Xue — Twenty Years East of the River, Twenty Years West…
It was early January, the coldest time of the year.
Even in the relatively warmer inland region, the snow melted only to fall again. A thin layer had accumulated on the ground, lightly covering the dirt road leading into the village.
Yan Xue entered through the village entrance with a wicker basket strapped to her back. Smoke was already rising from the chimneys of many homes.
Yan Family Village was not particularly large, with fewer than two hundred households in total. There was no supply and marketing cooperative in the village, so anyone who wanted to buy something or sell their family’s surplus produce had to attend the market held every five days in one of the nearby villages.
The market at Dazhaojia was quite far away. The round trip was over thirty li, so she had inevitably been delayed.
Yan Xue stamped the snow from her shoes outside the main gate. The moment she entered the courtyard, she saw a figure dart out of her house like a monkey.
The Yan family’s courtyard was not very large. The main house had four rooms and was occupied by Eldest Uncle Yan’s family of eight, along with their widowed Second Grandma. The one-and-a-half-room eastern wing had been built separately when Yan Xue’s father married. Yan Xue now lived there with her younger brother, Yan Jigang.
Because the courtyard was so small, the wing was only five or six metres from the gate.
Eldest Uncle Yan’s eleven-year-old third son, Yan Jizong, clung to the doorframe and shouted inside with a cheeky grin, imitating someone’s stammer.
“D-don’t c-copy the way o-other people t-talk! I-I’m not c-copying anyone!”
Yan Xue did not even need to think to know that her younger brother, Yan Jigang, must be red in the face and neck with anger. Unfortunately, the more anxious he became, the less capable he was of forming a fluent sentence.
Ever since their father had been killed by falling rocks on the mountain the previous year, nine-year-old Yan Jigang had developed a stammer.
He had accidentally seen their father’s mangled body. After that, he suffered nightmares throughout the night and occasionally went into convulsions.
This kind of psychological stammer could potentially be cured, but their circumstances did not allow it. Brats like Yan Jizong also spent all day imitating the way Yan Jigang spoke, treating it as a game. It had made Yan Jigang increasingly afraid to open his mouth and eventually too frightened even to leave the house.
Sure enough, a halting voice came from inside.
“Y-you… y-you’re j-just…”
“I-I-I’m just!” Yan Jizong continued mimicking him, already doubled over with laughter.
Yan Xue watched for a moment before striding forward and smacking the back of his head.
“Have you finished your homework? Is that why you have time to run around?”
She had not held back. The slap produced a crisp *smack*.
Yan Jizong immediately clutched his aching head. When he turned and saw that it was her, he nearly jumped.
“I was only joking around with Jigang! Why did you hit me?”
“I was only joking around with you. When did I hit you?”
There was no anger on Yan Xue’s face. She was even smiling as she returned his words to him.
There was no point explaining to a brat like him that mocking someone’s disability would hurt their self-esteem. His parents did not care. They said the children were merely playing and accused her of making a fuss over nothing.
Yan Xue could not be bothered to educate someone else’s son. Instead, whenever she caught him playing a joke on Yan Jigang, she would play one on him too.
They would see how long it took for him to learn his lesson.
Seeing that he had been rendered speechless, Yan Xue even raised her hand again.
“If you think I hit you too hard, I can do it again. I promise I’ll be gentle this time.”
There was no chance Yan Jizong would let her try again. He had believed her the last time and had almost been slapped straight into the ground.
He fled while holding his head.
“I’m not stupid!”
It seemed he had learned at least a little.
Only then did Yan Xue step into the house. She looked at her younger brother, who was standing in the doorway to the inner room.
“Did Jizong come to play with you?”
It was not an unnecessary question. Yan Jizong could never sit still, but after coming over a few times and discovering that Yan Jigang neither liked going outside nor talking, he had stopped visiting as often.
Yan Xue spoke slowly, her tone natural and relaxed, as though she were merely asking in passing.
She had heard in her previous life that a slow, relaxed speaking environment could ease a patient’s nervousness and effectively improve speech difficulties.
Speaking of which, she had been here for a year now—perhaps even longer.
In any case, ever since she had struck her head a year ago, another lifetime’s memories had appeared in her mind. The two sets of memories had constantly fought each other, leaving her ill for nearly half a year.
Even now, she had not figured out whether her soul had transmigrated into this body or whether she had been reincarnated here from birth and only recently recovered her memories.
