Chapter 28 Choosing a House
There are quite a few houses that have recently become available in the factory, and most of them are being held by the housing department and are waiting to be allocated.
Zhao Qing then took a bunch of keys from his belt.
"Does your sister-in-law prefer a single-story house or a tenement building? Let me think of a few other suitable rooms?"
"The room should be well-lit, preferably not on the top floor... and it would be even better if it were more spacious."
Living on the top floor in a climate with long summers and short winters is really not a good choice. Chen Yun didn't want the couple to sleep in the corridor after they got married.
"Let me think about it." Zhao Qing fumbled for the keys, muttering to herself, "This is the top floor, and there's no paved road in front of this building..."
The factory staff housing is definitely better to live in when it's newly built. Although the old houses are spacious, most of them are not well insulated and are located on low ground, so many places flood when it rains.
Zhao Qing knew the factory's situation better than anyone else, and after thinking it over, she finally chose three rooms for Chen Yun to choose from.
"The first room is in a tenement building, on the second floor... It's not far from here, we can walk there."
This tenement building is much larger than Chen Yun's dormitory building. If you look up and count the windows, there are at least twenty households on each side.
Moreover, there are houses on both sides of the corridor, with at least forty households per floor.
Chen Yun: "..."
It's not even as good as those low, red brick buildings!
Before she even reached the second floor, Chen Yun smelled a strong stench of urine, followed by the sound of a woman yelling at her child.
"If you can't control your piss, then go pee in front of your house. What are you doing peeing in front of my house..."
The mischievous little child laughed and ran away.
The woman chased after him and cursed him a few more times before finally stopping.
The houses, stretching as far as the eye could see, lined both sides of the corridor. Each doorway was piled high with clutter, and some people even had beds laid out in front of their doors with mosquito nets hanging up.
"..."
"Section Chief Zhao, we won't go in." Gao Ming subtly dodged the bamboo pole that suddenly appeared in front of him, and smiled wryly: "Chen Yun and I both prefer peace and quiet."
"I haven't come to see this room myself, but I remember the notebook says it's quite big..." Zhao Qing was also a little embarrassed.
Gao Ming and Chen Yun didn't dislike the house because it was bad; it was just that there were too many disputes with the neighbors. Given a choice, they would definitely choose something else.
The second room was diagonally opposite the transport team.
Regardless of the condition of the house inside, its location next to the factory gate makes it quite convenient to go out... it's just that the living area is a bit far away.
The building is one of the first old buildings constructed.
A three-story tenement building.
The black bricks I made myself in the early years were of questionable quality, and their surfaces are now pitted and uneven due to wind and rain erosion.
Chen Yun pulled a handful of wild grass from the crack in the bricks without saying a word.
"There's a problem with the Housing Management Department's report!" Zhao Qing said firmly as she took back the keys.
The third house is located by a small river.
"This building was converted from a factory. It was originally intended to be a factory warehouse, but later it was discovered that there was a river next to it, making it inconvenient for trucks to come in, so it was converted into a staff housing building."
The house can be considered a single-story building, with a sloping roof covered in gray tiles.
There are six rows of houses in total, with four rooms in each row, and the doors of the two rows of houses facing each other.
Every window in the house was at least two meters high. Chen Yun noticed that the curtains in the house next door were only half-drawn.
There is a patch of dirt land about ten square meters in front of the house, which is mostly planted with scallions, garlic and green vegetables, except for the house diagonally opposite which is full of flowers and plants.
It was the season when chrysanthemums were in full bloom, with tiny pink flowers dotting the green landscape.
With the pink floral curtains drawn tightly in the windows, one can imagine that this house must have a very artistic female owner.
Chen Yun admired the flowers, while Gao Ming was quite satisfied with the ceiling height of the house.
The lowest part of the house is at least five meters high, and the highest point of the sloping roof is estimated to be more than seven meters high.
"Let's go inside and take a look." Gao Ming offered to go inside for the first time: "It's close to the staff hospital, only a ten-minute walk away."
Moreover, with lush trees all around and a flowing river nearby, it must be much cooler than a tenement building in the summer.
Zhao Qing breathed a huge sigh of relief.
The old, warped red wooden door creaked incessantly when opened.
There were no neighbors to the right of the house, but soon there was movement in the house to the left; a window was pushed open and someone peeked out.
He looked to be a young man of seventeen or eighteen, but his puffy eyes were instantly reduced to slits by the sunlight.
"Mom, we're here to look at apartments."
Then the young man shrank back inside, and someone inside muttered something unintelligible.
