Seeing children around her own age, Xiaoxi—who had been lying listlessly on her mother’s shoulder—immediately lifted her head. Her large, quiet eyes looked curiously at the children playing below.
Xu Huiqing stroked her head and softly asked, “Does Xiaoxi want to go play?”
Xiaoxi shook her head and nestled her face back into the crook of Xu Huiqing’s neck.
The Boss Lady greeted the security guard. “My maternal nephew’s wife wants to enroll her little girl in our compound’s kindergarten. I’m here to see Director Chen!”
The security guard was a cheerful-looking man with a round face and short stature, a constant smile on his face. He appeared to know her. Hearing this, he pointed toward a shady, tree-lined corner. “The director’s in her office!”
The Boss Lady then led Xu Huiqing to the Director’s office.
Director Chen looked about forty, a middle-aged woman with an elegant bearing. Hearing that Xu Huiqing was here to register her child for kindergarten, she asked for the child’s name and age. When she learned that Xu Huiqing was a teacher with a formal State Employment Position at a public elementary school back in her hometown, her expression grew warmer. Even the Boss Lady glanced at Xu Huiqing with surprise.
She had originally assumed Xu Huiqing was like so many uneducated rural girls who came to the city to do manual labor. She hadn’t expected Xu Huiqing to be a “College Student” with a state post.
Director Chen was equally curious why a young woman with a guaranteed iron rice bowl position would leave her hometown, child in tow, to make a living in the city.
Xu Huiqing didn’t elaborate, saying only, “I got divorced.”
Director Chen asked no further questions. She just registered Xiaoxi’s information. When she asked for the child’s name, Xu Huiqing’s mind suddenly stirred. Thinking of the Zhao family’s Son Preference, she fell silent for two seconds. “Her surname is Xu. Her name is Xu Guanying.”
Guan — elegant and refined.
Xu Huiqing hoped that all of Xiaoxi’s suffering would dissipate with her past life, and that this life would be filled with prosperity and good fortune.
Ying — innate intelligence, magnanimous spirit.
She wished for this life of Xiaoxi’s to be free from emotional calamity, with robust health, outstanding distinction, lofty aspirations, and a brilliant future.
She wanted her child to grow up healthy and happy, to see the world’s higher, farther, and more beautiful vistas, to feel the vastness and majesty of the world, not to be confined by trivial romances and affections.
This was not just her hope for Xiaoxi, but also her hope for herself in this life.
“Xu Guanying,” she said once more.
In that moment, she felt an urgent need to finalize the housing situation in H City, to quickly move her and Xiaoxi’s Household Registration out of her parents’ home, to establish an independent household. They would have a shared Household Registration Booklet, a new name, a brand-new life.
It was already late June, and the kindergarten was about to go on summer vacation. The kindergarten did remain open during the summer, and Director Chen asked Xu Huiqing if she wanted to send Xu Guanying over the summer.
Director Chen’s voice was very gentle, unhurried and calm. “The fees for summer are different from the regular term. The regular term is charged per semester — thirty-six yuan per semester. Summer is charged monthly: a supervision fee of twenty yuan, a snack fee of fifteen yuan, and a meal fee of thirty yuan.”
She was thinking that Xu Huiqing, freshly arrived in the city, likely didn’t have much money. She would need to find work quickly, and the child would surely need somewhere to be placed. That’s why she asked.
After a pause, Director Chen added, “You were a teacher before. If you’re looking for work, it’ll probably be in that direction. If you haven’t found a job yet, why not try asking at the Youth Palace across the way? They’re probably short on teachers for the summer.”
Summer vacation was always the Youth Palace’s busiest season. Unlike the kindergarten, which still received children during the summer, elementary and middle schools were completely closed. Working parents had nowhere to place their vacationing children, who were almost all dropped at the Youth Palace during summer. This was the time the Youth Palace urgently needed teachers.
In this era, technical secondary school graduates, junior college graduates, and university students all had Job Assignment, guaranteeing them posts. Finding a teacher with educational credentials for the Youth Palace was very difficult. A person like Xu Huiqing—with credentials, who had left a state-assigned position in her hometown to find work—was extremely rare and exactly what the Youth Palace desperately needed.
Xu Huiqing thanked Director Chen gratefully.
Originally, the Boss Lady hadn’t intended to sign a lease contract, planning to just collect rent each month and be done. It was probably her first time renting, and she hadn’t even thought to collect a deposit.
The condition of the apartment’s interior was abysmal. Xu Huiqing still wanted to find someone to repair it. So she spoke with the Boss Lady about fixing it up and made it clear she hoped not to be kicked out after the repairs were done.
The Boss Lady had never imagined Xu Huiqing would even want to repair the place. She said, “If you want to fix it up, fix it yourself. Do whatever you want, as long as you don’t ask me for money!”
Of course, spoken words alone held no guarantee. Xu Huiqing wrote every clause clearly into the lease contract.
The Boss Lady had initially looked down on Xu Huiqing somewhat, seeing her as a country person. But it turned out Xu Huiqing was even more meticulous than she was.
Right there at the kindergarten, she borrowed pen and paper from the security guard in the guardhouse. Xu Huiqing drafted the lease contract in the guardhouse, copied both ID cards, and both parties signed and pressed their thumbprints.
In her past life, Xu Huiqing had bought several properties under Xiaoxi’s name. When vacant, she’d rent them out. Though real estate agents drafted those lease contracts, she had read them carefully and knew the general clauses by heart.
Newly arrived in a strange city, she was guarded against everything. She wrote the lease contract in great detail, including essentially everything she could think of.
When the Boss Lady saw Xu Huiqing handling matters so meticulously and methodically, her opinion of her rose a few notches. She thought to herself, “As expected of a college graduate, a cultured person.” Her attitude became considerably more pleasant and polite.
