Chapter 92: Pay all the money, pay part of the money...
In September 1996, Chen Pan officially became a college student in the English Department of Beijing Normal University.
It was also in this year that the entire Liuping Town was demolished and rebuilt on a large scale.
In the same year, Yang Xiaomei, who was almost sold by her father, suddenly disappeared from Qingshui Village with her new ID card and the star wishing bottle given to her by Chen Pan.
I heard that when she left, she didn't take a penny or an extra piece of clothing with her.
At that time, Chen Pan looked at the little star he had subconsciously folded with a hundred yuan bill and just smiled faintly.
Something about her accidentally getting a stomachache before the college entrance exam, or the other person not being at home when she went there.
Thinking of the other person's fate in her previous life, Chen Pan began to doubt that she was unable to take the college entrance examination due to her illness.
In rural areas, some families pay special attention to their children's education.
They are willing to sell everything they have in order to provide a college student to change the fate of their family.
Yet, even in rural areas and even in cities, some families are reluctant to allow their daughters, or even sons, to continue their education. They fear that their children will become uninhibited and never return. In their eyes, the child has been raised in vain, and they have lost a child, a betrothal gift, or even a source of support for their retirement.
Anyway, that day Chen Pan folded the two hundred-dollar bills and several fifty- and twenty-dollar bills she had just received into little stars and put them in the star wishing bottle she had prepared long ago.
She put the little stars at the innermost part and tied the mouth of the bottle tightly with a ribbon.
That was the last time she did anything for her former good friend.
If the bottle hadn't reached the other person's hands, if the other person had gotten the bottle but hadn't opened the cap. If the other person had opened the cap but hadn't poured out all the tightly packed little stars and examined them one by one, then the other person wouldn't have been able to discover the abnormality inside.
The so-called wishing bottle is the five hundred yuan that Chen Pan gave to the other party.
Now, ordinary workers in Longcheng earn about two to three hundred yuan a month, and civil servants and teachers earn about four to five hundred yuan a month.
Even the 20-hour hard-seat train that Chen Pan had taken from Longcheng to Beijing cost only 110 yuan.
Anyway, Chen Pan can only help his friend to a certain extent regarding his future destiny.
In the end, the other party would find a place and secretly work outside. Or they would find a place and immediately contact Chen Laosi. Or they would take the money, wander around, and then come back. Or they would not dare to leave Longcheng at all, and would just wander around the city and then go home.
Anyway, Chen Pan really couldn't take care of everything.
Because college life is so wonderful and exciting, Chen Pan is a little overwhelmed. And just because you get into college doesn't mean you don't have to worry about studying anymore.
It was not until he went to college that Chen Pan realized that their classes were not fixed. They might have one class here and the next class in another teaching building.
Moreover, in Chen Pan’s new dormitory, after everyone got familiar with each other, Chen Pan found out that his college entrance examination score was the lowest among the four.
When school started, the first problem Chen Pan encountered was that her English skills were slightly worse than those of her classmates. The English she spoke was also completely different from others.
The fact that she was admitted to this school was indeed due to the relatively low admission score of Beijing Normal University in Long County.
Anyway, after everything was settled at school, Chen Pan began to immerse himself in learning English.
She majored in English at school because she didn't want to have to listen to incomprehensible words in class and didn't want to be laughed at by other classmates for her accent every time she stood up to answer a question.
Chen Pan could only take his Walkman and take time out every day to go to the school woods or a small pavilion with few people to practice memorizing and practicing.
And at this time, the demolition of Chen Pan's house really began.
Because of the demolition, Chen Pan’s bank card suddenly received 600,000 yuan in demolition compensation.
Even after she transferred half of the compensation to her grandfather, she still had 300,000 yuan in her bank account. This was 300,000 yuan in 1997. Although the money was not as valuable as before, it was still a huge sum of money for them.
In addition to receiving 600,000 yuan in demolition compensation, Chen Pan's family received housing compensation equal to the size of the house inside. The factory warehouse wasn't counted as part of their housing, but their one-story house was built to be exceptionally large. Grandpa Chen lived in a large suite, they had a large office, Chen Pan's small suite, and six single-person dormitories.
All of those are ultimately counted in the house area.
The demolition work finally started at the end of October.
For this reason, Chen Pan, the owner of the house, took a special leave to go home.
The situation at that time really felt crazy and dreamy.
