Reborn in 1977

Chapter 492 Building a House

January 28th, the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month, Saturday.

It seemed the day of the week didn't matter to Chen Fan, as he didn't have a job.

Although he wasn't working, he wasn't idle either.

The pottery kiln at the southwest corner of the small earthen slope, which had been dug the earliest, hadn't been used for firing pottery for a long time. Today, with a rare moment of leisure, Chen Fan cleaned the kiln opening, made a batch of pottery, and waited beside it for the kiln to open.

At this moment, he was the only person in the large farmhouse courtyard. He had forcibly given Huang Ying and the other five girls a winter vacation.

The girls were certainly unwilling to return to their own homes. They ate well and lived well here, with not only radios and phonographs, but also heated brick beds to sleep on at night, much warmer than the cold beds at home.

Not to mention the charcoal stoves for heating; Huang Ying and Yang Ju could make those themselves, but they consumed a lot of charcoal. With four rooms in the house, which rooms should have stoves and which shouldn't? Who would decide?

So, going home meant only sleeping in a cold bed and enduring hardship.

However, during the Chinese New Year, it wasn't wrong for Teacher Chen to let them go home for the holidays. They could only come over in the morning to do some housework and spend the rest of the time at home helping with various preparations for the New Year.

So, the question arose.

With so many people at home, why did they still need their help?

Of course, it was because there weren't enough hands!

Chen Fan sat on a self-made chair in a wasteland style... it was just a chair made by stripping the bark off some logs, regardless of whether they were straight or not, and piecing them together, then padding it with a pile of straw. It was all the same to sit on.

Next to him was the warm kiln opening. Even if the sky was gloomy and the north wind howled, he didn't feel much cold.

On the large earthen slope in front of the educated youth院, the village occasionally echoed with booming sounds.

They were demolishing houses!

Chen Fan pulled out a dry tobacco pipe from his waist.

The mouthpiece was a piece of white jade, which he had carved himself; the pipe stem was a thin piece of yellowish bamboo. He had intercepted this bamboo from the village's grain rations. The bamboo pole was uniform and sturdy, and after several months of maintenance, the original green color had faded, replaced by a oily yellow.

The tobacco pot was made of purple copper by himself, and the tobacco pouch contained shredded peony tobacco. This way, although it increased the tedium of filling the tobacco, it also avoided the embarrassment of getting a mouthful of tobacco when smoking.

Perfect.

(Just like this kind of tobacco pipe)

He pinched a ball of tobacco and stuffed it into the tobacco pot, took two puffs with satisfaction, and just as he exhaled a stream of smoke, he saw Yang Ju trotting out from the corner of the educated youth院's wall.

Chen Fan leaned back in his chair without moving, watching her approach.

Yang Ju ran up to him, panting for a few breaths, and said, "Teacher Chen, my dad asked me to invite you over."

Slowly exhaling a puff of smoke, Chen Fan said, "What's the problem?"

Yang Ju said with a bitter face, "There are a few places in the drawing you made that the master carpenter doesn't understand."

Chen Fan wiped his face, stood up, pointed with his pipe, and said, "Lead the way."

Yang Ju's mouth twitched slightly. Teacher Chen had been listening to Peking opera on the radio these past two days, and he was probably a bit addicted.

But she didn't dare say this. She turned around and ran back.

Chen Fan held the pipe in one hand and put the other behind his back, imagining himself as Divine Constable Liu Jiyan, or perhaps Heavenly Mystery Old Man would be even better. In any case, it couldn't be Fan Liangji; mainly, the looks didn't match.

At the same time, he lightly tapped his feet, his heels not touching the ground, only stepping with the balls of his feet, moving with a vibrating, seemingly slow but actually fast pace, using the Eight-Step Catching Cicadas footwork. In a few steps, he caught up with the trotting Yang Ju, and under her depressed gaze, he quickly disappeared on the village path.

At the top of the village slope, at Captain Yang's house.

The original earthen wall house had been leveled, and dozens of men and women, young and old, were helping to move the broken earthen bricks, quickly clearing a large area.

Seeing Chen Fan come over, Yang Chuanfu, who was only wearing an autumn shirt, quickly waved at him, "Come on, come on, how did you draw this structure?"

Chen Fan ignored him, walked directly to Wang Youhai, stretched his head to take a look, "Oh, this is like this, like this..."

After explaining, Wang Youhai nodded, "I understand."

He then took out a cigarette and handed one to Chen Fan, without saying much polite words, turned around and led two people to work.

Seeing that the problem was solved, Yang Chuanfu also breathed a sigh of relief, patted the dust on his hands, took out a cigarette, lit it on Chen Fan's pipe, and said with a strange expression, "Why did you also get a dry tobacco pipe, just like an old man?"

Chen Fan took a puff, "It's fun."

