"1992: Temporary workers in supply and marketing cooperatives get rich by hoarding goods"
In Hongxing Town in 1992, raindrops hit the iron sheet of Lin Jianjun's shack like a reminder.
At the age of 22, he clutched his newly-paid salary of 38 yuan, and his fingertips were sore from his mother's medicine bill. In the 10-square-meter shack, the paralyzed mother lay on the bed and moaned, and the unemployed sister counted the last half kilogram of rice in the grain book. This was the third month that Lin Jianjun, an educated youth who had returned to the city, replaced his father as a temporary worker in the supply and marketing cooperative. The life was shabby than the adobe wall in the countryside.
The shelves of the supply and marketing cooperative are so empty that rats can run away. Good cloth requires a ticket, and bicycles have a permanent trust relationship. But on the black market, the price of a bag of fertilizer can triple. Lin Jianjun stared at the urea bag gathering dust in the corner of the warehouse, his Adam's apple rolling.
Late that night, he squatted under the old locust tree at the entrance of the black market with all his belongings. When the first farmer handed him double the price with red eyes, he touched the first "extra money" he earned in his pocket - enough to buy half a month's worth of medicine for his mother.
"Jianjun, do you dare to resell public goods?" Lin Jianjun was stuffing his sister's new cloth shoes into his bag when the director of the supply and marketing cooperative pounded the table. He didn't say anything, he just looked at his mother sitting up and basking in the sun for the first time on the day the shack was replaced by a brick house.
From secretly hoarding fertilizers to subscribing unsalable brown sugar from supply and marketing cooperatives, from riding a second-hand bicycle to surrounding villages and towns to bargaining with vendors from the south, Lin Jianjun stepped forward through the cracks in the planned economy.
The starting point for him to climb out of the mud is also the prelude to sudden wealth.
