Chapter 155: Wild Boars Enter the Village

“Stop staring. Once the village becomes more prosperous, we’ll get a tractor too,” Zhou Yimin said to them.

The old village secretary overheard but didn’t rain on their parade. He just quietly scoffed in his heart: Even if we had that kind of money, would we really need a tractor? That thing—our commune only has a few of them.

Would Zhoujiazhuang even have a use for it?

Besides, those things are probably ridiculously expensive! Without the right connections, you might not even be able to buy one.

But Zhou Yimin wasn’t joking or just painting a rosy picture.

Once Zhoujiazhuang earns enough money from selling vegetables, poultry, and the like, he really does plan to buy a tractor. There’s no vehicle in the village, which makes everything inconvenient.

Those well-paved roads they’ve been building are also laying the groundwork for vehicle access.

He estimates that by next year at the latest, Zhoujiazhuang will be able to buy its very own tractor.

“Who’s gonna drive it then?” one of the young men asked, without a trace of doubt in Zhou Yimin’s words.

If anyone else—especially the old village secretary—had said something like that, they’d have brushed it off as wishful thinking. After all, this is a tractor we’re talking about, not a bicycle.

But when Zhou Yimin says it, the credibility shoots through the roof.

So if Zhoujiazhuang really does end up with its own tractor, who’ll be the one to drive it? Everyone wanted to be that driver!

“Whoever wants to drive it can learn. Whoever learns it gets to drive. We could even take turns—just for the thrill of it,” Zhou Yimin said casually.

As soon as those words left his mouth, all the young men there were tempted.

Zhou Yimin himself actually wanted to get a motorcycle. Riding a bicycle all the time was tiring. But getting one wasn’t easy, and he’d need a legitimate reason to use it publicly. Otherwise, it would draw too much attention, and being too flashy wasn’t a good look.

Ideally, it would be gifted by somewhere like the steel factory or the instant noodle factory.

That way, there’d be no fear of inspections.

Motorcycles in the 1960s were rare but not nonexistent. Since crossing over to this time, Zhou Yimin had already seen them several times.

Of course, most of them were police motorcycles. These had sidecars, and people commonly referred to them as “偏三” (leaning trikes).

The motorcycle that would later be hailed as China’s most iconic—the Xingfu 250—was actually manufactured this year and continued production until 1995. From its inception, the Xingfu 250 was a sensation all over the country. Its discontinuation in 1995 came because it could no longer keep up with the times.

As for foreign brands, they weren’t unavailable—just priced sky-high, often starting at ten or twenty thousand yuan.

Back in those days, being a “ten-thousand-yuan household” meant you were already a big-time rich guy. Motorcycles were not for the average person.

In the middle of the night, Zhou Yimin was jolted awake by a commotion.

He instantly realized it was something serious—there was the sound of gongs being struck. The village only used gongs to raise the alarm in emergencies.

“Grandpa, Grandma, don’t go out. I’ll check what’s going on,” Zhou Yimin said as he got up and saw that his grandparents were awake too.

Little Zhang Lu, being just a child, was still sleeping soundly—the gongs hadn’t woken her up.

“Alright, just be careful,” his grandfather reminded him.

He more or less already guessed what had happened.

Usually, this kind of alarm meant something had come down from the mountain and was wreaking havoc in the village fields.

The wheat was almost ready for harvest, and there were already people keeping watch at night. They couldn’t let their hard-earned crops be destroyed by “thieves.”

Zhou Yimin grabbed a flashlight and headed toward the area where the torches were brightest.

As he got closer, he realized it wasn’t gongs they were striking, but metal basins.

From everyone’s conversations, Zhou Yimin quickly pieced together what was happening.

A group of wild boars had come down from the mountain and were trampling through their cornfields. Some villagers had already brought shotguns and gone ahead. The old secretary and the brigade leader were organizing the rest of the villagers to drive the boars away.

Many people didn’t realize that wild boars are nocturnal creatures. They typically move and forage at night.

During the day, they stay hidden in shrubs or tall grass, usually only active at dawn or dusk. Around noon, they retreat deep into the woods to avoid sunlight. In disturbed areas, they become fully nocturnal, often coming out just before sunset and staying active throughout the night.

Of course, that wasn’t always the case.

“Secretary, this might be trouble. I counted—there are eleven of them,” someone reported.

Don’t be fooled by the smaller ones. Even a hundred-pound wild boar could be deadly if it rammed into you. As for the ones weighing three or four hundred pounds, if they get angry, even a tiger wouldn’t dare face them head-on.

Otherwise, there wouldn’t be that saying: “Wild boar first, bear second, tiger third.”

Zhou Yimin hadn’t had many run-ins with wild boars, but in his previous life, he’d seen videos of boars ramming doors and windows—they were terrifying. The glass at a high-speed rail station wasn’t ordinary glass, but it still shattered on impact. Iron doors were like paper in front of them.

Knowing the danger, the old secretary and others still had no choice but to drive the boars away.

That was their life-saving grain. If they let a dozen wild boars rampage through it, what would the village eat for the rest of the year? They had to fight back. They weren’t trying to kill the boars, just scare them off.

“Don’t we have firecrackers?” Zhou Yimin asked.

“Got three strings left. They’re all here,” someone replied.

They had prepared in advance, but three strings weren’t much. They might work on one or two boars, but this was a whole herd—bold and aggressive.

Just like people gain courage in numbers, animals do too.

“What if we break them apart and use them separately?” someone suggested.

“That won’t work. They’d lose all their impact.”

“So what now? These two or three strings aren’t going to cut it.”

After some time hunting, Zhou Dafu had grown bolder and said, “I say we wipe them out in one go. We’ve got five guns—let’s do it…”

Before he could finish, his father gave him a hard smack.

“Shut it! Who said you could speak?”

Everyone knew wild boar meat was good eating, but it wasn’t that easy to get. Eleven boars running wild was not something you could control. People could die.

Anyone who suggested such a reckless plan would be blamed for life if something went wrong.

His father looked like he wanted to kick some sense into him.

Zhou Yimin was thinking along the same lines as Zhou Dafu. Since the wild boars had come straight to their doorstep, this was free meat—he wasn’t about to let it go.

He’d walked around the village many times lately and had a good grasp of the terrain.

To the west of the village, there was a cliff more than twenty meters high. If they could drive the boars in that direction and make them fall off, they wouldn’t need to take big risks.

With that in mind, he spoke up, “Secretary, let’s drive them that way.”

Zhou Yimin pointed in that direction.

The old secretary, sharp as ever, immediately understood what he meant.

“You’re saying…” The brigade leader caught on too.

Zhou Yimin nodded. “We’re going to chase them off anyway—might as well try.”

“Alright, you few, come with me,” the brigade leader called out to the villagers with shotguns and led the charge.

(End of Chapter)