Chapter 33: Escape from the Troubled Times 31
After seeing off the two officials, the village chief led everyone to a gentle slope not far from the field.
There are many houses on this side of the gentle slope, some big and some small, some with yards, some without, and some just with a shack. It can be seen that everyone's progress and habits in house repair are different.
However, the houses in the indigenous area are much richer than those of outsiders. Most of their houses are made of stone at the bottom, yellow mud on the top, and black tiles on the top. But all outsiders, without exception, live in adobe and thatched houses.
Arriving at the housing construction area, the village chief turned around and faced everyone. His eyes swept across the expectant faces, and without hesitation, he introduced them loudly to everyone.
"You three households will settle in this area. This area is full of people who were assigned to Wuli'ao Village like you. There is a lot of space here. You can choose a good place and build your house."
The village chief pointed out an area where houses can be built. In their village, houses cannot be built randomly. The location needs to be registered with the consent of the village. This is the so-called homestead.
Of course, if the house is built in the mountains, no one will care.
Since there were already people here first, they naturally wouldn't get the chance to occupy the good territories, so they could only choose more remote places.
The three households were familiar with the area, and the family members discussed with each other to choose a site.
Lin Xia chose a gentle slope against the mountain. Not far away was the family where she had inquired about the news of crossing the river.
Seeing that everyone had chosen a place, the village chief began to promote it. He was not stupid to become the village chief. What he said before about how lucky they were to be assigned to the village was just a polite remark, but he actually knew the situation clearly.
They clearly said before that they would not send new people here, but they sent people here today. This shows that these three households have made an effort. They are not locals, so it is impossible that they used effort to rely on connections. The answer is obvious: they have money.
"Many families in our village have adobe bricks ready. If you want to build a house, you can order adobe bricks from the village, or you can spend time making them yourself. But if you want to live in a house with blue bricks and tiles, you must go to the county to order bricks."
"If you don't know how to repair the house, you can hire people in the village to help. They all have time recently."
When saying the last sentence, the village chief looked at Lin Xia specifically, obviously talking to her specifically. The other two households were large families, one with five young men and women and two children, and the other with two elderly people, four young men and women and three children.
Compared with these two families, Lin Xia was indeed weak and alone, and she was still a woman, and she didn't look like she could repair a house.
Lin Xia nodded to show that she understood. "Please ask Village Chief Wan to arrange it. I will come to you if I need you."
At that moment, someone from the household that Lin Xia didn't know asked, "Village head, I see everyone is farming. Should we start clearing the land first so as not to miss the farming season?"
Village Chief Wan reacted and said embarrassedly.
"This matter is indeed the most important. If you hurry up and open up the wasteland, you will just be able to catch up with this one.
Don't panic just because the villagers have already planted the rice. That's because the villagers planted this crop of rice earlier than in previous years.
Last winter, there was a sudden heavy snowfall, which did not melt until March, so the early rice was missed. Therefore, the village directly planted mid-season rice, which was planted a month earlier. If you work faster, you may be able to catch up with the time of previous years. ”
Everyone had never grown crops three times a year before, so they were curious about the planting time for early, middle and late rice.
The village chief explained to them that Lingzhou had no winter in the past and the climate was hot and humid. Although the crops grown from the beginning of the year to the end of the year were not as delicious as those in the north, there was no shortage of food.
When other people heard that they could grow crops for three seasons, they were overjoyed, but when Lin Xia heard about the term "three seasons", she felt like the sky was falling.
Her face was slightly dark, her thin lips were tightly pursed, her thoughts were wild, and a little man appeared in her mind, working non-stop every day, from morning to night, from the New Year to the next New Year.
Oh my God! Will she continue to farm every year and die of exhaustion in the fields?
Lin Xia thought about it and felt terrible, but what else could she do if not farming? Robbing the rich to help the poor?
Forget it. Thinking back to when I was hungry, I might as well just farm.
The climate has been abnormal since last year. The heavy snow at the beginning of the year affected the crops for several months. The village chief asked them to speed up the reclamation of the land as much as possible. If there is another heavy rain or snow, all the crops will be destroyed.
Lin Xia is not in a hurry to repair the house. She just arrived and wants to settle down for a few days. The first one to stick his head out will be the one to get hammered.
