Chinese New Year is almost here!
The 28th day of the twelfth lunar month.
Every household in the village has hung dried goods, sausages, and other items in front of their doors in preparation for the New Year. Walking along the road, you'll often encounter groups of children, dressed in new clothes and carrying firecrackers, running along the way.
The people who had been working away from home also returned. Thanks to a certain nouveau riche, because the village got its first Santana, the villagers spontaneously went to his house again, and Xu Tangmian finally had a few days of peace.
Ever since her family got a telephone, people have been coming to her door every now and then, asking her to make a call out of consideration for her neighbors. If it were a real emergency, that would be fine, but most of the time they would call the other person's workplace to talk about trivial matters, forcing Xu Tangmian to explain to each person when they called back.
Xu Tangmian was too busy to be a switchboard operator today. Amidst a flurry of calls from other people, she finally managed to get a call from the welfare home. Zhi Meizi's train was expected to arrive in the city around 10 a.m.
It was Li Yutao who had used her connections to send Zhi Meizi to Beiping, so she was considered Zhi Meizi's benefactor. Naturally, she brought her along to pick her up at the station this time. Li Qingmang greeted some acquaintances here and borrowed a Hongqi car. With Zhi Meizi, there were four people in the car.
Yu Chunsheng was worried about his pregnant wife, but something else had happened at the printing factory and he couldn't leave. Plus, there wasn't enough room for so many people in the car, so Xu Tangmian didn't let him go.
Unexpectedly, Song Weidong, who originally wanted to make a good impression by acting as the driver, was suddenly called away by the health center before setting off. As a result, his brother-in-law, who originally wanted to show off, temporarily became the driver, and there was actually a seat in the car.
Yu Chunsheng had already gone to the printing factory. Xu Tangmian had no intention of calling him back. After discussing it with Li Yutao, they drove straight into the city.
The car contained only her younger sister and her best friend. Li Qingmang went all out, rambling on and on about their boyfriends, and finally lamenting why no one was interested in him.
This was, of course, a joke. The Li family's social standing wasn't exactly top-tier in Beiping, but it was considered upper-middle class within their circle. At least, even though the two children were just coming to Yilin City for some experience, they could still find a deep and complex network of connections.
Li Qingmang and Li Yutao are twins. Their son was assigned to the Policy Research Institute, and was also expected to work in Beiping (Beijing); their daughter wanted to work in education, so she was assigned to be a primary school teacher at Hongxing Primary School, a school run by Principal Ding, a friend of Li's father. The plan was for her to work at the grassroots level for a few years before naturally transferring into the education system.
There were quite a few people who wanted to marry into the Li family, especially since the two children were both good-looking and capable. However, the younger daughter had fallen in love with the village doctor, while the older son disapproved of the pampered young ladies from similar social classes and spent all his time working without any sense of propriety, which gave the Li parents a lot of headaches.
Upon arriving at the train station, Li Yutao took out a cardboard box she had prepared beforehand and held it high, on which were written the three large characters: Wang Xiazhi.
There were many pedestrians coming and going at the train station. Fearing that passersby might bump into Xu Tangmian, Li Yutao specially led her to a corner a little further back, while she and her brother walked ahead holding up the sign.
A train whistle sounded, and the green train slowly pulled up to the platform. Xu Tangmian hadn't seen Zhi Meizi for a long time, and couldn't help but feel excited. As soon as the train stopped and people got off, she couldn't help but stand on tiptoe to look at each door.
Soon, from a car door a little further away, a girl wearing a pink cotton-padded jacket and with her hair tied in pigtails jumped off the bus. She spotted the sign with her name on it in the crowd at a glance and ran towards them through the crowd.
Zhi Meizi looked much more lively than before, and her clothes and appearance showed that she was being taken care of. Xu Tangmian was delighted and couldn't help but sigh that she had done a lot of useless things since she transmigrated, but at least she had done something good.
Because her belly was already quite big, Xu Tangmian didn't extend her arms to welcome Zhi Meizi like others did; this gesture was done by the Li siblings.
Zhi Meizi jogged over, threw down her suitcase, and greeted Xu Tangmian first, saying with a surprised look, "Teacher Xu, are you having a younger brother or sister?"
Xu Tangmian nodded, then looked down and asked her, "Do you hope it's a younger brother or a younger sister?"
Zhi Meizi replied, "Sister, I hope it's a sister."
Xu Tangmian smiled and ruffled her hair again, "Your brother Yu thinks so too."
Zhi smiled and hugged Li Yutao again, but hesitated when hugging Li Qingmang, which made Li Qingmang deliberately put on a stern face and tease her: "Why did you skip me? Have you forgotten who bought clothes and snacks for you?"
Zhi Meizi's eyes flickered as she reached out to hug him, but before she could prepare herself, Li Qingmang suddenly picked her up and lifted her up, spinning her around in the crowd a few times. Startled, she screamed, "Put me down, Brother Li!"
The people on the platform were used to this, but Li Yutao felt that her brother had embarrassed her again. She coughed twice, rubbing her forehead, and only then did Li Qingmang put the child down.
With a child in the car, Li Qingmang suddenly became more composed, chatting casually while asking about Zhi Meizi's homework.
Zhi Meizi had never been to school since she was a child. Only Xu Tangmian had taught her to recognize a few characters. After what happened, she was even less able to concentrate on her studies. After arriving in Beiping, the Li family specially hired a psychologist for her and arranged a tutor, raising her like their own daughter for a period of time.