Yang Chuanfu was speechless. He simply skipped this topic and said, "Anyway, you have nothing to do at home, why don't you come over and be the chief commander for building houses?"

After finishing the public affairs, the members of the team finally had time to consider private matters.

And the biggest private matter at the moment was undoubtedly building houses.

Now, in the Luciawan Brigade, except for the 5th team left by the Lu family, almost all other teams had earthen wall houses.

The reason for saying "almost" was because Teacher Chen's two-story building was a "pseudo-earthen wall house." From the outside, it looked like a two-story earthen wall house, but inside it was all green bricks that were even stronger than red bricks, and a lot of steel and cement were used. The floor slabs were also self-made precast slabs, very strong.

Because too many people participated in the construction of this house, naturally more people knew about it, and it became the object of envy for every household in the entire brigade.

Of course, no one would be like Teacher Chen, plastering the exterior walls of a good brick house with mud and putting a thatched roof on it. That would simply be crazy.

If you're going to build, build a beautiful brick house, even more beautiful than the brigade headquarters!

More than a month ago, Chen Fan heard at the brigade headquarters that the members wanted to build brick houses, so he spent a few days drawing many design drawings for the village.

There were layout diagrams of the entire village's houses, as well as several structural diagrams of house construction.

Now that the public affairs of the brigade headquarters were finished, and each team had finished distributing dividends these past two days, they had money in their pockets and free time, so naturally they wanted to seize the time to build new houses.

Some people were still thinking that if they could grab the first batch, they might even have a chance to spend the New Year in the new house!

However, the ideal was very full, but the reality was very skinny.

First of all, brick houses, especially buildings, couldn't be built by just gathering a few people.

Secondly, even if there were enough people and everything went smoothly, it would take at least a month or so, which was completely different from an earthen wall house.

Anyway, building a house at this time meant forgetting about spending the New Year in the new house.

What's more, manpower was still a big problem.

Even though almost every strong laborer in the current rural areas had participated in building new houses, the ones built before were basically earthen wall houses, which were very different from brick houses. Not to mention that even when building earthen wall houses in the past, they had to ask master carpenters from the commune construction team to come.

So, of course, those who wanted to build houses could only line up.

And the method of queuing was very simple, that is, drawing lots.

That day, after the dividends were distributed, Accountant Liu made wooden chips, and Supervisor Huang was responsible for shaking them up. All the wooden chips were put into a cardboard box, and each household head who wanted to build a house reached out to touch them with their eyes covered.

Captain Yang was indeed the captain, and he grabbed number 2 in one go.

If it hadn't been for Accountant Liu, who personally made the wooden chips, drawing number 30, and Supervisor Huang drawing number 28, the members would definitely have thought they were doing something shady.

Now, of course, they wouldn't.

Then everyone eagerly watched the Huang Laowu family at number 1 and the Yang Captain's family at number 2 build new houses.

Besides the six teams, the other eleven teams also needed to build new houses. For example, Zhang Wenliang, who had just gotten married, had already placed an order with the construction team, inviting masters Wang You-tian and Wang You-hai to oversee the work.

However, with more monks than porridge available, he couldn't monopolize both leading masters. After discussions between Secretary Yang and others from the brigade headquarters and the construction team, they decided to adopt a multi-level configuration of "high, medium, and low."

Wang You-hai would take a few people to Team 6, while Wang You-tian would stay with a few people in Team 5. The commune construction team would then send a few more master craftsmen to mobilize all personnel and try to satisfy the needs of the other teams as much as possible.

If they really couldn't take care of everyone, there was no other way but to queue up.

After Wang You-hai took his people to Team 6, Team 6 would send some of its own renovation team members to work with the construction team in other teams.

The master craftsmen were the first level, responsible for overall supervision and technical guidance. The renovation team members and construction team members were the second level, performing technical work such as carpentry and bricklaying.

The last level was the strong laborers from each team, who naturally took on the hard labor, such as demolishing walls, removing tiles, moving bricks, and mixing cement.

In this way, efficiency was instantly improved.

In just two days, the houses of Huang Lao-wu and Team Leader Yang, who had drawn the first two numbers, had been demolished one after another.

Now, Team Leader Yang's house was almost cleared, and Huang Lao-wu's house had begun to lay the foundation.

According to the current progress, they would definitely be able to move into their new houses before the spring plowing.

Hearing Team Leader Yang's invitation, Chen Fan glanced at the construction site and said without turning his head, "No time, busy."

He pointed to Wang You-hai, who was busy working, "With Master Wang here, what are you afraid of?"

Yang Chuanfu took a puff of his cigarette, looked at Master Wang, and said, "I'm just afraid that Master Wang won't understand the blueprints sometimes."

He turned to look at Chen Fan and muttered, "Others may not know, but don't I know? What are you busy with?"

Chen Fan smacked his lips and took another sip from the cigarette holder, only to find that there was no more tobacco.

