History of Human Space Exploitation

Chapter 66 Gu Lanlan: The Only Story 3
In the penultimate small hot pot restaurant at the end of the dark "Smoke Alley", Gu Lanlan and her two friends sat around three sides of an old wooden table that was almost knee high, sitting in a semi-squatting position on a cylindrical grass mound .In the middle of the tabletop of the low table is a hole slightly larger than the head. In the hole is a stove for heating a hot pot. In the stove are more than ten pieces of pre-burned charcoal.

The proprietress, who was half a head shorter than Gu Lanlan, was of medium build and wore a long blue apron. She walked slowly to their table with a copper pot filled with red spicy butter hot pot base.The proprietress bent down and placed the large copper pot with the smell of numbness, spicy, and fragrance on the stove.Under the action of hot charcoal, the surface of the red oil in the hot pot plopped with bubbles accompanied by a strong aroma.

"There... is there that?" Li Fei muttered, holding his chin.

"You mean... poppy shell?" Zhou Xiaoying said. "Lan Lan, are you allowed to eat this?"

"Hmm...can't...although I know this will taste good...but...ah..." Gu Lanlan said.

"Yeah, even though it's been ground, you can still smell it. The proprietress went to find someone who makes opium for medical use, and she paid a high price for it?" Zhou Xiaoying said.

"It also looks like a by-product of medical raw materials. I remember who told me that the last illegal poppy field in Myanmar seemed to have been closed more than 70 years ago, and the last field in Afghanistan didn't seem to last for a few more years." Li Fei continued.

"Let's go, I hate this the most, I know you two have always hated anything related to drugs, otherwise we wouldn't have worked together to do the research on the topic of global anti-drugs in high school. What's more, Lan Lan is Scientists and astronauts who are about to go to the sky, I guess the people in the Aerospace Association hate this even more?" Zhou Xiaoying was about to stand up, and Li Fei also started to get up.

"It's been so many years since I left here to go to Nanjing, you really haven't changed at all. Yes, I haven't changed, and I hate these too," Gu Lanlan said.

The three got up and walked straight out of the small shop. The proprietress knew why the three regular customers left. She felt guilty and guilty, and she didn't try to stop her. She just looked at her regular customers who had been eating hot pot for nearly 20 years with a bit of reluctance.They have grown from little girls to mature women, and they may never come to this small shop to care for them again.

Sitting down at a nearby small hot pot restaurant that has also been in business for several years, ordered food, served the pot, and began to enjoy the hot, spicy, and full-bodied hot pot, the three friends continued to chat.Although the smell of banned substances in Auntie Zhang's hotpot restaurant, which they have eaten for nearly 20 years, made all three of them unhappy, but the question of poppy still brought back common memories for the three of them.When I was in the second grade of high school, a group project assigned by a certain teacher asked the students to study things that disappeared in the past 200 years.Zhou Xiaoying, Li Fei and Gu Lanlan chose to study naturally grown drugs that were basically banned after long-term human efforts.

On the door of this small shop, there is still the old sign: "Dogs waste food."

Gu Lanlan, who was staring at the chopsticks when she put a huge hairy belly in the hot pot, said, "I remember that our subject mainly studied the period from the late 21th century to the early [-]st century. , some situations of planting natural drugs in northern Myanmar, but I didn’t say how they disappeared later, do you remember?” After she finished speaking, she lifted the hairy belly into a small bowl filled with half a bowl of oil and swung it around a few times. He directly sent the hairy belly into his mouth.

Li Fei raised her shoulder-length hair, tied it behind her head with a blue rubber band, and said, "Yes, I am actually very interested in the future development, but it was only a high school subject at the time. There is not enough time and space for homework. Do you still remember that we agreed to find some books, materials, read, and communicate with each other?"

"Well, I didn't look for books, but I found several work reports of relevant government departments around 2023. Although many very specific details have been ignored, they are generally very instructive." Zhou Xiaoying held the paper in her left hand. A colander containing five or six slender goose intestines, half submerged in the red soup, fiddled with the goose intestines in the colander with chopsticks in his right hand and said.

"How do you say it?" Gu Lanlan and Li Fei almost asked together.

"The report reviews some gains and losses and achievements in the implementation of the 'alternative planting' policy for the first 2023 years from 30. Do you remember 'alternative planting'? Our topic was mentioned at the end." Zhou Xiaoying finished the five or six Fresh and tender goose intestines were sent into the stomach together.

"Yes, I remember this. But we only saw the situation at the end of the 90s. At that time, China hoped that through planting subsidies, high-priced purchases, and even a certain degree of cash subsidies, the places where traditional poppies were planted would be replaced by food and fruits. These common cash crops." Li Fei picked up a piece of potato chips that had been cooking for a while and started to become flat and sandy, and put it into her dipping bowl.

"Yes, but the actual effect is not good. Even many former tobacco farmers who had started to grow food and other things at the beginning of the implementation of this policy started again after a few years. I don't say anything about the deep-seated reasons, but it is not from the text. The problem of policy continuity is more specific, even if a lot of subsidies regardless of cost are added, it is still not enough to compete." Zhou Xiaoying picked up a piece of beef that had turned light brown.

