In the first half of Liao Lifeng's life, there were two "highlight" moments.
Once, he was admitted to a 985-brand university with high scores and became the "proud son of heaven" in the eyes of the villagers. Since then, "other people's children" have a look.
Another time, it was he who easily passed the civil service examination, and in the eyes of the villagers, "eating the national meal and holding the iron rice bowl", the high-ranking official Houlu was his future. To this end, Liao's father, who had always been frugal, threw a feast for him, and firecrackers were set off in the sky.
Today, at the age of 31, he has become a pork guy in a wet market, busy for more than ten hours a day. Cleaning, placing boards, deboning, cutting meat... The whole process flowed smoothly, and no one noticed that he was different from other pork sellers.
He said bluntly that he seemed to have fallen from the sky to the ground, "I am often joked: I used to manage self-employed in the Industrial and Commercial Bureau, and now I am poured out as a self-employed person." ”
His father scolded him, "I already know what kind of university I want to sell pork, and I can finish junior high school."
The person who had gone to his house to have a banquet and praised him for his greatness now shook his head when he saw him: "Quit being a civil servant, run to sell pork, and somehow think."
Liao Lifeng had heard the story of Lu Buxuan, the butcher of Peking University, and there were many people on the Internet who connected the two of them. But only Liao Lifeng knows that his rapidly declining life does not have so much romance, "biting his teeth and swallowing into his stomach, and the pain in it is only known to himself." ”
Dialogue with Liao Lifeng
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Nine Faction News: How has business been doing lately?
Liao Lifeng: During this time, the business is not very good, usually you can sell two pigs, you can only sell one in these days, and you can earn three or four hundred yuan a day.
Nine Factions News: When did you start selling pork?
Liao Lifeng: In March this year, I started learning from my friends, choosing pigs, shaving bones, cutting meat, selling pork with a deep doorway, and I had to learn. In April, I rented a store in Liuzhou and officially started selling pork, the name of the shop was Liao Ji Butcher Shop, because I was busy, I had not yet come and hung up the signboard.
Nine Factions News: Is the work hard, and what is the rhythm of the daily work?
Liao Lifeng: At 3 a.m., I will go to the slaughterhouse, start to select pigs, kill pigs, shave, and then pull the slaughtered pigs back to the store, start to remove bones and divide meat, and at about 6 o'clock in the morning, start selling meat.
It was almost 10 o'clock, and I had to drive to Laibin City and kill another pig to pull back. Because the slaughterhouse in Liuzhou only kills pigs in the morning, the guests do not have this restriction, I go there to kill another one, and by the afternoon my pork is fresher than others, I can sell it twice a day, and the income doubles. I sold until 9 p.m., slept for 4 or 5 hours, and got up at 2 o'clock in the middle of the night to work.
Nine Faction News: Why did you quit your civil service to sell pork?
Liao Lifeng: Mainly to repay debts, I don't want to affect my children's future because of debts.
I have a friend who is a second-hand car, when opening a branch, looking for me to borrow money to invest, I borrowed more than 800,000 yuan from him before and after, I did not have much money myself, of which 400,000 was borrowed from the bank. Unexpectedly, he took the money, not to open a store, but to invest in online loan companies, and then the state cracked down severely, he rolled up the money and ran away, and my money also drifted.
Later, I sold my parents' house, paid off some of my debts, and pooled my money to buy two apartments. The apartment is of a lease nature, and a lease contract will be signed at the same time as buying a house, and the apartment can be rented to the hotel for operation, and the real estate company promises that the monthly rent can be roughly offset by the monthly payment.
Although the room rate was very high when I bought it, almost twice the market price, I thought I could collect rent and buy it, and as a result, the hotel has not been opened, there is no promised monthly rent, I have to pay back the monthly payment, more than 10,000 per month.
Nine Factions News: What happened later?
Liao Lifeng: Two thunderstorms have left me with nearly 2 million yuan in debt, and I can receive more than a dozen debt collection calls every day. If I had been a civil servant and had not paid off my debts for 10 years, I would have resigned.
After resigning, I worked as a travel blogger, and I just bought the equipment back and encountered the epidemic, which was over before it started. I went live again and sold snail powder, but I didn't make any money.
At the end of the road, a friend who made fast food asked me if I wanted to kill pigs, and he said that killing pigs could earn hundreds of yuan a day, and when it was good, there were more than a thousand. I'm a college student at a 985-brand university, and I never thought I'd do this before, but people always have to survive, and I decided to sell pork.
