Zhou Chengsen was baffled. "What happened?"
How could giving betrothal gifts for a marriage result in someone reporting them?
"A few days ago, a leader's son got married..."
Ruan Tang explained the situation to him.
It turned out that at eight that morning, on his way home from his morning exercise, Grandpa Ruan had overheard several gossipy women discussing how a leader had held a wedding banquet at a certain major hotel and been reported.
After hearing about it, Grandpa Ruan had asked for the details. He learned that the man had held a wedding for his son at a hotel, with eight tables in all. The dishes had included lobster and sea cucumber—every kind of delicacy from land and sea. Then, the day after the wedding, someone had reported them. After an investigation, the man had received a Party Discipline Sanction and been demoted.
The moment Grandpa Ruan heard this, he ran home and had Ruan Tang call Zhou Chengsen. But Maternal Grandmother had answered the phone and said they had already set off.
Everyone was afraid that the betrothal gifts Zhou Chengsen had sent were too lavish and that someone would report them.
Then Ruan's grandmother had deliberately gone outside to wait in the compound.
That morning, people were coming and going through the compound to buy groceries or go to work. Whenever anyone asked why she was standing there, she said that her granddaughter's future husband was bringing over the betrothal gifts and that she was waiting to see whether he had arrived. She also casually mentioned that Zhou Chengsen was a fisherman and that his family's fishing boats made a great deal of money.
Otherwise, given Ruan's grandmother's temperament, she would never have shown off these things.
She simply wanted to tell everyone that the Zhou