127 reported again
When Lin Yiku returned, Guan Yuehe felt that the house had become more lively. For example, some people watched TV together, and others studied together.
Most importantly, the kang (heated brick bed) at home is now much more comfortable to sleep on.
Lu Chang and Lu Yan were arrested, and Song Gong'an and Lin Yiku, whom we hadn't seen for a while, both returned home. The work of digging sewers and laying pipes in the alley was also nearing completion, and life suddenly returned to normal.
After two days of calm, the newspaper was published, and Comrade Guan Yuehe's name once again appeared on the front page, sparking another round of discussion.
"It's that Ginkgo Alley again, and that woman again. Why do all the bad guys flock to that area?"
The person next to him shrugged. "You'd have to ask the bad guys. Who knows what they're thinking?"
“My neighbor’s relative lives in Ginkgo Hutong. I heard that there are lots of good things buried under that hutong. They’ve dug up pits and holes everywhere. They’ve dug out more than a dozen boxes just at the entrance of the hutong. I don’t know how many more are left!”
These words instantly drew the attention of everyone around.
"No wonder bad guys flock there; they're after the treasure."
Some people's eyes darted around, already considering going to Ginkgo Alley to check if the news was true or not.
The residents of Yinxing Hutong noticed that since the newspaper was published, more and more strangers were loitering near the entrance of the hutong. The elderly people became vigilant: their hutong had just seen off a couple of spies, could it be that bad guys were targeting them and trying to move in?
"Auntie, I'd like to ask you something..."
"What are you doing? What do you want by barging into our yard? Which unit are you from? What's your name?" Seeing that she was no match for him, Aunt Er immediately called out Aunt Bai, and the two of them blocked the gate of the compound to stop him.
“Let me tell you, the director of Changhu Police Station lives in our compound. He’s home right now. If you take another step forward, I’ll call for help.”
The person who came over wanting to ask about gossip: "..." was treated like a thief and guarded against.
But there were indeed some ill-intentioned people who set their sights on Ginkgo Alley.
Finally, a sign was placed at the entrance of Ginkgo Hutong that read: "Public toilet under construction, not digging for good stuff!"
When Guan Yuehe returned home from get off work and heard the rumors circulating outside that "there are all good things down there" in Ginkgo Alley, her expression was indescribable.
She was glad that her photo wasn't published in the newspaper; otherwise, she would have been mistaken for a panda in a zoo and surrounded by onlookers.
The newspaper from the daily newspaper office was published the day before yesterday morning, and the commendation meeting from the Municipal Public Security Bureau was held this afternoon. Guan Yuehe brought back a stack of newspapers and a certificate of merit when she came home from work today.
Everyone had already seen the contents of the newspaper, but she still delivered a copy to both of her parents' homes.
She also brought her award certificate to Courtyard No. 3. She showed it off at home before carefully putting it away. There was only one of these, so she couldn't give it away; if she broke it, it would be gone.
She finished showing off, but Jiang Guiying thought that since she had a camera at home, she should take a picture to record it.
So, early Sunday morning, taking advantage of the good weather, Jiang Guiying asked Xie Zhenhua from next door to come over to Guan Yuehe's house to take a picture.
"Don't frown, hold the certificate and newspaper higher." Jiang Guiying looked at them and added, "Change your clothes, you don't look serious enough."
Guan Yuehe looked down at her clothes. How beautiful and pretty they were! This dress was a recent gift from Xu Chengcai and Qin Zilan. She couldn't wear it to work, but since she had a day off today, she changed into it after breakfast and tidying up the house.
"Take a picture of this outfit first, I'll change into something else later." Guan Yuehe said to Xie Zhenhua, who was holding the camera, "Thank you so much, Teacher Xie."
"It's no trouble at all." He can also teach his daughter how to use a camera while he's at it.
After Xie Zhenhua helped take photos for half an hour, he asked Guan Yuehe to borrow her camera and bought some film from her. He then took Tingting, who was so excited that she wanted to start taking pictures right away, home.
Jiang Guiying instructed, "Wash two extra portions, and send one back to your uncle and aunt as well."
