Reborn in the 1980s: Nine Stunning Beauties Get Pregnant Before Marriage

After a busy day, Chen Yongqiang sat down and had a drink with Qin Shan.

The aroma of food wafted from the kitchen, where three women were munching on sunflower seeds and watching the black-and-white television with great interest.

This is the daily life of ordinary villagers in a small mountain village. Life may be hard, and there is always work to do.

But as long as there is food to eat, work to do, and hope to look forward to, life feels interesting and fulfilling.

A month later.

Chen Yongqiang has asked the villagers to demolish the original three dilapidated mud-brick houses and level and compact the foundation.

That day, he arrived at the brick kiln firing site at the entrance of the village.

The kiln fire had been extinguished, and Yang Dahai was leading a few people to prepare to open the kiln and inspect the bricks.

Yang Dahai looked at Chen Yongqiang with a hint of shame on his face: "Yongqiang, this is already the third kiln. The first two kilns had a really high scrap rate. After picking and choosing, less than half of them were usable."

Chen Yongqiang stepped forward, picked up a red brick that had just been moved out, looked at it, and tapped it. The sound was quite clear.

"It's alright. Those that are not very regular or have cracks, I can take them back and use them to build the yard wall or pigsty."

Previously, Yang Dahai had sent two quick-witted villagers to a brick kiln in the neighboring town to learn for more than half a month.

This time they came back and used all the methods they had learned. Whether it will succeed depends on the results of the third kiln.

"Zhu Zi, let's open the kiln!" Yang Dahai shouted.

Chen Yongqiang also moved closer, his eyes fixed on the kiln door that was sealed with mud.

Zhu Zi responded and, along with another villager, picked up an iron pickaxe to pry open the mud bricks sealing the door.

Once the kiln door was fully opened, Zhu Zi leaned out and looked inside, only to see a patch of dark, uniform red bricks.

Zhu Zi reached out and took out a piece, then tapped it with his finger, producing a crisp, ringing sound.

A smile instantly spread across his face, and he turned around and shouted, "It's done! The kiln bricks are done!"

The surrounding villagers immediately gathered around, and seeing the kiln full of intact red bricks, they couldn't help but grin and pat each other on the shoulder.

Yang Dahai let out a long sigh of relief, a smile of relief spreading across his face.

Looking at the kiln full of red bricks, Chen Yongqiang finally felt relieved. If he had delayed any longer, he would have gone to the next town to buy bricks.

"Village chief, I'll go drive the tractor over and load it directly onto the truck, so we don't have to go through another transfer."

Yang Dahai nodded: "Okay, hurry back and clear out the bricks here so they can be loaded onto the truck."

Chen Yongqiang turned around and drove his tractor home, with firecrackers going off behind him.

The success of this kiln of red bricks boosted everyone's morale.

Chen Yongqiang returned to his original homestead, which had become a busy construction site.

Several experienced craftsmen were busy laying the foundation and building the stone base with their helpers.

When Qin Shan saw him return, he asked, "Why was there a commotion in the village just now? It sounded like firecrackers?"

Chen Yongqiang walked to the tractor parked to the side: "The brick kiln at the village entrance is finished firing! Let's set off firecrackers to celebrate!"

"Really? Then I'll go and take a look too." Qin Shan climbed onto the tractor as well.

Chen Yongqiang started the tractor and took Qin Shan to the brick kiln.

Chen Yongqiang drove his tractor, taking Qin Shan to the brickyard.

He reversed the tractor directly to the open entrance of the kiln and stopped it.

Yang Dahai shouted a reminder from the side: "Everyone, wear gloves when you're moving bricks! Some of these bricks aren't completely cold yet, be careful not to burn your hands!"

Qin Shan jumped off the tractor, went to the kiln entrance, picked up a red brick that was still warm, and said, "This one is fired quite well."

Chen Yongqiang followed Yang Dahai to the makeshift shed.

Yang Dahai opened a notebook and calculated: "This kiln will yield about five thousand bricks."

"Your tractor can carry 500 bricks at a time. Adding the 2,000 bricks you took away before, you've taken away a total of 2,500 bricks."

Chen Yongqiang signed his name after that line of numbers: "Even if we haul it all up today, it'll only be seven thousand bricks, which is far from the forty thousand bricks needed to build the house."

"With the experience of this successful kiln firing, the subsequent firings will be much smoother, and the brick production will definitely be much faster." Yang Dahai was also quite confident.

Chen Yongqiang made a suggestion: "Village chief, if you can manage the workload, you could consider building a larger brick kiln next to it. Right now, one kiln can only fire five thousand bricks, which is a bit slow."

"Who are we going to sell all these bricks to?" Yang Dahai was unsure, as no one else besides Chen Yongqiang had placed an order for bricks.

"Don't worry, as long as the bricks are of good quality and can be fired consistently, there will definitely be buyers. In the future, more and more families in our surrounding area will want to build brick houses." Chen Yongqiang knew exactly what the future held.

"Okay, I'll discuss this with Zhuzi and the others." Yang Dahai nodded.

This brick kiln was, after all, run by several villagers together. As the village head, his main role was to lead and coordinate, but how to actually run it was up to them to decide.

Chen Yongqiang made several trips, rushing to bring all the freshly fired red bricks back to his homestead before dark.

Zhao Fugen, a respected and skilled master craftsman in the village, came over.

After glancing at the pile of red bricks and cement to the side, the old man instructed Chen Yongqiang:

"The materials are almost all ready. You should get the sand ready in the next couple of days. Once the sand arrives, we can pick a good day and start laying the foundation."

"Okay, Uncle Zhao, I'll arrange the sand as soon as possible." Chen Yongqiang replied, handing the old man a cigarette and lighting it for him with a match.

The next morning, Chen Yongqiang drove his tractor, loaded with shovels, sieves and other sand-dredging tools, to the riverbank about five or six miles outside the village.

The ice on the river has mostly melted, but we still need to explore which stretch of riverbank has the most sand and the best quality sand.

"Brother Yongqiang, is there sand in this river?" Qin Liping, who always followed along, also came along.

She stood on the riverbank, peering curiously into the clear river.

Chen Yongqiang took a shovel and walked to the shallow water: "Whether it's there or not, we'll know once we fish it out."

As he spoke, he scooped up some sand from the water with a shovel and dumped it on the bank.

The shovelful that was just scooped up contained mostly pebbles and coarse gravel, with very little fine sand.

"The sand here won't do; there are too many rocks. Let's try another place."

Chen Yongqiang drove his tractor upstream along the riverbank, searching slowly.

We walked and stopped, changing riverbanks several times, but what we dredged up was either mostly stones or heavy with mud.

Finally, at a gentle estuary where a small river flows into, Chen Yongqiang shoveled another shovelful.

After the water is filtered, a small pile of fine sand with very few impurities is left on the sieve.

"This is it."

"Have you found usable sand?" Qin Liping stood aside, unable to offer any real help.

Chen Yongqiang took off his coat and threw it on the tractor seat. "I'll take some back with me for the first trip and show it to Uncle Zhao. Next time, I'll bring a few more people to work together."

"Alright, I'll go check if there are any fish in that bay." Seeing him start to get busy, Qin Liping walked upstream along the riverbank.