After signing the lease contract with Xu Huiqing, she even took her to the place nearby where people had gas cylinders delivered, helping her order one. She escorted Xu Huiqing back to the unit entrance of Yinshan West 8 Courtyard. Then, contract in hand, she hurried off to the bus terminal.
Standing alone at the unit entrance of the compound, contract in hand, Xu Huiqing felt a bit surreal. She’d found a place to rent so quickly, resolved Xiaoxi’s schooling issue, too.
It was still early, and she didn’t idle. She went to the corner store at the compound’s entrance and asked where she could buy a bamboo mat, blankets, and bedding. After purchasing daily necessities, she had no more hands to carry Xiaoxi. A bamboo mat tucked under her arm, both hands holding basins, towels, a thermos, an electric fan, and other household items.
Xiaoxi, who had been constantly carried by her mother ever since being brought back from the deep mountains, was finally set down by Xu Huiqing. The tiny little person, gripping the hem of her mother’s clothes, the big and the small, mother and daughter, struggled up the seven flights of stairs.
After hauling a huge pile of things upstairs, mother and daughter stood at the entrance of their dirty, dilapidated apartment, feeling quite at a loss.
In her past life, Xu Huiqing had been the model of a “virtuous wife” in everyone’s eyes. But in reality, Xu Huiqing wasn’t quite that “domestically skilled.”
Her virtue mainly manifested in being kind to the neighbors and never mistreating her younger sisters-in-law.
In this era where a married-off daughter was like spilled water, Old Zhao and Old Lady Zhao, as well as Zhao Zongbao, treated their daughters harshly. Whenever the Zhao Sisters returned to their parents’ home, they were never pampered guests; they were expected to willingly do chores around the house.
With such wonderful sisters-in-law, how could Xu Huiqing not welcome them? Every time they came, she was welcoming and warm, buying food and drinks, equally enthusiastic toward their children. She never gossiped or gave them attitude just because their visit to their parents’ home meant a couple extra meals. She even welcomed them to come back often to visit, to stay longer.
Everyone praised their aunt-in-law as a good person!
Even if she did nothing, her reputation among the Zhao Sisters was excellent. They were very clear that their natal family could not be relied upon. The only one they could count on was Xu Huiqing.
Xu Huiqing had three older brothers above her. As the only daughter in the family, she had been doted on by her grandpa and parents since childhood. She only needed to study well. At home, the most she did was sweep the floor or feed the pigs. During the busy farming season, putting on a straw hat and sitting under a tree’s shade to watch the rice drying on the threshing floor so the chickens wouldn’t eat it—that was the hardest work she’d ever done.
Because she had somehow cracked the family’s iron pot while trying to cook as a child, her mother wouldn’t even let her cook.
Before she was married, she had already been assigned to teach at Town Central Primary School. After marriage, she continued working. The cooking and household chores were actually always done by her mother-in-law, Old Lady Zhao.
The Zhao family people did try ordering Xu Huiqing around the way they ordered Old Lady Zhao. But Xu Huiqing, having never been raised with the concept of doing such chores—that is, having no eye for housework—when Old Zhao or Zhao Zongbao habitually ordered a female family member around, namely Old Lady Zhao or Xu Huiqing, Xu Huiqing, accustomed to having her three older brothers help with things growing up, would habitually call Zhao Zongbao to do it instead.
Zhao Zongbao couldn’t order her around.
After a few such incidents, Old Zhao and Zhao Zongbao habitually stopped asking her and instead ordered Old Lady Zhao to do it. Old Lady Zhao would do the work while complaining, grumbling, and banging things around, cursing.
She never named names. Freshly graduated and assigned a job straight out of school, at just eighteen or nineteen, how could Xu Huiqing understand the curses were aimed at her?
Even if she occasionally caught on, she’d get angry herself!
She had her own job, her own salary. Why order her—who had worked all day—instead of ordering your idle, loafing son?
Not only did she not follow Old Lady Zhao’s hints to take over the role of serving the entire family, she’d make Zhao Zongbao do it.
Old Lady Zhao couldn’t bear to let her precious son do housework. She’d immediately do it herself!
As for Old Zhao and Zhao Zongbao, they didn’t care who did the housework, as long as it wasn’t them, as long as there was food on the table at mealtime and the floors at home were clean.
If these conditions weren’t met, Old Zhao would scold Old Lady Zhao, and Old Lady Zhao would loudly complain and pour out her grievances for Xu Huiqing to hear.
The entire Zhao family would look at her. And young as she was then, she’d just blink her big eyes and look back at them, clueless.
She hadn’t understood back then. Now, looking back, Xu Huiqing realized it was like a food chain within the Zhao household’s ecosystem. Old Zhao fed on Old Lady Zhao. After she married in, Old Zhao, Old Lady Zhao, and Zhao Zongbao fed on her.
It was only because she was educated, had a job, and had the confidence that she wasn’t devoured.
A sudden clarity dawned on Xu Huiqing. When the Zhao family, who clearly weren’t short on money, still wanted to send Xiaoxi away—to sell her—could it also be because they hadn’t managed to get a grip on her, Xu Huiqing?
They knew all too well how much influence a child has over their mother!
At her life’s most vulnerable moment, they had struck a fatal blow.
After Xu Huiqing later found Xiaoxi, she had lost her state position, but she had always worked as a teacher in schools, never leaving the workforce. And later, as the Zhao family became more and more prosperous, there was even less reason for Xu Huiqing to do housework.
So although Xu Huiqing was renowned near and far for being a ‘virtuous wife,’ she had truly never done much housework. Looking at the filth and disarray filling the apartment, for a moment, she truly didn’t know where to begin.