Guan Yuehe thought to herself: Well, she must be famous in the Harvest Brigade again.
I wonder if my uncle will sneak off to burn incense for her grandparents again in the middle of the night.
Are you having lunch at home?
Guan Yuehe changed back into her dress, put on her coat, and said, "I'm going to Xie Dongxue's house today."
Before leaving home, Guan Yuehe first went to check on the toilet and bathroom in her house, which were still not finished.
Jin Junwei, who lives across the street, went to the new residential compound of the car factory today and said that Zhou Hongqi's mentor was celebrating his birthday. Zhou Hongqi had been temporarily transferred to work in a neighboring city, so he had to take Yuanbao to his mentor's house to celebrate.
He also took the opportunity to visit the cadre's quarters with private bathrooms to see how other people's bathrooms were arranged, and planned to take inspiration from that and create one himself.
Upon hearing this, Guan Yuehe was no longer in a hurry to renovate her own bathroom. Jin Junwei was a very reliable person, and she decided to learn from his excellent experience later.
—
Xie Dongxue's husband, Zhao Lin, is a retired soldier who was assigned to the security department of a machinery factory as deputy head after his demobilization.
After they got married, they were allocated a house in the machinery factory. The Beijing Machinery Factory had more workers than the Wuxing Automobile Factory, and their family housing was all in one place, close to the factory area. Unlike the Wuxing Automobile Factory, whose family housing was scattered in several areas, making commuting to work less convenient for the machinery factory workers.
Before coming over, Guan Yuehe took a detour to a department store to buy some nutritional supplements.
Xie Dongxue had been waiting downstairs for a long time and beckoned her upstairs, saying, "The bulletin board in front of our residential compound has a newspaper from three days ago posted. All my neighbors are praising you for doing a great thing."
"The workers and their families at the machine factory have excellent taste!"
Xie Dongxue laughed; she was anything but modest.
"Yuehe's here! Please sit down. I'll get you some water. Would you like some sweet soup?"
"Aunt Qian, I'll just drink plain water." Guan Yuehe was also familiar with Xie Dongxue's mother. When she first got her apartment, Xie Dongxue's father made the wooden tub for her to take a bath. Later, when Xie Dongxue got a spot in college, Aunt Qian even made her a scarf.
“Zhao Lin is on duty today and isn’t home,” Xie Dongxue explained.
Guan Yuehe didn't mind. She came to see Xie Dongxue's daughter and had nothing else to do, so she came to talk to Xie Dongxue.
Unfortunately, the child was still fast asleep and showed no signs of waking up. Guan Yuehe watched for a short while before tiptoeing back to the living room to sit down.
"Yuehe, I saw you're in the newspaper again! Wow, you're such a clever girl!" Aunt Qian asked. "Dongxue said you were assigned to work in the foreign trade department. Is work going well?"
"It went smoothly."
Xie Dongxue laughed and said, "Why do you need to worry about that? She can do well anywhere."
"That's true, Yuehe has a cheerful and outgoing personality, and she's very likable." Aunt Qian had a basket slung over her arm. "I'm going out to buy groceries, you two chat first."
After Aunt Qian came downstairs, Guan Yuehe smiled and said, "Aunt Qian always praises me so much, it makes my face flush."
He pointed to his own face as he spoke.
Xie Dongxue looked over and saw that her cheeks were indeed rosy.
"Hey... did you ride your bike here because it's hot?" Xie Dongxue directly exposed her, and she laughed and didn't deny it.
But after only two laughs, Guan Yuehe suddenly remembered the sleeping baby in the room and quickly covered her mouth.
Xie Dongxue said while cutting an apple, "I went back to the factory a few days ago to do an interview and ran into Mo Zhinan. He said that Shuangshuang will graduate at the end of this year and is now waiting for a job assignment."
Guan Yuehe took the half apple that she was handed over and said, "Last time our company went to the Foreign Languages University to recruit people, she also went for an interview. The interviewer had a good impression of her. Maybe we can continue to be colleagues."
