She Became A Downfall Noble Lady
Chapter 585 - 583 Trial Run

Chapter 585: Chapter 583 Trial Run

Since the Peach Grove began construction last year, Wong Qiao, Qi Younian, Cheung Wusi, and others had been extremely busy. On a daily basis, he either went to work in the Peach Grove or inspected the progress of the construction. To save time, he always traveled on horseback. Therefore, although the Peach Grove was well-built, arrangements for the female relatives to visit had not yet been made. Even the wife of the Princely Heir had not visited the Peach Grove since its renovation.

With the introduction of the Railway Carriage, a round trip could now be made in under an hour. Ye Zi, aiming to make recruiting workers more convenient, had already planned for interested villagers to take a tour. This would inform people that commuting to work in the Peach Grove using the carriage to transport workers was very convenient and did not waste time.

Since Mother had proposed a visit, it was of course no issue at all.

......

In the following period, in order to familiarize people with the Peach Grove for future industry expansion and to hire workers, as well as to test the operational parameters and conditions of the wooden tracks, Fan Zhengyuan arranged two to three trips per day for the Railway Carriage to and from the Peach Grove, depending on the situation, over the course of a month.

These included trips specifically for sightseeing as well as for transporting materials and settling the families of craftspeople and workers.

Even though the sightseeing trips had not ensured that all the residents of Clear Water Village had visited, at the very least, the head of each household had checked on it. The children, mixed with Sanshun and Jiajia, led by the guards, had gone to play more than once.

The first ones arranged to visit the Peach Grove were Madam Yin and Lady Zhao, along with a group including Jiajia and Xiuqin, and about a dozen children from the village, inaugurating the visits to the Peach Grove.

Fan Zhengyuan brought all the spare Railway Carriages into use, two with passenger compartments, and the rest, four larger flatbed carts. Because the flatbed carts were carrying children, and the carriages were fast-moving, Fan Zhengyuan specially had the craftsmen build railings on the left, right, and rear sides of the carts. Although it didn’t look very elegant, it was much safer.

It was now the end of summer, and the weather was still quite hot. Lady Zhao, looking from the open carriage window at the vast fields and small hills flying by, felt a smooth and rapid speed, truly feeling as if about to take flight.

She once again felt grateful she hadn’t acted on impulse and hadn’t agreed to her son’s request to leave the Qi family and return to Hezhou. Sitting in this almost flying carriage, she personally experienced that following Miss Ye, the future of the Qi family would certainly be immeasurable.

In less than an hour, the carriage stopped smoothly at the station in the Peach Grove.

Madam Yin and the others had been to the Peach Grove before; at that time, it was mostly just an unending bloom of peach blossoms as far as the eye could see. But the view was much changed from a little over a year ago.

Needless to say, the grove’s workshop and cattle farm were constructed following the standards of Clear Water Village.

What was novel were the craftsmen’s dwellings, a row of houses built with great precision. Each row was divided into seven or five courtyards; depending on the number of craftsmen staying, each courtyard had either three or two main rooms, two side rooms to the east and west, along with a storage room and a kitchen.

When Ye Xinyan was building the houses, she based them on the staff dormitories from the planned economy era of her previous life. The entire residential area was planned to have more than ninety courtyards built in two rows.

Additionally, there were two rows of dormitories for the singles. Each room housed four people and was provided for craftsmen and workers who were unmarried or did not bring their families.

The surrounding high walls were constructed to prevent opportunistic thieves and wild animals from entering this deserted area that was neither near a village in front nor a shop in the back.

When Madam Yin’s party arrived, more than fifty courtyards had just been built in the lodging area, and less than half were occupied, but there was already a thriving vitality.

In Madam Yin’s view, the dormitory area seemed somewhat cramped, yet it was sufficiently novel to her.

The dwellings of the overseers, house servants, and tenant farmers she had seen on her own estate were each built according to their own affairs; those who had better incomes or came from decent families had better homes. Even those farmers who lived from meal to meal, their adobe houses and straw huts remained firmly present in the farmstead and village as well. She had never seen such uniformly organized farm dwelling places anywhere.

Lady Zhao, in her curiosity, even had the steward of the Peach Grove lead her through the unoccupied courtyards to look at the differently sized housings, leaving her utterly astonished.

For the average household, these houses were already excellent. Moreover, these were assets of the landlord, and those who worked at the Qi family and the cattle farm could stay here for free. Such a good deal, if not witnessed with her own eyes, she would not have believed it had anyone else told her.

At this moment, Lady Zhao faintly felt, if such ordinary craftsmen could lead a calm and stable life, perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do the same.

As Lady Zhao thought this, she turned her head and saw Xiuqin dressed in a pale blue light silk dress, modestly wearing two silver hairpins in her hair, and the openwork silver bracelet on her wrist glimmering in the sunlight. She couldn’t help but laugh at herself, thinking that tranquil and stable life was the hope of the common people struggling to make ends meet. If one could have a better life, who would choose to live a life where one must agonize over every single large coin, wishing to split it in half to spend?

At this time, the Peach Grove, though devoid of the sight of blossoming peach flowers, was a lush green shade. The mottled trunks, covered in purple glossy bark, grew naturally, whether twisted and knotted or sprawling widely, lively and thriving. Although not perfectly orderly, there was a unique and natural charm.

The wild peach stones wrapped in their bright green shells hung from the branches, evoking the sight of a fruitful harvest.

With children like Sanshun and Qi Jiaer mixing in, and the season being quite pleasant, Madam Yin, Lady Zhao and the others, together with the children from the village, had a rustic cookout on a clear patch of the Peach Grove.

Most of the workers from the cattle farm were from Clear Water Village or nearby villages. There were those who had brought their families to settle here, and these children were familiar with the children brought by Madam Yin. When Sanshun saw them, he called them over with a shout, coming together to gather firewood, start fires, and prepare for a barbecue. While they were at it, they snacked on the pastries and small eats brought by Sanshun, Qi Jiajia, and others.

The family members of the artisans from the Mechanical Workshop, mostly from outside, had been directly transferred from Clear Water Village to live in the Peach Grove. These children were somewhat unfamiliar with Sanshun and the others.

They watched from a distance as this group of people, led attentively by the steward, along with a lavishly dressed lady and a wealthy little gentleman, enjoyed their noisy feast of eating, drinking, joking, and frolicking, yet they did not dare to approach closely.

Sanshun, as the children’s king of the village, naturally had the generous character that came with his role. When he spotted a group of children of varying sizes in the distance, he called out to Xiao Si, "Go call them over. It’s just some food, which we have often. It’s rare for them. Let’s share some. We won’t run out; we can just top it up back at our homes if we need to."

Upon hearing Sanshun’s words, Xiao Si looked at the children and was reminded of the life they used to live. He agreed readily, "Alright, Sanshun, why explain all this to me? Our past years were even tougher than theirs. Now that things are better, how could we forget our past? We aren’t those kinds of people."