Chapter 3

Chapter 4: The charm of that bowl of chicken stewed with shiitake mushrooms

Su Can had forgotten how outrageously expensive A4 printing was at print and copy shops in 1998: a single sheet cost one yuan fifty. If a student lost a textbook, photocopying a replacement would cost a small fortune. Even a school might have only one or two precious photocopiers. To save on paper costs, some test papers were mimeographed, such as these internal practice sheets Dong Qingyun had handed out.

Compared with the widespread availability of print and copy shops eleven years later, the changes in prices and per capita purchasing power, and the usual photocopying rate of twenty cents a sheet, with discounts for bulk orders, this really showed the earthshaking changes brought about by the development of the market economy under reform and opening up. The gains had certainly been substantial.

But one yuan fifty was still one yuan fifty. With his personal spending strictly controlled at this age, Su Can discovered that his pockets were completely empty. He did not have so much as ten cents.

In the end, Tang Wu paid the copying fee for him, and Su Can was naturally very grateful. It seemed his class monitor was not as cold and intimidating as he remembered. At least, beneath her deliberately indifferent gaze, he could see her kind heart and disposition.

Perhaps that coldness was merely a disguise to protect herself. Perhaps it was also an essential factor in her future success.

Success... right!

Su Can suddenly realized what the important thing about Tang Wu that he had thought of earlier was!

The sudden return of that memory brought Su Can out in a cold sweat. He looked again at Tang Wu, who had taken out ten yuan to pay for him and was now accepting her change from the shopkeeper.

A pretty girl, perfectly proportioned, with slender fingers and captivating eyes that blinked-the outline of the beauty she would become was already unmistakable. Su Can etched that image into his mind, only to feel a sudden, wrenching pain in his heart.

Su Can recalled a report he had read online in 2006. "Tang Wu was the director of Morningstar International's new projects division. This beautiful investment broker, who held her own against men and had made something of a name for herself in the industry, was seen by everyone as the very picture of a fashionable, independent woman, the focus of countless halos of admiration. Anyone seeing Tang Wu for the first time would surely feel it was a waste that this girl had not become a star. Yet this outstanding, beautiful broker, who had handled over a hundred million in funds on the securities market, ultimately failed to manage her own love life. A relationship that had begun during her school years ultimately could not withstand the test of time or the temptations of the world. In the end, Tang Wu fell for someone else after developing feelings for a diamond-tier client through her work, while arguments with her boyfriend over everyday trivialities continued to escalate. This also led to her subsequent murder at the hands of her boyfriend, who could not accept the truth. Whatever the circumstances, the beauty of days past was ultimately gone. However beautiful, strong, independent, and accomplished a person might be, failing to carefully cultivate their own love could ultimately lead only to tragedy. Did this offer a warning to a society growing ever more fickle at an ever faster pace?"

Tang Wu, the class monitor before him, would become an accomplished woman, but would ultimately be murdered by her lover. Unable to bear the fact that their breakup was settled or his own shattered pride, her boyfriend had calmly made thorough preparations, armed himself with a knife, and asked Tang Wu, who had already moved into a wealthy businessman's villa, to meet him one last time. Tang Wu had softened and agreed to meet him. In the end, she had refused his request to get back together, never expecting her enraged boyfriend to stab her in the heart at the last moment, killing her on the spot.

As that image overlapped with the Tang Wu before him, whose beauty was only beginning to emerge, Su Can had never expected this quiet, gentle scene beneath the sunlight to affect him so profoundly.

Perhaps this was life: seemingly ordinary, yet in truth full of towering waves, because no one could foresee or gauge, from this very moment, what would happen in the future.

In the end, holding his photocopied exercises, Su Can watched rather dazedly as Tang Wu and the twins, Cheng Yun and Cheng Lan, left in their two groups.

Naturally, Dong Qingyun followed Tang Wu. Even walking with her for a little while would be nice.

But today, Tang Wu had actually taken out her own money to pay for Su Can. Worse still, that brat had openly stared at her in a daze afterward, looking as though her beauty had stunned him. He was utterly shameless!

Dong Qingyun had wanted to teach Su Can a proper lesson, but on second thought, he let it go. They would be graduating soon anyway. He and Tang Wu both had their sights set on City No. 1 High School, a key provincial school, while a brat like Su Can would spend his whole school life stuck in a second-rate school like Third Middle School. With grades like his, he was destined for a bleak future at the bottom of society.

