Reborn in 1977

Chapter 442: A Small Courtyard in the City

“You really donated it?”

“I did.”

Chen Fan strolled around the small courtyard, finally stopping at the Eight Immortals table in the main room. Seeing Zhang Wenliang still looking dazed, he couldn't help but sigh softly, “This money is too hot to handle, better to turn it over.”

Even though that Chen Fan clearly couldn't swim and jumped headfirst into the Yangtze River, making his return almost impossible, this money really couldn't be kept; it was too hot to handle!

An Quan sat down on the other side, lit a cigarette, and said, “Little Chen's approach is right. A huge sum of money in hand is like a child carrying gold in a busy market; who knows how many people would be envious.

It's better to learn from those old cadres and hand over all their savings to the organization before they die. It appears noble and avoids a lot of trouble.”

Zhang Wenliang clicked his tongue, as if the donated money was his own. “More than ten thousand! If it were before, I wouldn't have been able to save that much in my entire life!”

After a moment, he turned his head to look at the courtyard, and chuckled, “Fortunately, your parents left you this house, so it's not a complete loss.”

Then he saw An Quan give him a subtle glare, and he realized he had said the wrong thing. He lightly slapped his mouth and turned to look at Chen Fan, chuckling dryly, “Sorry, I didn't mean it that way.”

Chen Fan shook his head gently, indicating it was okay, then turned to look at the main room and said calmly, “If it weren't difficult to donate a house, I wouldn't want this house either.”

Handing over the money was following the trend and learning from the older generation.

Donating a house?

That would almost be equivalent to alienating oneself from the people!

People only donate their remaining wealth after death. What is remaining wealth? It's the excess money beyond what's needed for basic living.

No one donates their house along with it, unless they have no descendants.

If you donate your house, what will others think?

Especially those old members and cadres who donate all their savings before death, wouldn't it make them seem selfish?

And the living old cadres would also think, you even donated your house, should I donate mine in the future?

Donating money is fine, but you can't leave your children homeless, right?

Everyone, from top to bottom, would be dissatisfied. Wouldn't that be courting death!

So when Factory Director Yang and Deputy Factory Director Li brought him here, Factory Director Yang specifically instructed him that this was the last thing his parents left him, and he must cherish it and not donate it again.

Chen Fan also followed their advice and accepted the house.

From now on, he was also someone who had his own house in the municipal party committee!

Originally, large units like the Machinery Factory all had their own staff dormitories. Unless they were originally locals, very few people would buy their own houses.

After all, a house was worth a lot of money, and there was no real estate transaction market at the moment. Everyone was waiting for the unit to allocate housing; being without a house was the norm.

However, when Chen Fan's parents came to Yunhu, they came as "pioneering oxen."

That is to say, when they came to Yunhu, there wasn't even a Machinery Factory yet. They and many "comrades" started from scratch, step by step building the Machinery Factory into what it is today.

At that time, there wasn't even a Machinery Factory, so naturally there couldn't be any dormitories.

Even if the Yunhu area arranged accommodation for them, firstly, Chen Fan's mother liked peace and quiet and didn't like noise, otherwise it would be difficult to work in peace, and secondly, the accommodation conditions were tight at the time, plus she had a lot of savings in hand, so she promoted the spirit of giving and gave the single room arranged by the organization to others.

Then, on the edge of the urban area at that time, not far from the selected factory site, they accepted this quiet small courtyard with an area of more than one mu "gifted" by a fellow villager.

That fellow villager naturally also received a considerable amount of money as a “gift”.

Now, more than ten years have passed, and the rural area on the edge of the city at that time has been quickly surrounded by the Beicheng Industrial Zone, and this place has also become the city center.

From a geographical point of view, this courtyard is located right between the city center and the Beicheng factory area. Nearby, there are department stores, supply and marketing cooperatives, Xinhua bookstores, hardware stores, restaurants, guest houses and other commercial facilities, belonging to a prosperous area.

But it is also quiet in the midst of the hustle and bustle, only two households away from the main road. The path in front is not too narrow, enough to accommodate two cars side by side, and even the roadside is planted with plane trees, which can both prevent dust and insulate sound.

Inside the courtyard, there is an area of about 800 square meters. In the middle, nearly 200 square meters were used to build three and a half brick houses.

The main house has three rooms, in a "one main, four wings" layout.

The middle is a spacious main room, with a small utility room behind the main hall. The rooms on both sides are divided into front and rear rooms, for a total of 4 rooms.

