Chen Family Cove was built of rammed earth and stone, with three stories. The ground floor stood eighteen chi high, equivalent to roughly four meters in later times, and the second floor was twelve chi high, so the wooden stairs connecting the floors were rather steep, especially for a frail elderly woman like Chen Caozhi's mother, Mother Chen Lady Li, who found climbing up and down them exhausting.
With his mother's consent, Chen Caozhi cleared out two rooms on the second floor, where he lived next door to his mother and Yinggu. This meant she had one fewer flight of stairs to climb when she went downstairs for a walk. He had originally wanted to move to the ground floor with her, but, considering its dampness and limited sunlight, he settled on the second floor as a compromise.
Mother Chen Lady Li was delighted by her son's filial devotion. Every evening, accompanied by him and the elderly maid Yinggu, she walked beside the willow grove outside the Fortified Manor, talking about old times, her manner peaceful.
Late May and early June were the wheat-harvesting season, and all of Chen Family Cove grew busy. Lai Fu and his two sons, in particular, worked from dawn until dark; even while the tenant farmers reaped the wheat, they had no leisure.
The West Tower Chen Clan owned over two thousand mu of land, fifteen hundred of which were planted with wheat, and had twenty-three tenant households. Now they were all working at a feverish pitch. Women and children carried baskets of food and pitchers of drink to the fields for their husbands, fathers, uncles, and elder brothers. The blazing sun beat down, and sweat dripped onto the hot earth. The work was certainly hard, but their landlords were benevolent: the wheat rent per