The first generation of migrant workers in Anhui today, the couple who built the wall live in my house

In mid-May of this year, an Anhui mason couple who were over 50 years old and had never met each other before lived in my home for five days and five nights, which gave me an opportunity to get to know today's migrant workers up close.

I really want to borrow the lyrics of Anhui Huangmei Opera's "The Fairy Match" to describe the two of them as "husband and wife building walls together." However, will they be a lucky couple who receive help from the gods and embrace happiness?

Now, listen to me tell the story of this "fairy match" in this world.

After 27 years, my house in a community on Jiangning Road, which was known as the "TOP-10 high-rise buildings in Putuo District" at that time, is now dilapidated, with ceiling plaster falling off and floors deformed... Compared with the newly renovated units in the surrounding area, no matter the style, furniture, Facilities...all hold back my "infrastructure fanatic" and "world's number one manufacturing" status.

In mid-April of this year, the child's mother received a call from her child, saying that she had rented a house outside and was preparing to live independently. We, the two elders, were both happy and worried when we heard this. We were happy that the boy had finally grown up and no longer needed care from his elders. But we were worried that we would soon start the “old house renovation” plan that we had planned for many years: renovating the existing two-bedroom and one-bedroom apartment. The large unit that merged the living room and the one-bedroom unit was restored into two small units. Each generation lives in a separate unit, living separately without interfering with each other, but also helping each other without disconnecting from each other.

But this is no small matter. The renovation 27 years ago was just a rough house renovation. Today's renovation requires demolition, redesign, and the use of current new materials, new technologies, and new processes that I am not familiar with... Even the work methods are very different from those back then.

Relatives suggested that I hire someone to do the work and purchase the materials myself, which would satisfy me and save money. I went to the building materials market for a while, and I was dazzled by the flooring alone. The types and styles were completely different from those 27 years ago - the reputation of "industrial powerhouse" is not in vain.

A shopkeeper's sister-in-law told me that a female customer went around more than sixty times in various building materials markets before finally purchasing one of her toilets. This "self-purchasing" is too exaggerated.

The products in the building materials market will dazzle you.

Just when I was struggling with my worries, I learned that a 1-bedroom, 1-living room unit on the 12th floor of the same building as mine was being commissioned by a decoration company, so I checked the company with Dianping. Shanghai customers gave it a pretty high score. Think about hiring a private contractor. Although it may be more affordable to be independent, the effort involved is immeasurable, and it will be troublesome if there are problems afterwards. After all, it is more reliable to leave it to a company. "A monk can run away but not a temple." Ultimately, it was because we were getting older and were afraid of losing our lives, so we signed a contract with that company.

On May 10, four fireworks were fired, and the renovation project of my old house with one bedroom and one living room officially started. My child's mother and I moved into a 2-bedroom apartment for a temporary stay. Following the principle of "break first and then build", the company invited three strong men to spend 4 or 5 days tinkering with each other to restore the house to its original state and turn it into a rough house again. A project manager named Yang told me that the wall decoration will officially start tomorrow.

On the morning of the 15th, I heard the noise from people next door. When I entered the house, I saw that various building materials and tools such as hollow bricks, red bricks, cement and yellow sand were already in place. Manager Yang brought two masons, a man and a woman.

The man is tall and thin, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, and talks non-stop; the woman is short, fat and strong, and doesn't talk much. Both of them looked over 50 years old.

"They are a couple. The man's surname is Du and the woman's surname is Fang. They are both from Anhui Province in our company." Just when I was surprised, the manager introduced me in time.

Then, I watched with curiosity how the masons were building the wall 27 years later. He should first pull a string to stake out and position it, right? I wonder.

Master Du has a thick throat and a slightly hoarse voice. I saw him setting up a small laser level with a brick, and while he was busy observing and adjusting the green laser lines projected by the level on the ground, walls and ceiling, he was nagging to the manager: "The walls of this house are The ground has not been leveled, it is all a bit skewed, it is difficult to handle, so I can only try to straighten it.”

