The Village Chief’s Youngest Son

Chapter 52

A year before Yun Song arrived here, an elderly person died in a Guangcheng hospital. She was a very ordinary old woman.

At the end of her life, the old woman looked back on her years and felt she had done right by everyone. She had raised her own children and her sister’s children as well. Even in her old age, she had never been a burden to her offspring. Yet, in her entire life, there was one person she had truly wronged.

She had been ignorant in her youth. Only in old age, after carefully ruminating on her life, did she understand the mistake she had made as a young woman. But by then, nothing could be undone.

Before she passed away, she wrote the matter down and asked her daughter to have it registered in a newspaper.

People of her generation had seen public confessions in newspapers several times during their youth.

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There were no records of Li Qingqing giving birth in any of the hospitals in Guangcheng.

After all, so many years had passed. Several hospitals had been renovated or remodeled, and some records had simply been lost.

“We’ll keep an eye out for you on our end,” said the veteran nurse who received Yun Song. After checking repeatedly, she was certain there was no such person.

Yun Song thanked her and left her contact information, asking to be notified if any relevant information surfaced.

Most people are willing to provide leads when it comes to criminal investigations by the police.

After the nurse went home, she mentioned the matter to her mother. Being older, her mother said, “It might not have been in a hospital. Back then, many people preferred to have a midwife come to the house for the delivery. If you can’t find it in the records, the midwife might know.”

Midwives and hospitals operated under two different systems. Because midwives generally went to the pregnant woman’s home, they had more contact with the family’s environment. Furthermore, since midwives didn’t deliver babies every single day, most of them retained memories of the children they helped bring into the world.

The nurse realized this made sense and quickly found Yun Song’s number to pass on the lead.

While most people in the city went to hospitals, those who still relied on midwives were the migrant workers who came to Guangcheng for labor.

There were three midwives everyone trusted back then. Yun Song quickly tracked them down, but two had already passed away.

The remaining one was now in a nursing home. Yun Song and her young apprentice soon located her.

As the two entered the facility, they felt as if time had stood still. Elderly residents were basking in the sun in the courtyard; some were playing chess, others were knitting sweaters, and one old woman was reading a newspaper.

Everything moved at a sluggish pace.

Seeing visitors arrive, the seniors merely glanced over. Seeing no familiar faces, they returned to their own business.

A staff member led the mentor and apprentice to the midwife they were looking for.

The woman was eighty-eight years old. She had been knitting a sweater, but her mind was very sharp. Upon hearing they were investigating a case, she was willing to cooperate.

“Do you remember a pregnant woman named Li Qingqing? In 1996, did you ever deliver a baby for her?” the apprentice asked.

The old woman shook her head. “I don’t remember that.”

It was understandable. After so many years, names were indeed hard to remember.

“Among the babies you delivered, were any of them given up for adoption?”

“We only handled the delivery, not what happened after,” the old woman said.

When people get old, many mundane things fade from memory.

Other elderly residents began to drift over to listen.

“The name Li Qingqing… I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere,” the old woman reading the newspaper muttered the name a few times before speaking up.

She hadn’t heard it; she had seen it.

It was a very common name, so there was a chance it was a coincidence.

Yun Song asked anyway, “Do you know this person? She sold eggs here in Guangcheng during the nineties.”

The year 1996 flashed through the old woman’s mind, but nothing more followed. She thumped her head with her fist. “Yes, it was the nineties!”

Yun Song used more details about Li Qingqing to jog the woman’s memory. “At that time, her husband worked at a scrap recycling station.”

Husband?

The old woman suddenly remembered. “Did she have a daughter who died right after birth?”

Yun Song nodded.

“I saw it in the newspaper!” The woman remembered where she had seen it and hurried inside to find her papers.

Many newspapers in Guangcheng had already disappeared. The younger generation rarely read them; only those who had formed the habit in their youth still did.

The seniors at the nursing home liked to keep the newspapers they had read, looking through them again when they had nothing to do. Since their memories weren’t great, it felt like the first time every time they read them.

Yun Song helped her search.

Soon, Yun Song’s hand stopped.

It was a newspaper from a year ago.

The headline read: “A Confession to Li Qingqing.”

