Chapter 190: Polio Sugar Cubes

It was another early morning, and Zhou Yimin was the first to grab the one-yuan item.

Today’s haul included: 100 jin of rice, 100 jin of olive oil, 100 jin of mangoes, and 100 boxes of oral polio vaccine sugar cubes.

Zhou Yimin was pleasantly surprised.

The rice wasn’t anything special—he’d managed to snag plenty of it recently through the one-yuan flash sales.

The olive oil, hailed in later years as a “miracle health oil,” was considered the most nutritionally suitable oil known to humankind. With a history of thousands of years along the Mediterranean coast, it earned nicknames in the West like “liquid gold” and “queen of vegetable oils.”

However, Zhou Yimin wasn’t interested in olive oil.

Among vegetable oils, he preferred peanut oil. For animal fat, nothing beat good old lard.

In later years, merchants trying to sell vegetable oil began pushing the narrative that lard was unhealthy, hoping to get the Chinese people to abandon their centuries-old tradition of cooking with it.

And a lot of people really bought into that.

In the end, people realized vegetable oils weren’t necessarily any safer.

Mangoes—being a tropical fruit—were a rare sight in the North during this time, let alone something people could actually eat.

Zhou Yimin found himself missing the sour green mangoes from his past life.

But what really excited him were the 100 boxes of oral polio vaccine sugar cubes.

A few years back, a disease that had never seen a large-scale outbreak before—poliomyelitis—swept through the country.

Those who contracted it were often left paralyzed, and in severe cases, it was fatal. The fatality rate wasn’t low, and most of the affected were children. It was the terrifying disease known as infantile paralysis.

If Zhou Yimin remembered correctly, in 1960—this very year—China successfully developed its own live attenuated oral polio vaccine for the first time.

Before this, only the Soviet Union and the U.S. had produced polio vaccines.

However, even though the country had developed the vaccine, the sugar cube form hadn’t hit the public yet.

Of course, if he handed them out without disclosing their purpose—simply giving them to children as candy—no one would suspect a thing.

After all, this was a preventative medicine, not a cure. If someone already had polio, taking it wouldn’t help.

Mention “polio sugar cubes,” and many people might think of Leon Lai from the Four Heavenly Kings. Back in the 1990s, he launched a campaign called “Eradicate Poliomyelitis,” donating polio vaccines to tens of millions of children in China.

That single act made it nearly impossible for anyone to criticize him.

There were two celebrities in Hong Kong who were basically beyond reproach—Leon Lai, and Principal Gu, who was devoted to building schools.

After breakfast, Zhou Yimin went to the school and handed over dozens of sugar cubes to Principal Zhou Zhigao, instructing him to make sure each child got one.

Zhou Zhigao didn’t even ask why. Yimin wouldn’t give them something harmful.

Zhou Yimin then gave some to the old village secretary to distribute to the children who weren’t in school.

The village kids were thrilled to have candy, gobbling it up with glee. Some even wanted to save theirs and were only persuaded to eat it after being scolded.

“These are the leftovers.”

Zhou Yimin didn’t take them back. Instead, he said to the old village secretary, “Secretary, keep them. From now on, when there’s a newborn in the village, make sure they get one. I heard it helps prevent a certain disease.”

He didn’t specify which disease.

The old secretary suddenly understood.

So that’s why Yimin insisted that every child in the village eat one. It all made sense now. These kids were really lucky.

He agreed without hesitation. “No problem. Leave it to me.”

Today’s delivery was another truckload of baby bok choy—slightly more than yesterday, around 7,000 jin in total.

After the harvest, the villagers got right back to weeding and watering. Not a moment was wasted. After all, every yuan earned now meant shared profits.

Everyone was highly motivated.

The level of importance was right up there with the upcoming wheat harvest.

Once the bok choy was all picked, the village wheat would be just about ready. When that time came, the school would give the kids a few days off to help out.

Of course, they wouldn’t be expected to do any heavy lifting, but picking up stray ears of wheat? No problem.

The old secretary handed the money from the wild boar and yesterday’s vegetable sales to the brigade leader, telling him to go out and buy donkeys and oxen. This had been Zhou Yimin’s idea. If they wanted to improve labor efficiency, manpower alone wasn’t going to cut it.

With livestock like donkeys and oxen, things would move much faster.

Zhou Yimin told the old secretary that they had to be willing to invest at this stage.

To be honest, if it weren’t for Yimin’s suggestion, the old secretary probably wouldn’t have agreed to spend the money.

If it weren’t for the promise of future income, it would’ve been even harder to convince him. Spending money was fine, but coughing up over two thousand yuan at once? That was no small thing!

A donkey cost several hundred yuan.

Even with over two thousand yuan, they couldn’t buy many.

To put it bluntly, donkeys were worth more than people. Back then, getting a wife cost just a few yuan—twenty at most. Especially during these hard times, many families would even forgo a dowry altogether just to ease their burden.

“If there aren’t any at the Hongxing Commune, go a little further out,” the old secretary instructed.

“Got it.”

The brigade leader tucked the money away and set off with two other villagers.

Zhou Yimin delivered the vegetables to the steel factory and, after collecting payment, didn’t immediately return to Zhoujiazhuang. Instead, he went to the neighborhood office with a jar of honey.

“You bring something every time—what’s with all the courtesy?” Director Li chided.

“This is honey collected by villagers. I thought you and Auntie Li might like to try some.”

Director Li was touched. Ever since she’d accepted Zhou Yimin as her nephew, it felt like she’d been on the receiving end of his generosity. This kid was too sincere.

She handed him a newspaper. “Take a look.”

The paper featured an article about that song—the entire piece was full of praise.

Zhou Yimin was surprised. It’s gotten this popular already?

In recent years, he’d been focused on village affairs and hadn’t paid much attention to the courtyard happenings.

“Our district’s performance competition already ended?”

He hadn’t even followed the street-level selections. Turned out, not only had the district-level competition already wrapped up—it was over just yesterday. Time flew.

Director Li was speechless. You don’t even follow news about your own song? She was truly exasperated. Something this big, and he didn’t even think it was worth noting?

“It ended yesterday and was a huge success. Our street came out looking great. We were just about to head to your courtyard to give out awards!”

This time, it wasn’t just the street office handing out prizes—the district office would too.

Director Li accompanied Zhou Yimin back to the courtyard. At that moment, the residents were buzzing with excitement, grinning like it was New Year’s.

The First Uncle and the others had already received word that the street office would be coming to reward the children today, so they’d all stayed put in the courtyard.

Everyone shared in the pride.

“Where’s Yimin? Dapeng, didn’t you notify him?” the First Uncle asked Luo Dapeng.

Luo Dapeng looked embarrassed—he’d been so happy yesterday he got drunk and completely forgot.

Everyone rolled their eyes at him. Typical—no mustache, no reliability!

His mother couldn’t help but thump him a few times.

(End of Chapter)