Carrying a Jurassic on me
Chapter 840 - 464: Rural School, Going to Roast Green Soybeans

Chapter 840: Chapter 464: Rural School, Going to Roast Green Soybeans

Yan Fei headed home after school at noon, and the beef-selling truck had long since returned.

Although the small town had a complete range of schools, from elementary to high school, there really weren’t many teachers. Take First Middle School for example, Yan Sanfen, when he was in his first year of junior high, knew that there was a new music teacher. Hence, there were music classes on the schedule at that time. But by the second year of junior high school, that music teacher seemed to have pulled some strings and transferred away, so the entire middle school completely lost its music class.

As for high school, it was even less likely to have such a course as music. After all, the whole school was dedicated to preparing for the college entrance exams, the gaokao. Anything not required for the gaokao definitely wouldn’t be part of the curriculum.

Therefore, the teacher team in the town was truly streamlined, to the extent that homeroom teachers couldn’t just manage one class—they had to teach at least two. It’s been slightly better these past two years, at least the principal didn’t have to teach classes anymore.

But Yan Fei was used to being a hands-off manager, leaving those like Pang Fa and the other study slackers to worry about the schools in town. Right as noon lunch had finished, Xiang Rui brought news after a trip home: it seemed a school had been forgotten by everyone.

There was a newly built No.2 Junior High School on the outskirts of the town. No.2 Junior High School had quite decent facilities; everything from the teaching buildings was new. However, the teachers were somewhat lacking, all of them had been drawn from various schools, with a few simply being elementary school teachers that had been transferred over.

For instance, there was the teacher who had once helped Xu Xiaoyan by selling the paper Yan Fei had sourced from the paper factory.

The new school was actually right on the edge of the town, but since the town was quite small, the school was regarded as being outside it. Most townspeople still believed in First Middle School, and only students from the villages would end up being assigned to No.2 Junior High School.

Thus, such a school had a very weak presence in the town to the point even the cattle farm people had forgotten about it—they had been the type of students who had dropped out early, and the school was too far for them.

In fact, even Yan Fei had forgotten about it; he never delivered beef to No.2 Junior High School back when he drove the three-wheeled cart himself.

But this was something that teachers at No.2 Junior High School couldn’t just say out loud; they could only privately discuss it among themselves. No one would go to the cattle farm to make a complaint. After all, the beef belonged to Boss Yan; he could deliver it to whomever he liked. Who could say Boss Yan was wrong to do so? He was sending beef to the schools he had attended and was about to attend. Boss Yan hadn’t studied at that No.2 Junior High School, so what was the issue with not delivering to them? Any objections would just have to be kept to oneself.

This time it was because of a big stir at the cattle farm; Xiang Rui felt something was amiss when she went home for lunch and overheard a neighbor saying their relative was quite unlucky. It was known that teachers didn’t want to go to No.2 Junior High School, yet this person thought the new school had a nice environment and dormitory, only to realize that they were left out when beef was distributed. This was how Xiang Rui remembered: it turned out that there weren’t just three schools in town now, but four!

Yan Fei inquired about how much beef was left, and upon learning that scarcely any had been "sold," he thought about it and asked, "Does anyone know exactly how many schools our county has in total?"

Everyone was stumped.

Indeed, nobody knew. The county certainly had more schools than just the few in the town, including some in the countryside. But such matters went unnoticed by these folks.

It was Xiang Rui who said, "Wait a minute, I’ll make a call and ask. We have someone from the Education Committee in our building."

Now, the town did have a township Education Committee, but it hadn’t yet dissolved this somewhat superfluous department.

After a while, the call came through, and Yan Fei learned that indeed, there were quite a few schools in the county, no less than ten or eight. But now, only elementary schools remained in the area below; at one time, there had been two middle schools, which have now both been absorbed by No.2 Junior High School, taking all of their teachers and students.

But as numerous as the schools were, there genuinely weren’t many teachers. Some elementary schools were down to just two or three teachers, not even one teacher per grade level.

Yan Fei was puzzled, "Isn’t there a town Education Committee? Why don’t they do something, request more teachers?"

Xiang Rui rolled her eyes at him, "Who would want to go teach in the villages? There aren’t even enough teachers in the town, let alone out in the county. But the county schools have more teachers than we inquired; some teachers aren’t on the establishment, so the town doesn’t have their records, and the villages allocate funds to pay their salaries themselves."

"Oh, I see how it is now!" Yan Fei began to understand. "But it’s also troublesome; no matter whether they’re on the establishment or not, we don’t know them in the county and can’t tell who’s really a teacher. How am I going to sell them cheap beef if I don’t even recognize them?"

"Just have each village provide proof, we’re distributing so many cattle to them for rearing, a little questioning and we’ll find out. It’s pretty simple..." Pang Fa solved the issue with a single sentence.

"That settles it then!" Yan Fei nodded, as he hadn’t given the idea much thought initially; in fact, there were plenty of solutions if one really considered. "So let’s notify them to follow the rule we set this morning; anyone who wants to buy can come. And clarify for them, they don’t necessarily need to produce a certificate, finding someone to vouch for them is okay too. Those raising our cattle can be witnesses, you guys could then ask around afterwards, and if there are any imposters, don’t hesitate to deal with them."