Manager Yang answered him and explained to me: "Yes, we knew this a long time ago. This house was built in the 1990s. At that time, Shanghai had no experience in building high-rise residential buildings, and the technology and equipment were poor. The 'leveling' of the walls and floors had to be done by relying on The old master visually inspected it. In the 2000s, four-line laser levels appeared in the domestic market. At first, the imported ones were worth tens of thousands of dollars. Later, the domestically produced ones were developed into 12-line ones and sold for only a few hundred yuan. They became a construction company. and a must-have tool for every decorator.”

"Nowadays, when building walls, laser levels are used for positioning, leveling, and calibration. There is no need to pull cotton yarn." Manager Yang added.

Master Du used a laser locator to determine the location of the wall.

When Master Du saw me thinking about his little instrument, he muttered: "I have two levels. One of the useful ones was hung on the wall and fell down. I have to buy it from a building materials store. Not every store has one." I don’t know which store in Shanghai sells this brand... I’m busy with work and can’t get away with it, so I can only use this old one.”

Manager Yang took the drawing and told Master Du where the wall needed to be built. Master Du quickly took the tape measure to find the location, used the laser green line as the alignment, and used a marker to mark the ground. Then the two of them used an ink fountain similar to that used by carpenters to pop up black lines on the ground. His wife, Master Fang, used a broom to quickly sweep away the dust on the ground before they flicked the string.

After the lines were drawn, they started mixing the cement. The couple moved in the yellow sand and cement together, and the woman was responsible for mixing the cement mortar. The man began to lay two rows of hollow bricks on both sides of the black line on the bathroom wall and floor, and then poured cement mortar into the middle of the hollow bricks.

"This is called a floor beam." Master Du explained to me, "Generally when people decorate and build walls, they build them directly from the floor to the floor. Our company's requirements are different. A floor beam must be pre-built at the base of the wall, and the floor beams are built on top. The wall is stronger and can effectively prevent the moisture in the bathroom from spreading to other areas.”

When I saw them busily and skillfully building walls using lasers instead of traditional wire positioning, I suddenly felt like migrant workers mixed with high technology.

When I moved my eyes away from the wall on the ground, I suddenly noticed a pile of pots, pans, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar placed in the corner of the empty room.

"Where do you eat?" I asked Master Fang.

"We cook our own food and eat here... Wherever we build the wall, we eat." She pointed to a large plastic storage box, which is filled with rice, flour, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and an electric stove. The electric cooker and the lid of the box serve as a table, and the other snakeskin bags contain tools and materials. When it was time to move the construction site, I contacted Lalamove on my mobile phone; our small pickup truck couldn’t even fit all these things... We also took the car and went to the next construction site together. "

Master Du added: "This morning we took the Lalamove from the Minhang construction site. It cost about 50 yuan, which is cheaper than a taxi. Shanghai is great."

"Have you bought your groceries for today?" I asked his wife.

"I didn't go shopping today... Are there any markets near here?" his wife asked me.

"Yes, there is a Lianhua supermarket on Jiangning Road and Macau Road. It's very close... How will you eat today if there is no food?" I asked her curiously.

"It doesn't matter. We often eat fermented bean curd and pickles. I'll go check it out and buy some food in the evening."

"We'll live here," the man said, pointing to the rough kitchen on one side. "We'll sleep in it at night. We'll spread it out with cardboard boxes and sleep on the floor. The bedrolls are already there."

"How is this possible? You and your wife are sleeping on the cement floor of this rough house like this!" I shouted, finding it unimaginable.

"It doesn't matter. It's expensive to rent a house in Shanghai. We can't make much money from our work. It's not worthwhile to pay the rent. Besides, we travel all over Shanghai. We can't work in one place for long. The minimum is half a day, and the maximum is only one month." Even if the company gives us dormitories, it’s not convenient for us to live there. It’s more convenient to sleep on the construction site and we can control our time!”

"We are all used to it." Master Du said with a smile. His wife immediately added: "This job is so dirty, there is no place to take a shower."

I went back to the house and told the child's mother that they were going to live in my house and that they would only eat curd and pickles as side dishes.

"How can you still have the strength to build a wall after eating this?" the child's mother said. When I saw there were two boxes of eggs at home, I said, "I'll give them one box of eggs first." "Okay, send it to them quickly!"

