Chapter 101 Beating the bed
Once inside the bedroom, the company commander gestured and said, "The bed will be placed against the wall, with one end against the wall and the other side against the window. It should be knee-high and take up about half the room's area. That should be about right."
The most important thing in a house for everyone is the bed where they sleep.
Other items can be purchased later when we have more money and ration coupons; those are not important. But a bed is absolutely essential.
A young urbanite in the crowd said, “In our hometown, the tenement buildings and courtyard houses are divided into single rooms, double rooms, and triple rooms. Newly married young people can’t get a house for the first few years if they don’t have connections. In our Shanghai alleyways, every household is crammed with more than a dozen people, and housing is very tight. Unlike us, we get a big house with three rooms right away.”
The company commander glanced at him and said, "I remember you were one of the people who ran away last time."
The young man scratched his head and chuckled, "Company Commander, if you had told me earlier that we could get housing so quickly, and such spacious housing at that, why would I have run away!"
The company commander chuckled: "Did you think that all the recruitment talk and propaganda we did back then was just to trick you into coming here?"
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Isn't that right?
They said such nice things back then.
Once you arrive, you'll be assigned housing and work, guaranteed to have enough to eat, and you'll receive a monthly salary. You'll be a formal employee as soon as you arrive.
And the result? Only the guarantee of "employees" was fulfilled.
What's the point of having employees who can't get enough to eat, don't have a house, and work from dawn till dusk until their backs are so sore they can't straighten up?
After signing up, they were full of fantasies about life on the frontier, but reality weighed them down. The miserable days seemed endless, and the sweat they shed every day made them wish they could sprout wings and escape from here.
Such hardship led everyone to believe that they had been scammed.
Putting aside the employees of these companies, Song Lubai and the others from the Commercial Department also felt cheated when they first arrived.
Which company would take people off the train and send them to the desolate Gobi Desert to do hard labor?
This wasn't the kind of job they had envisioned.
Fortunately, their first month's salary wasn't five yuan, but ten yuan, which filled them with hope for the future once again.
The company commander shone his flashlight around and, seeing the expressions on everyone's faces, laughed and said, "If I didn't say it that way, who would volunteer? But we're not lying. The conditions here are tough right now, so it's unavoidable that we're tired. But we don't have much else here, but we have a lot of land. Once we develop, every household will be able to get a brick house like this. Most of the houses in your rural hometowns are still mud houses. Our place will definitely be better than your hometown in the future."
"Alright, it's getting late. We won't stop you from making beds now. You can do it while it's cool at night, or you can do it during the day at noon."
The company commander whistled and went back happily, but the rest of the team were reluctant to leave.
Although they would come to this house from time to time, their feelings were different when they came back to see it again now that they were about to move in.
Wang Haiquan was surrounded by people from the Commercial Department.
"Director, when will we be able to have our own housing?"
At that time, the company's employees were the envy of the young people in the commercial department.
Everyone wants to own a house, especially a spacious one like this!
Wang Haiquan smiled and dodged the question: "Once you're assigned to your work units, you'll definitely be assigned dormitory rooms first. As for housing, it's the same as the custom back home: you have to get married first. Only after you're married can you apply for a spacious house to live in alone."
"Alright, you guys can distribute them yourselves first, I'm going back."
The women shared a room with eight people each. Excluding the married women, there were only forty-seven women in the camp, of which thirty-eight were from the business department.
This shows how many female comrades there are in the company.
Even if the remaining nine unmarried female comrades in the company all married the male comrades in the company, there would still be plenty of single men in the company.
The eight people were divided into groups of eight, and each group picked out the houses in the front row first.
A row of houses consists of ten suites, with five suites in a row, and a gap of about twenty meters in the middle of the row of houses.
After the girls had chosen six apartments, there were still fourteen apartments available for married couples to choose from.
After the first group has finished choosing, there are still a few sets available for the remaining single men to choose from.
The night is bright tonight, with a round moon hanging high in the sky, its light as clear as water, illuminating the Gobi Desert.
No one felt tired; they chatted and laughed as they went to haul soil together.
It's cooler to work at night, but the temperature can reach 40 degrees Celsius at noon during the day. Mixing mud and building beds under the scorching sun is not as comfortable as at night.
Truckloads of soil were hauled back and piled up outside the bungalows.
The construction team reminded us, "When you're shoveling mud later, add a little water, just enough to bind the soil together. You'll also need to throw in some grass, like reed stalks or something. Actually, wheat straw would be even better."
The construction team members were experienced at this kind of work; they dug a hole before watering the plants.
The men helped stir with sticks, the women carried water and poured it in, and the construction team watched from the side.
Once the mud had thickened, the construction team leader reminded them, "Alright, scoop it up, pour it in, and use our wooden planks to outline the shape of the mud bed. It will take shape overnight."
The planks weren't long enough, so we had to join two planks together.
With everyone working together, a mud bed was quickly made.
The mud bed was blocked off on both sides with wooden boards, and under the direction of the construction team leader, the uneven mud surface on top was smoothed with a shovel.
The construction team leader advised, "Scrub it a few more times. If you still can't tell whether it's level or not, squat down, align your line of sight with the bed surface, and compare back and forth. If the bed isn't level, it won't be comfortable to sleep on."
After scraping back and forth quite a few times, the construction team leader was finally satisfied.
A sticky mud bed was born through everyone's concerted efforts.
Many hands make light work; starting with hauling soil, the whole process took less than an hour.
With multiple production lines and sufficient manpower, nine beds were completed within an hour.
It was the first time anyone had done this job, and everyone felt a great sense of accomplishment watching a bed slowly take shape.
With the experience gained on the first day, everyone finished building the beds for the remaining eleven rooms on the second night.
After a day, the color of the bed surface built the night before has become noticeably lighter, and a few cracks have appeared on the surface, which is a sign that the mud has lost moisture.
Although there are only two rows of habitable houses for the time being, it didn't stop them from excitedly stacking beds in the houses that hadn't been fully sun-dried yet.
This busy work lasted for five days, and everyone was exhausted, but very satisfied.
If it weren't for the fact that it wasn't yet holiday time, everyone would have moved in while the mud beds were drying.
A mud bed can accommodate four people. The length of the bed is the same as the length of the room, and it is two meters wide. It looks more spacious and generous than the beds in the dugouts.
The company doesn't provide beds or daily necessities; everyone has to buy them themselves.
After discussing it, Song Lubai and the others from the shop decided that they still had to go to the bazaar and get a felt blanket together.
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