A day later, Xu Yue was discharged from the hospital, Zhang Tianyuan picked her up in the hospital, and drove Nie Zhen's car, Nie Zhen said, he can use this car casually, and he doesn't have to return it until he buys a suitable car, anyway, Nie Zhen's car has seven or eight cars.

Of course, there was also Snake Lin who went together, but Xu Gang didn't go, but went to the Imperial Capital University to report, Zhang Tianyuan didn't bring him to the Imperial Capital to play, but to recharge, and he was reluctant to spend so much money in vain, so he went hard.

In the car, Zhang Tianyuan asked Xu Yue: "I heard that the courtyard house is very popular in the imperial capital, why do you want to sell it?"

Xu Yue shook his head and said: "You don't understand, now it is difficult to find a set of small and medium-sized courtyard houses in the emperor's capital, and the courtyard houses where ordinary people live have long been rebuilt in a mess." Some of the better ones are the former or current residences of high-ranking celebrities, but there are also many renovations. There are still a few large courtyard houses, like the palace mansions in the past, among which the best preservation is for museums and parks. Others occupied by government agencies are inevitably renovated with sewers, heaters, and toilets with flush toilets. If you want to renovate it, you will simply tear down the Chinese-style house to build a small Western-style building, and our courtyard house has actually undergone some renovations, such as sewers and toilets, which are necessary for modern life, but there is no heating, and there is air conditioning. ”

"This is also true, although the courtyard is beautiful, but it is inconvenient to live in. Zhang Tianyuan only understood a little, he only thought about beauty, but he didn't think about convenience, modern commercial housing, although it is the same, but after all, everything is complete, network, heating, water and electricity are very convenient.

"The fate of the courtyard shows that it is out of place. Press 'Original Design'. There is only one family living in a courtyard house. The head of the household, the old man and his wife, lived in the north room, and the eldest son and daughter-in-law lived in the west wing. The daughter lives in the ear room on the west side of the north room, and the east wing room serves as a kitchen and dining room. The south room is used as a living room or study or servant's room or other children's residence. The yard is planted with cloves and pomegranates, as well as vegetables and flowers. There are jujube trees in the courtyard, and locust trees outside the courtyard. Of course, this kind of courtyard house is delicious. Xu Yue said again.

"Yes, yes, this is the life I want. Zhang Tianyuan is very envious of this kind of life, in today's high-rise buildings, you just plant some flowers on the balcony, it's so boring.

Xu Yue shook his head and said, "If the population of the imperial capital is always kept at hundreds of thousands to one million, the courtyard is still 'suitable'. But since 1949, the population of the imperial capital has continued to skyrocket, and now it has exceeded 15 million. From 1949 onwards, except for high-ranking officials and celebrities, there were fewer and fewer ordinary people living in their own courtyards, and four houses in a courtyard usually had to live in four households. The courtyard door is wide open all day long, and it is shared. As for the old houses that were rebuilt with broken temples or vacant land or houses that were too dilapidated and demolished, it is rare to build the traditional old-fashioned houses with gray brick walls, high ridges, large eaves, and small tiles, but simple bungalows with red brick walls, almost no eaves, and large cement tiles. Why? Save labor and materials. If the vacant land is larger, it can simply build a building and live in more people. In a metropolis like the imperial capital. Living in a bungalow is too wasteful of land.

A small courtyard house is too crowded for four families, so each family ponders that courtyard. Especially after the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, the yard was first crowded with earthquake sheds, and then the sheds became more and more shapely. It became a kitchenette and even a house for people to live in. Most of the current courtyard houses have no courtyards, and the narrow aisles turn left and right, and the small houses built by themselves dominate the streets. Any open space inside and outside the courtyard was occupied. Starting from the entrance hole, there are piles of old furniture, honeycomb coal, bicycles, and broken cardboard boxes. If you don't pay attention, you stumble for a moment. Where is the original smell of the courtyard?" Xu Yue sighed.

"What about your yard?" this is what Zhang Tianyuan is most concerned about.

"Our yard is better, the street office said. It is not allowed to be built indiscriminately, saying that it has cultural value and must be preserved, so in this way, we can't even rent a house, so my parents used to provide for me to go to college, and there was no income from rent, which was a headache, and they also loved and hated this big courtyard. Xu Yue smiled bitterly.

"So now that you have money, you want them to go out and live?"

"Well, the street office comes almost every day to ask my parents to donate the house to the government, but why, the government said that only 20,000 yuan will be given for one square meter, isn't this a robbery?" Xu Yue said unconvinced.

"I see, then I bought it, wouldn't I have to suffer from these too?"

"That's not it, they can't afford the price you offer, they can't afford the price, and they don't dare to come hard, it's not demolition, it's not that it's just sneaky pushing, they want to buy it as a tourist resource, and they don't dare to touch it." Xu Yue explained.

"What's the most interesting thing about the courtyard culture?" hasn't arrived yet, anyway, so Zhang Tianyuan just knows a little more, otherwise it will be bad if he moves in in the future and doesn't understand anything.

Xu Yue thought for a while and said: "Speaking of courtyards, what is inseparable is the Hutong culture. Although the courtyard has become a miscellaneous courtyard, the so-called 'hutong customs' will continue as long as the hutongs are still there. This does not include those high-ranking celebrities who live in the hutongs, who do not belong to the hutongs at all in terms of their living customs. The door of the detached courtyard where they live is closed from morning to night, and they do not match the neighbors of the common people at all. And those people who live in the compound have a very close relationship with their neighbors, and they can't be close if they don't want to, and they don't see each other many times a day when they come out and go in.

