During the Mid-Autumn Festival this year, Xiaoyue and her grandson sat on an old rattan chair in the Xiangfu Garden. The shadow of the grape trellis fell on them like a faded old painting. The little grandson pointed at the newly hung portrait of Su Jinli on the wall and asked in a baby voice, "Grandma, who is this?"
"This is your great-grandmother," Xiaoyue touched her grandson's head and took out a smooth bamboo slip from her bosom. It was the sugar painting base left by Su Jinli. "She was an exceptionally capable person."
"How amazing is it?" the little grandson looked at it curiously while holding the bamboo stick.
"That's amazing!" Xiaoyue pointed at the faint phoenix pattern on the bamboo slip. "When my great-grandmother was young, she was fighting with a poor scholar on the streets of West Market for a sugar painting. The scholar squatted on the ground and laughed at her dragon drawing, saying it looked like an earthworm. She was so angry that she stepped on the hem of his blue shirt and made it dirty." She couldn't help laughing as she recalled the scene her mother described. "Then the scholar stuffed his own phoenix sugar painting into her hand and said, 'I've got you, and I'll protect you from trouble in the future.'"
"And then?" The little grandson was fascinated by the story, the bamboo strips in his hands reflecting the moonlight.
"And then," Xiao Yue'er gazed at the brilliant sunset in the sky, its color reminiscent of the warm glow in front of the sugar painting stall, "they got married. Great-grandfather went from being a poor scholar to becoming the top scholar in the imperial examination, and great-grandmother went from being the daughter of a chancellor to a master of storytelling. She left behind all those who had bullied her, and her life was sweeter than a sugar painting."
"Where is grandma now?" the little grandson asked with his little face raised.
Xiao Yue looked up at the starry sky, the Milky Way glittering brightly. She could almost see the boy and girl fighting over the sugar painting, smiling at each other in the clouds. "Grandma's gone to see Grandpa," she smiled, tucking in her grandson's blanket. "They're at the sugar painting stall in another world. Grandpa's laughing at Grandma's dragon drawing because it looks like an earthworm, and Grandma's chasing him, stepping on his shoes."
A gentle breeze rustled through the grape trellis, making the leaves rustle like someone chuckling softly. Xiaoyue seemed to hear her mother's voice, a hint of cunning: "Xiaoyue, remember, in the next life, we'll meet at the sugar painting stall."
Yes, see you at the sugar painting stall. Those four words, like a piece of candy, were held in Su Jinli's mouth for a lifetime, sweetening the memories of future generations. She spent her life telling everyone that fate isn't confined by palace walls, but rather a choice made at a streetside sugar painting stall; that grievances aren't fate, but the raw material that can be boiled into honey. Now, her story has become a legend in vernacular novels, her spirit a motto on a rouge box, and her love, woven into the laughter of her descendants, lives beneath the grape trellises of the prime minister's mansion, in the streets of the capital, and on the brows of every woman who dares to live her true self, forever sweetening it.
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