Chapter 7 Seeing my best childhood friend, Chen Pan...

Grandma Chen couldn't help cursing for more than ten minutes on the spot.

He scolded Wang Xiaohua and her daughter outside and made them cry.

"Woohoo!!! Mom, Dad and my little brother are all in town, let's go back first!"

Her father and brother were still in the school's residential compound in town, and she felt like if she spoke up now, the old man and woman across the street might hit her. Wang Jiajuan, inexplicably scolded and crying, finally had no choice but to drag her mother, who was even more agitated than she, home quickly. To avoid a real fight between the two families, which would have put her at a disadvantage, or made her the laughingstock of the other neighbors. She had already noticed a neighbor eavesdropping by opening their door.

"Oh, what's going on?"

In the blink of an eye, it was already half past eight in the morning.

Xu Chunhua didn't know how time had flown by so quickly this early in the morning. She picked up a hot brown sugar pancake with her chopsticks and handed it to the old man across from her and the little granddaughter next to her. Then she said, "Hurry up and eat! Eat big bites of potato and pancake. Don't let what's happening outside affect your appetite."

"Um!"

Chen Pan and Grandpa Chen, each holding a large bowl of fried potato chips, nodded at the same time.

While eating, they couldn't help but talk about what happened last night and this morning. Then Xu Chunhua asked again, "What's going on these past two days? Why is there something going on every day?"

"What's the big deal? Last night we were able to turn a disaster into a blessing. Just now we prevented future troubles. This is good."

Grandpa Chen had studied with the educated youth in the village before. Seeing that his wife was in a bad mood, he immediately searched his mind for the idioms he knew and spoke carefully.

"Yes, Grandpa is right. Yesterday, Grandma, you almost got hit, but in the end you didn't. That's turning a bad situation into a good one. As for what you said just now, our family's conditions are really not that bad, and we really don't need the Wang family to always give us clothes. They just gave us some clothes and shoes that her daughter would no longer wear, but asked us to constantly think about their family's kindness and repay them. I really feel that it's not worth it."

"It's not a matter of whether it's cost-effective or not. We're all neighbors after all—"

Chen Pan wanted to persuade her grandmother again, but the grandmother who had been so powerful just now became indecisive again.

Seeing her like this, the usually quiet grandfather immediately said, "Who cares if it's cost-effective or not? Anyway, things have developed to this point. What's the point of talking about it anymore? Besides, today is the Little New Year. Don't you want to go to Old Xue's house to buy pork and ask about the Li family's situation? Besides, making Jiaotuan in the evening also requires a lot of preparation. Why would you care about it when you are so busy!"

Ever since his son's death, Chen Aiguo has become indifferent and open-minded about many things. Seeing his wife starting to get upset again, he tried to persuade her in a particularly light-hearted manner.

"That's right!" After her son's death, her family's relationships with relatives and neighbors suddenly changed. Thinking back to the events of more than a decade ago, when they didn't have a son, Xu Chunhua, whose relations with both her parents and her husband were already strained, nodded heavily.

After putting this matter aside, Xu Chunhua really started to think about what he had to do throughout the day.

Seeing her granddaughter enjoying the shredded potatoes and sesame cakes, Xu Chunhua immediately put another piece of pickled cabbage on her granddaughter's bowl and said, "Panpan, go buy some meat with grandma later!"

"Okay!" Chen Pan, who had only been reborn for one day but felt like a long time had passed, narrowed his eyes and nodded heavily.

"That's so good, but is grandma's cooking really that delicious? Look at you two eating so much that you don't even lift your heads."

As soon as Grandma Chen said this, Chen Pan and Grandpa Chen, who were eating with their heads down, raised their heads almost at the same time.

"It's delicious. Grandma's fried potato shreds are better than those made by the chef. The pancake is also very crispy and sweet." Chen Pan praised generously. God knows how long she had been craving this taste.

