Xiao Hongyao had not been idle these past two days either.
She went to the library and borrowed A Brief History of the Development of Yangcheng Fireworks Factory. After reading it, she filled in much of the historical background that had not been explained in detail in the original novel.
The Yangcheng Fireworks Factory was originally founded in the late Qing Dynasty under the name “Nan Ji Fireworks Workshop.” Its founder, Song Dingnan, was Song Kuoyang’s great-great-grandfather.
After Liberation, Nan Ji Fireworks Workshop became a public-private joint enterprise. Later, the joint enterprise was converted into a state-owned factory, and the Song family was completely pushed out. In 1966, it was renamed Yangcheng Fireworks Factory.
In the original novel, the reason Song Kuoyang was able to make a huge success of his business after moving to Dongguan was because he possessed the exclusive fuse formula of the former Nan Ji Fireworks Workshop.
Because it was raining today, Xiao Hongyao spent the entire afternoon curled up in her room reading.
In the evening, she helped her eldest aunt prepare dinner. Tang Yueying was an excellent cook. Even without meat, she could make delicious dishes by adding a little lard and chili to the vegetables and stewing or stir-frying them.
The food was so fragrant that Xiao Hongyao could easily eat two bowls of rice every time.
Braised eggplant, a plate of stir-fried jicama, and some pickled Chinese chives prepared earlier—three simple dishes were quickly finished and brought to the table.
The Xiao family had just sat down to eat when Aunt Liu arrived with good news.
“I know something about Song Kuoyang’s situation, so I specifically emphasized Hongyao’s education. Our Hongyao graduated from high school, just like Song Kuoyang. Both of them are educated young people with some knowledge. Song Kuoyang also failed to attend university because something happened during his college entrance examination. When I mentioned that, hey, since their circumstances were similar, he became interested…”
Aunt Liu did not openly take credit for herself, but every word seemed to highlight how much she had contributed.
Xiao Ganju and Tang Yueying played along, praising her ability and thanking her for going to so much trouble to help.
Xiao Hongyao, on the other hand, remained calm.
She was going on a blind date with Song Kuoyang tomorrow, and there was a good chance he had only agreed because his aunt had pressured him.
In the original novel, after Song Kuoyang was rejected by the Xiao family, Song Yanzhen arranged blind dates for him with two different girls. Neither relationship worked out.
So if this really was a blind date, there was a good chance it would fail as well.
She planned to use this opportunity to clearly propose a partnership to Song Kuoyang.
They could have a fake marriage. She could help him qualify for a house, and afterward, they could work together to make serious money.
Song Kuoyang had the formula and technical knowledge. She needed to find a way to obtain startup capital and customers.
Otherwise, if she waited until Song Kuoyang went south, accumulated enough resources, and started his own business, her three-year deadline would already be over.
At present, Song Kuoyang was the best connection and resource she could possibly reach.
She had to find a way to convince him to cooperate with her.
After Aunt Liu left and they finished dinner, Xiao Hongmin noticed that her younger sister seemed preoccupied.
“Regretting it? You don’t want to go on the blind date?”
Xiao Hongyao was only thinking about how she could successfully persuade Song Kuoyang to cooperate with her.
“I don’t regret it. I’m just worried he won’t agree.”
Xiao Hongmin rolled her eyes.
“Have some dignity. How can a woman chase after a man like that?”
“…”
Xiao Hongyao could not explain herself, so she smiled and retorted, “You and Liang Tian are the ones who are really throwing yourselves at someone. If it were me, I wouldn’t go back to an old flame.”
Xiao Hongmin laughed and started tickling her.
“Are you making fun of me?”
The sisters rolled around on the bed, laughing.
“You really like Song Kuoyang?” Xiao Hongmin asked seriously.
“I don’t have to like him to marry him. We could just live together and make a life.”
Xiao Hongmin sighed wistfully.
“You don’t know how wonderful love is. You don’t understand it. What a pity.”
“I don’t think it’s a pity.”
All Xiao Hongyao could think about was how to make money.
The next morning, after breakfast, Grandma practically dragged her to a hair salon outside the factory to get her hair permed.
Big waves were not fashionable at the moment. The hairdresser’s specialty was tight curls.
When the perm was finished, Xiao Hongyao looked at herself in the mirror.
