Chapter 150 – If You Want to Get Rich, Build a Road First

Once the guests left, peace returned to Zhou Yimin’s household.

Zhang Lu, like a wild horse freed from its reins, ran all over the village with the other kids and quickly became the top dog among them. Even Laifang soon became her little sidekick, looking like she was having so much fun she didn’t want to go back.

In her heart, she probably thought the countryside was much better than the city.

No one bossed her around here. The living conditions were good—she had a room all to herself—and even going to the toilet was more convenient than in the city.

More importantly, the food was excellent. There was meat with nearly every meal and endless snacks. Wasn’t this life better than her city home?

Even Zhou Yimin’s grandparents liked her, treating her like their own granddaughter, never scolding her. Unlike at home, where her mother never hesitated to lay down the law if she stepped out of line.

Of course, this was partly thanks to Zhang Lu’s sweet tongue and way with words. She knew how to act cute and wheedle, which completely charmed the elderly couple.

“Yimin, do you think this group is enough?” the old village secretary asked, leading over a group of women.

Zhou Yimin gave them a quick glance and nodded. “Yeah, that should be enough.”

He was planning to make mushroom spawn bags. If he had to do it all by himself, who knew how long it would take? So, he had asked the old secretary to gather some women to come learn how to make them.

The women who came were all curious when they heard Zhou Yimin was going to teach them how to grow mushrooms.

As farmers, they were pros at growing things and didn’t usually need anyone to teach them. But this was their first time dealing with mushrooms, so their curiosity and eagerness to learn were completely natural.

Zhou Yimin had asked the village to prepare the materials for making the spawn bags three days earlier.

“There’s one more thing, Secretary,” Zhou Yimin said.

“What is it?”

“Roadwork.”

Building roads was an important matter.

In later generations, there was a popular saying: If you want to get rich, build roads first!

Time had proven it true.

The old secretary looked puzzled. “Where exactly do you want to build?”

Wasn’t the village road still usable?

“Starting from the village entrance, the main road through the village. I noticed those vegetables in the riverbed—some of them will be ready to harvest in ten or twenty days, right? When the time comes, I’ll have the big trucks from the steel factory drive straight into the village.

The current road isn’t good enough for that! It needs to be at least three meters wide,” Zhou Yimin said.

That would make it easier to transport the products out of Zhoujia Village, so the roadwork was absolutely necessary.

At the moment, the main road in the village was about two meters wide—just barely enough for a vehicle. Zhou Yimin had observed over the past few days, and even if it was widened to three meters, it wouldn’t eat into too much farmland.

There was already some space left on both sides of the rural road. As long as that space was incorporated into the road, it would be just about right.

The old secretary and the others immediately understood.

That definitely needed to be done. It was about the village’s prosperity and wealth, so everyone took it seriously.

“Alright! I’ll call people over. We’ll try to wrap up all these odds and ends before the wheat harvest begins,” the old secretary nodded.

Otherwise, once the busy farming season started, they wouldn’t have time.

Zhou Yimin laid out some requirements for the road.

Hard paving with concrete or asphalt was definitely out of the question. Not just for Zhoujia Village—even the Hongxing Commune didn’t have the resources or capability for that.

All Zhou Yimin asked for was a road surface that was flat, solid, and could withstand some degree of rain and snow erosion.

It wasn’t exactly easy, but it wasn’t impossible either.

“Alright, just leave the roadwork to us,” they said.

If they couldn’t even get this done, what use was Zhoujia Village anyway?

So the old secretary gathered another group of villagers, put them on road construction duty, and appointed a team leader.

Right now, Zhoujia Village was very busy. Besides their usual production tasks, they had to tend to the vegetables and melons in the riverbed. The mountain enclosure work was finished, but they still had to build simple chicken coops and mushroom houses—no small feat.

In short, none of the able-bodied young men in Zhoujia Village had any free time.

Except Zhou Yimin, who still strolled around from time to time.

Zhou Zhiming was also part of the conscription list. When he heard the village was building roads, he suggested, “Secretary, if we want a better surface, we could lay coal slag.”

There was a brick factory in Hongxing Commune that produced coal slag every day, which could be hauled away by truck.

Coal slag, an industrial solid waste, is the residue discharged from coal-fired power plants, industrial and domestic boilers, and other coal-burning equipment—also known as furnace slag.

Abroad, coal slag was fully utilized. Depending on its composition, it could be used to make cement, bricks, refractory materials, and even to extract rare metals like gallium or germanium.

But in China at the time, coal slag was basically useless.

Brick factories were always scratching their heads over how to get rid of it.

If someone came to haul it away, the factory would probably be thrilled.

The old secretary praised the suggestion: “That’s a good idea, though it’ll take some effort.”

After all, hauling slag from the Hongxing Commune wasn’t close. Right now, their village could only rely on manual labor—maybe an ox cart or a wheelbarrow at most.

Covering the village road in a full layer of that stuff would be quite the workload.

“If only we had a tractor, that’d be perfect,” someone mused.

In later years, tractors were everywhere. But at this point in time, they were considered high-end equipment. Only communes had them—villages or regular brigades weren’t even qualified.

There was even a running joke in later years that the power of a single-cylinder diesel tractor was a mystery.

People would see these tractors, outfitted with huge cargo beds, hauling logs on muddy roads and still managing to move. That’s where the joke came from.

In truth, such jobs required slow speeds, diesel engines running at full throttle, and a bit of technique. Given time, they could always get moving. But it did put serious wear and tear on the tractor’s belts.

“Still dreaming about tractors? If we had a tricycle, you should be laughing your head off!” the old secretary rolled his eyes.

Zhoujia Village might be able to scrape together the funds to buy a tricycle, but a tractor? Forget it. Even if they sold off everything they had, it probably still wouldn’t be enough.

The brigade leader said, “Actually, I know someone who drives a tractor. I’ll go ask him.”

Having a tractor to haul coal slag would definitely be a big help. Relying on wheelbarrows? Who knew how long that would take.

He knew a tractor driver, though not very well. Even if he managed to persuade him, there was no telling what it might cost. Still, it was worth asking.

Zhou Yimin had currently selected three types of mushrooms to cultivate: straw mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, and oyster mushrooms.

Straw mushrooms are cooling in nature, good for clearing heat and relieving summer heat. They’re especially suited to hot weather. Most importantly, their growth cycle is short—harvestable in just a month.

Shiitake mushrooms are more common and widely recognized. Their advantage, unmatched by many other mushrooms, is that if the fresh ones don’t sell in time, they can be dried.

However, shiitakes have a longer growth cycle—around three to four months.

Oyster mushrooms are widely distributed and can be cultivated almost anywhere in the world. They are wood-decay fungi, typically growing on dead hardwood, rotting stumps, or the decaying parts of live trees.

In China, they’ve been cultivated since ancient times and were previously known as “heavenly flower vegetables.”

Based on how things developed in his past life, oyster mushrooms wouldn’t be grown on a large scale until the 1970s.

(End of Chapter)