Though the Jiangcheng educated youth numbered only twenty, the group was a hidden hoard of talent.
When the time came to mix the mud and mold the bricks, another volunteer eagerly stepped forward.
Hu Huanxin, a brick factory worker’s son who had grown up in the countryside, had spent his childhood kneading mortar and making mud bricks with his father and grandfather. His favorite pastime had always been playing in the mud.
Sturdy and compact, he had a round face, large eyes, and a constant, beaming smile that made him look much younger than his years. The other educated youth affectionately called him “Little Bean Hu.”
Under Hu Huanxin’s direction, the group worked with seamless efficiency—chopping wood for molds, digging earth, mixing mud, pressing the bricks, removing the forms, and stacking them for drying.
Brickmaking was grueling work. After a full day of labor, Hu’s team had produced a thousand bricks. The vast field of yellow earth bricks, neatly laid out to dry, presented a truly magnificent sight.
A few of the educated youth collapsed in exhaustion, yet they refused to rest. Instead, they stood by and gazed at the fruits of their labor, their smiles radiant.
“Wow, did we really make all these bricks?”
“This is so satisfying!”
“Once we build the walls with these, we won’t have to worry about the wind and rain anymore.”
Tao Nanfeng directed the second group of educated youth in laying the rough-stone foundation. After clearing the trenches, they spread a layer of fine sand and then stacked the quarried stones in a stepped formation.
With Tao Nanfeng’s immense strength and the group’s fervent energy, they completed a third of the task in a single day.
The setting sun cast a golden glow over everyone. Qiao Yadong gazed at their progress, his face alight with excitement. “At this rate, when will we be finished?”
Tao Nanfeng’s eyes shone with joy. “Twenty days will be enough.”
The group erupted in cheers. “Yes! Weasel is going to be so pissed!”
They knew they owed this rapid progress to Tao Nanfeng’s astonishing strength. Without her using the sledgehammer to break the mountain rock, the construction would have dragged on indefinitely.
Night fell, and the moonlight dimmed.
The educated youth returned to their office to rest. The construction site fell silent, save for the croaking of frogs in the damp areas where spring water dripped.
Two figures crept toward Educated Youth Post No. 6, slipping through the shadows to the spot where the mud bricks were stacked. In the faint moonlight, one of them bent down, felt for a brick, and brought a heavy foot down upon it.
“Damn, these things are hard as hell!”
“There are so many bricks. How are we supposed to stomp on every single one?”
“Stop complaining. Just push them over first.”
“I don’t get why Chief Huang has to be so obsessed with these bricks. Doing this… it makes my stomach churn.”
The night was still, and the educated youth slept soundly, completely unaware.
The two men finished their sabotage and slipped back to the farm headquarters to report. Huang Xingwu gritted his teeth in smug satisfaction.
Let’s see what you build your house with now, he thought. Making your own bricks? Keep dreaming.
The next morning, the educated youth arrived at the settlement, ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work. Instead, they were met with a scene of devastation.
“Ahhh! Our bricks!”
The thousand mud bricks, stacked so neatly the night before, were now scattered in a chaotic mess. The wet clay, still drying, had been crushed and mangled. Some were split in half, others chipped or deformed—all of them useless.
A whole day’s hard labor, destroyed in a single night.
Wei Min shook his fist, unable to hold back a curse. “Goddamn it! That weasel definitely sent someone. The bastard’s too scared to fight fair, so he resorts to this shit.”
Hu Huanxin’s eyes burned with fury. “Let’s go! Let’s go settle the score with that weasel.”
“We have no proof,” Qiao Yadong countered, his voice heavy with concern.
“What can we actually do?” Everyone knew Huang Xingwu was behind this, but evidence… they had none.
Hu Huanxin pouted, his face falling into a miserable frown. “I worked all day on those. All that effort, just ruined.”
Qiao Yadong’s expression darkened. He scanned their surroundings, then pointed to where they had planned to build the clay stove. “It’s only a one-day delay. Don’t let it get to you. From now on, we’ll take turns on a night watch. We can’t let them sabotage us again.”
Wei Min stomped his foot in agreement. “Fine! Two people per shift. We’ll guard this place.”
Tao Nanfeng pressed her lips together, rolled up her sleeves, and bent down to lift a heavy stone. The group worked in unison, and before long, they had constructed a small, open-air stone shelter.
Once finished, they paused to spit in the direction of the farm headquarters.
“Saboteurs deserve to die a thousand deaths!”
“The weasel will rot in hell!”
