Chapter 492 Construction Begins
Zhang Jianwen had just finished notifying everyone of the matter, and everyone below immediately started shouting and talking about it.
This movement does not mean that they want to protest. They feel that it is freezing in the winter, and the village has to ask everyone to come out to work.
On the contrary, everyone present was very happy after hearing the news.
Because the construction of the river embankment this time is different from the last time the village organized a cleanup of the river beach. Last time, there was no wages and no food.
But things are different now. This time Zhang Jianwen organized everyone to build the river embankment. Although they did not provide food, they no longer had to work for free like before.
Everyone was so excited just now because this time there was wages to be paid.
Although it is the twelfth lunar month of winter when the weather is freezing, everyone’s thoughts in this era are completely different from those of later generations.
Many people in later generations have been busy for a whole year. After entering the twelfth lunar month of winter, the farming industry has come down, and they don’t want to be busy anymore. They are taking advantage of these two extremely cold months to have a good rest and have a good year. Keep up the hard work in the coming year.
Now, although everyone has no work to do in the fields and has some free time at home, not only are they unhappy, but they are getting more and more worried every day.
After all, in their view, only when you have work can you have income. Without work, no matter how little income you have, you will still have to pay for several meals a day, which is a huge loss.
Especially in a house with a large number of people, during this free time, the big pots of cooking every day make the head of the house feel distressed.
So when they heard that there was work to do in the twelfth lunar month of this year and they could still get paid, everyone cheered. This was much better than sitting at home and eating nothing.
"Okay, that's what it is. You think about it for yourselves. If you want to come, come up and queue up to sign up."
Zhang Jianwen saw everyone whispering to each other for half a minute, and felt that everyone should have almost finished the discussion. , and stopped everyone.
"Village Chief, the one at the top of my house didn't come. After I sign up for myself, can I sign up for her as well?"
At this time, some villagers below raised questions, because When there are meetings in the village, basically only one person from each family can come.
Since registration is about to start now, many people are anxious. There are still laborers at home. After all, everyone in the family wants to get this kind of paid work. After all, they have nothing to do at home. Also idle.
“Of course, you can sign up as many people as you want in your family, but there is a prerequisite. Children under the age of fifteen and elderly people over the age of seventy cannot sign up. And after signing up, every day Everyone has to work, you can’t just come if you want, or just come if you don’t want to.”
Of course Zhang Jianwen allowed this. Although the section of the river in the village is not very long, the amount of work is not small. With the few people on the spot today, I'm afraid it will take several months to do it.
But he made a requirement on the age to start working, and children and the elderly were not allowed to sign up.
After all, it’s freezing cold today, so young people can just go out and work, while the elderly and children can stay at home and warm themselves by the fire.
Zhang Jianwen only limited the age of the elderly to seventy instead of sixty because the elderly in their sixties in the village now work more efficiently than many young people.
Their bodies are very healthy, and their physical fitness is better than that of most young people in later generations.
And there is another reason. Many old men in their fifties and sixties in the village are very good at building stone walls. Many young masons may not be as good as them.
In the past, the embankments on both sides of the river were earth embankments. Now that they have been washed away by water, they cannot continue to be filled with earth. They must be built with stones to make them solid.
With this group of old masons here, the progress of the project can be accelerated a lot.
Many people below felt very disappointed when they heard that children under the age of fifteen and seniors over the age of seventy could not register.
Because there are many families with children around fifteen years old and elderly people in their sixties or seventies.
If there were no restrictions, many people would want to work as a family and take advantage of this opportunity to earn more money.
But now that Zhang Jianwen has imposed such restrictions, many families can only work as a couple, with at most older children and elderly people who are not too old.
But soon, they became happy again, because after signing up for the job this time, they could work until it was completed.
You don’t have to worry about encountering a situation where there are too many people working and no one will be available after working for a few days.
The person in charge of registration was Huang Weimin. After Zhang Jianwen gave the order, a long queue immediately formed in front of him.
Zhang An also joined the queue, preparing to sign up with everyone.
But before he could wait in line for two minutes, Zhang Jianwen caught him on the spot.
