Break out of the courtyard

January 1981, 2, New Year's Eve.

Hong Kong Island, The Peak, Peak Road, Central and Western District, The Peak, Villa No. 118, Renheyi Community, Zhang Family.

31-year-old Zhang Heping sat on the steps of his house in a trance, smelling the leftovers and alcohol in the yard, watching the employees and their families cleaning up the mess, listening to the laughter of his family members behind him, and thinking about the New Year's Eve of February 19, 2 years ago...

It feels like I had a very long dream!

"Honey, have some sobering tea!" The first wife Tang Xin handed a bowl of tea to Zhang Heping.

Immediately afterwards, a pair of soft little hands were placed on Zhang Heping's head and started pressing his temples.

"Hubby, don't drink so much next time. Otherwise, I'll dock their wages!" Chen Shuting, the concubine, scolded Zhang Heping from behind: "How can every family take turns to toast you!"

Zhang Heping buried the back of his head in the hollow of Chen Shuting's thighs and drank a sip of tea in silence.

The two wives stayed quietly with Zhang Heping at the door for a while, until most of the tables and benches outside the door were taken away and cleaned, and all the employees said goodbye to Zhang Heping, then the three of them returned to the house.

The bright house was a little noisy, with songs on the TV, conversations on the sofa, the sound of mahjong playing at seven or eight tables around, and the noise of children playing upstairs and downstairs...

Unfortunately, due to public security considerations, the Hong Kong government has banned the use of fireworks since 67, so the festive atmosphere is somewhat lacking.

"Too noisy!" Third sister Tang Si saw Zhang Heping coming in and said pretentiously: "Brother-in-law, can I go to your study and find some books to read?"

The door of the study room on the second floor is usually not locked!

But this evening, Chen Shuting returned home and found that Tang Si’s man, as well as her two sons and one daughter, were actually rummaging through something in the study!

Chen Shuting was angry that they touched the materials on her desk, so she locked the study!

"Third sister, it's rare for you to come back, so you should spend more time with your family. There's nothing you want in my study!" Zhang Heping calmly revealed another purpose of Tang Si's return.

Zhang Heping's words made his father-in-law Tang Ming's face darken suddenly, and the surroundings became much quieter.

The old woman Tang Si pretended to be confused and said, "Brother-in-law, did you misunderstand me? I just want to find a few books to pass the time."

Zhang Heping was too lazy to argue with the other party. He sat on the single sofa that Tang Lie had given up and read the newspaper that Chen Shuting handed to him.

Seeing that Zhang Heping ignored her and glimpsing her old father Tang Ming staring at her, Tang Si shut up and looked at the TV.

"Bullshit!"

As the sound of shuffling mahjong tiles rang out, the surroundings returned to their previous bustle.

Before they knew it, it was 10 o'clock in the evening. After Tang Ming, his elder brother Tang Zhi and others went upstairs to rest, the families of Tang Ren and Tang Yi also returned home one after another.

"The mainland will not tolerate the existence of capitalists!" Sister Tang San saw that there were fewer people around her and felt that she had done it. "Once Hong Kong Island is taken back by the mainland, all your property will be confiscated! Taiwan Island..."

"Taiwan Island has been removed from the United Nations!" Zhang Heping said calmly, "You must always be on guard against the mainland's landing and recovery war. Unless I am stupid, I will go to Taiwan Island with you."

Tang Si was choked by Zhang Heping's words, and then heard her say very confidently: "We in Taiwan have the support of the country of magnesium, we..."

"Get out!" Zhang Heping folded the newspaper twice and threw it on the coffee table, saying coldly, "Do you want to go out by yourselves, or do I call the bodyguards to chase you out?"

"You!" Tang Si never expected that Zhang Heping would turn against her.

"They stole my hard drive!" Zhang Bei's voice rang out in the stairwell. "Mom, I'm talking to you, can you hear me?"

