In the room, the two sisters stared at each other in disbelief for a long, long time.
Only after seeing that the rest of the family had left did they finally feel at ease enough to start discussing things.
An Songxiang lowered her voice and asked, “Sis, what are you going to do about transferring your household registration?”
“I need to ask the school first before I’ll know,” An Songyu replied. She wasn’t very sure herself.
After all, in her previous life she had barely concerned herself with such matters.
After graduating, she had followed the school’s dual-selection policy and directly entered a large hotel in South City, starting as a front desk clerk.
And in the following year, she would form a small household with her husband in South City.
To be honest, An Songyu didn’t have a particularly detailed understanding of Shuncheng’s development over the next ten or twenty years.
The only thing she knew was that the demolition of Jiang Village had been a turning point that affected the fate of her entire extended family.
Otherwise, even with a second chance at life, An Songyu wouldn’t be able to completely determine the exact timing of the demolition.
“Then you need to hurry and handle it!” An Songxiang urged anxiously.
She had a few guesses about their father’s intentions.
But no matter what, if Jiang Village was destined to be demolished, as long as their household registrations remained in the village, the two sisters would each receive an additional resettlement payment.
Since this was nothing but a benefit, An Songxiang was determined not to miss it.
An Songyu’s thoughts were no different from her sister’s.
She quickly nodded. “I’ll talk to Sister Xia as soon as I go back and ask her to schedule my nearest day off.”
“Preferably tomorrow… that way we can handle both of our household registrations together.” An Songxiang sounded hopeful.
Yet she was also even more afraid that something might go wrong.
After all, their father had clearly avoided their mother when informing the two of them.
If they requested too much leave to deal with their registrations, their mother might find out.
Given Bi Lizhu’s temperament, if this weren’t a matter of giving what belonged to a son to daughters, she would probably fight hard to secure benefits for her daughters.
But the situation was special right now, and the sisters didn’t dare to provoke her displeasure at such a moment.
No matter how anxious they were, the matter still had to wait until An Songyu went on her afternoon shift to be handled.
So the two of them simply locked the door and left home.
Although they couldn’t directly inquire about the demolition, there was no harm in paying attention to some related peripheral information.
While the two sisters were each busy with their own affairs, An Jianping and the other two also arrived at Jiang Village.
After getting off the bus at the entrance of the village, An Jianping looked at his son and asked:
“Songlin, Xiaoxuan, I need to go to the team leader’s place first. Are you coming with me, or would you like to go elsewhere first?”
An Songlin exchanged a glance with his fiancée, and the two of them declined almost in unison:
“Dad / Uncle, we’d like to take a look around first.”
An Jianping wasn’t surprised. He nodded to them and went straight to the village committee office.
He really did have official business to take care of in Jiang Village today.
The village committee office of Jiang Village was not far from the entrance. It was a two-story building that was clearly somewhat old.
An Jianping knocked on the innermost office on the second floor.
Inside, Village Head Jiang Wenlin, who had already been waiting, looked up.
When he saw An Jianping, he immediately greeted him warmly. “Jianping, you’re here! Come on in and sit.”
“Uncle Lin,” An Jianping replied politely.
After the two of them sat down and brewed some tea, Jiang Wenlin pondered for a moment before asking:
“Jianping, I seem to have heard from your older brother that you’re planning to give up both of your residential land plots in the village?”
An Jianping shook his head somewhat awkwardly.
“Uncle Lin, I don’t have that intention now. Back then… I was in a bit of a rush, so I thought of that.”
Jiang Wenlin let out a small sigh of relief and spoke earnestly:
“Jianping, when it comes down to it, our two families aren’t outsiders.”
“If your family truly has an urgent need for money, just come back to the village and let us know.”
“After all, over the past few years, which household in the village hasn’t benefited from your help?”
“Believe me, as long as you’re willing to ask, we might not gather a large amount, but we could still scrape together a thousand or several hundred yuan from each household.”
“No, no, that really isn’t necessary!” An Jianping waved his hands repeatedly.
After thinking for a moment, he decided to take this opportunity to probe cautiously:
“By the way, Uncle Lin, I heard there are quite a few fish ponds, mulberry fields, and flower fields in the village that haven’t been contracted out?”
Jiang Wenlin gave An Jianping a helpless look.
He thought this was just Jianping avoiding the topic of financial difficulty by casually changing the subject.
But this was something that long-term villagers generally knew.
So Jiang Wenlin followed along with the topic and continued:
“There are indeed quite a few fish ponds and mulberry fields and flower fields in the village that haven’t been contracted out.”
“However, the locations that remain uncontracted aren’t particularly good.”
“Jianping, you’re in the city most of the time, so you might not know the village’s current situation.”
“Nowadays, most people in the village are running farmhouse inns or specialty picking businesses. To better receive guests, even if they already have land of their own, they’d rather contract plots closer to the village entrance.”
“After all, those locations have more convenient transportation and make it easier to attract guests.”
Before the household contract responsibility system was implemented, Jiang Village had already become a fairly well-known wealthy village in the surrounding area thanks to planting mulberry forests, raising silkworms, and harvesting cocoons.
After An Jianping graduated from technical secondary school and, with excellent grades, was retained by the city’s silk-weaving factory,
Jiang Village’s silkworm cocoons could be directly supplied to the factory.
As a result, Jiang Village further intensified its development of the mulberry–fish pond system.
This model did not change even after the implementation of the household contract responsibility system.
However, when land was divided in Jiang Village, two approaches were adopted.
One type—land suitable for growing grain and vegetables—was distributed directly to individual households.
The other type consisted of low-lying or barren land that had originally been unsuitable for farming, which was completely developed into mulberry–fish ponds.
These were still collectively managed, with labor contributed by each household.
Thus, in Jiang Village, the area of land belonging to the village collective had always been quite large.
Later on, Jiang Village found better development directions, yet most of the mulberry–fish ponds remained untouched.
The land allocated to individual households gradually turned into plots of flower fields and orchards.
Then, as farmhouse tourism began to rise, every household in the village became too busy to handle their own affairs alone.
Those mulberry–fish ponds and flower fields that had once led the entire village to prosperity gradually fell into neglect.
In the past couple of years, village officials had been trying various approaches, hoping to put this increasingly neglected land back to use.
However, the mulberry–fish ponds that had been engineered according to the terrain were not suitable for being converted back into vegetable plots or orchards.
Those abandoned flower fields were also located far from the village.
Even when village officials themselves took the lead in contracting them, it was still difficult to change the situation.
Thinking about this, Jiang Wenlin couldn’t help but sigh.
An Jianping already knew a bit about the village’s situation, but he hadn’t been aware of the attitudes of the village officials.
Seeing Jiang Wenlin like this now, a certain thought in his heart began to stir once more.
(End of chapter)