Chapter 347: “Part of the reason for the road is to solicit the help of the Party Village Secretary; the other part is to have some good karma.” (1)
“I’ll give you a massage in a little while. That way you won’t be sore tomorrow.” Feng Zeyu worried that Shu Yan would feel comfortable when she woke up tomorrow.
“I should be fine. I have been practicing yoga lately.”
The club that was referred to her by Hu Ruixue has a yoga instructor. In addition to some body-molding exercises, Shu Yan would practice yoga as well. She planned to continue on with yoga after her body-molding regime was done.
She had seen others who practiced yoga. They had good temperaments and shapely bodies. She hoped that she could maintain in reasonable shape after 40 years old too.
Horse-back riding slowly, Shu Yan’s bangs were lifted up by the wind slightly and she laid comfortably in Feng Zeyu’s arms.
“It is so pretty here. I hope we can come again.”
“We can come anytime if you want.” Feng Zeyu, too, liked this place a lot.
Back then when he was no longer able to stick around his home town, his grandfather pulled strings to get him into the troop, which subsequently changed his life. He might otherwise really have turned to the streets and gone down the path of no return.
That afternoon, they put a blanket on the ground and laid down on it to watch the blue sky with white clouds. They could spend an entire day lying there like that.
“Look at my little horse, Mom.” Tianbao came by slowly riding on a small female horse.
“Where did the horse come from? Don’t hurt it.” The horse looked very small.
“Jinshan said it would be fine. He rides it all the time.” It was the first time Tianbao was riding on his own.
“Who’s Jinshan?” Shu Yan turned and asked Feng Zeyu.
“He’s the grandson of the old village head. This is probably his practice horse. If he says it’s fine, it must be fine.” Feng Zeyu helped Shu Yan off the horse and came over to stroke the horse that Tianbao was riding on. “You still need to be careful even though the horse is small. It is no joke to fall off of one.”
“I’m not afraid. Uncle Fang would protect me.” After being together for the last few days, Tianbao looked up to Feng Zeyu more and more.
Feng Zeyu knocked him gently on his head. “I only have two hands. What if I can’t make it on time?”
After a little while, JingJing, too, came over on a little horse. There was a boy around 8 years old walking next to her. He was very well built. Most likely he was Jinshan that Tianbao had mentioned.
“Mom, can I ride the horse over to that side?” Truth was, JingJing was a little bit scared of horseback riding before. But she was not afraid of the little horses. In fact, she found the little horse very cute.
Other than Jinshan, Jinshan’s father was there as well. Shu Yan was not worried about them wandering around. Besides, the point of coming here was to have fun. She didn’t see the need to be overcautious.
They went over to the village head’s place for dinner again and they cooked another lamb. Feng Zeyu and the village head talked a lot about the road over dinner. The village head’s idea was to fill up the potholes and put pebbles over it.
“Can we apply to have concrete road from the province?” Feng Zeyu did some math with Lin Dazhi the night before. The closest province city was 20 kilometers from here. The road was quite flat. The village can provide the labor and it would cost roughly a million yuan.
The old village head shook his head. “No, I have submitted our request many times in the past. They kept telling us that they didn’t have the budget for it.”
The grassland was too big and the villages too spread out. Take their village for example, the population was below 100. The province was poor to begin with. Of course they would not shell out 1 million yuan to pave the road for them. Besides, once they have paved their roads, all the other villages would want the same and all would be going to the province for that. They would never hear the end of it.
Shu Yan was surprised as she listened to them talk. She didn’t know that paving roads would cost so much. Per Feng Zeyu’s calculations, it would cost roughly 10,000 yuan per kilometer. And that was assuming the road was flat. If there were mountains or rivers, the cost would only go up from there.
If that was the case, the 50,000 yuan that she donated was not even close. She felt that it should be enough at the time and her third brother said he would top off the remainder. She thought they were talking about 10,000 ~ 20,000 tops. Now it looked like even 100,000 wouldn’t ben enough.
Their village was, after all, located in the ravine, some two mountains away from the next closest village. If they were to pave roads, they would need to first cordon off the fields with rocks and they would also need a bridge. It would entail much more than what they were talking about here at the grassland.