People are so strange. Long ago, Chen Pan hated the endless supply of potatoes and noodles at home. But after her grandmother passed away and they left their hometown, Chen Pan missed those flavors so much. Later, even though Chen Pan was a cook in some sense, she couldn't recreate the flavors of her childhood. She just couldn't make the simple stir-fried potatoes and plain noodles taste the way her grandmother did now.

"Delicious, delicious! When I think about the fact that we can eat white flour pancakes every day, put so much oil in fried potatoes, and make some brown sugar pies, I feel like life is as good as a dream—"

Holding the hot brown sugar pancake in his hand and looking at the two plates of vegetarian pancakes and brown sugar sesame pancakes on the table, Grandpa Chen, who had just come back from burning incense and had a quarrel with the Wang family across the street, looked particularly intoxicated and happy.

Then, naturally, Grandpa Chen talked about the war in the early years when he was a young boy and couldn't stand the hunger. He went to the village landlord's yard in the middle of the night to steal sweet potatoes and was almost chased to death by the landlord's old yellow dog.

"There was another year when famine struck the entire country. Not only were there potatoes and sweet potatoes in the fields, but we even stripped the bark off the trees on the hills, along with Guanyin soil. After eating all that, our stomachs were incredibly bloated, and we felt incredibly uncomfortable. It's the Chairman and the country that are so kind. In just a few decades, we've been able to eat white flour like this. By the way, old woman, have you offered the cakes to the Kitchen God and the Chairman?"

The grandfather with a patch on his leg was talking and then he remembered the New Year's Eve celebration and the Kitchen God worship.

"They have already been offered. Both of them have been offered."

Grandma Chen was very content with her current good life. Looking at the two pancakes she had made early in the morning, and then thinking about the dozen bags of grain in her warehouse, the two cabinets of white flour, and the chickens, ducks, cows, and sheep in the yard outside, she couldn't help but smile. Then, she quickly put aside the question of whether the house next door was right next door or not, and really didn't think about it anymore.

Half an hour later, after finishing breakfast and cleaning up the house, Grandma Chen and Chen Pan, wearing cotton-padded jackets and headscarves, went out again. As for Grandpa, he continued to feed the livestock and clean the kitchen beams.

"Grandma Panpan, Panpan, are you guys going out?"

The morning was different from the evening. This time, as soon as they went out, they ran into their neighbors who lived next door to them.

"Well, Xiufen, are you washing clothes? So many?"

"It's not Chinese New Year yet, so I thought I'd wash everything I need to wash." The neighbor across the street, who was in her thirties, smiled and replied. Then, suddenly, she lowered her voice and asked, "Auntie, I heard you almost had an accident yesterday. Are you okay?"

"It's okay, it's okay, my foot was just pressed and my pants were completely scratched."

"I was wondering why you changed your pants today!" Morning is everyone's gossip time. While the two were talking, the old lady from the house diagonally opposite Chen Pan's house also crossed the road with her little grandson and came over to talk to them.

"Grandma Zhou!"

Chen Pan, who had been listening quietly, called out subconsciously, and then listened quietly.

Everyone talked about what happened yesterday and the quarrel between the Chen and Wang families this morning.

After Grandma Chen told everyone everything in general, the daughter-in-law of the Yang family, who had been washing clothes at the gate, and the old lady of the Zhou family, who had heard the quarrel early in the morning and had actually been waiting for Xu Chunhua to leave, were all satisfied.

After saying goodbye to the two families next door, Chen Pan and his grandmother met several waves of enthusiastic villagers again at the corner of the clear spring.

Some people came to fetch water with shoulder poles, some came to wash potatoes and sweet potatoes with iron baskets, some brought their old cows and horses to drink water, and some came to wash clothes after washing clothes downstream. When everyone saw them coming, they would almost always greet them warmly.

Then there was no other way, so Grandma Chen could only stop and point to her old cloth cotton shoes and the pants she had changed, and tell everyone again about the danger of yesterday.