“He who is willing to suffer the hardships is the one who can pull the weasel off his horse!”
Their anger only fueled their resolve. Hu Huanxin took charge, directing the others as they began mixing mud again.
Ye Qin stood nearby, holding a handful of wildflowers. A few blossoms slipped from her grasp and fell into the wet clay; she immediately bent down to retrieve them.
“Wait.”
Tao Nanfeng watched as a sprig of stem and leaf remained embedded in the mud. A sudden idea struck her.
Ye Qin paused, her head tilting in confusion. “What is it?”
The more Tao Nanfeng thought about it, the more certain she became. “Let’s make straw-brick houses.”
Straw-brick houses? Hu Huanxin looked puzzled. “You mean mixing straw and stalks into the clay? We use those for firewood in the villages. We can’t afford to waste them.”
“Exactly,” Tao Nanfeng said, her eyes shining with excitement.
She remembered reading about this in a book: in the harsh winters of the north, farmers cut stalks into one-finger lengths and mixed them into yellow clay.
The resulting bricks provided excellent insulation. Just like reeds, the hollow stalks trapped air, creating a natural thermal barrier.
Ye Qin raised her hand, eagerly jumping in. “The pig farm has a chopper specifically for chopping pig feed. If we borrow it, it’ll be perfect for cutting the reeds.”
Let’s do it, they decided.
They were all in their teens, an age where curiosity and creativity burned brightest. Some of the educated youth headed to the mountains to harvest reeds, while others went to the pig farm to borrow the chopper.
They set up on the open ground and began chopping the stalks.
The reeds were hollow, and with a few quick snaps and crunches, a massive pile of chopped straw grew.
After experimenting with several different ratios of straw to mud, they finally settled on the perfect mixture and began forging the bricks in earnest.
Three days later, the rough stone foundation was complete.
The first batch of bricks, now dried and cured, was stacked neatly on the open ground, ready for construction.
The eastern wetland, once a wild tangle of weeds that echoed with the nightly chorus of frogs, had been transformed into a deep pit measuring five meters wide and ten meters long.
Spring water flowed steadily down a rubber hose—the same source they relied on for drinking and washing. A large vat was placed at the end of the line to store the water; when it overflowed, the excess spilled into the wetland, nourishing the lush aquatic plants.
“Should we fill this pit in?” Qiao Yadong asked Tao Nanfeng.
She shook her head. “Let’s divert the water into it. It’ll make a perfect pond.”
The other youth broke into excited cheers. “Yes! We’ll use the vat for drinking water, and the overflow can fill the pond. We can raise fish, go swimming—everything!”
They worked and planned as they went, and within a few days, they had actually constructed a proper pond. They even laid a path of green stone slabs along one side, making it easy to wash clothes and faces.
Though the pond was still slowly filling—its bottom covered in only a shallow layer of muddy water—the educated youth were already imagining a future of floating lotus leaves and darting fish.
A faint smile touched Qiao Yadong’s lips. “Everyone, let’s cherish this pond. We can’t let it get dirty.”
One by one, the others thumped their chests in promise. “Don’t worry, Monitor Qiao. We’ve got it.”
After their vows, they turned to Tao Nanfeng. “How did you come up with this? Did you plan to dig a pond all along?”
Her voice was calm as she replied, “Let me tell you a story.”
She recounted the tale of Ding Wei, a prime minister during the Northern Song Dynasty who oversaw the restoration of the imperial palace after a fire.
He had dug a trench to extract earth, which then became a canal to float timber downstream. Once the construction was complete, he filled the trench with the leftover bricks and stones. It was a masterstroke of engineering that saved tens of thousands of taels of silver—a classic example of efficient management.
The group fell silent, the pieces finally clicking into place.
“You’re always thinking two steps ahead, Nanfeng! You’re brilliant!”
“I guess reading really does pay off.”
“A thousand bushels of grain, a house of gold… all found in books, huh? Heh heh.”
Just as the flattery was reaching a fever pitch, Chen Zhilu came running toward them from the distance, shouting as he ran, “The mountain road is open! We can go down and buy the tiles!”
Qiao Yadong let out a long sigh of relief.
Seven days had passed since the bet was made. If the mountain road hadn’t opened, the delay in transporting tiles and lime would have stalled the entire project.
Chen Zhilu led a group of five educated youth down the mountain, making trip after trip to carry up blue tiles, lime, window frames, and glass. Through their collective effort, the Zhiqing Settlement gradually began to take shape.
They learned as they went, their clumsy attempts at brickmaking, mixing mortar, and laying walls gradually giving way to a practiced skill.