I immediately gave 12 large-sized eggs purchased online from Meituan Supermarket to Master Fang: "How can I move if I don't eat something nutritious!"

"Thank you... thank you!" the couple said repeatedly.

At a quarter past six in the morning the next day, the sound of a shovel mixing cement came from the next room. At around nine o'clock, I went to the construction site next door to give a few bottles of Nongfu Mountain Spring to the couple who were building the wall. I saw that the extension wall on the north side of the hall was already over 2 meters high. The west side of the bathroom wall had reached its top, and the north side had been built to a height of one person. .

The couple was already so busy that they were sweating profusely. The man used the laser positioning line to calibrate the position while neatly placing the red hollow bricks up. The woman was mixing cement and delivering bricks to her husband in a timely manner according to his instructions. She also used a shovel from time to time to remove the cement mortar that had fallen to the ground while the husband was building the wall, removing the broken bricks that had been mixed in, and then shoveling them back into the mortar pile. Continue to mix well and use.

"How do you think my wall is built?" Master Du asked me with a smile while wiping away his sweat.

"Very good, very neat." I noticed that the green light lines emitted by the laser locator basically matched the wall he built, so I praised him. In fact, I didn't know how to build the wall.

"The floor beams made yesterday cannot be built immediately. They must wait until today so that the quality will be good." Master Du explained to me. The wife said at the same time: "Look at the recess next to the door. It's difficult to fix it. Look at how my husband built it."

Following her finger, I looked carefully there. It was a newly built L-shaped corner, with a thin, side-standing red brick wall on one side and a thick hollow brick wall on the other. At the 90-degree corner of the wall, he dislocated the two types of bricks every three rows, making the wall neat and beautiful.

I remembered that many years ago, a construction expert taught me the secrets of construction quality inspection and acceptance: "When looking at the quality of a decoration project, there are generally no problems on the surface of walls, floor tiles, and floors. The key is to look at its 'edging'. If the junctions such as edges and corners are not neat, the quality is not up to standard.”

"Some masters can't do it or find it too troublesome and don't want to do it for you. I do it not to look good, but to make the bricks at the joints bite tightly so that the wall will not split in the future." Master Du said a lot. , but every sentence is heard.

"The wall of your bathroom facing the hall, in the long run, it is more suitable to apply cement mortar on the wall, which can better block the moisture in the bathroom. Although the current technology requires plaster, I still recommend that you use cement." The master said frankly Discussed his views.

"Some people are worried that the cement will crack, but I have done some processing, appropriately increasing the proportion of coarse sand and cement, and trying to mix it evenly for you, so that it will not dry out and crack when applied..."

"Okay, let's use cement as the wall." I accepted his suggestion.

In the afternoon, the master who was responsible for the demolition came again, and within a quarter of an hour he demolished the connecting door connecting the two houses. "I will help you build the partition wall today." Master Du obviously understands the inconvenience that no partition wall will bring to our lives.

In the evening, I go next door again. As soon as I entered the door, I heard Master Du shouting: "Start beaming now." "Huh? Do you need to beam for interior decoration?" I was puzzled. The master said, "This kind of beam is called a 'door lintel'. It is pre-made and installed above the door to share the pressure of the wall above the door on the door, so that the door can always open and close smoothly. I can just move it up." ”

"These are the two." The master pointed out to me. I took a look and saw that they were two cubic cement prefabricated parts with a cross-section of 10 cm and a length of nearly 2 meters.

"This thing is very heavy. How are you going to lift it up?" I looked at the height of more than 2 meters that the master pointed out to me, and thought to myself, if there is no lifting equipment, I should at least use a hoist, right?

"We all moved it up by hand, but the door is not as high as yours, nor are your parents. Your house is 2.3 meters high. It's impossible for one person to get it up. I asked my wife to help me."

