Was there any difference?
Ye Yaodong rubbed his face. So old he looked like his daughter's grandfather? That wouldn't do. Wouldn't he embarrass her in the future?
"Is there anything I can put on to make my skin lighter? Otherwise, I'll just keep getting darker in the sun. What if I embarrass our daughter when she grows up?"
"You and your wild ideas. Did your dad embarrass you?"
"I didn't go to school, and everyone's dad was the same. What's embarrassing about making a living through your own labor? But my daughter is different. She's going to leave this fishing village and study in a big city. I can't embarrass her. Being poor doesn't matter. Eight generations of poor peasants is something to be proud of. But if someone looks at me and asks her, 'Is that your grandpa?' wouldn't she die of embarrassment? I can't do that to her."
Lin Xiuqing was speechless. "She's only just turned a month old, and you're already thinking about her going to college?"
"I'm just planning ahead, aren't I? It hasn't even been a year, and look how tanned I've gotten. Another ten or twenty years of this, and won't I be done for? No, I have to figure something out. Look how fair and handsome my face used to be... Wasn't my face what you fell for...?"
As Ye Yaodong spoke, he rummaged around on the table, only to find a shell of clam-oil balm and a box of vanishing cream, both of which he had bought for her.
"Just these? Nothing else?"
"What else do you want?" Lin Xiuqing was utterly speechless, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. A grown man, afraid of getting dark and old in the sun?
"Sigh..."
Women these days really were too unassuming.
"You win