"Oh my god! I saw blood on the ground when I came here just now. I heard that Li Changzi's son was transferred to the city hospital overnight. He was immediately admitted to the intensive care unit, which costs over a thousand yuan a night."

"Is this true? Tian family, who told you this?"

"I heard it from my brother-in-law. He also followed them to help send people off last night."

The half-broken cement pier that fell below the Qingshui Spring yesterday, along with several cement-stained bricks, has been salvaged. In just one night and one morning, the damaged stone pillar has been rebuilt. Now it's time for skilled workers to re-cement it.

Carefully observing the changes around her and listening attentively to the conversations of the adults, Chen Pan, although still maintaining the quiet and introverted demeanor of her youth, was actually beaming with joy.

Chen Pan didn't regret throwing the brick at the culprit who destroyed her family in her previous life.

One of the reasons why Grandma Chen came out today was to tell everyone what happened yesterday again, so that the Li family wouldn't suddenly cause trouble for them or ask her to return the fifty yuan they had paid.

Anyway, thanks to her publicity, everyone who received a lot of first-hand information last night and this morning now has a clearer understanding of this serious incident in their village that almost resulted in a loss of life.

In the entire Qingshui Village, only a few households have televisions, and even fewer have radios.

In a village with a severe lack of entertainment resources, everyone in the village is particularly interested in what happened last night and is willing to talk to Grandma Chen, the person involved, in person.

They set out at around nine o'clock and arrived at the village central supply and marketing cooperative, which was seven or eight hundred meters away. It took them more than an hour to walk there, while usually it would only take them seven or eight minutes to reach the destination.

The supply and marketing cooperative of Qingshui Village is located in the very center of the village.

Although the village roads were crooked and not completely straight, the entire village was divided into four parts with the supply and marketing cooperative as the center.

The area where Chen Pan's family lived was called Qingshui Waicun Shangdui. The entire Qingshui Waicun Shangdui, including the entire Qingshui Spring, was located on the upper right side of the road. The Wang family, who lived across from Chen Pan's family, were called Qingshui Waicun Xiadui, even though they were only separated by a village road.

To the right of the supply and marketing cooperative were all outlying villages. To the left of the cooperative were all villages called Qingshuicunlicun. The village road served as the dividing line: the upper left was called Qingshuicunlicunshangdui, and the lower left was called Qingshuicunlicunxiadui.

Initially, Qingshui Village used the village's only drinking water source as a dividing line to separate the inner and outer villages. Later, as the village population grew, the village established its most important supply and marketing cooperative, and then a village brigade across from the cooperative.

Finally, the center of the village was moved from the original clear water spring to the village supply and marketing cooperative more than 150 meters away from the spring.

"Then it's settled, Grandma Panpan. All three sows from your family will be given to us."

"I'm not sure about this yet. Sister-in-law, please wait a little longer. I'll go back and discuss it with my old man."

"Okay, okay, don't worry, the price we give you from our hometown will definitely be higher than outside. We are not doing this business to make money, but just want to take the opportunity to attract customers."

"Okay, I'll ask again later and get back to you as soon as possible."

As Chen Pan stood outside the supply and marketing cooperative, contemplating her former hometown, Grandma Chen had already bought two pounds of pork from the Xue family's pork stall. Not only had she bought the pork she would eat for the next few days, but she had also seemingly decided the future of her three sows in the blink of an eye.

“Panpan!!”

Just as Chen Pan, wearing a red cotton-padded jacket and an ugly yellow headscarf, was dazedly watching the villagers coming and going around her, an excited voice in the distance suddenly brought her back to reality.

"Yang Xiaomei!!"

Seeing his childhood best friend, Chen Pan was so excited that he immediately ran towards him.

Then soon, she was standing face to face with Yang Xiaomei, who was also wearing a red jacket but a pink headscarf, holding hands.