Today was Han Li's forty-sixth birthday.
It marked forty-six years since she had come into this world.
Over those forty-six years, she had grown day by day from a newborn baby.
Kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school...
Her family had been too poor to afford tuition, so she had not gone to college.
After graduating from high school, she had gone to work at a restaurant in Yu County through a relative's introduction.
Then she had met her husband, who worked as a chef at the same restaurant.
He was Lin Zhe's father, Lin Guodong.
They had met, gotten to know each other, fallen in love, and finally married. Then, after ten months of pregnancy, she had given birth to Lin Zhe.
From a baby to a toddler, an adolescent, a young adult, then a wife and a mother...
Now forty-six, Han Li was fast approaching fifty and the ranks of the elderly.
Sometimes, late at night, just before falling asleep, she would look back on her life and feel that time had passed terribly quickly.
A lifetime was only a few tens of thousands of days, and half of hers had already gone by.
In the past, Lin Zhe had neither the means nor the confidence to say he would let his parents enjoy a comfortable life.
Whenever their birthdays came around, the most he could do was send them a 200-yuan red envelope on WeChat with his birthday wishes.
Neither of them had ever accepted his red envelopes, though. The money would always return to his account the next day.
Now, he could just about count himself as someone making big money.
And he would earn more and more in the future.
With his mother's birthday happening to come around now, Lin Zhe felt it did not