First of all, the house is quite soundproof...
The room is about 30 square meters, and the roof is so high that even talking echoes.
"Is the room cool now?"
As soon as the front and back windows are opened, a breeze blows through the room instantly. There is no musty smell in the air, and there is even a faint fragrance of chrysanthemums.
Gao Ming looked up and examined each of the walls around the house.
"I see some steel channels still stuck in the wall. Were they left behind when we built the shelving?"
There were steel channels on all four walls of the house. Although they were later sealed with cement, you could still see traces of steel bars.
"The warehouse shelves were built with steel channels embedded in the wall. To remove them, the building would have to be demolished. There was no other way but to leave them there... However, it doesn't affect people living in them."
"After the house is allocated to me, I can make any changes to the interior as I please, right?" Gao Ming asked again.
Although Zhao Qing found it strange, he nodded honestly: "As long as it does not affect the main structure of the house or encroach on the land outside the house, it is not considered a violation."
Gao Ming nodded, then suddenly leaned close to Chen Yun's ear and whispered a few words.
Chen Yun's eyes lit up.
With such a tall building and existing steel channels in the load-bearing walls, it certainly meets the requirements for building a second floor.
“Then we’ll choose this room,” Gao Ming decided.
Zhao Qing looked at Chen Yun, waiting for her to nod and make a decision.
"We'll choose this one. Thank you, Director Zhao."
"That's fine! I'll give you the key first, and you can come to the housing department to handle the rest of the paperwork after you get your marriage certificate."
No matter what's so special about the house, the two of them finally found a place that suited their tastes, so they didn't have to return the two bottles of wine that Zhao Qing had just received yesterday.
Chen Yun took the keys and then wandered around the house.
"Which house did Captain Gao take a fancy to? Someone came to see it last month and went back to apply for a change, saying that the echo inside was so loud that it shook his head." Zhao Qing asked curiously.
"I plan to build a second floor."
"Second floor!"
Zhao Qing looked up at the roof... It was more than enough to build a single floor.
Why didn't he think of this method? A single floor is thirty square meters, and two floors together would be sixty square meters, which is bigger than the room allocated to the factory director.
If we had thought of this earlier, the house wouldn't have slipped out of the housing department.
Zhao Qing's Adam's apple bobbed, and despite his deep regret, he left.
What else can they do but stay? Are they really going to back out and take the house back...? Gao Ming is not someone who can be bullied so easily.
“The windows are so high, the windows on the second floor and beyond are already built in,” Gao Ming pointed out to Chen Yun.
"Do you know a carpenter who can build two-story houses?"
"Have you heard that our factory introduced two new production lines a couple of years ago, but the technicians didn't know how to adjust the machines and deliberately concealed this, resulting in a large number of unusable iron bars being discarded?"
Chen Yun shook her head.
Two years ago, she was looking for a job in Taicheng. How could she have known that a machinery factory hundreds of miles away had a problem?
However, she had heard that the factory had started recruiting technicians last year.
"The factory suffered huge losses because of this incident. At the year-end meeting, all employees had their bonuses and benefits deducted... The iron bars are still piled up behind the factory building!"
"Weld a layer of iron?" Chen Yun didn't understand the specific method, but he remembered that in his previous life, he had seen many home renovation bloggers use steel structures to build a second floor when renovating their new houses.
Gao Ming smiled and nodded.
"Do we have enough money?" Chen Yun asked worriedly.
Chen Yun's total savings amounted to over five hundred, while Gao Ming had over nine hundred.
Building such a large two-story structure would cost at least several hundred dollars for a wooden frame alone, and even more if it were all made of steel bars and cement.
Chen Yun was worried that after the second floor was built, the two of them would have to sleep in separate beds in this empty room for several months.
Chen Yun slept in a single bed in the dormitory, while Gao Ming slept in a bunk bed in his dormitory.
How can we live like this...?
“If the house didn’t have steel channels, I wouldn’t have considered building a second floor. There are ready-made support points, and then you can use sheet metal… You don’t need to weld everything, just weld a frame.”
The steel channels in the wall can easily support over a thousand kilograms, and with the iron frame reducing some of the load, it's perfectly fine for people to live on it.
"It won't cost much, we just need to find a trustworthy welder to make the welds stronger."
Chen Yun can talk fluently about treating people's illnesses, but Gao Ming's explanation of some steel channel or force point only makes things more confusing.
"Don't worry, I promise we can sleep peacefully on the second floor from now on."