"Speak nicely!" Tang Xin pinched her eldest son Zhang Bei's ear, dragged him to the first floor, and said unhappily, "Can't you just buy a new hard drive? It's not a valuable thing!"

"That's the system disk my dad made for me!" Zhang Bei looked towards the living room unconvinced, and seeing Zhang Heping sitting on the sofa, he quickly shouted, "Dad! Third uncle and his men stole my hard drive!"

If Zhang Heping had not just sensed that his eldest son Zhang Bei was scolding Tang Si's man downstairs, he would not have suddenly turned against him.

Tang Si saw her man and two sons and one daughter returning to the first floor and glaring at her. Tang Si immediately realized that they must have found something good in the basement!

However, as soon as Tang Si stood up, Zhang Heping had already walked quickly towards her man.

Tang Xin didn't understand computers and didn't take the hard drive made by Zhang Heping seriously.

But Zhang Heping would not agree to them taking the things away. Even though he did not take those hard drives seriously, he could not start this process.

Otherwise, everyone in the Tang family would come to his house to steal and rob!

"Stop!" Tang Si saw Zhang Heping knock down her man in one encounter and punch her son, so she rushed over quickly.

However, her speed is not as fast as Zhang Heping's.

When she rushed to the stairs, Zhang Heping had already put four people there.

Then, Zhang Heping stretched out his right hand, grabbed Tang Si's neck as she ran over, and lifted her into the air.

"Go find the hard drive!" Zhang Heping said to his eldest son Zhang Bei. Before Tang Xin came over, he dismembered her third sister Tang Si's limbs and threw her aside.

Tang Xin stood there in a daze. On one side were her husband and son, and on the other was her half sister's family. Was it really necessary to fight for a child's toy?

Just as Zhang Bei was searching the three men and one woman on the ground, the people upstairs who heard Zhang Bei's shouting came down one after another.

"What happened?" Mother-in-law Xu Jiefeng glanced at the five people lying on the ground, and pulled Tang Xin, who was standing at the stairs, aside.

"Dad, they tore both sides of these eight memory sticks apart, and the connecting cables of the four hard drives were also cut off!" Zhang Bei came to his father Zhang Heping with his computer accessories in his arms, looking depressed.

Zhang Heping touched his eldest son's head, then returned to the sofa, picked up the phone and called the security duty room.

"I caught five thieves here!"

Snapped!

Zhang Heping said this lightly, but it made Tang Ming, who had just come downstairs, frown.

When the bodyguard on duty heard Zhang Heping's call saying that five thieves had been caught, he broke out in a cold sweat, hurriedly blew the team assembly whistle, and rushed to the villa with the nearby bodyguards.

It's too late to say, then soon!

Before Tang Ming could organize his words, a group of bodyguards in black uniforms rushed into the living room and quickly locked onto the five dead bodies lying on the ground.

"Wait!" Tang Ming saw the bodyguards holding up Tang Si's family of five, and asked hurriedly, "Heping, what's going on?"

In fact, Tang Ming had already guessed it from the few words just now, but he just didn't know how to plead for mercy.

"It's hard to prevent a thief in your own house!" Zhang Heping said as he checked the memory sticks on the coffee table, "Throw the five of them over to my eldest brother-in-law."

The bodyguards didn't realize who they had captured at first, but when they heard their boss Zhang Heping only asked them to send the man to the big boss Tang Ren, they couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief and quickly carried the man away.

Tang Ming and his elder brother Tang Zhi looked at each other and followed him out reluctantly, followed by a dozen children and grandchildren who were watching the fun.

After everyone in the Tang family left, Ma Xiuzhen, the mother who had been sitting on the sofa without saying anything, could not help but say, "Heping, it's not easy for you to put Ah Xin and her mother in the middle."

"Then what do you think I should do?" Zhang Heping said coldly, "Go to Taiwan with her?"

"You definitely can't go to Taiwan!" Father Zhang Bing interrupted, "If she wasn't from the Tang family, I would have slapped her in the face!"