Among the demolition terms of paying all the money, paying part of the money and part of the house, or paying three times the amount of the house as compensation, the Chen family chose the conservative second option.
In the end, Chen Pan received 600,000 yuan in demolition compensation and five houses. Among the five houses, one was a three-bedroom, one-living room house of 120 square meters, three were two-bedroom, one-living room houses of 90 square meters, and one was a small two-bedroom, one-living room house of about 50 square meters.
Chen Pan's house had a very large yard, and their one-story bungalow had been renovated and used for accommodation, so in the end Chen Pan received this much compensation.
But Grandpa Chen and Grandma Chen only received 90 square meters of housing compensation for their small shop of 30 square meters, which is not as exaggerated as the big yard under Chen Pan's name.
For all the compensation for the 90-square-meter house, Grandpa Chen and Grandma Chen asked for a corresponding 90-square-meter street-facing shop as compensation, so they didn't get a penny.
It was precisely because of this that after receiving the demolition compensation, Chen Pan immediately transferred half of the money to her grandparents.
Soon after receiving his own 300,000 yuan, Chen Pan contacted an agent and quickly paid in full for a 60-square-meter two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment and a 40-square-meter one-bedroom, one-living-room apartment within Beijing's Fourth Ring Road. The two properties were located in the same complex, but in different buildings. Chen Pan bought both newly built units, one on the third floor and the other on the fourth. At the time, the price per square meter was 2,800 yuan, and there were no restrictions on who could buy a home.
Chen Pan spent about 170,000 yuan on the 60-square-meter, two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment. He paid a little over 115,000 yuan for the 40-square-meter apartment. By the time he was done with everything and had the two property certificates in hand, he was left with only 10,000 yuan of the 300,000 yuan demolition payment.
Because of this incident, Grandpa Chen and Grandma Chen, who had always respected her, criticized Chen Pan on the phone.
According to them, once Liuping Town is rebuilt, she will have five houses under her name and will not have to spend money to buy such an expensive house in Beijing.
They were actually quite unhappy about the fact that she had spent 300,000 yuan of the demolition compensation and only had 10,000 yuan left.
Even so, they later transferred 50,000 yuan to Chen Pan, asking her to renovate a house first. They couldn't just buy a house and leave it empty.
Then from that day on, Chen Pan started to focus on the decoration of his own small house while studying.
Yes, because of money, Chen Pan decided to renovate the small house temporarily.
Renovation is actually a very troublesome and tedious task. Because Chen Pan is young, many of the decorators who come across her seem to want to bully and fool her.
After looking for several waves of independent decorators, Chen Pan accidentally met an employee of a decoration company.
From that time on, Chen Pan began to work one-on-one with the young professional decoration manager.
Although at that time, Chen Pan still participated in everything from buying floor tiles and cement to choosing floors and windows.
But from that time on, there was a dedicated person responsible for all her problems.
That person understood Chen Pan's needs and took his requests seriously. If Chen Pan was dissatisfied with something, he could discuss it with his cement workers, bricklayers, plumbers, and carpenters, saving Chen Pan a lot of effort.
Liuping Town began demolition at the end of October, and Chen Pan received the demolition compensation in January 1997.
Chen Pan bought the house in the first month of her sophomore year. When she got the property certificate, it was April Fool's Day, the first day of April.
The subsequent renovation took up almost all of Chen Pan’s spare time.
It took Chen Pan four months to renovate that small house of only 40 square meters.
Because of the renovation work, Chen Pan did not go home during the summer vacation that year.
Waiting for August 25th, the day when her little house is completely renovated.
Chen Pan looked at the small one-bedroom apartment that he had cleaned several times, and felt unprecedentedly moved and at peace.
After wiping the yellow floor clean, Chen Pan couldn't help but lie down on the floor.
Because her family’s new houses are resettlement houses, they may not be able to obtain new property certificates in the future.
Besides, those houses don’t belong to her alone. She will definitely have to share them equally with her grandparents.
Now, these two sets of properties in Beijing are indeed registered under Chen Pan’s own name.
Knowing the future housing prices in Beijing, Chen Pan is now very excited.
She also clearly understood that when she was reborn, she did the right thing by trying every possible means to get her grandparents to Liuping.
Without the compensation for the demolition of the compound, how could they have earned 600,000 yuan just by working and doing business? Remember, this was 600,000 yuan in 1997.
