Chapter 289 Field of Hope

On July 1994, 7, the Provincial Sports Lottery Center announced that Chu Dapeng's special prize was real and valid, and reissued the Santana car and prize money. On August 26, the Jiangchuan City Procuratorate filed a public prosecution against Lin Yongqiang for fraud and bribery. On August 8, the Jiangchuan City Intermediate People's Court opened a trial. The court held that the defendant Lin Yongqiang colluded with Xiao Lijun and others to defraud cars and cash during the period of underwriting lottery tickets.

After several months of investigation and evidence collection, the truth of the case came to light.

This case is not complicated. To put it simply, lottery underwriter Lin Yongqiang hired a group of people at a cost of 2000 yuan per person to use real lottery tickets to claim the grand prize. In this way, he saved a lot of prize costs and boosted lottery sales.

In fact, such things are very common in the business field, but the fatal thing is that the winners have to leave personal information, notarized certificates of winning and fingerprints at the provincial sports lottery center of the regulatory department. Lin Yongqiang certainly did not dare to let those agents leave real information, so he could only forge it, but this was also a loophole that could not be covered up. The identity information of all the winners did not match the household registration information at all, and the contact numbers left were all empty numbers. The police checked and found it. Lin Yongqiang had long been aware of this, so when Zhang Yunqi pushed the Chengnan Branch to investigate the case, he very rationally took the initiative to surrender himself.

Regarding Chu Dapeng's forged lottery tickets, Lin Yongqiang did not admit that he had framed him. He still suspected the possibility that Chu Dapeng had forged lottery tickets because the first prize lottery tickets he and Xiao Lijun used were real tickets that had been collected before, and there was no need to use fake tickets. However, after Chu Dapeng won the prize unexpectedly, Lin Yongqiang and Xiao Lijun verified the first prize lottery tickets of that day and found that one of them was fake. More importantly, among all the people who won the first prize that day, only Chu Dapeng did not leave his fingerprints on file, while everyone else left their fingerprints as required.

Lin Yongqiang became suspicious at the time and secretly asked someone to investigate Chu Dapeng. It turned out that Chu Dapeng had a bad character, was addicted to gambling, and had a history of stealing and cheating many times. This made him more convinced that the fake lottery ticket was from Chu Dapeng's hand, so he reported it to the Provincial Sports Lottery Center. He and Xiao Lijun believed that Chu Dapeng would give up the Santana and the prize money out of a guilty conscience.

At that time, the Chengnan Branch felt that Lin Yongqiang's statement had a certain degree of credibility, because at this point he really had no need to continue making up stories, and it would not do him any good. So the Chengnan Branch continued to investigate the origins of the fake lottery tickets, and several people who won the first prize on March 3, including Chu Dapeng, were once again included in the police's vision.

After checking one by one, the police found that a winner named Liu Siqing was a major suspect in the crime. After arresting him, they learned through interrogation that this person was very good at counterfeiting lottery tickets. He heard that "instant lottery tickets" could win Santana, so he forged the lottery tickets in advance by altering them, went to the lottery site to redeem the prize, and deceived Xiao Lijun's eyes. Xiao Lijun only discovered the fake lottery tickets when he checked the lottery tickets at night. After discussing with Lin Yongqiang, on the one hand, he was unwilling to lose the bonus and Santana, and on the other hand, he did suspect that it was Chu Dapeng who did it. This triggered a series of events afterwards.

On the second day after the trial, Jiang Feng took her two daughters to Chu Dapeng's grave. The injustice was finally cleared, but for Chu's family, the emotions were complicated. The pain that Chu Dapeng brought to the mother and two daughters was not easy to forget, but even if it was a piece of rotten flesh on the body, it would still hurt if it was cut off.

The next day, Chu Jian and Zhang Yunqi set out on the road to Yunxi Village. There were quite a lot of people traveling with them. In addition to a group of Liansheng executives headed by Li Jilin, there were also Old Man Zhang, Ji Ling, Chunlan, Xiao Xiao and Chu Xin, as well as Lin Shiyu, a reporter from the Xiangnan Daily who came for the second time.

The new processing base of Longjingyuan Canning Factory built in Yunxi Village has been put into operation, and a groundbreaking ceremony will be held. Zhang Yunqi has a lot of things to deal with when he goes to Yunxi Village, and the environment in Yunxi Village is also good, with blue sky, white clouds, green water and green mountains. He thinks that since Chu Jian had just been discharged from the hospital, it would be good for him to come to the countryside to recuperate.

There were four cars in a row. Zhang Yunqi was driving a Mercedes-Benz S320 in the front. Several girls were eating snacks and chattering. The atmosphere was very happy, but no one paid attention to Zhang Yunqi. He, a lonely man, looked out the window at the vast sky and boundless fields and couldn't help humming a song: "Our hometown is in the field of hope. Smoke is floating over the newly built houses. A small river is flowing beside the beautiful village. There is a field of winter wheat and a field of sorghum. There are ten miles of lotus ponds and ten miles of fruit fragrance. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! We have lived in this field for generations, working for it to be rich and prosperous. Our ideal is in the field of hope..."

