They kept catching fish into late October. Once Li Jianguo finished the fieldwork, he joined in, and Li Long handed the net-setting and fish-selling over to his older brother, hitched up the horse-drawn cart, and headed to the County Seat.
The salt company had not been established yet. Bulk salt transactions were handled through the Supply and Marketing Cooperative.
As a member of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative, Li Long naturally received a discount on salt.
"You're buying this much?" The warehouse keeper was rather surprised. "What's all this salt for?"
"For my herder friends. Feeding livestock, curing hides, things like that."
"Oh, right... no problem. It's coarse salt, after all. There's plenty in the salt lake." The warehouse keeper asked no more questions and even helped Li Long carry it.
Li Long also asked:
"Is this salt from Jinghe or over by Wu City?"
Northern Xinjiang had quite a few salt lakes. There was one east of Wu City, roughly two hundred kilometers from here. There was another in Jinghe, west of Wusu, a little farther away.
"Jinghe. The salt there is good," the warehouse keeper said. "But with coarse salt, good or bad doesn't really matter, as long as it does the job."
It was used for pickling vegetables too.
Word was that Jinghe's salt was better, especially the base layer at the bottom of the salt lake. According to an industry insider he had heard in later years, as long as that base remained, the lake would keep producing salt. But rumors spread that this base layer, this rock salt, could cure illnesses, so many people, mainly industry insiders with connections, went to dig it out. Eventually, Jinghe's salt lake stopped producing salt.
Whether that was true, he did not know. It was only hearsay.
This time,