Chapter 27 027 Mid-Autumn Festival
Aunt Ding was really enraged. When Zhou Hongqi tried to pull her away, she yelled that anyone who brought a gigolo into the house was no good either.
Just as Guan Yuehe pulled Xu Xiaomei away, Zhou Hongqi got angry, restrained Aunt Ding's hands, and said to Xu Xiaomei, "Come on, hit her as hard as you want."
Xu Xiaomei, who had just been struggling to tell Guan Yuehe to mind her own business, stopped struggling.
When she and Aunt Ding started fighting, it was just a fit of temper. With Zhou Hongqi joining in, it turned into a brawl.
But Xu Xiaomei didn't want to fight anymore, while Zhou Hongqi did.
As soon as Guan Yuehe let go of Xu Xiaomei, she had to pull Zhou Hongqi away.
"What's wrong with her hands?" Jiang Guiying noticed that Guan Yuehe had been staring at her hands ever since she entered the room. She leaned over to take a look and saw that the calluses on her fingertips were not as thick as they were before, and there was not a single injury on her palms.
Guan Yuehe shook her head, a satisfied smile appearing on her face. Jiang Guiying couldn't figure it out and didn't bother to ask.
After dinner, Guan Canghai announced that he and his whole family would be going back to their hometown for National Day this year. They would have to leave early in the morning and return in the evening. He had already arranged with Grandpa Lin to borrow his bicycle on National Day.
I told them half a month in advance so that they and their siblings could free up their time.
It was fortunate that her father had told her in advance, otherwise she would have agreed to go to the movies with Lin Sitian during the National Day holiday.
It was supposed to be a trip back to my hometown, but it really was just a trip to my uncle's house.
Her father moved to the city to work with his entire family, and the whole family's household registration was also transferred there.
Before her grandparents passed away, they divided the family property, and her father received a room. That room collapsed long ago, and later her eldest uncle built a new house on the same site, and the land was then allocated to her second brother. The land in the village belongs to the collective, and has nothing to do with her family.
So, they no longer have a house in their hometown, and every time they go back, they just visit their uncle's house.
Autumn is the harvest season, and there are more fruits available in the village than in other seasons.
The last time I went back to my hometown in the fall was three years ago.
Her second brother is five years older than her and two years older than her eldest sister. If everything had gone smoothly, their child would be old enough to run errands by now. But things haven't been going well for her second brother.
I went on my first blind date when I was nineteen. We dated for a month, but the other person felt we weren't a good match, and it didn't work out.
When I was twenty, I saved a woman by the river. Her family came to my door, insisting that I had taken advantage of them and that I should marry her. My second brother refused to do so and almost got arrested. Luckily, someone saw what happened and testified for him, so he escaped a terrible fate.
Later, the woman who was rescued got married and had children, but her family still held a grudge. Knowing that her second brother was going on blind dates, they would go to the home of his blind date's family and spread rumors, which always caused trouble for the family.
Unfortunately, my uncle was the production team leader, while that family was from another production team, so it was difficult to report back.
My second brother has been dragging this on until now and still hasn't gotten married.
Guan Canghai and Jiang Guiying had been worried about their second son's marriage and hoped that nothing would go wrong this time.
After announcing the decision to return to her hometown for National Day, Jiang Guiying then announced that dinner was served.
—
The female announcer for the National Day cultural performance has finally been decided; a female comrade from the broadcasting station has been selected.
The temporary workers sighed and complained after missing an opportunity to shine.
There's also good news: there will be openings for permanent positions by the end of the year, though the exact number is uncertain. However, as long as the factory's athletic shoes sell as well as its sportswear, the temporary workers will eventually become permanent employees.
Xie Dongxue, who had worked hard for a month, was a little discouraged. She was just one vote away from becoming the announcer!
"If I had been just two votes short, I wouldn't be this resentful." Xie Dongxue felt increasingly choked up as she thought about it. Even the piece of meat that Guan Yuehe had offered as a form of comfort still made her feel choked up. "Give me another piece."
Guan Yuehe looked at the two remaining pieces of meat in the lunchbox, gritted her teeth, and gave away another piece.
"What did Gu Mannian just say to you?" He looked excited; anyone who didn't know better would think he'd struck gold.
Guan Yuehe shrugged. "I just said hello."
Xie Dongxue didn't believe it. "He went all the way here just to say hello? Is this the first day he's met you? That's weird."
Guan Yuehe guessed that Gu Mannian probably knew that her sister and Gao Yuansen had broken up and thought that her opportunity had come.
When she got off work that day, she didn't go home to eat with her family. She found that there was no soy sauce at home, so she took the bottle and some money and went out.
She bumped into her sister at the alley entrance, talking to a strange man. The man glanced at her sister while speaking, then quickly lowered his head, his face turning bright red. A moment later, he looked up again…
She discovered that her sister had always been attracted to gay men who looked like intellectuals.
Gao Yuansen appears to be a cultured man, but he lacks foresight. He only thinks about getting married and not about how to live after marriage, which makes him seem pedantic.
This man now also has the air of a cultured person.
She glanced down at the soy sauce bottle in her hand, hesitating whether to continue forward or retreat back to Courtyard No. 2 to avoid disturbing her sister.
“Guan Yuehe.” Her sister looked at her.
