About one day at the end of 1990, a vegetable market in Xuhui District of Shanghai (which should be Urumqi Middle Road or Huashan Road) was bustling with people.
At one time, the supply of Shanghai's food market has been unable to keep up with the rapid population development, but after the serious efforts of the municipal government in the late 1980s, the problem of people's food basket has finally been solved.
The food basket has been solved, but the service of the food market has become a problem. The people who buy the food depend on the face of the food seller, which has caused public complaints.
At that time, the food market was all state-owned enterprise units, and the food sellers were also state-owned enterprise employees. Although most of the employees had a decent service attitude, they were also self-consciously superior, with ugly faces and hard words.
It doesn't matter if you look ugly. After all, you can't expect a person who sells vegetables, fish and meat to be of high quality, but someone intentionally shortens his weight.
The vegetable market in the 1980s
At first, the staff of the vegetable market sold public dishes, and it was useless if they had more than one kilogram of fish and one kilogram of meat. However, some people used their brains to sell one kilogram of fish and one kilogram of meat. One day when fish and meat were sold, they could leave more than ten kilograms of "kickbacks" for themselves, and the family would eat fish and meat for free every day.
This trend must not last long, because if one stall does this, it will immediately "infect" the left and right stalls, thus polluting the whole vegetable market, and the market order will be ruined.
It is said that there was an aunt with a compound surname of Duanmu at the meat stall in those days. According to the legend, there were many famous cultural people in Duanmu's surname, such as Zi Gong, a disciple of Confucius (named Duanmu Ci), a famous modern writer Duanmu Hongliang, Duanmu Mengxi, etc.
However, this aunt's style obviously does not match her surname. She not only takes the lead in short weight, but also refuses to correct even if found by customers. Instead, she quarrels with customers every day, which is notorious in the food market.
The leaders of the food market also know that there is such a number of people, but it is estimated that this Duanmu aunt has a little background and is fierce, so the leaders are too lazy to find themselves unhappy. They open their eyes and close their eyes as if she is air.
Scene of the vegetable market
On that day, news came from the market that a "big leader" would come to the market to check the work, but the specific time was not determined. Everyone could not help but be awestruck. Only Aunt Duanmu went her own way.
After a few days, the legendary "big leader" never came, and there was no news, so everyone's heart was slowly relaxed.
Later, it was said that Ye Gongqi, who was then the director of the Standing Committee of Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, was coming, but I don't know why he never came.
As a municipality directly under the Central Government, the director of Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, as the leader of one of the "four groups", is at the same level as the secretary of the Municipal Party Committee, the mayor, and the chairman of the CPPCC, and is one of the top four leaders in Shanghai.
On the morning of December 28, when the market opened, an elderly man with gray hair, a round face and a pair of thick glasses walked into the market with a basket.
I grew up like this
He looked here and there. He kept asking about the price of vegetables, but there was not much in the basket. Finally, he reached the meat stall.
The old man and Aunt Duanmu looked at each other for a moment. Seeing that the meat stall was cold and quiet, which was quite different from the busy scene in other places, he couldn't help coughing and said, "Your business here is not very good!"
Aunt Duanmu answered disapprovingly, "No business, so easy! You know how to cut?"
The old man pushed his glasses, as if not satisfied with his aunt's answer, and then, intentionally or unintentionally, said, "Do you kill customers in this vegetable market? Now the municipal government will catch up with this phenomenon!"
This made Aunt Duanmu blow her hair on the spot: you poor old man is not the leader of the city. Why do you have so many things? She angrily chopped the meat cleaver in her hand to the chopping board, and then burst into foul language.
Vegetable market meat stall
"Damn it! I said that Ye Gongqi was coming the other day! If he did come, he would buy meat in front of me. I don't care what Ye Gongqi is. I will kill him as soon as I kill him!"
Here, we need to popularize science. "Fuck a bitch!" and "Fuck a bitch!" mean the same thing, that is, the most common national curse. The local pronunciation of "Ye Gongqi" is similar to "Ye Gongji". This uneducated aunt naturally takes "cock" and "hen" as one thing.
The old man was speechless for a moment: I have seen unreasonable people, I have never seen such unreasonable people, and he didn't say anything more, just left the stall silently.
As for what happened later, we can imagine that the old man was Ye Gongqi himself, but he didn't notice the food market in advance and didn't bring any entourage because he didn't think that he would know the truth if he made a big investigation.
I think if the leaders of the vegetable market know that people under them dare to speak to the leaders at the ministerial level in such a rude way, and calmly admit that they are killing guests, they will probably be scared to urinate.
Ye Gongqi
As for the result of Duanmu, although it was not seen in the authoritative media, it is natural to imagine that the so-called bonus deduction is good, and the lightest punishment is to transfer out of the market.
But "I used to swear at ministerial leaders" is something that Aunt Duanmu has probably talked about all her life.
In 2014, the China Consumer Association organized a selection of "30 years of consumer rights protection contribution figures of the Chinese consumer protection movement", and finally selected 20 individuals (in addition to 10 legal entities) who made unique contributions to the consumer rights protection movement.
In the list of 20 people, Ye Gongqi, the former director of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress and chairman of the Shanghai Consumer Protection Association, ranked third.
