Chapter 247: Construction Department

The person in charge of the Construction Department is called Yu Ge, who is someone that has followed Baifeng from the very beginning; he followed Baifeng to build houses back when they went to change to the New Camp, and later, because he just liked building houses and engaging in construction, and was also the person in the entire tribe who built the best houses, Baifeng let him be the person in charge of the Construction Department.

The scope of work for the Construction Department is not just as simple as building houses; it also includes the construction of city walls, ground hardening, drainage and water supply, road construction, and so on. The overall appearance of the Baifeng tribe today is already far different from before.

The houses are all orderly and tall, with bright walls and tiles, and the main thoroughfares are all hardened, or rather, paved with Brick; this way it looks good, and one does not have to fear mud on rainy days, and their various transport vehicles can also travel back and forth much more easily, with less bumping.

They built a very large deliberation square, used for all tribespeople to discuss important matters of the tribe, and it is also a place for sacrifices and celebrations; usually after dusk, everyone also comes here in groups of three or five to relax, for example, to play Tic-Tac-Toe or something.

Of course, because the tribe's productivity is constantly increasing and the tribe is becoming wealthier, very few people go to sleep as soon as it gets dark; before, it was because there were no entertainment activities, but now they have the energy and the mood, and everyone is willing to go out and walk around or play after dinner.

In order to enrich everyone's entertainment life, Baifeng taught the tribespeople relatively simple games, like Sandbag Throwing, Shuttlecock Kicking, and the like, which are all very popular games.

Sandbag Throwing and such can also exercise everyone's reaction ability, especially letting children play; one can see a child's physical condition, coordination, and such from the game, and adults play it too.

Those Soldiers—no one is willing to play with them; when they throw the sandbag, it is heavy and accurate, and an average person getting hit by one might have to leave the game immediately due to injury, especially if it hits the limbs, and they would likely have to ask for a day off to rest; in order to protect the safety of everyone's games, Baifeng stipulated that people of the same skill level can only play together, and cross-level grouping is not allowed.

Besides this square, they also have a more massive Threshing Ground, and more than one, because they are planting more and more grain; the small Threshing Ground from before could not handle the operation at all, especially if the temperature was high in summer, the straw piled together was also prone to catching fire, and if placed in the same place, once it caught fire, the whole tribe would have nothing left.

They have already experienced it once; in order to work through the night in summer, there were Torches everywhere in the Threshing Ground, and as a result, a gust of wind blew sparks onto the husks that had just been collected, and it immediately burst into flames; they could only watch, and could do nothing.

Fortunately, that time it was only a part, most of it had not been collected back from the fields, and the only things burned to the ground were those on the Threshing Ground.

Added to the fact that their houses were far apart and they lived scattered, that was why it did not cause a major disaster; otherwise, their tribe would probably have had to be rebuilt, and in the end, they watched helplessly as the big fire burned everything on the Threshing Ground, and apart from lying on the ground crying, they could do nothing.

When Baifeng was woken up from his sleep, the fire was already uncontrollable; later, Baifeng even gave a few talks on fire safety knowledge for this reason, though of course they had no fire-fighting equipment to use, and the places to pay attention to were only mountain fires and the fire when cooking.

Because the Threshing Ground was truly too large, they had no way to pipe water over; all they could do was build the Threshing Ground in an open area, and build a few more, with more distance between them, so that even if one caught fire, it would not affect the others.

The housing construction of the Baifeng tribe also ushered in a qualitative change, because the implementation of their family system was successful, and the living form of one family per household had been completely established; it was just that for various reasons, Baifeng had not yet distributed the land to the families, and still followed the form of the Production Team.

However, their housing changed from a whole family squeezed into one room to living in a courtyard house; the houses are more numerous, a family lives more spaciously, and they have their own privacy, and the safety has also gone up a level.

But because the construction progress is slow, and the residential area is already somewhat saturated, only a small number of wealthy tribespeople live in courtyard houses.

The source of houses in the Baifeng tribe: one type is uniformly arranged by the tribe, which is the most basic Brick room, and as for how many people can live in it, that depends on how you can squeeze; another type is, after Baifeng's approval, choosing a new homestead for oneself, handing over one's old house to the tribe, and then using one's private property to exchange with the tribe for materials and labor to build a house for oneself.

The supplies rewarded by the tribe must be able to flow back into the tribe in a reasonable way; otherwise, how much can one person eat, how much can they wear? The remaining supplies would all just sit in their houses molding and rotting.

Everything, except for the basic things uniformly distributed by the tribe, the rest can be exchanged by them using their own property; the tribe no longer provides them for free.

As long as you have enough grain, even if you want a Glass wall, the tribe can build it for you; however, the wealthy people in the tribe now are all sharp, and certainly would not take grain to do such meaningless things; they basically emptied their family savings to build a beautiful courtyard house.

The courtyard house thing was first created by Baifeng, because the number of people in his family went from three to five, and a small house was inconvenient for doing anything; plus, the tribe's construction level was already very high, so Baifeng directly designed a courtyard-style small villa, the kind with a two-story small building.

In one courtyard, the kitchen, bedroom, toilet, and bathroom are all there, and there is even Baifeng's own office; flowers and Grass are also planted in the courtyard, and blooming lotus flowers are planted in a large vat.

Other tribespeople followed suit and also built courtyard houses, but they were not qualified to build two stories, so they were all one-story houses, though the living comfort was much better than the previous houses.

The recovered old houses were given to other tribespeople to continue using, because those who changed to new houses were all high-level members, and the houses they lived in before were all particularly good, so they were swapped for by those tribespeople who had a little property, but only a little. And the old houses of these people were given to those who had newly become tribespeople to live in.

The shortage of tribal land forced Baifeng to find ways to expand; more than ten thousand people could not just be squeezed into one small place, but if he were to learn from Xuanyuan and build villages, it would make their strength too scattered.

So Baifeng had no choice but to re-plan the residential area; the place they live in now can only accommodate as many tribespeople as there are now, and other people, if they want to build houses in the future, can only build in the newly designated areas, close to the farmland, but far from the city center.