Ling Pingan saw an unread text message on his phone when he woke up the next morning.
“The grapes are ripe…” he looked at the content of the text message. It was from Uncle Zhang, the village chief of his hometown in the suburbs.
It only mentioned one thing, the grapes in the village were ripe. He asked if he should keep a few kilograms for him just like the years before.
Of course, that was a must.
Ling Pingan immediately replied with a message. “Uncle Zhang, please keep about 50 catties for me…”
The grapes from his hometown were of A-Grades!
Especially when it was used to make wine. It was top-notch!
Although Ling Pingan wasn’t fond of wine, his aunt liked it.
A reply to his message was sent to him not long later.
Uncle Zhang: Okay!
Ling Pingan picked up his phone and hurriedly washed up.
He had to rush back to his hometown to get the grapes today.
He had to hurry, considering that it had just rained yesterday.
Otherwise, the grapes might spoil if they were left out for too long, and it would affect the taste of the wine!
The kitten Bastet was already waiting when he walked to the stairs.
“Little one…” Ling Pingan picked it up. “How about we go to my hometown in the suburbs today?”
“There are a lot of grape trees and strawberry farms over there!”
Meow!
The kitten meowed and seemed to be happy.
Ling Pingan carried it and walked downstairs. He turned on the computer first and uploaded that day’s update.
He looked at the collections at the same time.
32…
Wasn’t it 28 before he slept the night before?
Did it increase by four numbers?
Not bad!
He smiled and turned off the computer happily.
Then, he carried the kitten out of the door and closed the shop door.
Then, he got on a bus and headed to the rural area in the eastern suburbs.
The bus went around the city,. Soon, it drove out of the city and entered the villa area in the suburbs.
The villas were one after another between the mountains and lakes.
Some maids wearing traditional clothes of Silla were chatting and laughing beside the villas.
Ling Pingan shook his head as he watched.
The Federal Empire had started a trend of retro fashion recently.
The Tang and Han style.
Therefore, Silla maids had become popular!
And the Silla Kingdom seemed to have found this business opportunity and launched a customized service.
It was said that the monthly salary of the highly trained high-class Silla maids had already reached a terrifying number of tens of thousands!
It was even higher than the salary of many professional engineers!
The bus drove out of the villa area and soon entered a stretch of farmland.
All that could be seen were vegetable sheds and fruit-growing bases.
Jiangcheng City had large areas of rural land in the suburbs like most of the large cities in the Federal Empire.
These places were non-development areas protected by law.
They were mainly woods, orchards, and vegetable fields.
There were historical reasons for this.
The founding emperors and generals of the Federal Empire had a deep-rooted fear of hunger!
The question that Taizu and his meritorious officials thought about the most at first according to many historical sources and memoirs was, when could they stop people from starving?
Therefore, the system of government was designed to stop people from starving.
However, Emperor Taizu never imagined that less than 30 years after his death, there would be no famine in the metropolitan territory of the Federation.
That was because the Beizhou was liberated.
The vast and fertile land of the Beizhou could produce the grain of the metropolitan territory for several years in a year.
Then there was the establishment of the Nanzhou and the Xisong.
Great…
Cheap overseas grain swarmed over.
All the grain grown in the metropolitan territory was in an economic crisis except for the northeast regions.
Thus…
The metropolitan territory was completely transformed into orchards and vegetable gardens.
Not a single acre of land was used to grow grain especially in the rural areas surrounding the cities.
Every city could proudly announce to the outside world, “We are the hometown of vegetables and fruits!”
The only problem was that vegetables and fruits were expensive!
Cabbage was more expensive than pork and even more expensive than C-Grade beef in the market!
As for fruits?
Anyway, Ling Pingan remembered that if there were fruits on the menu on any day when he had lunch at school…
It would be a holiday.
Usually, most of the lunch was junk food.
Chicken drumsticks, beef, sea fish, prawns, and so on.
Eating them made him want to throw up!
It caused the obesity rate of teenagers to rise.
The bus had already turned into the terminal when he was thinking about that.
Ling Pingan held his pet and got off the bus.