"Zhang An, come here too. Open a table here and divide everyone into two teams so that we can finish it earlier."
Zhang Jianwen moved a small table from the village committee office He came out of the desk, gave Zhang An a pen and a notebook, and asked him to go over and help everyone sign up.
It took nearly a whole morning to get everyone to sign up.
Zhang Ankang glanced at the registration form from beginning to end. More than two hundred people had signed up. Excluding the elderly and children, this was almost all the labor in the village.
After registering, everyone dispersed and went back to their homes.
Zhang Jianwen said that it will take a few more days to start construction because the sand and gravel materials are not ready yet.
"I just saw you queuing up too. I didn't expect you to come and sign up too."
At this time, only a few of them were left at the door of the village committee. Zhang Jianwen came over and told Zhang An Said a few words.
He was quite surprised that Zhang An also came to sign up to work. After all, the people in the village came to sign up for wages, but Zhang An was obviously not like that.
"Hey, it's just idle time anyway. Instead of staying at home, why not come out and join in the fun with everyone."
He really didn't come here for the money, but because he wanted to Come join in the fun with everyone and contribute to the village. Anyway, being idle is idle.
And he is not the only one in the village like this. For example, Zhou Yang, Zhang Laosan and other families whose family conditions have become very good now have also signed up.
"By the way, uncle, there is still water in the river. Do you plan to dig out the roadbed and rebuild the river embankment this time?"
Zhang An thought that in such a cold weather now, he must not be able to Let everyone run to the water and work.
"How is that possible? Haven't you seen that the water level in the river has dropped in the past two days? Because the upstream river mouth has intercepted the water into the Beipan River. After another two or three days, the river water will drop. At that time, it will be able to Let’s start the work.”
After Zhang Jianwen said this, Zhang An remembered that the water level in the river had dropped a lot in the past two days.
Originally, he thought that winter was coming and the river was in a dry season, but now he realized that it was the mouth of the upstream river that had cut off the river water.
The river mouth in the upper reaches has rarely been closed for many years. It seems that the last flood caused serious damage to the banks of the river.
Now that the water is closed, I probably want to take advantage of this year’s dry season to do some repairs.
After all, there are countless villages attached to the banks of the river, otherwise it would be no joke when the water rises next year. As for the section of the river in Changqing, the entire river bottom starts from both banks and becomes more concave toward the center of the river.
So even after the river is dammed, there will still be more than one meter of water at the bottom. There is no need to worry about the fish in it, otherwise Zhang Jianwen would have asked everyone to go to the river to collect the fish first. Caught it.
In the following days, we could see cars pulling loads of rocks into the village every day, as well as cement and sand.
In fact, lime can be used in places like this now, and people will not say it is a shoddy project that involves cutting corners.
After all, there are still some people who use lime when building their houses.
Zhang An went out for a walk in the past few days and found that after the water level in the river dropped in other places, he had already started to take action. They used lime and stones.
Zhang Jianwen obviously did not intend to save money on this. He knew the importance of the river to the village, so he chose cement and emery that were much more expensive than lime.
In this way, everyone in the village could only get wages for the section of river embankment that Changqing Village was responsible for repairing, and Zhang Jianwen invested the rest in building materials.
Unlike other villages, some people in the village will stay more or less.
There is no place to pile stones in the village, and no one is willing to use it to pile stones in the fields.
Because this will cause great damage to the paddy field, and it will be compacted by stones. When plowing next spring, it will not be easy to plow up, and the crops planted will not be very good.
Especially cement. Although it can be used to build walls like lime, lime can be used to fertilize fields and kill insects, but cement can only have a counterproductive effect on the land.
So in the winter, the grain-drying field that finally became idle was used as a temporary warehouse.
In the past, children in the village would go to the grain drying field to play various games after school.
It's no longer possible now. The amusement park where they grew up has been taken over by loads of building materials.
In the evening, the loudspeaker in the village sounded again in anticipation of everyone.
"Notice, notice, villagers who have signed up to work, please gather at the entrance of the village at 7:30 tomorrow morning for a roll call. Please don't be late."