She had practically been given a tiny explosion on her head.
It even made her look older.
Yet Grandma and the hairdressers all stared at her with wide eyes and exaggeratedly praised her.
“Oh my, so pretty! Absolutely gorgeous!”
“So fashionable! You look so elegant!”
“What a lovely girl!”
Surrounded by all the praise, Xiao Hongyao began to lose confidence in her own judgment.
“Does it really look good?”
“It really does! You look like you’re from Shanghai. So fashionable!”
Being the trusting person she was, Xiao Hongyao believed them.
And so, with her fashionable and adorable fluffy curls, she stood outside the cinema, attracting plenty of glances.
It did not rain today. Song Kuoyang arrived at the workshop at 6:50 in the morning.
The loading workshop was located at the foot of the mountain. Twelve independent workshops stood in a row.
Because they handled gunpowder used for fireworks and firecrackers, the work was extremely dangerous. The workshops were at least thirty or forty meters apart, and each workshop had only one worker.
After locking away his belongings and changing into cotton work clothes, Song Kuoyang stepped into the wet sand pit at the entrance to discharge static electricity.
Then he carried two bamboo baskets of firecracker tubes with fuses already attached into the workshop.
Once the gunpowder was delivered, he began working.
Working alone meant he did not need to speak.
Quiet.
Focused.
Content.
He worked until eleven, when the factory broadcast announced the lunch break.
Before going to the rest shelter for lunch, he went to ask the team leader for permission to leave early.
Song Kuoyang was a technician in the powder-mixing workshop. After returning from his assignment in the Northeast, there was no longer a position for him in the powder-mixing workshop, so the factory had temporarily assigned him to the loading workshop.
Team leader Yang Guisheng knew that Song Kuoyang would not stay there forever and treated him well.
“Just finish today’s work and hand everything over properly.”
Song Kuoyang finished his work ahead of schedule at 2:30.
After cleaning up, he prepared to leave.
He changed clothes, put on his wristwatch, and walked outside.
Yang Guisheng was standing beside a pillar near the rest shelter and waved to him.
“Engineer Song, I was just about to look for you. Come here for a moment.”
Song Kuoyang walked over.
“What is it, Brother Yang?”
Yang Guisheng spoke very quickly.
“The factory director wants you to go to his office. Go right now. Some important leaders from above want to meet you.”
“I have something to do today.”
“No matter how important your business is, you’ll have to put it off for a while. Little Li is waiting for you outside.”
There was no way to refuse anymore.
Song Kuoyang glanced at his watch.
Going to the factory director’s office to meet the leaders could take who knew how long. The timing was now completely out of his control.
Just then, the sound of a bicycle bell came from a distance.
Song Kuoyang looked up.
It was Tong Weiqiang, who worked the evening shift at the gatehouse, arriving early.
Xiao Hongyao had been waiting outside the cinema for about ten minutes.
It was not even 3:30 when a young man wearing very fashionable clothes and sporting a neatly parted Hong Kong-style hairstyle stopped his bicycle in front of her.
“Hey!”
What was that supposed to mean?
Xiao Hongyao looked at him as if he were an idiot.
The young man with the Hong Kong-style haircut looked her up and down, then asked, “You’re Xiao Yuanyang’s younger sister, right?”
Xiao Hongyao nodded.
“My Yang-ge… well, some leaders came specifically to see him, so he can’t make it. He was afraid you’d keep waiting, so he sent me to tell you.”
What bad luck.
Xiao Hongyao could not help feeling disappointed.
“My name is Tong Weiqiang. I work as a patrolman at the loading workshop.”
After introducing himself, Tong Weiqiang smiled ingratiatingly.
He thought his Hong Kong-style haircut looked especially well matched with the girl’s little fluffy explosion of curls.
When Xiao Hongyao heard his name, a delighted smile spread across her face.
She had forgotten most of the original novel’s plot, but she clearly remembered one minor character.
He was a famously unlucky man.
Whenever an opportunity to make money came looking for him, he somehow managed to miss it perfectly.
No matter how hard he tried, he always missed out.
She had never been able to remember his name.
So his name was Tong Weiqiang.
This unlucky man was absolutely worth developing into a business partner.