Gao Ming looked around to make sure no one was watching, then put his arm around Chen Yun's shoulder and pulled her closer to him.
Chen Yun was still preoccupied with how to decorate the house in the future.
This room will not only become their new home, but they may also live there for many years... No one knows how many years the machine factory can survive in the torrent of time.
Knock knock knock—
The hand on his shoulder was quickly withdrawn, and Chen Yun watched with amusement as Gao Ming scratched the back of his head as if nothing had happened.
He's calm and bold in everything else, but when he puts his arm around his partner's shoulder, he feels guilty like a thief.
"Hello, comrade."
The woman knocking on the window was in her thirties, wearing an indigo overall with a faded "March 8th Red Banner Pacesetter" badge pinned to the collar. She had thick eyebrows, a square face, and a braid hanging down her back.
"Hello comrade, what can I do for you?"
Chen Yun walked over and opened the door, only to find that the woman was really tall; she must have been bending over and leaning against the window.
"Hello, I'm Yang Juhua, who lives next door," the woman introduced herself, with a young girl standing in the open doorway next to her.
"Hello, Sister-in-law Yang, I am Chen Yun."
"Chen Yun...you're Dr. Chen from the staff hospital?" The woman's serious expression faltered, and she raised an eyebrow.
"Does your sister-in-law know me?"
"My husband had a cold a few days ago and was so feverish that he was shaking all over. We went to your place and got two pills. He got better after taking them!"
Sister-in-law Yang's expression seemed to suddenly become warm after she learned Chen Yun's identity.
Just now... I had a feeling that I was about to cause trouble?
“I remember Master Hu.” Chen Yun smiled, gesturing slightly to indicate Master Hu’s height. “Master Hu even asked me to tell you where he kept all his money, afraid he might just burn it all down!”
“This is my husband, Lao Hu.” Yang Juhua chuckled and pulled the girl at the door forward. “This is my daughter, Hu Yue’e. She’s graduating from vocational school this year, and I’m planning to have her take the medical school entrance exam. I’ll be happy if she can work at the factory’s hospital like Dr. Chen.”
Hu Yue'e's military green Lenin suit collar was pulled askew by Yang Juhua, causing the introverted girl to blush with embarrassment before she could even speak.
"Mom, let me go."
"Ouch... I couldn't control my strength." Yang Juhua quickly straightened her daughter's clothes, but the dull thud from the pat on the shoulder sounded painful.
Hu Yue'e seemed to be used to it, and smiled shyly at Chen Yun and Gao Ming.
"Hello, Dr. Chen."
"From now on, you should learn more from Dr. Chen. If you don't understand anything in your studies, don't be shy and ask Aunt Chen for help. Don't be afraid of embarrassment..."
Hu Yue'e pursed her lips and didn't reply.
Yang Juhua rambled on for a long time before yelling into the house, "Hu Xiangyang, get out here! Are you incubating eggs at home?!"
"..."
"Mom, can't you speak properly! Who says a grown man should stay home and incubate eggs?"
Hu Xiangyang, looking displeased, stepped over the threshold with his messy hair and his white shirt tucked into his waistband in a crumpled mess.
"Call someone." Yang Juhua kicked Hu Xiangyang's buttocks.
Hu Xiangyang rubbed his bottom, turned to Yang Juhua with a wronged expression, and yelled, "How am I supposed to know what to call you if you don't tell me!"
"Are your eyes on your butt? Call them uncle and aunt!"
"She looks about the same age as my sister, why are you calling her 'Auntie'!"
Chen Yun smiled; who doesn't like to talk about their youthful days...
“Dr. Chen calls me sister-in-law and I’m on the same level. If you don’t call me aunt, what should you call me? Do you want to call me auntie?”
The mother and son spoke louder and louder, until it sounded like they were shouting.
Chen Yun's ears were ringing from the shock, and Gao Ming pulled her arm and quietly took two steps back.
"Aunt Chen." Hu Xiangyang was the first to give in, reluctantly addressing her.
"Uncle Gao over there, didn't you see him?!"
Hello, Uncle Gao.
Hu Xiangyang had just called out to someone when Yang Juhua slapped him away in disgust... She turned around and pushed him away mercilessly with her large hand.
Hu Xiangyang was so angry that he jumped up and down and yelled in the house.
"What did Sister-in-law Yang want to ask me just now?"
"I just saw a young woman come into the house and thought she was Luo Jianguo's new wife. It's all my fault for being blind and shouting without seeing clearly."
Chen Yun only remembered hearing the name Luo Jianguo somewhere, but couldn't quite place where.