I might as well pull up a chair and enjoy watching his tragic life as the high school entrance exams brutally sort him out!

Somewhat dispirited, Su Can followed the familiar route back to his family's work-unit residential compound. Everything along the way belonged to the old city as it had been back then. Xiahai had not yet obtained national tourist city status, nor undergone the rapid transformation brought by billions in investment. Even a square in the city center took three or four years to build. The urban area developed at a snail's pace, the city's economy was not particularly healthy, and industry was even less developed. His home was south of the city proper, yet everything around it consisted of buildings and surroundings typical of the eighties.

His family had moved into their new home in 1997. As far as he remembered, it had been his first move in over a decade, and his only one. Even in 2009, his parents had still lived in that same home.

Now that he had returned to 1998, his family had been in their new home for less than a year. The apartments had been built with funds pooled by his parents' work units and could be called commercial housing, something of epoch-making significance back then. Naturally, employees received priority, and sales to outsiders were prohibited.

This commercial apartment had drained most of a lifetime's earnings from his parents, who were merely employees at ordinary organizations. He remembered failing the high school entrance exams in 1998, falling short of admission to Third Middle School's senior high division by a dozen or so points. With his grades at the time, he had been more than eighty points short of a key provincial school like City No. 1 High School, a gap that even tens of thousands of yuan could not have bought his way across back then.

With his family already unable to come up with the construction payments after pooling their funds, Su Can's failure in the entrance exams had only made things worse. A five-thousand-yuan premium admission fee was not much by present-day standards; for the Su Can of now, two months of belt-tightening would have covered it. Back then, however, it had undoubtedly been a heavy blow to a family whose savings were already exhausted.

Su Can vividly remembered how their relatives had also happened to need money urgently at the time, and the sight of his mother secretly wiping away tears as she worried over the money. His resolute-looking father's brows had furrowed deeply, too. For a long time afterward, Su Can had deliberately shut out that painful memory.

Thinking back on it now, he truly understood that money was always the means of sustaining a person's life, and even a happy family's life. Especially in the economically developed society of the future, money represented status and notions of success to a certain extent.

The apartment building before him stirred a little excitement in Su Can. In fact, if not for the fresh paint and his greetings along the way to familiar older neighbors in the compound, now a decade younger, he might have thought he had not crossed those eleven years at all, that he was still in 2009.

"Mom, I'm home." There was still a honeycomb-briquette stove in the kitchen specifically for stewing things. It certainly looked out of place in a kitchen with floor tiles, but they had used it back then to save electricity, though it had later been removed. Watching his parents busy chopping vegetables in the kitchen, with the aroma of chicken stewed with shiitake mushrooms filling the air, Su Can felt his eyes grow moist again.

His parents turned around, and his mother was already beaming. "Why are you home a little later than usual today? Dinner's almost ready. I stewed a chicken for you. My son's taking his high school entrance exams soon, so he needs some brain food. I'm counting on you to bring home good results!"

His mother was eleven years younger. Although her figure was already beginning to grow a little plump, her face still retained its charm, along with a hint of shrewdness. Later, after being laid off, she would open a little shop of her own and manage a passable business, but that was a story for later.

His father sighed. "Ah, we've paid premium fees for you all the way since kindergarten. This time, son, the entrance exams are up to you. Ah, but with your grades as they are now, I think it's going to be rough..."

His mother secretly pinched his father's side, her expression already changing. "Honestly, this is just how you are! At a time like this, you won't even encourage your son. What do you want him to do, then? Stop trying and get into some lousy school? What would be the point of going there?"

Knowing he had misspoken, his father nodded repeatedly. "Yes, yes, that's right. We're counting on you this time!"

Looking at his father's square, handsome face, which still held traces of his former military bearing, Su Can nodded hard and fought just as hard to keep his tears from falling. Eleven years later, his father's face had been covered in wrinkles, and his once-straight back had stooped a little as he walked. He had also developed cervical spondylosis and often lay awake at night, enduring it until dawn.

He worked at a construction company, which later went bankrupt and was restructured. Too honest and upright, without the scheming ways of his coworkers, he had ended up no more than a lowly security clerk, often facing the embarrassment of unpaid wages.

Eating the chicken stewed with shiitake mushrooms, its rich fragrance filling the house with warmth,

Su Can tried to hold back, but in the end he could not. Large tears slipped into the slightly salty chicken broth.