Chen Pan ultimately didn't catch up with the free university education. She just happened to catch up with the sudden and dramatic increase in university tuition fees.
Chen Pan also didn't catch up with the free job assignments. Ever since she was admitted to university, the government had gradually phased out job assignments. She wasn't sure she'd be able to catch the last wave of state-sponsored assignments.
But Chen Pan finally caught up with the demolition.
Even though Chen Pan's pockets were completely empty at this moment, he was not worried at all.
In the future, whether she lives in the two houses herself or rents them out, or if she chooses to sell one when the housing prices are at their highest, Chen Pan knows that she has a way out.
Because he didn't have much money, Chen Pan started tutoring outside with his three other roommates after the new semester started.
They don't have to find students themselves as tutors; someone above them arranges everything, and they go directly to the parents to discuss the matter. If they're satisfied, they can start the class. Even their wages come from what the parents give to their senior, who then takes a cut, ultimately giving Chen Pan and the others 16 yuan an hour.
Yes, students from Beijing Normal University have special advantages when working as tutors outside.
When Chen Pan first worked with everyone, he was paid 16 yuan an hour. Later, his salary was raised to 17 yuan.
And outside, I heard that some people have already earned 20 or 23 yuan an hour.
Just when Chen Pan had been tutoring for a while and had basically solved her problem of food and pocket money, Grandpa Chen, who had sent her 2,000 yuan for tuition and accommodation some time ago, suddenly sent her another 5,000 yuan.
When depositing money, Chen Pan unexpectedly found that there was an extra 5,000 yuan in his bank card, and he immediately called home.
Then she heard his grandfather say a little embarrassedly: "I felt that you should have money on you, so I only transferred 2,000 yuan to you last time, which was regarded as paying your 1,500 yuan tuition and 500 yuan accommodation fee. But your grandmother and Qin Yang reminded me a few days ago, and I wondered if it was really like what they said: 'Beijing is expensive and renovation costs are expensive. Maybe you have used up all the money you have, so you don’t have money to buy a ticket home.' So I thought about it a few days ago, and went to the bank again to transfer another 5,000 yuan to you. I was wondering when you would find out, but I didn’t expect you to find out after only two days."
"I've been tutoring with everyone recently, so I'm not short of money—"
Feeling a little touched, Chen Pan told his grandfather that he had been tutoring for half a month, had received 500 yuan a few days ago, and had just gone to deposit the money yesterday.
"Well, more than ten yuan an hour is indeed a lot. But you can't let this affect your normal studies. Anyway, I still say that if you are short of money, you must tell us. Panpan, you also know our family's current situation. We really don't need money right now."
Chen Aiguo was happy that Chen Pan went out to make money, but he also felt sorry for her going out to work at such a young age.
Anyway, after the phone call ended, Grandpa Chen gave Chen Pan another three thousand yuan, saying that it was her living expenses for the year and she could spend it as she pleased.
Looking at the 8,000 yuan in the bank card, Chen Pan was happy for two days, but then he had other thoughts.
Yes, ever since he made money as a tutor for the first time, Chen Pan has been eager to try again.
Then, taking her own 8,000 yuan, Chen Pan persuaded her three roommates to join her in doing the job that her senior had done.
She plans to organize everyone to study at the place they designate.
Chen Pan planned to simply whitewash her own two-bedroom, one-living room apartment, install some basic floor coverings (either laminate or secondhand), and then fix the plumbing and electrical work. She'd also buy some secondhand tables and chairs, and then, in that apartment, she'd hire middle and high school students, whom her classmates had found, to tutor her. It was the same kind of tutoring program she'd run next door when she ran a restaurant in her previous life. Chen Pan wanted to try it out.
They acted right away. Later on, Chen Pan and his three roommates worked together to find someone to whitewash the house, install plumbing and electricity, and buy second-hand floors, tables and chairs.
During their freshman year, they were busy getting familiar with the surrounding environment, adapting to real college life, and keeping up with the teacher's lecture progress.
By the time they are in their sophomore year, they are already familiar with everything around them.
Almost everyone holds the idea of going out to accumulate more teaching experience, finding ways to train themselves, and using their special identities to make more money quickly.
So from the moment Chen Pan made the proposal, and after they were shocked that Chen Pan actually had a house in Beijing, in the end almost everyone wanted to seize this opportunity to exercise more.
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