Chapter 39: Intelligence - Hearing Before Seeing the Person.
Arriving on the island a year early, the female lead Lin Xiuqin and the male lead Chen Ruifeng were not yet married. Not only did Qin Xiangxiang not meet Lin Xiuqin, but Chen Ruifeng also asked her to introduce him to potential partners.
Qin Xiangxiang's head was a little fuzzy, but she was too lazy to care about the male and female leads. All she wanted to do now was live her lazy life. She got 110 yuan of pocket money every month just by lying around. The female lead didn't live as well as she did.
"Comrade, I'll try to find out for you," Qin Xiangxiang said dismissively, immediately putting Chen Ruifeng out of her mind.
"Sister-in-law, you must remember to help me. My surname is Chen, my name is Chen Ruifeng, and I am also a deputy regimental officer."
Qin Xiangxiang responded and walked steadily on the flat ground, breathing in the salty sea breeze. The seawater near the shore was murky, but the blue sky and sea in the distance were dazzling. Turning around to look back, she saw lush greenery in the distance and houses of all sizes near the shore, making for a very beautiful scene.
"Mommy, so many fishing boats!" The chubby boy nestled in his father's arms. Although they lived in a large coastal city, ordinary citizens rarely saw the sea, let alone so many fishing boats.
As the Qingming Festival approaches, mackerel near the Thousand Islands of Minnesota return to the shore to spawn, which is the time when they are at their fattest and full of roe, making them very delicious.
We drove to the naval family compound, entered through the imposing gate, registered, and passed by a health center, basketball court, and football field. A dozen or so family buildings, both new and old, came into view.
The old bungalows hadn't been completely demolished yet; a row of them remained, with yellow walls and black tiles, and several rooms. The first room was the broadcasting room, where broadcasts were played every noon and evening. Next to it were a sports equipment room and a musical instrument activity room, as well as an office for family members to send and receive mail, a telephone room, and a honeycomb briquette storage room.
In front of the bungalow were four ping-pong tables, as well as parallel bars, single and double bars, and a long jump sandpit. Several children were squatting in the sand playing in the sand. When they saw people coming, they looked over at them.
The child's clothes were dirty, and his legs and arms were covered in fine sand.
The dozen or so apartment buildings were in better condition than the bungalows. There were flower beds on the ground floor with scattered flowers, and some people had even planted vegetables wherever they could find a spot. A few chickens were pecking at vegetable leaves on the ground, and there were a few clumps of dried chicken droppings on the cement floor.
Between the two buildings there is a bicycle parking shed and a public toilet. Behind the toilet, weeds grow in abundance, with a lot of pig feed growing on them. Further away, there are pig sheds and some vegetable gardens.
Qin Xiangxiang, who was visiting for the first time, was really not used to this "urban-rural fringe" scene. It was a three-story building, but there were chickens raised on the ground floor, vegetable gardens behind the public toilet, and pig sheds!
Even the most cramped tenement buildings in the city are difficult to use for raising chickens or pigs. At most, you can raise a few chicks, and eat them as soon as they grow a little bigger. The crowing of roosters is something that tenement buildings can't tolerate.
In her dream, she saw this scene and felt so wronged. She clearly lived in an apartment building, but wasn't this being sent to the village? And they even gave her a small vegetable plot, where she could build a thatched shed to raise chickens and plant fruit trees. Wasn't this making her farm and become a farmer? What was the difference between this and the educated youth sent to the countryside?
However... raising chickens means you can eat meat and get eggs for free! The pigs in the pigsty are collectively shared. At the end of the year, when the pigs are slaughtered, the meat can be distributed. There are people specifically in charge of managing it, but she doesn't need to manage it. In winter, each family can get a lot of pork.
The fruit trees in the family compound are also shared by the community. Everyone can pick the fruit, but adults rarely pick the fruit; children are the main ones.
The newly built staff housing building, numbered 012, stands out among the other buildings. All of them have green wooden doors and windows, with one building on the west side and the other on the east side.
The bottom floor has two steps and a ramp. In front of it is a lawn and flowerbeds. A lone chicken stares at the visitors with its tiny, beady eyes, pecking at the lawn every now and then.
Looking at the conditions before him, Li Jianzhi couldn't help but sigh. The conditions here were indeed like those in a rural-urban fringe area. Before, they said they had never seen a live chicken, but now, live chickens are everywhere.
The chickens are fine, but the ducks are mostly sea ducks raised in the mudflats. They eat small fish and shrimp on a daily basis. The sea duck eggs are very large, but they taste a bit fishy and are cold. No matter how much ginger you add, you can still feel the coldness.
Li Jianzhi would refuse to eat sea duck eggs unless they were made into salted duck eggs.
Li Jianzhi looked at the woman beside him with some trepidation, afraid that she would not be able to accept the conditions before her. The island could not compare to Shanghai. The workers' village where Qin Xiangxiang lived adopted the design of the Soviet Union in the 1950s. It was quite beautiful and exquisite. Even though the cobblestone road underneath had been worn smooth over the years, it still had a petit-bourgeois charm.
The military family housing is primarily practical, built in a square and simple style, without many twists and turns, spacious and bright. These dozen or so family buildings are like a dozen square bricks, neat and rigid.
I've made my wife suffer.
Mr. Hu felt utterly disheartened.
Qin Xiangxiang had already seen this scene in her dream, so she didn't care at the moment. Anyway, the conditions in the upstairs room were okay. As long as she didn't have to work the night shift all night, she didn't really care.
She's just here to relax and tidy up her own home. If she wants to go to the city, she can take a boat to Mingzhou when she has time; it's not far, and she can make a round trip in a day.
"Think about it, you chose the second floor here?"
