Chapter 6: Record of Moving to the City in the 90s. 6

After such a huge blowup, the atmosphere at home wasn’t very good.

At lunch, when the fried chicken was served, no one ate with much appetite except Su Huandan.

Jiang Chunhua didn’t eat a single bite, and at dinner she only forced down a few mouthfuls.

That night, she went to bed early.

In the middle of the night, Su Huandan quietly slipped into the backyard with an iron hook in her hand. After aiming carefully and scraping at the spot a few times, she managed to poke open a small hole, and a musty smell drifted out from inside.

Su Huandan kept at it, hooking left and right, until the iron hook finally caught a wooden plank about a meter square and pulled it up.

Done.

Su Huandan turned around and put the iron hook back on the wall beside the kitchen stove, hanging it neatly in place before returning and jumping straight down into the cellar.

Feeling her way to the large earthenware jar, she lifted the lid and tossed in the Gold Sycees¹ from her system space. She added some gemstones of various colors too, filling the half-person-high jar to the brim. Only then did she keep one Gold Sycee in her hand and prepare to go out.

There was a ladder in the cellar. Earlier, it had been lying on the ground, so there had been no way to use it to climb down, but now that she propped it up, she could step on it and climb back out.

After coming up, Su Huandan went to the east room. She glanced at her mother, who was already snoring softly, then woke her father.

The moment Su Dakui opened his eyes and saw a pitch-black face looming over him, he was so startled he nearly passed out.

“What are you doing? Why aren’t you sleeping? What do you want?” Su Dakui only asked once he had followed his youngest daughter into the backyard.

She had almost scared him to death just now.

Su Huandan muttered in a low voice, “Dad, don’t shout. I’m taking you to see something.”

As she spoke, she pulled Su Dakui to the back of the kitchen and pointed at the cellar entrance on the ground. “I was coming back from relieving myself just now and stepped into empty space. There’s a cellar here. I went down and had a look. Dad, guess what I found?”

As she spoke, she handed him the Gold Sycee in her hand.

Su Dakui had never seen a Gold Sycee before. There wasn’t even any moonlight tonight, and it was dark as pitch, so he couldn’t make out the color. All he knew was that she had stuffed something like an iron lump into his hand.

When Su Huandan went to wake her father, she had brought a flashlight too. She switched it on and shone it onto Su Dakui’s hand.

The moment Su Dakui lowered his head and looked, his eyes went wide.

He opened his mouth to shout, but this time Su Huandan didn’t need to stop him. He raised his own hand and clapped it over his mouth.

He snatched the flashlight and shone it on the Gold Sycee. After a long while, he finally whispered, “You found this in the cellar?”

Su Huandan nodded. “There’s nothing else in there, just a big earthenware jar about half a person tall, the kind with a lid. It looked like it was full of these. I couldn’t see clearly before, so I called you to come check with me. If it’s real, then our family’s struck it rich. Later we can buy more houses in the city. In the future, just living off rent² would be enough for the whole family to eat and drink without worry.”

That struck right at Su Dakui’s heart.

Only by buying a house and settling down in the city could his daughters marry into good families. If he really had a large sum of money in hand, then even after they got married, he wouldn’t have to worry about them being bullied. With a wealthy family behind them to support them, they could live with confidence.

“Let’s go down and take a look.” Su Dakui didn’t even use the ladder, he jumped straight down. He waited until his youngest daughter climbed down after him, then turned to look for the big jar she had mentioned.

Calling it a big jar wasn’t quite right. It was really a ceramic vat about 1.2 meters tall, the sort people used in the past for storing wine, vinegar, or soy sauce.

The moment the flashlight shone into the mouth of the vat, good lord, it was dazzling. It was all gold.

Su Dakui only took one look before silently breaking into a grin. With these things, he had even more confidence about moving to the city.

“Daughter, only you and I know about this, understand? Don’t tell your mom or your sisters. Wait here. Dad’s going to find something. We can’t leave this stuff here any longer.” That whole night, Su Dakui used the burlap sacks from home and, bit by bit, in several trips, carried all the gold out of the vat.

As for where he hid it, even Su Huandan didn’t know. In any case, she couldn’t find it anywhere in the house the next day.

As soon as day broke, Su Dakui left.

Before leaving, he instructed his wife and children, “I’ll be back in seven or eight days at most. You all stay home and behave. The work in our fields has been contracted out³, so don’t go helping with other people’s jobs either. Get some proper rest. I’m planning to take you all into the city by the end of the year. The women in the city all have such fine, delicate skin. You should take good care of yourselves too. Don’t let people laugh at you once you get there.”

It took Jiang Chunhua and the others half an hour after he left to react. “Your dad said he’s taking us into the city?”

Su Huandan nodded. “That’s what Dad said, moving into the city. Didn’t he always say that sooner or later he’d let us live in the city and become city people?”

Jiang Chunhua’s lifeless eyes instantly lit up.

Whenever Su Dakui talked about moving to the city, Jiang Chunhua had always taken it as nothing more than something he said to comfort her.

Was it really that easy to get into the city?

Who would have thought her man would actually do what he said?

Moving to the city was no longer some impossible dream. It had become something right in front of them, and Jiang Chunhua’s energy immediately came back.

She looked at the sky. It was still dark as pitch, so she hurried her three daughters along. “Go back to sleep already. Didn’t you hear what your dad said? Take good care of yourselves. You need to get fair and clean, or the city people will laugh at you.”

In 1990, moving to the city was a hot topic.

Whether someone in the family had married into the city,

or had gone into the city to buy things,

or was capable enough to move the whole family there to live, it was all the kind of news people loved to talk about.

Before stepping inside, Su Huandan looked at her mother sitting on the doorstep, staring absentmindedly at the front gate with joy in her eyes, and smiled.

For her mother, moving to the city was an obsession too.

No matter how her three older sisters had ended up in the city, they were all city people now.

And before yesterday’s commotion, no one outside had known that Su Huandan’s three aunts had actually been sold into the city, so people often talked behind her mother’s back.

Why was it that all three of your older sisters married into the city, but you couldn’t?

Because you just didn’t have that fate.

Now that her husband was capable and they really could move to the city, Jiang Chunhua felt wonderful.

Su Dakui came back in less than five days.

He came back, stayed one night, and left again. This time, he wouldn’t be coming back until it snowed.

And Su Huandan started school as well.

She attended the middle school at the township government, and she was now in her third year of junior high.

On the first day of school, Su Huandan was chased out the door by her mother early in the morning.

“Hurry up and get going. It’s a long way, so don’t be late. Study hard and get into a good high school next year. If you can make it into college, your dad and I will do whatever it takes to put you through school.” Jiang Chunhua had said these words more times than anyone could count.

At first, she said them to her eldest daughter, Su Huanzhu, but unfortunately, though her eldest was deft with her hands, she just wasn’t cut out for studying.

Making clothes, making shoes, cooking, Su Huanzhu could do it all. But the moment homework came up, she was completely lost.

She just couldn’t learn it.

Later, Jiang Chunhua said the same thing to her second daughter, Su Huanxia.

Her second daughter was much the same as the eldest, the kind who would rather work at home than go to school.

And now it was her turn to hear it.

Su Huandan wasn’t much suited for school either.

Her grades were below average, and she was quick-witted, but she just couldn’t apply herself to studying.

She was exactly the kind of student teachers always talked about: “You’re smart, you just don’t use that smartness on the right things.”

And for a student, the right thing was school, wasn’t it?

In her previous life, Su Huandan didn’t like school, yet for some reason she especially liked hanging around with classmates whose grades were just as bad as hers.

In plain terms: a wild girl!

Translator’s Notes