When Shengnan heard this, she panicked and said, "Sister, what did you say? How could I like Zhou Zhiqing?"

"I didn't say you like Zhou Zhiqing, you said it yourself!" Xuemei continued to ask.

Shengnan then realized that Xuemei already knew about her and Zhou Zhiqing's affair. She hurriedly leaned over to Xuemei's ear and whispered, "Sister, when did you find out?"

"On the afternoon when I went to the county town with Han Chen, when I went to the mountain, I accidentally heard you and Zhou Zhiqing arguing." Xuemei explained.

"Then no one else saw it, right?" Shengnan asked nervously.

Xuemei thought Qingya and Ruirui wouldn't go out and tell Shengnan about it. Xuemei shook her head and continued, "No, I was the only one who heard it. Shengnan, let me ask you, what's going on between you and Zhou Zhiqing?"

"I don't know now!" Shengnan said worriedly.

Xuemei asked angrily, "What's so good about not knowing this? Are you two dating now? If you are, then you are. If you are not, then you are not."

"We are not dating. If I had a partner, I would not have agreed to let my mother go on a date! It's about my blind date. After Zhou Bing heard about it from others, one day when I got off work and no one was paying attention, he secretly walked up to me and handed me a note. He said that he liked me, and if I had feelings for him, I should wait for him on the mountain behind my house at noon the next day." Shengnan said with her head down.

"So you mean that you haven't confirmed your relationship yet?" Xuemei asked.

"This matter is very complicated, and I can't tell my mother. I originally planned to find a reason to ask her to reject the two guys I wanted to see before. But now she thinks that I am ignorant and deliberately stubborn?" Shengnan explained.

Xuemei looked at Shengnan seriously and asked, "I'm asking you, isn't Zhou Bing deliberately trying to be mean? Is he trying to stop us from having a relationship?"

"Sister, it's not him. It's me, because in my heart, I think if he is my partner, it means he will be my husband in the future. But now he still has some things to deal with, so I haven't agreed to him yet?" Shengnan said worriedly.

Xuemei felt relieved when she heard it wasn't a problem with Zhou Bing's character. She asked, "What's the matter? Can you tell me?"

Shengnan thought for a while and then lamented, "Sister, let me tell you about the current situation. Can you help me analyze what to do?"

Shengnan saw Xuemei nod before continuing, "Zhou Bing's family situation is a bit complicated. Of the children born to his grandparents, only two daughters survived: one was his aunt, and the other was his mother. His mother relied on her cooking skills and expertise to find a job in the county government cafeteria, and later recruited a son-in-law, who became his father."

Not long after Zhou Bing was born, his grandparents passed away. His mother had been in poor health since giving birth to him, and later died of illness during the natural disaster in 1958.

His father was a Phoenix man. After his mother died, he took over her job as a logistics worker in the county government cafeteria. Within a few months of his mother's death, he fell in love with a widow in the logistics team.

Zhou Bing's aunt disagreed, but his father said it was for Zhou Bing's sake. This way, their family would have two formal employees, and Zhou Bing could be transferred to a city hukou and have a monthly allowance.

Later, Zhou Bing's aunt agreed, but asked him to sign a guarantee that his job and the Zhou family's house in the village would belong to Zhou Bing. Before his father remarried, his aunt also specifically told him that if his father and his stepmother treated him badly in the future, he should return to the village to find her.

In the first one or two years, his father was very good to him, and although his stepmother didn't treat him as well as her own son, she wasn't harsh on him either.

After the natural disaster, the family moved into two 20-square-meter bungalows allocated by the county government. In 1961, his stepmother gave birth to a son with his last name. From then on, his father treated him increasingly badly. His stepmother also took advantage of the youngest son to whisper in his father's ear, complaining that he ate too much.

At first, when Zhou Bing saw that the amount of food at each meal was getting smaller, he thought there was some difficulty at home. Until one day, he found out that his stepmother secretly took his stepbrother to eat in the room.

Zhou Bing immediately exposed his stepmother and went back to the village to tell his aunt about it. His aunt brought his uncle and the young men in the village to seek justice for him and told his father that if he didn't want to support him, he should give up his job.

His aunt ripped off the hypocritical facade of his father and stepmother, and even asked the neighbors to pay more attention to him in the future. Later, when his stepmother didn't give him enough to eat, he would snatch his two younger brothers' food. Whenever his stepmother and his father scolded him, he would beat his two younger brothers until his father and stepmother stopped scolding him.

When Zhou Bing graduated from high school at age 17, classes were suspended. His aunt wanted his father to give him his job, but his father played the victim, saying that his two younger siblings, born to him and his stepmother, were still young and that his future marriage would require a large sum of money, making the burden on the family too heavy.

I'd wait until he was 19 before giving him the job. The salary and receipts he'd receive would be too little compared to what he was getting now. Seeing his father personally pleading with him, and knowing the heavy burden on their family, Zhou Bing agreed to wait two years before taking over his job. When his aunt found out, she went to the city and had his father sign and seal a letter of guarantee at the neighborhood office, even calling in a nearby police officer as a witness.

After that, he kept doing odd jobs in the city. Last year, his father and stepmother saw that he was about to take a job. Coincidentally, the government required that families with many children, including one unemployed child, must go to the countryside. So his father and stepmother resorted to underhanded tactics and secretly took his household registration to the neighborhood office to register him for the rural program.

Zhou Bing, a staff member of the Youth League Office, only found out about this three days before he went to the countryside when he came to deliver train tickets.

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content!