This is also the most common rural house layout in places like Lujiawan.

Behind it, there is also an outbuilding used as a kitchen and dining room, which is counted as half a room.

After Chen Fan's parents bought it, they spent several years renovating it.

They renovated and reinforced the dilapidated places, laid bluestone slabs on the original rammed earth floor of the house, paved the front yard with bluestone bricks, and turned the vegetable garden in the backyard into a flower garden, leaving only one ridge for growing vegetables.

In addition, a circle of dense arrow bamboo was planted around the courtyard wall for sound insulation.

The bamboo does not wither in all seasons. Even now in winter, the courtyard is lush and green.

Taking advantage of the construction of the Beicheng factory area and the laying of underground pipelines, they built a flush toilet next to the outbuilding near the dining room.

Originally, the main house and the outbuilding were separated, but they built an L-shaped veranda to connect them, so that they would not get wet in rainy days.

They even built a pavilion in the middle of the small garden, and paved a stone path from the veranda to it, making it look particularly elegant.

The house itself has access to water and electricity. After the renovation, the current living conditions are not much different from those decades later.

After Factory Director Yang resumed his work, when dealing with Chen Fan's parents' affairs, he drove away the group of people who had taken over the nest, and re-painted and cleaned it.

A few days ago, the leaders of the Public Security Bureau came to investigate Chen Fan's affairs. He heard that his old friend's son was still alive, and was a nationally renowned writer and medical expert, and was immediately overjoyed.

As soon as the investigators left, he immediately asked people to clean it up, and even replaced the damaged furniture, only retaining some complete old furniture, as a memento for Chen Fan.

After lunch, he and Deputy Factory Director Li brought Chen Fan over, and asked people to send over those books stored in his house, and sent several sets of bedding and daily necessities such as pots and bowls, so he could move in at any time.

Deputy Factory Director Li also invited people from the street office's housing management office to handle the house transfer procedures on the spot.

After they left, Chen Fan breathed a sigh of relief and had the leisure to look at the house he had just acquired.

The gate is a double door, enough for a car to enter and exit… It's a pity that private individuals can't buy cars these days, otherwise Chen Fan would want to wait until he saved enough money to buy one for himself.

It's naturally not needed in Lujiawan, but every time he comes to the municipal party committee, he has to take a bus or a tricycle, and the buses at this time are infrequent, often waiting for a long time, which is a waste of time.

It would be much more convenient if I had my own car.

Just as Chen Fan was lost in thought, Zhang Cuie came in from the backyard, her face covered in sweat, and said breathlessly, "Teacher, the backyard is all cleaned up."

Chen Fan immediately poured her a cup of tea. "The water temperature is just right. Have a drink and rest for a while."

Zhang Cuie didn't refuse, picked up the teacup, and gulped it down in one go.

The water was freshly boiled, and the tea leaves were a gift from Deputy Director Li.

After Director Yang and the others left, the seven girls started their labor mode. First, they wiped the already clean house inside and out again. Huang Ying even took the time to boil a pot of water in the kitchen and made a large pot of tea.

The only problem was that if Deputy Director Li saw the high-end Longjing tea that he had worked so hard to obtain being used to make a large pot of tea, he would probably faint on the spot.

After they wiped the house, they discovered that the small garden in the backyard had long been ruined. It was overgrown with weeds, and even the ground had hardened. So they found hoes and shovels from the storage room, first set fire to the dry weeds, and then turned the soil over.

When Huang Ying and the others also came in, Chen Fan felt a little sorry for them, seeing them all covered in sweat, and said, "Go boil water and take a bath. The weather is hot and you're sweating a lot, so be careful to prevent catching a cold."

He paused for a moment, then said to An Quan and Zhang Wenliang, "Why don't you just stay here for the night? You two can sleep in one room, and they can sleep in two rooms. I'll sleep in the study. There's just enough space."

"Later, have Third Tiger call the post office and have the team send a boat over tomorrow so we can take the two feed machines back directly."

Zhang Wenliang had no objections and immediately nodded in agreement. "Okay, I'll go now."

Saying that, he drank the tea in his cup in one gulp, got up, and walked out.

An Quan looked around, smiled, and said, "Why don't I go to the菜市场 and see if I can buy some vegetables to celebrate moving into the new house."

Over the past year, many customs that had once been banned had returned.

