Chapter 72 Please Eat White Rabbit
As the year draws to a close, farmers, like all animals that hibernate, have already put away their hoes and hung up their plows and huddled by the fire, enjoying the rare leisure time of the year.

Zhang Yunqi is not a farmer, but there is not much farm work to do at home, so he has a lot of free time. He rested well at home for two days, cooked some delicious food and tutored his sister Zhang Xiaoxiao, who is a poor student.

Teacher Zhang Xiaoxiao assigned winter vacation homework to the fifth grade students. One of the assignments was to write a diary every day, and the number of words must not be less than 100 words.

This doesn't seem difficult for Xiao Xiao. The only problem is that she often finishes writing 1 to 23 words in her diary, which is words per day. For example, "January , XUE. Today my second brother asked me to sit in the SHU to study for homework. I collected a lot of HUO."

Gone.

She didn't know what to write.

Zhang Yunqi taught her: "You have to learn to set up obstacles. For example, when Tang Monk went to the West to obtain Buddhist scriptures, it was not that easy. There were many obstacles along the way, such as the 81 difficulties. Tang Monk went through countless hardships. Only at the last stage could Tang Monk obtain the true scriptures and become a Buddha on the spot."

Zhang Xiaoxiao is very smart. Under Zhang Yunqi's guidance, he was able to draw inferences from what he had learned.

When writing about a picnic, she knew how to set up obstacles: she forgot her knife, couldn’t light a fire, and had no place to wash the vegetable leaves. Once she solved the obstacles one by one, she could write, let alone a hundred words, even a thousand.

But one day, she suddenly came to her senses, looked at Zhang Yunqi with her innocent eyes and said, "Second brother, isn't it a bit fake that you are teaching me to write like this? We are different from Tang Seng. In fact, everything is going smoothly for us, without so many obstacles."

Zhang Yunqi smiled and touched her little head: "When you grow up, you will understand that everything will have obstacles, and some obstacles you can't solve yet."

******
January 1th is the day to visit Guiping Prison.

The day before he went to visit Zhang's father, Zhang Yunfeng went to the town and rented a van from a friend for 30 yuan. The friend joked, "Why are you renting a van at the end of the year? Are you going to meet someone for a blind date?"

Zhang Yunfeng smiled and said it was more important than meeting a partner.

That day, Aunt Zhang took Chunlan and Xiaoxiao to the market in town and bought new clothes for herself and her two daughters, as well as headwear for her two daughters.

That day, Zhang Yunqi called his eldest sister Zhang Qiulan and asked her to put down what she was doing the next day and go to Fengyang County Bus Station with her brother-in-law Niu Fen and her nephew to wait for them and go to Guiping County to visit the prison together.

That evening, the whole family was excited and busy preparing the clothes to wear and the things to bring for the prison visit the next day. Chunlan tore off the award certificates posted on the wall one by one, rolled them up and put them away in a cloth bag. The fifth child, Zhang Xiaoxiao, took a bath early and changed into new clothes.

Mother Zhang tied up the bedding and cotton-padded jacket she brought for Father Zhang, and asked Zhang Yunqi to go to the store at the entrance of the village to find a plastic bottle to put the jar meat in. She kept saying, "Your father likes to pickle the fat meat in a jar of chili peppers to eat with wine, but he was poor before and couldn't eat fat meat. This time I'll bring him some more to satisfy his craving."

Zhang Yunqi told Zhang Ma that she was not allowed to bring food to the prison. After a pause, he said, "There is a store in the prison where you can buy some delicious food. I will deposit money into my father's card regularly in the future."

"Then, keep these jar meats for him to eat with wine when he comes back." Zhang Ma said, and silently poured the jar meats dipped in red chili oil from the rooster bowl back into the jar. Early the next morning, Zhang Yunfeng drove a rented van, carrying his newly dressed family and things for Zhang's father, to Fengyang County Bus Station to pick up Zhang Qiulan's family of three, and then set off for Guiping County.

On the way there, Zhang Yunqi looked at the expectant expressions of the whole family, but what he was thinking in his heart was how to get his father out as soon as possible.

