This Zhao Mingfa was originally from S County, but later became a rural person. Zhao Mingfa's mother Zhao is a native of Zhaojiagou, Baishi Township, S County, when Zhao Mingfa was in the county seat, he was not surnamed Zhao, and later returned to his rural hometown with his mother and changed his surname to Zhao.

At that time, it was still the 80s of the last century, and Zhao was nearly thirty years old and had not yet married. At that time, the girls in the village were basically married before the age of twenty, and she was already an old girl who had not married. The reason why she didn't get married was not because she wasn't beautiful, or because she had a physical illness, but because she had ideas. Some of her peers married into the city and became a farmer-turned-non-resident household, and they no longer had to be used as land, which was really envious of others. The Zhao family also wants to marry someone from the city, but how can there be such a good marriage? The matchmaker in the village introduced her to a partner, and as long as she was not from the city, she would not go. After a few years passed, she became an old girl.

The Zhao family has an old mother, an elder brother and sister-in-law, and a sister-in-law and a child, and a family of five living together. The old mother is old and no longer cares about things, and the family is headed by her brother and sister-in-law. My brother is a rake ear, and he has to listen to his sister-in-law, and the family is completely in charge of his sister-in-law. At that time, the grain output in the rural areas was low, and the peasants had to pay public grain every year. Enough to the state, enough to keep the collective, the rest is their own. Every household does not have enough food to eat, and when there is a shortage of green and yellow, it is inevitable to go to other people's homes to borrow grain. At that time, the peasants loved the land and often quarreled and even fought over the ridges of the fields. Although the Zhao family also has a piece of land, she is an outsider in the eyes of her sister-in-law. This thing is really strange, strictly speaking, the sister-in-law is married from other places, and the sister-in-law is an outsider, why did the native Zhao become an outsider? After listening to his sister-in-law's pillow wind, his brother became more and more dissatisfied with Zhao, and hoped that she would marry out as soon as possible so that the family could save an ration.

Coincidentally, there is a Zhu Liangxing in the fertilizer factory in S County, who has no parents, is widowed and has no children, and asks someone to introduce him. The princess in the village made a matchmaking and asked Zhu Liangxing and Zhao to meet. For Zhu Liangxing, although the Zhao family is a little older, he is quite beautiful, and he is married for the first time. For the Zhao family, although Zhu Liangxing is a second marriage, he is from the city and has no children to drag him down. Both parties were satisfied, and the marriage was completed on a certain date. The Zhao family moved their household registration from Zhaojiagou in Calamus Township and became a city person. Zhu Liangxing loved Zhao and had a family, and he didn't find a job for her, so he let her have a husband and children at home, and he earned money in the factory to support his family. A year later, their son was born and named Zhu Mingfa, who later became Zhao Mingfa.

Time flies quickly, three years have passed in a blink of an eye, Zhu Liangxing works in the factory, Zhao is a housewife, and the family is happy. There are unforeseen circumstances in the sky, people have good and bad luck, and a heavy rain instantly took away everything from this family.

That year, it rained heavily in S County, the city was seriously waterlogged, and all the low-lying areas were flooded. On the night of the accident, Section Chief Wang of the fertilizer plant and Zhu Liangxing were on night duty together. After dinner at home, the torrential rain was pouring down, and Zhu Liangxing rushed to the factory in a raincoat. There was standing water everywhere on the road, and Zhu Liangxing tried to walk on the waterless street as much as possible. When he came to a waterlogged depression, Zhu Liangxing tested it with a stick, but the water was not deep, so he cautiously waded through the water. Unexpectedly, when he walked to the center of the stagnant water, his whole body was sore, and he fell into the stagnant water before he could scream, and died of electrocution. Zhu Liangxing died in an accident on the way to work, and the fertilizer factory also made some compensation. This Zhao family has no job, takes a little compensation, and has to take a child, how long can he support it?

Section Chief Wang's son is also an employee of a fertilizer factory, and he has grown up and is ready to get married, but there is no wedding house. Section Chief Wang wanted to build a house from the family courtyard of the fertilizer factory, but the family courtyard was full and there were not many houses. Section Chief Wang got the idea of Zhao's house and wanted to buy Zhao's house. He found the factory director, and the factory director knew that Section Chief Wang had someone in the county party committee, and he wanted to climb the big tree of the county party committee leader through Section Chief Wang, so he agreed to help him give it a try.

The factory director found Zhao, comforted her first, and encouraged her to be brave and strong. The director also said that there are many young people in the factory who have reached the age of talking about marriage, and the factory wants to buy Zhao's house back and give it to young people to live in marriage.

After Zhao's husband died, she was most afraid that the factory would come to collect her house, and the more afraid she was, the more likely it would be. Zhao looked at the factory director pitifully and said, "Where am I going to live?" Zhu Liangchen just left, leaving us with a pair of orphans and widows who are helpless, how can we survive in the future? ”

"You can go to your hometown! The factory will give you a subsidy. The director said.