I saw him move the iron work bench under the beam, make the four stool legs as long as possible, so that the stool was nearly one meter tall, then stood on it, carefully measured the height of the reserved hole in the wall from the ground, and felt that everything was When the requirements were met, he moved a beam and placed it on the work bench. He climbed on the bench and asked his wife to climb on the bench as well. Then the two of them stood side by side and vigorously held up the prefabricated beam, trying to put one end of it on the left side. At the top of the wall, insert the other end into the reserved wall hole on the right.

However, no matter how hard they tried, they could not lift the heavy reinforced concrete beam weighing more than 100 kilograms to the predetermined position. As I looked at it, I felt that the situation was critical. If I missed it and fell, I might injure them, so I immediately ran up before trying to help them lift the beam to the predetermined position.

"No!" Master Du shouted, "The hole can't be plugged in! Put it down, put it down..."

"What's going on? I measured the hole in the wall and it's just the right size." Master Du said to himself. After some careful observation, he found the reason. It turned out that there was a structural beam in front of the wall. Although the average height of the beam was measured correctly, the beam was 1 centimeter thicker just in front of the hole.

Master Du used an impact drill to remove the excess concrete from under the beam. The three people lifted the beam again, and finally one end was inserted into the hole, and the other end was properly placed on the top of the wall.

"It's done! It's done! Thank you, boss, for your help!" Master Du said excitedly. Then another beam was brought in. That one was shorter. The master measured the length and cut off the excess part with an electric cutter. The couple lifted the beam support into place in no time.

The two beams are connected to each other to form a continuous straight line. Master Du looked left and right, adding cement mortar to the joints of the beams, and happily admiring the fruits of his labor.

Suddenly, he asked me: "Where does the bathroom ceiling hang?" I said it was quite high, about 25 centimeters from the ceiling. "That won't work. We need to take down the beam on the left and cut off the protruding part." I ran to the bathroom and took a look. The beam passed through the wall hole and protruded outward by about 10 centimeters. So I said to him: "Forget it, it doesn't matter if this point is prominent. Who will look above the head?" I thought to myself, I finally used all my strength to move it twice, is it possible that I have to do it a third time?

"No, we still have to cut it off. It's too ugly. The people behind the tiles will scold me for not doing a clean job." Master Du said firmly. So the three people once again took down the beam, and Master Du cut off 10 centimeters, and then used all their strength to install it.

"This is perfect. Thank you. Without your support, we really wouldn't be able to do it!" Master Du said to me sheepishly, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

Two precast concrete lintels above the two sliding doors are already in place.

I returned to the house, it was already dark, and I told my child’s mother, let’s order takeout today. "It's better to go out to eat, but also go to the supermarket to take a look." "What about at home? The wall between our house and the next door has not been built yet..." "What does it matter? There is no gold or silver at home!" They won't..."

So we turned off the lights and quietly closed the door. Went to a nearby restaurant for a quick meal. The child's mother bought a box of pork belly and a pack of louver knots at the supermarket: "This will replenish their bodies. The meat you buy for them cannot be bought at a discount."

When we got home, there was no sound from the next door, and we tried to talk as little as possible. Afraid that turning on the lights would affect their rest, they could vaguely see in the darkness that the separation wall seemed to be incomplete. I took the meat and the blind knot and tried to knock on the door next door. After more than a minute, the master came to open the door naked. I said embarrassedly: "Are you already sleeping? Excuse me! My wife bought you braised pork and asked me to deliver it. You go to bed. There won't be any tonight. Is it burned? Then put it in my refrigerator and I will deliver it to you tomorrow morning."

"Thank you! Sorry, I'll give you the money!"

"No, no, no, it's just a small thing to express your feelings."

That night, we slept on the bed in the south unit, and the couple who built the wall slept on the ground in the north unit. I felt that the spaces between us and the two strangers were connected to each other, and there was no wall in between; but it was one sky and one sky. land.

I don’t know if my snoring will affect them, maybe they don’t hear it at all! ——The workers who get up at around 6 o'clock in the morning, carry several kilograms of bricks and stir heavy cement without interruption, and work until 8 o'clock in the evening, how can they still hear the snoring of others? !

It was just daybreak. I got up and went to the bathroom. I saw that half of the wall between the two houses had been built last night - it turned out that there was already a wall. I thought there was no wall!

