Then, he turned his head and looked at Shen Junru carefully, "Is Teacher Shen twenty years old this year?"
Shen Junru shook her head. "Nineteen, twenty next year."
Huang Wanzhen smiled and said, "It's a good time to study. Didn't you say before that you were admitted to university, but your family didn't let you go?"
Shen Junru put down her chopsticks and said dejectedly, "Yeah, I didn't know how good it was to go to school then. I wish I had persisted a little longer."
Huang Wanzhen poured her a glass of water and said, "It's not too late to persist now."
Shen Junru picked up the water dejectedly and took a sip. "If I go against my grandmother's wishes, my family will probably not pay for my studies. College is very expensive."
Huang Wanzhen asked curiously, "Don't you have any savings? Or valuable jewelry or items? Your pocket watch doesn't look cheap. If you sell it, it should be enough for your tuition for a year."
Shen Junru's eyes lit up, "That pocket watch cost more than 2,000 yuan when I bought it."
Huang Wanzhen looked at her sideways and said, "That's right. You don't have to worry about tuition at all."
Shen Junru, who was full of energy one second, became depressed the next. "But I'm a little scared. You don't know, my grandmother is just like the old lady in the opera, very arbitrary and tyrannical. Even my father doesn't dare to disobey her."
Huang Wanzhen shook her head in disbelief. "Your father doesn't disobey her because he's her biological son, and she won't let him suffer any injustice."
"Think about it, did your grandma stop your dad from studying?"
Shen Junru shook her head like a rattle. "No, not only did she not stop my dad and his family from studying, but my dad told me that when they were young, my grandma even spent a lot of money to hire a scholar to come and teach them."
After a moment of hesitation, she continued, "Now, my dad works in the Education Bureau. Every year he responds to donations and the like. My grandma always gives to him without blinking an eye."
Huang Wanzhen asked again, "What about your mother? Does she have a job?"
Shen Junru nodded. "My mother is from Jiangsu Province. She used to be the vice principal of a girls' school in Jiangsu Province. Now she is a Chinese teacher at Muzhen Girls' School."
"But she probably won't be able to do it for much longer. My grandma doesn't want her to go out to work and she always dislikes her in words and deeds. Every day when she comes home from get off work, she has to wait on my grandma. At night, she corrects students' homework and goes to bed after 11 o'clock. She gets up after 5 o'clock in the morning to cook for my grandparents."
"Some time ago, she cried to my aunt, saying she was too tired. My aunt advised her to quit her job and stay at home to take care of my grandparents."
Huang Wanzhen raised a sarcastic smile, but immediately concealed it.
"Hey! I just don't understand. Your grandparents raised your dad, but they didn't raise your mom. Why didn't your dad take care of them, but your mom did?"
Shen Junru blurted out, "My dad earns a lot, my mom earns little, and my grandparents need someone to take care of them, so my mom had to quit her job."
Huang Wanzhen pretended to be curious and continued to ask, "You have so many servants at home, aren't they enough to serve your grandparents? Do you order your mother around?"
Shen Junru hesitated and said, "Well, my grandma said the servants didn't serve us wholeheartedly."
Huang Wanzhen looked at Shen Junru's confused look and sighed helplessly, "Isn't your third brother a doctor at John's Hospital? You really should go there and be a volunteer for a few days."
"Huh?" Shen Junru was puzzled. "Why are we talking about volunteers?"
Huang Wanzhen said earnestly, "If you go and serve the patients in the hospital, you'll know how difficult it is to serve the elderly, and you won't have to stand on your father's side right away."
"Thousands of years have passed, and women's status is still lower than men's. That's because men tend to favor men, and women tend to favor men."
"Although mothers-in-law are women, they are the husband's mothers and will certainly not help their daughters-in-law or improve their status in the family. Daughters are also women, but they are their fathers' little cotton-padded jackets. They admire and respect their fathers and easily overlook their mothers' efforts because they are too common and too easy to obtain."
"Maybe my mother wouldn't agree with what I said. They've been instilled with the idea of 'obey your father at home and obey your husband after marriage' since they were young. In fact, they also tend to favor men."
Shen Junru looked at Huang Wanzhen blankly, "What are you talking about? It makes me panic and I want to do something urgently."
Huang Wanzhen shrugged nonchalantly, "Just do whatever you want to do."
Shen Junru rubbed her fingers irritably, "The main thing is that I don't know what to do."
"Since I was little, I did whatever the elders told me to do. I wanted to do it well so they would like me and praise me."
Huang Wanzhen suggested with a smile, "Then go be a hospital volunteer for a day and experience the life of serving others."
Shen Junru clenched her left hand into a fist and encouraged herself, "Okay, it's only one day anyway. No matter what, I can get through it with my eyes closed."
Huang Wanzhen laughed at her, "Don't close your eyes, the hospital is not that scary."
Shen Junru curled her lips, obviously not believing her. "I heard from my third brother how they perform surgery there. They cut open the stomach, put their hands in the stomach to look for something, and then cut it out with a knife."
"Ugh, no more, no more, let's eat."
Huang Wanzhen saw how uncomfortable she was and quickly smoothed her back. "It's okay. You can't enter the operating room, so you won't be able to see those things."
Shen Junru hummed twice, then said, "I'll go this Sunday. I'll tell you in advance so you don't end up empty-handed when you come to my house."
After the two had their meal, they went to a shoe store. Huang Wanzhen couldn't wait to try on several pairs of leather shoes. However, because her feet had not fully recovered and she couldn't wear high heels, she had to choose a pair of flat leather shoes.
It was Shen Junru's turn. Huang Wanzhen pointed to a pair of stiletto heels and said, "This pair looks good. It makes your legs look straight and long."
Shen Junru blushed all of a sudden and glanced at the guy not far away embarrassedly, "What nonsense are you talking about."
When paying the bill, Huang Wanzhen casually asked, "Is your boss here today?"
The man in the Mao suit nodded and said, "That's me. If you're not satisfied with anything, just tell me."
Huang Wanzhen seriously suggested, "Boss, your store sells women's leather shoes, so you should hire a female waiter. Old-fashioned women like us, although we also want to buy leather shoes, feel uncomfortable when the male waiter looks at our feet."
"The experience was so bad that I don't want to come a second time."
In this era, all the slightly clean and decent jobs belong to men, and women can only do some laundry and maid work.
Huang Wanzhen hopes that the boss can hire some female employees, even just one, she would be happy to see it.
If there is one more female employee, there may be one less prostitute who dies prematurely in the Eight Great Hutongs.
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