Chapter 39, the beginning of the new story, features a protagonist named Miao Youjin.
When literacy is linked to personal benefits, the effect is immediate. Yao Xiaoyu, who had slept well after getting angry, woke up to find a piece of white paper pasted on the kitchen wall with half a sentence to remember for the day written on it.
Looking again at Grandma, who was getting ready to leave, a corner of a piece of paper was sticking out of her pocket.
Why bother?
Yao Xiaoyu ate stir-fried cabbage and pork, but she didn't feel very happy. She could only comfort herself by saying that actions matter more than intentions, and being able to read was better than anything else.
Because the weather got colder, we could use the confit method, so our family went from having a big meat dish every week to having a variety of meat dishes every day. The solidified lard could be scratched with chopsticks, so we gently divided the week's worth of confit meat into six pieces and used one piece each day to stir-fry vegetables.
The pork in the stir-fried cabbage with pork comes from this. The pork belly slices, which have had some oil rendered out, are not tough and are not greasy even if you eat a lot. It's just that the portion is too small for a large family, but compared to the steamed dishes we used to eat without even a pot, this meal is already quite good.
Yao Xiaoyu picked up a slice of meat, gulped down the thick porridge that held its shape perfectly in place, and then took her boiled egg and went out to work with Tao Erni, who was waiting at the door. Her pens, ink, paper, and other such items had all been moved to a locked drawer at Maria Hospital last week.
Eggs were a special supply for Yao Xiaoyu after she started working. Zhou Chunhua and others didn't know about the work at the hospital, but they thought that Yao Xiaoyu was mentally exhausted from working and writing. Before Yao Xiaoyu started her job, her family held a small meeting and decided to boil an egg for her every day to nourish her body.
Wenrou wanted to include Yao Tianrui as well, but Zhou Chunhua immediately retorted with one sentence:
"Eggs cost one copper coin each. If Tianrui wants to eat one, he should also pay the two cents."
Yao Tianrui didn't hesitate for a second before choosing to keep his two cents—there were always times when he was short of money at work, eggs were delicious, but the meals at home were also plentiful.
"Two fried dough sticks, please."
Yao Xiaoyu stopped at the pancake shop, ordered two freshly fried dough sticks, tore one open, and gestured for Tao Erni to take it.
"I can only eat one and a half."
Just like instant noodles, one bowl isn't enough and two bowls are too much, Yao Xiaoyu also finds one fried dough stick not enough and two too greasy. One and a half sticks is just the right amount. However, in the past, she would take the untouched half stick back home for a treat, but now... she'll wait until she's in the mood.
"If you don't eat it, I'll throw it away."
Seeing that Tao Erni's hand didn't move, Yao Xiaoyu figured she probably didn't want to eat food that someone else had touched, so she was about to let go—in this era, the principle was that "food that has been on the ground for three seconds belongs to homeless children," so there was no such thing as wasting food.
It's a bit of a hellish joke, but it's true.
If a fried dough stick falls to the ground, Yao Xiaoyu doesn't even need to move an inch. With just a turn of her head, the fried dough stick will disappear without a trace.
"I'll eat it."
Tao Erni interrupted the starting preparations in the corner and readily accepted the fried dough stick worth half a copper coin. The fried dough stick was very crispy and made a crunching sound when bitten into.
The two parted ways at the hospital entrance as usual. This time, Tao Erni asked Yao Xiaoyu to write the two characters for her: "rice".
...
Why do you look unhappy?
Aunt Gu watched Yao Xiaoyu tidying up the newspapers and asked curiously, "This girl has a good temper, who could have provoked her like this?"
"nothing."
Yao Xiaoyu pursed her lips and shook her head. After yelling at them yesterday and outsourcing the responsibility, she was no longer so angry with the two women in her family. However, compared to Tao Erni, who was looking at her eagerly today, she couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.
Yao Xiaoyu was unwilling to talk, and Aunt Gu didn't press her further. The key to how she could gossip for so many years without getting beaten up was her keen observation skills. She could tell whether someone genuinely didn't want to talk or was just playing hard to get. There were plenty of people willing to chat, so Yao Xiaoyu wasn't an exception.
"How about... a big Tu Ning?"
A middle-aged man, holding a piece of paper, hesitated for a moment at the entrance of the Western medicine pharmacy before Yao Xiaoyu could even react to who he was. Aunt Gu had already put down her work, walked over, and taken the paper from the man's hand.
"Take it."
Aunt Gu glanced at the paper, took the medicine from the pharmacy cabinet and handed it to the man. Then she sat back down at the table and started doing her handicrafts. The man stood blankly at the door for a while, and finally left with some doubt.
What is "Da Tu Ning"?
The conversation came so quickly that Yao Xiaoyu hadn't even had time to react before it was over. Fortunately, the man was gone, but Aunt Gu was still there, so at least she had someone to ask.
