Gu Wan blushed at his call of “Little Sister Wan” and timidly greeted him back, “Big Brother Zhou.”
Country folk were hospitable. Zhu Fengxian served tea and brought out sunflower seeds to entertain Qin Zhihua and Zhou Jing. Unaccustomed to such social gatherings, Gu Wan quietly retreated to her own room.
With neither table nor chair left inside, she had no choice but to sit idly on the edge of her bed.
She listened to the several people chatting in the courtyard for a bit before Gu Jinsheng suggested taking Zhou Jing to see the room, to see if anything was missing so they could make up for it.
Qin Zhihua naturally accompanied them inside. Seeing that the room was clean and tidy, he let out a sigh of relief in his heart.
Zhou Jing raised an eyebrow when he saw the bedding on the bed. Today he had seen Qin Zhijun’s bed, where a thick layer of straw was stuffed beneath the straw mat, and he had wondered for a long time whether fleas might be hiding in that straw. The Gu family, however, had prepared proper bedding for him.
Looking over at the table, a brand-new enamel tea mug rested on it, its glazed surface smooth and delicate, featuring a portrait of the Great Leader and red quotes on its body. Next to it stood a large red tin thermos flask.
He thanked Gu Jinsheng, “The room has been tidied up so well. I’ve truly troubled Uncle Gu and Auntie.”
Gu Jinsheng’s weathered face beamed with joy, and he said happily, “We were just afraid you wouldn’t get used to living here. As long as you find it fine, that’s good. In a moment, I’ll have your Auntie bring you a bucket of water for washing your face and feet. Things were rushed today so just make do for now; tomorrow we’ll go buy you two new basins.”
Gu Jinsheng repeatedly told him to just call out if he needed anything before leaving Zhou Jing to rest and returning to his own room.
After Qin Zhihua left, the Gu family members returned to their rooms one after another, and before long, the lights were turned off.
The night was quiet as moonlight seeped into the room through the thin window curtains. As Zhou Jing lay on the Gu family’s newly made bed, a subtle, faint fragrance that resembled orchid—yet was not quite orchid—hung in the air.
He sniffed the pillow and blanket; they carried the scent of sun-dried cotton without that orchid-like subtle fragrance, leaving him wondering where that scent actually came from.
After a good night’s sleep, when he got up to wash the next morning, he ran into Zhu Fengxian, who was busy with chores. Not in a rush to fetch water, he followed Zhu Fengxian into the kitchen. From his pocket, he pulled out a stack of food coupons prepared the night before—meat coupons, sugar coupons, and industrial coupons, which were relatively scarce for rural families—and handed them to Zhu Fengxian, saying:
“I’ll be troubling your family for a period of time. Receiving such thoughtful hospitality from you all, please consider this a small token of my gratitude.”
How could Zhu Fengxian possibly accept it? Being a young master from the city, Zhou Jing didn’t know how to engage in the back-and-forth of polite refusal. He said anxiously, “If you really won’t accept it, I’ll feel embarrassed to stay here. Just consider this as the room fee I’m paying.”
Only then did Zhu Fengxian embarrassedly accept them. Zhou Jing smiled, went to wash up, closed his door, and headed toward the Qin family’s house.
He had spoken with Qin Zhijun yesterday about accompanying him to the Provincial People’s Hospital today to check on the recovery of his leg injury.
Gu Wan’s tasks for today—aside from cooking, taking good care of Niuniu, and drying the grain—were to go to the village’s supply and marketing cooperative to buy two enamel washbasins. When Gu Jinsheng pulled out three yuan that morning to hand to Gu Wan with instructions to buy the washbasins, Wang Shuiying didn’t yet know about Zhou Jing’s gift of coupons, so she grumbled in a whisper behind Gu Jinsheng’s back:
“Dad sure is generous. In our house, we only got two enamel washbasins when we got married; the rest of the family uses wooden ones.”
Gu Chao glared at his wife, “If you don’t know what’s going on, don’t babble nonsense. Can we make Zhou Jing share those things with us? City people are very particular.”
Even though he didn’t know the exact specifics of how “particular” they were.
It was indeed generous. After farmland was allocated to households this year, work points were no longer counted. Men relied on doing odd jobs to earn money, while women did housework, looked after children, and tended the fields. Odd jobs weren’t available every day; a master craftsman like Gu Jinsheng earned no more than a dozen-odd yuan a month, while Gu Chao was still an apprentice, bringing home only eight or nine yuan a month. Read the latest chapters at g.com.
