Ideals and Youth: I Too Had a Youth (Part 5)...
Upon hearing this, the village chief couldn't help but bounce up again, leaning on the table: "Do you think this is a free hotel?!"
Ye Xiqing replied matter-of-factly, "That's impossible. No hotel is free. Only places like yours that serve the people are free."
village head:……
Seeing that the village chief was about to lose his temper again, Ye Xiqing quickly comforted him: "Oh, what's wrong with letting me stay for a while? I'm not going to live here forever. I'll leave once the house is built."
"Please keep track of how much food I eat from you, and I will definitely pay you back when my grain supplies come in."
"And this is a good thing too. When the higher-ups come, we should show them how you care for orphans and widows."
"If the boss is in a good mood, there might even be an award."
With the items in his pocket, the village chief and Ye Xiqing's relationship progressed somewhat, and he began to speak more openly.
"Are you an orphan and a widow? Aren't you divorced?"
"In all the years since Dayushu Village was established, you're the only one like this. Aren't you ashamed?"
Ye Xiqing immediately objected: "What? The freedom to divorce is stipulated by the state. Do you have a problem with the national law?"
"Your thinking is dangerous. No wonder you've been stuck in this small world and haven't been able to get promoted."
"When the boss tells you to go east, you go west; when the boss tells you to get a divorce, you're still arguing with him."
village head:……
No, why does Bao Xiangqiao suddenly have so many useful and useless things to say?
The two remained deadlocked for a while, but in the end the village chief gave in, because Ye Xiqing started making empty promises again.
"Once I've recovered, I'll send you the banner. Not in the village, but when you go to the town for a meeting, I'll send it to you in front of all the leaders."
"When the leader comes down for an inspection, I sing your praises in front of him. Isn't that enough?"
Ye Xiqing's words all sound like nonsense, but sometimes when you listen to them carefully, they seem to have some value.
The village chief, a local resident, had never seen such rhetoric before, and finally gave in.
She looked at Ye Xiqing with utter disdain: "Why did you go through all this trouble? Can't you just live a normal life?"
"You're a woman, and you think you can just get the land approved and then build up the village? What good is that hundred yuan you got from the Zhou family?!"
That's ridiculous. Building a house is harder than getting land approved.
Even if she builds a thatched house on it, she'll still take up the land.
She's not stupid enough to leave land lying idle after she's already acquired it.
...
That being said, they couldn't actually build a thatched house. Ye Xiqing wasn't the kind of person who could endure hardship, so at least she needed a proper place to live.
During these days, she didn't focus on throwing a tantrum; in between her outbursts, she also observed the situation in the village.
Although Dayushu Village is called a village, which may give people the impression that it is small and closed off, its actual area is actually very large.
A village is divided into several production teams. The farmland of different teams may overlap, but their residences are far apart and they basically do not communicate.
While they are called villagers, they should be more accurately described as team members. The default concept of "village people" among villagers is actually "team people."
If Ye Xiqing wants to avoid further trouble with the Zhou family, she could consider switching teams.
However, in the Zhou family's team, Ye Xiqing, as an outsider, was always playing away games.
Not to mention the other, even more unfamiliar teams, she decided to stay in this area.
The team has the most people with the surnames Zhou and Wang, and there are also three families with the surname Cheng.
The Zhou kings lived together, but the Cheng family separated into their own territory, and Ye Xiqing made a deal with the Cheng family.
After dinner, when the whole family was together, Ye Xiqing took the child to Cheng Lao Er's house to discuss exchanging land.
Rabbits don't eat the grass near their burrows; no matter what, people from the same brigade won't intermarry.
There were no real relatives among people with different surnames, but because they had been living together for a long time, they had established a seniority system.
Ye Xiqing personally visited and got straight to the point.
"Second brother, second sister-in-law, you know my situation. I'm divorced from the Zhou family, and they still have two acres of land tied up in my hands."
"Everyone knows what kind of people the Zhou family are. They're shameless and love to take more than their share. I'm afraid they'll do something bad to me if I farm next to them."
“I’m just an orphan and a widow, and I can’t compete with their whole family. So I’ll let you plant it in exchange for two acres of your ridge land.”
“I don’t think there are any good people in this village, except for you Lao Cheng’s family, who are really honest.”
"How about I move next to you and become your neighbor?"
Upon hearing this, Cheng Lao Er's family exclaimed: "Is there really such a good thing?"
As a modern person, Ye Xiqing has an information gap in the times. She knows that in the future, farmland infrastructure will become more and more advanced, and planting and harvesting will be automated, not to mention small things like watering. There will be no more concepts of irrigated land and dry ridge land.
But people in this era cannot predict the future, and in their eyes this is a great bargain, so they happily agreed.
Ye Xiqing had a new business partner, and of course she wanted to take him to the Zhou family to ask for land. She wanted not only those two acres of barren land, but also the crops that were currently growing on it.
Now, unless the Zhou family has lost their minds, they'll know that Ye Xiqing is genuinely divorcing him and wants to take things from his family.
To cut into existing property is certainly as painful as scraping flesh, but those two acres really do belong to Bao Xiangqiao and her child.
After the abolition of collective farming, everyone actually had land. Even Qiao, the daughter of Bao Xiangqiao, who was born before the land was divided, had a mu of land.
However, according to custom, land is managed by family units, and each person is only counted as a portion of the land. Except when brothers divide the family property, they do not keep detailed accounts, and it is generally assumed that the property is jointly owned by the family.
Now Ye Xiqing has opened up a new path: divorce.
Before this, no one had considered this matter, because most problems in this world are solved by the idea that if something works, it's fine.
Anyway, the land has been allocated to you, so whether or not it can be implemented is your own business.
