Chapter 4: Jiang Village

Standing at the spacious front desk, An Songyu maintained a standard smile while taking advantage of the lack of guests to greet the shift supervisor for the day.

The supervisor, Sister Xia, was in her thirties and a person who strictly adhered to principles.

Although An Songyu had arrived just in time for her shift, she hadn't been late.

Therefore, she didn't say anything more.

After exchanging greetings, An Songyu sat down in front of the two computers.

She remembered that whether it was at this hotel or the ones she would work at for the next ten or twenty years, her job at the front desk always involved handling check-ins, check-outs, and other related procedures for guests.

This was the advantage she held as a genuine hotel management student.

But it was precisely because she had studied hotel management...

Soon, as the time drew closer to three o'clock in the afternoon, An Songyu was already too busy to think about anything else.

At this time, An Jianping, who had already arrived at Jiang Village, knocked on his younger brother's door.

Jiang Village was not a large village.

The entire village consisted of only twenty-four households.

Yet, it was divided into three different surnames.

Among them, the Jiang and An surnames were the major ones in the village.

Only the remaining Zhu surname consisted of a single family.

Strictly speaking, he was just a man who had married into a Jiang family, and with the permission of his father-in-law, he had given his youngest son his original surname.

By now, they had developed into four generations living under one roof.

But until the demolition, their family had never split up.

And if one were to count the population, the Jiang surname, which had been in Jiang Village longer than the An family, actually had more people.

It was just that the An family had split their households early; their family alone accounted for four households, naturally making them the surname with the most households in all of Jiang Village.

An Jianmin, the younger brother, was now one of the most capable people in the village.

An Jianping knocked on the door for quite a while, but hearing only the sound of a dog barking and no response, he guessed that the couple might not be home.

After thinking for a moment, An Jianping went to the small shop next door.

"Uncle Six, where are my younger brother and his wife?"

An Shunkang, who was watching TV while tending the shop, squinted as he looked over, taking a good while to recognize the person in front of him.

He said with a sudden realization, "Oh, it's Jianping? You're looking for Jianmin? He should be over at the village secretary's place!"

As he spoke, he couldn't help but walk out of the shop and ask

"Jianping, I heard from Jianmin that he's planning to build a house by the fish pond recently? And he wants to renovate your parents' old house, too. What about you?"

"Of those two homesteads of yours, the house on one doesn't even have a roof anymore."

"In another two years, I reckon those mud walls will collapse."

"As for the other one, it's purely used for growing weeds. Why did you insist on claiming that homestead back then?"

An Jianping smiled with a bit of embarrassment.

Before he could say anything, An Shunkang suddenly lowered his voice and asked

"Jianping, I heard from your eldest brother this morning that you seem to have the intention of giving up your homestead in the village?"

"Jianping, you mustn't be foolish!"

"Your household registration was moved out a long time ago, so we won't even talk about how early you were allocated that homestead."

"That homestead of your eldest son's was only granted to your family because you had influence at the silk mill and could ensure the village's annual cocoon harvest had a buyer."

"Otherwise, logically speaking, since your eldest son has never spent a single day with his household registration in the village, he wouldn't have been qualified for a homestead at all."

"Look at the village now; who hasn't built a small two-story house?"

"Your old house is even more dilapidated than your parents'."

"In this day and age, in a village as close to the city as ours, where else can you still see mud walls?"

An Shunkang's words were not the least bit exaggerated.

Shuncheng not only had an obvious geographical advantage, but it was also only a half-hour drive from the provincial capital of Nan Province.

Even Shuncheng itself had seen excellent development in every street under its jurisdiction.

Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a county-level city directly under the administration of Nan Province.

And the location of Jiang Village, while not right in the center of Shuncheng, was one of the best-developed streets outside the city center.

It was separated from the central urban area by nothing more than a wide river.

Jiang Village was only a half-hour journey from Rongdi Street.

Since the Reform and Opening-up, the people of Jiang Village had progressed from mulberry-fish ponds to growing vegetables and flowers, and later to the thriving farmhouse picking industry they had today.

In the village, not to mention every family building new houses, even the oldest and shortest small buildings were at least two stories high.

Like An Jianping's family, having not only an empty homestead but also one with only a few mud walls left...

It was very polite of the old man not to directly express his disdain, as some of the Jiang family members in the village had done.

An Jianping knew the old man meant well and didn't say much.

After chatting casually with the old man for a few moments, he saw that there was still no sound from An Jianmin's house, so he prepared to head directly to the village secretary's house.

Walking through the village, An Jianping took the rare opportunity to observe things carefully.

Overall, the development of Jiang Village was exceptionally good.

Entering from the village entrance, the dozen or so households scattered along both sides of the road almost formed a "Jiang Village Street."

Most daily necessities could be resolved without even leaving the village.

At the end of this street was the small shop belonging to Uncle Six.

The house next to it was An Jianmin's.

However, although the two families appeared to be neighbors, the distance between them was not close.

An Jianping's main business was a fruit shop, but he also had a large orchard in Jiang Village.

The entrance to the orchard was on the other side of his house.

Therefore, near An Jianmin's house, apart from Uncle Six being the closest, other houses were not far away either.

An Jianping continued walking into the village, and not far away was one of his two homesteads.

One of them was adjacent to his parents' and brothers'.

His family's was the closest to the village entrance; from his current perspective, the houses seemed to be arranged from low to high.

His own, naturally, consisted only of a few mud walls hidden among shrubs and weeds taller than a person.

Next to his was his parents' old-fashioned brick-and-tile courtyard.

Although it was only one story and one could easily see the passage of time, against the backdrop of his homestead, it didn't seem quite so shabby.

Next to that was the house built by the eldest brother in his early years.

It was the first two-story building in all of Jiang Village.

Behind that was the new house built by the fourth brother a few years ago.

It was one of the few tall buildings in Jiang Village, standing a full five stories high, mainly to provide accommodation for the eldest brother's farmhouse restaurant.

Behind this row of houses belonging to their extended family lay a vast expanse of orchards, vegetable gardens, and fish ponds.

This was the family fortune they had painstakingly developed over the years.

After passing their houses, he was not far from the village secretary's home.

As a village named after the Jiang surname, for a long time, the village cadres had nothing to do with the An surname.

But in recent years, with the An surname clearly developing better than the Jiangs, the first college-graduate secretary had emerged from the An family.

Before An Jianping could reach the village secretary's house, he saw two familiar figures not far ahead.