Back to my 1980s

"Master Zhao, the tractor said it would be here after lunch, it should be here soon."

Zhao Hua caught a glimpse of the group coming from the road near Meng Qinghe's house out of the corner of his eye, and quickly got up to greet them.

Meng Qinghe glanced at Zhao Hua, smiled slightly, and turned to go home.

Master Zhao waved his hand, parted from the group, and walked over, saying, "You're here so early? Looking after the bricks?"

"Yeah, I can't just leave it unattended. Alright, now that you're here, I don't need to keep an eye on things anymore. I'm going back to catch up on some sleep. When the tractor comes and finishes hauling the sand, I'll have him go to our house and call me." Zhao Hua took out some cigarettes and offered them to the people around him.

This stuff has been going out of stock so fast lately. I tried to buy a whole one at once, but the supply and marketing cooperative wouldn't sell it to me, saying they didn't have that many in stock.

Master Zhao took the cigarette, nodded, and smiled, "Alright, then you should go back and rest. Did you go down to the river again last night?"

Zhao Hua threw down the branch in his hand, casually wiped it on the ground with his foot, scribbled over the numbers he had just written, and laughed, "Of course, where else would we get money to build a house if we didn't go down to the river? Alright, I'm off."

After saying goodbye to Master Zhao, Zhao Hua went straight home.

The house was quiet. Zhao's father had gone out to work, Zhao's mother was nowhere to be found, and Zhao Ru was probably catching up on her sleep.

Zhao Hua thought for a moment, then gently closed the courtyard gate and went to his east wing. Their mud walls were quite thick, and the room was much cooler than under the sun outside. It wasn't as cool as under a tree with a cool breeze, but it was still a place to sleep.

This is probably the only advantage of earthen houses, but the disadvantages are also quite obvious: during the day, earthen houses absorb heat, drawing all the heat into the earthen walls.

But once the sun sets and the temperature drops, the earthen house becomes a real problem. It starts to slowly release heat, letting out the heat that was stored in the earth during the day, turning the house into a sauna.

However, it has little to do with Zhao Hua, because Zhao Hua goes fishing at night, and by the time he comes back from catching fish, the heat will have dissipated.

Zhao Hua left a crack in the door, then took off his clothes and went straight to bed.

After being dormant for many days during the rainy season, the cicadas have emerged from the soil in droves these days, taking advantage of the soft soil.

Zhao Hua listened to the cicadas chirping outside and slowly closed his eyes.

……

……

"Brother! Wake up, someone's looking for you outside."

Who is it?

"Tractor driver."

"Okay, got it."

Zhao Hua didn't know how long he had slept, but he slowly got up, dressed, and went outside. The tractor was already waiting at the door.

"You're here? Sleeping?" The tractor driver waved to him.

"Hey, I took a nap. Is the sand hauled over there finished?" Zhao Hua quickly walked a few steps and jumped onto the tractor. There was still some sand stuck to the corner of the trailer.

"I'm done. Old Zhao told me to call you when I'm done. What should I say? Go straight to the lime factory?"

"Okay, let's go. Do you know where it is?"

The driver waved his hand and said, "Oh! I've been to every corner of this area. Sit down."

The tractor started up again with a "putt-putt-putt" sound. Zhao Hua moved the front of the tractor forward a little, and the tractor turned a corner and went directly onto the small road behind his house.

As the car picked up speed, the wind rushed towards Zhao Hua's face, making his clothes flutter and feel quite cool.

The car was too loud, and the two didn't speak on the way until they arrived at the lime factory. Zhao Hua jumped out of the car, looked around, and said, "Is this also part of our village's territory?"

"Yes, a little further on is the village entrance, which belongs to our village. However, it borders the neighboring village, so we can't farm here. Whether we plant a little more or a little less, there will be trouble. We also fight all the time when we fight over water. Later, they built factories here."

"Huh?" Zhao Hua exclaimed as if he'd heard a ghost story, "Steal water? Isn't there a big river right ahead? There's plenty of water in the river, why would we need to fight for it?"

The tractor driver laughed and said, "I can tell you never work in the fields. Being close to the river is useless. The land is so big. You may think it's close to the river, but it takes more than half an hour to fetch water back and forth twice."

"In addition, the slope below is so steep that if we relied on carrying water from the river to irrigate the land, we would be exhausted before we even finished irrigating the land. We still have to rely on the water stored in the irrigation canals above."

"Oh, I see." Zhao Hua nodded in understanding. In later generations, people used pumps to draw water from rivers to irrigate their fields, so he subconsciously thought that as long as there was a river, there would be no shortage of water. Now that he thought about it carefully, it actually made sense.

Even if water pumps were available in later generations, it would still take an entire afternoon to irrigate the fields, given the pumping efficiency. Relying on carrying water from the river was simply unrealistic. After several days of hard work irrigating the middle of the field, the edges would start to dry out again...

"That river probably only works during a severe drought," he chuckled. "Let's go get some lime. Which one's a lime factory?"

The tractor driver pointed to one of the factories on the left and said, "This is a lime factory, and that bigger one over there is an asbestos tile factory. Do you need asbestos tiles? They're good for roofing too."

Zhao Hua quickly waved his hand and said, "I don't want to."

These days, everyone thinks asbestos tiles are a good thing, and they are a new type of energy-saving building material that is being vigorously promoted.

Everyone thinks asbestos tiles are cheap and convenient, while reinforced concrete floor slabs are something only city dwellers can afford.

In addition, the barriers to entry for manufacturing asbestos tiles are ridiculously low. Asbestos fiber building materials companies provide centralized distribution, and cement is not a difficult task for state-owned factories.

Furthermore, manufacturing asbestos tiles was so profitable that almost every household used them, which led to a real surge in the use of asbestos tiles for building houses over the next few years.

But he later heard that houses built with asbestos tiles were not very healthy or safe to live in. He couldn't remember the details. In addition, his son had been pricked by asbestos tiles several times when he was a child and cried, and he himself had also been pricked by asbestos tiles many times.

The asbestos tiles produced in the rural factory were so bad that even with gloves, they would prick your hands. The quality was ridiculously poor. He vaguely remembered hearing that someone used asbestos tiles to build a house, and when the master craftsman helped build the house, the asbestos tiles broke directly, and the master craftsman lay down in the pile of broken asbestos tiles.

The master chef then went directly to the hospital. As for why Zhao Hua was so impressed by such a small incident, it was simply because when he heard about it, his whole body ached. People who have never been pricked by asbestos would not understand that kind of pain.

I didn't expect them to start building the factory so early. It's a port city after all; new things just get here earlier than elsewhere.

He quickly went into the lime factory, ordered fifteen baskets of quicklime, a total of 1,500 jin (750 kg), loaded the quicklime onto the truck, and the two hurriedly returned to the educated youth settlement.

When they arrived at the educated youth settlement, they had already dug a pit, and the workers were constantly pouring water and yellow sand into it, waiting for them to bring back quicklime to mix and build the foundation.