When Chen Guiliang woke up, the sky was already bright.
The moment he opened his eyes, he saw light filtering through the gaps between the roof tiles.
Their house had earthen walls and a tiled roof. Drafts and leaks were commonplace, and during heavy rain, they even needed buckets and basins to catch the water.
It should have been rebuilt into a two-story house years ago, but his father had been cheated, delaying things until now.
They did not even have decent furniture. Everything was old stuff bought when his parents got married or brought as dowry.
Lying in bed, Chen Guiliang began thinking about renovating the house.
If they bought a home in a big city, Grandma would probably not be able to get used to living there.
Besides, Grandma got carsick.
He could earn money to build a new house after starting a business in college.
For now, he needed to study hard, get into a good school, and bring honor to his parents, Grandma, and maternal grandparents.
That was extremely important.
Not counting junior colleges, the village had produced only one college student so far. After graduating, that person had become a doctor at a hospital in the provincial capital. Their family was therefore held in great esteem, and whenever anything happened, the neighbors would take the initiative to help them.
Villagers helped one another even among ordinary families, but that family's treatment was clearly different.
Chen Guiliang had what it took to become the village's second college student!
Grandma and the others would definitely be happy.
Getting recommended for admission through competitions was unreliable, so Chen Guiliang needed to prepare for both possibilities and honestly improve his grades.
"Grandma! Grandma!"
Chen Guiliang got up and called out several times, only to find Grandma outside feeding the chickens.
The family's land had already been "given" to neighbors to farm, leaving only two private plots for growing vegetables.
It was the complete opposite of ancient landlords recruiting tenants. Giving away land now actually left you owing favors. If the fields were abandoned for several years, then when Chen Guiliang's parents came home and wanted to farm again, they would have to put in effort to reclaim them.
And as more and more people went out to work, the amount of abandoned land in the village increased every year. Only those with good relationships were willing to "help" farm your family's land.
Naturally, the grain grown in the fields belonged to whoever actually farmed them.
But the agricultural tax, including the three deductions and five unified levies, had to be paid by the land's original owner!
Grandma could never stay idle. Aside from tending the private plots, she went out every day to gather firewood and raised plenty of poultry.
"The food's in the pot!" Grandma called.
Chen Guiliang went to the kitchen and brought out the food. After Grandma finished feeding the chickens and ducks, she came over and sat at the table too.
Rice porridge and pickled vegetables.
After breakfast, Grandma barely rested before going to weed the vegetables in the private plots.
Chen Guiliang followed her over and said, "Grandma, we've got enough firewood at home to last for years. Don't go out gathering firewood anymore. You're always climbing slopes and crossing ridges—what if you accidentally fall?"
Grandma said, "All right."
Chen Guiliang said nothing more and did not help with the weeding either.
He knew Grandma was only finding things to do because she was too idle. If he helped pull all the weeds now, she would definitely go find some other work.
It was as though farm work could never be finished, as though it would keep appearing from nowhere.
"Brother!"
His cousin Chen Guirong stood in the courtyard and called out.
Chen Guiliang walked over with a smile. "You've grown taller again."
Chen Guirong sat on the doorstep, looking rather helpless. "It's finally the weekend. I wanted to go hang out with my classmates, but Dad insisted I come over and ask you about study methods. With grades like mine, what the hell is there to ask about?"
His cousin was in his third year of middle school. His grades were abysmal, and he could only get into some trashy high school.
Later, he would not even finish high school before dropping out to attend technical school. He became a chef, lived fairly well, and even made cooking videos that turned him into a small online celebrity.
"Brother, do you have cigarettes?" Chen Guirong asked quietly.
Chen Guiliang said, "No."
"I heard you were handing out Hongtashan cigarettes everywhere yesterday," Chen Guirong said.
Chen Guiliang reminded him, "You're underage."
Chen Guirong thought, You're not turning eighteen until next year either.
Chen Guiliang asked again, "Is your school still that chaotic?"
Seeing that he could not mooch a cigarette, his cousin could only give up. "Brother, did you forget? Last year the whole city cracked down hard. The police were arresting people everywhere. The school is peaceful now."
Chen Guiliang immediately remembered. The city television station had even broadcast the results of the crackdown, displaying rows upon rows of guns, knives, and steel pipes.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of all sorts of criminal gang members had been arrested.
There had been nationwide crackdowns in 2001 and 2002, and Longdu City was naturally no exception.
Chen Guirong chuckled. "Actually, even without the crackdown, as long as I gave them your name, those punks wouldn't dare mess with me."
After chatting with his cousin for a while, Chen Guiliang wandered around the house.
In the empty pigsty, where they no longer raised pigs, he eventually found several discarded beverage bottles Grandma had picked up.
"Come with me." Chen Guiliang picked up a Sprite bottle and headed out toward the riverbank a few hundred meters away.
Chen Guirong caught up and asked, "Brother, what are you doing?"
Chen Guiliang said something his cousin could not understand. "Qin Shi Huang needs a token."
"Qin Shi Huang?" Chen Guirong scratched his head.
The small river in front of their home had made great contributions during the War of Resistance.
At the time, the salt-producing regions of the coastal provinces had been occupied by those damned Japanese devils. The salt produced in Longdu City had to supply several surrounding provinces, making it one of the major salt-producing regions in the rear area of the war.
Much of that salt had been transported out along this small river, and the nearby salt-shipping docks had even been bombed.
