Chapter 12 My daughter, our family has 2 million
"dad."
Zhong Qiao thought about it, raised his head, and suddenly spoke seriously.
"I've been the one causing you trouble all this time."
Mr. Zhong was stunned.
Mother Zhong also looked over.
They almost thought they were hallucinating.
"I will divorce Xu Shaojun and continue my studies, but—" Zhong Qiao said firmly this time, "I must raise my daughter."
Mr. Zhong was stunned again.
"Alright, alright." Mother Zhong was afraid that the father and daughter would quarrel again, so she quickly interrupted, "Let's eat first. We can talk about the future later."
She drove Mr. Zhong to the foot of the bed and scolded him, "Why haven't you changed your bad mouth yet?! Can't you let the child finish his meal first?!"
Mr. Zhong didn't say anything this time, as if he hadn't come to his senses yet and was thinking about something.
Zhong Qiao tugged at Mother Zhong's sleeve and asked, "Where's Siqi?"
Mother Zhong said angrily, "He is actually close to that girl and is playing with her next door."
Before he finished speaking, Zhong Siqi walked into the house with the child in his arms, looking very happy.
As soon as he entered the room, he presented it to Zhong Qiao in an almost flattering manner.
"Sister, this little girl you gave birth to is really smart. I teased her for a long time, but she didn't smile when she saw anyone else, only me."
"Yeah?"
Zhong Qiao took the soft little ball, feeling mixed emotions.
I owe my daughter so much.
In his previous life, he only knew how to make money, and left his two children in his hometown to be raised by Zhou Ping, who favored boys over girls.
She originally thought that as long as she made good money and ensured her children had enough food and clothing, everything would be fine. Even if Zhou Ping was patriarchal, Wanwan was a daughter of the Xu family after all, so she couldn't do anything to her.
After living her life again, she realized that things were not like that. Material economy was important, but parental companionship was more important.
Children without parental care grow like weeds. Without anyone to love them, they cannot tell what true love is.
Therefore, the old bachelor's little bit of care made his daughter jump into the fire pit like a moth to a flame.
If I had been able to raise my daughter myself, she would not have lacked love since childhood, leading to her being easily deceived by other men with a little care when she grew up.
If I had paid more attention to my daughter and loved her a little more, how could she have followed in her footsteps?
Zhong Qiao put his face against the child's forehead, feeling the soft and milky feeling, and secretly swore in his heart that he would take good care of his daughter in this life and would never let her suffer the same fate as in her previous life.
Mother Zhong sighed and said, "Qiao Qiao, you've been unconscious all night and haven't eaten anything. Let Siqi hold the child first. I'll bring her over after you finish eating."
The aroma of food entered Zhong Qiao's nostrils at the right time.
She suddenly remembered that she hadn't eaten properly in the past two days.
My stomach was empty and cramped, but now I feel nothing.
This is a very bad sign, indicating that under extreme hunger, the body's "emergency mechanism" has begun to appear.
Zhong Qiao reluctantly handed the child to Zhong Siqi.
Zhong Siqi couldn't wait to get what she wanted. She took the child in her arms and couldn't let go. She asked curiously, "Sister, has my niece been named yet?"
Mother Zhong raised her hand and delivered a critical hit.
"What niece? Your father and I are still alive. We haven't acknowledged her yet, and yet you keep calling her niece so sweetly!"
Zhong Siqi held the child with a look of grievance on her face: "I don't know what's going on. I felt close to this girl the moment I saw her, but when I saw that little boy yesterday, I just didn't feel comfortable no matter how I looked at him. It's really strange."
Zhong Qiao made the baby in her arms giggle. After a long while, she said, "Si Wan, her name is—"
The word "Xu" was about to come out subconsciously, but she was suddenly stunned, then changed her words with a smile.
"Thinking from the great way is always innocent, smiling at the spring terrace and being drunk with ink flowers."
"Zhong Siwan, her name is Zhong Siwan."
The Zhong family surrounded the little girl.
Some people are sad, some are emotional, and some are foolishly happy.
"Qiao Qiao, if you really want to raise this child, you must immediately sever ties with the Xu family, otherwise it will be difficult to register the child."
