They Say I Can Curse People (16)

Chapter 47

Fifteen years ago, there was a family living above the large pond in Yulan Town. There were four daughters in the family. The eldest and the third daughter met the policy requirements and were registered in the Hukou, but the second and fourth daughters were both without Hukou.

When the other children in the village were sent to the village school to study, the eldest daughter was also sent there. But the child was truly exhausted. Every day she had to go to the village school, trek over several mountains at noon to come back and cook sweet potato rice, eat, and then trek over those mountains again for afternoon classes. After school, she still had to cut grass for the pigs and cattle.

In the third grade, the eldest daughter finally collapsed from exhaustion. she flopped onto a pile of pig grass and said, “It’s too tiring. I’m not going anymore.”

“You don’t know a good thing when you see it! You have books to read and you’re unwilling to go! At the very least, you have to finish this semester. The money has already been paid.” Her mother couldn’t bear to waste the money, yet she couldn’t bring herself to lose face by asking for a refund.

The eldest sister thought about having to continue suffering like this and began to wipe away tears. Just then, the second sister walked in. The second sister had a very quiet, withdrawn personality. She was the type who could spend one or two hours just watching ants.

“Let Second Sister go in my place. She needs to learn to read eventually.” The village school wasn’t strictly managed. There were already precedents of two sisters taking turns to attend classes.

From then on, she and the second sister would use one Hukou identity to study. This way, the third and fourth sisters could do the same later.

The matter was settled just like that.

The second sister didn’t object. She remained as quiet as ever and went to school the next day. Her demeanor made people suspect she might not be able to learn anything at all, especially when she came back the first day with handwriting that looked like gibberish.

The eldest sister didn’t take it seriously. Anyway, the goal was just for her to learn some characters so the semester’s tuition wouldn’t go to waste.

Now the eldest sister only had to do farm work and didn’t need to go to school, which was much easier than before.

On the day of the final exam, the second sister returned as usual. She still didn’t say much and didn’t mention the exam.

It wasn’t until the third day, when the eldest sister ran into a school teacher while out, that she learned the second sister had ranked third in the class on the final exam.

“I graded the Chinese paper first, and your sister barely passed.” The village school teacher was named Liu. Teacher Liu couldn’t help but sigh as he spoke. “The handwriting was just too ugly.”

“Teacher Liu, she got third in the class just by barely passing?” The eldest sister was shocked. Her own grades had also been just barely passing. If she had known, she wouldn’t have quit.

Teacher Liu said, “Then I graded the math paper. Your sister got a perfect score. I went back and looked at the Chinese paper again.”

Only then did he realize her handwriting was just a bit ugly. He hadn’t looked closely the first time and had just marked things wrong. Looking at it carefully now, many parts were actually correct, so he regraded it.

Her total score then jumped to third place.

“Your sister is more capable than you. she is someone meant for studying. Tell your parents to make sure they send her to school.”

The eldest sister had attended school herself, so she naturally understood what this meant. She hadn’t even gotten a perfect score in first-grade math, and her sister hadn’t even started from the first grade, yet she got a perfect score.

Her sister was truly gifted at studying.

Their family had someone who could study? It was like a pie falling from the sky¹!

Thus, the family’s opportunity for education was given to the second sister. Because she had no Hukou, she continued to use the eldest sister’s identity.

Now, when the teachers at Tonglin Town Middle School looked back, they could still remember the shock of learning this child had only officially enrolled in the third grade.

“She spoke very little, but she was truly… like a star of wisdom² descended to earth. During the high school entrance exam, she ranked in the top two in all of Pingcheng. The student in first place was two points higher than her, but that student’s raw score wasn’t as high as hers. The first-place student had ten bonus points for being an only child. Because of that, she didn’t get the title of top scorer. We still feel it’s a pity.” That was the closest Tonglin Town Middle School had ever come to producing a top scorer. The gap in educational resources between the city and the townships in Pingcheng was massive. Especially in towns like theirs, many students had to do farm work when they got home. It was precisely because of this gap that such a student’s emergence was so eye-catching. At the time, all of Pingcheng was talking about this second-place student from a rural middle school.

“Fortunately, several high schools in Pingcheng were offering money to recruit her. The exact amount wasn’t made public, but it certainly wasn’t a small sum. In the end, No. 1 High School was the smartest. They didn’t just give her money, they covered all three years of her high school tuition, boarding, and meal fees.”

“Our middle school was also waiting for her college entrance exam results. Her performance was very stable, and she went straight to Tsinghua University³.”

In the eyes of the teachers, she was excellent in every way.

“She is very good to her family. After she got money from the high school entrance exam, she sent her eldest sister to a vocational college. Now that sister is a cashier at the town health clinic in Yulan Town. Both of her younger sisters have gone to school. Their home has a telephone and a television, all bought by her.”

“I heard that because of this, although Yulan Town has a serious issue with over-quota births, they don’t have as many Black Households as Tonglin Town, and the school enrollment rate for girls is higher than it is here.”

