Chapter 71: Old friend Xu Heye looked at her and felt that she looked familiar.
Xu Heye looked at her and felt that she looked familiar, but when she thought about it carefully, she really couldn't remember who she was.
Wu Yulan saw Xu Heye looking at her with a puzzled expression and immediately became unhappy. "Come on, Xu Heye, you've only been in Hucheng for a few days, and you don't recognize me?"
A familiar name immediately popped up in Xu Heye's mind: a small round face and a noisy personality.
"Wu Yulan?" She remembered that this was her best friend when she was a child.
The two knew each other while still in the womb. Later, when they were in elementary school and in the second grade of junior high school, they were good friends and classmates. This relationship lasted until Xu Heye returned to Hucheng.
But for Xu Heye, she hadn't seen Wu Yulan for more than ten years.
But for Wu Yulan, Xu Heye had been gone for less than half a year.
Xu Heye rubbed her eyes and made up an excuse, "I was just taking powder, and the fog made my eyes blurry, so I couldn't see you clearly."
"I told you, how could you forget me so quickly?" Wu Yulan pulled over a stool and sat down in front of Xu Heye.
Xu Heye looked at Wu Yulan's apron, which had the name "Wu's Noodle House" written on it, and asked a stupid question: "Yulan, are you working here as a summer intern?"
Wu Yulan looked at her suspiciously: "Xu Heye, what's wrong with you? This is my store."
"Oh, yes, I remember now. This is your shop." Xu Heye slapped her forehead, completely confused. This shop was indeed Wu Yulan's.
After the reform and opening up in 1978, Wu's father and mother opened this noodle restaurant here.
Wu's father was a skilled cook, especially his fried chili oil, which was his signature dish. As a result, the noodle shop was well-received as soon as it opened, and business has been good for over a decade.
But - when she came back a few years later to pick up her father to go to Hucheng, this noodle restaurant had been converted into a foot massage parlor.
I heard from a familiar neighbor that Wu Yulan and her family sold the store and returned to Beijing with their daughter.
However, life was not very good after returning home. The three of us squeezed into the basement of my uncle's house and we didn't have a proper job.
To support the family, Wu's father worked as a porter, carrying things for others and accidentally broke his leg. Wu's mother had no other choice but to find a job as a nurse in the hospital, tending to paralyzed elderly men and women, dealing with feces and urine all day long.
Wu Yulan returned to Hucheng, but could not keep up with the education there. In the end, she failed to get into technical secondary school or high school. She stayed at home for two years and then went to work in a factory.
Whenever the old lady of the Wu family talked about this matter, she would scold her daughter-in-law Xue Yu as a troublemaker.
Xu Heye was too busy to ask about Wu Yulan's situation, so she sold her house and left in a hurry. She never heard from her again.
She had never thought that she would see her childhood best friend again. Xu Heye looked at Wu Yulan and was very happy. She couldn't lose contact with her again this time.
Xu Heye said, "Yulan, I'm so glad to see you. I live in Hucheng now... Zhangshu Lane. There's a Jingu grocery store at the entrance. The owner's surname is Liu, and I call her Aunt Liu. The store has a landline number... If you have anything, you can write to me or call me."
"Okay, I'll definitely write to you." Wu Yulan went to the counter to get a pen and paper and wrote down the address and phone number Xu Heye had given her. The two had been together since they were little, and now that they were apart for such a long time, she really missed Xu Heye.
But - "Why didn't you write to me after you went to Hucheng?" Wu Yulan said unhappily.
"I wrote it." Xu Heye paused and said that the person who wrote the letter was Xu Heye in his previous life.
In this life, Xu Heye almost forgot this childhood friend in the depths of time. She paused and promised seriously, "Yulan, don't worry, I will write to you when I get back."
"Uh-huh."
After Xu Heye finished her noodles, she went to pay, but Wu's father refused to take the money. "Heye, I went to Hucheng and became estranged from your Uncle Wu."
Xu Heye: “…”
"Okay, thank you Uncle Wu for treating me to noodles. Then Yulan and I will go out and play." Wu Yulan took off her apron, and the two sisters left the noodle shop and started strolling in the old street.
A new cake shop opened on the street. Xu Heye went there and bought two cream buns and gave one to Wu Yulan.
Wu Yulan was not polite. She took the bread, took a bite, and sighed.
"He Ye, is Hucheng really that good?"
Xu Heye was silent for a while and shook her head, "I don't know either." If you think about it carefully, Hucheng did not leave her with many good memories.
But that is their parents’ hometown, the place they long to return to.
In 1978, after the policy of returning educated youth to the city was introduced, many married educated youth were willing to divorce and abandon their wives (husbands) and children in order to return to the city.
Xu Hui and Dong Taohua are both from Hucheng, but they are already married and have formal jobs here. Considering the livelihood of their family after returning, they finally decided to stay.
But deep in their hearts, they have never forgotten Hucheng.
Xu Heye always remembered that in her previous life, she took her father back to Hucheng for medical treatment, and the excited expression on her father's face when she got off the train station.
Later, when Xu Hui was seriously ill and had not much time left, he confided his feelings to her.