Mother Zhong sighed, scooped up the meat soup with a spoon, blew on it, and handed it to Zhong Qiao's mouth.
"Don't worry, Mom." Zhong Qiao came back to his senses, took a bite of the warm meat, and his throat rolled. "I know what I'm doing."
The Xu family is such a hell, she will definitely jump out with her daughter even if it means losing a layer of skin.
Zhong Siqi held Zhong Siwan and sat beside her pitifully. She sniffed and felt a little jealous: "Mom, you are too partial. I have never eaten such delicious food at home."
He usually eats snake gourd, green vegetables, sweet potatoes, and occasionally eggs.
Only then did Zhong Qiao notice the dishes on the table.
Three meat dishes and one vegetable dish.
A layer of sesame oil was poured on the egg custard, garnished with green chopped green onions, mushy lean meat slices, blanched Shanghai greens, and a bowl of milky white crucian carp soup.
Compared to the confinement period in my previous life, when every day I either ate pickles with porridge or ate pumpkin, and had Zhou Ping tell me what to do, and had to wash the Xu family's clothes in the middle of winter... this is already pretty good.
Mother Zhong rolled her eyes at him and said, "Your sister just gave birth and is very weak. You, a big and strong man, are shameless in comparing yourself to your sister."
Zhong Siqi snorted and stopped talking.
Looking at the heartwarming scene in front of him, Zhong Qiao felt a slight soreness in his nose.
It’s great that everyone is still here.
Then she thought of another question.
My family has always been in business and has made a lot of money, enough to provide food and clothing for several generations. But why does Zhong Siqi's words make it sound like our family is so poor that they can't even afford to eat?
Zhong Qiao hesitated for a moment, then said, "Mom, tell me the truth, is there something wrong at home?"
Mr. and Mrs. Zhong looked at each other with complicated expressions.
Father Zhong smiled and said, "Are you wondering why our family has fallen into such a state?"
Zhong Qiao nodded.
Mr. Zhong said slowly, "When you ran away from home, we were extremely worried. Later, I found an old friend who could give me a 'Home Return Permit' to go to the mainland to find you. We paid a large sum of money. We paid the money and did go to the mainland, but we couldn't get our property back in Hong Kong."
Zhong Qiao listened silently and finally understood why his family was living in such a difficult situation.
Foreign exchange controls were implemented in the 1970s. All foreign exchange earnings had to be turned over to the state. The RMB was not freely convertible, Hong Kong dollars could not be directly converted into RMB, and cross-border capital flows required government approval.
The various procedures involved are numerous and very complicated. Due to policy reasons, the Zhong family has no channels to transfer their property to the mainland.
If Zhong Siqi hadn't been admitted to a university here and the Zhong family hadn't given up looking for her, she would have had no choice but to stay here.
"Don't worry, our family is fine."
Seeing her concerns, Zhong's mother took over the conversation and stroked the back of Zhong Qiao's hand comfortingly.
"I brought some jewelry with me, so I can still make ends meet. I also asked your father's old friends and some of your grandfather's old comrades to help me. A few days ago, I was able to remit my property from Hong Kong to the mainland with great difficulty. Although the amount remitted each month is not much, it is enough for our family to live on."
"Oh, speaking of this."
Mr. Zhong thought about something, his face full of melancholy, "My favorite radio was confiscated. Your mother's jewelry must have been lost, otherwise our family would have become a "speculator"!"
"Old friend?" Zhong Qiao didn't care about his father's sigh and caught the key words.
Isn’t my grandfather a scholar?
In her memory, there was a thin and small old man wearing glasses, who was very gentle and recited classical Chinese that they couldn't understand every day. How come some old comrades appeared now?
Mother Zhong cleared her throat and said, "It's inconvenient to talk about your father's friend. As for your grandfather, he was tricked into enlisting by your Uncle Li's father a few years ago. His old comrades were brothers who fought bravely in the Korean War."
Zhong Siqi's eyes lit up. It turned out that his grandfather was a hero and had done such heroic deeds!
"Mom, what official position did my grandfather hold?" Zhong Siqi leaned over and tried to think of the military rank mentioned in the textbook. "Company commander? Battalion commander?"