The bus stop was set up next to a distribution center for agricultural products.
Ling Pingan could smell the rich aroma of fruits and vegetables as soon as he got off the bus.
He walked over to look. Boxes of strawberries were already packed, one grape after another, green grapes, red grapes…
There were also mountains of bananas and pineapples.
They were all seasonal fruits!
However, Ling Pingan shrunk his neck when he saw the price.
Even the cheapest bananas cost ten yuan per catty here!
As for the expensive ones…
Strawberries cost twenty-eight yuan per catty, and they were the B-Grade ones.
The A-Grade was not available here. Those high-grade fruits had long been pre-ordered at a high price.
Fortunately…
Ling Pingan hugged Bastet and said, “Little Darling, fortunately, I still have the identity of a farmer!”
There were many systems in the Federal Empire, and they were still the same as three hundred years ago.
One of them was the household registration system.
Emperor Taizu divided the people into ‘scholars, farmers, industry, and commerce’ according to tradition at the beginning of building the country.
The era of constitutionalism began after the founding of the emperor, according to the posthumous edict left behind by Taizu, ‘the steps of governance and constitutionalism’.
Each profession must have a fixed number of representatives and be selected from the corresponding professions in the Parliament of ministers and physicians at all levels.
For example, currently, education and scientists occupied a large proportion in the Minister Council of the central government.
The Education Committee of the Federal Empire and the Science and Technology Development Committee of the Federal Empire were all super forces of the nature of the entire empire.
Similarly, there had always been reservations about the seats for farmers.
It was just that there were relatively few.
However, the identity of a farmer was extremely useful.
And Ling Pingan’s ancestors had always been farmers.
Even though he had moved to the city as early as his grandfather’s time.
However, his identity card and the occupation marked on his household register had never changed!
The location of his household register had always been the Qilipu Village in Dongmei Town, Jiangcheng City, where his ancestors had been.
And the villages of the Federal Empire had always been united since ancient times.
Especially in Guangnan!
The relationship between the townsfolk was as close as that between schoolmates and comrades.
The people of a place would automatically become close to each other whenever they met.
Guangnan people often acted like chivalrous heroes who saw injustice on the road in many old movies and TV shows.
The plot was basically about the protagonist being bullied overseas. Then, a burly man on the side of the road immediately pulled out the revolver hanging from his waist and charged out upon hearing the protagonist’s Guangnan accent.
As a result, people had formed a stereotype.
They thought that Guangnan people were all chivalrous heroes who rode tall horses with revolvers hanging from their waists, serving justice in the vast Beizhou plains.
But that was more than 200 years ago.
And now, the chivalrous heroes on horseback had disappeared in the Beizhou plains along with social development and technological progress.
However, the local clique of the Guangnan people was still strong.
Everything was negotiable as long as they were from the same birthplace.
Everything was negotiable, even if their ancestral home was from the same place.
The most important thing for Ling Pingan was that he could go to the orchards and vegetable fields to pick the fruits and vegetables he wanted to eat with the identity of a farmer.
And the price was cheaper!
It was less than 30% of the market price.
He was lazy!
He would have vegetables and fruits to eat every day if he were more hardworking!
Not only that, but every time also a villager came to the city to buy or travel.
They would bring him some of the village’s vegetables and fruits.
Thus, Ling Pingan set out on the road to his home with Bastet in his arms.
He was familiar with the way!
His parents would bring him back to the ancestral house in the countryside once a week before he was ten years old.
First, they would clean the ancestral house, then pray to the ancestors, and buy some vegetables and fruits.
However, Ling Pingan rarely returned after his parents died.
Especially after he graduated from university, he would come back to buy grapes for the sake of wine every year, apart from paying respects to the ancestors during the new year.
As for the ancestral house, he entrusted it to a distant relative in the village, asking him to help look after and clean it.
Ling Pingan gave him a monthly payment of 500 yuan for that.
Ling Pingan walked along the road as he held Bastet, then turned into the left-hand path in front of a bridge and entered the village road.
A small village by the river bay came into view after climbing over a few hills.
That was Qilipu!