At 6:30 a.m. on the third day, I heard the sound of Master Du building walls and the sound of his wife shoveling mud while mixing cement mortar. After about an hour, the sounds gradually disappeared. "The partition wall is all built," I said to the child's mother. This means that the rooms in the two units have been successfully isolated.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, I took the pork belly and louver knots out of the refrigerator and brought them to Master Fang who was mixing the mortar next door. "Hurry up and cook. You can eat it at noon. It will take some time to cook the meat." The couple said repeatedly, "Thank you, boss, for being so polite!"

"Yesterday I saw that the lights in your room were turned off and there was no sound. I thought you were resting. Half of the wall was built but I didn't build it. I was afraid that the sound of building the wall would affect you. So I built it all early this morning." Master Du was a little unhappy. Say it politely.

I saw that all the walls in the house had been built. Master Du took a pallet and a mortar knife and applied cement mortar to the surface of the brick walls. , five hundred yuan, I can do it, but I don’t like it, I just like to build walls, dry walls, I’m good at it!”

He said the four words "handy" very loudly and with full pride. It was obvious that he really liked building walls.

"The old brick wall still protrudes by about ten centimeters in the southwest corner of the newly built wall in your bathroom. It is unsightly and reduces the usable area. I will help you remove it this afternoon." Master Du said.

"Of course it would be best if we could get rid of it, but that would be extra work for you, and it would be troublesome anyway, so let it be like this." I said.

"It's okay. I'll help you get rid of it without asking the manager for money."

"Thank you very much!" I said gratefully.

The couple's tacit cooperation in building the wall reminded me of the proverb "when a man and a woman work well together, the work will not be tiring."

"Have you been in this business for more than ten years?" I asked Master Du tentatively.

"No, I started working when I was 17 years old. I used to build houses, but in recent years I switched to interior decoration. I worked in Hangzhou for three years and Shanghai for two years..."

"I have traveled all over the country, including various cities in the Yangtze River Delta, Fujian, Wuhan, Hebei, Beijing, Xinjiang... including the athletes' village in the Hebei Olympic ski resort."

"The Olympic Village used to be barren mountains. When we were working there, the ice was five centimeters thick and it froze us to death... When we were working in Xinjiang, we got up at three o'clock..."

"I was also a boss at that time and led more than 20 people. We traveled to so many places and built so many walls..."

While we were chatting, Manager Yang came. After checking around, I praised Master Fang and said, "You did a good job in mixing the cement mortar." I looked at the ordinary, dirty dark gray mud on the ground and couldn't tell what was going on, so I asked Manager Yang curiously. , "What's so good about it?"

"It was mixed very evenly and delicately," said Manager Yang. "My family was too poor to afford tuition. As soon as I graduated from junior high school, I started working on a construction site at the age of 17. I have worked in all types of work. I am the only project in the company where I am a construction worker. Manager, I can tell whether the cement is mixed well or not at any construction site in the company."

After hearing the manager's praise, Master Fang said: "I stand in the cement slurry with both feet and stir it... I use my feet to mix it evenly, and the sound is low, so it doesn't affect the neighbors in the building." She pointed to the side. A pair of tall galoshes covered in mud said to the manager.

"I said your mixing was good. You mixed it with your feet, so that's good!" Manager Yang turned around and told me that many plasterers don't do this. They just turn it over with a shovel a few times. The yellow sand inside If it is not completely mixed with cement and is applied to the wall, it may crack after a long time or if it is subject to small vibrations.

I pulled Manager Yang aside and asked him quietly, what do you think of this wall? Are you satisfied? "Very good, they did it very seriously." "

After the manager left, I asked Master Du, "Are you familiar with Manager Yang?" I guessed that he came to my house because Manager Yang sent him a job.

"I'm not familiar with him. It's only been two years since we came to Shanghai to sign a contract with this decoration company. There are nearly a hundred project managers under the company. This is the first time I've met him. I also want him to see my craftsmanship. Can I do it? If you are recognized by him, you can take on more of his work in the future.”

This quite surprised me. Seeing that he talked to Manager Yang about everything on the first day, I thought they were acquaintances.

