First, a clarification: these watermelon seeds were what some people called black melon seeds, the thick-shelled kind, distinct from sunflower seeds. Sunflowers came in many varieties too. The black ones grown for oil were called oil sunflowers, while the kind usually roasted were flower sunflowers, which yielded little oil and were best suited for roasting and eating.
There were white ones too. The long, slender ones were the horse-tooth seeds sold nowadays, while those about the same size as flower sunflower seeds were generally boiled with five-spice seasoning.
That was a digression. Enough of that.
The man who came looking for Liang Dacheng was Xu Jianjun. He had missed out on weaving taibazi that year and held something of a grudge against Li Long, but there was nothing he could do. Who had told him to cause so much trouble the previous year?
Of course, Xu Jianjun did not think he was to blame. He simply felt that Li Long disliked him. Later, when the taibazi weaving ended and everyone involved received over three hundred yuan, he had been green with envy.
Over three hundred yuan! Several new bicycles had appeared in the team back then. He really was envious!
But envy was envy. If they would not take him, there was nothing he could do.
Later, when Broom-Making was underway, Zhang Qiang stirred up trouble, so Xu Jianjun delivered the brooms he had made to Zhang Qiang. He earned the same money either way, and taking them there would annoy Li Long too. Why not?
Unfortunately, that fellow Zhang Qiang failed to hold out. In the end, he had to take his big brooms to Stone City and sell them from a stall, working from dawn till dark and wearing himself half to death, yet not daring to complain