The two lifetimes were separated by nearly sixty years, but they had one similarity.
She had just lost her father in both.
However, one had been her biological father and the other her stepfather. One had left her completely alone, while the other had left her a younger half-brother who shared the same mother.
As for her mothers, the one from her previous life had abandoned her early, so Yan Xue did not remember her well. The mother in this life had genuinely loved her children and had never abandoned her, no matter how difficult life became.
Unfortunately, she had not lived long. She fell ill and died only a few years after giving birth to Yan Jigang.
That had left Yan Xue, an outsider who had changed her surname to Yan, to be raised mostly by her stepfather.
Therefore, Yan Xue and this younger brother truly depended on each other for survival.
During the two months when Yan Xue’s illness had been at its worst, Yan Jigang had forced himself to endure his fear and take care of her.
With the outsider gone, Yan Jigang was indeed less nervous. He copied her and deliberately slowed his speech.
“No. He came… to bring something. He said… Eldest Aunt gave it to us.”
Although speaking was still difficult for him, at least he did not stammer.
Yan Xue followed the direction of his finger and saw four golden cakes on the stove beside the large iron wok. They had been placed on a coarse porcelain plate.
Now that was unusual.
Yan Xue had only been seventeen when her father died, so the guardianship of both siblings had fallen to Eldest Uncle Yan’s family.
However, whether it was managing their daily lives or repaying the money Yan Xue had borrowed from the production team for her medical treatment, Yan Xue had been the one finding solutions.
The family next door had not even sent them a grain of rice.
What was more, the area surrounding Yan Family Village was famously known as part of the sweet-potato belt. The soil was deep, loose, and well-drained, making it particularly suitable for growing sweet potatoes. More than seventy per cent of the grain produced locally was sweet potato.
Even when steaming bread, people first had to make a sweet-potato starter. Cooked sweet potatoes were peeled and kneaded into the dough starter, left to rise, then mixed with white flour and allowed to rise a second time.
Ordinarily, women and children barely got to see any other grain. Proper steamed bread was reserved for the men who worked in the fields.
These corn-and-soybean cakes contained a generous amount of cornmeal and between a quarter and a third soybean flour. They were stuck against the side of the wok and cooked until soft on top and crisp underneath.
They smelled especially fragrant.
Would Eldest Aunt truly be willing to give something like this to them?
Yan Xue’s first thought was that unsolicited kindness always concealed ulterior motives.
Yan Jigang had clearly lost any sentimental illusions about their eldest uncle’s family as well. Worry appeared on his small face.
“Wh-what are they… planning this time?”
There was already a precedent.
When their father died in an accident, responsibility had been traced back to neighbouring Wang Family Village, where people had been using explosives to quarry stone on the mountain.
A human life had been lost, so Wang Family Village had paid some compensation.
Eldest Aunt had gone to collect it. After returning, she had not mentioned a word of it to the siblings and had stuffed all the money into her own pocket.
Had it not been for that, Yan Xue would never have gone to argue with them, struck her head, and spent nearly half a year bedridden on the heated kang.
“It’s fine. Whatever she’s planning, it’ll only work if we agree to cooperate.”
Across two lifetimes, Yan Xue had encountered far too many difficulties. She had survived them all, so she was not particularly worried.
She removed the basket from her back and placed it on the floor.
“Dazhaojia was paying one fen more for peanuts than they do here—nineteen fen per jin. I also bought a salted fish at the market. Tomorrow, we’ll soak it and fry it with some radish. We can eat it with these cakes, and I won’t have to go through the trouble of making anything else.”
Supplies were scarce during the planned-economy era. Simply eating until one was full was already difficult, making salted fish an exceptional delicacy.
The moment Yan Jigang heard there would be something delicious to eat, his eyes lit up.
However, he soon hesitated again.
“Sis, how much… do we still owe the team?”
“Does owing money mean we stop eating?”
Yan Xue stroked his head.
“I walked dozens of li today. I’m starving to death. Come and help me light the fire.”
He was still a child, after all. Yan Jigang’s attention was immediately diverted. He answered and ran over to light the stove.
As he pulled the bellows, he did not forget to show concern for her.
“Why don’t… you eat a cake first?”
“I can wait a little longer.”
Yan Xue emptied and tidied the basket, then took out the money she had earned that day and began doing the accounts.
Unlike neighbouring Wang Family Village, which had a quarry, Yan Family Village relied entirely on farming.
Every year after the autumn harvest, grain was distributed to each household according to the work points they had earned.
