Chapter 119

After coming out of Jiang Wu's house, Jiang Bai couldn't help but look back at the house upstairs that he had just entered.

The first phase has been completed, and the landscaping outside has also been completed. Many people who have seen Jiang Wu's house asked Manager Qian to arrange the decoration after buying the house, and some people hired someone to decorate it themselves, but most people still want to decorate it like Jiang Wu's house, and directly asked Manager Qian to copy Jiang Wu's decoration on a one-to-one basis. There are

also people who bought a small house and were reluctant to give up the 60-square-meter space upstairs occupied by the living room, so they asked to make it directly into the second floor. The height of the living room does not need to be that high, and the 60-square-meter space is enough for them to separate three large rooms.

Manager Qian asked them if they wanted to do soundproofing. Some families were afraid of spending too much money. After all, they had already spent all their savings on buying the house, not to mention the renovation. They wanted to save as much as possible. Some families wanted to move in as soon as possible. Seeing all the construction sites around, it was really noisy, so they asked for soundproofing.

In fact, before Jiang Gui mentioned the need for soundproofing, Manager Qian had not thought of doing soundproofing. Their model room had never been soundproofed.

Now, the manager has to make a lot of extra money just for the interior decoration of the first phase of houses in their community, especially during the May Day holiday. Jiang Xi came to sign the decoration commission contract for her villa with him.

The total area of ​​her villa is 600 square meters, excluding the large terrace, balcony, yard, and attic that were given as gifts. There is also a basement below, which is not included in the house area.

According to Jiang Xi's request, he had contacted the floor heating merchant before May Day. After negotiating the price and signing the commission contract, he arranged for the floor heating to be installed in all the rooms of the house, including the basement.

Shanghai is not as cold as the north, and it is impossible to have centralized heating, so the heating for Jiang Xi's villa is completely powered by electricity. Manager Qian thought that for such a large villa, if all the floor heating was turned on, the daily electricity consumption would be a considerable amount.

Because he had already decorated Jiang Xi's duplex apartment and knew what she needed for a house, he also specially found college students majoring in architectural design in universities in Shanghai to design Jiang Xi's villa.

The students who studied house design did not expect that they would have the opportunity to practice before they graduated, and they cherished this opportunity very much. After all, the villa would be his actual case work in the future. The college students were also very confident. After meeting Jiang Xi on May Day, they heard a lot of Jiang Xi's ideas.

When the college student first received the job, he was thinking about decorating Jiang Wei's villa into a work of art, and all kinds of novel ideas were poured down by Jiang Wei.

Because Jiang Wei's requirements for his future residence are warm, comfortable, simple and bright.

Bright, that is the requirement for lighting, Manager Qian understood, a whole glass wall.

The height of the single floor of the villa is 4.2 meters, and there is no need to do the partition treatment like an apartment, because the area is already large enough, if Jiang Wei lives with his grandfather, it is more than enough.

However, Jiang Xi definitely cannot take care of such a big house by herself. She will definitely need to hire at least two people to take care of the hygiene and food at home, so she needs to prepare a nanny room. Although Jiang

Xi did not live in a mansion in her previous life, she had seen many mansions. However, she was influenced by the small peasant economy and did not waste space just because the villa was big enough. She tried her best to make use of every inch of space.

The villa area is located on a higher ground. Generally speaking, even if there is a flood, it will not flood here. Except for the basement and the warehouse, Jiang Xi decorated it according to the area of ​​the house. Not only did she lay floor heating, but she also wanted to make an audio-visual room. When the time comes, she will buy a projector and watch movies at home.

This idea confused Manager Qian and the college student he hired to design the house.

Forgive my ignorance, but can a movie theater be built at home?

After that, the college student never dared to talk about designing a work of art again. He just listened to Jiang Xi. He and Manager Qian were responsible for writing down Jiang Xi's needs, including the movie viewing area, fitness area, reception area, restaurant, kitchen, etc., all of which were done on the basement floor. For the purpose

of lighting, the walls of the reception area are all made of glass.