The law isn't forcing you to get married, nor is it forcing you to get divorced. You're willing to go between both sides, so you don't end up with either.
If it's something you're willing to do, how can you blame others?
This customary practice, more natural than the law, and though a custom, was implemented more thoroughly than the law, meant that women's land rights were merely empty words.
As a result, Ye Xiqing insisted on implementing this half-written document, and I've never seen her so serious.
Now that Ye Xiqing has brought the Cheng family here, the Zhou family knows that they have no choice but to hand over these two acres of land.
But why should they give away this year's crops too? These crops were grown by the Zhou family themselves!
Mentioning this issue woke Ye Xiqing up. "If you want to settle accounts, I'll settle them with you."
You say these two acres are yours to cultivate, but the land outside is also cultivated by me. I even cultivated it for your family for six years. How much compensation are you going to give me?
As for the cost of seeds, fertilizer, and watering, I gave you a rough estimate beforehand, so you can really assume you don't owe me anything, right?
If they are not satisfied with her rough calculation, they can do a detailed calculation to see who owes whom more!
To say that the Zhou family is shameless is absolutely slander; the men in their family are definitely the most shameful in the village.
In the past, whenever there were disputes with the village, it was always Bao Xiangqiao, a key figure in the arguments, who would try to break up the fights.
Now that this general has defected to the enemy, the Zhou family instantly felt the oppressive feeling of their own people fighting each other.
The newly introduced second wife, whether in terms of combat experience or eloquence, is no match for Ye Xiqing, who has exceptional physical attributes.
Ye Xiqing also possesses exceptional accounting skills honed through nine years of compulsory education; with the aid of data, she is exceptionally meticulous.
After several rounds of calculations, not only did the grain from the land belong to her, but the Zhou family also owed her one hundred.
The onlookers were overjoyed, and even members of the Zhou family were secretly enjoying the spectacle.
Old Zhou glanced at the crowd of onlookers, then at his second wife who was being thoroughly defeated by Ye Xiqing's barrage of insults, and finally had no choice but to accept it.
Fine! Fine! Fine! Let's just say they're unlucky!
The land they fought for was exchanged between Ye Xiqing and the Cheng family, and the land could be traded while the crops were still green.
Ye Xiqing's homestead was allocated to the Cheng family's residential area, and the Cheng family's land was also nearby.
In Dayushu Village, the land is laid out in long ridges, with each family's land extending upwards. Ye Xiqing discussed the matter with the Cheng family, who were exchanging land.
We need the land in front of the gate, to widen it out further, and add a side garden to make a total of two acres.
Otherwise, she would be difficult to take care of. Although there are two people in their family, there is actually only one able-bodied person.
The Cheng family naturally agreed.
Farmland may be close to the residence, but the residence is located on high ground and has difficulty getting water. In this case, the only standard for judging the quality of the land is how well it can be irrigated.
He only wants the top plots of land and takes all the bad land. What kind of living bodhisattva is that!
The Zhou family suffered a lot because of Ye Xiqing, while the Cheng family benefited greatly from her, and the relationship between the two families instantly became closer.
Ye Xiqing then asked the couple to help with the house construction.
In times of economic hardship, building a house relied entirely on personal connections.
Bao Xiangqiao is not only an outsider and a divorced woman, but she also offended many villagers when she fought for the Zhou family.
It's impossible for her to find a helper through her personal connections; she can only rely on getting married.
Having settled down and built their businesses in this area for so many years, they must have their own network of connections, and gathering people together is not difficult for them.
The helper doesn't need wages, but meals must be provided. Ye Xiqing currently has neither land nor grain, so he can only ask Cheng Erjia to lend him some, promising to repay them immediately after the autumn harvest.
Regardless of Bao Xiangqiao's past behavior, she is now their neighbor, and the Cheng family immediately nodded in agreement, indicating that they would do their best.
Of course, it's only natural to deduct a little extra food from the meals provided.
If someone borrows grain, even if they don't say so, you should still repay more than you owe; that's a matter of courtesy.
As a modern person, Ye Xiqing has absolutely no sensitivity to the matter of borrowing money; she dares to lend anything that can be recorded in the accounts.
In this way, through a combination of credit and loans, the construction team was brought together.
A group of people were digging soil and mixing mud in a large pit, while another group was carrying the mixed mud to the construction site.
We borrowed molds from someone else to make adobe bricks.
Life is about experiencing everything. Ye Xiqing carried a shoulder pole and watched the two mud baskets sway.
The little girl followed behind her, running around, and grabbed a lump of mud, molding it into something.
Then he reached out his dirty hand and let out a series of unintelligible laughs at her: "Mom! Mom!"
Ye Xiqing: ...
Passersby laughed, saying, "This child is so lively; he'll definitely amount to something when he grows up."
Ye Xiqing silently looked away: Yes, she'll wash her own hands and clothes if she gets them dirty.
Because people's assessment of the happiness of a group depends mainly on the children; if the children can laugh, the mothers should be quite happy.
Seeing Bao Xiangqiao not only unaffected by the divorce but even happier, Zhou Wenyan didn't know what to feel.
He picked up his luggage and turned back to the construction site, burning his precious youth.
Watching the male protagonist walk away, the system reached out its hand to stop him: Main plot! Main plot! Its main plot!
Ye Xiqing threw the soil into the clay mold.
She's crazy. The camera is on her, and she has absolutely no connection to the main plot or the male lead.
System: So what's the main storyline on your end?
Ye Xiqing continued to pick up mud from the mud pit.
In an era when people still had to pay grain taxes, becoming a rural woman offered her a semblance of a life story.
She farms!
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