As far as the eye could see, the riverbank was covered in pebbles.
Chen Guiliang poked a hole through the center of the Sprite bottle cap, filled the bottle with river water, and said to his cousin, "Help me find some small, pretty pebbles."
"What do you need pebbles for?" Chen Guirong asked.
Chen Guiliang said, "To give a girl as a gift."
"Hahaha!"
Chen Guirong immediately mocked him. "Brother, that's way too old-fashioned. Who gives girls pebbles? She'll definitely despise you for that."
"What the hell do you know?"
When Chen Guiliang had been in school, he had always thought he needed money to date. Gifts worth only a few yuan seemed too cheap and embarrassing, and he simply could not bring himself to give them.
But now that he had been reborn, he dared to give away worthless rocks.
Mockery aside, his cousin still obediently squatted down and helped him look for attractive pebbles.
"How about this one?" Chen Guirong picked one up.
Chen Guiliang squirted water from the Sprite bottle and washed the mud from its surface. "No. It's cracked, and it's too big."
Chen Guirong tossed aside the lousy stone and resumed searching. As he searched, he said, "Brother, I should be the one teaching you how to pick up girls. Your methods are already outdated."
"You date in middle school?" Chen Guiliang asked.
"Why can't middle school students date?" Chen Guirong replied.
Chen Guiliang said, "How do you date?"
"You take girls to play on computers. There are internet cafés in town now, though unfortunately they can't connect to the internet," Chen Guirong said. "Or you go roller-skating. A roller rink opened in town. They play Jay Chou's songs over loudspeakers, and skating there feels super stylish. I even dyed my hair blond a while back. I looked fucking handsome. Sigh, but when I got home, Dad beat me up. I had no choice but to spend money dyeing it back."
"You deserved to be beaten to death!"
"Brother, is this one okay?"
"It's too gaudy. The colors are all over the place."
"How about we go into the city and pick out a bracelet for your girl... for my sister-in-law? One of those crystal ones, all sparkly and fucking pretty!"
"Shut up and keep looking slowly!"
The warm morning sun of early winter shone over the two boys on the riverbank.
After working for a full hour, the two cousins had picked out more than thirty pebbles.
Chen Guiliang took them to the riverside and washed them all clean, comparing them again and again, one by one.
In the end, he kept one and threw the rest into the river.
When they returned home, Grandma was gone again. She had probably finished weeding and gone somewhere else to find farm work to do.
Chen Guiliang lit the firewood to boil water and said to his cousin, "Go catch a chicken."
"Got it!"
Grandma was too frugal to buy meat or even slaughter a chicken.
Near noon, Grandma came back carrying a bundle of firewood and discovered that her two grandsons had killed one of her egg-laying hens.
"Grandma, the chicken's stewing in the pot. It'll be ready in another half hour," his cousin said with a grin.
Grandma smiled along with him and went into the main room to turn on the television.
She liked that color TV.
Chen Guiliang had his cousin keep tending the fire while he went to watch TV with Grandma. "Grandma, next time I come back, I'll buy you a kitten. You can play with it at home. Don't go out looking for things to keep yourself busy with."
Grandma made a request. "It has to be a local cat, one that can catch mice."
"Then I'll get a black-and-white one," Chen Guiliang said.
Grandma did not much like visiting neighbors. When she met elderly women from the village, she usually just listened while they talked.
Keeping a lively Milk Cat would probably make her life more interesting.
Judging the time, Grandma went to the kitchen, lifted the pot lid, and poked the stewing chicken with her chopsticks. "It's not tender enough yet. It needs to stew a little longer. Rongrong, take a bowl home at noon."
His cousin smiled. "All right."
Although the two families were not on very good terms because of Grandpa and Second Aunt, they still needed to maintain basic contact.
For instance, whenever one family cooked meat, they would send the other a bowl.
But Second Aunt had her own way of dealing with that. Every time, she bought only a little meat, barely enough to stir-fry a small plate, making it hard for Second Uncle to offer any to Grandma.
Once the chicken was done stewing, his cousin filled a bowl. "Grandma, Brother, I'm heading out."
"Watch where you're going. Don't fall," Grandma reminded him.
"I know, I know." Chen Guirong jogged away.
After his cousin had gone far enough, Chen Guiliang took out five hundred yuan. "Grandma, Dad gave me this. Everyone in the village knows Dad made money, so someone will definitely come borrowing, and we might even attract thieves."
"I know more than you do." Grandma took the money into the inner room to hide it.
When old people encountered thieves at home, they generally lay still and pretended to sleep. The thieves would rummage through everything and leave whether or not they found money.
Two years ago, all the chickens and ducks Grandma raised had been stolen by a group of thieves in the middle of the night.
She had discovered them at the time and even recognized who the thieves were.
But she had not dared to shout. She could only continue pretending to sleep.
After lunch, Chen Guiliang watched TV with Grandma for another half hour, then got up and packed his things. "Grandma, I'm going back to school."
"Let's go. I'll walk you out." Grandma turned off the TV.
Chen Guiliang brought along his first- and second-year high school textbooks and walked toward the village road, Grandma following behind him.
"Grandma, no need to walk me any farther."
"All right. Go on, then."
Chen Guiliang walked along the village road for a while, then turned back to look. Grandma was still standing on the hillside.
He knew she would not feel at ease going home until he had crossed the mountain pass and disappeared completely from sight.
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