Siheyuan: Starting from 1958

The fried chicken shop is developing faster than Wang Dong imagined.

After a brief period of rapid expansion, the main store's daily consumption of white-feathered chickens has remained at around 120, while the consumption of chickens at the branch stores has remained at around 100.

This means that each fried chicken shop in Beijing can bring Wang Dong a profit of more than 100 yuan every day.

And this is just the profit of the fried chicken shop.

According to the latest calculations from the farm, although the price of broiler chickens is only two yuan, exactly half that of old hens, the farm still makes a net profit of one cent.

Once the feed mill officially starts production and begins supplying feed to the farms, there will be no middlemen taking a cut. Even if the price of broiler chickens drops to 1.5 yuan per chicken, the farms will still have a net profit of 0.1 yuan.

This means that the more fried chicken shops he opens in Beijing, the more white-feathered chickens his farm produces, and the more profit he earns.

With this in mind, Wang Dong went on a crazy expansion of fried chicken shops for the next two or three months.

In the vast city of Beijing, you can almost always find Dongjun Fried Chicken in any place with a large enough flow of people.

This expansion only slowed down when all fried chicken shops consumed more than 3,000 white-feathered chickens per day.

Before we knew it, the end of the year had arrived again.

Because this year has been particularly busy, and his parents-in-law were reluctant to leave the courtyard house, Wang Dong had to postpone his moving plans once again.

For Wang Dong now, whether or not to move is no longer important.

The biggest scourge in the yard, Sticky Bunny, is still in prison and won't be released for another two years.

His old rival, Yi Zhonghai, now works under him and even controls the house he lives in. Yi is too busy currying favor with him to dare to oppose him.

After being detained for three days, Qin Huairu completely lost her previous sharpness and edge. She became like a nobody all day long, going out to work early and returning late to serve Yi Zhonghai, fearing that the house the Jia family lived in would be taken away at the end of the year and that Bang Geng would have nowhere to live after getting married.

Jia Zhangshi was also frightened by Qin Huairu's detention and realized that his unreasonable arguments were of no use to the police.

For the past few months, I've been like a coward, hiding in my own home every day.

If he remembered correctly, Wang Dong hadn't seen Jia Zhangshi in the courtyard for several months.

If it weren't for the occasional mention of Jia Zhangshi and a few others in his father-in-law and mother-in-law's conversations, Wang Dong would have almost forgotten that such a person existed in the courtyard.

Yan Fugui, who lived in the front yard, was even more outrageous.

In order to raise enough money to keep the house he had lived in for most of his life.

To avoid embarrassment, Yan Fugui would leave the courtyard before dawn every day to collect recyclables and garbage in the nearby streets, and would quietly return to the courtyard after dark.

Many people in the courtyard knew that Yan Fugui collected garbage and recyclables outside. Because they knew that Yan Fugui was a very proud person, and because he left early and returned late every day, he was rarely seen, so no one said anything about it.

Liu Haizhong had completely lost interest in managing things in the backyard.

After losing several thousand yuan due to smuggling, he took a job as a consultant to avoid going hungry in his old age.

Although the salary wasn't high, Liu Haizhong's forging skills were excellent, and the work was easy. He could earn forty or fifty yuan a month, enough for the elderly couple to live a comfortable life in their yard.

Adding to the problem, his two sons were not very filial and often came back to the courtyard to scheme against the elderly couple, leaving Liu Haizhong exhausted and wanting to sleep as soon as he got home from get off work every day. Under these circumstances, the courtyard became unusually quiet.

But Wang Dong knew in his heart that this tranquility was only temporary.

With the return of the troublemaker Banggeng to the courtyard house after two years, the release of the Yan brothers from prison, and Xu Damao's release from jail, the quiet courtyard house will surely become lively again.

But these are all things for later.

At this very moment, a new storm is brewing in the middle and front yards.

The Jia family of Zhongyuan.

As the year draws to a close, neither Qin Huairu nor Jia Zhangshi show any joy at the impending arrival of the year.

As agreed, three days before the Lunar New Year, the Jia family had to repay the more than one thousand yuan that Bang Geng had borrowed, including interest, to the Wang family in the front yard. Otherwise, the neighborhood committee would transfer the Jia family's current house to the Wang family, and Jia Zhangshi would lose the only house in the courtyard.

"Huairu... do you think we could keep this house and not give it to Old Wang in the front yard..." Madam Jia Zhang was really going all out for the Jia family's house, and she frowned as she offered her idea.

“I’m a woman, and I’m over sixty years old. If I really hold onto this house and don’t give it to Old Wang, there’s nothing Old Wang and his family can do about it. They can’t just force me…”

A few months ago, Qin Huairu might have actually agreed with Jia Zhangshi's idea.

In her mind, her mother-in-law was notorious for being a rogue and a shrew. Every time she made a move, she could intimidate the other party. Perhaps she could even make the old Wang family in the front yard hesitate to act against Jia Zhangshi.

But after being arrested and detained by the police for three days, Qin Huairu had to admit that his previous rogue behavior was completely useless in front of the police.

If Old Wang from the front yard demands that they vacate the house immediately, or even calls the police to intervene, the mother-in-law's shameless behavior will not only fail to solve the problem, but will also bring a lot of trouble to the Jia family.

There's a real chance that Jia Zhangshi might be arrested by the police and detained for a few days as a warning to others.

Thinking of this, Qin Huairu felt a wave of fear wash over her and quickly refused, "Mom..."

"Playing the rogue won't solve the problem."

"Let's think about where you'll live after that old turtle's house in the front yard is taken away?"

“The partitioned room in Lao Yi’s house was originally for Bang Geng to live in. Now that Bang Geng is still in jail, it’s just sitting there empty. Why don’t you move in and live there for a couple of years?”

"I'm sure I'll be able to save up a hundred or two hundred yuan in two years. Even if I can't buy a house, I can rent a room."

"If all else fails, we can do some minor renovations to the west wing where Lao Yi is currently living..."

"Just like the main house in the middle courtyard, it will be divided into two floors, so we won't need to rent a house and we'll have a place to live."

"But this matter must be approved by Lao Yi, since the west wing is still in Lao Yi's hands."

“I’ve talked to Lao Yi many times during this period, asking him to transfer the house to me, or to transfer it directly to Bang Geng in two years. I promise to take care of him in his old age, but Lao Yi is too wary and has never agreed. He won’t even let me see the property certificate, for fear that I will steal the property certificate for the west wing…”

"Let's go see Lao Yi together later. I'll go first, and you can say a few nice words. Let's try to settle things tonight and start moving tomorrow."

"The east wing can be given to Old Wang as collateral, but everything inside was bought with our own money, and we can't leave anything to Old Wang." (End of Chapter)