The kitchen is also equipped with a dishwasher, oven, range hood, etc.

The decoration of the entire villa, from top to bottom, all the cabinets are floor-to-ceiling, which is convenient for cleaning and maintenance.

Jiang Qi also requested that an elevator be installed in the villa.

After hearing this, Manager Qian and the college student were already embarrassed.

Including the basement and the three-story attic, there are only four floors in total. You can't install an elevator in the attic, right? Isn't it just a three-story house? Why install an elevator?

And why install floor heating in the basement? What a waste of money. The area of ​​the basement alone is 300 square meters, and the area of ​​the attic has not been spared by her. Everything must be designed well and all the space must be fully utilized. With her design, the 600-square-meter house can at least look like a 1,000-square-meter house.

Jiang Xi only had three days off for the May Day holiday. During these three days, she was discussing the design of the villa with her money manager and the college student designer. In the end, the decoration cost alone could buy another big house.

But Jiang Xi didn't care. She had received the royalties for the fourth and fifth volumes of the physical book. The popularity of "Justice Bao II" made the publishing of "The Song Dynasty" very profitable. The publishing house reprinted the book again and again, and her royalties were enough to support her decoration.

In fact, her decoration was not luxurious, and could even be called simple. This was the era, and electrical appliances were expensive. The floor heating of the two floors plus the basement, 900 square meters, was not cheap, and the elevator was not cheap either.

But Manager Qian and the college student were quite excited. If the decoration was completed and the photos were taken, they could use them as their own villa decoration cases and design cases. In the future, if a client with a villa asked them to decorate or approached them, just like the apartment they decorated for Jiang Liu, this case would allow the client to see the actual decoration effect.

So the two of them not only met Jiang Liu's actual requirements for the house, but also had to consider aesthetics. How could the design and decoration of Jiang Liu's house be both practical and aesthetic? For this reason, the college student also asked two of his good classmates to help with the design reference. Now the house has been decorated for three months, but it is not yet finished.

Jiang Bai found Manager Qian and asked where he was going to eat.

Manager Qian then remembered that everything else in Jiang Xi's house was complete, except that this apartment could not be connected to gas, so if he wanted to cook, he had to call the gas delivery man to send a can of gas up. In addition, although the kitchen was decorated, there were no tableware such as pots and pans. In other words, if Jiang Bai lived here for a short period of time, it would be fine. If he lived here for a long time, he would need to prepare pots and pans and other daily necessities by himself.

Jiang Bai certainly did not live here for a long time. He would live on campus after school started, and this was just a temporary residence.

After knowing that Jiang Bai was a college student who was about to register for college, Manager Qian said, "The construction site next door is under construction. Every lunch time, they sell boxed lunches, but the number of boxed lunches they cook every day is limited. If there are three extra portions for the three of you, I will go and tell the boxed lunch seller next door that I will add three more portions. The boxed lunch is one yuan."

Jiang Bai was surprised that the boxed lunch was so expensive. If there were three meals a day, it would cost three yuan. The three of them would spend ten yuan a day just on food.

He wanted to buy a rice cooker, buy some vegetables, and cook stewed rice. It would be clean and hygienic.

In this respect, he and Jiang's mother are exactly alike. They always complain that the food outside is not clean and hygienic. If they can cook by themselves, they will never order food outside. In fact, he just wants to save money.

Among them, the rice cooker is a little more expensive, but the rice cooker is not useless after one use. When his sister comes, the rice cooker can still be used.

He told Tong Jingang and Tong's father about his idea,

and Tong's father agreed. He and Tong's mother both have fixed salaries. Although his unit has good benefits, the salary is fixed, especially in his system, which increases every year, but the increase is limited. It is not easy for two people to support Tong Jingang, a college student.