He had to knock the ashes out of the pipe and refill it with tobacco, while saying, "It's just that you chose a different design. If you had chosen the same one as Huang Lao-wu's, would you need to ask me?"

After a pause, he added, "Why can't I be busy? Don't forget, I'm also a member of the Writers Association. When I went to the provincial capital last time, I received a task from the chairman of the Writers Association to submit a 300,000-word novel manuscript in February. Time is tight."

Upon hearing this, Yang Chuanfu didn't dare to say anything. No matter how important his family's house construction was, he didn't dare to compare it with Teacher Chen's writing. He had that much self-awareness.

Chen Fan continued, "I fired up a kiln again today to burn something. Besides, there are some medicinal herbs that I just harvested that need to be processed, and I also have to prepare for the New Year and write couplets. If I didn't have to go to banquets every night, I wouldn't even want to go out."

Yang Chuanfu coughed twice, "Then, that's fine. Since you're busy, then you can be busy with your own things first. But let me say this first, if Master Wang has anything he doesn't understand, you can't ignore it."

Chen Fan lit his pipe and nodded, saying, "Of course."

As he said this, he secretly sighed, thinking that the team leader was indeed a bit inferior to the leaders of the brigade headquarters.

Look at Secretary Yang, Team Leader Zhang, Team Leader Xiao, and Team Leader Ye. From the beginning, they never mentioned asking him to be a technical advisor.

It wasn't a big deal. Would he be idle enough to run over and help?

Impossible!

Yang Chuanfu didn't know that someone was slandering him in his heart. He took a puff of his cigarette, stood on the village road, and looked around, feeling quite proud, "This year, every household has been given a large sum of money, and everyone wants to live in brick houses and small Western-style buildings."

Especially those with large families who couldn't afford to split up before. Now, taking advantage of the house construction, they can split up the family. Now, Lu Jiawan has 48 households. By this time next year, I'm afraid 68 households won't be enough."

Chen Fan pursed his lips, thought for a while, and said, "Not necessarily. I think it can at least double."

Team Leader Yang was a little unconvinced, "I admit that you are capable, but you definitely don't understand this kind of thing as well as I do. For example, Huang Lao-wu's family will definitely not split up, and some families with elders won't agree to their sons splitting up before it's time to retire. That's a dozen or so fewer families."

Chen Fan shrugged, "I don't know much about the situation of each household, but I know about the village's homesteads."

Hearing this, Team Leader Yang was immediately speechless.

He looked around again, his brows furrowed, and he thought to himself, according to the village plan drawn by Chen Fan for Team 6, using the available space on this small hill as much as possible, while ensuring the distance between each household, so as not to be too crowded.

In the end, a total of 112 homesteads were planned, which means that if no new residential areas are opened up, this place can accommodate a maximum of 112 households.

This is because the distance between each household was too loose in the past. Now, all the old houses have been demolished and rebuilt, and the space has been re-planned, so that so many houses can be accommodated.

Otherwise, according to the previous habits, with a courtyard in front and a vegetable garden in the back, let alone 112 households, I'm afraid even 60 households would be difficult.

So the question is, with a limited number of homesteads, will each household try to occupy more?

Does this need to be thought about? The answer is definitely yes!

Thinking of this, Team Leader Yang couldn't help but smack his lips. He didn't even care about his own house and waved to Chen Fan, "You go and do your thing, I have something to do."

Before he could finish speaking, he had already run to the courtyard of the house next door and ran inside.

That was the home of his father, Old Team Leader Yang. Needless to say, he must be discussing with his family how to seize the opportunity and occupy a few more homesteads.

Chen Fan grinned and chuckled, looked around the construction site, and walked back leisurely.

Anyway, the Yang, Liu, and Huang families of Team 6 have always been like this, loving and killing each other for nearly a century. Maybe one family can take a small advantage at some stage, but they can never take a big advantage.

Otherwise, the other two families would definitely not agree.

Now there are only so many homesteads, no matter how much they fight for it, the objective conditions are there. Even if Team Leader Yang seizes the initiative, he can only occupy one or two more plots of land at most. And when Accountant Liu and Security Officer Huang come to their senses and see that the Yang family has so many people to split up, they will definitely understand their intentions, and then there will be another "dragon fight."

As a "worldly expert," Teacher Chen is of course sitting on the fishing platform watching the show.

But before the show starts, he should go and see the pottery he fired.

Returning to the front of the pottery kiln, feeling the temperature, and thinking it was about right, Chen Fan smashed open the kiln opening.

He rummaged through it and found a few pieces of pottery.

Several pottery flutes, ocarinas, and xiao... were all musical instruments.

He took out a round ocarina and tested the sound. Chen Fan nodded in satisfaction, then sat on the wasteland-style chair in front of the kiln opening, put the ocarina to his lips, and a melodious piece of music began...