“Beautiful! Peng Weiguo takes possession in midfield and passes to Shen Rong!”
“Cross it, cross it, cross it… Yes! It’s in! I knew it!”
June 1995.
Shen City.
At noon, Qiao Xiaolong was eagerly watching Shen City Television’s rebroadcast of the previous night’s Jia-A League football match. He was just getting to the exciting part.
Suddenly, there was a click!
The instant Hu Zhijun of Guangzhou Apollo scored, their battered secondhand Changhong television abruptly went black.
Qiao Xiaolong’s expression instantly darkened, too.
He turned his head and, sure enough, saw his father looking grim, a black television remote still in his hand.
“What are you doing, Dad? It was just getting good,” he complained.
Qiao Jianguo slammed the remote down on the dining table, his expression stern. “No watching television during meals. What have I taught you?”
At the sight of his father’s stern face, Qiao Xiaolong’s back stiffened. Clearly, certain unpleasant scenes had come to mind.
He didn’t dare argue any further and hurriedly picked up his rice bowl and shoveled a mouthful into his mouth. Still, he muttered, “What’s wrong with watching television while we eat? Day in, day out, all you care about is saving that little bit on the electricity bill.”
With the remote set down, Qiao Jianguo maintained a serious expression and pretended he hadn’t heard his son’s complaint.
Just then, a chicken drumstick appeared in front of Qiao Xiaolong. It had been stewed until it glistened with fat, its meat so tender that it looked ready to fall off the bone at any moment.
Unfortunately, its appearance left something to be desired.
It had been stewed in clear broth, with nothing added to give it color.
Qiao Xiaolong was just about to accept the drumstick as a matter of course when something occurred to him. He looked up at the person beside him with an ingratiating expression.
“I won’t have the drumstick, Mom. Give it to my wife. She’s just gotten pregnant and needs more nourishment.”
As soon as he finished speaking, his wife, Song Zhenzhen, gave a little snort, as though expressing her disdain.
Still, she didn’t refuse the drumstick Mother Qiao offered her.
“Yes, yes. You do need more nourishment,” Mother Qiao said with a cheerful smile when her daughter-in-law accepted it.
Mother Qiao was forty-six that year, but time had left its marks on her face early. Her frugal, plain ways meant she wore a worn-out apron even when she sat down to eat.
After she had given one drumstick to her daughter-in-law, there was still another on the table.
She wouldn’t eat it herself, and Father Qiao wouldn’t have it either, so Mother Qiao formed a plan for who would get it.
First, she picked up the plump drumstick and offered it to her husband as a courtesy. After he firmly declined, she turned toward another person at the table.
This person hadn’t said a word the whole time and had simply been staring quietly at the bowl of rice in front of her.
Mother Qiao tapped the table to snap her daughter out of her daze. “What are you daydreaming about?”
Qiao Yan came back to her senses. At the sight of the large drumstick dangling in front of her, she immediately swallowed.
Mother Qiao didn’t notice anything unusual about her daughter. She intended to follow her usual plan: make a show of offering the drumstick to her daughter, then give it to her son as a matter of course once her daughter refused.
Who would have thought things would turn out differently this time?
She had only just made the pretense of offering it when her daughter gleefully accepted the large drumstick, even giving her a sweet smile.
“Thank you, Mom! I knew you loved me most!” Qiao Yan said.
“…” Mother Qiao stared dumbfounded at her empty chopsticks, unable to react at first.
It took her quite a while to recover. By then, Qiao Yan had almost finished the large drumstick.
“Why aren’t you trying to lose weight anymore?”
Wasn’t she always going on about wanting to lose weight and refusing to eat meat?
Qiao Yan’s mouth was stuffed with chicken. Only after she wolfed it down in a few bites did she answer, “I am. Of course I am. Eating meat is how you lose weight.”
“What nonsense.”
Amused by his younger sister’s twisted reasoning, Qiao Xiaolong shot her a sideways glance and mocked her. “You just got a craving for meat.”
Song Zhenzhen had also finished leisurely eating her drumstick by then and chimed in at just the right moment. “Exactly. When the women at our factory try to lose weight, they won’t touch even a scrap of meat.”
Qiao Jianguo frowned. “You’re a young girl. What do you need to lose weight for?”
As the head of the household, Qiao Jianguo naturally spoke with authority. Once he said that, everyone else fell silent.
