Courtyard House: I'm an engineer, and a fairy godmother transferred me to a different position.

The postman pedaled his bicycle into the courtyard and called out, "Is Liu Guangtian home? There's mail for you!"

That shout silenced the entire courtyard.

All eyes were focused on that thin envelope.

Yan Bugui was the first to react, his eyes suddenly lighting up:

"Hey! Back in the day, when Guangqi received his college acceptance letter, it was delivered to his door by the postman—is it Guangtian's turn this time?"

really.

What Liu Guangtian received was a vocational school admission notice.

It's worth mentioning.

Liu Guangqi's words of encouragement before he left did indeed have an effect.

This kid actually barely made the cut-off score!

I got accepted into a vocational high school!

The news spread, and the courtyard immediately became abuzz with excitement.

It's not that I'm excited for Liu Guangtian himself.

After all, with Liu Guangqi, a college student, preceding them, vocational school wasn't exactly groundbreaking.

What truly stirred up emotions was the patch of land in the backyard.

At this moment, the residents of the front and middle courtyards secretly felt that the backyard had absorbed the fortune of the entire courtyard.

otherwise--

How could the Liu family produce college and vocational school graduates one after another?

Add another one: Xu Damao, a high school student from the Xu family!

As a result, the clamor for changing houses grew louder and louder.

Jia Zhangshi was the most vocal, insisting that they move next door to the Liu family so that her grandson Banggeng could take the college entrance exam in the future.

How could the people in the backyard agree?

Your child cares about their future, but you don't care about other people's?

that's it.

During the days when Liu Guangqi was not returning, a house-swapping dispute caused quite a stir in the courtyard.

At this moment, Liu Guangqi is engrossed in the research and development of CNC machine tools.

I have no time to come back and deal with these troubles.

---

Inside the courtyard house.

Before the smoke from the chimneys in the front and middle courtyards even rose, the noise of people was already deafening.

Dozens of eyes simultaneously passed over the moon gate and landed on the silent backyard.

The bitterness in his eyes could be smelled from afar:

"Isn't this weird? Why do all the good things seem to be happening in the backyard?"

"Who says otherwise! The Liu family has produced scholars one after another, and the Xu family even has a projectionist who graduated from high school."

"What about our front yard? If you count on your fingers, there aren't many people who even graduated from junior high!"

"And then there's Guangqi—he's only been out of school for a few years, but he's practically a department head!"

"He's successful, but his father isn't bad either! Didn't his second uncle get promoted to deputy workshop director?"

"Sigh, people are linked to each other, and fate is linked to fate!"

Someone lowered their voice and interjected mysteriously:

"If you ask me, it's because the backyard has excellent feng shui!"

This sentence was like a spark splashed into a pan of oil, exploding with a crackling sound:

"That's right! How come I didn't think of that!"

"It must be a feng shui problem! Otherwise, why would all the good things happen to them? Look at that old locust tree in the middle of the yard, all its branches are stretching into the backyard!"

"This isn't fair! I want to move to the backyard too!"

"Change! We must change rooms!"

"Let my child go and soak up some of the good fortune!"

The clamor was like waves, one higher than the next.

Among the crowd, Jia Zhangshi's voice was the loudest.

This woman, who had always been a firm believer in feng shui—

Although he always bowed and smiled obsequiously in front of Liu Guangqi, he was extremely attentive;

But when she's with other people in the courtyard, her unreasonable and argumentative nature comes out completely.

At that moment, she was standing with her hands on her hips in the backyard next to the Liu family's house, in front of the door of a newly moved-in steel mill worker's house.

His voice was deafening:

"Old Fang's family! You don't have any children going to school, isn't it a waste to occupy this house?"

"My dog ​​is going to go to university! We have to move! I want to be neighbors with my second uncle and benefit from his scholarly atmosphere!"

Inside the house, Lao Fang, who had just finished get off work, was picking up his enamel mug to drink some water when he was startled by the shout, causing his hand to tremble.

His wife peeked out from the inner room: "Who's outside?"

"Sounds like Aunt Jia from the Intermediate People's Court."

Old Fang frowned, put down the jar, and went out the door.

As soon as the door opened, Jia Zhangshi's round face loomed right in front of her.

"Oh, it's Old Fang." Madam Jia's eyelids drooped, her chin held high. "Let's not beat around the bush—swap your house with mine!"