Before 1994, studying in college was subsidized by the state, and it was basically free. Note ①

But since the reform began in 1995, tuition fees have increased. This year, universities have started the integration system. University tuition fees have increased from 200 yuan last year to 1,300 yuan this year, not counting the 150 yuan textbook fee per academic year. In other words, the tuition fee for one year in university alone is 1,500 yuan.

This seems to be similar to the current high school tuition, but the accommodation fee in university is higher than that in high school. In high school, food can be exchanged for food coupons and can go home to eat, but in university, this is not the case. Therefore, on top of the 1,500 yuan, at least 500 yuan of living expenses must be added. At least

2,000 yuan a year.

How much does a worker earn at this time? This year is generally considered to have increased, 300 to 400 yuan a month, and in big cities it may have increased to 500 or 600 yuan.

The mother of the child, Wu Cheng, works at a hospital and currently earns only about 300 yuan a month.

The salary for Grandpa Jiang's patrol work has increased this year, to 100 yuan a month. If it is a rural child, Grandpa Jiang's annual salary cannot support the tuition and miscellaneous fees of a child.

This is also the reason why Jiang Xi was in such financial difficulties in her previous life, even though she already had the salary subsidy from Grandpa Jiang.

Grandpa Jiang's annual salary was not enough to support her tuition fees for one year. The rest had to be made up from other places. Grandpa Jiang's patrol work limited his daily range of movement. He would not leave Jiangjia Village at most, and he could not stay in Jiangjia Village all the time. How long would it take him to accumulate one or two yuan in a dilapidated village? Even if he picked some fern heads and bamboo shoots in spring to sell, the money he could earn would only be enough for two boat trips.

Tong Jingang's family was a dual-employee family. One of the parents' annual salary was invested in Tong Jingang, leaving only one person's salary. Tong's father and mother also had to live, so Tong's father also saved as much as possible.

Each school has a different registration time. Jiang Bai's Shanghai University of Technology freshman registration time is August 24, and Tong Jingang's school registration time is August 27.

They came to Shanghai in advance. After the three of them put their luggage away, Jiang Bai went to Manager Qian's place and asked him where there was a vegetable market nearby. Manager Qian told them the bus route. The three of them took the bus to the market to buy pots, pans, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, meat, eggs and vegetables.

When they came back, Jiang Bai borrowed a phone from Manager Qian's sales office and called Jiang's father.

Every day, Jiang's father was only there when he called him between 9:30 and 10 in the morning and 2 to 3 in the afternoon. The rest of the time, he was either buying goods or selling lunch boxes at the train station. He could not be found.

Jiang Bo finally waited until this time and told Jiang's father that the university did not accept rice and that he had to use an IC meal card to top up money before he could eat.

Jiang's father had made money now and was not stingy with Jiang Bo. He said, "I'll transfer the money to you now."

After hanging up the phone, he went back to ask Jiang's mother for the passbook.

Jiang's mother looked at him warily, "Why do you want the passbook?" She was afraid that Jiang's father would know someone who would borrow money from him, and that the money they had worked so hard to earn would be lent out by him again.

When he lent out the money, she went to those people and threw a tantrum, crying and threatening, and finally got the money back to pay off the debt.

Jiang's father smiled helplessly and said, "Baizi University is in Shanghai. We can no longer take food from home to exchange for food coupons at school like before. Now we have to pay with money, using the IC meal card, and the money is charged to the meal card."

Jiang's mother asked, "How much does it cost?"

She counted on her fingers, "One yuan a day, thirty yuan a month, and a semester is four months. You transfer one hundred and twenty yuan to him."

Jiang's father said helplessly: "Baizi is already 18 years old, it's the right age for him to eat. How can one dollar a day be enough? Our lunch boxes are one dollar each."