Before she could figure it out, she heard Gao Ming ask in surprise from behind, "Sister-in-law, are you talking about Luo Jianguo, the younger brother of Deputy Factory Director Luo?"
"That's him!" Yang Juhua said with a look of disgust.
"How did you know that Luo Jianguo and his wife were assigned this room?" Gao Ming had also noticed the change in Yang Juhua's expression and asked curiously, "Did you not want them to live next door?"
“The couple went to check it out in private more than once. Anyone with eyes could see that!” Yang Juhua said, pursing her lips.
Last month, someone from the housing department brought the couple to see the apartment. I overheard them chatting outside, and it seemed like they would be assigned the apartment to them once their housing application was approved.
Chen Yun and Gao Ming exchanged a glance.
"The housing department brought them to see the apartment even though their application hadn't been approved?" Chen Yun asked casually.
"Do I need to explain this to you?" Yang Juhua raised an eyebrow at Chen Yun, hands on her hips. "Everyone wants to be allocated a good house, and everyone knows perfectly well how to get a good house first."
Luo Jianguo gave gifts to the staff of the Housing Affairs Department. As soon as a housing application was approved, he would take advantage of his position to allocate the housing to them first.
But I never expected that Chen Yun and his group would beat me to it.
"My husband and Luo Jianguo don't get along, so I definitely don't want them living next door to me..."
The two worked in the same workshop. As the workshop director, Lao Hu disapproved of Luo Jianguo taking advantage of his position as the deputy factory director's brother to cheat and shirk his responsibilities, and he often criticized him by name in public.
Last year, their workshop was the only one that failed the lathe maintenance test. Later, it was discovered that someone had tampered with the lathe.
Hu Gangtie suspected that Luo Jianguo was behind it, and the two got into a fight in the workshop, both of them being punished.
Yang Juhua felt that her husband, Lao Hu, had been greatly wronged, and she would tell everyone she met about it, so of course she would not be left out at this time.
“Everyone around here knows that we have a bad relationship with his family, so why would I want to be his neighbor?”
Yang Juhua ended the conversation with a smile, though she wouldn't honestly admit that she was prepared to report the housing department. Luckily, the people who moved in weren't Luo Jianguo and his wife.
A strong burnt smell suddenly wafted through the air. Chen Yun sniffed carefully and realized it must be from Yang Juhua's house.
"Did your sister-in-law burn the rice?"
"What!" Yang Juhua stamped her foot in surprise, turned around and rushed into the house, her mouth still running.
"I must have had the worst luck in my life to give birth to a son of a bitch like you. You didn't even notice when the rice was burnt."
"All you do is sleep all day long. Let's see if you can sleep forever."
"You'll eat the rice at the bottom of the pot for lunch!"
Chen Yun glanced into the room, both amused and exasperated. Hu Yue'e immediately moved to the door to hide, her expression helpless: "Auntie, my mom is really fierce when she swears."
The Hu family's house did not have a second floor. The beds of the parents and siblings were separated by a cloth curtain, and the room was filled with cabinets and tables.
Next to the dining table was a honeycomb briquette stove, with a tin chimney extending from the stove opening all the way to the back window.
It's a typical northern stove; very few people use it in Panshui County.
After all, summer is already hot, and cooking over a fire indoors... the fumes and temperature are unbearable.
Gao Ming had obviously thought of this as well, and suddenly suggested that he go and take a look at the direction where the house was closer to the river.
The two walked around to the back of the house.
Behind the house, there was a muddy area about two meters wide from the riverbank. Gao Ming knocked on the walls everywhere until he stopped at the window of Yang Juhua's house next door.
"Load-bearing walls should not be knocked down."
"Section Chief Zhao said we can't add any more buildings, and we can't touch any walls that aren't load-bearing," Chen Yun said.
Otherwise, someone else would report it to the Reform Committee in no time.
"I don't plan to build an extension; I just want to create a doorway here so I can move the honeycomb stove outside to cook. Having it outside will reduce the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning inside..."
Every winter, there are cases of poisoning from using honeycomb stoves for heating in the factory. It's really unsafe to keep the stoves at home.
Chen Yun looked at the wall, pointed to the window, and asked, "Why don't we widen the window a little bit and turn it into a doorway?"
Even without expanding, Chen Yun's figure was large enough to easily walk out from inside.
"Good idea." Gao Ming's eyes lit up, and he immediately started thinking about how to do it.
At that moment, Chen Yun was thinking... how much curtain fabric would such a big window use up!