Guan Yuehe raised an eyebrow and walked up to them. The man smiled at her, his shyness from in front of her sister gone. "Hello, I am..."
Guan Yuehua interrupted him, saying, "Let's talk about work when we get to work. I have to go with my sister to buy soy sauce, I'm leaving now."
Once they were a distance away, Guan Yuehe heard her sister breathe a sigh of relief and say, "I'm partnered with him to announce the program this year. He's so annoying, he talks too much nonsense."
Well, even if she has the air of a cultured person, it won't work; her sister didn't like her either.
—
On the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival, long queues formed again at the canteen of Zhuoyue Garment Factory, much longer than the queues for receiving New Year's gifts during last year's Spring Festival.
Guan Yuehe was pulled by Wang Zheng to help out in the sales department, running around to department stores and shops in Beijing. When she returned to the factory, she could only be at the back of the line.
She's not exactly idle in the factory office anymore; she's currently helping Sister Zhu take meeting minutes. But when the sales department gets busy, they're always short-staffed. As soon as Wang Zheng mentioned it to the head of the sales department, they borrowed people from the factory office.
She was relatively free in the factory office and was willing to go out and run errands.
Actually, she quite enjoyed traveling around with Wang Zheng, but each department had its own specific openings. It was possible to promote someone from the production workshop, but it was generally not possible to transfer someone from other departments.
She will most likely work in the factory office until retirement, unless she strongly requests a transfer to the sales department.
But when she thought of the older brothers and sisters in the factory office and the days when she could slack off there, Guan Yuehe's desires diminished.
Sister Zhu, carrying the Mid-Autumn Festival gifts from the factory, walked over from the front of the line and came to comfort her, saying, "It's the same whether you're at the front or the back of the line."
This year's Mid-Autumn Festival gifts were quite generous: two mooncakes, a net bag of fruit, and a prepared duck.
It's true that it's the same whether you're in the front or back of the line. The fruit comes in bags, and the ducks are all whole, almost all the same size. And you're not allowed to pick and choose; once you're in line, the person in charge of distributing the food gets whichever portion you get.
Guan Yuehe felt relieved.
The purchasing department failed to secure pork this time, so they had to order ducks from a farm instead.
No one was disappointed; being able to eat meat was already a blessing. With fruit and mooncakes in one hand and duck in the other, they hurried home, all smiles.
The Five Star Automobile Factory was different. Each worker received a pound of pork as a Mid-Autumn Festival bonus, along with two mooncakes and a net bag of fruit.
Pork is delicious, but a pound of pork certainly doesn't weigh as much as a duck.
Other units, such as epidemic prevention stations, waste recycling stations, and daily chemical plants, brought back different things, but they were all roughly the same.
Except for a very small number of skilled workers who have high-level positions and high incomes, the income gap among most ordinary workers is not significant.
Small differences make it easier to be satisfied. After all, that's how everyone is.
The perks we receive during holidays are about the same for everyone; when we bump into each other, we can chat happily for a bit. Nobody should be envious of anyone else.
But that evening, almost no meaty aroma wafted out; everyone unanimously decided to save the good stuff they brought back for the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Except for a very few families.
For example, Lu Chang and Lu Yan, a couple who live in the gatehouse of Courtyard No. 2, have already put the meat in the pot, and their large bowls are covered with a thick layer of meat.
The children in the neighboring courtyards cried because of the lingering aroma. Even the northwest and southwest children of Song Gong'an's family wanted to eat meat. Song Gong'an chased after them with a belt and beat them until they cried and said they wouldn't eat it anymore.
Police officer Song chased after Song Xinan with his belt for a long time but couldn't catch up with him because he would take a few steps and then rest. Song Xibei, who had already climbed onto the roof, was so anxious that he howled.
Guan Yuehe sat at the door watching the commotion; even without meat to eat, the steamed buns tasted especially delicious tonight.
The next morning, Guan Jianguo and Lin Yufeng took their two children to the Lin family to deliver Mid-Autumn Festival gifts, and also made a trip to their maternal grandparents' house to deliver gifts.
Originally, it should have been Guan Canghai and Jiang Guiying who made the trip, as they also had other relatives to visit, but Guan Jianguo was instead asked to take a detour to the Jiang family.
Guan Yuehe knew that the trouble was still caused by the "borrowing of the house".
On the day she moved into her new house and held a party, her maternal grandparents' family had their eyes on her house and wanted to lend a room to her cousin for his wedding.
It was supposed to be a loan, but there was no agreement on when it would be returned. As time went on, it became unclear who actually owned the lent house.
Her attitude was clear at the time: she didn't have a very good relationship with her maternal grandparents, and borrowing their house was out of the question.
But her uncle and aunt didn't give up. They came to her house several times to see her mother, and their conversations implied that they wanted to borrow the house.
They originally planned to have my cousin get married and register his marriage during the National Day holiday, but since they didn't have a house, the woman said to wait a little longer.
If we wait any longer, we don't know if it will even happen.
Her mother had been holding back from agreeing, and her uncle and aunt had long been unhappy about it.
With the Mid-Autumn Festival approaching and National Day not far behind, my aunt and uncle will definitely bring this up again.
Today, to avoid trouble, and to save herself from having her grandparents use their seniority to pressure them into giving their approval, her parents simply had her older brother deliver the gifts.
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