Chapter 8

Throughout the entire walk, Ye Qingshui and Xie Tingyu didn’t say much. Ye Qingshui, having stirred up some trouble, didn’t care about how the other youth viewed her, but Xie Tingyu finally spoke:

“You recited it very well, not a word off. You have a good memory.”

He complimented her. Xie Tingyu had a strong shorthand ability, and when Ye Qingshui had only recited a few words, he already found it familiar. After listening further, he could match the words perfectly to what he had read.

Ye Qingshui glanced at him and coughed lightly, saying, “You’re too kind, too kind. I’ve memorized that line many times.”

In fact, there are no such things as endless geniuses in the world. After Xie Tingyu left, Ye Qingshui repeatedly read the motto he had left behind. She memorized it after many repetitions, until it became second nature. This was his motto.

“I see.” Xie Tingyu smiled.

“Mm-hmm.” Ye Qingshui waved her hand dismissively.

In her mind, Ye Qingshui was calculating how to settle the food expenses with Xie Tingyu. At home, from the rice and flour to the oil, salt, and vinegar, much of it had been provided by him. While she benefitted from this support, it didn’t feel entirely right, especially since it was from Xie Tingyu. She had earned money today, so it was time to pay him back.

When they reached the door, Ye Qingshui broke the silence and spoke, “I—”

Xie Tingyu, towering above her, gazed down with a slight smile. “Let’s talk after dinner.”

The world is vast, but eating is the most important.

Ye Qingshui nodded, washed her hands, and sat down to eat. As soon as everyone gathered at the table, her grandmother and mother eagerly picked up their chopsticks and reached for the fragrant meat dishes. This was stuffed mushrooms—mushrooms filled with minced meat. To enhance the flavor, Ye Qingshui had also mixed in chopped carrots, lotus root, and eggplant. The fatty meat had already melted into the juices, creating a rich, oily sauce that soaked into the mushroom caps.

Although the wild mushrooms from the mountains were small, they were delicious.

Each time Xie Tingyu took a bite, he could feel the juice spill out from the mushroom, hot and fresh. No wonder Ye Qingshui was in such a hurry to call him back for dinner. Once it cooled, it wouldn’t taste the same.

Although there wasn’t much meat, and it didn’t satisfy the hunger like a full meal at home, this feeling of eating just enough left people craving more.

Ye Ma wiped her mouth and felt the oily glow on her lips, which made her feel content.

However, she didn’t realize that both meals today had been earned by her daughter’s hard work.

In her heart, Ye Ma was a little uneasy. Since her daughter married, many people in the village had admired them for picking such a wealthy son-in-law. The son-in-law made it so that they could eat meat not only on holidays but even on normal days. They occasionally had a big meal with rice and fine noodles. It was truly a good match.

Ye Ma felt a little guilty and thought to herself that if only Shuiya could have a big fat baby soon! So, she took over all the household chores and urged the young couple to retreat to their room for some intimacy.

Ye Qingshui, feeling the pressure from her mother’s “baby-making” stare, awkwardly went back to the room with Xie Tingyu.

Ye Qingshui coughed lightly and then spoke, “The rice and grains at home need to be accounted for. This is money I owe you.”

She still had some savings, but it was the lack of tickets that held her back. Ye Qingshui borrowed Xie Tingyu’s pen, quickly calculated some figures, and handed them to him.

Xie Tingyu looked at Ye Qingshui, bent over the table, calculating. Her two black braids hung down from either side of her face, and as she calculated, her gaze was incredibly focused.

Ye Qingshui held the pen in a way reminiscent of a primary school student, carefully writing down the amounts for rice, flour, pork, oil, salt, and vinegar. It was surprising how accurate she was—three and a half pounds of rice, two pounds of flour, even five ounces of oil were accounted for.

This was a talent developed through experience. Some chefs have hands like scales, able to tell the weight of an ingredient just by feeling it.

To be able to make such a clear accounting, one couldn’t help but marvel: this rural woman is really thorough and meticulous. Xie Tingyu found it quite interesting, because he could see the pain she felt in paying back the money.

Ye Qingshui, feeling the pinch, took out some tickets and a three-cent coin and handed them to Xie Tingyu. After selling buns today, she had only nine cents left. She still had to add three more cents to pay off her debt to him. In the past, she had saved some money, but hadn’t been able to repay Xie Tingyu due to the lack of tickets.

Xie Tingyu didn’t care much for the money. He casually put the money and tickets back into her pocket.

“No need. This is your reward for cooking for me.”

Xie Tingyu’s fingers brushed lightly across her pocket, not touching her directly, but the sensation of the fabric pulling made Ye Qingshui freeze.

Ye Qingshui froze, holding her breath, before finally controlling her irritation and not losing her temper. “What are you doing?”

“This is what I owe you, take it.” His voice was faint, but his tone left no room for refusal.

Xie Tingyu cleared his throat, “It’s my turn now.”

“You’re very clever. I want to ask you, if you had the chance to continue learning, would you want to?”

Upon hearing this, Ye Qingshui hummed. Of course, she knew she was clever. Her cleverness wasn’t the type that came easily—it was the kind that came from repeating things over and over until they stuck.

In the past, Xie Tingyu had mentioned learning to her, but he had asked in a tone that was almost indifferent.