This sentence was repeatedly announced by Zhang Jianwen through the loudspeaker. Three times, just in case everyone didn’t hear clearly.
Because there were many people in the village who signed up to build the river embankment, and the work this time could not be completed in a day or two, Zhang Jianwen did not adopt the method of working one day and finishing the other. This was too troublesome.
He still divides the registered villagers into village groups. If the group leader is present, he will be called by the group leader. If the group leader is not present, he will find a temporary group leader.
However, almost every household in the village attended, and only Zhang Jianguo, the leader of each village group, was absent.
Because he was busy raising little Siqi at home, after all, it was enough to have Zhang An at home to sign up.
Su Ying’s maternity leave ended after Xiao Siqi was one month old and she had returned to school to start classes.
Now that there are only two of him and Wang Fang at home, they are naturally happy to tease their grandson at home.
The next morning, Wang Fang made scallion pancakes for breakfast. After Zhang An ate a few, he went out with his tools and prepared to gather in the village.
No matter who you work for these days, especially this kind of paid work, you need to bring your own tools.
Now the village is organizing the construction of river embankments, and everyone brings all the tools they need. After all, there is nothing in the village. It is not easy to solve a big project with so many people using just tools.
Especially the various tools used by masons, which are even more important.
However, everyone is not stingy. Anyone who has one at home will use it and take it back after use. And some people like to use their own tools, which is convenient.
By the time Zhang An arrived at the entrance of the village committee, the Bazi was already crowded with people.
After greeting a few people casually, he realized that everyone came early because they were afraid that Zhang Jianwen would deduct wages for being late.
Although it is winter now and the sun rises relatively late, the place to work is right at the entrance of the village, which is much better than going to the fields, so everyone comes quickly.
At half-past seven, the leaders of each group started tapping their fingers.
Because Zhang Jianguo did not come to the Sixth Group, Zhang An was appointed as the temporary team leader by Zhang Jianwen, temporarily acting as his father.
Although there are hundreds of people, the number of people in each group is much smaller, so the ordering speed is very fast, and the ordering is finished in a while.
Huang Weimin kept a big book to keep track of the number of people. They were not afraid that someone would be there when they were starting and finishing work, and then cheat on them in the middle, because they would go on inspection tours.
"Okay, let's all set off. First dig out the bank sill and follow the lime line. Then we can lay the stone sill. Those who have carriages at home will also stay."
Although they were preparing materials in the past few days, Zhang Jianwen and Huang Weimin were not idle.
While purchasing building materials, we planned the river section in the village and used lime lines to mark out the areas that needed to be dug in advance. This made construction very convenient for everyone.
Following Zhang Jianwen's order, the large group of people set off towards the entrance of the village in a mighty manner.
The people with carriages must have been left behind to haul the stones, sand and cement.
Although the drying field is not far from the river, it is not an easy task for people to transport so much stone and sand.
So the horses and carriages that everyone raised were requisitioned. Of course, they were not used in vain. Those who brought the carriages to work would receive higher wages than others.
Just like the masons responsible for laying stone ridges, the wages are higher than others, so everyone is very willing.
Zhang An heard Zhang Jianwen say that the one with the carriage was staying, and after thinking about it, he only had horses at home and no carriage, so he didn't think that what Zhang Jianwen was calling was his own.
"Zhang An, please stay, don't think about running away first."
But before he could take a few steps, Zhang Jianwen called him back.
"Uncle, my family doesn't have a carriage."
Zhang An's family is the only family in the village that has a horse but no carriage. After all, Dahei was picked up by Zhang Jianguo by mistake.
Because a horse-drawn carriage is enough for the family, I have no idea of purchasing a carriage later.
"I know, your family doesn't have one like mine. The carriage is in my yard. You can pull it out and use it. Anyway, my horse has been sold and is no longer needed. It would be a waste to have your black horse sitting idle."
Poor Dahei was actually targeted by Zhang Jianwen.
Otherwise, in this winter, he could just keep his wife and children warm in the circle,
(End of this chapter)