"Let's choose this corner unit on the second floor, it'll be farther from the stairs, so we won't have to make noise going up and down the stairs."
Li Jianzhi also agreed to choose the long side unit. In fact, none of the three unit types on each floor were very good. The design of houses in this era did not take privacy into consideration at all. The front door faced the front door, the middle unit was too close to the stairs, and the light on the side closer to the corridor was not very good.
Choosing between the second and third floors is also a headache. The first floor is not an option, the second floor is risky because of noise from upstairs, and the third floor is cold in winter and hot in summer, requiring climbing one more floor, but it is quiet.
Qin Xiangxiang said, "Let's compromise and choose the long, side-by-side unit on the second floor."
"Don't rush to choose, let's go up and take a look."
In her dream, Qin Xiangxiang chose to live in the East Building. This time, she chose the West Building. The long side unit on the second floor of the West Building was empty, and the two neighboring families were occupied. The long side unit on the third floor was also occupied. If she wanted to choose the West Building, she could only choose the long side unit on the second floor.
She's not going to choose Donglou anymore; she'd rather stay away from the future male and female leads and not see them. But she can secretly gossip about it.
Go up two flights of stairs to the first-floor corridor. There are three households on each floor, forming an enclosed layout. The stairs are in the middle. Standing in front of the stairwell, there is a door to the left and another door to the right. The door to the middle household is next to the stairs.
Climbing up to the second floor, the same apartment layout, the two doors of the corner unit and the long corner unit face each other. As soon as you open the door, you can see the door of the other unit. The corridor is not wide. In order to resist typhoons, the corridor is closed. There is a row of windows, which are exceptionally bright.
The second-floor corner unit was occupied. A broom and shovel were piled up in front of the door, with three burnt honeycomb briquettes in the shovel. There was a white sink and faucet under the window in the middle of the corridor.
People also lived in the middle household. Their honeycomb briquettes were piled up near the edge of the house because they needed to be away from the water taps, as the briquettes would get damp and burn poorly.
Seeing this, Li Jianzhi was even more disappointed. There wasn't even natural gas, and his wife didn't know how to burn coal!
The long side unit on the second floor was unoccupied. When they came to view the apartment, they had picked up the key in advance. As soon as they opened the door, they were greeted by the kitchen doorway. Walking in, there was a window on the right, as well as a faucet and a sink made of cement and white porcelain.
The kitchen is small, only about four or five square meters, and can only accommodate one or two people; it's quite difficult to even turn around. To the left of the kitchen is the bathroom, which is about one square meter in size.
Further inside is the living room, which is ridiculously narrow. It's just big enough to fit a table, and if you put a group of people in it, it'll almost fill the entire living room.
However, the master bedroom and the second bedroom are ridiculously large, larger than the living room, especially the master bedroom, which, together with the balcony, is very spacious and bright.
This is also a special design feature of the era when housing was extremely scarce. It's like the shared kitchen in old apartment buildings. Everyone was desperately trying to squeeze in space for the kitchen, bathroom, and living room. The kitchen and bathroom could be shared, but what use was the living room when there was no room left?
With families now having many children, they simply turn every room into a master bedroom, and divide it however they like—a secondary bedroom into two rooms, a master bedroom into three rooms, it's all up to each family.
Qin Xiangxiang and Li Jianzhi are now a family of three, so there is no need to make any partitions. The couple sleeps in the master bedroom and their son sleeps in the second bedroom. Qin Xiangxiang is most satisfied with this large master bedroom with a balcony!
It was much bigger than her previous house, and even with the balcony, a bed, a wardrobe, a sewing machine, and a piano, it still felt spacious.
With her husband not coming home, this large bedroom will belong solely to Qin Xiangxiang from now on!
The toilet and kitchen are also their own. They just need to put a refrigerator in the living room, fill it with vegetables, and live a comfortable life behind closed doors.
In addition, although burning honeycomb briquettes is more troublesome than gas, there is a pot of water on the honeycomb briquettes most of the time. You can wash your face, take a bath, and wash your hair with hot water in the morning and evening without waiting. Just add some cold water and you can wash without waiting for the water to boil.
As for carrying coal? That's a man's job, and she's too lazy to do it.
This family of three uses 130 honeycomb briquettes a month, which is about four briquettes a day, or 30 briquettes a week. This is why many people prefer to live on the first floor. They have to carry more than 100 honeycomb briquettes upstairs every month, which is quite a hardship. It's better to live in the family compound, where soldiers often help carry the briquettes upstairs. But it's still inconvenient to throw them away every day because they are very heavy.
A honeycomb briquette costs two to three cents, and burning coal for a month would cost about two to three yuan.
"This is the one we'll choose."
"Is this the one we're going to choose? Or should we take a look at the east wing? Actually, the third floor is quite nice too."
Qin Xiangxiang: "Isn't it troublesome to carry coal from the third floor?"
Li Jianzhi was taken aback for a moment, "That's right, wife, you're so thoughtful."
"How can my wife be so virtuous? I simply couldn't get by without you!"
Qin Xiangxiang: "..." Shut up!
"Clang, clang, clang... Is anyone there?" Standing outside was a woman in her thirties or forties, surnamed Gao. She was tall and had a loud voice. She had a square face, and most people called her Sister Gao. Her husband was a military doctor. He was a very warm-hearted person and also a "know-it-all" and "information expert." He would go wherever there was excitement, and he was always the first to know what was happening in the courtyard.
Therefore, he was jokingly called "Chief of the Intelligence Department," hence Chief Gao.
Sure enough, a new person arrived at the family compound, and the head of the intelligence department immediately set out on a mission to gather intelligence.
Before you see him, you hear his voice.
"My wife is so virtuous! I couldn't possibly get by without her!"
Wow, this new family member is actually quite virtuous.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