"The circuits of four memory sticks are broken. They can be repaired by adding flying wires." Zhang Heping pointed to four memory sticks, tapped the connection point of the flying wires, and then pointed to the hard drive and said, "The hard drive is fine. Go check if the connector on the motherboard is broken."

As soon as the eldest son Zhang Bei carried the things to the underground floor, his nephew Tang Lie from next door came running over.

"Uncle, that..."

Zhang Heping waved his hands and said impatiently: "You guys can handle it yourself! If it happens again, don't blame me for throwing them into the high seas to feed the fish!"

"Next time, don't let them into the community!" Tang Lie said hurriedly, "My dad said that we should send them on a plane tomorrow morning and send them back to Taiwan!"

"Dad!" The eldest son Zhang Bei ran back with two black interfaces, "Two of them are broken."

"We'll fix it another day!" Zhang Heping didn't even bother looking at the two broken ports. "Take grandpa and grandma up there to have some rest!"

"Oh..." Although Zhang Bei was still a little depressed, he obediently supported Old Zhang and asked grandma Ma Xiuzhen to go upstairs to wash up.

Zhang Heping said to his concubine Chen Shuting, "You go up there too, and let the children go to bed early. Also, give two stacks of red envelopes to parents first, so that they can get used to it first, otherwise they will be reluctant to give out red envelopes tomorrow morning."

After there was no one else in the living room, Zhang Heping went to the basement to take a look at the cabinet case that had been violently torn open, and locked the doors of several rooms in the basement.

When Zhang Heping returned to the living room, Uncle Tang's children and grandchildren were going upstairs. Father-in-law Tang Ming was sitting on the sofa, urging his wife to go upstairs to rest.

"Heping!" Tang Ming waved to his fourth son-in-law Zhang Heping, and then urged Tang Xin to take her mother upstairs to rest.

Zhang Heping walked over to the sofa and sat down. He waited until there was no one else in the living room before Tang Ming leaned back on the sofa and said softly:

"When Tang Si was 13 years old, I was ordered to go undercover in the Magic City. I could only ask the three siblings to change their names, and then Baldy arranged for them to go to school."

"Aren and Ayi are studying in military schools, while Tang Si is studying in an ordinary girls' school, but she has chosen Baldy as her godfather..."

……

February 2th, the first day of the Lunar New Year.

Unlike previous years, the Zhang family did not go out to greet outsiders this morning. Instead, they were blocked in the villa by wave after wave of people who came to pay New Year's greetings.

By the way, Ma Xiuzhen and Zhang Bing opened the red envelopes given to them by their young wife last night. Each red envelope contained a thousand-yuan bill. Two stacks of them meant two hundred bills, which is 20 thousand yuan!

Last night, they were thinking about sending out 20 yuan in red envelopes today. They thought about it for a long time and couldn't fall asleep. This is 20 yuan!

It was only in the 20s that they had seen 20 yuan bills, which added up to yuan. But at that time, yuan could not buy much!

However, after the two hundred red envelopes were distributed, Ma Xiuzhen and Lao Zhang were surprised to remember that when they had the New Year’s Eve dinner last night, the number of children from the two communities in Pingba seemed to be a bit too many.

So, when their young daughter-in-law Chen Shuting gave them another stack of red envelopes, they became numb and could only continue to accept New Year greetings from others and then give red envelopes to their children.

The reason why so many people came to the Zhang family to pay New Year's greetings is that most of the people in Renheyi Community and Baosuan Community are employees of the Zhang family or their family members.

Since we are so close, there is no reason not to come and wish you a happy new year.

On the other hand, not many people went to the Tang family on the left and right sides. Their employees would not ask for the red envelopes until after work.

While having lunch on Pingba, brother-in-law Tang Ren offered Zhang Heping a glass of wine without any extra words. He probably wanted to express that he had sent his third sister Tang Si back to Taiwan.