"It's quinine, it says so here."
Aunt Gu opened the cabinet door she had just closed and showed it to Yao Xiaoyu. She had no complaints about Yao Xiaoyu working here for a week and still knowing nothing about medicine—everyone goes through that, it would be strange if a young girl could understand foreign medicine so easily.
The name quinine may be unfamiliar, but its other name is more widely known in this land—quinine.
“Look at this character, it has a big character on top and two 'earth' characters on the bottom. He only recognized the top part, so he called it that.”
The traditional and simplified characters for "Kui" are the same, and the doctor's handwriting is so flamboyant that people coming to get medicine often make similar mistakes. Aunt Gu was already familiar with this, but Yao Xiaoyu was concerned about something else entirely:
"Aunt Gu, can you read?"
Two guests came last week. Aunt Gu only opened the medicine cabinet after asking about the appearance of the medicines. Yao Xiaoyu thought Aunt Gu had memorized where each medicine was stored and its characteristics, but today…
"I can't read."
It was another unexpected answer. Yao Xiaoyu didn't believe it and asked around for a long time before she could roughly understand the key point.
Aunt Gu was indeed illiterate, but she recognized the names of the medicines. She had been with these medicines for so long that the words were like pictures to her. Each picture had a different pronunciation and structure, and she could tell what it meant just by looking at it. She could also tell if something was missing. But she couldn't write them herself.
She couldn't even recognize a single character when it was taken out of context from the entire name of the medicine.
Yao Xiaoyu: ...
Being literate is being literate, and not being literate is not being literate. This kind of half-knowledgeable person is something Yao Xiaoyu has never seen before.
Yao Xiaoyu's literacy brain is starting to stir again.
"I'm so old, I only need to recognize silver dollars and small copper coins. If I want to know what's going on in the newspaper, I can just ask someone to read it to me. Why do I need to be literate?"
Aunt Gu had no desire to work hard, and Yao Xiaoyu didn't force her. After flipping through the newspaper for a while, she began to think about her new article.
The outline for the new story has been finalized. The protagonist's surname is Miao. She is a girl born in a rural area of northern Jiangsu. She is the fifth child in her family and does not have a formal name. Her family only calls her Miao Wuni. After the taxes in her family increased again, her father finally made up his mind to take the whole family to Shanghai in a small wooden boat to make a living.
They didn't bring anything valuable and couldn't afford the rent. The small boat with a roof was where the Miao people lived. If nothing unexpected happened, the Miao people would, like everyone else, wait until the boat planks rotted away before building a shed on the shore and living in what they called a "rolling dragon."
Miao Wuni didn't want to live like this, so she decided to go to Shanghai and make some money.
Yao Xiaoyu had collected a lot of material during this period, and once she got into the zone, she wrote with great enthusiasm. She didn't put down her pen until Aunt Gu urged her to go eat. While she was waiting in line for the smoked meat, she was still thinking about Miao Youjin's story.
Miao Youjin was the name Miao Wuni gave herself later. She originally planned to be called Miao Youqian, which was more straightforward, but the teacher felt that she couldn't say it. So the teacher told her that it was better to have gold than money, and coaxed her to change the name to the homophone You, saying that the name could contain gold as big as a pomelo.
"Did the hospital strike it rich today? They even have mutton."
Lamb is warming in winter and can be used for everything from hot pot to stew. It's also expensive. When Yao Xiaoyu tricked Yao Ping'an into copying the gold-patterned bowl, she used the excuse of getting her manuscript fee to eat lamb hot pot. In the end, she got the manuscript fee, Zhou Chunhua had a big fuss, and Yao Xiaoyu was just fooling people. She hasn't been able to eat hot pot even once since.
The conversation of the people ahead interrupted Yao Xiaoyu's thoughts. Only then did she belatedly smell the aroma of meat. Yao Xiaoyu subconsciously counted the spices inside: chili peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, ginger, cinnamon...
"With such skills, how did you end up working in a hospital?"
Someone voiced Yao Xiaoyu's doubts: it's not that hospitals are bad, but compared to the more relaxed private chefs, their place really doesn't have any advantages.
No one knows the answer, and no one investigates it—the taste of mutton stew with radish is simply too wonderful.
The person serving the food didn't shake their hands. Each person received a standard two pieces of mutton and a bowl of radish. The mutton was served with the skin on, making it very tender and soft. However, the radish was even more flavorful. Each piece looked quite neat, but it would break in half with just a pinch of chopsticks. You had to carefully control the force you used. Some impatient people simply abandoned their chopsticks and scooped the radish out with a spoon.
Yao Xiaoyu ate the radish clean, even mixing the last bit of soup with rice before finishing the meal with mutton. Satisfied, she went back to continue writing.
