Rebirth 1958: My Home is in Nanluoguxiang

On the surface, the Chang family is now a ten-thousand-yuan household.

The combined salary of Chang Zhengyang and Guo Huiying is just over 400 yuan, which means their annual salary is nearly 5,000 yuan. Although this is not unique in the alley, it is one of the best.

Think about it, what kind of place is Yanjing?

At the feet of the emperor, at the foot of the imperial city, this is the best place to live. There are too many senior officials in this entire capital.

Take the Nanluoguxiang area for example. There are people of all ages living in government agencies and military compounds. The families living there are basically dual-income families, and it is not uncommon for a couple to earn a combined salary of more than 300 yuan.

Therefore, children from large compounds never play together with children from slums, because the income gap between the two families is too big.

Xu Damao was just made a regular employee this year, earning 37.5 yuan a month. His annual salary is less than Chang Zhengyang's two-month salary.

However, ordinary people these days have no objection to cadres and intellectuals receiving high salaries.

Because that is what people earned by risking their lives to fight for their empire, and intellectuals get high salaries based on their abilities. If you are not convinced, why didn't you join underground work, go to the front line, or study hard in the past few years?

Choice is more important than effort, the direction is wrong! All efforts are in vain!

If you choose to be an ordinary person, don't envy others who live in big houses and have a life without worries about food and clothing.

However, this situation did not last until the 1980s, when everyone's mentality changed, because it was now possible to make a lot of money openly through speculation, fraud and deception.

In the 1980s and 1990s, there was even a popular saying that those who make missiles are not as good as those who sell tea eggs.

The children of high-ranking officials are no longer willing to be workers, soldiers, teachers, doctors, or scientists. They are swarming into the banking system!

When Chang Zhengyang saw the technicians and workers from the water plant coming, he first cut a melon for them and then gave each of them a cigarette. After they finished eating the watermelon and smoking, they immediately became full of energy, with the help of the three brothers of the Chang family.

The tap water was finally installed before evening.

"Haha, now I don't need a ladle to take a shower. I can just stand under the shower head and shower directly."

Chang Zhengyang stood in the bathroom, looking at the shower head above his head with great satisfaction.

"It seems like there's something missing?"

Chang Zhengyang stroked his chin, looked at the shower head and thought for a while, but he didn't catch the inspiration just now, so he walked out, walked around the yard, slapped his thigh and said: "I know, we still need a solar energy!"

"What solar energy?"

Chang Zhengyang's voice was so loud that it attracted the attention of the whole family. Everyone ran over, surrounded him, and asked what solar energy was.

"Solar energy allows us to have hot water anytime and anywhere. With solar energy, we don't need to boil water when we take a shower at night. We just turn on the tap and hot water comes out of the shower head."

Isn't that just like a bathhouse?

Everyone looked at Chang Zhengyang with suspicion, thinking he was daydreaming.

Chang Zhengyang snorted when he saw this, and asked Chang Wanyue and He Yushui, "Xiaoyue, Yushui, you two will take the college entrance examination next year, and you can be considered quasi-intellectuals. Let me test you, what is the working principle of solar energy?"

Chang Wanyue and He Yushui looked at each other, and they both lowered their heads in thought.

Solar energy, as the name suggests, is energy provided by the sun. Could it be possible to use convex mirrors to focus sunlight to boil water?

The two high school sophomores huddled together and whispered for a while. After eliminating multiple possibilities, they finally came up with an answer that they thought was closest to the truth.

Chang Wanyue raised her hand and said, "Brother, do you want to use some kind of device, such as a large concave-convex mirror, to focus the light to one point and heat the water in the iron bucket?"

Uh, buddy just wanted to paint the tin bucket with black paint, there's no need to go through so much trouble!

"Well, Xiaoyue, your idea is very good and deserves encouragement, but we don't need to go through so much trouble. We can just coat the large iron barrel with black paint."

Chang Wanyue was dumbfounded and asked, "Ah? It's that simple?"

"It's that simple. The summer sun is strong enough to keep the water in the tin bucket at around 50 degrees, which is hot enough for us to take a bath."

Well, we thought it was some high-tech thing, but after all the fuss it turned out to be just a tin bucket. Everyone immediately lost interest in the so-called solar energy and went out to enjoy the cool air.

Chang Zhengyang smacked his lips and touched his nose awkwardly.

In fact, he wanted to install a small boiler, a radiator for his home, and a 24-hour hot water supply.

Later I thought about it and decided to give up. This idea is simply not realistic.

The main reason is that there is no fuel!

These days, coal is rationed. Every household has to buy coal from the coal station with a coal coupon, but you can't buy more. Even if you have internal connections at the coal station, I'm sorry, you can only buy a few kilograms of loose coal, or broken coal lumps. What use can these coal lumps be?

The coal bought at home is usually only enough for cooking and boiling water. In fact, people would rather go to the water station to buy hot water, which costs five cents a pot of water.

The same is true for the Chang family. Every day, the third and fourth brothers are asked to go to the water station to buy water. Each of the two brothers carries two kettles of hot water, and they buy four kettles at a time, which is basically enough for the family to use for a day.

If you have guests at home, go to the boiling water station and get two more kettles of water.

Use a simple solar water heater in the summer and go to the bathhouse in the winter, without interfering with either.

In fact, the difference between the north and the south is that northerners prefer to take a bath in the bathhouse in winter.

In the north, the temperature is more than ten degrees below zero in winter. Soaking in a steaming hot bathhouse and letting the bath master scrub off the dead skin and mud on your body is so refreshing that it is really indescribable.

If you say to the bath attendant: Master, didn’t you eat today?

Hey, the bath scrubber immediately understood that this was a regular customer who had come, and he would have to get used to the new techniques later.

There are pedicure technicians, barbers, and tea service providers in the bathhouse. Three or five old men can spend an entire afternoon in the bathhouse.

Chang Zhengyang likes to go to the bathhouse, but he doesn't like to go there.

These days the water in the bathhouse pools is not changed, and there are many people taking baths, so the water is too muddy. Chang Zhengyang really can't accept it. He would rather go to the Yulong River to take a bath in winter.

However, this situation is expected to improve this year. Since he became the director of Institute 607 and the institute has sufficient funds, he expanded Institute 607 in the early spring of this year, adding a basketball court and a staff activity center.

The activity center is also a three-story building. The first floor is a staff bathhouse, the second floor is a chess and card room and a reading room, and the third floor is a staff screening room. Soldiers from the neighboring barracks often come over to watch movies during their vacations.

As the head of the institute, Director Chang has his own small pool. Who in the institute dares to object?

The only thing Chang Zhengyang regretted was that no girl took the initiative to rub his back!

Especially a certain secretary named Wang, who has no sense of secretaryship at all. Today, when the leader’s home was installing running water, she actually refused to help!