The village was just as she remembered, poor and backward, with children running around barefoot everywhere. Most of her friends who had grown up with her had gone out to work after graduating from junior high school. Some were unemployed at home, idle and forming gangs.
Those young men can wait for two more years and get married and have children after their families build two houses for them. If they can rely on their parents for support, they can continue to do so. If they cannot, they will have to go to the fields to work.
Those girls just find a good husband-in-law family and marry him. Their only way out is to hope to find a good husband-in-law family and have food and drink for the rest of their lives.
As for studying and taking college entrance exams, they disdain it.
Especially after her elder brother Qiao Tian's incident, the "theory of the uselessness of studying" was regarded as an imperial decree by the villagers!
"What's the point of studying, little girl? After finishing second or third grade and learning a few words, you can come down here to dig vegetables, feed the pigs, and do housework. When you're older, send her south to work in a garment factory. You can earn two or three thousand a year!"
"What's the point of going to school? Look at the son of the Qiao family. He passed the college entrance exam and couldn't even get his diploma, let alone a job! He spent all those years and money studying for nothing!"
She had heard a lot of gossip like this in the past two days.
Although her family wasn't wealthy, all three of her sisters, including her, were educated. Her father, Qiao Xingmin, was a member of the third high school class and never went to college, a lifelong regret. Only those who have studied appreciate the benefits of education, and even the poorest families never considered letting their children drop out.
My eldest sister graduated from the third year of junior high school, but she didn't continue her studies because her grades were not good enough.
My eldest brother Qiao Tian has always had excellent grades. After graduating from junior high school, he was admitted to a five-year junior college. In that era, graduating from a junior college was equivalent to having a promising future, let alone a junior college!
She lived in the Qiao family for 12 years and studied a lot.
In the afternoon, Ye Qiao sat under a big tree beside the village pond, staring blankly at the little kids fishing for crayfish around the pond.
She won't be able to leave for the provincial capital, City N, to visit her elder brother until tomorrow, by train.
She stretched and stopped thinking about those troubles. Fortunately, she was reborn and had the ability to stop the Qiao family from suffering!
The bucket in front of the little kid from the Chen family next door was already half full of crayfish. These days, crayfish are not yet a delicacy on the table. Children only fish for fun and compete to see who can catch the most. The adults don't like to cook them when they get them home. Most of the time, they just dig a hole and cook them.
Who would have thought that twenty years later, crayfish would be transformed into something more expensive than prawns, costing dozens of yuan per pound!
Spicy crayfish, thirteen-spice crayfish, garlic crayfish...
Oh, she is so greedy!
"Xiao Qiang, do you still recognize your sister?" Ye Qiao walked up to an older boy she knew and said with a smile.
The 12-year-old boy shook his head and looked at his beautiful and fashionable sister who looked like a beautiful girl in a painting, his cheeks blushing unconsciously.
"I'm your sister Qiao Qiao! Do you want to sell these lobsters? Can you give me all of them for fifty cents?"
Fifty cents! That's a lot of money! I can buy a small pistol!
Xiao Qiang nodded without thinking, grabbed his sister's basin and poured all the crayfish in it into the bucket, "All for you!"
The sister was about to cry because her crayfish was snatched away by her brother. Ye Qiao quickly took out a White Rabbit candy from her purse and gave it to her. It was not easy for a country girl to eat candy, so she was so happy that she wanted to fly.
When the other children saw that Xiaoqiang's sister had candy to eat, they also looked at her eagerly. They took the initiative to pour the crayfish in their basins into Xiaoqiang's bucket and asked Ye Qiao to exchange them for candy.
"Okay, okay, I have them all!" Ye Qiao was even happier and divided up all the remaining White Rabbit candies.
When she returned home carrying a bucket of crayfish, her father frowned and said, "Silly child, what's so delicious about these crayfish?! Tell your mother to go out and buy you some prawns tomorrow morning!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