He said that every time he returned to Hucheng, he was amazed at how clean the streets were. The sunshine was especially bright, and even the large camphor trees that were common at the doorsteps of his homes were particularly lush and friendly.
But later he apologized to her, saying that it was mom and dad's fault.
He said, if it weren't for our obsession to send you back to Hucheng, your mother might not have died, and our family would have stayed in Gan Province. With your intelligence and grades, you wouldn't be able to get into Peking University, Tsinghua University, or even Fudan University, but at least you could get into a good university.
You will be as energetic as those college students, enjoy your study life and love, be assigned a good job after graduation, and live a stable but happy life.
He said, I'm sorry, I have to leave you alone.
He said, child, you must live well on your own in the future.
Xu Heye came back to her senses and asked Wu Yulan, "What's wrong with you? You seem to be worried."
Wu Yulan sighed again: "He Ye, you know, my mother was also an educated youth."
Xu Heye nodded.
She knew that Wu Yulan's mother, Xue Yu, was also an educated youth, but she was from Beijing.
It just happened that I went to the countryside in the same year as Xu Hui and Dong Taohua.
The three of them even came on the same train, and after going to the countryside, they were assigned to the same brigade, so they became good friends.
Later, Dong Taohua and Xu Hui prepared to marry, and Xue Yu also married Wu's father. Later, both women became pregnant and gave birth to daughters at the same time. Seriously speaking, her friendship with Wu Yulan was actually a continuation of the friendship of her parents' generation.
Wu's father was a local, and Xue Yu wanted to return to the city at that time, so she had no choice but to divorce and leave her husband and daughter alone.
She couldn't bear to leave her husband and children, so after much consideration, she gave up her dream of returning to the city.
"After you return to Hucheng, Mom also wants me to go back to Beijing. But--" She glanced at Xu Heye. The neighbors in the alley all knew that Aunt Dong had traveled thousands of miles back to Hucheng to get Heye's Hucheng household registration.
"But my mother didn't want me to go back alone. She was afraid I'd be bullied and not be well taken care of... So she thought about selling the noodle shop, taking the money and moving the three of us back together. Once we got to Beijing, they could find a new place to open a shop."
"But Dad wasn't very willing. Jingshi was a completely unfamiliar place to him. Besides, the noodle shops that made money in Gan Province might not be popular in Jingshi. Mom told me that people over there like douzhi and zhajiangmian. They might not like our spicy and sour hot and sour noodles."
After Xu Heye finished listening, she asked, "So what do you think?"
Wu Yulan's face was gloomy. "Dad and I agree. But Mom—" Mom had sacrificed so much for them. It was so hard to get back, but if she turned down such a good opportunity, she might not get it again in the future.
"If it really doesn't work out, I think it's better for me to go back alone, just like you, Heye." That way, my parents' careers can be preserved. Even if I can't stay in Beijing, I still have a way out when I come back.
Xu Heye: "Have you told Uncle Wu and Aunt Xue about your thoughts?"
Wu Yulan shook her head.
"Actually, I think you can have a good discussion with Uncle Wu and Aunt Xue. Now that the policy has been relaxed, there will definitely be more opportunities to return to the city than before.
Besides the policy for returning children of educated youth, applying to universities in Beijing is another option. And I heard the Hucheng government is considering a policy where buying a house will give you a blue-stamp household registration. Perhaps Beijing will have such a policy in the future too!
"Buy a house and get a household registration for free?" Wu Yulan's eyes lit up.
"Yes." Xu Heye nodded, and without any guilt, she made up a story about a classmate. "There are classmates in our class whose parents work in government agencies. I heard that a representative proposed this. But I don't know exactly when it will be implemented. Maybe in two or three years, or maybe in seventy or eighty years, but it will definitely be implemented. You can also keep an eye on it."
Xu Heye knew that the blue-stamp household registration policy was first implemented in 1992, and then only in small and medium-sized cities. As for large cities like Beijing and even Shenzhen, it had to wait until the mid-to-late 1990s to be implemented.
The reason these cities introduced this policy was because of the sluggish real estate market, and they wanted to stimulate the market by giving away household registration by selling houses. However, this did not prevent her from telling Wu Yulan the news, giving them an option.
Wu Yulan seemed to be lost in thought.
"He Ye, thank you. I'll discuss this with Mom and Dad when I get back."
"Well, you guys should discuss it carefully and don't make impulsive decisions." At least in the previous life, the Wu family's move of selling the noodle shop that was doing well and the whole family going to Beijing to join Brother Xue Yu was not feasible.
It’s not that Brother Xue Yu is a bad person, it’s just that no one likes relatives without any financial resources to depend on them and suck their blood.
After separating from Wu Yulan, Xu Heye decided to go to the small restaurant next door to pack two meals to take home.
My parents should be awake by this time. I just got home and there is nothing at home. I have no place to buy groceries and it is very troublesome to cook by myself. I might as well go to the store to get food taken away.
Back then, before the technological advancements of later generations, the rice, flour, oil, and salt used in the restaurant's kitchen, with the exception of table salt, were all grown by nearby farmers. The oil was pure rapeseed oil, the vegetables were seasonal summer fare, and the rice was milled from nearby farmers, giving it a very natural flavor.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