After more than ten years of trying to break old customs, the result was a lonely failure.

Chen Fan nodded, took out a large envelope from his pocket, opened the seal, and poured out hundreds of tickets of various sizes and types.

Grain coupons, meat coupons, oil coupons, cloth coupons, shoe coupons, industrial coupons... there were even two or three bicycle coupons, radio coupons, watch coupons, and sewing machine coupons, and even a motorcycle coupon and a TV coupon.

Of course, it wasn't the Yangtze 750 or Happiness 250 type of motorcycle. Although there were no explicit regulations, the default rule was that these types of vehicles were generally not supplied to individuals, and department stores didn't sell them either.

This coupon was for a Black Crow light motorcycle, which was also very good.

These were all given to him by Deputy Director Li, who said they were ticket vouchers issued with his salary.

The money could be donated, but there was no need to donate these tickets.

Chen Fan didn't care whether they were really issued with his salary and accepted them all in one go.

After rummaging through the pile of tickets for a long time, he finally found the meat coupons, grabbed a few at random, and handed them to An Quan. "Don't just buy fatty meat. It's too greasy. Get some good hind leg meat and ribs."

An Quan left grumbling, saying that everyone else wanted to buy more fatty meat for frying oil, but you've had too many good days and have become picky, complaining that fatty meat is too greasy. Why don't you just become a vegetarian!

After An Quan left, Chen Fan turned to look at Huang Ying and the others. "Aren't you going to boil water and take a bath? Do you really want to catch a cold?"

Hearing this, the girls giggled and ran to the kitchen in the back.

Chen Fan sat alone in the main room, slowly smoked a cigarette, finished the tea in his cup, got up, and walked to the study located in the southeast corner.

Inside the room, the innermost part was a wall of bookshelves filled with books, including some foreign professional works.

Chen Fan walked to the bookshelf and looked carefully. The books inside were mainly mechanical and electronic professional books, including domestic ones, including translated versions, and foreign originals.

The remaining small part consisted of English, French, Russian, and Japanese books.

According to Director Yang, the books he retrieved were less than half of what they used to be. Many of the books here were later bought back from bookstores based on his memory.

Especially those foreign language books, including translated works, were all found by him through people in the Shanghai Foreign Language Bookstore. He didn't say how much money he spent, but Chen Fan estimated that it was at least a thousand yuan.

And now, he had given all these books to Chen Fan in one go.

In addition to the wall of bookshelves, there was also a Steinway upright antique piano against the east wall.

(Steinway upright antique piano)

This piano was brought back from the United States by Chen Fan's mother when she returned to China, and she had never given it up when she got married and moved.

Fortunately, those who engaged in sabotage at that time saw that the piano was not smashed but moved to the trade union club, so it was preserved.

Later, Director Yang naturally returned it to its original owner and moved it back here.

Chen Fan sat on the newly made piano bench, opened the piano lid, placed his fingers on the keys, and slowly played a series of smooth notes.

In the side room in the backyard, Huang Ying and Huang Li were the first to go to the bathroom to take a bath. The rest of the people were sitting in the dining room. Hearing the piano sound coming from the front room, Yang Ju's eyes lit up. "Teacher Chen can also play the piano?"

Liu Dan looked at her in confusion. "Teacher Chen's accordion was taught by Uncle An. How could he play the piano?"

Zhang Cuie raised her head, her eyes full of unconditional trust in her master. "What's so strange about that? Accordions and pianos are both instruments. If you can play the accordion, you can definitely play the piano."

"Besides, this is originally his home. Maybe his grandmother taught him how to play the piano before, but he forgot it later. Now that he sees the piano, he remembers how to play it again. Isn't that normal?"

Hearing this, the others couldn't help but nod lightly, then one by one propped their elbows on the dining table, supported their cheeks with their hands, and listened to the piano sound with a look of intoxication.

After a while, Chen Fan finished playing the "Yellow River Piano Concerto", slowly closed the piano lid, stood up, turned around, and looked at a violin placed on a small table.

This violin was not a relic of Chen Fan's mother, but his father's. Back then, it was with this violin that the rough and tumble Chen Dad successfully tricked Chen Mom into his hands. To some extent, the two can be regarded as a talented man and a beautiful woman, a match made in heaven.

Chen Fan slowly walked over, opened the violin case, took out an antique violin from it, then rested the violin on his shoulder, slowly placed the bow on the strings, and a piece of "Butterfly Lovers" poured out.