Chapter 106

After retiring, Jian Ru rented an old house in the countryside with two acres of idle land, living a semi-reclusive life, detached from the world. She originally had no intention of joining any noisy variety show.

But when she heard that Wei Sheng’s show aimed to help impoverished elderly people in the city find reemployment and to raise pension funds for those who had lost their ability to work, her naturally kind heart made her agree without hesitation.

Zhang Jianguo was even more eager to participate. After all, as an old artist active on stage back in the day, during their youth, they had spent more than half the year touring rural areas, bringing wonderful cultural performances to the people.

It was just that now, not to mention the cities—even in the countryside—people’s entertainment options were rich and diverse. They danced in public squares, scrolled through short videos, barely watched TV, and certainly didn’t, like decades ago, carry benches from miles around just to watch a big opera performance.

Zhang Jianguo wanted to continue contributing to community culture, but unfortunately, the people didn’t need them anymore…

“Whether they need us or not, we’ll know if we try, right? Anyway, we’re retired now, sitting around doing nothing. Just treat it as passing the time. If a day doesn’t work, then try for a month. If a month doesn’t work, then a year. I spent three years turning the Haitangyuan Street Senior Choir into a city top-three team. Now it’s just a livestream room, and we don’t even have to deal with trainees. What’s there to be afraid of?” Yang Hongyan declared boldly.

Jian Ru glanced at Yang Hongyan with envy. She admired this kind of outgoing, socially fearless person the most.

Unfortunately, she herself was a natural introvert with social anxiety. Thankfully, the program script stated that she only needed to handle the late-night livestream from 10 PM to midnight. However, what exactly she was supposed to broadcast wasn’t specified.

Jian Ru guessed it might be similar to her old midnight radio program: reading some peaceful, soul-soothing essays.

She guessed wrong.

Jin Yannan assigned her midnight livestream a theme called “A Letter to My Younger Self.”

Through the Street-level Elderly Care Center, she sent out an invitation to thousands of retired seniors in the district. The content was simple: If you could travel back in time, what would you most want to say to your younger self?

After quickly skimming through the two “Letter to Myself” submissions she had just received, the sentimental Jian Ru already had red-rimmed eyes.

Due to scheduling, her midnight special was the first to go live.

The elderly residents who, notified through the WeChat group, tuned in right on time to cheer for their neighborhood’s show had never expected that the first livestream would hit them right in the tear ducts!

With her signature gentle and soothing voice, Jian Ru read the first letter, which came from a 76-year-old elderly woman who still relied on collecting cardboard to make ends meet.

Her name was Wang Zhaodi. Just from the name, you could tell how desperately her parents had wanted a son.

Wang Zhaodi could only write her own name and a few common characters. This letter was dictated by her and transcribed by volunteers from the Elderly Care Center.

“If only I could go back fifty years! I’d definitely tell my younger self: Stop caring about that family full of blood-sucking beasts! I must get married! Have two children of my own!”

In the quiet of the night, Jian Ru used her signature warm and healing voice to read this letter soaked in blood, tears, pain, and regret—

Fifty years ago, Wang Zhaodi was already in her twenties, yet still labeled an old maid unable to marry.

No—it’s not that she couldn’t get married. It was that her parents were adamant: without a bride price of 500 yuan, no one would take away their cash cow.

Her parents had four daughters before finally having a son to carry on the family line. From a young age, they told Zhaodi, as the eldest sister, that she must work hard and earn money to support her brother.

When she was young, Wang Zhaodi had relatively good luck. Being diligent and neat, she got a job as a housekeeper for a retired cadre couple. Her monthly salary was even higher than her father’s at the match factory.

Back then, although Zhaodi wasn’t a stunning beauty, her plain and wholesome appearance perfectly matched the era’s aesthetic standards for women. The retired cadres she served were always trying to introduce her to potential matches—workers from the power plant, the cigarette factory, or the brewery. Back then, young men from these workplaces were extremely popular in the matchmaking market!

Had it been any other family, parents would’ve been overjoyed for their daughter to have such prospects. Not hers.

The mere thought of their eldest daughter getting married and her entire monthly salary going to her husband’s family made Zhaodi’s parents feel like their hearts were being cut by knives.

When the well-meaning retired cadres offered to introduce suitors for their daughter, her ruthless parents opened their lion’s mouth and bluntly told the matchmaker: Zhaodi’s monthly income was on par with someone working at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative. If anyone wanted to marry her, they had to bring a full 500 yuan bride price!