"Really?" Xie Dongxue was surprised. She was about to say yes, but then she frowned and said, "I heard that Mo Zhinan's family wants to ask a relative to arrange for her to stay at the school as a teacher?"
"Is that so?" Guan Yuehe couldn't help but frown. "Maybe the results haven't come out yet, and Shuangshuang hasn't told her family."
But she and Xie Dongxue exchanged a glance and immediately thought of how Mo Zhinan and his family weren't very supportive of He Shuangshuang's application for the college entrance examination.
After a moment of silence, Xie Dongxue said ambiguously, "Some families hope their daughters-in-law will be well, but others may not."
As she spoke, Xie Dongxue also mentioned some gossip in the family compound: "When the college entrance examination was reinstated, a woman made a fuss for several days before she finally registered. As a result, the night before the exam, her in-laws drugged her, and she had diarrhea all night. She didn't even have the strength to take the exam."
"And then there was the family next door to my house. The woman became a cadre and was very busy with work. Her husband was jealous of her becoming a cadre and felt ashamed because he was just an ordinary worker. He went to the factory to make a scene, insisting that the factory remove the woman from her cadre position, saying that there was no one at home to cook and take care of the children. Later, the woman went to the Women's Federation to file for divorce and remarried with her children."
Guan Yuehe listened to several pieces of gossip and thought to herself: Sure enough, anything can happen in a crowded place.
Comrade Xie Dongxue, having worked in the trade union before, has a keen eye for these family problems.
"I guess Mo Zhinan and his family don't necessarily want Shuangshuang to get into a big company. But Shuangshuang isn't someone to be trifled with, so it all depends on what she thinks."
Guan Yuehe strongly agreed. The He Shuangshuang she knew was always clear about her goals. Once she had made up her mind, she would roll up her sleeves and get to work. If she were to compromise easily, she would never have chosen to take the college entrance examination in the first place.
Just as she finished speaking, the baby inside suddenly started crying, and Aunt Qian returned carrying a basket of vegetables. Guan Yuehe would go to help Aunt Qian wash the vegetables for a while, and then go to play with the baby.
I had a big lunch at Xie Dongxue's house before leisurely heading home.
—
After waking up from her afternoon nap, Guan Yuehe heard a commotion outside. She went out to see what was going on and found that Aunt Ding had hired someone to bring Ding Laowu back from the hospital in a tricycle.
The Ding family is arguing about this.
Now, apart from Ding Lao Er's family of four who moved out and Ding Xiang who went to school, Ding Lao Da and his wife, Ding Xianguang, Ding Lao San's family of four, and Aunt Ding, a total of eight people live in the back house.
Ding Xianguang was of marriageable age and had already found a partner to marry. His family had set aside a room for him, just waiting for him to find a partner and get married.
Now that Ding Laowu is injured multiple times, there's no room left in the house, and apart from Aunt Ding, no one in the family wants him to come back.
"Didn't Ding Laowu rent a place outside? Why doesn't he just live outside? Why does he have to come back and squeeze in with everyone?" Guan Yuehe didn't understand.
Zhang Ersao, who knew the most inside story, laughed gleefully, "He used to swindle people out of their valuables with small sums of money, but he finally met his match. Someone found his place and smashed everything in his house to pieces. The landlord even came to him demanding compensation."
Once they got the compensation, they immediately stopped renting the house to him, because he was afraid of causing trouble.
Aunt Bai, who was also watching the commotion, said, "This beating was his destined calamity. Even if he hadn't been beaten by Lu Chang, he would have been beaten by the people Lu Chang tricked."
Those nearby thought it made a lot of sense.
Guan Yuehe whispered to Lin Sitian, "Aunt Bai is extremely superstitious now."
Just two days ago, she overheard Aunt Bai introducing a fortune teller who sells talismans to Chang Zhengyi, saying that the fortune teller's talismans are quite effective.
With his usual righteous courage, Guan Yuehe guessed that he would definitely go to that sorceress to buy talismans.
Sure enough, that evening, when she and Lin Yiku returned from the public restroom, they saw Chang Zhengyi secretly burning something on top of the old public restroom.
Even though he knew it wasn't a "ghost," he still clung to superstition!
