During this time, Zhang Weibing contacted her many times, but Su Wenli was also there. The three of them often went up the mountain to forage for wild vegetables, mushrooms, and wild fruits, and occasionally caught pheasants. However, in the end, Su Wenli took the pheasants home. Thinking back, she was foolish. She was young then and didn't understand love at all. She didn't take the engagement seriously, and she felt even less for Zhang Weibing, her fiancé, treating him only as a playmate from the same village.
Su Xingran's family is from a rural area in northern China, in a village called Sujia Village. Su is the most common surname in the village, but there are also people with the surnames Zhang and Huang. The other two surnames came to Sujia Village as refugees from famine and gradually settled down and integrated into the village. Thus, Sujia Village has three surnames, but the Su surname still accounts for the majority of the population.
Zhang Weibing's family was his grandfather's. After drifting to Sujia Village, they settled down here, got married, and had children, thus putting down roots in Sujia Village. Because Zhang Huang came later and mostly lived at the end of the village, while Su mostly lived at the beginning, and the village was large, Su Xingran and Zhang Weibing really didn't know each other.
The villagers often saw the three of them together and said they had a good relationship, even their parents believed it to be true. But who would have thought that it was actually Su Wenli and Zhang Weibing who had a good relationship, and that Su Xingran was just a tool to cover up their illicit affairs?
She remembered that Zhang Weibing received a spot in the village's worker-peasant-soldier university in 1975 and went to study. She and her parents often helped with chores for the Zhang family. When Zhang Weibing's mother fell ill, she and her mother took turns caring for her. She often heard Zhang Weibing's mother say to her, "It's not easy for Zhang Weibing to study away from home, and there's nothing for him to eat or use." She went home and told her parents, who gave her ten yuan of their twenty yuan savings to take to Zhang Weibing's family, along with some food.
The family paid off the 100 yuan they owed the village head and brigade leader before the 1974 Spring Festival. In 1972, the commune established junior high and high schools, and her junior high tuition was 2.5 yuan per year. Looking back now, Zhang's parents weren't exactly good people either; they really were related to her uncle's family, no wonder they ended up as in-laws.
In her past life, it was the second year after Zhang Weibing started school. Su Wenli often told her that she was already nineteen years old, and her uncle and aunt frequently told her to find a husband, but she felt none of the men they found were suitable. She said she liked men who were scholarly, refined, gentle, and polite, but there were none in the nearby villages. She would show a sad expression, and even ask Su Xingran with tears in her eyes if she would never have the chance to marry someone she loved in this life.
Su Xingran felt sorry for her cousin. She didn't understand what love between men and women meant. Perhaps love was like wanting to live with her parents forever? If that was the case, then marrying someone you didn't love was very tragic.
She remembered what the villagers said: "Zhang Weibing is a refined, gentle, and polite person, and he also happens to be a scholar." She asked her cousin if she liked someone like Zhang Weibing, and her cousin said somewhat awkwardly that he was that type, neither confirming nor denying it.
Later, when her cousin brought up the issue again, she made a decision. Her cousin was her savior, and she couldn't let her cousin's future life be unhappy. She was willing to give Zhang Weibing to her cousin, since her cousin was three years older than her. She wasn't in a hurry to get married herself; she just wanted to stay with her parents.
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