Jiang's mother glared at him: "Don't think I don't know, how can the price of the school meals be the same as our lunch boxes? In the past, Guoan and Guoliang went to college without paying a penny for tuition, and the country even subsidized them." She muttered unhappily: "If it's my turn to go to college, the tuition and miscellaneous fees will be nearly two thousand a year!"

"You can still support one now, but in two years, you will have to support another. Fortunately, you made some money from selling lunch boxes this year, otherwise you would have to beg for food if you wanted to support two college students!"

She reluctantly stuffed the passbook into Jiang's father's pocket and added, "You are not allowed to give me a penny more!"

But when Jiang's father came back, Jiang's mother found that there was 300 yuan missing from the passbook, and she muttered, "You just know how to spend money!" She

didn't say anything else.

No matter how much she favored Jiang Song, she knew that Jiang Bai was now a college student, and at least he would have a stable job in the future. Although she had made up her mind to live with her eldest son in the future, if she married her eldest son's wife and she didn't get along with her, she still had her younger son.

The younger son is a down-to-earth person, and he is not a philanderer. If she can't get along with her elder daughter-in-law in the future, she can live with the younger son.

Although she has never been to school and can't read, she still has the necessary wisdom to survive, and she has a plan in her heart.

After Jiang Bai knew that Jiang's father had given him 300 yuan for meals, he calculated it himself and felt that it was enough.

Jiang's father said: "The 300 yuan is the money you put into your meal card for meals. I also gave you another 100 yuan as living expenses. If it's not enough, call me again."

The 100 yuan he gave privately was his private money.

The market he and Tong's father went to today was a wholesale market. Vegetables were cheap, and chicken legs were also cheap. He bought a lot of frozen chicken legs today and put them in his sister's refrigerator. He thought that he could go to the market every week to buy some vegetables, cook them at his sister's place, and bring a large can to school, just like in high school. In this way, the money in the meal card can be used to buy rice, and the meat and vegetables can be eaten with the ones they brought.

But this will not be possible until at least October. It is still too hot now, and the cooked dishes cannot be kept at all.

He is still thinking about how to make money.

When his sister is not around, he feels uneasy, as if his heart is floating in the air, with nowhere to put it.

When he walked to the door of Jiang Bai's house again, Jiang Bai still felt a little unreal.

He knocked on the door first to see if the original owner had returned. After making sure that there was no one inside, he carefully took out the key, opened the door, and poked his head inside to look. After seeing that there was really no one inside, Jiang Bai and Tong Jingang walked in with confidence.

As soon as Tong Jingang entered, he sat on the sofa, rested his arms on the sofa backrest with his arms stretched out, crossed his legs, and asked Jiang Bai with a smile: "Baizi, look quickly, do I look like Chen Haonan now?" He said regretfully: "If only there was a camera, I could take a few pictures from this angle, I would definitely look handsome!"

Tong's father couldn't help laughing when he saw the two guys in front of him peeking their heads out like thieves. After hearing what Tong Jingang said, he urged him: "Let Baizi take a rest, and go put the things in the refrigerator. It's too hot, don't let them go bad." He reminded him: "Put the chicken legs in the freezer."

He carried the things to the kitchen to cook.

Jiang Bai was embarrassed to let Tong's father cook, but Tong's father was used to cooking at home, so he smiled and said, "You two take a break, leave this to me, don't worry, it will be ready in a while."

Jiang Xi's house has a refrigerator. Manager Qian introduced it to them before, so they know how to use it. After plugging it in, Tong Jingang put the chicken legs and duck legs he bought in the freezer, and the vegetables in the fresh-keeping cabinet. Tong's father washed the pot and washed the rice, while Jiang Bai washed the vegetables and cut the duck legs.

Jiang Xi's kitchen gas stove was turned on, and all he needed was a gas tank and a wok to cook.

But Jiang Bai had limited money, and buying a rice cooker was a big deal for him. The rice and egg dishes today were paid for by Tong's father. He and Tong Jingang were going to stay in Jiang Xi's house for several days, so it was not good for Jiang Bai to pay for everything.

