Chapter 11: The Prelude to Boiling the Rod (Part 1)

  After the end of the discussion at the deputy director's meeting of the Business Bureau, Li An came to Tang Yi's office and complained as soon as he entered: "Director Zhang of the Finance Bureau is too bullying, not allocating any budget to us, how can we carry out our work?"

  Tang Yi pointed to the sofa, indicating for him to sit down: "What did Director Zhang say?" He also instructed Secretary Li to make tea.

  Li An sat down in discontent: "Director Zhang said that the county's financial budget for this year has been arranged a long time ago, and there is no surplus funds to give us the Investment Promotion Bureau. Secretary Tang, you tell me, with only tens of thousands of yuan in funding, how can our Investment Promotion Bureau carry out its work? The nature of our work is to go around and run for funding everywhere, we can't just sit in the office and wait for a strong wind to blow the funds over, can we?"

  As soon as Little Li handed over the tea and walked out, Li An immediately removed his disgruntled expression and smiled, saying: "This Little Li, no matter how I look at him, he seems like someone who does underground work."

  Tang Yi smiled indifferently: "As a party member, it's not surprising that he would engage in underground work."

  Li An burst out laughing, as if Tang Yi's words were hilarious. After a while, he asked: "Secretary Tang, are you saying that someone is sabotaging us from behind? Look, first of all, the funding budget for the investment promotion agency can't be resolved."

  Tang Yi shook his head: "It's not that I'm making things difficult for you, it's just the end of the year and it's normal that there's no budget. However, Secretary Tao promised to allocate funds, if the finance bureau freezes that money, we'll talk about it then." He smiled and said: "You guys are also like this, without money, there are ways to do work without money, you can call those big merchants, whether it succeeds or not is still considered doing work. You can't just sit in the office drinking tea and reading newspapers because of no money, others won't say that Li An has no leadership ability, they'll only poke fun at my Tang Yi's spine."

  Li An said, "I've already given the order." Tang Yi nodded slightly and thought for a moment before saying, "You have tens of thousands of yuan in your budget, right? Why not print some promotional pamphlets about Yan Mountain? Look at our Yan Mountain - to the east we have Tian'e Lake and the Yalu River, and to the north we have the original forest of Xing'an Ridge. What a great tourist destination!"

  Li An nodded sincerely, but he was puzzled in his heart and didn't know what kind of achievement could be made with these mountains and rivers. Although he was astute, his vision was still limited to the environment at that time.

  Tang Yi asked again: "How do you think our Yan Shan development should be positioned?"

  This topic is a bit big, Li An smiled reluctantly: "I can't say anything about this, only Secretary Tang is used to looking at problems from such a high angle."

  "We may be a small county town, but in this era of reform and opening up, with the momentum of a thousand horses galloping forward, as long as we grasp the pulse of the times accurately, our small county town doesn't have to be forever at the tail end of the phoenix and the cow's rear. A small county town can also make a big splash."

  "Although Yanshan has always been an agricultural county and its industrial foundation is not good, we have Swan Lake and Yalu River as our neighbors, so there's a lot of potential for tourism."

  Tang Yi said, looking at Li An's expression of admiration and confusion, couldn't help but laugh, his own ambitions could now be displayed in front of him, while he was still confused. Tang Yi also knew that bringing up tourist cities was too premature, after all, the tourism industry only flourished after the country implemented a two-day weekend.

  However, Tang Yi's original intention was not to position the city as a tourist city. So he threw out his long-held idea: "Director Li, although Yan Mountain is not a Korean autonomous prefecture or county, there are many Korean compatriots. Do you know which famous Korean figures in Yan Mountain County history?"

  From the change in address, Li An knew that Secretary Tang was starting to talk business with himself, thought seriously for a moment, and shook his head: "I really don't know about this."

  Tang Yi smiled and said, "I was flipping through the county annals a few days ago and stumbled upon an interesting story. Come, take a look." He turned around and handed Li An several photocopied pages from the desk, which were the first few pages of the Yan Shan County Annals. Yan Shan was formally established as a county during the Qing dynasty; before that, it belonged to the Black Mountain White Water region, an uninhabited area where Han Chinese had not yet migrated in large numbers. The beginning of the county annals mostly consisted of ancient legends and stories from the Tang and Song dynasties, which were unverified and considered unofficial history. Li An flipped through the pages but couldn't make out anything special, until he heard Tang Yi say, "Take a look at that story about the transmission of the Dao by Master Han Chengzi."

  The legend of Hanchengzi says that during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, a man named Hanchengzi from Baekje traveled across mountains and rivers from Central China to bring Confucianism to Baekje. The county annals wrote it into several small stories with a hint of Monk Tang's journey to retrieve scriptures. It also mentions that Hanchengzi stayed in Yanshan twice, and before returning to Baekje, he built a hut in Yanshan, where he gained insight into the true meaning of Confucianism. Of course, the story says that he was enlightened by Confucius himself in Yanshan.

  Li An couldn't understand why, this kind of myth-like story was common in county annals, but after the founding of New China, it was called feudal dross and discarded. In recent years, with reform and opening up, county annals have gradually restored their original color. He looked left and right, but couldn't see what was special about this story. However, Secretary Tang asked him to read it, so there must be a deeper meaning. He pondered over Secretary Tang's thoughts, but couldn't figure them out, and suddenly felt anxious, sweating on his forehead. Only then did he realize that the leader in front of him was more difficult to serve than those officials he had met before. No wonder he had risen to prominence at such a young age! Li An had a yardstick for measuring leaders: the harder it was to guess their thoughts, the higher their level and the more potential they had to climb up. In fact, Secretary Tang's mind was not as deep as Li An thought, but his experience was only a decade or so longer than Li An's, and that decade was an era of information explosion, so naturally, Li An couldn't figure out what he was thinking.

  Tang Yiduan picked up the small white jade tea cup, took a sip, and smiled: "Originally, I just thought it was just a story, but later, when I accidentally read through Korean history, I found that this character, Han Chengzi, actually existed. He was an official of Baekje during the Three Kingdoms period on the Korean Peninsula. Can't we say that Han Chengzi is the first person recorded in historical materials to introduce Confucianism to the Korean Peninsula?"

  Li An smiled wryly in his heart and didn't understand what was going on. He also didn't dare to ask, so he could only think deeply about Comrade Tang's words.

  Tang Yi's fingers tapped on the table, with a confident expression: "Since there really is such a person, then there's a big story to be made! We can commemorate Han Chengzi's repair of the mountain lodge, and Yanshan can naturally become the civilized road for cultural exchange between ancient China and ancient Korea, worth writing in big books!"

  Listening to Secretary Tang's slightly arrogant tone, Li An couldn't help but laugh and cry. What is this? Just because of a story that has been passed down with errors, it can be linked to the name of an ancient Korean high-ranking official, and then fabricated into some kind of ancient cultural center? The Road of Civilization? But on his face, he still had to show an expression of Secretary Tang's insightful views being truly brilliant.

  Tang Yi could see through Li An's thoughts and didn't think much of it. How could Li An have known that a few years later, a nationwide craze for tracing one's roots would sweep the country? Almost every slightly controversial celebrity had several hometowns, and the mountains and rivers mentioned in famous poems often had multiple locations. For example, Yishan Mountain was claimed by both Hebei and Shandong provinces, while Confucius' birthplace now has three or four different locations. It's impossible for anyone to claim Yan Shan as their hometown, so it's better to make a fuss about the stick than to fight with others until blood is shed.