"We are dispatched by the company to accept the work, but if the project manager does not recognize your work, your reputation in the company will be very bad in the future, and your life will be very difficult. The company also operates on an elimination basis." Master Du said, "At the same time, if you do a good job There are also rewards for being good. Every year, the company's project manager recommends 80 or 90 outstanding plasterers to participate in a wall-building competition. The walls they build are reviewed by experts. Whoever does a good job will be given an extra bonus. I am also trying to participate. For a moment...hehe."

Master Du is cutting away the excess protruding concrete, and dust is scattered everywhere. This time he wore a mask and told me to leave quickly.

In the afternoon, I saw Master Du cutting steel mesh at the construction site without wearing a mask. As soon as the cutting machine was turned on, dust suddenly rose, and his wife asked me to leave quickly. I stayed outside the house for a while, and after he finished cutting, I went back inside and said to them, you guys are too careless about labor protection. I remembered that I heard Master Du coughing two nights ago.

The wife said: "There are all masks, but sometimes he wears them and sometimes refuses to wear them. I wanted to buy a hat, but I didn't have time. Once I bought it online and placed an order. When the goods arrived, we have already moved to work elsewhere."

"I can help you with this. Just ask the courier to deliver it to my house. It will be delivered in half an hour?"

"Ah, how fast?" The couple felt incredible.

"Can that laser level be taken away?" Master Du has been thinking about the broken treasure.

"It should be possible, let me check for you..." I quickly found the Dongcheng green light wall level he wanted in Meituan Outsourcing. At the same time, I also found a fishing sun hat with a brim and a shawl.

After sending the pictures to them for confirmation. I helped them place an order on Meituan. In about half an hour, both items were delivered.

Master Du hurriedly opened the level, turned on the switch, checked the accessories, and confirmed that it was his favorite product. He was very happy.

"No, they don't cost much, so I'll give them both to you," I said.

"That's not possible. We asked you to buy it, why did you change it?!" Master Du insisted on transferring the money to me. I said, then just charge the money for the level. Hats are very cheap. You have worked so hard and I don't care. Sorry, please give me some thought.

His wife put the hat on her head and said, "That's good. There will be less dust on the head... I didn't expect Shanghai's express delivery to be so powerful!" They were very happy to see them, and I was also very happy. After all, it was all good for me. It's just a matter of effort.

Master Du finally bought the Dongcheng brand 12-line laser level that he had been longing for.

On the fourth day, I will work for ten more years to return my home, live in a villa, and play mahjong.

On the fourth day, Saturday, according to the community property regulations, no high-noise operations such as hammering and cutting are allowed on weekends. We should have no problem building a wall. The main work in the morning was to apply cement mortar to the inner wall of the kitchen. Master Du used a laser positioner to carefully correct the level of the wall. His wife, Master Fang, was still responsible for supplying materials, gently shoveling the cement mortar on the ground, and from time to time using his feet to pile up the mud. On the stampede.

"Today I sprayed water on your new bathroom wall again. Give some water 24 hours after the cement is applied to make it solidify more firmly. Some people just leave the wall alone after it is built." Master Du said.

"Now I have a little trouble. There is a small piece of remaining old cement above the kitchen window that has not been knocked off. My cement slurry cannot be smoothed out, and it is not firm even after I apply it. I have to knock it off... I'm afraid if I don't get rid of it today. The construction period is delayed," the master said worriedly. I said, "Then try to be as gentle as possible. If there is a loud noise, the neighbors will complain!"

In the afternoon, the child's mother bought a bag of green garlic and a box of pork belly slices online and asked me to give them to the couple building the wall. It felt like there had been no movement in the room for a while. I pushed the door open and saw Master Du quietly painting the walls in the kitchen while his wife went to the roof to dry the clothes.

"Oh, you are so polite. We haven't finished the dishes yesterday yet." Master Du accepted the side dishes sheepishly.