"Change rooms?"

Old Fang was taken aback, thinking he had misheard.

Aunt Jia was staring absently towards the backyard when Old Fang's words suddenly pulled her back to reality: "The factory-allocated housing can't be changed so easily!"

"Weren't these all apartments allocated by the factory?" Jia Zhangshi practically spit in the other person's face. "Why can't we change them?"

She raised her chin: "You don't have any children going to school, isn't it a waste to occupy this auspicious spot? My Banggeng is going to go to university and become a cadre! Let's switch, you move to the middle courtyard, and I'll live in the back courtyard."

"It's perfect that we'll be neighbors with Uncle Er's family!"

The old man's face turned ashen: "Aunt Jia, can't you be reasonable? The property deed is in my name, and the rent is deducted from my salary every month. How can you just change the lease like that?"

Madam Jia retorted, "Why can't we change it? We're all in the same courtyard, why should your backyard get all the good feng shui? If we don't change it today, and Banggeng doesn't get into university in the future, it'll be because you stole the good fortune of the central courtyard! It's your Fang family that ruined my grandson's future!"

As expected, she was still the same domineering Jia Zhangshi.

A huge accusation was slammed down on Old Fang, making it hard for him to breathe. He had been an honest man for most of his life and had never seen such a ridiculous and unreasonable situation.

Standing beside the central courtyard, Yi Zhonghai watched the farce unfold with a tense expression, his mind churning. As a respected elder in the courtyard and Jia Dongxu's mentor, Jia Zhangshi's insistence on moving out of the central courtyard was tantamount to a public slap in the face. What would others think if word got out? Even his own apprentice's family felt the central courtyard had bad feng shui and wanted to move to the backyard to be neighbors with the second elder.

A bitter feeling welled up in Yi Zhonghai's heart—if he had chosen the house in the backyard back then, could he have raised a successful child now? Why would he be left with a desolate old age?

The commotion in the backyard attracted Yan Bugui. He leaned close to Yi Zhonghai and whispered, "Old Yi, shouldn't we talk about this too? If we could really switch places, I'd like to move to the backyard too. Let Jie Cheng and Jie Fang also benefit from the literary atmosphere; that would be better than anything else."

This thrifty fellow was even willing to forgo his gatekeeper's allowance.

Yi Zhonghai's lips twitched—Dream on, who wouldn't want to move?

The bright red banner on the courtyard wall proclaiming "Break Free from Feudal Superstition" is glaringly obvious, yet some things have long been ingrained in our very being. The concept of feng shui is a prime example. Even graves must be chosen according to the terrain and water features, let alone dwellings. Some traditions you may not believe in, but it's hard to ignore them.

At this moment, the entire courtyard was in turmoil, and even the two stewards were unable to calm down.

Liu Hai, however, knew perfectly well what was going on. He walked to the front of the crowd with his hands behind his back, his voice booming, "Stop making a fuss! Housing allocation is based on seniority and contributions, not feng shui! Guangqi got into university through hard work, and Guangtian stayed up all night studying because of perseverance—it has nothing to do with feng shui!"

His gaze swept over the crowd: "Which family wants their child to succeed? They should urge them to study hard and not have these crooked thoughts! If they cause any more trouble, I'll ask the factory security department to uphold justice!"

The courtyard fell silent instantly. If anyone else had said those words, Jia Zhangshi might have thrown a tantrum, but since it was Liu Haizhong, who had just been promoted to deputy workshop director, who spoke, she didn't dare to utter another word.

A dispute arising from feng shui gradually subsided in the twilight of the courtyard.

A few days later, one evening, Liu Guangqi was called back to the familiar courtyard house by a phone call from his father, Liu Haizhong.

As I stepped into the courtyard, it was already dusk, and the dim yellow light from the eaves cast long shadows of the trees. The aroma of stewed meat wafted from the house, mingled with my father's rare hearty laughter—it was to celebrate my younger brother Liu Guangtian's admission to a vocational school.

The father had always been indifferent to his two younger sons, but in those days, getting into a vocational school was still a great honor for the family. As the eldest son, Liu Guangqi naturally had to come back and make an appearance.

At the dinner table, after a few drinks, my father became quite talkative. As he spoke, he brought up the recent "house-swapping" controversy in the courtyard. Apparently, several families in the front and middle courtyards had suddenly set their sights on the back courtyard, believing it to have good feng shui, and were scrambling to move there.

