Not long after Li Long entered the woods, he spotted a migrant digging for fritillaria. The man startled at the sight of him, grabbed his sack, and ran.
Li Long thought he had seen the man a couple of days earlier, so he called out:
"Carry on digging. I'm just passing through."
The man recognized Li Long's voice too. He stopped, smiled awkwardly, and said:
"I thought you were from the Forestry Team... So it's you, Boss Li."
"Why dig here? There isn't much fritillaria around here," Li Long asked casually.
"But nobody checks here..." The man told him the truth. "There's plenty of fritillaria in those gullies to the east, but plenty of people checking too. You could get caught. Farther into the mountains, it's dangerous. There are wolves and bears, so I dig here. I can still get a few kilos a day."
Fair enough. Everyone had their own aspirations. Li Long nodded and left.
He had nothing against migrants. After all, these so-called migrants were simply people who had no registered status in Northern Xinjiang yet. Who knew? They might get it one day.
Besides, his eldest brother had once been a young volunteer supporting the frontier. Before getting his household registered, hadn't he technically been a migrant too? Most of the people in the Fourth Team had come to Northern Xinjiang because they couldn't get by back home, or because of various other difficulties, and then registered their households here. Registration was stricter now, and those who had registered earlier called the newcomers migrants. There wasn't really any derogatory meaning to it. After all, most registered residents had once held the same status themselves.
Li Long had once thought the term "migrant" existed only in Northern Xinjiang, but later learned that it was used in both