It meant that back then, he had signed and stamped an agreement with the village. Anyone who wanted to demolish the building later would have to honor it, and couldn’t just brush it aside.
I locked the paper in a tin box and hung it from the handlebars of my tricycle. It rattled away every day.
One early morning, the province sent over a demolition compensation assessment. It stated that the compensation under policy would be 12 million yuan.
The developer privately offered another 80 million yuan, citing “historical complications.”
The news spread through the alley. My ex-wife, who had vanished five years earlier, came back. My gambling-addict father, who had abandoned me more than twenty years ago, also appeared at my gate, leaning on a cane.
I knew they hadn’t come to see me. They’d come for the 80 million.
As soon as I’d signed the papers and the money hit my account, I had a water heater installed in my daughter’s room. For the first time, she could take a bath without heating the water herself.
I also bought a two-bedroom, 80-square-meter apartment next to the urban village for 1.2 million yuan, paid in full. It was all the space we needed.
Finally, I donated a reading room to the village and named it “Fangjia Village Reading Room.”
But every morning at five, I still rode that electric tricycle out to collect scrap.
Someone stopped me. “You’re worth tens of millions, and you’re still collecting junk?”
I looked back at him. “Money is money, and I’m me. They’re two different things.”
