Early the next morning, the truck came to the Big Courtyard to pick up Li Long.
Having already dropped Mingming and Haohao off at the village preschool class, Li Long climbed into the truck and headed west.
Everyone at home now had their own duties and work to do. Sister Yang was the busiest: she got up early to cook for everyone, cleaned up afterward, then went to the dried meat processing yard to lead the others in making dried meat.
Gu Xiaoxia went to work, and Han Fang went to school.
In another two months, Mingming and Haohao would be starting kindergarten. Then everyone really would be busy with their own affairs.
This trip involved a lot to do and a tight schedule, so Li Long had no plans to visit his second older brother's home. Factory Director Du had said they needed to wait for him to arrive before testing the machine, then load it after the test run, which would take quite some time.
They headed west all the way. Unlike in later years, when cotton fields lined both sides of the road, there were now vast stretches of Gobi Desert. Although it was already late May, some places had barely any grass. All he could see were scattered saxaul and red willow bushes, with a little short green grass growing between the stones on the ground. It looked desolate.
Although development had already begun, nature still dominated. There was far more wasteland than farmland, unlike in later years, when everything that could be developed had been, and even places that could not would gradually be covered in solar panels.
In those places covered with solar panels, the grass beneath them actually grew better because less water evaporated.
The truck moved fast. The driver, whose surname was