Liu Guangqi almost burst out laughing when he heard this.

Feng shui? He knew the families in the backyard. In the original story, Liu's sons either married into the family and never looked back, or they just stayed at home living off their parents' wealth. If that could be considered a feng shui treasure land, it was probably a treacherous place that breeds wicked children.

There's no need to guess; it must have been the old lady from the Jia family who stirred things up.

When it comes to the ability to stir up trouble and create problems out of nothing, no one in the entire courtyard can match her. Liu Guangqi even felt that if Jia Zhangshi were not around, life in this courtyard would be much more boring—he himself had almost forgotten what these "good neighbors" were originally like.

Speaking of which, the property rights of courtyard houses in Beijing these days are often a mess. In the early years of war and turmoil, and later re-divided by the military control committee, the houses in the courtyards were divided into private and public property. If the owner of private property owned more than a certain number of houses, apart from the three or four rooms he lived in, the rest had to be handed over to the street office for management and rental. Two or three percent of the rent would go to the original owner; this was called "rental management".

The deaf old lady in the backyard is a case like this.

The house belonging to Sha Zhu in the Intermediate People's Court is also private property—three rooms passed down from his ancestors, with clear property rights. It does not belong to the street office, nor was it allocated by the factory; it is truly his own property.

The other families in the courtyard were mostly workers from the steel rolling mill; their houses were allocated by the factory, and the rent was deducted from their wages each month. Yan Bugui, who lived in the front courtyard, was a primary school teacher; his house was a dormitory arranged by the school through the neighborhood committee.

There are more than 20 households, with both public and private property rights, and their relationships are intricately intertwined. No wonder there are always disputes about houses in the courtyard.

Such courtyard houses are currently unavailable for sale and not worth considering. Liu Guangqi prefers to live in the ministry's dormitory building, where it's quiet and worry-free. He plans to buy a detached house when policies loosen up in the future; that's his proper plan.

As for the Jia Zhang family, their house was a government-allocated unit from the steel rolling mill. Exchanging government-allocated housing for government-allocated housing is not difficult as long as both families are willing and they go through the necessary procedures at the factory.

The problem is—who would be willing to switch places with her?

After her outburst, the people in the backyard were even more eager to avoid her, so who would be willing to give her their house?

However, these disturbances have nothing to do with Liu Guangqi.

He doesn't live in this courtyard regularly, so these neighborhood squabbles are just fodder for gossip.

After celebrating with his younger brother, he didn't linger and got up to leave.

As I stepped out of the courtyard gate, I heard the crying of a child from somewhere behind me, mixed with a woman's shrill scolding.

Liu Guangqi looked up at the sky.

As dusk settled, a sliver of pale blue-white light lingered in the distant sky.

He recalled his father's drunken complaints during the meal, and the way the people in the courtyard argued heatedly over half a room.

These days, who doesn't want to live a better life?

Whether it's scheming or arguing, it's all part of the instinct for survival.

But his path doesn't lie here.

Under the tree, there are always chirping sparrows, fighting over a few grains of chaff.

He must go higher—to grow where there is light.

After successfully manufacturing transistors, the next challenge shifted to the development of integrated circuit boards, and ultimately to the innovation of CNC machine tools.

This is clearly not a task that can be accomplished by one person alone.

It requires a complete and professional R&D team.

Fortunately, relying on the resources of Tsinghua University and his previous accumulation of stereo transistor technology, Liu Guangqi quickly gathered a group of students from the university.

It must be acknowledged that university students of that era were generally of high caliber. They may have lacked experience in groundbreaking innovation, but they were solid and reliable in carrying out the tasks assigned by Liu Guangqi.

In reality, the upcoming research and development will require a large number of mechanical engineering professionals. Although Liu Guangqi possesses ample technical expertise and experience, it is ultimately difficult for one person to oversee all aspects. If he were to do everything personally, not only would it be inefficient, but he might also exhaust himself first.

Therefore, Liu Guangqi established a joint research and development laboratory, using Tsinghua University as a base, and invited professors from the university to participate in the collaboration on a rotating basis. In a sense, these professors were not lacking in opportunities for collaboration, but the CNC machine tool project that Liu Guangqi was working on was undoubtedly the most attractive option at the time.