She could build a shack like everyone else and sleep in it without feeling cold. Although it was only hot in April this year, the weather warmed up very quickly. Just across the state, the temperature went from early spring to early summer.
"Village chief, what about our seeds?" someone asked with concern.
"You can borrow seeds from the village. The term is six months. You have to pay back eleven if you borrow ten."
Everyone can rest assured, as long as we can borrow them, the worry is that there are no seeds.
The village chief carefully explained the matters needed for farming, and when he saw that everyone only had the relief food issued by the county, he kindly asked everyone to go into the mountains to pick mushrooms and dig wild vegetables, and he bluntly stated that the village would not lend food.
After giving the instructions, the village chief left, and the rest of the people looked at each other in bewilderment. Just then the villagers who had gone to the fields came back, and they came up to get to know each other, after all, they would be neighbors in the future.
Neighbors today are not like those in the 21st century, now neighbors interact like relatives.
It was also at this time that Lin Xia learned that her neighbors were surnamed Qi. She didn't remember their specific names, so she just called them Old Man Qi, Aunt Qi, Qi Da, Qi Er, Qi Da's wife, Qi Er's wife, and the three children.
The next day, the other two households went to the village to borrow tools for farming. Lin Xia did not participate in this activity. She did not know the farming skills yet. She planned to observe and learn and only plant one season this year.
Her first priority was to build a house. The shack was not cold but rather stuffy. The main point was that it was unsafe and there was an occasional drizzle. She really couldn't stand the sticky feeling. She also had no place to take a shower, so she urgently needed a house.
Lin Xia found the village chief and told him her needs: two rooms in total, a bedroom, a kitchen, and a high yard. She also wanted to build a firewood shed and a bathroom with wooden boards next to the kitchen, and a toilet in the corner of the yard. Finally, she strongly requested to build a thatched pavilion.
As for the main room, it is not necessary at all. If someone comes to visit, you can just entertain the guests in the pavilion in the yard.
During her private contact with the village chief, she also got some information from him.
This village originally had about a hundred households, each of which was a large family. Not including outsiders, there were more than a thousand people in total. It was not a single large clan, but a mixed family of three surnames: Wan, Li, and Zhang, with the Wan family having the largest number of people.
The situation of outsiders in the village is quite complicated, with a total of 46 households, each operating independently. Most households have four or five people, but there are also people like Lin Xia who open an account alone, totaling about 200 people.
Lin Xia thanked the county clerk again in her heart. The money was well spent. The overall atmosphere in Wuliao was good. They were not a clan, and their residences were separated from the locals. They would not bump into each other unless they had special dealings with each other, which reduced a lot of friction.
Next is the daily routine of waiting for the house to be repaired.
First go to the village carpenter to order furniture such as beds, cabinets, tables, chairs, wooden barrels, etc.
Then I went to the back mountain to familiarize myself with the environment, and in the meantime I also observed and learned about the neighbors' daily land reclamation routine.
Afterwards, I went into the city to shop for items for my new home, and also bought some farming tools. I didn’t buy any food because I had nowhere to put it. I couldn’t just leave it in the makeshift shack, or I would have to kill it the same day if someone saw it.
During this period, Lin Xia almost suffered a loss. It was not convenient for her to carry all her belongings with her when she was traveling outside, so the relief food distributed by the county was often kept in the shack. If Lin Xia had not not gone to work and had come back temporarily to scare the children wandering nearby, she would have been out of food. Later, she could only carry more than ten kilograms of food with her.
The reason these refugees were able to get here was definitely not because of their kindness. Most of the kind people died on the road. This is why Lin Xia insisted on adding a yard.
The adobe house was built very quickly, and it took ten people 10 days to finish it. After all, she was a single woman and it was easy to cause misunderstanding, so Lin Xia did not contact them at all and entrusted the work to the village chief. In the end, it cost more than four hundred taels.
This incident also led to another troublesome thing.
The villagers saw that Lin Xia spent money so lavishly and was still a woman, so they thought she was perfect for a family reunion and started introducing marriage proposals to her.
The fighting power of the aunties was so terrifying that Lin Xia was extremely annoyed. She directly told the aunties that she was a widow, her husband had not died long ago, and she wanted to observe mourning for her late husband. Only then could she barely stop the gossips.
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