Restart life

Chapter 72 0070 [Visiting Relatives and Friends]

The settlement where Chen Guiliang's family lives is called Manzituo, which is located between the three administrative groups of this village.

The terrain is secluded and narrow, with only seven households in total.

These seven households were formed when the brothers separated their family property and belong to three different village groups.

There are quite a few graves nearby.

In particular, the ancient minority burial sites commonly known as "Manzi Cave".

There are also some Han Dynasty tombs, but most of them have been looted.

When Chen Guiliang was in elementary school, he sneaked into a robbed ancient tomb, took a skull, and brought it to school, scaring many students into crying. He was then severely reprimanded by the teacher and slapped on the palm of his hand twenty times.

When he put the skull back in the grave, he tore off a tooth as a souvenir, which led to another beating when his parents found out.

From this, we can see that Master Chen was a reckless and unruly person since childhood, and his neurotic personality seems to be innate.

During the Chinese New Year, Chen Guiliang spent his time either visiting his maternal grandparents or staying at home writing game design proposals.

Elementary school classmates come to visit every now and then.

Because when Chen Guiliang was in elementary school, he was always the king of the kids.

The battle to establish authority was when he brought a skull to the school, and anyone who dared to disobey him would be slapped with a dead man's head!

"Brother, let's go quickly."

"I'm coming."

On the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, we made an appointment to visit my grandmother's family home to pay our respects, and my second uncle and aunt's family were also going.

Because Grandma gets carsick, we had to walk, which took more than four hours.

It was a village next to the district town, a relatively remote but still relatively wealthy rural area.

"Grandma, Uncle, Aunt, Cousin..."

"Come quickly and burn paper money and food for our ancestors!"

Grandma's mother, who is commonly referred to as "Grandma" here.

My great-grandmother is over eighty years old this year. She was born into a wealthy family and had her feet bound when she was young.

She naturally married the son of a landlord, but her husband had a rather unorthodox way of doing things. During the War of Resistance against Japan, when Sichuan salt was in short supply, he actually recruited a group of people to smuggle salt.

All I can say is that they are extremely wealthy.

When Feng Yuxiang came to Longdu to call for donations to fight against the Japanese, Zuzu's family not only donated several hundred silver dollars, but she herself also donated a gold ring and a pair of gold bracelets.

Later, when the liberation was achieved, he donated another two hundred silver dollars to the People's Government.

They did not suffer any major disasters, and their family did not own much land; some of it was left over from the land reform.

However, there were still quite a few silver dollars. Until the 80s, the grandfather still had more than a hundred silver dollars hidden away, but they were stolen in the early 90s. Only the four daughters each had a few silver dollars hidden away to "obtain the wind" (a metaphor for good fortune).

In comparison, Grandpa's side were the real big landowners.

Fortunately, my grandfather's parents were both opium addicts who squandered all the family property, and when classifying people by social class, they were directly classified as poor peasants...

Although my grandfather never went to school, his older brothers and sisters were all well-educated and became teachers and workers in the city after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Because of his status as a stepson, the father rarely visited his grandfather's relatives in the city.

"Liangliang, I heard you won first prize. Tsinghua and Peking University are vying for you!" Third Uncle asked.

Third Aunt's husband was Feng Tao's father, a prominent figure in the village.

He has some basic knowledge of fortune telling and traditional Chinese medicine, and he writes calligraphy very well. He is often asked to mediate neighborhood disputes.

Chen Guiliang replied, "Tsinghua and Peking Universities haven't given me any definite news yet, but Fudan University and Beijing Normal University are definitely planning to admit me."

My third aunt's husband said, "Fudan University is pretty good. Graduates are assigned to big cities."

His thinking was still stuck in the era of guaranteed job assignments, and he then praised Chen Xinghua and Yao Lan: "You two have done a very good job raising your son; he's going to be very successful."

Chen Xinghua and Yao Lan just smiled. When their third uncle spoke, everyone else had to listen obediently.

Grandma had no brothers, but she had three sisters.

My second maternal uncle and my fourth maternal uncle were both honest, simple farmers.

Third Uncle then said to the other children, "You all should learn from your older brother. Chen Guirong, you're the oldest among those still in school, besides your brother. How are your grades doing?"

My cousin, Chen Guirong, buried his head in his food and said, "It's alright."

"It's alright, but it's not good enough. If you don't study hard, you'll only be able to go back to the countryside to work on the land!" Uncle San scolded.

Chen Guirong felt a chill run down his spine; he had been afraid of this great-uncle since he was a child.

"Nie Wei, what about you?" Third Uncle asked Second Uncle's grandson.

They asked each of them one by one, but none of the children dared to speak.

The third uncle continued to praise Chen Guiliang, making Chen Xinghua and Yao Lan feel proud. At this moment, all the hardships of the past few years seemed insignificant.

Feng Tao winked at Chen Guiliang.

After lunch, Uncle San called Chen Guiliang to the bedroom (which also served as a study) and said warmly, "Come here quickly, I've written a calligraphy for you." Chen Guiliang took it and saw that the content was very old-fashioned: "There is a path to the mountain of books, and diligence is the way; the sea of ​​learning is boundless, and hard work is the boat."

As for calligraphy, it's definitely better than Chen Guiliang's terrible handwriting.

Third Uncle pulled Chen Guiliang aside to brag, telling him some strange and unusual stories, and then tested Chen Guiliang on Zi Wei Dou Shu (Purple Star Astrology)—something he himself had taught Chen Guiliang, which Chen Guiliang had only superficially learned in junior high school.

