed, and the villagers still cultivate their original land, with poor production conditions, and the distance to the fields is even farther away. After calculating the input-output ratio of purchasing buses to send people to work in the fields, the county officials responsible for relocating migrants were dismayed to discover that they had been foolish again.
It is estimated that after this, every harvest season, agricultural products will continue to pile up like mountains, and the roads leading to the farmland cannot be realized due to geographical conditions and funding issues, making the new village a more troublesome operation.
Originally, Lao Ye Miao Village still had some scattered livestock farming, but in the late 1990s, with the introduction of central documents such as "Closing Mountains for Afforestation" and "Returning Pastures to Agriculture", this path to prosperity was temporarily closed. As for other products like walnuts, jujubes, and pears, although the county's poverty alleviation varieties are good, development started late and investment in physical infrastructure is insufficient. Overall, Lao Ye Miao Village is a backward agricultural village in the entire Tianjing area, with an annual per capita income of less than 1,500 yuan.
Actually, the Lao Ye Miao Village Party Branch and Village Committee had put forward several strong suggestions to the county government a few years ago: to strengthen the hardware construction of the new village, ensure production and living facilities, and gradually develop rural secondary industries in the new village; to quickly repair and open up highways at all levels, especially those leading to production areas, to ensure normal farming; to send technical personnel to provide training on animal husbandry and tertiary industry planting and breeding techniques for villagers, so that the emerging new industries can gradually become the pillar industries of the village.
The main drafter of this letter was the village head at that time, Han Dageng's younger brother Han Dashun. The county didn't know why, but they also attached great importance to this matter and sent a team to investigate and actively support poverty alleviation. Although the highway directly to the production area did not materialize, the rest gradually unfolded. A year later, it seemed that heaven was sending a blessing, and in the county's investigation team, a comrade who had done geological work before discovered an open-pit coal seam with unknown reserves behind Lao Ye Miao Village!
This news shocked the current village chief, Han Hu. It turned out that a place where birds don't lay eggs actually had such a big profit? Han Hu immediately blocked the news and spent money to shut up the investigation team's mouths. Then, he mobilized his men, brought in the landless vagrants from the village, made promises and vows, and with a loud noise, led a group of young men who were full of gold rush dreams into the area...
This situation was not unusual, privately opening small coal mines is illegal, but if nothing big happens, the authorities would turn a blind eye. Moreover, Liaoning Province has always been a major coal and iron province. The Han family had made a fortune in the garment and hat business in Jingkou, and they had accumulated quite a bit of wealth. This group of people were united, and from top to bottom, they understood each other's intentions. At least, the small coal mine would make their wallets thicker. They did an excellent job of keeping the news under wraps, so few people in or out of the village knew about it. It wasn't until the small coal mine started operating that people found out, and many were impressed by Han Hu's vision and courage.
Han Hu was not ambiguous either. After seeing the benefits, he immediately raised funds to repair the road from the coal mine to the entrance of the rural highway and even connected the roads to the production areas. In this era, there are not many people with a conscience. As a result, Han Hu's prestige rose sharply, pressing against Old Branch Secretary.
But at the beginning of the year, Han Hu's daughter, Han Xiaoxue, a young woman who had just graduated from an MBA program in the city and was assigned by Han Hu as the person in charge of the coal mine, problems arose...