"Sigh... I’m going to lose more money on phone bills!" Heizi grumbled as he began to look up phone numbers with a small notebook in hand.

"Do we distribute to the county side?" Pang Fa asked.

He was referring to the people who worked at the township government, and Yan Fei casually replied, "Don’t worry about them, just send some stuff over to the police station and the armed forces department later. Aren’t we distributing cows on the eleventh? When the time comes, we’ll help those who come to help us, and those who don’t come won’t get anything."

Everyone agreed with this since, to be honest, there were too many freeloaders there. Some departments were particularly unpopular, such as where Xiang Rui used to work; there was no need to mention it for everyone to understand.

In the blink of an eye, it was time to go back to school. Seeing Fang Xiaoqing pack her textbooks for school, Yan Fei also got up: "I’m off to school now, you guys figure out the rest!"

He even teased Fang Xiaoqing with a smile, "Hey top student, want me to give you a ride to school?"

This girl would come back at noon and not forget to read her textbooks, which made Yan Fei, the non-diligent student, stand out even more. Hearing Yan Fei emphasize the word "top student," Fang Xiaoqing replied with a poker face, "No need to trouble yourself, big boss, I have my bicycle."

Another student at the farm, Gong Hanqing, didn’t go to school in the afternoon. Yan Fei had told him to start attending classes in the afternoon too since it was already their third year of junior high and time was tight. However, he didn’t want to go, claiming his grades were fine, and Yan Fei didn’t force him.

Though the people at the farm seemed to have all sorts of backgrounds, just because of this diversity, there was a sense of a large family here. Everyone was willing to work hard to maintain it. Take Gao Rui, for example, who was all alone before going to prison and still alone when he came out. It was only at the farm that he finally tasted what it felt like to be cared for. At least, there were people to mend his clothes, and everyone would inquire if something came up.

Watching Yan Fei dart out of the cattle farm, Xiang Rui muttered something behind his back, "Is he really planning to study well and aim high now?"

She just said this casually; having been at the cattle farm for a long time, she was very familiar with how things worked there. She knew all about the cattle-rearing knowledge everyone was learning, and those seemingly haphazard notes were actually skills the boss had ’stolen’ from university libraries.

Actually, Yan Fei wouldn’t be able to attend many classes. Teachers’ Day was coming up soon, and after Teachers’ Day, there was usually a monthly exam to gauge students’ progress. Then came the most anticipated, universally celebrated day for all students—the autumn harvest break.

Yan Fei was quite concerned about this, not about the holiday but about the fodder. It was customary in the countryside not to hurry in collecting corn stalks after the corn harvest in autumn, waiting until they dried out completely to use as firewood. But Yan Fei needed to buy straw for fodder, so the earlier it was cut, the better. Ideally, the stalks would be collected right after the corn cobs, then crushed and mixed with fresh grass to make silage.

However, this year’s task was quite easy because of the fifty mu of grassland.

In the afternoon after school, Yan Fei was getting ready to ride his motorcycle home when he saw Yang Qian and Jiao Bing by the blacksmith shop.

The moment they saw Yan Fei, they were quite dissatisfied: "Boss Yan, you’re not being fair. We’re all in our third year of junior high, and you went off to high school. You didn’t even tell us; aren’t you a bit out of line?"

Yan Fei felt comfortable boasting to others about going to high school, but it was different with his fellow students. If he boasted to them, he would just seem arrogant for no reason.

But these two didn’t take things to heart and certainly wouldn’t come to question Yan Fei just because he was ’sneakily’ attending high school. They had their own agenda, and once they saw Yan Fei earnestly admit his mistake, the two of them immediately said, "Forget it, we’re adults; we won’t hold it against you. Are you busy tonight?"

Yan Fei knew these two kids definitely had something up their sleeves: "Spit it out! What do you want to do? Whether I’m busy or not depends on the situation."

"We’re planning to skip class and not attend the evening self-study session. Why don’t you take us out for a ride on your motorcycle? How about we go roast green soybeans? We have already told our families that we won’t be coming home for dinner tonight. Being in third year, we’ll need to have dinner at school more often!" Yang Qian spoke with an air of solemn importance. You’d think he wasn’t preparing to skip class, but rather that he was heading to his execution...

Yan Fei just hesitated for a moment before nodding in agreement: "Alright, are we going after dinner or without dinner?"

"Of course, without dinner!" Jiao Bing said righteously. "Who would have an appetite after eating a full meal? Let’s just go hungry, come on, let’s hit the road now..."

"Let’s go then!" Yan Fei opened the door, rolled out the motorcycle.

Yang Qian was quick to act, likely because of his eagerness to have fun, and he locked the door as soon as Yan Fei pushed the motorcycle out, handed the keys to Yan Fei, and hopped onto the motorcycle.

The motorcycle roared out of town, and Yan Fei shouted back, "Have you two decided where to go yet?"

"Not yet! We haven’t planned a place. Aren’t you familiar with the area? Pick a spot where we won’t get beaten up if we’re caught?" Yang Qian hollered from behind.

These two rascals, no wonder it occurred to them to drag Yan Fei along! It turns out they didn’t even have a spot for green soybeans yet, planning to use Yan Fei as their scapegoat...