"Didn't you hear what Liu Feng said? She'd been on the train for two days and two nights. What kind of smells weren't on that train? Cigarette smoke, stinky feet... Maybe her sweat glands are more active, so she sweats more. Then she got drenched in that heavy rain just now. Of course she'd gone sour. Look at your level of awareness—do you really have to mock a new comrade over something so minor?"
Wang Yan had already examined He Xiaoping's face. There was no major problem. Her active sweat glands were one factor, but she was also somewhat weak from malnutrition.
That was normal. After all, material conditions were far from abundant these days, and more than half of China was still going hungry. He Xiaoping had never been welcome at home, and her family's circumstances had been poor to begin with. Having enough to eat was already good enough.
But if one really thought about it, her mother and stepfather could not have treated her quite so harshly. At the very least, she had grown up safely and even managed to get into an arts troupe in Jingcheng. To put it bluntly, if she had been starving, she would not have been able to dance. Dancing was physical work, after all. No matter how talented one was or how much one emphasized art, moving one's arms and kicking one's legs still consumed strength. If her family had truly treated her that badly, she would never have been able to dance.
She did have a bit of an odor, but it was nowhere near as unbearable as they made it out to be—just a faint sour smell of sweat. Compared to a gym locker room, a dance student's dance shoes were far worse.
Even if the others did not