The truth about whether ordinary people had a good year didn't require a government department's annual report. That stuff was useless. All you had to do was take a look at people's windows and the space beneath their awnings during the New Year, and you'd know everything.
Meat prices had soared this year. In the past, you could still see plenty of families hanging cured meats outside, leaving greasy stains on the ground and sidewalks. But this year, that was a rare sight.
If someone had windows full of salted meat, soy-braised duck, sausages, and the like, they were definitely loaded.
At Tianhua Jingshe, where Li Bai lived, the balconies, windows, and exterior walls of the fourth and fifth floors in the standalone Duplex Apartment building were lined with dried salted fish, cured meat, and soy-braised meat. The sight was spectacular. Plenty of people were practically drooling with envy. The amount of cured food hanging out to dry was downright insane. Did the family own a livestock farm or something?
These days, "rich tycoon" no longer meant a coal magnate. It meant a major pig farmer. "Having a mine at home" had become "raising pigs at home."
With meat prices so high this year, Great Dean Zhou's wife had been reluctant to spend much on New Year's supplies. She hadn't stocked up as she usually did, and in the end, she'd bought only a cheap two-pound soy-braised duck and three pounds of salted meat. That was it.
The two big bags Li Bai had brought over made up for Great Dean Zhou's disappointment. They were so generously packed that buying everything at the market would probably have cost over a thousand yuan.
But Xiao Li was rich, and Great Dean Zhou wasn't going to quibble over that little bit of