Around the textile mill, the bicycle repair stalls that had vanished without a trace began popping up again, one after another.
None of the households in the alley had forgotten the lesson from last time. This time, rather than rushing in like a swarm, they cautiously asked around first.
But what they learned left them with a jumble of feelings.
They discovered that some stalls had actually started assembling bicycles.
An assembled bicycle cost nearly a hundred yuan, with no ration coupon required.
Buying the parts and assembling one themselves would only save them eight or ten yuan at most, because parts now cost more than twice what they had before.
Wang Chaoyuan, Wang Yong, and the other families were all thoroughly frustrated.
Never mind that they had failed to put together bicycles for less than fifty yuan back then-even selling their original parts at current retail prices would have netted them dozens of yuan in pure profit. Unfortunately, everything they had bought had been confiscated.
Zhang Amei of the Wu family was also so regretful her guts had turned green.
When she happened to hear that the "junk" Wu Jianguo had wasted over twenty yuan buying could now sell for fifty or sixty, she felt awful.
Back then, she had told Zhang Min to sell it as scrap and gotten only one yuan for it. She had even scolded Wu Jianguo several times over it.
But now, for the sake of that one yuan, she had lost fifty or sixty. It hurt as badly as being killed.
She could not help recalling what Zhou Cheng had told Wu Shanshan back then. He had told the Wu family to keep the parts, saying their price would double in about six months.
At the time, she had scoffed, convinced Zhou Cheng