Moreover, this bride price would not accompany Wang Zhaodi to her marital home. After all, once she married, her future earnings would belong to her husband’s family. Wasn’t it fair that her natal family, who raised her all these years, got 500 yuan in return?

The matchmaker was stunned on the spot.

First of all, Wang Zhaodi was already 20 by lunar age—a “leftover woman” by the standards of the time. If she hadn’t been fairly attractive and earned a decent wage as a housekeeper, who would want to marry an old maid?

And yet they demanded 500 yuan?

With 500 yuan, you could marry a girl working at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative. Why would anyone choose a housemaid from their family?

Even so, her parents stood firm: no one would marry Zhaodi unless they could produce 500 yuan. The couple calculated behind their daughter’s back—truth be told, even with 500 yuan, it still wasn’t worth it.

After all, Zhaodi earned nearly 200 yuan a year. 500 yuan? That was nearly two and a half years’ wages! What was the point?

Besides, since Zhaodi was so good at serving others, the couple wanted her to stay at home for a few more years—ideally until her brother got married and had a child, so she could help care for her sister-in-law during postpartum confinement before she married off.

In truth, the couple secretly hoped that Zhaodi would never marry. That way, she could keep earning for the family every year, help with housework, and care for them in their old age.

Of course, they knew that saying such things out loud would bring scorn from others, so they simply used the bride price as an excuse. After all, they didn’t believe anyone would really come up with 500 yuan just to marry a 20-year-old “old maid.”

But unexpectedly, there really was such a fool!

The elderly couple whom Zhaodi worked for had a student, a man in his thirties. Because of years working away from home, his previous wife couldn’t endure the long-distance marriage and divorced him. They had no children. He was also a government official, and most importantly, after years of working, he had saved up quite a bit, enough to afford the 500 yuan bride price to marry Zhaodi.

What a wonderful match it could have been! But infuriatingly, Zhaodi’s parents were short-sighted and greedy. When they saw a fool willing to pay the 500 yuan, their eyes gleamed and they raised a new demand—

Want to marry their daughter? Fine! But they also wanted this man to provide Zhaodi’s younger brother with the full set of “Three Rounds and One Sound” needed for his wedding.

At that time, Zhaodi was still living with the elderly couple. If she had been a bit more clear-headed and realized her parents’ greedy and selfish nature sooner, she might have eloped with that man, and none of what followed would have happened.

Unfortunately, she had long been conditioned by her vampire-like parents, becoming like a beast of burden, blindly toiling for her family and working to earn her brother’s bride price.

The man never got a reply from Zhaodi. Not long after, he left the city.

Later, Zhaodi vaguely heard that he got remarried through another matchmaker, to a high school teacher.

And Zhaodi? She didn’t end up providing a steady stream of income to the family like her parents had planned.

The elderly couple she worked for passed away within half a year of each other. Jobless and unmarried, Zhaodi couldn’t find any formal employment. She had to set up a street wonton stall to continue making money for her family.

Decades flew by.

The hardworking, kind-hearted Zhaodi turned from an old maid into a lonely old spinster.

She never married her whole life, just like her parents intended—diligently earning money for the family, caring for her aging parents, helping her sister-in-law during postpartum confinement, saving money for her brother to marry, support his wife and kids, buy a house, and secure a job…

When she was still able to earn, her family treated her sweetly. They told her things like, “Where else could you live as comfortably as at home?” and “Your nephew is half a son to you, he’ll take care of you when you’re old.” And the result?

When she became too old even for housekeeping jobs, after squeezing the last drop of blood from her, her brother’s family heartlessly kicked her out.

As she was being thrown out, her sister-in-law sneered at her: “Delusional! Since when does a nephew support his aunt in her old age? You stayed unmarried your whole life, leeching off us for decades. What now? You expect my son to keep feeding you? Dream on! You never married, never had kids. It’s your own fault you’ve got no one to rely on in old age!”

Because Zhaodi became homeless, the local community office did try to mediate, but the problem was that she couldn’t provide any proof of having financially supported her brother’s family. And legally or ethically, there was no obligation for a nephew to care for an aunt.

By then, Zhaodi was nearly seventy. Even if the community wanted to assign her a street-sweeping job, they couldn’t dare risk letting such an elderly person work on the streets—what if she died on the job? And no company would hire someone her age.

In the end, with no other option, the community turned a blind eye and allowed Zhaodi to “occupy” a storage room next to a public toilet in the neighborhood. That less-than-four-square-meter space became the final shelter of her life.