Families that earned plenty of work points or produced well on their private plots could sell the surplus to the purchasing station in exchange for a meagre income.
Families with many children and few labourers had to buy grain from the production team instead and could end up owing the team money.
Yan Xue had spent nearly half of the previous year recovering from her illness.
The family kept around a dozen chickens, and selling eggs had only just allowed them to balance their income and expenses. Repaying their debt was out of the question.
Reselling goods for profit was also illegal in this era.
Even if she dared to risk returning to her old profession, buying fish wholesale from the coast and selling it from village to village, the profit margin would be extremely limited.
It would barely make a dent in their debt.
Besides, their most urgent problem was not money. It was Yan Jigang’s psychological condition.
He had not attended school the previous year.
His tuition had already been paid, but he had secretly run home. When Yan Xue discovered him, his face had been deathly pale.
He would turn ten after the New Year. He could not continue avoiding school forever, could he?
Even if she taught him reading and arithmetic at home, could he truly hide inside the house and avoid people for the rest of his life?
As she thought about it, Yan Xue’s chewing gradually slowed.
Yan Jigang, sitting opposite her at the table, assumed she was reluctant to finish her cake. He lowered his head to examine his own, then broke off the untouched portion and handed it to her.
“I can’t finish it.”
“I can’t finish mine either.”
Yan Xue returned to her senses and pushed the cake back.
She took a sip of cabbage soup before asking thoughtfully, “Jigang, suppose we moved somewhere else. Would you be willing to try going outside?”
Yan Jigang froze.
He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but no words came out. In the end, he could only lower his head, his face filled with shame.
Yan Xue did not bring it up again.
After the meal, she washed the bowls and chopsticks and cleaned the large wok. By the time she returned, Yan Jigang had wiped the table clean and placed a notebook and pencil on top, waiting for her to teach him new characters.
That night, Yan Jigang had another nightmare.
The moment the breathing of the person beside her grew heavier, Yan Xue noticed. She reached out and gently patted him through the quilt.
When he had fully awakened, she pulled on her padded jacket, got out of bed, and poured him a cup of warm water.
Yan Jigang quietly thanked her. After drinking it, he crawled back beneath the quilt.
He was clearly terrified, yet he closed his eyes and pretended he could still fall asleep.
For a brief moment, Yan Xue thought of her father from her previous life.
Before transmigrating, she had been caring for her seriously ill father in the hospital.
During the period before his death, he had been the same way. The pain kept him awake throughout the night, but he had been afraid of disturbing her. He would keep his body rigid, not even daring to turn over.
Perhaps Heaven had seen that she had no one left and had kicked her back into the 1960s, giving her another blood relative.
Surely it could not have been because the young woman accompanying the patient in the neighbouring bed had dragged her into reading a novel?
There had indeed been a character named Yan Xue in that novel, but the other woman had far better luck than she did.
Not only had she been born into a good family, but the man she married was also a senior engineer at a research institute.
Her only stroke of misfortune was breaking off an arranged childhood engagement during the first years of the political turmoil.
The rejected party seemed to have obtained the script of a broken-engagement revenge story. He did not even need the proverbial thirty years to reverse his fortunes. After only twenty, he returned to take revenge on her.
Her senior-engineer husband had not only failed to protect her but also had an even deeper grudge against the man.
He was disgraced before she was and ended up with the supposedly secure “iron rice bowl” of gluing paper boxes for a living…
Thinking about it that way, perhaps it was fortunate that Yan Xue had not followed the trend and transmigrated into a book.
When the breathing beside her gradually became steady again, Yan Xue lay back down.
The next morning, she counted the dates on the calendar, strapped on her basket, and went out.
By the time she returned, Yan Jigang had already fed the chickens and swept the inside and outside of the house until everything was spotless.
He was even puffing out his thin little cheeks as he carefully wiped the wooden lid of the large iron wok, looking like an industrious little Thumbelina.
As long as he did not have to go outside or speak to anyone, he was perfectly comfortable within the confines of their tiny mud-brick home.
Yan Xue sighed helplessly and went to the family’s private plot behind the house to dig up a radish.
She had soaked the salted fish the previous night. It had softened by now, so she only needed to cut it up before cooking it.
She was just about to pour oil into the wok and light the stove when the door to the main room opened.
Eldest Aunt Bai Xiuzhen entered, bringing a gust of freezing wind in with her.
Leave a Reply