Make a Fortune and Become Well-off [90] - Chapter 194

When Father Jiang checked the time, it was already eight o’clock. Others had finished their New Year’s Eve dinners and were sitting in front of the TV watching the Spring Festival Gala. Only then did Father Jiang say to Jiang Bai, “Let’s go out and set off firecrackers.”

Traditionally, firecrackers were lit only after the New Year’s Eve dinner.

The dinner table was quiet, and no one spoke.

Neither Jiang Ning nor Jiang Bai had a particularly outgoing temperament. In previous years, when Jiang Song was at home, New Year’s Eve was filled with laughter between him and Father Jiang. Jiang Song was always smiling, toasting to everyone in the family, and sharing auspicious words that made the whole family beam with joy.

But that year, with Jiang Song absent, the dinner table was quiet. Father Jiang and Mother Jiang’s New Year’s Eve dinner felt lacking in spirit.

Father Jiang drank two glasses of rice wine and sat in silence, looking at his children. Then he remembered to ask Jiang Ning about her studies at school. He put down his wine glass, a gentle smile on his face, and asked Jiang Ning, “Can you keep up with your high school studies?”

His daughter’s grades in junior high school were not very good, but she had performed exceptionally well on the high school entrance examination and was admitted to the No. 1 High School. He worried that when his daughter reached high school, she might struggle to keep up with the pace of the courses, and her grades could worsen.

“If there’s anything you don’t understand, your second brother is at home. You can ask him, or you can come to me,” Father Jiang said, feeling confident in his high school knowledge.

He could even recite the Paxing music backward and forward.

It was just that he didn’t speak Mandarin, and others couldn’t understand the poems he recited in Shuibu Town dialect.

The dishes were cold, and Jiang Bai was boiling lotus root meatballs in the pot. When he heard Father Jiang’s words, he looked up and said, “How can my sister not keep up? She got first place in the county!”

Father Jiang thought he had misheard.

Jiang Bai ate lotus root meatball, saying, “No. 1 in the county.”

“Who is first in the county?” Father Jiang paused with his chopsticks in hand, his eyes wide open.

“Ning Ning got first place in the county,” Jiang Bai still looked calm.

Father Jiang thought he had drunk too much and was mishearing things. He had only had two glasses of rice wine, not two bottles. Jiang Bai was annoyed with him. He raised his eyes and looked at Father Jiang, his voice a little louder, “Ning Ning got first in the county.”

Father Jiang looked at Jiang Bai, then at Jiang Ning, then at Grandpa Jiang, and finally turned to ask Mother Jiang, “I just heard Bai Zi say our Ning Ning is first in the county.”

“She got first place in the county.” He stroked his forehead. “Maybe I heard it wrong. Bai Zi said that she ranked first in the school, but I heard first place in the county.”

He didn’t even dare to think about being number one in the school, let alone being number one in the county. When Jiang Song’s grades were at their best, he had never ranked first in the school.

He picked up the wine glass, looked at it, and smelled the wine inside. “The wine brewed this year is strong.” He had just started drinking, but he was already a little too tipsy.

Jiang Bai poured himself a cup of hot water and said, “You heard it right; she is number one in the county. It’s the county, not the school.”

As soon as Father Jiang took a sip of wine, he choked and kept coughing. Mother Jiang stood up in shock and slapped Jiang Bai hard on the back.

“If you’re first in the exam, you’re first in the exam. Why are you talking so loudly that your dad choked?” Then she immediately slapped Father Jiang on the back and complained, “You’re so serious. You can even choke when you drink. A girl is first in the exam again. What’s the point of being the number one scholar?”

“Even if she becomes the number one scholar, she will belong to some other family someday. Why are you so excited?” She said nonchalantly.

She had heard from Father Jiang that if boys didn’t do well in junior high school, they could just try their best in high school. But if girls did well in junior high, they often lacked intelligence in high school. So she didn’t think Jiang Ning would achieve top rank in the exam.

“What other people’s? This is our own family’s topper!” Father Jiang coughed on the side, his face turning red from coughing. After a while, he turned to the other three people at the table in disbelief. “Ning Ning, you really came first. What exam was it? In what exam were you first in the county?”

Jiang Bai had already covered the pot on the table with a lid when Father Jiang choked.

The stove used to heat the pot was a small red clay stove that could only hold a piece of briquette. Because they had charcoal in the mountain, every household had one.

For the coal stove and briquettes, they went to Charcoal Mountain to pull the coal back and used a briquette machine to drive the coal into the machine one by one and press it out.

The meals on New Year’s Eve were very particular. For example, a dish of fish on the table couldn’t be touched and must be kept until the third day of the Lunar New Year, which symbolized having more than enough every year.

When people went to someone else’s house to eat, they were not allowed to touch the fish on the table. Doing so would violate their taboos, especially turning the fish over. This was a significant taboo that they could not touch.

They were very superstitious about this and believed that turning a fish over meant capsizing the boat.

Jiang Bai didn’t care about the fish at all; he was focused on protecting the two dishes in front of him—braised pork with fried tofu and pork head.

He was lucky there was a small stove on the table; otherwise, the two dishes in front of him wouldn’t have stayed warm.

Jiang Ning always ate quickly. If she didn’t eat fast, she might not get anything later. So as soon as it was time for the New Year’s Eve dinner, she scooped up a bowl of lotus root ball soup and blanched coriander to eat.

The coriander was grown by Mother Jiang herself. Their coriander wasn’t used as a garnish like onions but eaten as the main dish. The aroma of the coriander in this season was incredibly strong.

Everyone at the table seemed calm. The only one who wasn’t calm was Father Jiang.

Seeing that Father Jiang finally stopped coughing, Jiang Bai opened the pot lid, scalded the coriander inside, and said, “Joint Examination: No. 1 High School, Wuzhong, No. 2 High School, and…”

Father Jiang exclaimed, “Wuzhong participated too?” He looked at his daughter in disbelief. “There were so many schools in the joint examination, and you beat Wuzhong?”

“Yes, I got first place in the county.”

When did his daughter’s grades become so good? During the summer vacation, he even saw her buying a lot of miscellaneous books to read.

Why did Father Jiang feel a little dizzy? He hadn’t even had much to drink yet.

He asked, still unsure, “Did your sister really get the highest score in the joint examination?”