Chapter 15 Chapter 15 Very good, very good! Yingzi, your eyes...
After arranging the two children, Su Yan went to the space to look for dresses for the dance. All of her dresses were either too punk, or exposed her chest and back, or the colors were too bright. As for her shoes, either they had too many sequins and diamonds, or the styles were too trendy.
What she bought herself was definitely not in line with the aesthetic standards of this era. She took a pair of scissors and opened the package her mother had sent her before. She saw that it was a light green long skirt with small flowers. She tried it on and found that it just reached her calves. The skirt her mother bought was tightly wrapped and there was no place that should not be exposed.
Su Yan had a lot of shoes in the space, including quite a few high-heeled shoes, but only a few of them were suitable for wearing outside. She chose a pair of low-heeled leather shoes, which were solid sheepskin shoes with no other extra decorations, except that the shoelaces were inlaid with diamonds. She took scissors and picked off the artificial diamonds, making them look barely wearable.
She had just put on her skirt when she heard Xiaogang knocking on the door again: "Aunt, Uncle Dayan is here."
Dayan is a colleague in the HR department. Although they are in the same office, they are not very familiar with each other. Su Yan poured her some tea and said, "Dayan, why are you here? Is there something going on at work?"
Dayan was in his twenties, handsome, though short. Su Yan was actually a bit taller than him in her high heels. He smiled and said, "Aren't you going to the dance party hosted by the city government? I figured you couldn't ride a bike, so I came to pick you up. So, are you ready?"
Su Yan was beautiful, gentle, and a college graduate. Dayan thought she was pretty the first time they met, and his hands tingled when he listened to her talk. The HR people laughed at him, saying that since Su Yan came to the company, Dayan's illness had almost healed. He used to take four sick days a week, but now he only missed one or two.
Su Yan carried a black leather bag and told the two little ones to go to bed after reading the book.
Dayan was riding his bike ahead, the wind carrying the faint scent of gardenias. He asked Su Yan, "Yingzi, you're twenty-two this year, right? Three years younger than me, right?"
Su Yan was stunned. Although she had just turned twenty, Lu Yingzi was about to graduate from college and was actually twenty-two years old. "Why are you suddenly asking how old you are?"
Da Yan said to himself: "Yingzi, this girl is in her twenties, it's time for her to find a partner and consider getting married."
Su Yan rolled her eyes. "It's not your turn to urge me to get married. Who are you to me? We have no connection at all. You're really meddling in my business!"
But they were all colleagues who saw each other every day, so no matter how upset Su Yan was, she couldn't do anything. At most, she would say a few sarcastic remarks: "Big talk! I only listen to what a married person said to me. But you're not even married yourself, yet you're concerned about others. We're the same age, do you think it's your turn to say that?"
Although Su Yan's words were impolite, they were accompanied by a smile. Dayan didn't care. "Hey, that's not what I meant. I'm already 25 and have no place to stay. How can I say you're old? I'm asking if you have this plan. I can help introduce you to someone. What kind of person do you like?"
Su Yan smiled and said, "I don't know what kind of girl she likes, but she can't be fussy or shorter than me. Everything else is fine, but these two are absolutely unacceptable."
Fussy, shorter than Su Yan, isn't this just talking about yourself? He laughed awkwardly twice: "Yingzi, you are always teasing me!"
Su Yan smiled: "I'm not kidding you! Aren't you going to introduce me to someone?"
The Friendship Hotel is only three or four kilometers from the Jiangzhou Machinery Factory, and a fast bike ride would take just over ten minutes. When I arrived at the door, Sister Wang from the labor union called out anxiously, "Yingzi, the city government leaders are here, and you're so arrogant! Come in quickly!"
Su Yan was hurriedly pulled in, nearly spraining her ankle. Once inside, she saw men and women seated on either side. The podium was unadorned, with only a red sticker reading, "Jiangzhou Communist Youth League Dance." A man in his fifties, dressed in military uniform, was speaking at the microphone. Su Yan hadn't heard the speech from the front, but upon entering, she heard, "You have to know how to fight in battle, and you have to know how to dance a civilized dance!"
Su Yan bent down and slipped to the last row on the women's side. She looked across and saw that most of the people were wearing military uniforms. The government officials were wearing white shirts and there were very few of them.
The girl sitting next to her, wearing a dark blue skirt, frowned as she massaged her ankle. "What bad luck! Every time I wear high heels, I get unlucky!" She noticed Su Yan's soft suede high heels and said, "Oh my god, your shoes must have five centimeters heels. How do you walk with them so high?"
Su Yan could wear high heels to classes in college, so this was already considered low for her.
Su Yan smiled and asked, "Is your ankle okay? Do you want me to take you to the hospital?"