In 1996, I lived in the shantytown outside the South District of Guangcheng. It was mostly inhabited by rural people who collected scrap. There, I met a young woman named Li Qingqing. In January, Li Qingqing had a difficult labor. Her husband and I took her to the hospital. She gave birth to a baby girl with a large red birthmark on the right side of her face. After her husband took the child away, he came back and told me the baby had died at birth, and he told me to tell Li Qingqing the same. My thinking was wrong at the time, and I went along with the lie. Later, when my child was sick, Li Qingqing even gave me two hundred yuan for medical treatment. I have always kept this matter in my heart, and I deeply regret not telling her the truth.

A birthmark on the face. Yun Song immediately thought of the delivery rider mentioned by the two officers she had sent to stake out the area.

She must be Ming Qingfu’s eldest daughter.

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In 1995, Wu Jie was twenty years old.

Wu Jie didn’t have much expectation for a child. That year, he had experienced something far more significant that brought about much greater emotional turmoil.

He had come into money.

A poor boy from a mountain village, after enduring the contempt of others, he now had more money than anyone around him.

Once, when he was on the bus, city people would always look at him with strange, judging eyes, severely wounding his self-esteem.

But now, heaps of money belonged to him. The flattery of his brothers while drinking… all of it caused his ego to swell. He was addicted to it all.

To him, a child was merely the icing on the cake.

It should have been a joyous addition, but when he held the infant, the large patch of red birthmark on the baby’s face gave him a fright.

“Nurse, nurse, look at this… this… will it fade away on its own?”

He didn’t understand yet if all newborn babies had such things.

The nurse replied, “It’s a birthmark. Don’t worry, the child is very healthy. This birthmark can be removed with surgery later on.”

The nurse felt pity for the child, so she advised, “For this kind of birthmark, it’s best to do the surgery between the ages of five and seven. As she grows older, the birthmark will grow with her, making the surgery more difficult.”

“How much does it usually cost?” Wu Jie asked apprehensively.

“I knew a parent who had it done before; it was around thirty thousand yuan.”

Thirty thousand yuan!

Wu Jie’s heart tightened instantly.

The little money he had on hand wouldn’t even be enough to cover her medical bills, and besides, they planned to settle down in the city. The city’s family planning policies were strict; if they had this one, they couldn’t have another.

Wu Jie and Li Qingqing had grown up together, so he naturally knew her temperament. Most of the time, she seemed easy to talk to, but once she set her mind on something, eight oxen couldn’t pull her back¹.

With that thing on the child’s face, Li Qingqing would definitely want to treat it. But Li Qingqing had no money, so wouldn’t it end up being his money in the end? Besides, surgery was never that simple. He had a buddy who said over drinks that hospitals were just money pits, intentionally creating projects just to turn a profit.

When the time came, wouldn’t all the money he earned go straight to the hospital?

As he held the child, the smile vanished from his face. This didn’t feel like his child; instead, it felt like a bomb that could destroy everything he currently had at any moment.

He couldn’t let his current life be ruined.

No, absolutely not!

Wu Jie thought it over and over until a plan formed in his mind.

Seeing his pale face, the neighbor lady took the child from him. She was also startled by the birthmark, but she quickly said, “You two earn money fast. You’ll definitely have enough saved before she’s five.”

Wu Jie followed that line of thought: working hard for the next few years just to spend it all on a surgery for this child? The mere thought made him feel uneasy.

Wu Jie took the child back from the neighbor and said, “I’m going out for a bit.”

The weather in Guangcheng wasn’t great. Wu Jie walked through the cold wind holding the child. Surrounded by Guangcheng locals, he quickly found his Second Cousin.

Second Cousin took one look and immediately understood what he intended to do.

Still, he asked, “What are you planning to do? This isn’t the old village.”

Furthermore, the business back home had been discovered, and many people had been arrested.

Wu Jie was extremely irritable and snapped, “I know.”

It was because he knew that he was so frustrated.

“Then what are you going to do?”

Wu Jie said, “Second Cousin, you have a motorcycle. Give me a ride. I’m going somewhere.”

Second Cousin didn’t want to get involved, fearing he would be implicated. Only after Wu Jie promised he wasn’t going to kill the child did Second Cousin start the motorcycle and drive him to another district in Guangcheng.

The place they arrived at was a wet market. There were several factories nearby, and many people bought their groceries here.

At this hour, the market was nearly deserted.