Mother Zhong blushed. "Your grandfather couldn't carry anything on his shoulders or lift anything with his hands. When he joined the army, they thought he couldn't carry a gun, so they made him a cook."
Zhong Siqi was speechless. What kind of hero was he? While others charged into battle, my grandfather was the one who took the blame.
"You kid!" Mother Zhong saw the speechless look on his face and slapped him immediately.
"If your grandfather hadn't been a cook and hadn't been lucky, where do you think your mother would have come from?! Where would you have come from?"
"I know, Mom."
Zhong Siqi covered his arm helplessly, lifted up his clothes and saw that the skin that was beaten was red, with clear marks of the slap.
He curled the corners of his mouth and dared not speak anymore like a quail.
Mother Zhong turned around to make sure the windows and doors were closed, then quietly approached Zhong Qiao and said, "Qiao Qiao, don't worry. We are your support. The last thing our family lacks is money."
She gestured a number.
Zhong Qiao looked at it, hesitated for a moment, and said, "Two hundred thousand?"
Mother Zhong shook her head and then whispered a number.
"Our family has 2 million."
Zhong Qiao took a deep breath. Although he knew that his family was rich, he never expected them to be so rich.
In this era, being a household with an annual income of 10,000 yuan was already a very impressive thing, let alone 2 million yuan in 1976.
The next moment, Zhong Qiao became a little withdrawn.
Was I possessed by a ghost in my previous life? I gave up such a good life, ran to work in a factory to support a scumbag, and even rushed to be a shrew to take care of the children?
No wonder Mr. Zhong was so angry in his previous life. If it were her, she wouldn’t be able to accept it either.
"mom."
Zhong Qiao's brain raced. After a moment's thought, he said earnestly, "You and Dad did the right thing. Our family is extremely wealthy in Hong Kong. We must be honest and low-key when we return to the mainland. If we are targeted by someone with ulterior motives..."
She didn't dare to say any more.
In this day and age, everyone eats from the same pot. If other people knew that the Zhong family was extremely wealthy, wouldn't it easily bring disaster upon themselves?
It’s better to be low-key!
Zhong Qiao glanced at Zhong's father and mother, and was filled with admiration.
In the past, I only knew how to go against them, but now it seems that parents live decades longer than their children, and they have to be more cautious and insightful about some social practices.
Mr. and Mrs. Zhong were a little surprised.
They thought they had to explain everything to their daughter, but they never expected that their daughter had grown a lot in the past year and a half.
But they did not harbor any doubts, instead they felt even more sorry for their daughter.
In the past, my daughter was brought up to be ignorant of the world and never had to do housework. But now she knows all these social ways in just one and a half years. I guess my daughter must have suffered a lot in the Xu family!
"Let's not talk about this for now. Let me talk about you. You are always so stubborn."
Mother Zhong blew on the lean meat slices and continued to feed Zhong Qiao, unable to stop scolding her.
"If your father and I hadn't been so careful and left our Hong Kong landline at your Uncle Li's house before we arrived in Suzhou, and they had immediately passed the call from the hospital on to us, would you have planned to never contact us again in this life? Do you still care about us?"
Zhong Qiao came back to his senses, took a sip of soup carefully, and let her scold him, but his mind was quickly analyzing the information he received.
In her previous life, she regretted it as soon as she arrived in Suzhou and always wanted to divorce. She sent many letters to her family crying and apologized countless times, but there was never any reply from her family. She thought they were unwilling to forgive her, so she wrote to them every year.
Later, due to the turbulent times and the tense situation between Hong Kong and mainland China, she gave up.
However, judging from the tone of Zhong's mother's voice, it was obvious that she had never received her letter since before the internal struggle between Hong Kong and the mainland began.
And it’s easy to guess who was able to intercept her letter.
Xu Shaojun.
Zhong Qiao sneered in his heart.
A scumbag is a scumbag. In order to make her support him wholeheartedly in his studies, he would use any rubbish!
If she hadn't been so weak in the hospital at the time, she would have wanted to scratch his ugly and hypocritical face with the broken porcelain pieces!
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