Chapter 97 My boyfriend just feels sad and regretful
"Yes, he has already taken the bus back."
After seeing Zhu Jixiang off, Zhu Yingning returned to Xu Sirui's home and finally found time to talk to Liu Guifang on the phone.
Liu Guifang initially initiated the call, borrowing a neighbor's phone and calling several times. Since Zhu Yingning wasn't home, Xu Sirui answered each time. Liu Guifang had mixed feelings about him. She undoubtedly resented him for abducting her daughter, but because of his financial support, she couldn't say anything too harsh. She could only humbly plead with him to persuade Zhu Yingning to return home, and to inquire about Zhu Jixiang's whereabouts.
Xu Sirui always answered: "She is not here with me. I will ask her to call you when she comes back." As for Zhu Jixiang's topic, he chose to ignore it.
This dragged on until the day Zhu Yingning returned.
"Brother Xiang bought a ticket this morning, and it should arrive late tonight. I guess he will go straight back to the county's No. 1 Middle School. If you are worried, you can call their school tomorrow morning." Zhu Yingning said.
"Hey, hey," Liu Guifang responded from the other end, her voice still nasal from crying. "What about you, Ningning?"
She said, “I’m staying here.”
In case Liu Guifang didn't understand, she explained bluntly, "Brother Xiang doesn't even want to do housework. If he stays in Beijing, he won't work and send money home. If we rely on him to support our family, we'll be starving sooner or later."
Liu Guifang actually understood this in her heart, but when Zhu Yingning pointed it out, she could only respond in silence.
"When he comes home on weekends, let him do the housework. Mom, I know you're working hard, but your hardship isn't entirely caused by others. It's because you don't let yourself go. You don't want Xiangdi to take on his share of responsibilities, but instead shoulder it for him. That's why he's so distracted, and that's why you're so tired."
"But after all, he..." Liu Guifang couldn't help but want to defend herself, but halfway through, she felt that she had no way to defend herself and sighed, "Oh... I understand."
After hanging up the phone, Zhu Yingning didn't put it down immediately. She listened to the continuous busy tone coming from the other end, feeling mixed emotions.
Sometimes, Zhu Yingning felt that her mother was a strong woman. When someone violated the golden rules deeply rooted in her mind, she would always stand up to defend those iron rules. But most of the time, her mother acted weak and indecisive, like a plant without roots, and could only hold on to her husband and children.
Are you saying she favors boys over girls? This is an indisputable fact. Even if Zhu Yingning doesn't want to face it, after going through all these things, the fig leaf covering her favoring boys over girls has been torn to shreds by a pair of invisible hands.
But if she really wanted to say that Liu Guifang was an extremely vicious person, she couldn't come to such a conclusion.
Liu Guifang never went to school properly. She only attended night school for half a year when she was ten years old. She learned simple numbers and pinyin. She only learned enough to do the math when buying groceries and to distinguish between soy sauce and vinegar at a convenience store. She stopped learning.
At twenty, she married Zhu Dashan, a man of equal education. At twenty-one, she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. Everyone in the village praised Afang's pregnancy, saying it saved her so much effort by carrying both a boy and a girl. That period was Liu Guifang's peak of fame, the only time in her life that she received such widespread praise.
But the happiness didn't last long, as real problems began to arise.
Two hungry children must be fed and fed, right? To support his family, Zhu Dashan had to work away from home, leaving Liu Guifang, who had just given birth, alone at home to raise her two children and her parents-in-law.
Raising children is exhausting enough, and raising twins is even more so. Perhaps it's telepathy, or perhaps it's simply the close proximity that makes them susceptible to each other's influence, but if one gets sick, the other will inevitably fall ill within two days. If one cries, the other will soon follow suit. If one is hungry, the other will undoubtedly cry for food.
