Shi Zhen came to Anshan Town four years later in his previous life. Anshan Town at that time was very different from Anshan Town now.
Shi Zhen looked around at this somewhat unfamiliar town, and others were also looking at him.
The eighteen-year-old was wearing clothes that were common only ten years ago, his skin was tanned to a bronze color, and his overly long hair fell messily down his back.
Even so, that face was still attractive.
His eyebrows were thick and dark, with high arches that naturally conveyed a sense of untamed spirit. His straight nose and strong facial features created an indescribable harmony.
What draws the most attention, however, are his deep eyes, like an unfathomable abyss in the deep mountains.
A person with such a handsome appearance is bound to attract the attention of passersby.
Shi Zhen ignored the stares of the people around him. He looked around, chose a direction, and started walking forward.
Guan Baiyu is three years younger than him, and is only fifteen this year.
His biological father died early, his mother was unwilling to raise him, and his adoptive parents didn't like him either. He had no money, and although he was admitted to high school, he dropped out after only one year. After that, he started working odd jobs to support himself and also took self-study exams.
Right now... fifteen-year-old Guan Baiyu should be in his third year of junior high school.
Anshan Town is a large and wealthy town with a primary and junior high school that rank among the top three in Changxi City, and even a high school.
But Guan Baiyu didn't study in town; he studied in the countryside.
The quality of education in the town's primary and secondary schools is very good, but the quality of education in rural schools is very poor.
There is a shortage of teachers everywhere in this era. His former teachers couldn't even speak Mandarin well and often made mistakes when teaching them. Although J City is relatively wealthy, the rural schools are still not very good.
So even though Guan Baiyu had excellent grades in school, he only ended up in an ordinary high school.
At that time, Anshan Town did not have buses to the countryside, but there were many tricycles that carried passengers.
Many people in the town make a living by riding tricycles.
Taking one of these tricycles isn't expensive; it only costs a few yuan to go wherever the person wants to go.
But Shi Zhen only had 71.5 yuan left at this moment, and he was reluctant to spend more.
He took Shi Xinghuo and headed towards the village where Guan Baiyu lived.
Guan Baiyu's village is not far from Anshan Town; it only takes forty minutes to walk there from the bus station.
In my previous life, around 2008, Guan Baiyu's village was demolished.
Shi Zhen headed west.
Once you leave Anshan Town, the road narrows considerably; the concrete road is only a little over a meter wide, barely wide enough for a car to pass.
Nowadays, not many families own cars; owning a motorcycle is considered a luxury.
This cement road was built along the river. There is a river to the south of the road, and a few wild mulberry trees grow sparsely on the earthen slope by the river.
To the north of the river are small courtyards enclosed by fences, filled with vegetables. North of the courtyards are cement drying yards, and further north are rows of two-story buildings.
The small buildings with white walls and black tiles all look pretty much the same. Occasionally, a few houses will stand out by adding some mosaic tiles to their walls or creating diamond patterns with shards of green glass bottles.
Anshan Town has a large population, and there are many people in the countryside. On the drying grounds of those houses, you can often see elderly people chatting with children as young as a few years old.
Shi Zhen had been here with Guan Baiyu in his previous life. Although the scenery was very different then, the roads were similar, and he still recognized the way.
Shi Zhen stopped in front of a small house.
The houses along the way were mostly brick and tile buildings, but the walls of this house were made of rammed earth, and it was only one story high. Judging from its appearance, it must have been built at least several decades ago.
This house isn't connected to those smaller buildings; it stands alone right next to the concrete road.
This is Guan Baiyu's residence.
Guan Baiyu's background is quite pitiful.
His biological parents were originally from the town.
In earlier years, when a woman in town had a baby and there were no elderly people in the family to take care of it, she would send the baby to the countryside and pay a wet nurse to take care of it.
Guan Baiyu's biological father was sent to the countryside by his father in the 1950s to be raised by Guan Baiyu's adoptive grandmother.
Guan Baiyu's paternal grandmother died in childbirth, and his paternal grandfather remarried not long after. Guan's father was almost forgotten in the countryside until he was a teenager when he was taken away by his family.
After being taken away, Guan's father was not used to life at his biological father's house and would often run to his wet nurse's house in the countryside. Later, his father got annoyed and simply sent him to a construction team, making him follow the construction team to repair roads and bridges everywhere.
Guan's father lived like this until he was almost thirty years old, when he fell from the water tower and died while repairing it.
After he died, his wife ran away, leaving behind a crying baby whose biological father didn't want to raise him.
It was 1979. Guan's father's family had long since moved to Changxi City, which was very, very far for the Guan family living in the countryside of Anshan Town. However, when Guan's mother learned that the child she had nursed was gone, she still traveled a long way to pick up the unwanted child, named him Guan Baiyu, and registered him in the Guan family's household registration.
Grandma Guan's biological son was a year older than her father, but they never had children after getting married.
Grandma Guan brought Guan Baiyu back because she wanted her son to have an heir.
But Grandma Guan's son didn't want it, especially since Guan Baiyu's wife got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter not long after he came to the Guan family.
Some families favor sons over daughters, treating their adopted sons better than their daughters. But Guan Baiyu's adoptive parents were different; they only loved their own flesh and blood and couldn't be bothered with Guan Baiyu.
