Chapter 100 Going to the County
The breeze was cool, the sky was bright, and the distant horizon was filled with rosy clouds. Ziyi and Yike walked quickly to the town. When they arrived there, they bought tickets to the county town and boarded the bus. The two of them were seated in the last row next to the window, and they quickly opened the window as soon as they sat down. Oh my god! The smell in this car is so bad. The smell of sweat, foot odor, and chicken shit mixed into a very unpleasant smell, which kept drilling into one's nose. Even with the window open, the smell was only slightly lighter. Yike stuck his head out of the window, trying hard not to feel the smell.
The car was already full, but people kept getting on. It would have been fine if only people with chickens in their backpacks came on, but why did that uncle bring in a bamboo basket for pigs as well? It wasn't enough that the chicken manure stinked, but now he had to add the smell of pig manure. Yi Ke really wanted to go down immediately. She would rather tire her little feet than be mixed with all this raw feces.
"Driver, driver, you can't let him bring this pig up here! There's not enough space for people to stand in the aisle, so there's no room for a pig. Put it on the roof of the car, not on the car."
"Yes, put it on the roof. Hurry up and move it down. It stinks!"
"Go get two men to help him lift the pig onto the roof of the car."
The person who was talking talked, and the people who were helping to lift helped to lift, and finally the pig and the basket were put on the roof of the car. The driver went to cover the canvas on the roof and tied the rope.
He stretched his head out to take a look at the roof of the car, and saw that it was filled with large and small packages of things, piled up one on top of the other.
The carriage was as packed as the things on the roof: people were crowded in the aisles, and seats for two people were turned into seats for three. There was no wasted space under the seats, as they were filled with various large and small snakeskin bags or baskets. The snakeskin bags filled with chickens made a "clucking" sound under the buttocks of the people sitting on the seats, the "grunting" sound of piglets could be heard from the roof from time to time, and the loud voices of people and the cursing of those who were squeezed together formed a different kind of symphony.
The car finally started, and it swayed on the bumpy road and stumbled towards the county town. Yike felt dizzy and wanted to vomit after being shaken all the way. Someone in the car had already vomited, and the smell made Yike want to vomit even more. She had no choice but to bury her head in Ziyi's arms, trying hard to smell Ziyi's body fragrance.
The car swayed all the way and finally arrived at the county town. As soon as he got off the car, Yi Ke rushed to the side of the road and vomited until he felt like he had vomited out all his gallbladder.
Ziyi poured a cup of water from the kettle for Yike to rinse his mouth. After Yike rinsed his mouth, the faint fragrance from the bamboo cup relieved most of the nausea in Yike's heart. Ziyi put the bamboo cup into his backpack, and waited for a while before the two of them left the station.
Yike had been to this county town twice, and she had lost her curiosity about it, so the two of them wandered slowly around the city.
The previous two times, Yi Ke came and left in a hurry, but this time, Ziyi took Yi Ke to appreciate it carefully. Although the county town does not have the high-rise buildings of the past and does not have a wide range of goods, it is still very comfortable.
Mainly the blue sky, fresh air and green leaves make people feel happy. There were few vehicles on the street, and it took a long time for one car to pass by. In the past life, the streets were severely congested, and sometimes the speed of driving was not as fast as walking.
I felt uncomfortable at first when I first came here, but now I like this place. After all, the environment in my previous life cannot be compared with this one.
"We're here. I asked Brother Tang to buy this house. The houses on the left and right are also mine. But they are now occupied by Brother Tang and Ma Youcai. They allow them to stay temporarily when it's too late to go home. But Dad doesn't know about it. I didn't tell him because I was afraid he would worry. That's why I didn't bring you here the last two times." Ziyi and Yike wandered to a courtyard house and stopped.
The Siheyuan was the most common type of residential building in North China in the past. It is a combined architectural form in a residence, a square or rectangular courtyard. This type of courtyard is an inner courtyard-style residence surrounded by houses on the east, west, south and north sides. The reason why Yike remembers it so clearly is mainly because he once lived in his grandfather's courtyard when he was a child.
The structure of the Siheyuan is unique. Its courtyard is spacious and airy. The houses on all four sides are independent of each other and connected by corridors, making daily life very convenient. Inside the courtyard, the doors of the houses on all four sides open to the courtyard, and the family lives in harmony and happiness. In the spacious courtyard, one can also plant trees and flowers, raise birds and fish, and stack stones and landscapes, and people living in it enjoy the beauty of nature.
This kind of courtyard has only one gate. Usually the gate of the courtyard is closed and it is in a completely closed state. Children are playing in the courtyard; the old man is lying on a recliner under the veranda, looking at his children and grandchildren. The courtyard is full of red flowers and green leaves, birds singing and flowers blooming, and he feels contented. The whole family is living a comfortable, leisurely and quiet life in this enclosed yard, enjoying the joy and fun of family.