Whenever the child made a fuss, the naturally quiet father-in-law would fly into a rage, calling her a foolish daughter-in-law who couldn't even take care of the child properly. The mother-in-law would chime in, saying she had given birth to four or five children without the hassle she was facing, and then lamenting that the younger generation was becoming less able to endure hardship. The father-in-law would nod in agreement, then urge the mother-in-law to cook.
The days passed by in a muddle.
When the children were old enough to go to school, Zhu Dashan took a long vacation and went back home to discuss the children's schooling.
At the time, the villagers were still half-awake. Many had heard rumors of gender equality and compulsory education for girls. Most dismissed this as nonsense. Daughters would eventually marry, and a married daughter was like water spilled. What was the point of sending her to school? It would be better for her to stay home, farm, help raise her younger brother, and maximize her productive life before getting married.
The higher-ups sent people down to do ideological work for the villagers, but they said too much and made too many mistakes. The village chief was even beaten out with a dung shovel by the villagers.
When the ideological work was done at Zhu Yingning's home, the Party Secretary spoke earnestly, "Dashan, you've been outside, and you're different from the people in the village. You must know that girls in the city go to school just like boys. Times are changing, and society is progressing. Only by keeping up with the trends of thought in big cities can the young generation of us in the mountains escape the deep mountains and become better and better."
They chatted from dawn to dusk, smoking half a pack of cigarettes, insects swarming around the light bulb, and the secretary's lips blistered. Finally, Zhu Dashan nodded and said, "Let Ningning go to school with Xiang'er."
Liu Guifang was extremely worried. She pulled her husband aside and said, "Think carefully! Our family's savings can only support one child. Although the Party Secretary said public school tuition is cheap, it still costs money, right? There are also tuition and miscellaneous fees for buying books..."
"We'll support her as long as we can. When we can't afford it anymore, we'll let Ningning go out to work." Zhu Dashan interrupted her.
During that time, her parents-in-law were pushing for a baby, thinking that since Zhu Yingning and Zhu Jixiang were both older, it was time for a second, third, or even fourth or fifth child. Liu Guifang was terrified, and after chatting about school, she complained to her husband about her parents-in-law's pressure.
Unexpectedly, Zhu Dashan said, "We should have more children." Many of his peers had three or five children, but he only had two. Every time he attended a party, he felt ashamed.
Liu Guifang was so angry that she wanted to bite her teeth to pieces. She thought to herself, "You didn't give birth to the child, you didn't raise the child, you idiot. Of course it doesn't matter, but she couldn't say it out loud. She rolled her eyes and, before the secretary left, she said hurriedly, "Secretary, I heard that people outside are promoting family planning, late marriage and late childbirth, fewer and better births. Is that true?"
The village chief was delighted and praised, "I didn't expect you two to be so progressive! Yes, that's true. With a large population base, the country is advocating for fewer and better births for the sake of future employment. I think your family is a great one, with a son and a daughter. As long as you invest the energy and raise these two children well, there's no need to worry about them not becoming elites in the future. Your family is a model of progress in the village."
He then launched into another long and eloquent speech, explaining the concept of elites and resource allocation, emphasizing the importance of channeling limited family resources into existing children. Only then would each child receive an equal share of resources to grow into a successful individual, and that having more children would only lead to poverty. Zhu Dashan was completely bewildered, aware only that he had been elevated to a high position by the Party Secretary, a village native being hailed as a visionary scholar.
Once the stakes are raised high and the face is taken, it's hard to get down. After the secretary left, Zhu Dashan pondered for a long time and said to Liu Guifang, "Okay, I think what he said makes sense. So, you come with me to work outside and we can help pay for the children's tuition. You can find a hospital in the city to get an IUD, and we can focus on raising our two children."
So that night, Zhu Yingning's family decided on two things: one was to support the two children's education, and the other was for Liu Guifang to go to the city to work with Zhu Dashan.
