“Then tell me, what kind of man would you like to find?”
In the kitchen, Mother Qiao grew interested as they discussed her daughter’s marriage. With the door shut, mother and daughter finally had a chance to share a few intimate confidences.
Qiao Yan thought for a moment. “Hmm, how about someone whose family has received compensation for having their home demolished?”
Mother Qiao’s eyes widened. “Honestly, how can you be so provincial!”
Qiao Yan felt wronged. “What’s provincial about that? What’s wrong with someone from a family like that?”
Shenzhen families who had received demolition compensation were famous throughout the country. Having reaped the benefits of the times, every household had a long string of property keys hanging from their belts.
Back when Qiao Yan was at university, anyone who found a partner from one of those Shenzhen families would have been the envy of the entire university town.
To put it bluntly, if gender weren’t a restriction, even the men would want to marry into those families!
But Mother Qiao had yet to realize how sought-after those Shenzhen families would become. All she could picture were the backward rural conditions she had seen before, and the memory still filled her with dread.
“No, absolutely not. Our family finally managed to move from the countryside back to the city. We can’t send you back to a village!”
Mother Qiao was adamant.
Qiao Yan couldn’t overcome her entrenched views just then. Although she wanted to argue that villages receiving demolition compensation were hardly ordinary villages, for now, she went along with her.
“All right, all right. I won’t marry someone from one of those families. Then tell me, Mom. Who do you think I should marry?”
Mother Qiao answered as though it were obvious. “Someone with an iron rice bowl, just like your father, of course.”
Qiao Yan: “…”
That was the older generation’s way of thinking, all right.
A secure government job mattered more than anything!
Still, when she thought about it, that view wasn’t actually wrong in the long run.
Once upon a time, working within the state system had been synonymous with a stable but modest income. By 2025, however, civil service exam fever had taken hold, and everyone was doing everything they could to squeeze into the system.
That included several of Qiao Yan’s roommates.
Wasn’t it frightening? There had been exactly six people in Qiao Yan’s dorm room. Apart from Qiao Yan herself, all five were preparing for the civil service exams. One was even preparing for postgraduate entrance exams at the same time!
Qiao Yan had been stunned when she found out.
Had the economy really gotten that bad?
Why did she remember everyone saying just a few years earlier that civil servants didn’t make much money?
Reality was harsh. When the broader economic climate was poor, people naturally wanted to shelter within the state system.
But that was 2025.
As for what life was like for a Shen City civil servant in 1995, one only had to look at Father Qiao.
Qiao Yan pursed her lips. “I suppose that’s fine.”
Mother Qiao pinched her cheek and said earnestly, “What do you mean, ‘I suppose that’s fine’? It has to be fine. I’m telling you, you must bring home someone with an iron rice bowl. I won’t accept anyone else.”
Qiao Yan squealed and yelped at the pinching, making a racket in the kitchen.
“Mom, your hands are dirty! Let go of me, let go! I’m going out. Do you still want me to go to the matchmaking agency to find a partner or not?!”
Seeing that her daughter was finally taking the matter seriously, Mother Qiao released her, satisfied, and wiped her hands on her apron.
“All right, off you go. Wash your face and comb your hair first, and put on that dress in my wardrobe.”
Qiao Yan recalled what the dress looked like. “…Absolutely not!”
She knew Mother Qiao meant well.
But the dress in that wardrobe was the one Mother Qiao had worn when she got married.
Bright red!
Given how old Qiao Yan was now, it wasn’t hard to imagine how outdated that red dress must be.
Qiao Yan would rather wear the synthetic-fiber dress printed with a bootleg Mickey Mouse from her own wardrobe than that bright red dress supposedly made of “good fabric.”
Washing her face and combing her hair, however, were necessary.
Since Mother Qiao had just pinched her cheeks with the hands she was using to wash dishes, Qiao Yan went to the bathroom to wash her face again and brush her teeth. Then she carefully examined her current face in the mirror.
Once she finished, she felt reassured.
The person in the mirror clearly had exactly the same face she’d had before.