"Well, speaking of this, I later saw the notes written by several people who have lived and worked in that place for a long time. They also felt that although this seems to be active, it is still passively led by the nose strategically. " Gu Lanlan picked up a chopstick and dipped the minced garlic and green onion in the bowl into her mouth.

"Huh? This is very interesting, what did the diary say?" Li Fei asked.

"In the diary, drugs, especially poppy, opium, and heroin are not treated as special drugs, but as a kind of processing from planting, production and processing to global sales network, or industrial products. "Speaking, Gu Lanlan also ate a piece of tender beef.

"The author said that assuming that one kilogram of opium, the agricultural tools, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, labor, transportation costs, etc. consumed in the process of planting opium poppies consume 100 units of currency and can come to the heroin processing site. The heroin obtained from the purification of opium After adding all the labor costs, the 'factory price' of heroin in these workshops will reach about 2500 currency units per kilogram." Gu Lanlan said as she drank a big mouthful of bitter green tea poured out of an old iron teapot.

"Yeah, drug dealers will take what they call 'huge risks' to transport and sell these harmful things to addicts. And because the governments of various countries, especially China, are extremely strict on drug control The means and policies of the so-called customers will eventually increase the price by about 100 times on this basis, and each gram will require no less than two to three hundred units of currency." Li Fei ate the hot food that she had just cooked herself. The thick and long bezoar throat continued. "Lan Lan, tell me, in the face of such great interests, these harmful things can also be said to be human cancers. What kind of good medicine is used to curb them?"

"Yes, it is indeed not easy, and the cost is very high. After all, the production of opium,

Purifying heroin, in places where there are no legal restrictions, is indeed not a sky-high technology.However, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, and the turbulent political situation in Central and South America in the 21th and [-]st centuries are all necessary conditions for the establishment of those global sales networks. "Gu Lanlan ate a piece of wax gourd soaked in red butter.

Gu Lanlan finished eating some hot wax gourd slices with her round mouth, and then said: "What happened later was also a very gradual process. You all know that Myanmar has cooperated with the West for a long time and has done a lot of things. After the coup d'état in 2021, it may be that the domestic elites of this country have some kind of awakening, or it may be that the soldiers who stepped up to the bright side saw the changes in the international situation at that time, and in the next ten years or so, they won China's Unprecedented cooperation and investment. Do you guess which aspects of the investment are mainly, or which aspects directly affect the drug cultivation just mentioned?"

"I guess it should be the investment in basic electricity. Isn't the water resource good there? With electricity, it is a supporting project for many basic industries? I guess, is it those textile factories, processing factories and so on? After Myanmar absorbs a large number of workers, no one will plant poppies?" Zhou Xiaoying also put down her chopsticks, looked at Gu Lanlan and asked.

"Xiaoying's words are very reasonable. I think there is also an internal logic. If the 100 yuan per kilogram of opium that Lan Lan said just now absorbs socially necessary labor worth 30 yuan, if the factory Giving them labor remuneration in industrial production should increase the cost of hiring people to harvest poppies to 30, 60 or even 100 per kilogram." Li Fei said while eating a whole chicken offal.

"Feifei's tone is more and more influenced by "Das Kapital". Haha, labor is necessary in society. Yes, it is true. In the stage of opium production, after the labor cost doubles like this, it will inevitably double. It is fully reflected in the later production process and the later sales process, not to mention that this is a so-called 'death-fighting' industry." Gu Lanlan gently put three pieces of hot pot noodles into the pot. "In this way, I read some data later. The price of the heroin that reaches the terminal is rarely lower than 800, 900 per gram. And this price has greatly exceeded those in small dark underground workshops in big cities. Those new chemical synthetic drugs made here."

"Drugs also need competition, right?" Zhou Xiaoying said. "I recalled the news at that time. It must be that the people who made opium and heroin outside the country quit the industry because they couldn't make money. At the same time, the government has strengthened the investigation and punishment of these new chemical drugs produced in the country. .”

"This is really a good way to solve this problem. I remember that when we were doing the project, when we talked about the harm of drugs to human beings, the three of us cried when we saw those bloody words and pictures." Li Fei added arrive. "If I still watch related documentaries or pictures about the tragic death of the victims or the destruction of the family, I really won't cry because I am more than ten years older and think that I have a stronger mental capacity. Alas ..."

The three of them picked up the small cups of bitter green tea at the same time, touched the cups in the white mist above the hot pot, and drank the tea.The lives of the three of them were very different after graduation and separated.Gu Lanlan entered the Academy of Space Sciences and devoted herself to the research and study of astronomical observations. She has never had any experience of falling in love so far.

More than three years after graduating, Zhou Xiaoying got married with a rather sympathetic male colleague in the company, and two years later she became the mother of her son.A happy family is perhaps the best way to describe her state of life.

Li Fei's wild and unrestrained life in school also continued into her life after graduation.After working hard for five years and accumulating some savings, and with some support from a wealthy family, Li Fei embarked on a journey around the world for nearly five years.

The gathering was initiated by Zhou Xiaoying. Gu Lanlan in Nanjing and Li Fei, who was wandering in the Benares market in India when they received the news, both immediately booked flights back to Kunming.What the three of them didn't expect was that so many years of different life experiences still haven't changed the three of them's original intentions for many things.The hearts of the three of them couldn't help but shed tears of emotion.

(End of this chapter)