After telling Li Xiangqian about the vehicles, Li Long explained the road repairs in detail. As he put it, given the current conditions in the mountains, it was not a good idea for the Supply and Marketing Cooperative's people to go in.
"That's true. It's forty or fifty kilometers from the mountain entrance alone, plus the road from the county town to the Mountain Pass. The round trip alone would take five or six hours. All the time would be wasted on the road. When would we get any work done..."
Li Xiangqian was somewhat reluctant to give it up. After all, holding an activity like this every year had become a major undertaking outside his regular work.
Most of the certificates of merit on his office wall had come from this sort of thing. Now that they suddenly could not do it anymore, he hated to let it go.
Of course, reluctant as he was, Li Xiangqian was not about to blame Li Long for it. He asked:
"Are there any other activities our cooperative could take part in?"
"If you mean something that won't take long... sure." Li Long ran through the things that various models of ethnic unity had done in news reports from his previous life. Four or five ideas sprang to mind, and he said:
"Although we can't go into the mountains, doesn't the Pastoral Team have a Rural Childcare Center in the county seat? Our cooperative could go there and deliver some supplies to the elderly people and children staying there. We could also donate books and school supplies to the Pastoral Team's school.
"Those are all things that would genuinely help them. If you want physical work, plenty of the courtyards at the center are pretty run-down. Director, I don't know if you