February 1, 2022

Chapter 20: Black Market 1

After leaving the supply and marketing cooperative, Xiulan found a hidden place, then she entered the space and looked at the information about the 1960s era.

The 1960s was the period where China had the planned economy system.1计划经济 – Planned economy, also known as command economy or command economy, is an economic system, in this system, the state in production, resource allocation, and consumption aspects, etc., are carried out in advance by the government plan. The “command economy” is usually used in the same way as the planned economy, but if you distinguish it in detail, the command economy refers to an economic system in which the means of production are shared. Therefore, a command economy must be a planned economy, but a planned economy is not necessarily a command economy. In an era when the supply of commodities was extremely scarce, in order to ensure the balance of supply and demand, the state implemented a planned supply of food, clothing, and other necessities for urban and rural residents, and issued the coupons according to the population.

After all, it was all because of poverty. Supplies were too scarce, unlike in the 21st century, where supplies were abundant. As long as you had money, then you could buy anything.

But not all things required money and coupons. Just like in the black market, these things were not restricted, and some people just gave money without coupons.

Some rural people, when their family needed money, they would use the foodstuffs distributed to their family to exchange money on the black market, then the buyer did not need to give any coupons and would just give them the money. Foodstuffs could also be exchanged for various scarcity coupons, so in short, people who came here got what they needed.

However, because of the lack of supplies, the country did not allow things that were traded in private and the control was very strict. Once caught, there would be serious consequences. So, the things on the black market were naturally much more expensive than those normally available for sale.

Even so, in this situation, people would still go to the black market for foodstuffs. No matter how dangerous this was, it was better than starving to death without foodstuffs to eat. In desperation, who would care so much? Being able to fill your stomach was the most important thing.

After roughly understanding it, she came out of the space.

Although she had everything in her space, it was somewhat inconsistent with the things of this era and could not be easily taken out.

She wanted money and all kinds of coupons, so she could give it a shot on the black market. Anyway, she had foodstuffs in her space and taking out a little had no effect at all.

***Original translation is from enchantesstranslations.com. Please read it on the translator’s website.

Many people were short of foodstuffs and other things you could eat at this time.

If she took out some foodstuffs to the black market to trade them, she should be able to get some money and coupons.

Thinking this way, she sneakily took out five kilograms of white flour, five kilograms of rice, and five kilograms of dried noodles from the space.

She bought all the things in her space originally just to hoard enough supplies. Many of them were packaged in white bags and had no trademarks.

Otherwise, she would not dare to take out anything with traces of the 21st century.

After carrying these things in the basket, she searched for the black market in the county seat.

There was no way to ask others about the black market and she had never been there before, so she didn’t know the location.

But she judged from her own common sense, this kind of thing must not be done blatantly, so if she went to hidden places, she would definitely be able to find the black market and find people she could trade with.

As expected, according to her own judgment, she walked into a small alley and saw several people looking out.

Although the black market was banned, many people had no foodstuff and couldn’t get by at all, sometimes they had to take risks to get some foodstuffs.

Seeing those malnourished and sickly people with tattered clothes, she didn’t bother to ask them.

She wanted money and coupons, but she was worried that they didn’t have money or coupons to trade with her foodstuffs.

Those who came to trade on the black market might not necessarily be able to get money. For those who were desperate, who had no money and no tickets, it was very likely that they would directly grab the foodstuffs when others took them out.

She did not discriminate against the poor, but felt that since she came to trade on the black market, the more cautious she must be, the better.

She looked around for a while and finally saw a man with gold-rimmed glasses, wearing a black worker’s uniform, and had a somewhat thin figure.

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    计划经济 – Planned economy, also known as command economy or command economy, is an economic system, in this system, the state in production, resource allocation, and consumption aspects, etc., are carried out in advance by the government plan. The “command economy” is usually used in the same way as the planned economy, but if you distinguish it in detail, the command economy refers to an economic system in which the means of production are shared. Therefore, a command economy must be a planned economy, but a planned economy is not necessarily a command economy.