The girl had a round face and rosy cheeks. Her shoulder-length hair was tied up with a hairband, making her look much younger than Su Yan. Su Yan was looking at her when she was startled by her words: "Yours are made of soft-soled lambskin. My mother also has a pair that she brought back from England. Your shoelaces must be inlaid with something, either diamonds or rubies. How dare you wear shoes like these now?"
As she spoke, she shook the shoes on her feet and said, "Look, the leather of my shoes is so hard that it rubs my feet. I have two big blisters on my heels now."
Su Yan didn't say anything, just looked at her silently. The girl probably realized something: "Hey, you wear shoes like this, aren't you like me? Our families are landlords. We both come from landlord families, and we can't even talk about shoes?"
Su Yan shook her head and said seriously, "You're mistaken. These shoes of mine are not made of lambskin, nor are they bought from England. They are bought in Shanghai. You'll know when you go to Shanghai. This kind of leather shoes are sold there."
The girl curled her lips, looked at Su Yan, and concluded: "Hey, you are so boring, you say the same things as those people."
Su Yan wanted to advise her: "Miss, trouble comes from the mouth!"
The girl forced a fake smile. "The mouth can bring disaster? Could life be worse than this? We have less food than others, and we don't even have enough to eat every day. And we're forced to dance with others. We're lined up for people to pick and choose, like cabbages on a stall."
Su Yan felt that her words were really out of line in this era, and she didn't dare to say anything else. She just said, "If someone chooses you, you should choose someone else too! This is not an arranged marriage in feudal society. Nowadays, everyone has freedom of marriage and it's fully democratic. If you don't want to, no one can force you."
The girl looked at Su Yan as if she were an alien. "Yes, it's freedom of marriage. But there are leaders who try to persuade us. It was fine at first, but later they said you weren't very revolutionary, your Party spirit wasn't strong enough, and you weren't leaning towards the Party..." She kicked the bench in front of her. "Anyway, I'm a dead pig that's not afraid of boiling water!"
As they were talking, someone turned on the loud speakers and the conversation disappeared. Only the sound of dance music could be heard. The men sitting opposite stood up and came over to invite the women to dance.
Su Yan initially refused several invitations. Sister Wang from the labor union came over and said, "Yingzi, what's wrong with you? Several people have invited you to dance, and you've refused them all. Are you trying to disgrace the PLA? If this gets out, people won't just blame you, but our unit, the Jiangzhou Machinery Factory, for being so arrogant."
This Sister Wang is a person with a sharp tongue but a soft heart. She has a quick temper, but she is also very capable.
Su Yan was too lazy to move, so she pulled Sister Wang to sit down. Seeing an officer sitting in the empty seat across from her, she thought for a moment and made up a lie: "Sister Wang, it's not that I don't want to dance, it's that the person I want to dance with didn't invite me."
Sister Wang seemed to have heard some big gossip and asked excitedly: "Who is it? Who is it? Oh, our Yingzi actually has someone she likes? That's great. Last time we didn't get together, but now we can finally get together." She asked while glancing around.
Su Yan was very upset. It was just a dance. Sister Wang, you wouldn't think of them as a couple, right?
Sister Wang looked around. While most of these people had good jobs, and those from the military were at least battalion-level, their looks weren't great. Of course, the decent-looking ones had already married, so why would they keep attending these balls? This was a long-standing problem for most of them.
Sister Wang nudged Su Yan with her elbow: "Hey, point out who it is for me?"
Su Yan pointed casually: "Here, the one sitting in the first row opposite."
Sister Wang was farsighted, so she could see everything clearly from this distance. She looked him over and said, "I don't know him. He's never been here before. He's new. He's quite good-looking, with thick eyebrows and big eyes. He looks only a few years older than you." Finally, she concluded, "Not bad, not bad! Yingzi, you have good taste!"
Su Yan smiled. With her myopia of over 300 degrees, how could she see clearly what the other person looked like from such a distance?
But Sister Wang didn't urge Su Yan to go dancing. She patted Su Yan's shoulder and said, "Okay, I'll go talk to him and ask him to come over and invite you to dance."
Su Yan was confused by Sister Wang's direct attack and hurriedly pulled her back: "Sister Wang, there's no need. If he wants, he will come over by himself. You even went to tell me this specifically, as if I was in a hurry."
Sister Wang smiled and said, "What's there to be embarrassed about? Unmarried girls are all shy. I'll go and talk to them, I'll go and talk to them." As she spoke, she took Su Yan's hand away and walked over.
Su Yan didn't know whether she felt embarrassed for herself or for Sister Wang. She could only see Sister Wang walk over and point in Su Yan's direction. Then she saw the man across from her stand up, straighten his hat and collar, and walk straight towards Su Yan.
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