Riding the wind of rebirth

“Eighty thousand yuan was a huge sum of money back then, wasn’t it?” Zhou Zhi asked.

Back then, the term "ten-thousand-yuan household" hadn't even appeared yet. The average wage was thirty or forty yuan. My teacher and uncle dared to work on the "Jiyun Quangu" with three thousand yuan in funding, and Chen Yunfang and Sun Jiadong dared to develop the Beidou navigation system with five thousand yuan. Eighty thousand yuan in funding was a huge sum of money.

"Yes, back then, just getting that 80,000 yuan to Pingyao was a nerve-wracking journey for us," Professor Ruan laughed. "We also selected a few reliable classmates to take turns with us from the capital, Taiyuan, to Pingyao. At the same time, we left a classmate in Pingyao to be responsible for reporting on the disbursement and use of the funds in real time. We really didn't dare to spend a single penny recklessly."

Zhou Zhi couldn't help but chuckle. This Professor Ruan must have had a lot of dealings with local areas and knew that it was a traditional practice at the time for counties to misappropriate special funds, and they were very strict in preventing it: "Doing it this way, don't the locals have any objections?"

"To be honest, no," Professor Ruan said. "After all, it's a good thing that the 80,000 yuan was used to repair and protect the ancient city wall. In addition, the materials and labor costs will eventually be distributed to the local area, so the leaders are very happy."

“That’s true,” Zhou Zhi nodded. Back then, most cadres were like his own uncle. They might not have been highly educated and had all sorts of bad habits, but they were all wholeheartedly devoted to their jobs.

"Seeing our sincerity and the importance attached to it by the higher authorities, the locals were finally moved," Professor Ruan said with a smile. "In the end, they reflected on the 76 planning scheme and believed that the original plan would inevitably turn the very distinctive Pingyao County into an ordinary county without any characteristics, and lose the characteristics of 'a typical northern city with a southern flavor'. Therefore, based on the characteristics of the city and comprehensive analysis, the nature of Pingyao County should be: a tourist county with complete ancient city features under national key protection."

"It should be a world heritage-level tourist county with an important historical and cultural status in northern China, a key national protected area, and a complete ancient city appearance," Zhou Zhi said.

“We wouldn’t dare set it that high.” Professor Ruan found Zhou Zhi increasingly pleasing to the eye and smiled, “At least we hadn’t heard of these concepts back then. But the county’s plan, which sets the timeframe at 'near 1985 and long 2000,' has indeed played a very good protective role.”

"In 1987, the Shanxi Provincial Urban and Rural Planning and Design Institute undertook the compilation of the 'Pingyao Historical and Cultural City Protection Plan.' To compile this plan, the project team spent a year conducting a comprehensive survey of nearly 4,000 courtyards and tens of thousands of houses throughout the ancient city of Pingyao, and reviewed all the archives of the courtyards. They gained a detailed understanding and recorded the current quality, historical and cultural value, architectural protection measures, and property rights of each building, and even the house number, number of households, and population structure of each courtyard. Ultimately, the entire ancient city was divided into 28 areas, and each area was assigned weights and scored based on indicators such as housing quality, infrastructure level, and resident population, resulting in a human living environment quality value for each area. Based on this score, the protection plan and development strategy were formulated, including comprehensive management, street paving, and protection and maintenance of important courtyards and temples."

"The key focus is on protecting and restoring more than 400 courtyards within the ancient city that have been selected for their high cultural value and relatively complete historical remains."

"Impressive!" Zhou Zhi gave a thumbs up. Compared to the solid work done by this person, the planning and investigation of Langzhong Ancient City organized by the Yu Tang Foundation seemed a bit like a "makeshift team". Zhou Zhi was already thinking in his heart that "professional matters should be left to professionals". Why should he work so hard? He could completely entrust the ancient city investigation to this experienced expert in front of him!
"To do such a solid job under such difficult conditions is truly admirable," Zhou Zhi said sincerely. "You must have suffered a lot back then, right?"

“It was so tough.” Professor Ruan shook his head as he spoke: “We are all from the south. When we arrived there, the first thing we did was not adapt to the water and soil. The local food was mostly wheat-based, but it was often not even real wheat-based. Six or seven parts of it was coarse grains, such as buckwheat and sorghum. The diet was a big problem. The locals taught us a trick: eat more locally produced vinegar. Hey, you know what? That made everyone’s situation a little better.”

"Besides the unfamiliar environment, the old town's sewers were severely clogged due to their age, leading to terrible infestations of flies and lice. Our entire team contracted bacterial dysentery in less than a week, and we were all too sick to work!" Professor Ruan recounted the hardships of those days as a joke. "I had to go to the provincial medical college for help, asking them to send doctors and medicine." "Although there were many difficulties, we were mostly excited at the time, because Pingyao itself was so breathtaking and exciting!"

It's easy to imagine that the twelve-person working group was just as enthusiastic about the ancient city of Pingyao as they were about to see the works of the Four Masters of the Six Dynasties. They were only thinking about restoring the paintings as soon as possible, and whether they were tired or not was not a consideration at all.

"The survey conducted in 1987 was very thorough, and the results were very encouraging. The architectural complex, mainly composed of buildings from the Ming and Qing dynasties, has many buildings in very good condition and is well preserved as a whole."

"The reason for this is that Pingyao became a center of banks in the mid-Qing Dynasty, and wealthy families built and renovated many houses. These houses were of very high quality and are therefore well preserved."

“Professor Ruan, there seems to be a problem…” Zhou Zhi listened to Professor Ruan’s introduction and found that there was a discrepancy.

"what is the problem?"

“You said that after your plan was completed, it covered the period from 1985 to 2000,” Zhou Zhi said. “Then, in 1987, they were still working on detailed planning. In other words, the ancient city’s preservation project hadn’t actually started for more than a few years?”

“The phrase ‘the first few years’ can be temporarily removed.” Professor Ruan sighed. “The local finances are quite strained. Our plan only stopped the demolition of the ancient city and moved the new area to the other side of the river. As for the restoration… it’s already quite an achievement that we can repair and improve the city wall.”

"To put it another way, the Ministry of Construction once entrusted our school's planning office to hold several training courses for planning system personnel. People from all provinces and cities participated. Because of the special relationship between Pingyao and our school, we also invited their planning colleagues to come and participate in the training."

"Guess what happened? They replied that they were in financial difficulty and couldn't afford the travel expenses for three comrades during the three-month training. In the end, I applied to the school to waive the training expenses for these comrades and solve their housing and food problems so that they could be sent out."

Zhou Zhi couldn't help but laugh and cry at the same time. Two years ago, he saw in a report that the country had basically solved the problem of food and clothing in most areas, but the problem still existed for 80 million people, and continued efforts were needed to overcome it. Now he deeply felt that.

Such a valuable opportunity for further study was available, yet the local government couldn't even afford to send three people to Shanghai for a three-month business trip. The word "poverty" suddenly became tangible. (End of Chapter)