The next day.
The group got to the back hill. The clerks didn’t measure the land strictly according to the document, and some of the extra didn’t get taken off, so in the final reckoning there was nearly an extra fen of land. Don’t underestimate that one fen, it was fifty square meters, and planted with vegetables it was enough to feed a family of ten for two months.
When it was done Yan Xi’s father slipped each of the two of them another fifty wen, and after a meal he went to the village head to borrow the ox cart and sent the two of them back to the county office.
When Yan Xi’s father came back the family had already finished dinner and had left some for him in the kitchen. After dark they each went back to their rooms.
The next day Yan Xi’s father went to find the village head, and the village head helped him find twenty strong laborers in the village to build the house together. The women of the house made a midday meal at home, and some of the neighbor aunties came to help as well.
That day the men were divided into three teams: one team dug the foundations, another team hauled clay to make mud bricks, and the last team went to Yanshi Mountain to haul stone back for the footings.
You had to know that a house’s soundness is inseparable from its foundations, only if the foundations are well laid is the house safe.
The men dug all morning and at last had the main body of the foundation dug out, and once the ones who had gone for stone came back they could lay the footings.
At this point the ones cooking had carried the food up the hill too. Because there were a lot of people they made dishes that were big and filling: a basin of radish, potato and cabbage stew, and though there was no meat plenty of oil had gone in, and it looked and smelled good. There was also a big basin of two-flour buns, as many as you liked. The villagers, having worked all morning, ate all the food up, and remarked that the old Yan family really was free with it. In another house you’d be lucky to get a few black-flour wowotou buns and a wild greens soup with a few specks of oil floating on it.
In the afternoon the ones who had gone for stone came back. Stone can’t be used just as it’s quarried, it has to be worked by hand to a suitable size, and this job could only be done by strong laborers, since an ordinary man can’t stand more than a few strokes of the chisel.
Busy the whole day, they got the preparation for the foundations done, and only then did the group take their tools and each go home. Coming at the chen hour the next day would do.
The next day Yan Xi’s mother sent Feng Yue into town to buy some meat. Only if you feed people well will they have the strength to work. If there were bones she could buy two of those as well, cracked open, the marrow inside was very nourishing.
When Yan Xi’s father got to the back hill he found someone was already filling in the stone, and who knew how early he’d come, it was nearly level with the ground already.
Once several of them had laid the foundations together they set to work with the mud-brick makers. Mud bricks have to be baked in the sun for three days in good weather, only when the moisture inside is dried out can they be laid up into walls. You also had to watch the quality of the mud bricks, the cracked ones couldn’t be used.
Three days later there were several hundred sun-dried mud bricks, enough to start laying the walls. First an old hand at house-building came to check the wall lines, in case the walls were laid crooked and left a hidden danger.
With everything ready, the wall-laying work went fastest, as long as there were enough mud bricks, the walls could be up in a few days. The village’s strong laborers went into the hills to find pine suitable for the ridgepole. This wood was common, it didn’t warp easily, and it was relatively light.
On the day of raising the ridgepole the whole village came to watch. In the countryside this was a big event. It stood for peace in the home.
Early on the Yan family had the things for the sacrifice ready, a pig’s head, a sheep’s head and some pastries, and after that the villagers came to help raise the ridgepole.
When it was done Yan Xi’s father took out some maltose, peanuts and small steamed buns he had prepared beforehand and scattered them, which stands for wealth flowing in from all sides, and the people around scrambled for a share of the luck.
After that the Yan family gave a meal to the people who had come to help, commonly called the ridgepole feast. After that the house could be roofed, and at that step it was basically done, what went inside the owners would furnish little by little.
In two months the house was built.
There were six rooms in all. You opened the yard and went in and there was the front room, with the east and west wings to left and right. Beside the west wing was a side room, partitioned into two small rooms, which was where the juniors of the family slept. The kitchen was outside. Yan Xi’s father and mother lived in the main room, in the east wing the eldest brother and the second brother each had a room with their wives, and the west wing was where Yan Xi and her third brother Yan Jiang slept.
After the house was roofed they invited the neighbors they were on good terms with to warm the house, and then invited the village head and several clan heads and clan elders, with Grandmother Yan to keep them company, and after they had eaten and drunk their fill this housewarming feast counted as done.
Over several days they moved their things to the new house bit by bit. The beds and bedding and so on all came from the old house, as for furniture and such, they would add to it slowly later. And so life got going.
Winter went and spring came.
In the blink of an eye Yan Xi was fifteen. Apart from taking good care of her every month, the family no longer took the old Daoist’s talk of a calamity to heart. They only asked that Yan Xi be free of illness and misfortune from then on, it didn’t matter if she never married, since with that many brothers and nephews they could support one Yan Xi.
It was only after Yan Xi fell in the water and came back suddenly well that the family believed the Daoist’s words and knew Yan Xi’s calamity had passed. And sure enough, as Yan Xi got better, in only a few days life at home began to get easier.
As for Wu Yong, who had pushed Yan Xi into the water, at first the Yan family hadn’t had time to go and make trouble because Yan Xi had come to, and afterwards it was because they thought Yan Xi really was unhurt and had even come to her senses as a blessing in disguise. Going to the Wu house several days later, Zhang Zhaodi would certainly deny it, and rather than have a quarrel and give people something to laugh at it was better to let it go. It was only that from then on they would have to think twice about dealing with the Wu family.
Yan Xi thought that since there were other elders in the family she ought to go and pay a visit. Although they had split the household with her uncle’s family, her grandmother was still alive, and the old woman had been quite good to her too, whether over her treatment or over the split she hadn’t held anything back in the least. By feeling and by reason Yan Xi ought to go and see her.
On the other side, the Yan family’s old house.
“Husband, do you think Yan Xi’s idiocy being cured really is as that old Daoist said, that Yan Xi’s death calamity has passed? She was an idiot all these years, and who knew a fall in the water would make her better. If we’d known, we should have done it sooner,” said the aunt, Xu Xiangqin.
Yan Manfu, smoking his pipe beside her, said indistinctly, “Who could know when Yan Xi’s calamity would be? They said too that outsiders couldn’t interfere. If we really had laid a hand on it and Yan Xi were gone, how would you have me answer to Second Brother’s family? Enough. Don’t bring this up again. That the girl could get well is a good thing, and from now on Second Brother’s family will have an easier time of it.”
Yan Manfu had had two sons and wanted a daughter, but Xu Xiangqin had injured herself giving birth to Xiaohui, and any hope of a daughter was gone for good.
When at last the sons had married, the wives bore five grandsons in a row, and not the shadow of a granddaughter was seen.
So the old couple could only pour all their fondness for a daughter onto Yan Xi. Otherwise they could never have agreed to the common purse paying for Yan Xi’s treatment for five or six years.
If their old father hadn’t gone so suddenly, the two families would never have come to splitting the household. Although the two families still visited over the years, that was on condition Yan Xi wasn’t involved, otherwise Yan Xi’s mother would flip your table for you.
“Enough, wash and go to bed. Sitting up any longer just wastes the tallow-tree oil. Tomorrow when you get up take that piece of cured pork from the cellar over to Fuyun’s house and have her build Yan Xi up with it. Count it as a little something from us as elders.”
“All right.”
The room went dark, and only the cold cicadas outside the window were still crying tirelessly.