Ye Gongqi, born in Wuxian County, Jiangsu Province in 1929, joined the Party at the age of 15 and engaged in underground work. Although he was young at that time, he had a clear mind and was quick to handle affairs, so he was soon organized and arranged to come to Daijiaji underground transportation station in Taixing.
Interior view of underground traffic station
Under the cover of Ye Gongqi and others, a large number of underground workers and progressive young people in Shanghai entered the port through the underground traffic line from Longwo Wharf on the north bank of the Yangtze River, stayed briefly in Daijiaji for a few days, then went north through Hai'an County, and finally reached the Yanfu base area.
At the end of 1948, Shanghai underground party organizations decided to transfer student movement leaders and other democratic progressives who participated in anti hunger and anti civil war demonstrations to the liberated areas. Ye Gongqi, a 19-year-old traffic worker at that time, had already taken charge of a line alone.
He was responsible for the route from Shanghai to North Jiangsu via Zhenjiang, which escorted the most progressive and democratic people, including the music conductor Situ Han.
After meeting with Situ Han, Ye Gongqi agreed with him that Situ Han would play the role of rice merchant, and he would play the role of "cousin" of "rice merchant". The two of them took a fake ID card, and Situ Han followed the "cousin" to Zhenjiang by train, and then crossed the river by ship.
Along the way, the Kuomintang military and police were very strict. After getting on the ship, the police came to check again. Situhan was just a scholar, and he had never seen a big battle. He could not help feeling uneasy when he saw the police checking ID cards one by one.
Police check passers-by
But when he turned around and saw his "cousin" smoking as if nothing had happened, Stuart also calmed down, turned to the Food Daily and successfully muddled through.
After they got ashore from Zhenjiang, they waited in the appointed teahouse for a comrade to meet. After the handover, Ye Gongqi rushed back to Shanghai to escort the next comrade.
After the liberation, Ye Gongqi first worked in the district party committee, then transferred to the industrial system, and later served as the deputy director of Shanghai Light Industry Bureau and the deputy mayor of Shanghai in charge of economy and trade and rural work.
In 1985, Jiang Lao came to Shanghai to preside over the work, and he once specifically asked Ye Gongqi for advice: "What problems do people in Shanghai most want to solve?"
Ye Gongqi said without thinking, "The people in Shanghai are most concerned about the food basket, which is the non-staple food they eat every day." Later, he also served as the leader of the municipal vegetable leading group, which opened the prelude to the reform of the food basket that has lasted for four or five years.
Ye Gongqi in his later years
Ye Gongqi led the city's commerce and trade department to adjust the supply and demand problem with market mechanism in accordance with the working idea of "opening up at both ends".
They specially set up a fund, and municipal enterprises will pay a few yuan per person according to the number of employees to collect a non-staple food development fund to solve the funding problem of the "food basket project".
After several investigations, the municipal government came to the conclusion that there was a serious shortage of non-staple food in the city, one of the important reasons was the population degradation, and the milk yield of a cow was only half of that of others.
Now that the source of the problem has been found, it is easy to do. Then the municipal government arranged funds to introduce a large number of fine varieties of cows, pigs, chickens, etc., and then increased the scale of breeding. It learned advanced experience from major agricultural provinces and improved equipment. One person can raise 2000 chickens, and five to six batches a year, to achieve large-scale production.
In addition, the commerce and trade department also pays attention to strengthening agricultural scientific research work in cooperation with agricultural colleges and universities, not only to cultivate winter dwarf vegetables, Qingpu water bamboo and other fine varieties, but also to promote the vegetable growing methods of plastic film, small shed and large shed, so as to improve the growth rate of vegetables.
A thriving vegetable market
Supporting vegetable planting base, the Municipal Commerce and Trade Commission has also established a batch of large-scale soybean product factories to supply soybean products, soybean sprouts and mung bean sprouts every winter and summer when vegetables are scarce.
In 1985, non-staple food such as meat, oil, vegetables, eggs and so on in the city were purchased with tickets. By the end of the 1980s, these non-staple food tickets were no longer needed, and non-staple food supply was liberalized.
It can be said that Ye Gongqi has devoted a lot of effort to the construction of the food basket in Shanghai. No wonder he attaches such importance to the food market in the whole city.
In April 1988, Ye Gongqi was promoted from vice mayor to director of the Standing Committee of Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, and also the first full-time director in the history of the Standing Committee of Shanghai Municipal People's Congress. After that, he was reappointed as director of Shanghai Municipal People's Congress for ten years.
During his tenure, the Municipal People's Congress made great efforts to rectify the circulation order and protect the rights and interests of consumers. He has organized deputies to the National People's Congress to carry out special inspections in markets and shopping malls around Shanghai many times, and issued the Regulations on Product Quality Supervision and the Regulations on the Protection of the Legal Rights and Interests of Consumers.
In 2014, Ye Gongqi (first from left) and others visited the Light Industry Exhibition
After retiring from the Municipal People's Congress, Ye Gongqi served as the president of Shanghai Consumer Protection Association. His residual heat has not been extinguished, and he continues to make contributions to the protection of consumer rights in the city.
