Chapter 224
On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, every household cooks Laba porridge.
This is a custom that has been passed down for hundreds or thousands of years by the people of this land, and it is the first joyous day to welcome the end of the year.
In the factory compound, every household started cooking Laba porridge and curing sausages and bacon.
Those with many relatives have already started visiting each other and hosting New Year's Eve dinners.
Ji Xingguo also built a brick wall in the yard, heated a kang (a traditional heated bed), and bought half a pig from the meat market to start making cured pork.
Ji Wanmei likes sweet Cantonese sausages, while Ji Xingguo likes Sichuan-style sausages, so he made some of each flavor.
The firewood burned brightly in the earthen bed, crackling and popping intermittently. Once the firewood was burned out, it turned into charcoal.
At this time, Ji Xingguo would use a bamboo charcoal stove to take out the charcoal from the earthen bed, cool it, and then store it properly.
You can burn charcoal for heating in the living room, which will greatly reduce dust.
Of course, every winter, there would be vendors carrying charcoal and selling it from street to street in the county town, and Ji Xingguo would buy some.
However, due to his habit of working in the countryside during those years, Ji Xingguo got into the habit of collecting charcoal while making cured meat.
Ji Wanmei sat in the room drawing.
Winter came, and her hands and feet easily got cold. Even with warm gloves, her hand holding the paintbrush was not flexible when wearing gloves, so she could only hold the paper and pen with her bare hands.
Ji Xingguo then took a lit bamboo charcoal stove into the house for her: "Warm yourself up by the fire, so you don't get cold."
With the charcoal fire, the room immediately became warm.
Ji Wanmei would occasionally warm her hands with the warm water, while her pencil never stopped moving as she sketched on the drawing paper.
These drawings are clothing design sketches she made in her spare time when she had inspiration.
Once she and Lei Tingjun had saved enough initial capital, Ji Wanmei still wanted to return to her old business and start her own clothing brand.
It was precisely because she had this plan that she persisted in learning Shu embroidery from Grandma Song.
It must be said that Ji Wanmei gained a lot from learning from Grandma Song for half a year.
Most importantly, because she learned traditional Shu embroidery, each of her later designs incorporated a touch of the elegant and ancient charm of Eastern women.
Compared to many clothing brands that blindly follow foreign fashion designs, Ji Wanmei believes that her country's rich history of five thousand years is more than enough to design a brand that belongs to her own national style and combines modern and classical beauty.
This is what Ji Wanmei has always been committed to doing.
As she was drawing, Ji Wanmei stopped and thought for a moment.
She looked down at the charcoal stove and thought of Lei Tingjun again, wondering how he was doing in Honghe Township.
After returning to Pingquan County, the two of them did not communicate again.
Ji Wanmei told him not to send the letter to his home in Pingquan County.
However, even though communication was impossible, Ji Wanmei could still call Lei Tingjun.
She knew the phone number at his workplace, but calling it didn't guarantee he would be there.
Just then, Ji Wanmei turned her head and glanced at the telephone on the coffee table in the living room, and the phone rang.
Ji Wanmei's heart skipped a beat, and she quickly stood up, saying to her father in the yard, "I'll come to pick you up!"
"Hello?" Ji Wanmei picked up the receiver and tentatively asked the other end.
"Is this Meimei?" A gentle female voice came from the other end of the phone. "It's Auntie."
Ji Wanmei had just been worried that it might be Lu Zhuoxuan calling again, but when she heard it was her aunt, she breathed a sigh of relief and became happy again: "Auntie, where are you? Have you returned to the country?"
"Yes, I'm back in Shanghai." Auntie smiled gently on the other end of the line. "Your son-in-law and I are back for the New Year. Auntie hasn't seen you in so long. You must be on holiday now, right? Come to Shanghai and visit Auntie for a few days."
Because Ji Wanmei's mother passed away many years ago, few people know that she actually has an aunt.
She is her mother's half-sister.
However, after Ji Wanmei's mother and father got married, her mother rarely contacted her family.
After Ji Wanmei's maternal grandfather passed away, her aunt took her maternal grandmother, who was not related to her by blood, and went abroad.
The two families then had less contact.
In addition, because of the incident involving Ji Wanmei's mother, Ji Xingguo still harbors resentment about how her maternal grandfather handled the situation.
Therefore, in the years since Ji Wanmei's mother passed away, Ji Xingguo has never taken the initiative to contact them.
However, Ji Wanmei's aunt, Hai Shui, would call her every now and then.
Being abroad makes sending letters or making phone calls much less convenient.
After all, this was in 1988, and communication methods were still very backward.
Ji Wanmei's impression of this aunt all came from her childhood, when her mother would take her back to her maternal grandfather's house during the Chinese New Year.
Grandpa had a stern face and didn't greet them or speak to them. Only Grandma and Aunt greeted them.
Ji Wanmei's maternal grandfather was a survivor of the Republic of China era, and he held very traditional and stubborn views.
When my mother, who was of advanced age, wanted to marry Ji Xingguo, my maternal grandfather strongly opposed it, saying that if she was to marry Ji Xingguo, it would be as if he had never given birth to her.
However, Ji Wanmei's mother was a woman of strong character. She resolutely left home and chose to go to the countryside with Ji Xingguo.
Later, they got married and had Ji Wanmei, but her maternal grandfather never came to visit them.
The father and daughter had been in a cold war for more than a decade.
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