With a total monthly household income of only around twenty yuan, he had pulled out three yuan all at once to buy luxury items like enamel washbasins.
Qinghu Village was considered a large village and had its own supply and marketing cooperative. Whenever a family slaughtered a pig, after deducting the quota surrendered to the food station, the remaining meat was also set up at the entrance of this cooperative to be sold.
It was a single-story room of about sixty square meters. High wooden shelves reaching the ceiling lined the wall, leaving a two-meter-wide aisle in the middle, followed by a row of glass display counters.
Country folk didn’t have much spare cash to buy goods, so the entire cooperative had only one shopkeeper—the eldest daughter-in-law of the Party Secretary’s family, named Wang Chunxiang.
When Gu Wan walked in, Wang Chunxiang was bending her head over knitting a sweater; judging by the pattern, it was a male style. Across the counter, Gu Wan smiled and called out, “Sister-in-law Chunxiang.”
Hearing that delicate, soft voice, Wang Chunxiang looked up and saw it was the Gu family’s daughter, Gu Wan. She smiled and said, “It’s Xiao Wan! What are you looking to buy today?”
It had to be said that the attitude of the village shopkeeper was far better than those in the township or county. Gu Wan pointed to the enamel washbasins on the shelf against the wall and said, “Sister-in-law, please get me two washbasins.”
Wang Chunxiang thought to herself that a girl who had attended middle school was indeed different—her speech was refined and pleasant, spoken in a soft, gentle voice. Setting down the sweater in her hands, she stood up, grabbed two washbasins, set them on the glass counter for Gu Wan to inspect, and asked, “Buying a pair—is a relative getting married?”
Most enamel washbasins sold at this time had a white enamel base painted with big red “Double Happiness” characters and large red flowers, costing one yuan and forty-five cents each, which was truly not cheap. Rural folks mostly used wooden basins; those buying these enamel washbasins were usually relatives adding to a wedding dowry.
Gu Wan smiled and simply said they were for her own family’s use. After checking that neither basin had chipped paint, she took the three yuan from her pocket and handed it to Wang Chunxiang. Wang Chunxiang took the money and retrieved a ten-cent bill from the drawer to give Gu Wan as change.
Returning home, she swept the floor and did the laundry for a while before Niuniu woke up. Gu Wan fed him the warm egg drop porridge kept in the pot before carrying him to the grain-drying ground.
Gu Chao had already arrived at the drying ground, his wheelbarrow parked to one side. Taking a large broom, he swept the woven bamboo drying mats laid on the ground back and forth twice. Once he saw they were clean enough, he poured the grain onto the mats.
Seeing Gu Wan arrive, Gu Chao placed the empty baskets onto the wheelbarrow, teased his precious son for a moment, and pushed the cart away.
This area had drying mats laid out for several families. Niuniu tottered and ran around the whole field, so Gu Wan didn’t need to watch him too closely.
She took a large wooden rake, pushed open the piled-up grain, and raked it repeatedly until the grain was evenly spread across the drying mats.
Next, she only needed to stay at the drying ground to guard the grain from being eaten by chickens, ducks, and birds. There were many sparrows at this time of year; after standing for just a few minutes, five or six sparrows landed on her family’s plot. When she shouted to chase them away, those brave sparrows flapped their wings a few times, shifted ten or twenty centimeters away, and settled right back down to continue eating the grain.
Seeing the flock of sparrows, Niuniu excitedly wobbled and rushed toward the drying mat. The sparrows were startled by him and scattered in flight, with a few landing just over two meters away from Gu Wan.
Gu Wan didn’t know what she was thinking at that moment; she grabbed the broom at her feet and threw it over. Originally, she had only wanted to scare the sparrows away, but to her surprise, three or four sparrows were knocked unconscious onto the drying mat by the large broom she threw!
Gu Wan was a bit stunned. She looked at her hand and then at the large broom lying sideways not far away. Two-year-old Niuniu had already excitedly charged over to the broom, pulling it aside to reveal the sparrows slumping on the mat.
No young child disliked birds. Normally, when older kids raided bird nests and caught fledglings that couldn’t fly yet, they would hold them with delight and show them off everywhere. Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping dot com.