Lin Yiku, however, said that real bad elements are more evil than invisible ghosts, "maybe he just wants to get rid of the bad luck on him."
After thinking about it carefully, Guan Yuehe felt that it made a lot of sense.
Chang Zhengyi is indeed very unlucky. He always runs into bad guys, and the commotion he causes exposes the bad guys' true colors, but he gets caught without any credit.
Aunt Zhao went to ask Officer Song if she could also receive an award certificate.
Asking the Public Security Bureau to issue an award to Chang Zhengyi was out of the question. But Officer Song was quick-witted; he wrote a thank-you letter in his personal capacity to the epidemic prevention station where Chang Zhengyi worked, thanking Chang Zhengyi for providing the police with the clue.
The leaders of the epidemic prevention station praised Chang Zhengyi, saying that he lived up to his name.
But even the praise from his superiors couldn't stop Comrade Chang Zhengyi from engaging in superstition.
—
On Monday, Guan Yuehe went to work and asked if the final list of recruits had been released.
The reply I received was that it would definitely be available before December.
That won't be until the end of the year.
The colleague who answered said, "The first batch of graduate students will graduate next June. Some particularly outstanding undergraduates will also graduate at the end of this year or next June. With more people meeting the requirements, we will need to conduct several rounds of interviews and assessments."
The list of interns selected to attend the foreign investment conference has been released, and Guan Yuehe even saw several familiar names on it, including Ye Zhi Qiu.
Upon learning that these interns would be attending training at the foreign trade department every Sunday for the next month or so, Guan Yuehe thought she should exchange more meal tickets in advance. In case she ran into classmates or junior students while working overtime on Sundays, she would have to treat them to a meal.
When Guan Yuehe got home, she told Lin Yiku about it, saying, "I was lucky; I graduated a year earlier than the rest of the group, which saved me a lot of trouble."
"Of course, it's mainly because Comrade Guan Yuehe is outstanding. Otherwise, luck alone wouldn't be enough, right?" she boasted.
Seeing that she had said what she wanted to say, Lin Yi could only nod in agreement, "Yes!"
Guan Yuehe was very satisfied with his answer and wrote it down in a letter to Shenghua and Chunmei. She was really looking forward to seeing their expressions when they saw such a thick letter.
It's funny just thinking about it.
She had just chuckled twice when Jin Junwei came over with Yuanbao and knocked on the door.
He visited Master Zhou Hongqi's house yesterday, and today he asked around to find out where he could buy a squat toilet or a Western-style toilet, and even found out the prices. He came over to ask if she wanted to buy one too.
“I’ll ask the other people in the alley. If they also want to buy it, I’ll go to the factory’s purchasing department and see if I can get it through the factory.”
After finding out what squat toilets and Western-style toilets were, Guan Yuehe and Lin Yiku decided to install a squat toilet in their home.
Jin Junwei clearly wanted to get the toilet fixed as soon as possible. After confirming her address, he wrote it down and immediately took Yuanbao to the next house to ask.
Guan Yuehe exclaimed again, "It's so good to have a good neighbor!"
Throughout November, the public toilets and individual restrooms in Ginkgo Hutong were completed one after another. Everyone agreed to ask the purchasing department for help in buying squat toilets, and many people even went to Jin Junwei for his opinion.
Jin Junwei made a name for himself in Ginkgo Hutong, and when people mentioned him, they no longer immediately thought of "Zhou Hongqi's gigolo."
With the arrival of December, the renovation of public toilets in Ginkgo Hutong has finally been completed.
The storage room and bathroom that Guan Yuehe's family used to have have now been transformed into a bright and clean bathroom. The empty small room is temporarily being used as a storage room.
Shenghua and Chunmei finally received the thick stack of letters sent from Beijing.
"So thick? I'd like to see what she wrote!"
Upon tearing open the envelope, a newspaper and a letter were poured out.
The two immediately went to look at the newspaper and unconsciously read it aloud: "Comrade Guan Yuehe has captured another fugitive after ten years!"
She knew it!
Guan Yuehe wouldn't send a newspaper for no reason!
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