Miao Youjin's story is a typical tale of struggle from the bottom up. From being a penniless boat dweller at the beginning, to a trainee in the "rolling dragon" class, to achieving success in both career and love at the end, becoming the manager of a factory with a thousand employees, it almost captures every satisfying moment. Reading it in one go is incredibly exhilarating, but if it were to be serialized...
Editor Pi is unlikely to be the type to casually reveal his address, right?
Yao Xiaoyu pinched her cheek in frustration, revising and deleting and adding to the article she had written that morning.
The factory manager Miao Youjin at the end of the article is a cheerful yet meticulous person. When people mention this female factory manager, the first thing that comes to mind is her erudition. However, Miao Youjin was not like this at the beginning. She gradually grew up by stumbling along the way.
This writing style really tests the author's writing skills. If written well, the characters will appear very full and have their own arc. If written poorly... well, there doesn't seem to be any consequence.
Looking at the pile of serialized novels on the table, with no clear main characters, Yao Xiaoyu sighed once again at how low the expectations of readers were at that time.
However, Yao Xiaoyu still needs to polish her writing; this is the writing quality of a qualified author!
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Author's Note: There was a lot of discussion in the previous chapter, so here's a summary and answer:
[1] Question: The female lead's educational background.
A: Xiaoyu skipped grades in her studies. She had already graduated from middle school, but at that time, universities were not open to women. She had to wait until February 1919 to catch the first train of the first batch of female university students.
[2] Is your family leeching off you with a clear conscience?
A: No, everyone is struggling to pay off a debt of six hundred silver dollars. Zhou Chunhua is cooking for others, Wenrou is doing handicrafts, Yao Pingan is copying books, and Yao Tianrui is working. Everyone is making money; no one is idle. It's just that their abilities are limited (but they are making a good amount of money), which makes Xiaoyu stand out.
【3】Nutritional issues.
A: Every time Xiaoyu goes to collect her royalties, she buys several kilograms of pork. The nutrition won't be replenished in a short time, but the food isn't bad.
【4】Gently asks Xiaoyu to do things
A: The situation in which this occurred was that Yao Tianrui and Zhou Chunhua had jobs, Yao Xiaoli had to go to school, and Yao Pingan was unable to work due to health problems, so almost all the housework was done by Wenrou.
Xiaoyu didn't mention that she made money by writing articles, and Wenrou didn't know anything about it either. In Wenrou's eyes, Xiaoyu read books when she was free, and if she had time to read, she should also have time to do housework.
After receiving her royalties, Xiaoyu stopped doing all household chores.
[5] Grandma is always watching the money. Is she unable to bear seeing the female lead spend money?
A: No, it's because the family still has debts. It's fine for Xiaoyu to spend a little money, but if she spends lavishly, putting aside the question of where the money comes from, spending money recklessly without paying off the debt will give creditors the impression that "she has money to buy expensive things but doesn't pay back the money, and her character is questionable." In that era, a bad reputation could really make people refuse to sell you anything.
Like a small fish buying meat, it only dares to buy when there are few people around, and it chooses vendors who are tight-lipped, disguised as having medicinal properties.
Besides, Grandma wanted to pay off the debts as soon as possible, and she always hoped to have as much money as possible. She was eyeing all the family's money, not just Xiaoyu's.
【6】The issue of the female lead's status.
A: The female lead has a high status in the family, and they discuss everything with her (though there's nothing major happening right now). As for the food, in her grandmother's eyes, one big meat dish a week and one meal at a regular restaurant with her writing fees is enough; she doesn't need any extra nutrition.
[7] The hidden problems of Yao Tianrui and Yao Pingan.
A: Yao Tianrui was reserving a spot for someone else in the job, but because he wasn't the actual person in charge, the work wasn't easy. He had to give 6 yuan of his monthly salary of 6.2 yuan to his family and keep the remaining 20 yuan for himself.
Yao Ping'an has had this illness since birth, a disease of affluence that requires careful nurturing. He is a typical person with low energy, and the daily copying has exhausted almost all of his physical strength. The money for copying books doesn't even pass through his hands; it goes directly to Zhou Chunhua to pay off debts. Like Wenrou, he has hardly ever left the courtyard. Yao Xiaoyu's only requirement for him is to stay alive.
[8] Does Wenrou only have eyes for her son?
A: No. She is gentle and favors sons over daughters, but it doesn't mean she doesn't love her daughters; it's just that her love isn't as intense. Roughly, Yao Tianrui receives seven-tenths of her maternal love, while Yao Xiaoyu and Yao Xiaoli receive the remaining three-tenths. She wouldn't sell her daughter to raise money for her son's dowry, nor would she watch her daughter die. She loves and cares for her daughters, just not as much.
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These are the main questions I've summarized. Feel free to ask if you have any further questions.
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