Chapter 6 — The Snow Melts, The Sun Shines On The Green Mountains

Luong Quoc Dong sat on the doorstep smoking half a cigarette. He extinguished his cigarette.

“Pass the beer.”

No one cheered. I walked over and squatted next to him.

“Must keep the tree.”

“This sentence still sounds like human language.”

At that moment he turned to look at me.

"The day the beer is delivered, dad will supervise. There's a missing stone corner, dad will find you to figure it out."

"If one corner is missing, I'll give you a whole piece."

“So is it still the old stele?”

“Why is dad so difficult to serve?”

Finally, he laughed. After the plan was approved, Luong Quoc Dong went to the construction site every day, holding a tape measure to measure the stele base. The conservation worker was questioned to the point that he began to doubt his life, and finally gave him a protective helmet directly. On the day the tree was moved, the roots were dug up along with a very large block of wet soil. The whole village stood around. I was even more stressed than when I accepted the project. Not long after the tree was moved, a heavy rain suddenly fell on the mountain. A newly dug slope collapsed, mud and water flooded the construction road, and the excavator sank, leaving only half of the wheel exposed. When I ran over, Luong Tranh was leading someone to clean the drainage ditch, his pant legs were full of mud. The construction side said it had to be temporarily stopped to re-survey, and there is still no source of payment for the reinforcement costs incurred. The rain pounded on the helmet. I stared at the loosening mountain, with only one thought left in my mind. The eldest father was half right. If you fix a wrong road, what you have to compensate for is not just a tree. That evening, we checked the construction documents and discovered that the contractor had removed a temporary drainage section to make progress. The person in charge initially blamed heavy rain. I spread the contract and photos of the scene in front of him, called the supervisor, and finally forced them to bear the cost of redoing it. Luong Tranh returned from outside and threw his muddy shoes down next to the table.

“Are you scared?”

“A little scared.”

"It's right to be afraid. From now on, if you don't see anyone wearing a helmet, it's called a professional team."

His words were hard to hear, but he still gave me a bowl of hot ginger soup. The hot spicy taste ran from my throat to my stomach. Only then did I feel like I had escaped the rain. When the weather warms, the plant grows its first young leaf. Luong Quoc Dong took a photo and set it as his phone wallpaper, and everyone he met said:

“I knew early on that the tree would live.”

No one exposed him. Repairing roads, building processing points, negotiating orders, all three things come together at the same time. When the cooperative's account was about to run out, the packaging factory urged them to pay the deposit. I do not ask people to contribute more. I redid the budget three times, cut out the office decorations and propaganda wall, and prioritized keeping the production line. Luong Tranh led a few young men to paint the wall themselves. Currently, he is a construction supervisor at a construction company in the district. He understands a little about the project and also likes to manage me. At eleven o'clock at night, he snatched my computer.

“Go to sleep.”

“I'll add ten minutes.”

“My last ten minutes lasted until two in the morning.”

“You…”

“Calling dad is useless.”

I reached out to take it back, and he immediately raised the computer over his head.

"Hua Chieu Tinh, a failed project can still be redone. But if you collapse, the whole village will take turns scolding me."

I had to go to sleep. Thanh Thach Ao people raised me, but had no intention of letting me return make a candle that burns itself. They post the roster at the processing point. Who is on duty overnight, who monitors deliveries, who is in charge of customer care, it's all clearly written down. I stayed up too late when Luong Tranh unplugged the power cord. If I miss mealtime, Tuong Tu Lan can carry the bowl and chase me to the processing point. Before the first batch of qualified walnut kernels was sent, Trieu Khanh Phat criticized the low purchasing price. I wrote down every detail of packaging, shipping, wastage and labor for him to see, and made him follow the customer service department for a few days. Not long after, he proactively posted the cost sheet on the wall.

"This price is reasonable. Anyone who still only looks at the retail price, I will force that person to answer the phone to process the return."

The first year, the cooperative's revenue exceeded three million VND. The roadbed was also completed before winter. We thought the most difficult period was over. In December, an interview video suddenly entered the list of prominent searches. The title is:

“The child abandoned in the snowy night grew up, giving up a high salary to return to the village to fix roads.”

Not a few days after the video was posted, I received a strange phone call. The opponent only said one sentence:

“Chieu Tinh, I am your mother.”

8 I hung up. She called back. I continued to hang up. She changed from one number to another to call, and I finally picked up the phone.

“Main talk.”

The woman burst into tears.

“Chieu Tinh, all these years I have always been looking for you.”

"That year, the family was very difficult, the child was born prematurely, the doctor said he couldn't feed him. We had no other choice..."

I interrupted her.

“You called just to say these words?”

She immediately became impatient.

“How can you talk to your biological mother like that?”

"Your younger brother also really wants to meet you. We are family!"

I clicked save recording.

“That's enough.”

That evening, two strangers came to stay at a hotel in town. The man named Trac Kien Hung, is running a food company. The woman named Phuong Man Le is his wife. Their son, Trac Tu Hang, is one year younger than me, currently holding a sales manager position in the company. The so-called "difficult family" was quickly discovered by Luong Tranh. The Trac family announced to the outside world that the party on the day I was abandoned was to celebrate Phuong Man Le's "safe discharge from the hospital." The banner in front of the hotel only said the opening of a new store and "two joys at the door", but what the real fun was, they absolutely did not mention. The following year, Trac Tu Hang was born, and the monthly party was held with dozens of tables. More coincidentally, the Trac family's food company is preparing to expand into the field of agricultural products. Thanh Thach Ao cooperative has just received a key nomination from the district.