Even if you enter each house, the old-fashioned bungalow is not soundproof, good partition glass, the poor is only separated by a layer of window paper, which one is a little noisy, not to mention the quarrel between the two, it is difficult to hear even the hiccups and farts clearly. Whoever has a guest, what kind of food is eaten every day, and no one can hide anything from the neighbors. Let's put it even worse, everyone goes to the public toilets in the alleys. In the past, the toilet was not covered, the smaller toilet slipped into a squatting pit, the larger one, the two slips, people squatted face-to-face, and each other saw the 'most secret thing' in the crotch of each other.

Therefore, the first characteristic of Hutong customs is that they do not pay attention to personal privacy. Who's how old. What kind of fetish, how much money to make. How the life is going, it is not hidden from people at all. No one is taboo. Just ask, just talk. Whoever wants to hide something will be criticized: 'It's not good to carry people, but good things don't go back'. However, there are some things that really need to be carried by people, such as 'that thing' between two people. The conditions of the compound are too bad for doing 'that thing', and the psychological burden of being afraid of others hearing is too heavy, so they are as cautious as thieves, and they dare not speak out.

Nowadays, sexual knowledge is widespread. The common people only knew: men do that fast and climax in a while, while women need to relax, need a prelude, and take a long time to orgasm. Therefore, the characteristic sex life of Hutong leads most women to never know that there is such a thing as 'orgasm'. As a result, both men and women think that the man is 'taking advantage' of 'doing that thing', and the woman is suffering from sin. Someone said that there was such an old lady. As soon as she found out that her daughter and son-in-law had done that, she was worried, and if it was a few times a week or if it lasted a little longer, she would intervene: 'It's almost gone, and it's not worth eating.' You don't feel sorry for my daughter, I still feel sorry!' The old lady thought she was protecting her daughter.

The warm side of Hutong customs is that neighbors take care of each other. Lived in an old neighborhood for decades. Fa Xiao'er, who has been playing together since he was a child, has a friendship that is really more than ordinary relatives. During that period of material scarcity, I helped you buy two catties of tomatoes in the neighborhood. You bundle green onions for me, that's a normal thing every day. As soon as anyone hears that there are in-demand goods such as tofu and fish ribs in the store, they can't forget to quickly greet their neighbors. Whoever is in line will let the neighbors come and stuff it. The people in the back queue were not happy. And help each other to watch the door and receive a letter. Take care of your child. Every day, adults meet and chat, children play together, especially in summer, when the doors are open and ventilated, and children go to the east and west casually. Most of the family's dinners are also eaten in the courtyard, and the backbones of the eldest brother of the Zhang family and the elder brother of the Li family can almost be topped. While eating, he greeted: 'Uncle Zhang is fried noodles today?' 'I have fresh goods here, toon!

The customs in the alleys are particularly public morality, and anyone who wants to patronize himself and ignore others is not okay. For example, if there is only one faucet in a yard, someone else will have to wait if they want to wash it all the time, and whoever wants to pile broken furniture into the hole in the gate will not be able to push someone else's bicycle in. Therefore, when you encounter something unconscious, you need someone to come out and 'meddle in your business'. When you are not convinced by each other and quarrel, someone has to say 'fair words', usually uncles and aunts who are a little older. No matter how no, there are neighborhood committees in the alleys.

Later, there were people who called the neighborhood committee the 'Little Foot Detective Team', firstly because there were too many old ladies in the neighborhood committee, and secondly, their vigilance was particularly high, and they were all like policemen. In fact, they also do a lot of good things, taking turns on duty in the alleys all day long, walking around and seeing, there are only a few sliding doors and skids. In addition, if someone does not pay attention to public morality, can't sleep in the middle of the night, or harms public health or bullies neighbors, the neighborhood committee can come out and say a fair word and mediate. Xu Yue grew up in the hutongs, and although her family's courtyard house is not rented, the customs in the hutongs are very familiar.

Hearing this, Zhang Tianyuan said with a smile: "Listening to your words, it seems that this hutong culture is quite interesting." ”

"Alas, outsiders just want to be fresh. Nowadays, there are still many people who are obsessed with hutongs, including many foreigners, and big bosses like you. But if you ask the ordinary people living in the hutongs, most of them are looking forward to moving out as soon as possible.

"Why?" asked Zhang Tianyuan.

"Why do you ask this well, it's because the small bungalows in the compound are far inferior to the modern buildings. The first inconvenience is the toilet. In the early days, there were toilets in the courtyard, but there was no sewer, and it was necessary to dig out the dung regularly, otherwise it would be full. Later, the person who carried the dung bucket into the courtyard to dig up the dung was gone. A few of the toilets in the courtyard are connected to the sewer, but most of them are 'useless', and everyone can only go to the public toilets in the hutongs. What should I do at night? Every family has a urinal, and every morning I have to go to the 'night pot'. That's why Wang Xiaobo wrote about the common scene in winter in the hutongs: the iron grate of the sewer is frozen with half a piece of, which can be frozen until the beginning of spring. Xu Xu smiled bitterly and said: "I didn't feel anything when I was a child, but as I got older, I became very sensitive to many things, and I really wanted to move out of that place as soon as possible." (To be continued......)