Nine Factions News: Are you used to this identity now?
Liao Lifeng: I got used to it slowly. At first, I was confused when I faced the pigs in the slaughterhouse. I was a little dizzy, at first, I saw the slaughterhouse slaughtering pigs, a knife down, blood flowing, and then look at the other side, rows of pigs are hanging, blood flowing all over the ground, I will have palpitations, cold sweat.
Later, I slowly adapted, only pork in my eyes, and began to think about how to pick pigs and how to remove bones. At first it took me more than an hour to weed a pig, but now it takes 15 minutes. I also slowly dared to greet customers, no longer afraid of not being able to pull down my face.
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Nine School News: In what year were you admitted as a civil servant?
Liao Lifeng: In 2015, I graduated from the Law Department of Jilin University. After graduation, I interned in a bank and also started a business, and I have not been ideal for a job. I remember that I applied for a market planning position in a state-owned enterprise at that time, the state-owned enterprise was quite good, but the company said that I was not professionally right, and wanted me to transfer to do marketing, at that time I was more willful, since I could not do planning, I simply did not do it, and now I think about some regrets.
At that time, my sister was preparing for the civil service examination, and one day she asked me if I wanted to go to the civil service examination, and I did not know the way out of the future, so I went to register. As a result, he passed the exam and became a civil servant. In 2016, I officially became a clerk of the Liuzhou Administration for Industry and Commerce, usually handling cases in the economic inspection detachment, mainly responsible for grasping industrial and commercial violations.
Nine School News: What is the reaction of the family after being admitted to the civil service?
Liao Lifeng: After I was admitted as a civil servant, my family once held a banquet, and the whole village came to say hello. Because most villagers think that being a civil servant is becoming an official, and it is a matter of shining lintels.
Nine Factions News: How about the job of civil servant?
Liao Lifeng: At the beginning, I didn't know much about civil servants, and I traditionally thought that it was to drink tea and read newspapers. Later, I was assigned to the economic inspection detachment, the work was more challenging, and it was very motivating to do, but the salary of civil servants was not high, I was only 3200 per month at that time, and the year-end bonus was 10,000 8, and the house price in Liuzhou at that time was already 8,000 square.
Nine Faction News: What do your family think of your resignation to sell pork?
Liao Lifeng: After my father knew that I sold pork, he teased me that if he knew that if he wanted to sell pork, there was no need to send me to college, and he could go after graduating from junior high school. I told him that there was a way to sell meat in college.
In the eyes of the elders, civil servants are iron rice bowls, and I resigned from civil servants to sell pork, which is difficult for them to understand.
Nine Pai News: Would you be embarrassed to tell your friends and classmates that you are selling pork?
Liao Lifeng: When I first started to test the waters, I didn't know how to make money in this line, and how long I could hold on to this line of work, so I didn't dare to tell others that sending a circle of friends would block classmates and friends, especially colleagues from the previous unit, and I didn't want them to know.
In fact, I don't think there is any shame in selling pork, the real shame is that I give up halfway through the matter. I was afraid that selling pork was too tired and would not be able to resist giving up halfway, but after half a year, I felt that I could stick to it, and now my circle of friends is open, and I will often send some photos and videos of selling pork.
Nine Faction News: Former colleagues know that you are going to sell pork, what will they say?
Liao Lifeng: They said I was going to get rich. Civil servants have relatively low incomes, and they think it takes a lot of courage to quit their jobs and start a business.
Nine Factions News: Does selling pork make money in your imagination?
Liao Lifeng: I can generally sell two pigs a day, one pig can make hundreds of dollars, and the monthly income is more than 30,000. The first few months did make some money and pay off some of the debt. But these months are more difficult, and now I hope that the weather will become cooler and the market will be better.
This month, we opened a large pork chain store, our ordinary butcher shop, the meat price is 13 yuan a pound, they only sell 8 yuan 8, a day can sell more than 30 pigs, many customers are attracted to go. They have money, they are big, and they can squeeze the market at a low price. I can only try to control the quality of pork, no matter how much I can sell, at least to ensure some repeat customers.
Nine Factions News: What is the difference between selling pork and being a civil servant?