"It was terrible just now." Master Du said to me, "After noon, I knocked on the cement block on the window frame, and the security guard of the community came up. They were extremely fierce and asked us to pack up and leave immediately. I said, we can leave. , what to do with the mixed cement? You can’t take it with you, and you have to hit it with a hammer when it solidifies... He thought it was the same, so he said, you two go upstairs and downstairs in a symbolic circle. , stay away for a while and come back after a quarter of time..."

"Then the cement on the window frame was knocked off?" I asked him.

"Knock it off, it's done already." Master Du smiled proudly.

There wasn't much heavy work today, so I just chatted with the couple for a while. I learned from Master Du that they are both 54 years old. My wife used to work in an electronics factory near her hometown, working 12 hours a day and earning a monthly salary of more than 7,000. She married Master Du and gave birth to a son. After the son was brought up, she also went out to do decoration with her husband.

"He is a man who works in construction outside all year round. He has no one to take care of him and he is not too young. I am with him to take care of him in life and help him in work..." His wife, Master Fang, said with affection.

I did some math at home last night and found that Master Du graduated from junior high school at the age of 17, which should be 1987. In other words, in the early days of reform and opening up, he joined the army of national infrastructure construction and became the first batch of migrant workers in infrastructure construction in China.

In Master Du's career, he spent the first 32 years building residences, factories, office buildings, and hotels across the country; he spent the past five years renovating houses in Hangzhou and Shanghai. Building the wall almost consumed most of his life's energy. How much did he gain in the end? What is the real life of these first-generation migrant workers now? I really want to know this information that is rarely covered by various media now.

"In Chaohu City, Chaohu is a county-level city newly assigned to Hefei."

"Chaohu should be pretty good, a land of plenty."

"Yes, we have everything at home. Now with the construction of new rural areas, cement roads have been laid in front of our homes. The countryside is really good."

"My family bought a community house with three bedrooms and two living rooms of more than 100 square meters in the urban area of ​​Chaohu, mainly for my son. I built a small villa covering an area of ​​300 square meters, of which 100 square meters were built as a villa house, and 200 square meters were used as a villa. In the yard, I planted peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, jujube trees... a garden full of vegetables and fruits, but I didn’t have time to eat them, so I told my neighbors, you can just pick them and eat them. In my hometown, there are three empty houses. "

"I bought one. We don't know how to drive it. I just took the subject three exam and haven't gotten my driver's license yet. My son is driving it. My son thinks the model is too old and plans to change it when I get home this year." Master Du said slightly. Smiling awkwardly.

"You are working in various places, have you ever taken time to travel?" I asked him, "Very rarely, I took her to Tiananmen Square and Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Beijing; I have been in Shanghai for two years, the Oriental Pearl Tower, the Bund, and Nanjing Road. I haven’t been there,” Master Du said.

The wife interjected: "It's better to go back home. I work in the electronics factory at home. As soon as I get off work, the electric car comes home with a gust of wind. I go into my villa and take a hot bath. Not to mention how comfortable it is...it's not like doing this." You don’t have to take a shower, you’re so dirty.”

"Have you ever had any accidents while traveling around for so many years?"

"A few years ago, when I was celebrating the Chinese New Year in my hometown, I was hit by someone else's car while riding an electric scooter. Four ribs were broken, one on the left and three on the right. He rushed back to take care of me for a few months," the wife said.

I'm thinking that his family's good life has been established, and the couple are going home now. Their living conditions should be better than those of ordinary farmers who work at home, and even ordinary residents of Shanghai. After decades of hard work, his family has entered the middle class. Why do we still sleep on the floor here and eat pickles and fermented bean curd?

"In this job, have you ever encountered a boss who owed you wages?"

The question I asked unintentionally seemed to suddenly touch Master Du's nerves. He raised his voice and said: "I've been in arrears! I've been in arrears! Who in the business hasn't encountered arrears?! When I was in Beijing, a boss owed me and a few fellow villagers 40,000 yuan. The lawsuit went to the court, and it still can't be enforced to this day... …There’s a saying, ‘It’s good for a thousand years, it won’t be paid for ten thousand years’!”