Zhao knows that the world is hot and cold, and people are cool. She had seen a lot of this in the countryside. In some places, several brothers have their own families, and in the event of the death of their brothers, if the brothers' daughter-in-law has given birth to a son, they can inherit the family property and raise the child; If the daughter-in-law has no children, she will be driven back to her parents' house, and the family property will be divided among the other brothers. Zhao didn't expect that such a thing would also happen in the fertilizer factory, as soon as her husband left, the factory would take back the house and drive them away. If you don't agree, if you live here and offend the factory director, who will support you in the future? When I returned to my hometown, I could still find my own brother if I had something.

"How much does the factory cost?" Zhao asked.

"Zhu Liangxing worked conscientiously and responsibly, made outstanding contributions to the development of the fertilizer plant, and encountered misfortune on the way to work. Although the factory had already given a pension, the management decided to pay a high price to redeem the house. The factory is ready to send out 5,000 ......," said the factory director.

This price was already a lot in those days, and the Zhao family wanted a higher price. Don't ask for a price at this time, and you won't have a chance in the future. She said, "Add another five thousand!" ”

Five thousand plus five thousand is ten thousand, and the Zhao family became a 10,000 yuan household in the blink of an eye. The 10,000-dollar household was very remarkable in those days. Zhao remembers that there was a butcher in their village, who killed pigs and sold pork, made a lot of money, and his family ate well, often boiling pork bone soup, and people said that his family was a 10,000-yuan household. The factory director didn't expect Zhao to ask for so much money, but thinking that their mother and son were pitiful, and wanted to solve Section Chief Wang's urgent need, he gritted his teeth and agreed to Zhao's request.

Zhao returned to his brother-in-law's house to live for a few days, but his brother had no opinion, and his sister-in-law's face became more and more ugly day by day, saying that she was the water spilled by her married daughter, and her mother's family no longer had a place for her to stand. Zhao knew that if he lived in his brother's house for a long time, his sister-in-law would definitely make trouble, so he went to the countryside to rent a house. Zhao kept a hand and concealed the fact that he was a "10,000 yuan household" from his sister-in-law, and later bought the rented house. Although he had money in his hands, he was also afraid of sitting and eating empty, so Zhao opened a small store to sell some candy, melon seeds, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar, tobacco and wine, fragrant wax paper money and other items. Before Zhao got married, he was well-known in the nearby towns and villages, and he looked down on rural people. Later, she married into the city, the family suffered misfortune, she returned to the countryside, did not remarry, she took the child alone, slowly settled down, and her son Zhu Mingfa changed his name to Zhao Mingfa.

Zhao knew that there was no man in the family, no pillars, and he was very economical in food and clothing. Since she was a child, she taught Zhao Mingfa to develop a good habit of thrift and thrift. Zhao deposited the 10,000 yuan in the bank, and she usually relied on the pension given by the factory, plus she could live a little more business. For more than 20 years, her 10,000 yuan has been stored in the bank, and she wants to let the money earn interest, and the interest will regenerate money, so that the 10,000 yuan will roll bigger and bigger like a snowball. What Zhao didn't expect was that due to inflation, prices skyrocketed, and the money she had in the bank was actually decreasing day by day. Her money was slowly being stolen by someone else. Who stole it? Some people say that the money of the poor is stolen by the rich, and the rich take loans from the bank, borrow the money that the poor have deposited in the bank, use it to invest, use the money to make money, and the richer they get, the poorer they get. Zhao was a 10,000-yuan household in the 80s, and she was a wealthy person at that time, but by the time Zhao Mingfa grew up, the 10,000 yuan with interest had been seriously devalued. Zhao saved the money and lived a hard life with children since he was a child, there was no consumption enjoyment at that time, and then the purchasing power of money declined, and they could no longer buy what they could buy before, they were always poor.

When he was a child, when Zhao Mingfa was studying, he tried his best to earn money to buy school stationery. How do you make money yourself? He thought of picking up the rags. At first, he secretly picked up rags for fear of being discovered by his classmates. He sorted the rags he picked up, neatly placed them in a hidden corner, and when he accumulated a certain amount, he went to the scrapyard to sell them, and he could sell them for a few yuan at a time, which gave Zhao Mingfa great satisfaction. Seeing that Zhao Mingfa cleaned up the rags neatly and did not litter the appearance of the family, his mother Zhao also allowed him to pick up the rags after studying. In this way, you can not only earn money, but also move your muscles and bones to exercise.

The rags that Zhao Mingfa picked up included broken bottles, iron sheets, books and newspapers, waste paper, and cardboard pieces. This is usually found on the streets, in garbage heaps, or in abandoned canals. Zhao Mingfa was very shy when he first picked up the rags, and he didn't pick them up until there was no one around. Later, he became more and more bold, and his face became thicker and thicker, probably because the practice of "thick black learning" was getting better and better, and he was not ashamed when he picked up rags, and he was proud of his ability to support himself, which was incomparable to those children with good family conditions and raised in honey pots. There are only a limited number of places where you can pick up rags, and there are many people picking up rags on the streets and in garbage heaps, and there is a lot of competition, so Zhao Mingfa has to find another battlefield to pick up rags. He found that there was another peculiar place where he could pick up the more advanced rags, the pieces of cardboard, and that was the side of the grave. Some people sacrificed their relatives to set off artillery, and then left the pieces of cardboard that packed the cannons around the grave, which became the object of Zhao Mingfa's dabbling, which also exercised his courage. Although he didn't have a father since he was a child, he was very bold.