With Tao Nanfeng providing the theory and the others the muscle, they worked in perfect harmony. Following her basic principles—level horizontals, straight verticals, full mortar joints, and staggered seams—they built the walls up, layer by layer.
Twenty days later, the brick-and-tile house had its first rough form.
The walls stood three meters high, their gables sloped exactly as Tao Nanfeng had specified. Purlins were then laid across the top.
One by one, logs were felled on the mountain and carried up. The men climbed ladders to set the roof frame, install the purlins, nail down the tile battens, and lay the blue tiles.
Seeing the knowledge and diagrams she’d studied in books materialize into a real structure, Tao Nanfeng felt a surge of joy. Her long eyebrows arched, her eyes shone, and a smile touched her lips. She felt a sudden, irrepressible urge to sing at the top of her lungs.
She even had a song in mind: Commune Members Are All Sunflowers.
“The commune is a red sun,
And its members are sunflowers.
The flowers bloom toward the sun,
Their blossoms as large as grinding stones.
No matter the wind or rain,
We will never leave her side.”
Tao Nanfeng couldn’t sing—she was completely tone-deaf and usually never dared to open her mouth. But now, her guard down and her heart light, she hummed a strange, wandering tune as she hoisted a window frame into place.
When the small window was finally glazed, the heavy earthen-brick wall seemed to spring to life. It was as if the building had blinked, awakening from its slumber.
Tao Nanfeng took a half-step back, admiring the scene.
Her father had always said that architecture possessed a soul. She’d never understood it before, thinking only of the cold bricks, tiles, cement, and rebar as lifeless materials. How could something assembled from such dead things have a life of its own?
But now, watching the structure she had designed and helped build bloom into its final form, she finally understood.
On the evening of the twenty-sixth day, as the sun dipped below the horizon and the sky burned with the colors of sunset, Educated Youth Post No. 6 was complete.
The last blue tile had been laid on the roof, sealing it against the rain. The ground had been waterproofed, leveled, and packed firm, creating a smooth surface that would repel the damp.
The walls stood thick and sturdy, a bulwark against the wind and the wild beasts of the mountains.
The educated youth cheered, dragging their luggage into their assigned rooms. They rolled on the beds, threw open the windows and screamed with joy, and danced under the eaves, shouting like madmen at the verdant mountains.
“Our house is finished!”
—The tile-roofed house! The brick-walled house!—
Echoes bounced back and forth across the valley.
—The brick house is finished…—
Xiao Aiyun was laughing so hard she stumbled, clutching Tao Nanfeng’s arm. “We’ve gone mad,” she cried. “Mad with joy!”
Li Huilan had repotted her orchid, placing it on the windowsill. She gazed at its long, slender, vibrant green leaves, her eyes full of longing. “Next spring, it will bloom into the most beautiful flower.”
Ye Qin hammered a nail into the wall as she mapped out the room’s layout. “Towels and washbasins go here, and clothes and trunks go there. We’ll take turns cleaning.”
Tao Nanfeng leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, her gaze lost in the bright, clean room.
They hadn’t made curtains yet, leaving the glass windows transparent. The golden sun and crimson clouds met in a dazzling display, casting a warm, orange glow across the interior.
A handful of close friends sharing a room, the sunset painting our new home in gold.
The thought floated through Tao Nanfeng’s mind, and a gentle smile touched her lips.
Suddenly remembering something, Xiao Aiyun pushed Tao Nanfeng into the room’s only chair.
“You’re our greatest hero,” she said with a grin. “Today, we’re going to wait on you hand and foot.”
Li Huilan brought the teacups, Ye Qin produced the tea leaves, and Xiao Aiyun retrieved the thermos. Together, they poured Tao Nanfeng a steaming cup of tea, their eyes shining with earnest gratitude.
“Tao Nanfeng, you’ve worked so hard for us.”
Never before had she been thanked so fervently. Tao Nanfeng’s face flushed slightly. She waved a hand, flustered. “Don’t mention it.”
“Drink up,” Xiao Aiyun insisted, her face beaming. “You’ve been running yourself ragged these past few days, pouring both your mind and your muscle into this. We’re here because of you. How else would we have known how to build the house? We’d still be at that weasel’s mercy.”
Ye Qin’s eyes lit up as the mention of Huang Xingwu brought the memory flooding back. “That’s right! I almost forgot. We finished the whole house in just twenty-six days. The Weasel lost the bet—he can finally get the hell out of his position as Head of the Infrastructure Department!”