Did she regret it?

Of course she did.

Especially during every festive season, when homes across the city lit up with family reunions, hearing the laughter and joy of others, Zhaodi would often wonder—if she had been a little more selfish back then, thought a bit more for herself, would she also have had a happy marriage and filial children?

If only she could go back in time.

She would tell her younger self: Don’t be a brother-pleaser anymore. Stop sacrificing for those vampires! Find a good man, build a small family of your own, have a child or two…

Instead of ending up like now, dying alone, with no one to rely on, curled up in a filthy, stinking storage room, desperately waiting for death.

It’s hard to say whether someone like Granny Wang deserves pity or anger for her lack of resistance.

Anyway, from the perspective of Wei Sheng’s generation, facing such a hardcore brother-pleasing case like Zhaodi, there’s probably only one thing to say: “Respect and blessings.”

But for the elderly audience from her era, Granny Wang’s tragic life story was an absolute tearjerker.

These seniors didn’t use Weibo, but they were experts in the magical art of “forwarding to ** groups”!

Suddenly, family chat groups, square dance groups, Tai Chi groups, calligraphy groups… anywhere the middle-aged and elderly of J City gathered, the link to this show started appearing.

Not only that, some elders couldn’t get enough after watching it once. After discovering the show’s homepage offered replays, they watched it again and again!

They’d watch it alone at home, sighing repeatedly.

When meeting their old friends, they’d pull it up for collective viewing, sighing and lamenting together.

During family gatherings, spotting any unfilial younger generation, they’d replay the program, using it as a moral lesson to scold the ungrateful kids…

Even Jin Yannan hadn’t expected that before the final cut of the special episode was even done, the “Sunset Red Live Streaming Group” from Haitangyuan Street had already become an overnight sensation among the middle-aged and elderly across J City.

The livestream exploded in popularity, and soon, Granny Wang, who had been living by the public toilet, was found.

Turns out this story wasn’t fictional? Granny Wang really existed? Everything shown in the video was true?

Which also meant—the vampire-like brother and sister-in-law were also real?

Never underestimate these retired seniors. Among them were certainly some lonely, powerless elders, but there were also former staff and officials retired from the police and civil affairs systems.

Before long, through various special channels, Zhaodi’s ungrateful brother and his wife’s entire family were exposed.

In no time, this family became the target of public outrage in J City, like rats on the street with everyone wanting a piece of them.

Almost every day, people would throw garbage and rotten eggs at their door.

What? They called the police? Well… when elderly folks in their seventies and eighties “accidentally” dropped a couple of bad eggs at your doorstep, it’s not like the police were going to arrest them, right?

What hurt the brother and sister-in-law even more was that their son had been up for a promotion at work. But after word of his parents’ “glorious deeds” spread, that promotion opportunity went down the drain…

What infuriated them even more was that during their misfortune, people flocked daily to visit Wang Zhaodi in her tiny storage room, bringing her all sorts of food, supplies, and even giving her cash. The Wang family secretly watched local livestreams and saw the piles of bags and packages on the floor, wishing they could just snatch it all away.

Unfortunately, with people livestreaming there almost every day, they knew full well that showing their faces now would be walking right into a trap. They’d be verbally torn apart by these meddling busybodies.

They thought the whole thing would die down in a few days. The family had already made plans: once the attention faded, they’d make Zhaodi hand over all the money and goods she’d received during this time! It would help offset their recent losses.

But to their shock, right at that moment, a very wealthy local businessman suddenly stepped in and paid to have Wang Zhaodi moved into the best nursing home in the city!

Word was, that nursing home charged over 10,000 yuan per month?

If only Wang Zhaodi had still been living with them—then they could’ve used the excuse that she was being cared for at home and demanded that businessman pay them that monthly sum!

Unfortunately, their wishful thinking was doomed to fail.

A few months later, the elderly Wang Zhaodi passed away with a smile at the nursing home, bringing her regret-filled life to an end.

Before she died, Granny Wang left a will, deciding to donate all the more than 100,000 yuan in charitable donations she had received from kind-hearted people during those days, plus the tens of thousands she had saved from collecting recyclables, to the Haitangyuan Elderly Service Center, to help other lonely and unfortunate elderly people like herself…

————

In China, “three rounds and one sound” referred to the ideal dowry or wedding gifts. A man who could provide a bicycle, sewing machine, wristwatch, and radio was seen as a desirable husband. These items symbolized stability and prosperity, making them important for marriage negotiations at the time.