Standing behind the spacious front desk, An Songyu maintained a standard smile while taking advantage of the moment with no guests to greet today’s shift supervisor.
The supervisor, Sister Xia, was in her early thirties and someone who strictly followed rules and principles.
Although An Songyu arrived almost right on time for her shift, she was not actually late.
So Sister Xia didn’t say anything further.
After greeting her, An Songyu sat down in front of the two computers.
She remembered that whether it was at this hotel or at the hotels she would work in later for ten or even twenty years, her front-desk duties were always to handle guest check-ins, check-outs, and similar procedures.
This was precisely her advantage as someone who had formally studied hotel management.
But it was also because she had majored in hotel management…
Before she knew it, as the time drew closer to 3 p.m., An Songyu was already so busy that she had no time for extra thoughts.
At this moment, An Jianping, who had arrived in Jiang Village, knocked on the door of his younger brother’s house.
Jiang Village was not a particularly large village.
Altogether, it had only twenty-four households.
Yet it consisted of as many as three different surnames.
Among them, the Jiang and An families were the major clans in the village.
The remaining Zhu family consisted of only a single household.
Strictly speaking, that household had originally been a son-in-law taken into the Jiang family. With his father-in-law’s permission, the youngest son was allowed to keep his original surname.
By now, they had developed into a four-generation household living together.
But until the demolition, their family had never split into separate households.
In terms of sheer numbers, the Jiang clan—which had settled earlier—actually had more people than the An clan.
However, the An family had divided into separate households earlier, and their single family already accounted for four households, making them the surname with the most households in all of Jiang Village.
An Jianping’s younger brother, An Jianmin, was now one of the most capable and well-known figures in the village.
An Jianping knocked for quite some time, but when no one responded and only a dog’s barking could be heard, he guessed that the couple were probably not at home.
After thinking for a moment, An Jianping went to the small convenience shop next door.
“Sixth Uncle, where’s my younger brother?”
An Shunkang, who was watching TV while minding the shop, narrowed his eyes when he heard this and looked over. After a while, he finally made out who it was.
Realization dawned on him. “Jianping? You’re looking for Jianmin? He should’ve gone over to the village secretary’s place.”
As he spoke, he couldn’t help stepping out of the shop and asked,
“Jianping, Jianmin said recently that he’s planning to build a house over by the fish ponds, and he even wants to help fix up your parents’ old house. What about you?”
“Those two residential plots your family has—on one of them, the house doesn’t even have a roof anymore.”
“In another couple of years, even those earthen walls are probably going to collapse.”
“And the other plot is just left to grow weeds. Back then, why did you bother splitting off that plot at all?”
An Jianping smiled rather awkwardly.
Before he could say anything, An Shunkang suddenly lowered his voice and asked,
“Jianping, I heard your eldest brother say this morning that you seem to be thinking about transferring those residential plots in the village?”
“Jianping, don’t do anything foolish!”
“Your household registration was moved out long ago. No one says anything about you getting a plot back then.”
“But your eldest son’s residential plot was only approved because you were able to speak up at the silk factory and ensure that the village’s cocoons had a buyer every year.”
“Otherwise, strictly speaking, since your eldest son’s household registration never spent a single day in the village, he wouldn’t have been eligible for a plot at all.”
“Look at the village now—whose family hasn’t built a small two-story house?”
“Your family’s old house is in even worse shape than your parents’ place.”
“These days, in villages like ours that are so close to the city, where do you still see mud-brick walls?”
None of this was exaggeration.
Shuncheng not only had obvious geographical advantages—its distance to the provincial capital of Nan Province was no more than a half-hour drive.
Even within Shuncheng itself, every subordinate street had developed quite well.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been directly administered by Nan Province as a county-level city district.
As for Jiang Village’s location, although it wasn’t right next to Shuncheng’s central area, it was still one of the most well-developed streets outside the city center.
It was separated from the central urban area by nothing more than a single wide river.
And Jiang Village was less than half an hour away from Rongdi Street.
After the reform and opening-up, Jiang Village residents progressed from mulberry-dike fish ponds, to growing vegetables and flowers, and then to today’s agritainment-style fruit picking—each stage developed with real success.
Within the village, even if not every household had built a brand-new house, the oldest and lowest buildings were still at least two stories tall.
Families like An Jianping’s—with not only an empty residential plot, but another where only a few earthen walls remained— for the elder not to openly criticize him the way some of the Jiang clan members did was already very generous.
An Jianping understood the elder’s goodwill and didn’t say much in response.
After a bit of casual chatting, and seeing no sign of activity at An Jianmin’s house, he decided to head straight to the village secretary’s place.
Walking through the village, An Jianping found himself observing his surroundings more carefully than usual.
Overall, Jiang Village was developing quite well.
From the village entrance inward, the dozen or so households scattered along both sides of the road had almost formed a single main street within the village.
Most daily necessities could be taken care of without ever leaving the village.
At the end of this street was the convenience shop run by Sixth Uncle that he had just visited.
Right next to it was An Jianmin’s home.
Although they looked like neighbors, the distance between the two houses was actually not small.
An Jianmin’s main business was fruit shops, but he also owned a large orchard in Jiang Village.
The entrance to the orchard was on the other side of his house.
So aside from Sixth Uncle, there were no other households close by.
An Jianping continued walking further into the village. Before long, he reached one of his family’s two residential plots.
One of them was right next to his parents’ and siblings’ homes.
His family’s plot was the one closest to the village entrance. From his current vantage point, the houses seemed to rise gradually from low to high.
His own family’s plot was, naturally, nothing more than a few earthen walls hidden among bushes and wild grass taller than a person.
Next to it was his parents’ old brick-and-tile courtyard.
Although it was only one story tall and the passage of time was evident at a glance, compared to the state of his own plot, it somehow didn’t look quite so shabby.
Beyond that was the house his eldest brother had built many years ago— the first two-story building in the entire Jiang Village.
Further back was the newer house his fourth brother had built just a few years earlier.
It was one of the tallest buildings in the village, standing at a full five stories, mainly to provide accommodation for the agritourism business run by the eldest brother’s family.
Behind this entire row of houses belonging to their extended family lay a vast stretch of orchards, vegetable plots, and fish ponds— the family assets they had painstakingly built up over the years.
After passing their cluster of homes, the village secretary’s house was not far away.
As a village named after the Jiang surname, for a long time the village leadership had nothing to do with the An family.
But in recent years, as the An clan’s development had clearly surpassed that of the Jiang clan, the first village secretary who was a university graduate emerged from the An family.
Before An Jianping could even reach the village secretary’s house, he spotted two familiar figures in the distance.
(End of this chapter)