It's useless except for bluffing.

Well, it did have some use, as it taught Chen Guiliang how to calculate the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches.

Didn't you use that when writing a preface for a poem in the New Concept Writing Competition?
Feng Tao, however, never studied it and thought his father was a charlatan. If he were really that powerful, why didn't any villagers ask him to do feng shui or fortune telling? No one sought his medical treatment either; villagers preferred to see barefoot doctors when they were sick.

Chen Guiliang looked for an opportunity to escape.

He and his third uncle had nothing in common. He remembered that when he was in the first year of high school, he argued with his third uncle about international issues, and the two almost got into a fight on the spot.

This is an elderly political commentator who also acts as a peacemaker for the surrounding villages. But his main occupation is farming, so he still has to work in the fields.

In the courtyard, the great-grandmothers, great-aunts, mothers, aunts, cousins, and other female relatives were chatting, while the men set up a table to play mahjong.

Chen Guiliang went over and chatted with them.

Mainly, I spend time with my great-grandmother.

Of all his relatives and elders, his great-grandfather was the kindest to him, and also the kindest to his father. When his father was a child, he would be beaten at home and walk for several hours to his great-grandfather to complain and lick his wounds.

My great-grandfather didn't live for many more years; he passed away peacefully at the age of 90, which is considered a happy death in the countryside.

"Liangliang, if you go to Fudan University, you'll become a Shanghainese," an aunt joked.

Aunt Lin Chunhong said, "You don't know yet, Liangliang made more than 100,000 yuan in two months by playing games with Boss Tao!"

"Really?"

The elders were immediately amazed and showered them with praise.

The relatives here are quite harmonious, and no one has asked Chen Guiliang for money.

Actually, the relatives on my grandfather's side of the family were quite harmonious, but they treated Chen Guiliang and his son differently, as if they were outsiders. Within their own family, they always helped each other, and several of their younger relatives had been placed in state-owned enterprises.

Grandma sat in the courtyard basking in the sun, watching the younger generation chatting and laughing. She opened her mouth, revealing her smooth gums, and kept smiling.

"boom!"

A mischievous brat suddenly threw firecrackers, startling the elders.

That was Fourth Aunt's grandson, and he was quickly dragged over and given a severe beating.

Chen Guirong and the other children laughed heartily; they were the ones who had instigated this!
……

The Lantern Festival is just around the corner, and school will start soon.

During this period, some former creditors came to his door, mostly to repair their relationship with Chen Xinghua, and a very few came to demand interest—Chen Guiliang had said he would pay interest.

"Dad, Mom, you shouldn't go to work anymore," Chen Guiliang said.

Yao Lan laughed and said, "I'm not going. I'll stay in my hometown and farm."

She knew her son had money and wasn't worried about his college tuition and living expenses.

Looking at the dilapidated house, Chen Xinghua said, "I still need to work there for a few more years. I can't use your money to repair the house."

He has self-respect. After working for so many years, his son helped pay off his debts, and now he wants his son to pay for a house. What is his own value in life?
Chen Guiliang understood his father's thoughts: "How about this, you stay at home and rent a factory building in the brigade to raise rabbits. The scale doesn't need to be too big. I'll invest ten or twenty thousand yuan, and it doesn't matter if we lose money. If we make money, we can use that money to build a new house."

In Longdu City, almost every household raises rabbits. It's only after people started going out to work that fewer people are raising them at home.

And there's no worry about sales; everyone here eats rabbit, and not a single rabbit can leave alive!
As for the village's factory buildings, they represent a source of pain for all the villagers.

In the 80s, rural enterprises sprang up everywhere. A boss from Fujian province persuaded a cadre in the commune to come back to the village. The cadre then took the Fujian boss back to the village, and they quickly raised funds to open a glass factory.

Many villagers were misled and even took out loans to invest.

Then, the boss from Hujian ran off with the money. He left behind only a few empty factory buildings and a bunch of villagers who had lost everything, some of whom were burdened with loans of several hundred or even thousands of yuan.

That commune cadre was so angry that he hanged himself!

Chen Xinghua looked at his wife.

Yao Lan really didn't want to go out to work anymore. She said, "Let's give it a try. I'm not good at anything else, but I'm very good at raising rabbits. I've been cutting grass and raising rabbits since I was a child. First, I raised them for the production team, and later I raised them myself. It's much easier than raising pigs."

Chen Guiliang said, "Large-scale farming is different. Dad needs to visit other rabbit farms first. Don't raise too many in the first year, just two or three hundred. We can expand production after accumulating experience."

Chen Xinghua smoked a cigarette and pondered for a long time.

He has a very strong sense of self-esteem and wants to make a name for himself; otherwise, he wouldn't have partnered with someone to subcontract small projects in the mid-90s.

Chen Xinghua felt uneasy if he had to rely on his son for everything.

But thinking of his wife who had worked hard alongside him for many years, and his elderly mother who had been taking care of things at home, Chen Xinghua could only agree: "Then let's raise rabbits!"

On the sixteenth day of the first lunar month, Chen Guiliang bid farewell to his parents and grandmother and once again took a dilapidated bus back to school.

Meanwhile, reporter Chen Feng's article at the Xihua City Daily is about to be published.

-

(Being dragged into this rumor-mongering along with Er Gen and Lao Gui shows that Lao Wang has achieved some success. I'm secretly pleased. But we don't have an engagement custom here, and I've never seen anyone get engaged, so please stop spreading rumors that I was cheated on at my engagement.)
(This chapter serves as a transition, introducing the living environment and family background...)
(End of this chapter)