She could find ways to help him seize all those opportunities he had missed in the original story.
Maybe he could not make millions, but he could make hundreds or thousands.
Little by little, those amounts could accumulate.
Perhaps she could even build up her initial startup capital that way.
Xiao Hongyao became much more polite.
“Thank you for making a special trip, Brother Qiang.”
“Don’t mention it. Yang-ge gave me an order. I’d go through fire and water for him.”
Wanting to get closer to him, Xiao Hongyao, who was not good at flattering people, desperately searched for something to say.
“Your hairstyle is really fashionable.”
Tong Weiqiang shyly touched his carefully styled, neatly parted hair.
He understood the principle of returning kindness with kindness and immediately complimented her in return.
“Your little curly hairstyle is pretty fashionable too.”
After saying that, the two of them smiled foolishly at each other.
“Brother Qiang, don’t you have to work today?”
That reminded Tong Weiqiang that he still had to hurry back to work.
“I work the night shift. But Yang-ge asked me to do this, so even if I had to work, I would still come.”
When Tong Weiqiang smiled, two dimples appeared on his cheeks. He was actually quite cute.
“Do you live in the East Courtyard or the West Courtyard? I’ll take you home.”
“East Courtyard. Won’t you be late?”
“I don’t start work until four. There’s plenty of time. And it’s on my way anyway.”
Xiao Hongyao did not refuse.
She climbed onto the back of the unlucky man’s bicycle.
Tong Weiqiang was a talkative, friendly man who treated everyone like an old acquaintance, so Xiao Hongyao did not have to worry about finding conversation.
Recently, because Tong Weiqiang had been borrowing money from everyone, people had been avoiding him.
It was rare to meet someone who did not avoid him, so he practically emptied eight lifetimes’ worth of conversation on her.
“If my dad hadn’t dragged me back and refused to let me leave, I’d have gone south and made a fortune already.”
Xiao Hongyao comforted him at just the right moment.
“You don’t have to go south. You can make money here too.”
“Right? I think so too.”
Tong Weiqiang did not want to tell her that he was trying to raise money for a side business. After all, they had only just met and were not that familiar yet.
“Right now, I’m just…”
He was short of capital.
“Right now, I’m just missing… missing a benefactor. My dad is the roadblock on my path to getting rich.”
Xiao Hongyao laughed.
“What did your dad do?”
Tong Weiqiang immediately launched into a long complaint about his overly controlling father.
“Basically, whatever I do is wrong. Whatever Yang-ge does is right. No matter what I do, he doesn’t like it. Sometimes I really wonder whether I’m actually his biological son. It’s so annoying.”
Xiao Hongyao understood how difficult that kind of strained father-son relationship could be for a son.
“Maybe he thinks he’s doing it for your own good.”
“Exactly! That’s what he thinks.”
The two chatted happily all the way.
When they reached the entrance to the Xiao family’s courtyard, Tong Weiqiang seemed reluctant to leave.
He took the initiative to invite her.
“Let’s have a meal together sometime.”
After saying it, he looked slightly embarrassed, as though he had just stolen Song Kuoyang’s girl.
Little did he know that Xiao Hongyao also wanted an opportunity to become more familiar with him.
She readily agreed.
“Sure. Let’s find a time. I’ll treat you to a meal to thank you for taking me home.”
On this gloomy autumn day without any sunshine, a little sun seemed to rise in Tong Weiqiang’s heart.
“It’s a deal. It’s settled.”
The two waved goodbye.
Only after Tong Weiqiang had ridden away did Xiao Hongyao enter the courtyard.
She had not met Song Kuoyang today, but she had gotten acquainted with Tong Weiqiang.
That was a good start.
When she entered the main room, Grandma and her eldest aunt had brought home some piecework from the factory. They were making firecracker tubes and pasting paper around them.
Their neighbors, Aunt Qian, Aunt Zhang, and Aunt Zeng, had come over to discuss buying radishes, ginger, mustard greens, and other vegetables for pickling.
The nearby rural areas had already been divided into individual household farming. Several families would pool their money to buy large quantities of vegetables directly from the countryside at wholesale prices, which was cheaper than buying them from the supply and marketing cooperative.
The room was filled with laughter and conversation.
When Grandma saw her granddaughter come in, she froze.
