On January 25, 1986, the sky was gloomy and the raging cold wind blew snowflakes all over the sky. Everyone in the village hid in their houses to spend the winter and rarely went out.
Huifang, the eldest daughter-in-law of the Chu family, and three other sisters-in-law are making sticky rice dumplings in the house. There are many people in the family, so they make a big jar of this stuff every winter and can eat it from the New Year to the beginning of spring.
Chu Tiansheng walked into the house with a cold look on his face. He was an electrician in the village. Last night, the wind was so strong that it cut off an electric wire leading into the village. So he worked hard in the wind and snow for a whole morning and just managed to connect the wire.
Seeing her husband coming back, Huifang hurried to the kitchen to scoop up some hot water. "Are you cold? Take a shower with hot water to get rid of the cold. We'll have lunch soon. I melted a piece of pork today. Dad said he wanted steamed sauerkraut buns. I'll steam them up soon."
Chu Tiansheng hummed a sound. His wife, not disdaining his taciturn nature, continued, "The New Year is almost here. Shouldn't the power bureau's New Year's gifts be distributed soon? Have you heard from them yet?"
"No." Chu Tiansheng uttered a word in a muffled voice.
Huifang sighed and thought, if they didn’t get any money, then they didn’t get any. There are so many people in the family and they haven’t divided the family. Even if they got any money, everyone would share it together. There wouldn’t be much left for the eldest wife. She was just asking casually.
She took the water her husband had used to wash his face and poured it at the foot of the wall, then went back to continue making sticky rice dumplings.
The second son Chu Tianming's wife saw her come in and said, "Sister-in-law, is brother back? The buns are almost done, let's set the table for dinner."
"OK"
There were twenty people in the family, big and small, with one table on the floor and another on the kang.
Family planning didn't work for them. Chu Tiansheng had four brothers, and each family had two or three children. Living in the countryside, there weren't many entertainment options. It was freezing cold, and once the sun went down, what else could they do? They turned off the lights and started having children.
Look, the third generation of the Chu family has come in a bunch. The oldest one is 15 years old, and the youngest one is still in his mother's arms and feeding.
An old lady was sitting in the middle of the kang. She was the mother of the four brothers of the Chu family - old lady Feng Su'e. Oh, now she should be called Ling Shuang.
Old Mrs. Feng had been crazy for several years. Normally, when her daughters-in-law were at home looking after the children, they had to keep an eye on her, otherwise she would run away if they didn't keep an eye on her.
In fact, she was not crazy before. On the contrary, she was the most educated person in the village. She was born in 1928 in a scholarly family in Fengtian Prefecture and was an outstanding graduate of the Women's University before the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Her husband, Chu Renyong, was just a farmhand in her family at that time.
In 1947, the domestic situation was unclear, so the Feng family sold their property and left the country by ship. Feng Su'e was reluctant to leave her fiancé and did not go with her family.
As a result, at the end of that year, news came that her fiancé was killed by bandits on his way back to Fengtian to get married.
Feng Su'e lived as a widow. Her family was far away overseas, and her husband's family thought she had killed their only son and wanted to beat her to death. How could they care about her?
It was a time of chaos and there were many wars in Fengtian. When her fiancé died, the evil servants in the family took advantage of their master's grief and illness to steal all the Feng family's belongings and ran away, leaving only the wet nurse Huang and her son Chu Renyong.
Feng Su'e had no choice but to sell her remaining property and return to the countryside with her wet nurse. She did not dare to tell others that she was the Miss Feng family, and only called herself a maid of the Feng family.
A year later, perhaps she had given up or accepted her fate, and she married Chu Renyong. After marriage, she gave birth to four sons and one daughter. Chu Renyong and Huang treated her well, and the children grew up gradually. Feng Su'e didn't think there was anything wrong with this kind of life.
Until his only daughter Chu Tianjiao disappeared.
Chu Tianjiao is the only college student among the five children of the Chu family. She was also the first class after the resumption of the college entrance examination, and she was admitted to Beijing Normal University.
She was already treated like a treasure growing up, and after being admitted to university, she became the darling of the whole family.
In the summer of 1978, in order to welcome her back, my eldest sister-in-law cleaned up her room inside and out, took apart all the bedding, washed it, and made new ones;
The second sister-in-law prepared a table full of delicious food, including fish, meat, and wild game, hoping to nourish the little sister.
The third and fourth sisters-in-law were also not willing to lag behind and made new clothes and shoes for the younger sister.
The whole family was waiting for Chu Tianjiao to come back happily.
But after waiting for a long time, the food had gone cold and the person didn't come back. The Chu family father and son who went to pick him up came in anxiously. They were still wondering if they had lost contact with the child and Tianjiao had come back first?
Of course, there was no one at home, so the Chu family quickly contacted Chu Tianjiao's fiancé, Cheng Tianyi, an educated youth from Beijing.
Tianyi also became anxious and said that he was the one who personally sent Tianjiao to the train that day. The train was direct and there were people from the Chu family to pick him up when he got off the train. How could such a living person disappear?
Cheng Tianyi called the police in Beijing, and the Chu family also went to the police station in Fengtian Prefecture.
The police investigated for more than half a month and found nothing.
However, the Chu family did hear some ambiguous news. An eyewitness said they saw a white-haired old lady helping a girl who looked like Chu Tianjiao get off the train midway. The girl seemed a little unconscious...
The Chu family left a few daughters-in-law at home to look after the children, and the rest of the family went out to inquire around the county where the intermediate station mentioned by the witness was located.
But Chu Tianjiao seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth, and no one said they had ever seen such a person.
After searching for another half a year, the Chu family reluctantly gave up. Only Cheng Tianyi was still persisting. In his previous life, he didn't even go to college and traveled around the world for more than 20 years without giving up. However, he never saw his lover again until his death.
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