Niuniu pinched the head of one sparrow with his tiny hand and lifted it up to inspect it. Gu Wan was so startled that she hurried over and took the sparrow from his hand, fearing that the temporarily stunned sparrow might pinch or scratch his hand if it woke up from the pain.
Having his new toy snatched away, Niuniu naturally refused to comply, standing on tiptoe trying to get it back. Gu Wan held her hand high to dodge him, picked up the other three sparrows from the ground, and coaxed Niuniu, “Auntie will take them home to put them in something first before giving them to Niuniu to play with, okay? If you play with it like this, it’ll fly away when it wakes up.”
Only then did Niuniu nod obediently. Gu Wan carried him home, found a mesh bag that had come with some purchased apples, tossed the four sparrows into it, tied the opening tight, and carried it in her hand while holding Niuniu back to the drying ground.
For the rest of the morning, Niuniu locked eyes with the sparrows in that mesh bag, while Gu Wan knocked out over thirty sparrows in just over an hour—fast, fierce, steady, and precise, without a single miss.
By now, the Gu family’s grain-drying ground had seemingly become an execution ground passed down by word of mouth among the sparrows; no more blind birds came to offer themselves up.
Gu Wan stared at the distant Big Green Mountain and thought to herself that as long as she could avoid turning into a demon, half-demon blood was actually quite nice. It was so easy to get a bite of meat! One had to know that unless it was a holiday or a guest arrived, rural folk rarely ate meat even once or twice a month.
By evening, when Zhou Jing and Qin Zhijun returned, a new meat dish appeared on the dinner tables of both the Qin and Gu families: braised sparrows.
Hearing that these sparrows were knocked down on the grain-drying ground, the group of young people found it extraordinary. This was the first time Zhou Jing learned that sparrows were edible, and they were quite fresh too; he declared right away that he would go to the drying ground to catch sparrows tomorrow as well.
Qin Zhijun, on the other hand, couldn’t imagine how the delicate and weak Gu Wan had knocked down sparrows, but unfortunately, it wasn’t convenient for him to go outside yet.
After the family finished eating, when no one was paying attention, he called Qin Xiaomei to push him back to his room. Opening the drawer of his five-drawer chest, he took out a large bag of White Rabbit Cream Candies and handed it to Qin Xiaomei.
Qin Xiaomei actually recognized this; she had seen Wang Chunxiang at the cooperative eating them, saying they were bought in Shanghai and were a rare luxury item.
Her eyes filled with pleasant surprise, and she looked up to ask, “Brother, this… White Rabbit Cream Candy? Is it all for me?”
The words Qin Zhijun was about to say were choked back by Qin Xiaomei, leaving his face looking somewhat awkward. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his other free hand to cover it up, saying:
“I thought sweet things are only enjoyed by young girls. Take this bag of candy and split it half-and-half with Gu Wan.”
Hearing these words, Qin Xiaomei was stunned at first, then burst out laughing. Looking at her older brother playfully, she made Qin Zhijun feel rather self-conscious, and he instructed, “Deliver it over quietly.”
Qin Xiaomei agreed with a chuckle, hid the candy behind her back, and walked out.
Only when he saw her leave did Qin Zhijun breathe a sigh of relief. Lin Chunhua had stuffed all the items Zhou Jing brought into his room’s cabinet last night. Seeing the candy then had reminded him of Gu Wan’s low blood sugar issue, but it was too late at night to give it in front of others. He had gone to the provincial capital early this morning and only now found an opportunity—he really hadn’t thought about saving some for his own sister to taste.
Carrying the candy, Qin Xiaomei went over to the Gu house and walked straight into Gu Wan’s room.
Explaining the purpose of her visit, she said with a smile, “My big brother definitely has feelings for you. You have no idea—at first I thought this candy was given to me to eat, but it turns out he was just making me run an errand! Hearing me ask if it was for me, he froze up himself and said to split it with you. I can see right through it—he forgets his sister the moment he sees a pretty girl; he didn’t even think of me at all!”
Gu Wan blushed. He had thought she had low blood sugar and had even instructed her to carry candy with her last time.
She told Qin Xiaomei to take the candy back, but Qin Xiaomei refused no matter what, teasingly laughing:
“This is something my big brother gave to his future wife; I can’t keep it for myself! I’ll just open it and take a few to taste the flavor, and leave all the rest for you to enjoy sweet love. Eating the candy will make you think of my big brother!”