Guan Baiyu was raised by Grandma Guan. Although he called Guan's parents "Mom and Dad," he was not close to them. Guan's parents were always poor and had no money or extra kindness to give to Guan Baiyu, so Guan Baiyu never had a good life and even dropped out of high school.
In the past two years, Guan Baiyu's adoptive father borrowed money to raise chickens, hoping to make some money, but all the chickens died of illness, and he lost all the money.
He was already tightening his belt to make ends meet, so why would he care about Guan Baiyu?
Behind the small old house where Guan Baiyu lived, which was only about 60 or 70 square meters in total, there was a two-story building where Guan Baiyu's adoptive parents lived.
The small building was made of brick and tile, but it only occupied about eighty square meters. There were two rooms in the front and two rooms in the back on the ground floor, and the second floor only had two rooms in the front. There was supposed to be a building on top of the two rooms in the back, but because there was no money, it was not built. Only a platform was built.
Upstairs, Guan Baiyu's adoptive parents and daughter each lived in one of the two rooms. Downstairs, the four rooms were used for eating, raising silkworms, and storing grain in the front two rooms, but because the back two rooms were platforms instead of roof tiles and always leaked, they were used to raise pigs.
So, there's simply no place for Guan Baiyu to stay.
Guan Baiyu had always lived with Grandma Guan in that mud-walled hut. Grandma Guan died two years ago, but he still lives there alone.
These were things Shi Zhen had known for a very long time, yet he still remembered them vividly.
The mud house had its door tightly shut, and it seemed no one was home. Shi Zhen sat down on a large rock by the roadside, somewhat dazed.
He had asked at the station earlier whether today was Arbor Day or Saturday.
He didn't have to go to school on Saturday, so he rushed over just to see Guan Baiyu.
But he forgot that nowadays, students also have to attend school for half a day on Saturdays. It's probably around 11 a.m. now, and Guan Baiyu probably hasn't finished school yet.
11:00 AM, Xiaqiu Township.
Xiaqiu Township is a township under Anshan Town. The township has a primary school, a junior high school, and a fairly large health clinic.
In previous years, people from nearby villages would come to the township health center to give birth, but this year there is a regulation that they must go to the town hospital to give birth.
There's a street in Xiaqiu Township lined with all sorts of shops. Whether you need oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, groceries, fish, shrimp, or pork, you can find it all here.
Xiaqiu Junior High School and Xiaqiu Elementary School are located at the end of the street.
The elementary school students had already finished school, and a large group of children rushed out of the school with their schoolbags on their backs.
A small number of students were picked up by their parents, while the rest went home by themselves, some by bicycle and some by walking home in twos and threes.
The junior high school next door hasn't let out yet; they won't be dismissed for another twenty minutes.
Class 1, Grade 9.
Twenty years later, although most students at Xiaqiu Junior High School cannot get into regular high schools, they will go to vocational high schools after graduating from junior high school, and many will continue to junior college.
But at this time, 90 percent of the students at Xiaqiu Junior High School will not continue their studies. Even though it is only the third year of junior high school, many of them have already stopped coming to school and are working in factories outside.
The school also has fast and slow classes. The fast class is for students who plan to continue their studies after finishing junior high school. The teachers will focus on their studies. The students in the slow class will not continue their studies after junior high school, so the teachers will not pay much attention to them.
Those students didn't want the teacher to manage them either.
Class 1 is an advanced class. Even though it's an advanced class, the students can't sit still as school is about to end. They have already secretly packed their schoolbags, and as soon as the bell rings and the teacher leaves, some of them rush out.
Guan Baiyu also stood up as the crowd did. Just then, his deskmate suddenly stepped onto his chair with his backpack, then onto his desk, jumped off the desk, sneered, and left.
There were still textbooks on his desk that hadn't been put away properly, and now a large footprint was imprinted on them.
The desks in the classroom have been replaced. Instead of two desks per student, each desk is now one desk per student, arranged in four rows of two desks side by side in the classroom.
The first and fourth columns are placed against the wall.
In other words, if the person sitting next to the wall keeps going in and out, the person sitting on the outside needs to move aside.
Every week, the tables and chairs will be moved one row to the left, with the fourth row moving to the first row. This means that everyone will sometimes have to sit against the wall and need their deskmate to give up their seat.
This was nothing unusual, just giving up a seat, but Guan Baiyu's deskmate Yan Jiangtao disliked him.
When Guan Baiyu was sitting against the wall, he wanted to go to the toilet after class, but Yan Jiangtao sat on the outside and wouldn't let him go out.
When Yan Jiangtao was sitting against the wall, he wouldn't allow Guan Baiyu to move slowly when he needed to go in or out, otherwise he would kick Guan Baiyu's chair or simply step on Guan Baiyu's table to get out.
"Why is Yan Jiangtao like this!" The girl sitting behind Yan Jiangtao grumbled in dissatisfaction. Before, when Yan Jiangtao sat on the outside, he wouldn't let Guan Baiyu go to the toilet after class. Every time, she and her deskmate had to pull the table back so that Guan Baiyu could go out.
Guan Baiyu smiled at her, wiped the book with a rag, put it in his schoolbag, and left.
Behind him, some people felt indignant on his behalf, some didn't take it seriously, and some disliked him.
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