The three of them ate very contentedly at the table in Jiang Xi's restaurant.

Tong Jingang washed the bowls. Jiang Bai returned to the guest room and touched the brand new European and American palace-style four-piece set on the bed with complex and gorgeous patterns. He didn't dare to sleep on it at

all, for fear of dirtying his sister's sheets and bedspreads. Moreover, it was summer now, and there was no cool mat on the bed. The thick quilt and bedding looked hot. Jiang Bai, who was reluctant to turn on the air conditioner, discussed with Tong Jingang and Tong's father and decided to sleep on the floor.

Jiang Bai and Tong Jingang both brought cool mats.

Wucheng is rich in cool mats. When it is not the rice planting season, you can see grass for weaving mats on both sides of the road. They are neatly cut and exposed to the sun. Many unemployed people in Wucheng take the grass for weaving cool mats and go home to weave them to earn some money.

Therefore, straw mats are sold very cheaply in Wucheng.

Jiang Bai's room was all covered with wooden floors. Because Manager Qian and Yang Meirong occasionally came to clean, it looked very clean. Jiang Bai didn't want to turn on the air conditioner, but Tong Jingang really wanted to experience the feeling of having air conditioning in the summer, so the three of them decided to sleep on the floor in a room at night so that they could all use the air conditioner.

In the middle of the night, Jiang Bai was awakened by the cold. Looking at the unfamiliar environment around him, he suddenly felt a bit like he was in a dream and couldn't tell whether it was a dream or reality.

He got up and sat for a long time before he got up and walked into the living room. He originally wanted to take the quilt in, but somehow he walked to the French window alone and looked at the quiet night outside.

The summer was too hot, so the construction site got up very early in the morning and worked very late. When the sun was scorching at noon, they could go back to take a nap for a few hours and then continue to work at three in the afternoon.

At this time, there was silence outside.

In 1996, Shanghai had not yet become the Magic City it later became. Stars could be seen above the city of Hudong.

Jiang Bai looked up and saw the starry sky through the glass on the balcony.

With a click, the lights in the living room were turned on. Tong Jingang rubbed his eyes and saw Jiang Bai standing alone on the balcony looking at the stars. He also stood beside him, looked up at the sky, walked to the balcony again, and looked through the glass window to overlook the still-under-construction Hudong.

The total height of the houses in this community is only six stories, but because the height of each single-story house is 6.2 meters, the total height still seems quite high.

Jiang Xi bought a house on the third floor. Unlike those high-rise residential buildings with dozens of floors, he could not see the entire Shanghai and East Shanghai, but only the Huangpu River outside.

Unfortunately, there were no street lights outside at this time, and it was pitch black and nothing could be seen.

"Let's go, let's go back to sleep." He pulled Jiang Bai and shook off the hairs on his body: "I'm freezing to death!"

It was the first time for Tong Jingang to enjoy the treatment of being awakened by freezing in the summer.

They turned on the air conditioner for the first time, thinking that it was summer, and if they wanted to cool down, they should set the air conditioner temperature as low as possible. They set it to 22 degrees, and they were all awakened by freezing.

After Jiang Bai returned home, he soon heard the snoring of Tong Jingang and Tong's father. He originally thought that he would not be able to sleep, but he didn't know when he fell asleep on the cool mat, covered with a blanket. The

next day, Tong's father and Tong Jingang went to send Jiang Bai to register.

Jiang Xi's results in the city competition were also released. As expected, Jiang Xi got the first place in two subjects.

When the results came out, the teacher who printed out the rankings was very curious and asked, "Which school is Jiang Liu from?"

Because the rankings only showed the name and the score, but not the school, everyone assumed that it was from a city key school that was a veteran competition leader, so they didn't pay much attention.

When they were about to notify the top 50 students in each subject to come to the city for training, they found out that Jiang Liu was from Wucheng No. 1 Middle School.