After viewing the house, the couple discussed what to bring back from their trip to the county town in a few days to take their wedding photos.
As we chatted, we passed by Yang Juhua's small vegetable garden again.
"Sister-in-law Yang, my boyfriend and I will head back now."
Yang Juhua was squatting in the vegetable garden weeding when she heard this, so she quickly stood up and warmly invited, "Have lunch at my house."
"No need to trouble you, Sister Yang. My boyfriend has to leave this afternoon."
"Where is Captain Gao sending this time?" Yang Juhua was just being polite, then quickly changed the subject: "If you're going to the provincial capital, I have something I want to take with me."
"Let's go to the county town," Gao Ming replied with a smile.
“Our factory store has everything that the state-run stores in the county town have, and sometimes they don’t even have as much as ours,” Yang Juhua waved her hand.
She looked down on the things in the shops in the county town, but someone else did. Suddenly, the door of the shop across the street, whose front was full of flowers, opened.
"The transport team! Captain Gao!"
"Old Zheng!"
The young man has fair skin that many women envy, yet he doesn't lack masculinity at all. When he smiles, the corners of his eyes turn up slightly, making him look like a very gentle person.
Gao Ming was somewhat excited to see this person.
The two held hands tightly for a long time before separating. The young man's eyes were red with excitement, making his skin appear even whiter.
"What are you doing at the Red Sun Machinery Factory!" Gao Ming punched the young man, grinning with his white teeth showing. "If it weren't for this face that doesn't get tanned even on the battlefield, I really wouldn't have recognized you."
"The newspaper where I used to work was reorganized and restructured, and I was transferred to the propaganda department of the machinery factory."
"Brilliant?" Chen Yun exclaimed.
"Chen Yun, come here quickly, let me introduce you to someone."
There aren't many people who can make Gao Ming genuinely happy and smile when introducing someone to Chen Yun, and Zheng Wen is one of them.
The two used to be company commander and political instructor, respectively.
They are comrades-in-arms and partners.
“Back in the company, when I was disciplining people, Lao Zheng would do ideological work for them. We would play the bad cop and the good cop.”
Later, the entire company was reorganized and optimized, and the two men were subsequently demobilized.
The jobs were assigned to people in the north and south, and Zheng Wen moved around to several different companies, and that's how they lost contact.
Who would have thought... we'd run into each other at the factory.
“Last year, I ran into Xiao Mu by chance when I was on a business trip to Taicheng. He said, ‘You work in a remote mountain village. Who would have thought it was Hongri Machinery Factory?’… That kid deserves a scolding!” Zheng Wenhao shook his head with a smile.
"You rascal." Gao Ming gently placed his large hand on Chen Yun's shoulder and, unusually, introduced him openly, "This is my girlfriend, Chen Yun."
"Hello, sister-in-law." Zheng Wenhao stood at attention, pulled in his stomach, and gave a proper salute in the military style. Then he relaxed and called into the house, "Xiao Song, come out quickly."
"Object?"
"I got married last year, which is a year earlier than the company commander's."
The woman walking towards them was very beautiful.
She wore a thin, light pink dress that just went past her knees, and a pair of black leather shoes that were polished to the shine.
His face was slightly pale, and his thin body looked as if a gentle breeze could knock him over.
“This is my lover, Song Shiwei.”
Her name perfectly matches her temperament; Chen Yun gives the impression of a beautiful woman from Jiangnan who has stepped out of a painting, and her sweet, delicate voice is incredibly pleasant to hear.
"Hello, sister-in-law. Hello, Captain Gao." The voice was lazy and soft, just as Chen Yun had expected.
"Hello, sister-in-law." Chen Yun smiled.
“You used to live across from me in the company dormitory. I never thought we’d be living across from each other again.” Gao Ming smiled slightly at Song Shiwei and then eagerly grabbed Zheng Wen to reminisce about their time in the army.
"Why don't you come over to my house for a while, sister-in-law? They probably won't finish their conversation anytime soon," Song Shiwei said gently, and a strong fragrance immediately filled Chen Yuntian's mind.
It smells like a mixture of some kind of plant fragrance and face cream, and the last layer seems to smell like floral water.
Inside the house... the scent of floral water was even stronger.
Having grown accustomed to the smell of disinfectant, Chen Yun was immediately overwhelmed by the stench as soon as she stepped inside, and all three windows were tightly closed.
"Please sit down, sister-in-law."
Song Shiwei looked around the room, and finally dragged a small stool out from under the table and placed it in the middle.
There were two wooden sofas a few steps away from Chen Yun.
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