Chapter 173: Chapter 78: Top Star of the 60s Art Troupe (17)

"The house was just assigned the month before last, so the factory also handled planting the vegetable patch. It’s ready for harvest now, and if you can’t eat it all, you can take it to the cafeteria to exchange for grain, meal, or meat ration tickets..."

Director Huo explained everything in great detail as they walked. He even made a point of taking Xia Zhaoyun on a detour through the vegetable patch so she’d know where it was before they finally arrived at the house.

At the time, official control over land use wasn’t strict, so it was common for people to build extensions. As long as it wasn’t too excessive, the factory would turn a blind eye.

Besides, the families who lived on the ground floor and had a small yard were anything but ordinary. They were well-connected and had money to spare. When they enclosed the green space in front to extend their yards with a row of outbuildings—leaving just a two-meter path to the storage units of the building in front—no one saw anything wrong with it.

The five-meter-wide gap between the two side-by-side buildings also became a hotly contested piece of land.

Tong Yuxiang had her eye on the area and hired workers to expand their yard, enclosing the entire gap.

Back then, balconies and yards didn’t count toward a property’s official square footage. The building itself was thirteen meters long, with an additional three-meter-wide greenbelt. So, after adding two large outbuildings to the original thirty-five-square-meter yard, they gained an extra eighty square meters—more space than the house itself!

In the enclosed space, Tong Yuxiang had workers build three brick-and-tile rooms right up against the adjacent building. Their row of outbuildings also ended up with one more room than anyone else’s.

With workers and materials in place, they worked day and night and had it mostly built in two days. By the time the busy Director Huo learned about it, he was so angry that he had a huge fight with Tong Yuxiang and didn’t come home for a week.

Others tried to mediate, pointing out that Director Huo already had his own small villa, while Mr. Tong was also a director and entitled to housing. Furthermore, as the family of a martyr, they deserved preferential treatment.

In any case, the rooms were already built. It would be a waste of materials to tear them down now, wouldn’t it?

Furious but resigned, Director Huo paid for the extra space out of his own pocket at a supplementary rate of thirty yuan per square meter. For the eighty square meters from the gap and the eighteen square meters from the outbuildings, he ended up paying over 2,900 yuan.

With the Director leading by example, the other ground-floor residents who had followed the trend and claimed land were put in an awkward position. To protect their reputations and careers, they had no choice but to pay up as well. Inwardly, they were disgusted by the Director’s self-righteous, impartial posturing.

Just like that, Director Huo not only had his expanded house, but his reputation and prestige soared, leaving everyone else in the dust.

But now, the elders had made the final decision to give this house to Xia Zhaoyun and her two children. It turned out Director Huo and Tong Yuxiang had been doing all the work for someone else’s benefit.

And yet, they had to suffer in silence. After all, they were the ones who had previously accepted the status of a martyr’s family, hypocritically taking the welfare that came with it.

"I just had someone change the locks. Here are all six sets of keys for the house. If you find you’re missing anything, just go tell us at the Women’s Federation..." After setting the keys down, Director Huo smiled and added a few reminders. He patted the two children on the head, told them to listen to their mother, and then left without further delay, looking utterly refreshed.

Leading her two children, Xia Zhaoyun wandered through the house, inside and out, in a complete daze.

Just being able to move out of the Song Family home and start a life of her own was already an incredible stroke of luck.

She had only dared to hope for a single room in one of the dormitory buildings, just to have a private space of her own. She never imagined that instead of a single room, she’d get a seventy-five-square-meter house with a yard—a house that had been expanded by another ninety-eight square meters...

’In other words, the three of them now had a one-hundred-and-seventy-three-square-meter house?’

’A kitchen, a bathroom, a living room, a yard, and eight other rooms to use as bedrooms, studies, or storage?’

’Good heavens, this was in the Capital City! She had seen firsthand how housing prices could skyrocket.’

With housing assigned by a work unit, as long as you didn’t quit your job at the factory or make any major mistakes, the property eventually became yours. You just had to wait a few years for the deeds to be officially issued.

The logistics department had provided a complete set of supplies: kitchenware, furniture, daily necessities, food ingredients, and more.

Best of all, the master bedroom, which opened onto the small yard, contained a decommissioned factory sewing machine that was still in excellent condition, complete with assorted threads and fabrics. Parked in the yard was a bicycle, also a decommissioned factory model in similar shape.

Director Huo had explained that the factory provided these things as part of their care for a martyr’s family. Instead of monetary compensation, providing practical, all-in-one assistance was far more substantial.

The women from the Federation had even managed to reclaim a good deal of money and belongings for them from the Song Family and the Wen family.

Xia Zhaoyun felt her future was looking brighter than ever. She rolled up her sleeves, boiled some water, and gave the two little ones a thorough scrubbing, going through three basins of water in the process.

Dressed in clean, well-fitting clothes, the little ones were revealed to have fair skin and incredibly delicate features, their only flaw being how thin they were. But what surprised her most was—and she couldn’t tell if it was just her imagination—the three of them shared a noticeable resemblance!

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