Yike seemed to see himself as a child standing under the eaves of the veranda, watching the rain rolling down the small green tiles and dripping onto the bluestone slabs of the patio, just like pearls falling from a high altitude and shattering into pieces, or like a bud about to bloom and its petals immediately unfolding after hitting the ground. You can reach out and catch these beautiful raindrops and play with them under the eaves. Grandma chased her back to the main room with a bamboo stick, then mischievously ran to the kitchen to get a basin to fetch water from the corner of the patio...
The gate of this courtyard looks square in appearance, with tiles laid on the roof beams in piles, covering it tightly. The main entrance was composed of two heavy wooden doors. Ziyi unlocked the door and walked in. He stared at the door in a daze and quickly retreated.
"What's wrong? Come in! Be careful of the threshold." Ziyi walked over and pulled Yike in.
"Oh! Okay! Let's go in!" Yike followed Ziyi in. As soon as you enter the door, you will see a hidden wall and a wooden corridor surrounding it. There are east and west wing rooms, two small and one large; the main house has three rooms, with an ear room on each side; the back room is on the left side of the door. This is a quadrangle courtyard with a single entrance. The patio is paved with bluestone slabs. The patio is very large, with a well in the middle and a lush osmanthus tree in the southern corner. The yard was very clean, and it seemed that someone cleaned it regularly.
Ziyi took Yike to the main room in the middle of the principal house, with bedrooms on both sides. A portrait of the leader is hung on the wall in the middle of the main hall, and in the middle is an octagonal table. In addition to four benches arranged against the wall, there is also a rattan armchair placed on the side. There is a bed and a wardrobe in each bedroom. The closet was empty, the bed was empty, there was no clothes or quilt at all.
"No one has lived here before, so I didn't buy those things. Now that we are out, we will go and buy them later." Ziyi said.
"Okay. Can we live in the city more often from now on?"
"Sure, but the house is not registered in our name. If we want to live here, we have to go to the street office to register for temporary residence."
"Whose name is that?"
"It belongs to Brother Tang. The two rooms next door are in the names of other people. They are all city dwellers. Only those with city hukou can buy a house in the city."
"I also want to transfer my household registration, but it may be difficult to do so. I wonder if there is a way to cancel my household registration."
"It's better if we sell it. We don't have to go back to your house to transfer your household registration. We can just ask your team leader to write a certificate. But we are not in a hurry. Let's take our time. Do you want to go and take a look at the kitchen?"
"Okay, let's go check it out! Where is it?"
"The kitchen is in the small room on the east side, and the toilet is in the southwest corner. This courtyard was built by a big businessman in the past, and the materials used to build it were all top-quality. The owner was very reluctant to sell it. If it weren't for the fact that his son and daughter-in-law were sent down to the countryside, and the grandchildren had a hard time living in the city, the two old people would have been forced to take their grandchildren back to their hometown in the countryside, and they would have been reluctant to sell the house. The situations of the families in this row of courtyards are almost the same. They are all poor people with no place to live. Those who can't hold on sold their houses. The first house I bought was this one, and then the two families on the left and right also sold their houses, so I bought them together. At that time, I bought it mainly to store some things. After you see the kitchen, I will take you to see those things."
As they were talking, they went to the kitchen, where there was a kitchen cabinet, a chopping board, and a mud brick stove with a three-burner door. It was built in the shape of a large pot, a medium pot, and a small pot, but now there was only a small pot on the stove; next to the stove was a large water tank, which also had no water in it.
"I'll go buy a coal stove this afternoon, and some coal briquettes and firewood to put away so that it will be convenient for cooking when I come back."
"Don't buy smelting balls and coal stoves. You won't be staying here for long, so burning wood will be enough."
"Well, if we leave without burning a briquette, it will be a waste. Let's buy some firewood and keep it."
"Let's go and see our treasure." Ziyi took Yike to the east ear room, where there was a bookcase. It was not very big, rectangular, gray in color, with a total of six layers. There was not a single book in the bookcase, and the lonely bookcase was placed in the corner.
Ziyi moved the bookcase away, revealing the wooden wall behind it. Ziyi inserted the key into a small hole in the wooden wall. Unexpectedly, the small hole turned out to be the keyhole. There was a wooden door on the wooden wall. If Ziyi hadn't opened the door, it would have been difficult to find the door.
"How do you know there is a door here?" Yi Ke asked curiously.
"How could I not know what I did? There is a basement downstairs. The door was not here before, but in the main house on the east side. The owner told me when he left. Later, I blocked that side and opened a new passage to the basement here, and the door was moved here. Who knows if the original owner would tell other people." Ziyi said as he walked down the stairs with Yike and closed the wooden door so that even if someone outside could not find it.
Yike walked down a three-meter-long staircase underground and came to a red wooden door. Ziyi took out another key and opened the door. He fumbled on the wall behind the door for a while, and then the room became bright. It turned out that there was an electric light installed in the basement, and the light switch was behind the door.
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