Chapter 719: Unprepared
My work was not going well, and my own affairs also caused trouble.
Many problems arose in the progress of the renovation project of the Majia Garden that Ning Weimin brought back.
The main problem is that building materials and construction techniques are not available.
Ma’s Garden is one of the best private gardens in the capital. It combines the wisdom and technology of two major architectural masters in the capital, the Ma’s and the Lei’s. It can be said that the houses are simple and the mountains and ponds are ingenious.
Many things may seem ordinary, but the ancient construction team also calculated them according to the conventional system when estimating them.
As a result, they officially took over and it was time to start work. Let’s take a closer look.
Well, what people are playing with is that the buns have meat but not in the pleats.
In many places, this is not the case at all. There are other secrets, which require extremely high technology and craftsmanship.
And many raw materials have been discontinued today, or the output is very small.
For example, this lake stone and bluestone are severely lacking.
And this brick.
Some of the main buildings in the Majia Garden are actually made of gold bricks that Linzhou offered to the Forbidden City.
The soil in Linzhou is the best for making bricks, because the soil there is the sediment of the Yellow River bottom. It is fine and contains glue, has strong plasticity, and is easy to make mud.
Only this kind of fine-material pure mud brick is the most effective for brick carving. But now no one even burns it in Linzhou. Where can I get it?
Ning Weimin didn't want to make do with it. The so-called repairing it as it was before, from the craftsmanship to the materials, couldn't be out of shape at all. This was called quality restoration.
To find a suitable solution and a suitable substitute, you have to spend time looking for it.
Someone in the ancient construction team came up with an idea, saying that they could search in the fields at the Old Summer Palace, and they might be able to dig out a lot of useful things.
I don’t know how many people have done this.
There are a lot of things from the Old Summer Palace on the Peking University campus. Isn’t it the first-come-first-served approach?
But in Ning Weimin's opinion, this idea was just a bad idea.
It is true that no one cares about it now, but there is no airtight wall in the world.
The Ga Zi in the movie "Little Soldier Zhang Ga" said a wise saying - "Don't watch you having fun today, but be careful about the list I will make for you tomorrow."
He is not stupid enough to put a rope around his own neck. He must not forget about settling accounts for the sake of temporary convenience.
He doesn’t even dare to keep the bronzes, how can he still take advantage of this? Can't.
Of course, just spending time waiting is not enough, the fees will definitely have to be increased.
Especially this year, it’s not the right time to rush.
Because of the Beijing urban construction plan and the long-term prospects of the Asian Games, the capital has become a big construction site. Construction projects have begun everywhere, and banks have released money.
It can be seen that within five or six years, the speed of construction will only accelerate rather than slow down, and all of this will cause the price of building materials to skyrocket.
So Ning Weimin’s repair of the emperor’s uncle’s small courtyard basically met the budget, but Ma’s garden became a bottomless pit.
I don’t know how long it will take to complete the project, or how much money will be spent on it.
We can only repair what can be repaired and cover what can be covered first, and stock up on whatever materials we can at the moment.
But even so, it is not the most troublesome thing.
The most troublesome thing is the theater at the end of Majia Garden and the courtyard where the Jiang family lived. It may not be easy to take it back, and there is actually a hard fight.
Not for anything else, but actually to protect the people themselves.
While spending huge sums of money to relocate residents and factories from the streets, he also bought a yard belonging to his uncle.
Then they immediately embarked on a massive renovation project, which was a huge undertaking.
The Ancient and Modern Cultural Association is not a fool. As early as when Ning Weimin did all this, he expected that sooner or later he would have to deal with him over the issue of vacating.
So I also inquired about his whereabouts from all aspects.
I asked around, but I don’t know how. Anyway, I finally came to this somewhat self-righteous conclusion. Ning Weimin is indeed a senior executive of Pierre Cardon, but his position is deputy and he is not responsible for the company's main business.
The connections are mainly concentrated in Nancheng, and the energy is mainly in organizing public activities and catering business.
It seems that he is not well received by the head office and is a marginalized figure who is excluded from outside.
So, they regarded him as a fat, strong, stupid and rich sheep.
When Ning Weimin came to visit, a person in charge of the association wearing glasses came to receive him.
They were very welcoming, and they had tea, cigarettes, and fruits, but the price they offered was a bone-cutting knife.
Not only do they want Ning Weimin's uncle's courtyard as a new office location, but they also want 150,000 yuan in compensation.
For this theater and the courtyard where the Jiang family lived, Ning Weimin had to give them a house with almost double the area for free. How is that possible?
One hundred and fifty thousand?
With just this cash, I can buy four medium-sized courtyard houses these days!
However, the association was sure that Ning Weimin would be unwilling to let the original address of the house deed lack this crucial piece, and refused to let go.
Instead, I took him to see the house in person.
I praised the three-story theater building in person for how well it was built. The flower cave in the back is very convenient for growing flowers and storing things. The scenery in the courtyard and the quality of the houses are not comparable to ordinary courtyards.
He also said that their association stores a large number of precious cultural documents.
A move and a lot of trouble requires a lot of manpower to do the reset and sorting work, and the gain outweighs the loss.
That means that you have caused us so much trouble and have gone through so much trouble, but you actually refuse to give in even one step.
This money-hungry face, just like Scrooge in Dickens's "A Christmas Carol", actually made Ning Weimin feel the taste of a dog biting a hedgehog.
So with this sky-high asking price and no repayment allowed, we can no longer continue the discussion.
After encountering the wall thickness several times, Ning Weimin had no choice but to think of another way, trying to find the higher-level unit of the association just like he solved the problem in the emperor's uncle's courtyard.
Let’s see if we can try to eliminate the problem again and solve the problem from top to bottom.
But when I found out about it, I was shocked again, because it was a people group...
Hmm, it is a group where celebrities and high-level intellectuals gather together.
Not only is there a big boss behind him, but he is also a completely different person.
Just think about it for people like him to take care of their superiors.
The so-called pulling out firewood from under the cauldron is completely fanciful.
In fact, this result made all his acquaintances and friends in the housing management department cautiously advise him.
"Quit when faced with difficulties, don't be rash. It's better to do less than to do more. You already have so many houses. Why are you causing this trouble, right?"
No way, Ning Weimin himself was confused.
After much thought, if I had to handle this matter for my master, I might have no other choice but to stick out my neck and get stabbed.
Money is not really a big problem.
When the leeks in the postal market are cut next year, he can get even 1.5 million, not to mention 150,000.
The key is that he is unwilling to do this and is very angry.
And he couldn’t bear to part with the emperor’s uncle in his courtyard.
It is his own private property, and he wants to pass it on to future generations.
It needs history, it needs location, it needs quality, it needs environment, it needs level.
In the future, it will also have the concepts of cultural preservation, school district, subway, and central district.
Maybe I won’t be able to find such a nice courtyard if I want to buy one in the future.
For the sake of the master, putting such a good thing like yourself in it, this filial piety should be done, but it can't help but make people feel a little distressed.
Hey, let’s see if we can buy another yard to replace it.
Why don’t we say that all educated masters are full of enthusiasm but full of bad intentions?
These guys who killed a thousand people actually attacked me like a wolf and ate the wolf, so unexpectedly!
(End of this chapter)