Later, Zhi Meizi gradually overcame her psychological trauma and was able to attend school normally. She then took the initiative to ask her parents, the Li family, to let her live in an orphanage. The Li family thought that there would be more children there, making it easier for her to make friends, so they respected her wishes and only picked her up to eat with them every weekend, which was considered regular care.
When her respected older brother asked about her studies, Zhi took the initiative to unzip her schoolbag, which was resting on her lap, and took out her homework and test papers, handing them to Li Yutao in the passenger seat.
“I listened attentively to every class and did all the homework assigned by Teacher Fang. I got a perfect score on the final exam this time.”
Ms. Fang was a tutor hired by the Li family because they were worried that Zhi Meizi would fall behind in her studies at school. She would come to tutor her every weekend when Zhi Meizi returned to the Li family home.
Xu Tangmian looked pleased and quickly picked up the tin pencil case that was sticking out of Zhi Meizi's schoolbag. It was covered with stickers of Sun Wukong.
Unexpectedly, even a little girl like Zhi would put this on her pencil case. Xu Tangmian asked her, "Do you also like watching Journey to the West?"
Zhi nodded frantically, her mouth never stopping as she said, "The orphanage puts on TV for us every day after school. All of us kids love watching it. The Monkey King is so amazing!"
She held up her pencil case: "I won this sticker from someone else. I had an arm wrestling match with that boy, and whoever won got the sticker."
Thinking of the grand plan that Yu Chunsheng had mentioned to her last night, Xu Tangmian casually asked Zhi Meizi, "Do many people buy these stickers?"
“There are a lot, but I don’t have any money.” Zhi Meizi was not discouraged. She took out her textbooks from her schoolbag, opened the cover and found stickers of various beautiful fairies inside. She also took out a string of fluffy things and handed them to Xu Tangmian.
"What is this?" Xu Tangmian looked at the object in her hand that resembled both a headdress and a necklace.
"This is the rat spirit's headdress! Teacher Xu, haven't you seen it before?" Zhi Meizi picked up the headdress and put it on her head to demonstrate, even imitating what she saw in the play. "Wow, what a handsome little monk!"
Its lifelike appearance amused everyone in the car. Xu Tangmian thought, "A rat spirit's headdress makes you this happy. If they aired 'Princess Pearl,' you'd probably buy all three sets of Xiang Fei's red, white, and blue headdresses."
"That's right!" Xu Tangmian suddenly realized that even if she didn't have any special abilities, her information advantage was her advantage!
Leaving aside the distant past, let's just talk about the upcoming Chinese New Year. The Spring Festival Gala has always been a hit-making machine. The fire that started last year has been burning for decades, and the melody still gets people excited when it plays.
Xu Tangmian studied new media in college and originally planned to become a host or something similar. However, she only passed the second-class level in the Mandarin proficiency test and later settled for the teacher qualification exam.
Her graduation thesis was related to research on entertainment trends over the past few decades, which prompted her to think carefully about the 1988 Spring Festival Gala…
Back home, Li Youlan set up a large pot in the yard to welcome Zhi Meizi. She had heard from Xu Tangmian and the others that Zhi Meizi loved to eat lion's head meatballs, and with New Year's Eve approaching, she needed to prepare some meatballs for the New Year's Eve dinner.
Before even reaching the courtyard, a fragrant aroma could be smelled from afar.
Originally, Zhi was a little scared to step into her hometown again, but when she arrived at Teacher Xu's house and smelled the aroma of the lion's head meatballs, she felt that she was loved by a group of people, and that someone would protect her from the storms that were coming her way. She had nothing to be afraid of.
She happily jumped into the yard, but instead of seeing Brother Yu and Brother Song, she saw an unfamiliar aunt waving a ladle in front of a large pot.
The firewood crackled and popped, and wisps of white smoke rose from the oil pan. Li Youlan put down her spoon, walked over to her, wiped her hands with her apron, and then took her hand, asking, "You must be Zhi Meizi, right? I'm a distant relative of your brother Yu. You can just call me Aunt Li."
"Hello, Aunt Li." Zhi greeted her politely, then asked, "Are you frying meatballs?"
"Yes, I heard this is your favorite." Li Youlan took a quick look at it, then, worried about the oil splattering on her, quickly pulled her away and asked with a smile, "Where are your older brothers and sisters?"
Zhi ran over to the freshly fried meatballs and grabbed one, chewing as she said, "They went to the clinic to find Brother Song, so they left me here first."
"Okay." Li Youlan liked the child more and more as she looked at her. She went to the kitchen, put a bowl in it, and handed it to her. "Do you know how to turn on the TV? There's a TV in the house, and it'll be warmer."
Zhi jumped up excitedly, "There's a TV here?!"
——
Before they knew it, it was lunchtime. Yu Chunsheng rode back on his bicycle with a rolled-up bag of some unknown substance on the back.
Looking at the happy family in the room, he unrolled the scroll and spread out the painting: "How about this couplet? It was made by the factory itself."
Xu Tangmian: "Great!"
Li Yutao: "That's pretty good."
Song Weidong: "It's alright."
Li Qingmang: "Barely satisfactory."
Before Li Youlan could speak, Zhi Meizi jumped off her lap, hopped behind Yu Chunsheng, and quickly grabbed the stickers on the back and unfolded them.
"It's Monkey King! So many Monkey Kings!"
"You have such sharp eyes!" Yu Chunsheng chuckled and ruffled her hair, then asked somewhat nervously, "The factory worked overtime to print these, and we're planning to make some New Year pictures and couplets to sell in town. What do you think?"
Everyone: "Move over a bit, you're blocking our view of the TV."
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