Breaking the Situation at the Grassroots Level

Some walls are made of bricks, and some walls are built of hearts. In the spring of 2015, when Qin Dong walked into the demolition headquarters again, the smell in the air was still the same as three years ago—the earthy smell mixed with the musty smell of the old house. 1,200 Homes, 1,200 locks. Someone waited for more than thirty years and finally someone recognized her house. Some people have been pushing bricks for eight years, and their nails are still deformed. Someone dug out a sixty-year-old real estate certificate from the bottom of the box. The paper was brittle and there was a crack in the crease. Someone was holding a roll of hemp rope on the ruins, and someone was tying rope all over his body under the county government flagpole, waiting for an explanation. This is not a novel about demolition. This is a novel about "settlement of accounts" - accounts of policies, accounts of favors, accounts of history, and accounts of people's hearts. There is someone squatting behind the door to guard every account, and there is someone going over and over again in the middle of the night to calculate every account. What's considered fair is called an agreement, and what's considered unfair is called a knot. Some knots were untied, some were tied into knots, and some had been tied for so long that they had grown into the flesh. From the contract signing rate to 99%, from the buzzing air-conditioned office in the headquarters to the bright lights in the resettlement housing complex. Some people signed and moved into their new homes, while others continued to wait inside the fence. Some accepted it, some stood up, some left, and some are still there.