To please the person she liked, Ye Qingshui naturally went all in and nodded eagerly in agreement. That period of time when Xie Tingyu tutored her in studying was simply exhausting—mentally and physically. On the one hand, her heart was as sweet as if she’d drunk sugar water; on the other, she was force-feeding her brain knowledge, crying bitterly from the effort.

Back then, Ye Qingshui had to get up at five in the morning every day to recite literature. In the afternoons, after finishing labor for the commune, she would return home to do arithmetic exercises. Occasionally, Xie Tingyu would also sneak in some music lessons. Like all innocent young girls falling in love, she was over the moon every day, foolishly convinced he would stay. But in the end, he still left.

He probably found her too much of a burden—so stupid it pained him to watch. That was why he couldn’t help but “point her in the right direction” back then. The knowledge he taught her, she figured, was his way of compensating for their eventual divorce. He even encouraged her to study hard and get into college when he left, telling her, “A woman with knowledge can live more freely.”

Looking back now, Ye Qingshui felt that her previous life had really been simple—so was her love. Passionate, but with a terrible outcome. Once was more than enough.

Xie Tingyu saw the little girl looking at him with a half-smiling expression.

That kind of look, as if she was seeing through him to someone else entirely.

Xie Tingyu cleared his throat lightly and said, “Why are you looking at me like that? If you’re willing, just nod. The teachers are already in place. Those educated youths may speak harshly, but they’re quite dependable. One needs to learn more to break free from old shackles and pursue higher realms of thought.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than he heard her crisp voice reply: “Okay!”

Ye Qingshui agreed without hesitation. She also wanted to take the college entrance exam next year. Even though she had pieced together a lot of knowledge on her own later, she’d never attended university properly—and she regretted that.

With Xie Tingyu as a cover, she could pretend he was just her tutor. A primary schooler becoming self-taught wouldn’t draw much attention.

In his previous life, Xie Tingyu had scored high enough to get into a top university. As a teacher, he was surely more competent than the local high school teachers.

Seeing her so eager, Xie Tingyu went to dig out some of his old books.

It took a while, but he finally found a Chinese literature book. He didn’t have any arithmetic, politics, geography, history, physics, or chemistry textbooks—those foundational materials from secondary school.

But the fact that he had a literature book on hand was impressive in itself. That was because on weekends, he often visited the educated youth center to help illiterate members of the third batch (older students) and teach little kids in the commune the basics. He’d picked up this book at a bookstore in the city.

Xie Tingyu handed the book to Ye Qingshui, who stared at it with watery eyes and held onto it tightly.

“I… I’m really grateful to you,” she said.

Hopefully, he would go easy on her!

The moment she casually flipped to a page, Ye Qingshui was hit with a suffocating sense of dread. She’d never liked studying. The main reason she’d dropped out early was because… her Chinese grades were awful!

Noticing her drooping eyes, Xie Tingyu chuckled.

“Go sit over at that table,” he said. “Starting today, you’ll have to address me as ‘Teacher Xie.’ If you’re my student, you should act like one.”

Ye Qingshui hesitated for a moment, but quickly went and sat down at Xie Tingyu’s desk—his exclusive spot as a cultured intellectual.

Xie Tingyu said, “Read from the book aloud. If you don’t know a word, skip it. When you’re done, tell me what it means.”

Ye Qingshui began reading aloud, “The swallows are gone, but they’ll return again; the willows wither, but will turn green again; the peach blossoms fade, but they’ll bloom again.”

Her voice carried a soft regional accent, though not heavy—certainly lighter than most folks in the commune. When she read prose in Mandarin, it had the soft, delicate tone of a Southern girl.

Still, Xie Tingyu dutifully corrected her pronunciation. “That’s a third tone g , not yin . This one should have a retroflex— shi , not si .”

…

Late into the night, Ye Qingshui lay on her bed exhausted, both mentally and physically, and absentmindedly pondered her little side hustle on the black market. She wondered what kind of food to prepare next time to sell. Since she had flour, she was leaning toward something simple—like buns.

Her vegetarian buns sold quickly, but if she raised the price, customers couldn’t afford them. These days, even the rich were few, and everyone was cautious about how they spent their hard-earned money. Town housewives were even thriftier than village folk—they could stretch a penny into two.

If only she could make meat buns…

But meat in the market was outrageously expensive. As she drifted into sleep, that thought still circling in her mind, a sudden flash of inspiration struck.

She immediately sat up, crept out of bed, and tiptoed out of the room. Groping around in the storage shed, she pulled out a tattered net. Putting her frugality and craftiness to use, Ye Qingshui spent half an hour mending it—retying the frayed threads and patching it up.

In summer, when the rice paddies bloomed and pollen dropped into the muddy fields, the nutrient-rich mud attracted crabs and loaches to come feed. Every year, commune members suffered from the mess these creatures caused, and the kids would often catch crabs and loaches by the field embankments during their free time.

The crabs by the riverside were large and plump. Their meat was firm, and their roe was rich and creamy… ahem. Though it wasn’t autumn yet, they were already fairly meaty. In the 70s, rural folks didn’t eat shrimp or crab—they didn’t know how delicious they were. But in later years, these would become true delicacies.

At night, crabs would scuttle up from the water’s edge. Shine a light at them, and they’d clumsily scurry toward it in a swarm.

The more Ye Qingshui thought about it, the less she cared about pork. Her hands worked faster and faster, weaving the net with growing excitement.

Sansukini: I love crabs and I used to eat a lot of seafood when I was young, but when I grew up, I suddenly developed allergies to seafood that have shells, especially crabs.

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