This is his Achilles' heel.

But the big mistake had already been made in his previous life, and he had to drink this bitter cup of wine. All he could do now was to find a way to get his father out as soon as possible and make up for the little debt. However, his father had been in prison for a year already, and the only way to get him out earlier was to reduce his sentence.

In his previous life, Zhang Yunqi knew that a sentence reduction could only be granted after good performance in prison and obtaining corresponding labor achievements or commendations.

Labor performance is usually assessed once a quarter. One needs to accumulate three labor performances to be eligible to apply to superiors for commutation of sentence. After the application, it still needs to go through layers of approval procedures. That is, even if the performance is good, the commutation of sentence procedure will take at least a year to complete.

My father's total sentence is two years and four months, and he has already served more than a year, so it is very difficult to reduce his sentence through this means. Of course, if he has made great contributions, it is another matter, but how can I make my father have great contributions?

Zhang Yunqi planned to talk to Ji Zhong after visiting him in prison.

At around ten o'clock in the morning, the Zhang family arrived at the Guiping County Prison. Zhang Yunqi had been there once and was familiar with the place. He first topped up 600 yuan into Zhang's father's account. He wanted to save more, but the Guiping County Prison had a rule that the amount of pocket money that could be deposited for prisoners at a time should not exceed RMB 600 per person.

After depositing the money, Zhang Yunqi took his household registration booklet to register, received a visiting permit, and sat in the visiting room with his family according to his visiting number waiting.

Zhang's father, Zhang Liushun, had received a notice early on that his family was coming to visit. He thought that only his second son, Yunqi, was coming, but when he arrived at the visiting room and saw the entire family, young and old, dressed in new clothes, his old eyes became cloudy and he was speechless for a long time out of joy.

When they saw Mr. Zhang, the whole family gathered in front of the visiting window and called him, but they couldn't hear anything through the bulletproof glass. Moreover, the visiting time was only 30 minutes, there were many people and there was only one microphone. Finally, under the arrangement of the prison guards, the family took turns sitting in front of the visiting window and using the microphone to talk to Mr. Zhang.

The first person to speak was Zhang's mother. She held the microphone and smiled and said, "Dad, everything is fine at home now. Don't worry about it while you're in there. Our two sons are doing well. Yunfeng drives a tractor in town and Yunqi studies in the best high school in the city. The family is rich now and all the debts we owed before have been paid off. My heart disease has also improved a lot and I have stopped taking medication. Dad, you can relax in there and take good care of yourself. Buy whatever you want to eat. Yunqi has already transferred money to your card. Behave well and try to get out as soon as possible. Now the family is waiting for you to come out and enjoy life."

The second one was the eldest brother Zhang Yunfeng. He was not a man who was good at expressing his feelings. He simply said: "Dad, I brought you two Furongwang cigarettes, but smoke less and just enjoy it. Take care of yourself in there. I will have to wait for you to take charge of the matter of finding a wife."

The third one was about the second child, Zhang Qiulan. With red eyes, she carried her son to the window and said to Zhang Liushun: "Dad, this is your grandson, Tiantian, he is already seven months old. Dad, take good care of yourself in there. When you come out, Tiantian will be able to call you grandpa."

The fourth one mentioned was the fourth child, Zhang Chunlan. She took out the neatly stacked certificates from her bag and showed them to her father one by one. She said in a very firm tone: "Dad, these are the certificates I won this year. They are all first place. Don't worry, next year I will be like my second brother, and I will be the top scorer in the high school entrance examination in Fengyang County, go to the best high school in the city, and go to the best university in the country!"

The fifth one is about the fifth child, Zhang Xiaoxiao. She is short and she struggled to get to the window with her butt sticking out. Then she rummaged through her pockets and took out two White Rabbit milk candies. She held them in her hands and handed them to Zhang's father. With red eyes, she said in a baby voice: "Dad, I miss you so much. Can you come home with me? I'll give you White Rabbit candies, good candies, all of them..."

******
(End of this chapter)