“How… how come you’re already back?”
Her eldest aunt asked almost at the same time, “Weren’t you going to watch a movie? Why are you back so early?”
“Song Kuoyang didn’t come. He was suddenly called away by some leaders and couldn’t get away.”
Xiao Hongyao briefly explained what had happened, then sat down and helped paste the paper.
She had been making firecrackers with everyone these past few days. She was good with her hands and had already become a fairly competent worker.
Tang Yueying sighed.
“What a shame. It seems our family and the Song family just don’t have enough fate.”
Because the neighbors were there, Xiao Ganju did not say much either. She merely smiled.
“We’ll ask Aunt Liu tonight what happened. The loading workshop doesn’t work Sundays. They can always meet on Sunday.”
Tang Yueying comforted them.
“It doesn’t matter if they don’t hit it off. Marriage is a major life decision. There’s no need to rush. Take your time choosing.”
It didn’t matter.
There were still other opportunities.
Because she had met Tong Weiqiang, Xiao Hongyao was in an excellent mood, and she could not stop smiling.
The neighborhood women were all curious whether Xiao Hongyao’s illness was really cured.
How could she still smile like this at a time like this?
She looked a little foolish.
But they did not dare ask directly, so they could only smile and compliment her perm.
Aunt Zeng was the best at flattering people.
“Your clothes are fashionable too. I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Aunt Qian was slightly plump with sharp, attractive eyes, and she usually had the sharpest tongue.
After making a couple of exaggerated sounds of surprise, she said, “That man from the countryside who was surnamed Pan really has no taste. Ten Wang Jings couldn’t compare to our Xiaoyao.”
Then Aunt Qian changed the subject.
“Could it be that Song Kuoyang deliberately stood you up to get revenge on your family for breaking off the engagement? Maybe he purposely arranged the blind date and didn’t show up. I think…”
Aunt Zhang was a relatively kindhearted person and quickly interrupted her.
“That’s impossible! How could he?”
“Why not? A man getting dumped by his fiancée—what a loss of face! Of course he’d be angry. I’ve heard Song Kuoyang is very difficult to deal with.”
Xiao Ganju did not join the conversation.
Last month, Aunt Qian had wanted to introduce her nephew, who had suffered from polio, to Hongyao.
Of course she would love for Hongyao to remain mentally disabled forever so that her nephew might have a chance.
Even if her nephew had no chance, that did not mean she sincerely hoped Hongyao would recover.
Neighbors might appear friendly on the surface, but there were very few who truly wished for someone else’s family to do better than their own.
Originally, the Xiao and Qian families were both among the poorer families in the compound.
The Xiao family had lost their second son, while Aunt Qian’s youngest son had also gotten into trouble and been sent away for labor reform.
But ever since the Xiao family produced a university student and the grandchildren one after another obtained stable jobs, the Xiao family had surpassed the Qian family.
Aunt Qian had held a grudge against them ever since.
Sure enough, before long, a rumor spread throughout the fireworks factory compound.
People said Song Kuoyang had deliberately humiliated the Xiao family in revenge, making their foolish daughter wait outside the cinema all day.
The rumor quickly reached Secretary Wang’s home.
Wang Liansheng’s daughter-in-law told her mother-in-law, Gu Hequn, the gossip she had heard.
“She just tricked three thousand yuan out of our family, and only a few days later she’s already desperately going on a blind date with someone else!”
Gu Hequn was reading the evening newspaper. She removed her reading glasses and asked, “Who is she going on a blind date with?”
“Song Kuoyang. He’s from the Song family. When he was young, he was criticized and persecuted along with his grandfather and lived a miserable life. Things have gotten better for him now. He’s a technical specialist. I heard he’s very difficult to deal with and refuses to train apprentices even though he has the technical skills.”
Gu Hequn looked down on descendants of capitalist families more than anyone.
Still, she knew that although many descendants of capitalists were useless, there were also outstanding people among them—talented individuals of their generation.
But someone like Song Kuoyang, who had not even attended university, was at most a technician who selfishly guarded his skills.
He would never amount to anything important.
Gu Hequn put the newspaper aside.
“Evil people will eventually meet someone worse than themselves. Let that Song boy give the Xiao family a hard time. That’s fine by me.”