Wu Jie placed the child into one of the vegetable crates and then took off running. He didn’t look back, running faster and faster as if someone were chasing him.

Wu Jie was twenty years old that year. The novelty of the city and the thrill of money prevented his mind from dwelling on such specific emotions; he couldn’t connect himself to another human being who belonged to him.

Wu Jie thought to himself that these were all city people here; perhaps a city dweller would end up adopting her.

That would be a decent path for her.

Wu Jie’s life could be seen clearly at a glance. It was composed of various hardships born of poverty, coupled with a personal ego that had inflated due to having money. Within his fattened body, one could find almost no reason to justify keeping the child.

His shallow life seemed firmly encased in an iron barrel labeled “Self.” He didn’t feel he had done anything wrong.

That year, he was twenty.

Twenty-four years passed, bringing the time to 2019. Time had passed over the man without adding any depth to his life. He was still the same Wu Jie who had become arrogant because of a single decision that brought him wealth.

A man who has been successful once finds it hard to accept failure, let alone someone like Wu Jie who had been successful twice.

He fantasized countless times that if he had been born into a better family, he could have conquered the business world.

His life remained shallow, but he began to realize that his era had passed. It seemed he really couldn’t make money anymore.

This endless, bleak future made him panic. In the past, he could make money just by messing around; why was it so hard to earn anything now?

Everything about the city began to make him feel out of place. Coupled with his debts, he returned to his old village to hide.

Xinghua Village had changed completely. Not many people remained in the old home. Having grown accustomed to city life over the years, he wanted to put the hoe down the moment he picked it up.

In the past, whatever you planted in the village would grow; now, the weeds in the fields were taller than people.

He was no longer suited for farming.

During the day, he would drink with the Village Chief’s younger son. That man had been arrested and imprisoned years ago because his attempts to treat people had resulted in death. His father had also gone to prison back then, serving four years. After getting out, he never returned to the village.

According to others who had seen him, he had gone mad. He remained convinced that the Trafficked Bride from back then, Ming Wen, was an incarnation of the Immortal Lady, just like the stories in the village about Immortal Ladies descending to earth. Only this time, the Village Chief was the villain in the story.

Consequently, after his release, he spent his time in the city searching for the Immortal Lady, demanding she give him justice. He eventually died in the city, having never found her, of course.

The Village Chief’s younger son had killed someone with his “treatments” and was later caught and sentenced to five years. After getting out of prison, he was once waiting in line at a supermarket when an elderly person cut in front of him. He beat the person into a state of serious injury and ended up back inside.

He had only been out for two years. After his release, he returned to his hometown, having spent half his life behind bars. Upon his return, his eldest brother and sister-in-law looked down on him and forced a separation of the family property. Now he looked after two acres of land, and no one knew where he got the money to buy his liquor.

The two of them hadn’t been close in the past. Back then, Wu Jie was a nobody in the village, while the Village Chief’s younger son was a prominent figure. Naturally, it was impossible for them to have any real connection.

Now, Wu Jie sat drinking his wine, talking about the old days and the good life he once had in the city.

He was intentionally trying to show off in front of the Village Chief’s younger son.

The Village Chief’s younger son wasn’t as talkative as his father had been. Now, he simply listened quietly as Wu Jie spoke of his former glory.

At that time, Xinghua Village was inhabited only by the elderly and children. The village party secretary drove a motorized tricycle, the back loaded with supplies donated by kind-hearted people from the city.

There were clothes, shoes, and books for the village children, as well as various supplements for the elderly.

Wu Jie couldn’t help but sigh. “You know, those city folk are really rich. They send these things every year.”

It was indeed strange. Xinghua Village was famous, but not for anything good. If the wealthy people in the city knew of this place, they would surely know about what happened back then. Why would they donate things year after year?

The Village Chief’s younger son watched the scene. The elderly Li couple happened to be coming over to carry away some milk.

He suddenly remembered something and went back into his room. He opened a cabinet, where a yellowed notebook lay inside.

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Translator’s Notes

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1. eight oxen couldn’t pull her back: A translation of the idiom ‘jiǔ niú èr hǔ zhī lì’ (the strength of nine oxen and two tigers) or similar variants like ‘bā pí mǎ yě lā bù huí’. It describes someone who is incredibly stubborn or determined once they have made up their mind. ↩