Liao Lifeng: In the past, as a civil servant, the materials were not finished, at most I added a shift, and now I sell pork, and overtime is useless. Once the pork can't be sold, it will be particularly anxious.
Every day, I set aside more than 2 a.m., a little later, and when I get to the slaughterhouse, it will be particularly crowded. Once the time is delayed, the pork is not deboned in time, the meat color will be ugly, and the pork will basically not be sold. The thought of a few thousand dollars on the table made my heart hairy.
Nine School News: Do you think you are like Lu Buxuan, who graduated from Peking University and sells pork?
Liao Lifeng: We are not very similar. He is actively selling pork, and I am facing pressure to passively choose this line. My child is only 1 year and 8 months old and I don't want to affect him. After all, I was poor as a child, and I didn't want him to experience how I used to feel.
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Nine Schools News: Tell me about your childhood.
Liao Lifeng: I am the fifth child in the family, and before I was born, my parents always wanted a boy, and they couldn't get it after giving birth to four in a row. My parents were farmers, life was always tight, and after I was born, it was even more difficult to support five children.
Growing up, I had good grades and was always "someone else's child". My parents realized early on that they were going to let our siblings study more, so they tightened their belts and sent me to a good school in town.
I went to junior high school in Liuzhou City, and I had to pay 800 yuan for borrowing when I went to school in the city that year, and the tuition fee was 300 yuan per semester. This was undoubtedly a huge sum of money, and my aunt's monthly salary was only two or three hundred at the time.
When I was a child, I was always very introverted, because I stayed in a relative's house all year round, and my parents were not around, so I was very insecure. The good thing is that my fourth sister also went to school in the city with me. There was a scene where I was impressed, once I told the fourth sister that I missed my parents, and she said she wanted to, and then the two of us hugged each other on the balcony and cried.
Nine Schools News: Do parents often come to see you?
Liao Lifeng: We went to school in the city, and it was a semester when we went, and my parents were very busy, and they might have to squeeze out time to see me every other month or two. I remember my father always riding an old-fashioned bicycle, pulling rice, rice dumplings and some freshly picked fruits in the back seat, and riding twenty or thirty kilometers from home to the city, I always remember my father collapsing on the sofa and slowly falling asleep.
Uncles and aunts are very good to me, but you always feel that the things around you do not belong to you, and you have to be careful in everything you do, for fear of doing something wrong.
At that time, I was very envious of others having parents come to pick me up after school, so I had to go to the bus alone with my school bag. I only have three pieces of pocket money a day, two for the bus, and the remaining one for breakfast, and no money for snacks. Once, after school, I took the wrong bus and had to walk back on my own.
Nine Factions News: Do you have many friends?
Liao Lifeng: There are no friends, the family is poor, and they are foreigners, others watch cartoons, I have not seen it, I do not have anything that people in the city play, I do not have a common language with them, naturally there are no friends. At that time, I was always alone, turning here and there. The only activity on the weekend is to go to pick up scrap with my sister. The street is building roads, there are some nails in the scraps, my sister and I will go to pick up nails, pick up two or three pounds a day, can sell two dollars, a dollar to buy some snacks, the rest of the savings to buy instant noodles to eat, so that you don't have to get up early to cook noodles.
Nine Factions News: Did you deliberately hide your family situation at that time?
Liao Lifeng: I will not take the initiative to say what is the situation in my home, and try to avoid this question.
Nine Faction News: Why can you face the identity of selling pork now?
Liao Lifeng: As I grew up, I also underwent some personality changes, no longer inferior, and able to face many things calmly. In the third year of junior high school, my sister gave me a book, and after reading it, I felt more courageous about life.
In high school, I did not choose to continue to study in the city, in fact, my grades at that time were able to list good schools. But I still chose to go back, back to the high school in the county, where most of the classmates, like me, came out of the countryside, and everyone was almost the same.
During the college entrance examination, the first time I played abnormally, I only took two books, and I re-read it again. Before high school, I did not leave Liuzhou much, the college entrance examination volunteer I chose Jilin University thousands of kilometers away, at that time did not think too much, only hope to go to a farther place to see the world.
Nine Faction News: If 10 years later, you are still selling pork, will you feel sad?
Liao Lifeng: I also thought about what kind of career I will take in the future, until retirement, I think it is not impossible to sell pork, maybe then I will slowly get used to it, and I will not be so tired.
Wuhan Morning News reporter Chen Wei