For example, right now, around seven o'clock in the morning, the diligent and studious Chen Bing gets out of bed early at her grandmother's house.
At this very moment, Liu Yue's mother was still busy at the breakfast stall near the elementary school, while her father, Comrade Chen Shichao, was working at a construction site thousands of miles away. Her maternal grandfather, needless to say, had gone for a walk by the river. Her maternal grandmother, visible through the window, was working in the yard.
Seeing a good opportunity, Chen Bing slowly stood up and carefully got out of bed. Then, pushing a small stool, he went to a table. He skillfully opened the table drawer and rummaged through the clutter to find a radio.
After getting the radio, Chen Bing closed the drawer and then pushed the small stool back into place.
After doing all this, he climbed into bed, put the radio under his pillow, turned the volume down to the lowest setting, and tuned to a familiar radio channel. Soon, the gibberish French came through the receiver.
There are very few French channels available. Chen Bing secretly searched for a long time behind his family's back before finally finding the French audio broadcast that aired every day from seven to eight o'clock.
After listening and repeating along for half an hour, Chen Bing keenly sensed that her grandmother might be about to come into the house.
Don't ask me how I know, I overheard the neighbor next door asking her to borrow something.
While there was still time, Chen Bing turned off the radio, pushed the stool back to its original place, and then calmly returned to bed, pretending to be still half asleep.
A dozen seconds after Chen Bing closed her eyes, her grandmother pushed open the door and came in.
After she came in, she glanced around the room, then rummaged through the cabinets for a while. About half a minute later, she left the room with something in her hand.
After she left, Chen Bing didn't immediately get up to continue listening to the radio. Based on his understanding, his grandmother's next move would be to wake him up.
A minute or two later, she returned to the same spot.
The reason she wakes herself up at the same time every day, or rather, to check if she's awake, is somewhat related to her own personality. She used to get up at 7:30 every morning precisely so she could listen to the 8:00 AM Russian news.
"My dear grandson, are you still not awake?"
With a hand on her shoulder, Chen Bing also mimicked waking up.
He woke up groggily, then opened his mouth and begged for food. At seven and a half months old, he could already eat some porridge, fruit puree, and other complementary foods, so his grandmother went straight to the kitchen, scooped some porridge into a small bowl, and fed him.
I watched as my dear grandmother scooped a spoonful of white porridge with a white porcelain spoon, then put it directly into her mouth, chewed it up, and spat it back into the spoon.
"Ah...why are you looking at me? Eat! Why aren't you eating?"
Chen Bing first looked at the eagerness on her grandmother's face, then looked at the broken rice porridge in the spoon, which seemed to be covered with saliva.
I, Chen Bing, would rather die than eat a single bite of this food, even if it means jumping off this cliff!
Because Chen Bing kept her mouth tightly shut and looked very determined, her grandmother finally gave up after trying to persuade her for three minutes.
"You child, why are you being picky about such good rice porridge!"
She angrily rubbed her head, then ate the whole bowl of rice without leaving a single grain.
Rural women are mostly like this, always saving money in a ridiculous and pathetic way.
After finishing her meal, Grandma took the radio out of the drawer, fiddled with it for a bit, and then placed it in front of Chen Bing.
It was already eight o'clock, and the French program had ended, so Chen Bing wasn't interested in the radio anymore.
"Oh! You child, you're always online. You need to concentrate on what you're doing, you know?" Seeing Chen Bing's uninterested look, his grandmother, regardless of whether he understood or not, began to lecture him, "You're just like your father, you're always enthusiastic at the beginning, but you get lazier and lazier as time goes on. You should know..."
And so, Chen Bing listened to her grandmother scold her father for five minutes, then watched her berate her grandfather for ten minutes, and then began to recount the misdeeds of the old bachelor in the east of the village when he was young. During the intermission, she also scolded a dog that barked twice as it passed by.
Finally, she changed the subject and praised Chen Bing, hugging him and calling him "my good grandson" repeatedly.
After venting her frustrations, she picked up Chen Bing, carried a small stool, and went to the door. She peeled peanuts while listening to a crosstalk performance on the radio. Occasionally, she would greet passing neighbors and chat with them.
Indeed, the image of an old rural woman was vividly presented in Chen Bing's eyes.
Grandma was shelling peanuts, while she sat idly in a basket covered with a blanket.
For a moment, Chen Bing recalled an article called "Blessing" from high school, in which a child named Amao resembled her somewhat.
Perhaps seeing that she was bored, Grandma took a peeled peanut and put it in her mouth.
Fresh peanuts! I haven't had them in ages, and I'm really craving them. Just as Chen Bing opened her mouth to eat, her grandmother snatched the peanuts away with a strange smile.
"Your teeth haven't all grown in yet, why are you eating peanuts?"
Why are you giving it to me if I can't eat it?
I'm speechless. Seriously speechless. Is it really fun to tease a child?
After that, no matter how his grandmother tried to tempt Chen Bing with peanuts, he remained unmoved.
"Wow, that's really clever."
After making a couple of remarks, she stopped trying to tease Chen Bing. If it were any other child, they would definitely cry if an adult teased them like that, but her grandson was so well-behaved that he didn't cry at all, making him especially fun to tease.
My grandmother has raised five or six children in total, but Chen Bing is the first she's ever had. She's never even heard of someone like him.
"My dear grandson, my dear grandson."
Thinking of this, Grandma couldn't help but hug Chen Bing again and give her a good kiss.
After enduring her advances, Chen Bing was gently released.
The morning passed by leisurely, and around 10 a.m., when the sun was hanging low in the sky, my grandfather's hunched figure finally appeared at the other end of the village.
Almost as soon as she saw him, Grandma stood up excitedly and started criticizing him for going out so early in the morning.
She counted from head to toe, leaving the other person speechless and no longer daring to utter a sound. Only after he slunk into the house and took the initiative to do the washing and hanging of clothes did Grandma slowly shut her mouth.
Chen Bing had never witnessed such a scene in his previous life, because his grandmother had not existed in his world since he could remember.
I overheard my parents talking about how my maternal grandmother passed away from illness when I was almost one year old. The cause of death was unclear, but they knew it was a chronic illness.
Thinking about this, he couldn't help but feel a little sad. Compared to his parents, his grandmother was just a "stranger" to him after a few months of living together, but the care she gave him and the relationship between them had left a deep impression on him.
But there was nothing he could do. He was just a seven-month-old baby, and even if he knew in advance that his grandmother would pass away in a few months, he would be powerless to stop it.
After all, it was a long-standing illness that took her life, not a sudden accident.
If the passing of a loved one is irreversible, what can one do?
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