This suited Qiao Yan perfectly, and she hurriedly agreed with her father. “Yes, yes, yes! Dad’s absolutely right.”
Then she reached into the plate of chicken stewed in clear broth with her chopsticks again and pulled off a plump wing.
Mother Qiao and Song Zhenzhen: “…”
Of course Qiao Yan could feel her mother’s and sister-in-law’s gazes scraping over her like knives.
In fact, she was all too aware of them!
While eating the drumstick earlier, she had noticed that her sister-in-law’s attention had been fixed on the two drumsticks the whole time. When her mother offered the first one to her older brother, her sister-in-law had looked so aggrieved that the feeling was practically spilling out of her.
Then her older brother had given the drumstick to her sister-in-law.
Only then had her sister-in-law’s expression improved a little, but only a little.
That was because she still had her eye on the other drumstick.
Qiao Yan guessed that her sister-in-law thought that drumstick should be hers, too. After all, the family didn’t cook meat often, and now that she was pregnant, she needed the nourishment.
Or, if it didn’t go to her, giving it to her husband would do as well.
Either way, they were family.
Giving it to her husband was better than giving it to her sister-in-law or father-in-law.
Who would have thought that Mother Qiao would offer the drumstick to her father-in-law next, then to her sister-in-law after he refused?
Naturally, Song Zhenzhen wasn’t happy.
Even though the drumstick would most likely end up going to her husband anyway, Mother Qiao’s order of distributing the meat, which showed whom she considered closer to her, really annoyed her.
What displeased her even more was that her sister-in-law, who normally didn’t eat meat, had actually accepted it today. The sun must have risen in the west!
How could that be allowed?!
There were only two drumsticks!
Of course Song Zhenzhen wasn’t happy.
And Song Zhenzhen wasn’t the only one. Mother Qiao wasn’t happy either.
Mother Qiao had intended that drumstick for her son. Offering it to her daughter was just for show, to make it look as though she “treated everyone equally.”
She had only offered it because she knew her daughter normally didn’t eat meat.
If she’d known the girl would be craving meat today, she certainly wouldn’t have bothered putting on that act.
Both women had their own calculations and their own grievances.
Yet even though Qiao Yan saw all of this, she still accepted the drumstick before anyone could react.
The reason was simple.
She was hungry!
After transmigrating, Qiao Yan’s first reaction hadn’t been, Huh? I actually transmigrated?
Even an insignificant background NPC like me gets a chance to transmigrate?
Instead, it had been: Damn it, why am I about to faint right after transmigrating?
Why was she so unfortunate?
Sitting at the black-and-red square dining table with its peeling finish, Qiao Yan stared at the bland, watery dishes spread before her, feeling dizzy and lightheaded. She almost thought the Pinhaofan meals she’d eaten had made her hallucinate, until she heard familiar names.
Qiao Xiaolong. Song Zhenzhen.
She slowly came to her senses. Weren’t those the names of the supporting female character’s older brother and sister-in-law in the novel she’d just read last night?
In this novel, titled Rebirth and Striving in the ’90s, there was a supporting female character who shared her full name, Qiao Yan.
Among supporting female characters, Comrade Qiao Yan belonged to a thoroughly stereotypical category.
Why put it that way?
Because in the story, Qiao Yan had fallen for the male lead at first sight and harbored a secret crush on him. Disregarding the fact that he was already married and had a family, she had become practically obsessed with marrying him.
At first, she had cast flirtatious glances at him.
When the male lead ignored her, she became even bolder and openly declared her love.
Even after the male lead explicitly rejected Qiao Yan on the grounds that he was already married, she still refused to give up after crying her heart out for a while.
By this point in the plot, Qiao Yan already felt rather sorry for the original owner of her body.
Perhaps because they shared the same full name, Qiao Yan felt a little extra sympathy for her.
How she wished this young woman would face reality and stop chasing after the male lead.
However, the author seemed to have defined the original Qiao Yan as a “love-obsessed supporting female character.” Later on, she was even given the label of “villainous supporting female character.”
In the novel, Qiao Yan actually targeted the female lead out of jealousy!
First, she kept making a nuisance of herself in front of the female lead. When the female lead refused to take the bait, she repeatedly went to the female lead’s little shop to find fault, only to be put in her place every time.
In the very end, she actually lost her head and came up with a plan to get the male lead drunk and sleep with him, making their relationship a fait accompli.