It was already noon when we arrived at Yunxi Village.

Zhang Yunqi hasn't returned to Yunxi Village for almost half a year.

When the familiar hills and mountains on both sides of the dirt road came into view, he saw wisps of gray smoke from the distance. In the ditches and hills on both sides of the Crescent River, large tracts of crops were green and yellow. Some autumn crops had already been harvested. The bare-chested farmers shoveled the golden grains into the blue sky. The rice fell like rain and sprinkled on the children playing. On the small roads in the mountains, the peasant women trembled their fat buttocks and walked leisurely with lunch boxes on their shoulders.

On the surface, life and labor in the countryside always seem peaceful, leisurely and comfortable, but farmers who are rooted in the land know that for every Chinese peasant family of that era, every day during the double harvest season was full of bustle and tension.

The lunch was eaten at the home of Zhang Haijun, the current head of Yunxi Village and chairman of the cooperative. There were three tables in total. The dishes were full of the taste of hometown. Zhang Yunqi was very satisfied with the meal and had two cups of homemade sweet potato wine with a group of hometown elders. The work was all scheduled for tomorrow. There was nothing to do in the afternoon. Zhang Haijun's daughter Zhang Xiaomei took a few girls to the jujube forest by the Crescent River to pick jujubes. Zhang Yunqi also went, and he and Lin Shiyu, who had been following him for an interview, followed behind and talked while walking.

August after the beginning of autumn is the season when fruits and vegetables are ripe. When Zhang Yunqi and his party came to the jujube forest, they saw the bright red jujubes hidden in the green grass like stars.

This jujube forest belongs to Zhang Haijun's family.

Zhang Yunqi remembered that when he was a child, he often came here with other kids in the village to steal dates. Once, he was caught by Zhang Xiaomei's grandfather. The old man passed away a few years ago, but he had a very bad temper at that time. When he caught him, he slapped him without saying a word. Later, he met Ji Ling. He could come here with Ji Ling to pick dates openly, but the taste was no longer the same as before. This confirmed a famous saying: Home-grown dates are not as good as wild ones, and wild ones are not as good as stolen ones.

Zhang Yunqi glanced at Chu Jian who was with Ji Ling. Until now, no one knew about his relationship with Chu Jian. Chu Jian often worriedly told him that he should focus on studying now and not let others know. Some things should be discussed after the college entrance examination.

This made Zhang Yunqi always feel as if he had done something bad. Of course, he didn't know how to describe his current relationship with Chu Jian.

Ji Ling is always very lively every time she returns to Yunxi Village, but picking dates is not her strong point. Chunlan and Zhang Xiaomei, who are used to doing farm work, are experts in this field. They take long bamboo poles and hit the tree, and red and green dates fall like rain. Xiaoxiao picks them on the grass with original intention. The dates hit the heads of the two little girls, and they cry out "ah ah", but their little faces are red and excited. Their mouths are never idle, and are always bulging with dates.

Zhang Yunqi was sweating all over after picking dates from two trees. When he sat on a rock and drank water, Lin Shiyu next to him suddenly said, "You seem to like this kind of life very much."

Zhang Yunqi put down the water bottle and asked: "Is there anything wrong with this kind of life?"

Lin Shiyu shrugged her shoulders: "There's nothing wrong with it, it's just strange. With your status and age, shouldn't you be pursuing wealth and pleasure?"

"It seems like you have a lot of complaints about me."

"I don't have any opinions. I've just seen a lot of rich people's lives, so I think you are different. Your pursuit of spirituality far outweighs your pursuit of material things." Lin Shiyu sat on the grass, holding up her fair chin and asked, "You've done so many things for Yunxi Village. What's your mentality?"

Zhang Yunqi laughed: "Actually, you took a lot of effort to do this report. You wanted to pull it up, to find a different spiritual realm in me, to establish a very different typical young entrepreneur in the province, to explore a new model of property rights reform to revitalize state-owned enterprises, and to lead the people of my hometown out of poverty and become rich. Thank you, but to be honest, I really don’t have any lofty ideals, and I’m even a little selfish. I work hard to make money just to let my family live a good life. Now that my family has a good life, my ambitions are a little bigger, thinking about letting the people of my hometown live a good life. Of course, you may not be satisfied with these words, then I suggest you write the title like this: A red heart for the people, full of blood spilled in Yunxi-Remembering the young entrepreneur in Jiangchuan City who revitalized the canning factory through property rights reform to help his hometown prosper and get rid of poverty!"

Lin Shiyu was amused: "When it's time to be shameless, you're still as shameless as ever."

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(End of this chapter)