Qiao Yan had worried that she wouldn’t be able to adjust, but the moment she saw that face, she was already more than halfway there.
Although the original owner’s recent frantic dieting had left the face in the mirror much thinner than Qiao Yan’s original face, even giving her a pointed chin, those large, bright eyes hadn’t changed.
In fact, because she was thinner, her eyes looked even bigger than before.
This delighted Qiao Yan to no end. After all, her eyes had always been her favorite feature.
People said the eyes were the windows to the soul.
Well, hers were certainly very large windows.
Someone with big eyes couldn’t be all that ugly. Add her fair skin, and while she might not be a great beauty capable of toppling cities and kingdoms, she was at least a little beauty capable of toppling districts and villages.
With looks like these, wouldn’t she have all those young men at the matchmaking agency utterly smitten?
Never mind Chen Guangzong. Finding someone a hundred times better than him wouldn’t be a problem.
After admiring herself for a while, Qiao Yan combed her long hair smooth in front of the mirror. Only then did she return to the bedroom, where she barely managed to find a dress in the wardrobe that wasn’t too outdated. She put it on, rummaged around the apartment until she found a pair of white shoes, and prepared to leave.
Before going out, Qiao Yan asked Mother Qiao for two hundred yuan.
Naturally, Mother Qiao was reluctant to give it to her at first.
“What do you need so much money for?”
But Qiao Yan had a perfectly sound reason. “I’m going on blind dates to meet people, aren’t I? Don’t I need to invest in myself by buying a few nice outfits?”
“You little brat, you’re so vain. Aren’t all those clothes in your wardrobe enough for you?”
“Have you even looked at those clothes? They’re either Sister Hui’s hand-me-downs or my younger aunt’s. Not a single piece is my own.”
“What’s wrong with hand-me-downs? Can’t you wear them? Those clothes still look perfectly good to me. They’re no worse than new ones.”
“If you think they’re so good, wear them yourself! I’m not wearing them.”
As she spoke, Qiao Yan held out her palm to her mother. Her meaning was perfectly clear:
Hand it over.
In the end, Mother Qiao compromised.
She also felt that her daughter was old enough now that, if she wanted to marry into a good family, she did need a few new outfits to dress herself up.
But Mother Qiao only met her halfway.
Qiao Yan asked her for two hundred yuan, but she gave her only one hundred.
“Since when are clothes that expensive? Be smart when you shop and bargain harder. A hundred yuan is enough for three outfits!”
Qiao Yan was speechless.
Declining to comment on Mother Qiao’s belief that a hundred yuan could buy three new outfits, Qiao Yan happily left home with the hundred yuan she had just received tucked away.
It was a brilliantly sunny day.
The blazing sun scorched the ground.
There weren’t many pedestrians on the streets. After all, it was a weekday afternoon, and most people were still busy at work or school. “Idlers” like Qiao Yan were few and far between here.
Even so, once Qiao Yan stepped outside, the beginnings of what would one day become a leading first-tier city, currently a special economic zone, slowly unfolded before her eyes.
Qiao Yan’s first reaction was: Good grief, Shenzhen already had this many high-rises back then!
When she had read the novel, the mention of 1995 had made her instinctively picture a very backward era. After all, it was thirty years before 2025.
The image of 1995 in her mind had been something like the small county town back home.
Low-rise, self-built houses and chaotic roads. It wasn’t that there were no high-rises, but they would have been very, very rare.
Only now did Qiao Yan realize how completely wrong she had been.
What small county town?
Shen City was already a big CITY!
Just look at the surrounding high-rises. Even if they weren’t packed tightly together, they were still everywhere.
And look at the cars on the roads.
Traffic streamed past in a continuous flow.
Even more numerous than the high-rises were the scaffolding and construction sites.
It wasn’t hard to imagine how bustling and prosperous this place would become before long…
Seeing that yet more high-rises were about to spring up, Qiao Yan marveled inwardly. She really had transmigrated into a wonderful era of vigorous development.
Of course, what delighted Qiao Yan even more than those high-rises were the unassuming little shops lining the streets.