"Uncle, Happy New Year!" Tang You, the sixth son of my eldest brother-in-law, held up a wine glass and said with a grin, "Uncle, do you think I can help you with some business?"

Zhang Heping took a look at his sixth nephew's clothes, a suit, tie, and black woolen coat, and said with a smile, "Aren't you going to work at Hutchison Whampoa?"

"How can you earn more money by doing business than by working?" Sixth nephew Tang You raised his glass with both hands and clinked it with Zhang Heping's glass. "If you have any business that you don't like, please consider me."

After he finished speaking, Tang You drank the wine in the glass.

After Zhang Heping drank a glass with him, he said as Tang You poured him a glass of wine, "The business is ready."

Zhang Heping pointed at his eldest brother-in-law Tang Ren and said, "Your father and his team are working on LCD color TVs in Shenzhen. They should be able to start mass production in two or three months."

Then, Zhang Heping pointed at Tang Qiang at another table and said, "Aqiang and his team are planning to expand their mobile phone production. They need to negotiate with foreign telecommunications companies or telecommunications licenses. If you can help them negotiate a few cooperation agreements, perhaps you can open a telecommunications company yourself."

"In my case, high-end daily chemical products will be launched online in a few months, following the luxury brand route. If you have the capital, you can come and do the distribution."

Zhang Heping patted Tang You on the back and said, "Take your time to think about it!"

After Tang You received a reply from Zhang Heping, other nephews and nieces of the Tang family also came to toast him. They all wanted to do business, but they did not have as much capital as Tang Lie and his friends.

"Uncle, um... I'll drink three glasses of wine as punishment!" Tang Hai, the second nephew of the second uncle's family, came over with a bottle and a glass of wine, and drank three small glasses of wine for himself before saying shamelessly:

"Uncle, I was wrong! I shouldn't have trusted the Japanese! I shouldn't have given them the complete set of information about the LCD TV. I..."

Zhang Heping reached out and pushed away the wine glass and bottle in Tang Hai's hand, and said seriously: "This is a lesson that will make you regret for the rest of your life, but it doesn't mean that you will never have an LCD TV in this life."

"Follow your uncle to plan the production of LCD color screens in Shenzhen. This is the second chance your uncle and his men have given you. It depends on whether you can seize it."

After sending Tang Hai away, my eldest brother-in-law's second niece Tang Lu and her husband You Daren came over together.

"Uncle, I'm sorry, I..." You Daren glanced at the people at the main table and said hesitantly, "I can't immigrate to Japan. My parents are not in good health..."

"It's okay!" Zhang Heping clinked his wine glass with the couple, but didn't expose the adults' lies. "Go back to work after the New Year. Contact Island Electric, Island Telecom, and Towngas as soon as possible. The delivery date for the first batch of wires and pipes is approaching, so you have to make a good construction plan."

"Okay, uncle! I'll go over as soon as they get to work." You Daren agreed hastily, and then asked worriedly, "Uncle, what about the Peace Group office building in Shenzhen?"

"The foundation is ruined!" Zhang Heping said speechlessly, "It has been repaired intermittently for such a long time..."

Zhang Heping thought for a moment and said, "I'll go to Shenzhen to find Director Wu some other day and turn the office building into a library for them. Wait for my news."

When Zhang Heping was instructing the Tang family, Ma Xiuzhen couldn't help but look at her grandson.

Chang Wen, Chang Qing and Zhang Ting received quite a few red envelopes today, about 30,000 to 40,000 yuan each.

Even though Ma Xiuzhen already knew that the Hong Kong dollar was not as valuable as the RMB in China, she couldn't resist the huge amount of money!

From the red envelopes, I thought about the future of my grandchildren.

As long as this uncle gives them some advice, they will have no worries about food and clothing for the rest of their lives.

As she thought about it, Ma Xiuzhen suddenly became firm in her idea.

I will urge them to study more strictly when I get back!

We need to let them come to Hong Kong Island more often to build closer relationships, and not be like the Zhang family...