Chapter 724

He now regretted that when Jiang Guotai suggested making him the team leader, he went out to earn money.

Now thinking of becoming team leader again, it was impossible.

The current team leader, Xu Changjiang, was only in his early thirties, with the old leader as support. At this age, if Xu wasn’t promoted, he still had at least seven or eight years ahead.

Father Jiang was somewhat wistful.

He knew clearly who was behind the changes.

Sure, Jiang Guoding’s support and Jiang Guotai’s actions played key roles, but fundamentally, the reason for all this change was their daughter.

For many years, the old home was still dirty and muddy, but when their daughter got into university, it was like heaven had lifted their village, with changes growing every year.

When Jiang Ning first discussed contracting a sand factory with Jiang Guotai and Jiang Guoding, Father Jiang sat listening, excited and stirred. He wanted to contract a sand factory himself.

He had over a hundred thousand yuan at the time. Even with a short contract period, he could have done it. But in the end, he gave the money to Jiang Guotai.

He felt some resentment toward Mother Jiang, thinking if she hadn’t stopped him, he would have owned that sand factory and be a respected figure in the village by now.

But like the team leader position, many things, once missed, were gone.

As Jiang Guoping wandered the village, Mother Jiang felt uneasy, thoughts repeatedly drifting to Jiang Ning’s interactions with Aunt Jiang and her cold attitude toward her, making her heart heavy.

Even preparing New Year goods at home, there was no festive joy.” Tears dropped onto the dough.

The more she thought, the more wronged she felt. The more she thought, the more miserable her life seemed.

From childhood suffering under her  stepmother, working hard just to ease her mother’s pain and scolding; to raising several younger siblings as both sister and mother; at barely a teenager carrying loads on the embankment, shoulders and waist aching, enduring it all.

Finally married, but life with the in-laws was still tough.”

Like a curse!

She was strong-willed, after her stepmom passed, she took charge of the household, speaking more authoritatively than her own mother. Her father was a charcoal mountain team leader. How could she endure such humiliation? She bit her teeth but had to bear it.

The best years of her life were when her eldest son was born.

Giving birth to a son secured her position in the Jiang family. She no longer feared her mother-in-law and ruled the house. Returning to her natal home, she carried big gifts; brothers and sisters respected and admired her.

But the good days didn’t last. Suddenly, a thunderbolt crushed her.

Years of enduring grit, biting teeth and pushing through, everyone said she had finally reached the sweet after bitter. They all waited for her son to marry and give her grandchildren. But her eldest son disappeared, gone for years without a trace. At first, she didn’t think badly, but year after year, Mother Jiang became desperate.

She didn’t know why her life was so bitter—like she was born to suffer with no rest.

Father Jiang often wanted to start a business, but Mother Jiang shot him down, glaring, “You’re born poor! Stop struggling; the more you struggle, the poorer you get.”

But when she called Father Jiang “poor,” deep down she believed she was like an old ox, destined to plow and toil all her life, eating the worst grass, doing the hardest work.

That’s fate.

She accepted it.”

Like brainwashing herself, the more she said it, the more she truly believed it.

But she didn’t understand why her daughter wouldn’t accept fate.

And broke free from it!
Every year at the end of the year, every household would make all kinds of meatballs—lotus root balls, radish balls, and pork balls—symbolizing reunion and completeness. But this year, Father Jiang and Mother Jiang didn’t do anything; they just didn’t feel like it. They simply bought some ready-made ones from the market in Shuibu Town.

This year’s winter was warm, no snow. The vegetables and meat bought didn’t freeze. In previous years, Father Jiang and Mother Jiang would prepare a big stash, but since the eldest son wasn’t home, and the youngest son and daughter left by the third day of the New Year, all that food went uneaten. They would take the leftovers back to Shenzhen. There, they had bought a big freezer especially for storing meat and vegetables. The food they made but didn’t finish would end up feeding migrant workers at the train station, and they felt sorry for them because the pork they used was all local black pork raised at home, costing several yuan more per jin than the usual white pork in the market.

Because this happened year after year, this year Jiang Bai simply didn’t come home for the New Year. Father Jiang looked at the cold, empty house and decided not to prepare anything.

But Aunt Jiang’s family, since they were many, always seriously prepared a lot each year. Their whole family stayed in the hometown, no one went out to work, so they never worried about cooking too much and having leftovers—they only feared not cooking enough.

Since the New Year’s Eve dinner was to be at Jiang Ning’s place, Aunt Jiang prepared everything there. On a long rectangular wooden table in the dining room, various bowls filled with meat stuffing sat—radish and pork balls, lotus root and pork balls, pure meat balls, and so on. Aunt Jiang handled the stuffing, Jiang Ning and Grandma Jiang worked on shaping the balls. With a fire wall warming the room, hand-rolling meatballs wasn’t cold at all.

Father Jiang, sitting idly at home, came to Jiang Ning’s place to watch everyone busy. At that moment, he shared the same feeling as Mother Jiang—Jiang Ning and Aunt Jiang were a truly close-knit family. He felt like an outsider sitting there with nothing to do.”

Aunt Jiang kept working, smiling, “There’s water, the tap water’s connected now.”

Father Jiang went to check out Jiang Ning’s kitchen.

Because Uncle Jiang and his wife lived there for more than half a year, the kitchen was completely unfamiliar to him, filled with traces of Aunt Jiang’s life.

The kitchen was well-organized. The place for storing firewood was obviously arranged according to Aunt Jiang and Uncle Jiang’s habits—not only neatly stacked, but also a low cement wall was built to separate the firewood from the surroundings.

Among the whole village, only Uncle Jiang’s family, who were former bricklayers, would be so meticulous—making their home as comfortable as possible.

Yet this low dividing wall felt like a thorn piercing Father Jiang’s heart. He couldn’t bear to look and quickly turned his gaze toward the stove.

There were two stoves: one inside connected to the fire wall that warmed the whole house in winter when burning wood, and another separate one.

Unlike other families’ stoves, these had two brick holes in the stove wall, slightly larger than the sole of an adult man’s shoe. In the past, villagers wore homemade cloth-soled shoes that easily got wet in rain or snow. People would press their shoes against these holes while cooking, letting the fire warm and dry their shoe soles.

Above the stove, between the two pots, in the two V-shaped gaps, were two deep iron cans filled with water. When cooking, the residual heat warmed the water in the cans, making it convenient to wash dishes or even to bathe and wash faces and feet at night. The water was hot but not boiling since it was heated by residual heat from cooking.

This design was unique to Uncle Jiang’s family. Father Jiang’s stove at home didn’t have anything like this.

Seeing such a stove, it felt to Father Jiang as if he had entered not Jiang Ning’s kitchen, but his eldest brother and sister-in-law’s kitchen.

Other kitchen items—the hanging cured meats and sausages, the jars of pickled cabbage, radish, and long beans in the brick cupboard—all bore the strong style of his sister-in-law.

He and his eldest brother had split up twenty years ago. Though brothers by blood, they were two separate families in practice. Now, standing in his daughter’s kitchen, he felt a bit lost and uncomfortable.

He walked around the kitchen and then the living room, seeing Aunt Jiang, Jiang Ning, and Grandma Jiang sitting and rolling meatballs. The women chatted, but he couldn’t join in. After sitting a while, he left.