Siheyuan's Journey Through the Ages

Chapter 4 Neighbors Appearing

Ma Qing chuckled, "I'm not afraid. If it can't be sold, then it can't be sold. You know I'm not short of money, but I can't sell my parents' workstations at a low price. I can't get over that.

I will not use this workstation to flatter a leader I don’t know. People in our city don’t live in such a depressed state. Besides, the leader is still short of a few hundred yuan and hates me. I can’t do that! "

Section Chief Zhao laughed, "Okay, you have a clear idea. Anyway, it's not my money that is being spent. I will convey your idea to you. I don't think there will be any problem. I will take you to the factory to go through the formalities in two days."

"Thank you so much, please don't fight with me for the tea money, I'll treat you today."

The two chatted for a while, paid for tea and went home. Ma Qing returned to the gate of the Siheyuan at No. 95 Nanluoguxiang. Speaking of it, the Siheyuan at No. 95 Nanluoguxiang is the most standard three-entry Siheyuan, which is divided into the back house, front yard, middle yard, back yard and back house. The reason why the Siheyuan is called a Siheyuan is that only the courtyard with a square garden in the middle can be called one entrance. It is really embarrassing to count the back house and the back house as one of them.

After entering the door, turn left and walk through the back house, cross the hanging flower gate, enter the front yard and then step into the middle yard, then cross the corridor on the left side of the main house in the middle yard, walk through the back yard, cross the corridor on the left side of the main house in the back yard, enter the back house, and return to the northeast corner yard of your home.

Maybe it was too cold, or maybe it was during work hours, but I didn't run into anyone. I had done a lot of work that day, so Ma Qing planned to take a good rest, so he lay on the bed and dozed off.

Ma Qing woke up to a knock on the door. It turned out that his two childhood friends and classmates came to see him. One was Niu Zhenhua and the other was Yan Shengli, holding dishes and chopsticks in their hands. Ma Qing thought, this is really the King of Hell with a Bull Head and a Horse Face. Oh no, I have become a supporting role.

So he stared at Yan Shengli fiercely and asked, "What are you doing? Are you calling a ghost?" Yan Shengli waved the bowl and chopsticks in his hand and said, "Let's go and eat." Ma Qing then remembered that the Red Star Factory had started eating "big pot meals" since last year, that is, in the second half of 58. This saved trouble. He immediately took the bowl and chopsticks and went straight to the Red Star Factory cafeteria with his childhood friends.

Along the way, the two childhood friends kept making jokes to amuse Ma Qing, and Ma Qing had to tell them that their acting skills were really bad. The three of them walked and talked on the way, and it took them almost twenty minutes to arrive at a canteen in the Red Star Factory.

The canteen is really big, and can accommodate about 300 people at the same time. Various square tables, round tables, benches, and round stools fill the entire venue. The walls are covered with slogans such as "Eat for free, work hard to produce"

Since the start of the "big pot meal", there was not enough space in the cafeteria, so most people just got their meals and left to eat somewhere else. Ma Qing and the other two arrived relatively early, and the room was only half full. They quickly lined up to get their meals, and then went to meet up with the families of their two childhood friends. During the meal, there was another round of greetings and family talks, mainly to comfort Ma Qing, which made Ma Qing, who had come through, feel a little warm and a little embarrassed.

While eating, Ma Qing also saw the legendary great enemy, the Siheyuan romantic comrade He Yuzhu, who was so tired that he was flipping the pot in the kitchen like a grandson.

Niu Zhenhua's father, Lao Niu, saw Ma Qing looking at He Yuzhu and knew they were neighbors, so he started chatting with Ma Qing. They all reached a consensus: Comrade He Yuzhu is a beauty lover with ideals and demands (of course, this is what Ma Qing said in his heart, Lao Niu's original words were that he took after his father and liked beautiful women). The two adults also carefully analyzed the reasons why Comrade He Yuzhu was still single at the age of 24:
The first one is that his vision is higher than his ability. He has high requirements even though he himself does not have good conditions. He will not marry anyone but a beautiful woman. Isn't that the end of the world? Some people may say that He Yuzhu's conditions are okay. He is a level 8 chef with a salary of 37.5 yuan. Sorry, it is 59 now and He Yuzhu is not a level 8 chef yet. His salary should be less than yuan now. This salary in BJ is not low, but it certainly does not give him an advantage when looking for beautiful women. Now everyone eats from the same pot and has no professional advantage. Then, in the Red Star Steel Rolling Mill, he is completely at a disadvantage in terms of income.

Because he is not a front-line industrial worker, he gets the national standard salary for an eighth-level worker. Any young first-level worker at the Red Star Steel Rolling Mill is far better than him. He has average height, average looks, no eloquence, and his only talent is cooking, which is difficult to have an advantage in a relationship in this era. He doesn't have a beautiful childhood sweetheart to play development games with, so there is a 1% chance that he has no chance on his own.

The second reason is that his family is not very supportive. His father is unreliable and ran away to Baoding for a beautiful widow. His younger sister has to rely on him for support. Apart from the advantage that he lives in the main house in the central courtyard of a quadrangle, he has no other advantages.

The third reason is that my social circle is too narrow. Once my father passed away, all my connections were cut off. I am not a social expert, I have a stubborn temper and a foul mouth, and my work and life are monotonous and narrow.

He happens to live in Nanluoguxiang and Red Star Steel Mill, where there are many young men of marriageable age who are better off than him, and beautiful women are a scarce resource. If you live in Nanluoguxiang or Red Star Steel Mill and have a beautiful niece, will you introduce her to He Yuzhu? No, even the matchmakers in this area will not introduce beautiful women to He Yuzhu.

Finally, everyone came to the conclusion: He Yuzhu should either lower his standards and find an ordinary woman to marry, or go to the suburbs or rural areas near the old city to find a beautiful wife, or he can only find a beautiful second-married woman or widow with children, otherwise he will have to live out his life alone.

After listening to their gossip, the meal was almost over. Ma Qing couldn't help but give them a thumbs up. As expected, the public's eyes are sharp. Ma Qing, who had watched TV dramas, didn't think as clearly as they did. How shameful.

After the meal, everyone walked home leisurely. The homes of their childhood friends were actually in the Nanluoguxiang area, only about a hundred meters away from Ma Qing's home. After playing with their friends for a while, the old man Ma Qing couldn't stand it anymore and said goodbye and went home.

Ma Qing was holding the bowl and chopsticks, with his hands behind his back. As soon as he entered the front yard, he saw a thin middle-aged man wearing a pair of black-framed glasses and watering the flowers with a kettle in his hand. He was the legendary third uncle who would taste the saltiness of the food whenever a dung cart passed by.

Ma Qing couldn't help but complain in his heart about the courtyard house novels he had read in the past. For the sake of plot conflict, the normal Comrade Yan Bugui in the TV series was portrayed as too low-end. In fact, in the neighborhood's reputation, everyone knew that the Third Uncle was stingy, but he did not have a reputation for taking advantage of others, at least not now.

The third uncle was born into a small business family and inherited the fine tradition of most small business owners in China - thrift and saving money. In addition, he is an elementary school teacher and an excellent teacher, so he values ​​his own reputation very much. In fact, in this era, how can a person with a bad reputation be rated as an excellent teacher?

(End of this chapter)