These two incidents were earth-shattering events for the village, and villagers flocked to dissuade them. One reason was, "How can a girl go to school? What will happen to your farm work?" The other was, "How can a woman go out to work? Who will take care of your parents-in-law?"
Zhu Dashan held the cigarette the Party Secretary gave him, his hands behind his back, and said condescendingly, "You don't understand this. We're keeping up with the trends of the times. As for my parents, they have hands and feet. Do you think they're going to starve to death at home?"
With the precedent of Zhu Dashan's family, ideological mobilization work finally made a breakthrough. Later, the branch secretary and other cadres continued their efforts and finally persuaded more and more families to send their daughters to elementary school.
As for how long you can study - no one can guarantee that.
Things don't always go as planned. Five years into Liu Guifang's migrant work with Zhu Dashan, her father-in-law died of a cerebral hemorrhage while working on the farm, and her mother-in-law suffered an inexplicable stroke. Village opinion swirled, with some blaming Zhu Dashan's poor decision to take his wife away, leaving his parents-in-law unattended and unfilial. They also criticized Zhu Dashan's father, pitiful for having toiled his entire life and yet fathered such an unfilial son.
Zhu Dashan was furious. He couldn't vent his anger on himself, the villagers, or his dead father. He could only vent his anger on Liu Guifang and drove her back to her hometown.
From then on, Liu Guifang lived in her hometown to serve her mother-in-law, year after year.
Her parents were certainly ignorant, Zhu Yingning thought.
But if you put yourself in their shoes, you'll discover that they were once rare examples of "advanced" individuals in their benighted surroundings. While this "advanced" status is certainly far from truly advanced, they nonetheless made what they believed to be the right choices within their extremely limited understanding. It was their upbringing that determined the upper limit of their advancement and infinitely lowered the lower limit of their backwardness.
A person who grew up in an environment where boys are favored over girls decides to send his daughter to school, and a person who grew up in an environment where women hold up half the sky decides to send his daughter to school - the results seem the same at first glance, but the hardships involved cannot be measured on the same scale.
Zhu Yingning was not unable to empathize with Zhu Jixiang's tears at the train station that day.
On the contrary, she had also secretly wondered, in the dead of night, if Zhu Dashan and Liu Guifang had grown up in the city, would their family have avoided such hardships? Would she have received the complete love of her parents?
Unfortunately, there is no such if.
Her mother didn't love her very much, but the root cause was that her mother had not learned to love herself either.
How can someone who doesn't even love himself love a daughter of the same gender?
Of course she had resentment towards her parents, but she could not hate them, especially Liu Guifang.
The hatred was too strong, she just felt sad and regretful.
**
School is about to start in one day. Before school starts, Zhu Yingning finished all the things left over from the winter vacation.
First of all, we have to apologize to Xu Zhengkang.
He was a man of high regard for elders, and her breaking of the appointment and Zhu Jixiang's offense undoubtedly made him very unhappy. This unhappiness lasted until Zhu Yingning said to him, "Uncle Xu, I'm sorry to have troubled you. I promise this will never happen again."
He used his authority as an elder to give her a lecture, saying things like, "You kids have the mindset of students. You do things on impulse without considering the consequences or the time cost of others. You are grown up already. You should cultivate the concept of keeping your word. Otherwise, no one will dare to do business with you in the future." Only then did he let her go.
Next, I have to report to Zhu Zhiwei’s store.
When she went there, she learned that Yi Yi and Emily had been working in the store for several days. She felt deeply sorry, but they said it was okay.
During the lunch break, the two men excitedly pulled her to a corner and said they wanted to share a big piece of gossip with her.
She wasn't particularly interested in gossip, but she didn't want to dampen their enthusiasm, so she asked, "What gossip?"
She thought it was some celebrity gossip, but Yi Yi told her, "I discovered..."
She paused deliberately for a moment, creating a suspenseful moment, until Emily hit her with a smile, and then she said the second half, "The store manager has a boyfriend!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