“That’s not right. She graduated from Tonglin Town Middle School and spent three years here. Why didn’t she have much of an impact on Tonglin Town?” Tong Jin asked, feeling a bit strange.

“Perhaps the people in Tonglin Town never saw the environment she grew up in,” the teacher said.

What people crave is always what they can see around them. Everyone knows city people live well, but no one thinks they can live that kind of life.

But this family was different!

The older generation had seen the past of these parents. One had been like a local hoodlum in his youth, causing trouble everywhere, chased and beaten by his parents since childhood, and nearly unable to find a wife. The other was so argumentative that there wasn’t a soul in ten villages who didn’t know of her shrewishness.

Everyone also saw how they raised their children. The couple was a perfect match in their laziness. Neither was diligent or quick with work, so they didn’t even argue with each other. It was the children who suffered.

The family was often short on food, especially during the lean months between harvests.

At those times, the corn wasn’t ripe yet, and the sweet potatoes were just sprouts. There was truly nothing to eat in the pot.

So the couple would take out the seed potatoes kept for planting. Even though the potatoes had sprouts as long as fingers growing on them, they still prepared them for the children to eat.

In the afternoon, everyone returned from gathering firewood and passed by their house. They saw the four children had been poisoned, sitting in a row by the front door. Their heads drooped as they began to drool, and soon they collapsed at the entrance like four poor, poisoned ducklings. The couple themselves had collapsed inside the house from the poisoning.

Everyone rushed to take them to the clinic, where the staff induced vomiting, and they slowly began to recover.

Truly, even now that this family has found success, many people still have that scene burned into their minds.

Many in the village couldn’t stand the way they were raising their children back then! At the time, several people even sent them some cornmeal.

And as for this girl who got into university, who in the village hadn’t seen her walking barefoot in the dead of winter to pick rapeseed leaves in the fields? Who hadn’t seen her and her older sister stealing pears from their own home, only for the two children to end up kneeling at the door being beaten?

How did she suddenly become a star of wisdom descended to earth? If a star of wisdom looks like that, then couldn’t their own children be the same?

This child, honestly, looking at her from any angle, she seemed just like any other girl in the village.

Furthermore, they hadn’t even planned to let her go to school at first. What if her eldest sister hadn’t insisted back then that the child should get an education?

Now, this family has actually produced a university student, and the whole family’s life has improved. The couple had a telephone line installed at home, and they carry themselves with newfound confidence. Whenever anyone in the village needs to contact family members working away from home, they go to their house to use the phone.

The phone was bought by the second daughter, and she pays the bills. She said she wanted to thank the villagers for their help when she was little, so making or receiving calls is free. The couple actually listened to her and won’t take anyone’s money.

The couple isn’t short on cash anymore either. Every market day, they go to buy pork and fruit, often carrying it back in large baskets. Bananas, apples, biscuits, candies—they have as much as they want. They are generous too; whenever other children from the village visit, they give out biscuits and sweets.

When they talk about it, they say their second daughter is a credit to them, boasting about how they supported her education back then and how much foresight they had.

Everyone just offers superficial agreement: “Yes, yes, you certainly had foresight. You’re very lucky!”

In reality, who could feel balanced about it? Why them? Everyone saw exactly what their family situation was like with their own eyes.

Who could look at their own children without wondering if they might have a child like that too? A child whose potential was being wasted by them?

Under this influence over the years, almost every child in Yulan Town, whether they were “over-quota” births or not, ended up going to school because of this girl.

Once the base number of girls in school grew, those with the potential for study were immediately filtered out.

Although no student like Hua Jing appeared again, for this region, getting into junior high was an honor, and getting into high school was another. Ultimately, as long as they didn’t have to work with their backs to the sky and faces to the earth⁴ anymore, it was considered a way to change one’s fate.

Yulan Town didn’t originally have its own junior high school; everyone had to test into the one in Tonglin Town. As the number of students passing the exams grew over the years, Yulan Town eventually got its own junior high.

The people of Tonglin Town didn’t know much about this family. They only knew that Tonglin Town Junior High had once produced a genius student, but no one had seen her with their own eyes. They felt such a child was a rare find, something you couldn’t just ask for, and completely different from ordinary children. They assumed her parents must be different from ordinary people as well.

No one felt their own child could be like that girl, nor did they compare themselves to her parents.

Naturally, it didn’t attract much attention there.

Yun Song called the person involved, explained her situation, and asked to use her story as an example.

The person on the other end wasn’t as silent and withdrawn as people claimed. She chuckled softly and said, “Go ahead. That’s the same reason I’m willing to let my parents use me to show off.”

“However, since you’re in Tonglin Town, the effect might not be as good. After all, the people in your town don’t know my parents. They won’t have that thought of: ‘If people like them can live a good life, why can’t I?'”

Yun Song reflected on this; it was indeed a valid concern.

Translator’s Notes