This was his own home, unlike the Big Courtyard in the County Seat, where the buildings had already been old when he bought it. That was why Li Long had not put much effort into fixing up the Big Courtyard.
But this courtyard was different. From laying the foundations to putting up the buildings, Li Long had taken part in every step of its construction. Watching what had once been a patch of level ground become his own courtyard, soon to be his first truly independent home since his rebirth, filled him with excitement. He had poured a great deal of time and effort into it.
Like the other houses of the time, the exterior walls had been plastered with mud, smoothed very evenly. Li Long had not tried to stand out by building something from twenty or thirty years in the future, or simply putting up a two-story house. His funds would more or less have allowed it, but there was no need.
Even thirty or forty years later, no one in the village built two-story houses. Before restrictions on cotton cultivation came in, the richest family had contracted over ten thousand mu of land in nearby villages and regimental farms, earning over ten million yuan in net income a year. Yet their home in the countryside was still a single-story house, and they drove an ordinary pickup.
Then, because of grain policies, groundwater issues, and other problems, half the land was barred from cultivation. Everyone in the township had to leave half their land unplanted, eventually alternating between the plots.
The days of getting rich from cotton ended there.
Naturally, Li Long could not go against those policies either. After all, the village had a fair amount of land. Even under the cultivation restrictions, joining the Cooperative could