Naturally, the outcome was miserable.
When the male lead discovered her scheme, he finally reached the end of his patience and took action against her.
The original Qiao Yan was taken to the police station. When she heard that she might have committed the “offense of disturbing public order,” she was nearly scared out of her wits.
She tearfully begged the male lead to let her off.
But by then, the male lead was so thoroughly sick of her that he refused to withdraw his complaint, no matter what she said.
Utterly despondent, the original Qiao Yan had no choice but to call her father for help.
Her father, a civil servant, rushed to the police station to get her as soon as he heard. However, Shen City’s new mayor had just taken office and was cracking down hard on public disorder. With no other option, her father, who had always been honest and frugal, could only empty his savings to “pull strings” for his daughter. Only then did he manage to get her out.
But the matter didn’t end there.
At the time, Shen City, which was modeled on Shenzhen, was not only tackling public order problems but also beginning a sweeping campaign to rectify conduct in government offices from the top down.
In October 1995, the Shen City People’s Government issued its “Twenty-Two Provisions” on rectifying conduct in government offices, breaking the unprecedentedly secure tradition of the civil service “iron rice bowl.”
In early 1996, Shen City dismissed a batch of thirty-four civil servants. Among them was the original Qiao Yan’s father, who had used money to “grease the wheels.”
His “iron rice bowl” was gone.
The Qiao family’s world had well and truly come crashing down.
The family of four had originally depended entirely on Father Qiao’s salary.
Mother Qiao hardly needed mentioning. She had been a homemaker her whole life.
Qiao Yan’s older brother, Qiao Xiaolong, was a hopeless good-for-nothing who could never stick to any job. His wife, Song Zhenzhen, had originally had a job, but unfortunately, she had quit after becoming pregnant.
As for Qiao Yan…
To devote herself to “pursuing” the man of her dreams, Qiao Yan had quit her job selling home appliances at a superstore more than six months earlier and focused all her attention on him.
Her pursuit of him was also the reason Qiao Yan had been dizzy with hunger after transmigrating.
After meeting the female lead, the original Qiao Yan had become convinced that the male lead preferred the female lead because she was slender and delicate, looking as fragile as a willow swaying in the breeze, whereas she herself had a healthy, full figure.
So, after returning from that encounter, the original Qiao Yan had started dieting.
At first, she had only skipped dinner. Later, she had started skipping breakfast too.
Eventually, she had even limited her lunch to one or two bites of rice…
No wonder Qiao Yan had nearly fainted from hunger after transmigrating!
Once she realized this, the large drumstick being offered to her took on an entirely different meaning.
A moment earlier, she had thought she’d gotten food poisoning from Pinhaofan.
That large drumstick was probably part of her hallucination. Who knew what it really was?
But now she understood. She hadn’t been poisoned. She had transmigrated.
She was dizzy and lightheaded because she was hungry.
So, even though she didn’t particularly like such lightly seasoned drumsticks, Qiao Yan still accepted it without hesitation and took large bites.
As it turned out, although the large drumstick stewed in clear broth had hardly any seasoning, the chicken from this era was worlds apart from the hormone-fed, fast-grown chicken of 2025.
Qiao Yan was won over the instant it entered her mouth.
The drumstick meat was so firm and flavorful. Even the skin tasted delicious, without the slightest unpleasant smell.
After finishing a large drumstick, Qiao Yan felt a little less dizzy. But it still wasn’t enough, and she set her sights on the chicken wing in the bowl.
Since no one else was taking it anyway, Qiao Yan simply reached over with her chopsticks.
This time, however, there was a smack! Mother Qiao swiftly struck the back of her hand with her chopsticks.
“Ow! That hurts!”
“Good. What kind of young woman is as greedy as you? You’re old enough to know better, yet you don’t know how to let anyone else have a turn.”
“Let who have a turn? None of you are eating it.”
Qiao Yan pouted.
Actually, she knew Mother Qiao felt sorry that her son wasn’t getting any meat. After all, their family of five depended on Father Qiao’s salary alone. Money was naturally tight, and they only stewed a chicken once every ten days or half a month.
But Qiao Yan thought, What did Qiao Xiaolong not getting any meat have to do with her?
Before her sister-in-law joined the family, when there was only one drumstick to go around, it had never had anything to do with the original Qiao Yan.