"In Hangzhou, I work as a contractor, and the 20 people below me all came out to work with me from the same village. At the end of the year, the developer only paid part of it, and it owed 200,000 yuan. After that, they paid me a little bit every year, and they haven't paid it back yet. clear……"

"My fellow villagers all get money to celebrate the New Year, and I can't owe them anything. That year I gave them all what I got, and I went home empty-handed to celebrate the New Year... After that, I never worked as a contractor or built a house again. So I changed my career to decoration, which provided a guaranteed income.”

"He graduated from middle school and started a business in Hefei. He asked me for money to invest. I gave him 1 million and told him, if you go the right way to start a business, we will support you. If you go the wrong way, you will never get a penny in the future."

"He built an entertainment venue near Hefei University Town for students to have leisure time after class. It looks good now."

"We are in constant contact. He just called us this morning and asked us how our life was going, and asked us not to treat ourselves badly. He heard that we were sleeping on the floor and wanted to buy us an inflatable air bed." At this point, Du The master smiled happily.

"Then your son is pretty good and can care about you."

"I said we'll talk about the air mattress when it's cold. It's summer now and there's no need for it."

"Then you can't always sleep on cardboard boxes. After all, the concrete floor is very cold."

"We have quilts, no problem."

The wife interjected: "He eats three big bowls for one meal and two steamed buns for breakfast. You give us eggs, and make egg fried rice for him for breakfast the next day. He says he's not hungry after eating this... You Look at him, he’s still not getting fat.”

It can be seen that this is a loving and professional couple who enjoy each other. I said, "Seeing as you two are in good health, there's no problem in working for another ten years."

"Haha, yes, I will almost go back to my hometown after another ten years or so," the two said in unison.

When it comes to "the next ten years", instead of repeating the hard work that can be imagined day after day, it is better to look forward to the "days after retirement" with them, I thought to myself.

"You work for another ten years and earn some more money. Your retirement life should be good. You can live in a villa, grow vegetables and fruits, raise chickens and ducks, and go fishing. The old houses in your hometown can be turned into farmhouses or B&Bs. ...The days of the gods..." They listened to me and laughed happily.

"Do you have any hobbies in your spare time? Do you like listening to and singing Huangmei Opera?" I thought of "The Fairy Match" again and felt that they were from Anhui and a loving and hard-working rural couple. They should be regarded as "husband and wife". "Both returned home", I should like this story of escaping from the sea of ​​suffering with the help of seven fairies.

"We don't like singing Huangmei Opera. When we go home, we play mahjong and fight landlords! We didn't know how to play before, but we learned it when we went home for the New Year..." the couple said cheerfully, as if the bricks around them instantly turned into mahjong tiles.

It suddenly occurred to me that playing mahjong is also called "building bricks" or "building walls"? Haha, the couple returned to their hometown to continue "building walls" and becoming "mahjong players", and they are still "handy". This life... is amazing.

Looking at this honest and honest couple who are over fifty years old and have worked hard to build the walls of my home, I can't ask any more questions or say any unnecessary words. Go back to the house, turn on the computer, and listen to the familiar classic Huangmei Opera "The Match of the Immortal" again:

The birds on the trees are in pairs, and the green water and mountains are smiling;

I picked a flower casually and put it in my hair with my wife.

From now on, they no longer suffer the pain of slavery, and both husband and wife return their home.

You plow the fields and I weave, I carry water and you water the gardens;

Even though the cold kiln is broken, it can withstand the wind and rain. The love between husband and wife is bitter but sweet.

You and I are like mandarin ducks, flying together in the world.

Somehow, as I listened, tears seemed to flow out.

On the morning of the fifth day, Master Du received a new work order from the company. He told me that there was a project manager in Fengcheng New Village, Yangpu District, who asked him to go to the rescue immediately. He said that a load-bearing wall was hit during the demolition and the wall must be built immediately. Make up for it at night, and then come back in the evening to clean up the house for me, especially asking my wife to sweep the floor and take away the garbage - in fact, their work at my place has been completed.

On the sixth day, I got up at around seven o'clock. I wanted to see them off. When I walked to the door, General Tie held the door. There was no one inside and the ground was clean...

I put my hands together and sincerely wish them success in their work and have golden memories in their villa by the beautiful Chao Lake in their later years.