Stalls selling liangfen jelly, pork trotter rice shops, karaoke lounges, dance halls…
Qiao Yan gazed at them one after another as though entranced. Then her eyes landed on the entrance to a little restaurant selling Chongqing noodles, and she simply couldn’t look away.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t eaten enough at home.
All right, she had indeed eaten her fill.
But that meal had been utterly bland.
The Qiao family had originally moved here from Sichuan Province. In theory, their food should have suited Qiao Yan’s tastes, with a preference for stronger, saltier, spicier flavors.
Unfortunately, her sister-in-law Song Zhenzhen had thoroughly Cantonese tastes and couldn’t tolerate even a little chili.
Because of that, chili peppers had bid a permanent farewell to the Qiao family’s dinner table.
Once Song Zhenzhen’s pregnancy was confirmed, things had become even worse.
Never mind chili peppers. Even salt and vinegar were used sparingly.
Although Qiao Yan seemed to have eaten quite a lot at lunch today, that was only because she had been hungry.
When someone was starving, how could they afford to be picky about flavor?
Only now, with her hunger gone, did Qiao Yan belatedly realize that she wanted something with flavor. Chongqing noodles, for instance.
Qiao Yan was the sort of person who acted on whatever came to mind.
Since she wanted Chongqing noodles, she walked straight into the Chongqing noodle shop.
The lunch rush was already over, and the noodle shop was practically deserted. The proprietress was listlessly swatting flies.
Seeing Qiao Yan come in, she asked warmly, “What would you like, pretty girl?”
Qiao Yan looked at the menu on the wall, inwardly marveling at how cheap everything was. She suddenly understood why her mother had only been willing to give her a hundred yuan.
A hundred yuan would buy fifty bowls of noodles here.
No wonder her mother had told her to buy three outfits with it.
Although Qiao Yan still thought that was unlikely, her money should stretch a little further than she had imagined.
Having made up her mind, Qiao Yan pointed at the menu and prices on the wall. “I’ll have a two-liang serving of Chongqing noodles, with a braised egg, and a bottle of soda.”
“Coming right up! Room-temperature soda or chilled?”
“Chilled.”
Qiao Yan found a clean spot in the shop and sat down, then reminded the proprietress, “I can handle spicy food. Don’t tone down the heat for me.”
The proprietress, who was getting up to head into the kitchen, laughed.
“Got it, pretty girl. You don’t look local anyway.”
That left Qiao Yan feeling a little put out. She touched her face. Did she really look that unlike a local?
Fortunately, she didn’t dwell on it for long.
The proprietress soon brought out her Chongqing noodles.
The large bowl was filled to the brim, with red chili oil floating on the surface. Fried peas, chopped cilantro, pickled mustard stems, and other garnishes dotted the top, and its rich, spicy aroma could be smelled from far away.
One whiff told Qiao Yan that the flavor was right.
Now this was delicious food. What was so good about cabbage boiled in plain water?
Delighted, Qiao Yan picked up her chopsticks and began enjoying her bowl of Chongqing noodles.
After finishing the noodles and a bottle of ice-cold soda, Qiao Yan was finally satisfied. She paid the bill. The entire satisfying meal had cost only 3.5 yuan.
Qiao Yan had never eaten Chongqing noodles this cheaply before, which made her feel she had gotten an even better bargain.
So, after stepping outside with the 96.5 yuan the proprietress had given her in change, she turned toward a little shop and bought a milk ice cream bar for fifty fen.
Sunny days and ice cream were a perfect match.
Having just finished her noodles, Qiao Yan now held her milk ice cream bar, eating it as she wandered around. She couldn’t have felt more carefree.
Only when her feet began to ache did Qiao Yan reluctantly head home, carrying a newly purchased dress.
As she walked, she felt as though she had forgotten something.
But she was in such a good mood that she didn’t bother dwelling on it. Whatever it was, she had enjoyed herself today.
It wasn’t until she happily unlocked the front door and saw Mother Qiao’s surprised face inside that she suddenly remembered.
Oh no…
She seemed to have forgotten all about going to the matchmaking agency!
Author’s Note:
Oh no, oh no!