“People at birth were kind. Their natures at birth were alike. It’s what they learned that made them quite different persons.”
A 4 or 5 years old boy stood by the school’s window with his toes, looking inside secretly. The kid wore an adult’s wide sleeve jacket. When he raised his hand, his sleeve slid down, revealing the white and plump lotus root-like arms.
His tied-up hair was high in a small bun with a red string. He had round cheeks, a high nose, delicate features, red lips, and white teeth. And anyone who saw it had to praise a good.
“Little Treasure, why are you here again? If you disturb Third Uncle’s class, Grandpa will beat you up.”
Meihua was about to go home after cutting the fish wort and saw her little brother leaning ahead outside the village school. She was so scared that she hurried forward and pulled her little brother away.
“Second Sister, I won’t disturb Third Uncle’s class. I only want to see what the older cousins are learning every day.”
Yan Chu, who nicknamed Little Treasure now, obediently took his second sister Meihua’s hand and walked towards their house, without any intention of making trouble.
“Do you want to study too?”
Meihua was eleven years old this year. She was quite tall, but she was a little thin. She looked even more like a long stick when wearing unfit clothes.
But her appearance was good. She had an oval face, big eyes, and although the skin was darker, it did not conceal her beautiful facial features.
The siblings were similar, and at one glance could be known they were born to the same parents.
The girls from rural folks could get promised to others at twelve or thirteen and married at fourteen or fifteen. In small places, only those families who were destitute and wanted to keep their daughters for two more years to assist their families financially until the age of seventeen or eighteen, only then they got promised to others after becoming an old maid.
Therefore, Yan Meihua, who looked like a child in later generations, was already an adult.
“Our family has had a good harvest in the past two years. When you’re six years old, Grandpa might approve you to go to school.”
She carried a basket of fish wort, which was taller than Yan Chu, and swiftly acted like it was nothing. She was unmistakably used to doing*24doing*from 干 [gàn] that can mean as to do or to f*ck (vulgar) farm work. Seeing her brother’s eyes revealing hope, Yan Meihua did not hit him much but encouraged him appropriately.
Yan Meihua gave the impression that it seemed to be true.
The village they now lived in was called Yongning Village. The Yan family was the most common surname in Yongning Village. Legend had it that the Yan family’s ancestors fled to this wasteland. He took his wife and children to take root here and thrived for generations. This land reclaimed into the rich and beautiful small village today, so if you talked about it, the village’s surnamed Yan was indeed the same ancestor 800 years ago.
Later, some people with different surnames moved to this village, and the surname Yan gradually ceased to be the only surname in this village.
However, in Yongning Village, the head of the Yan family was the head of Yongning Village. This point would never change. Compared with other foreigners, the Yan family inevitably had more say in the village.
The ancestor of the Yan family was very forward-looking. He encouraged the juniors to study. He even asked his descendants to vacate a portion of the fertile land in his later years. The annual income from that fertile land was used to repair the village school and help the Yan family’s descendants with poor conditions to go to school. Over the centuries, the dynasty had changed. But the family rule of the Yan family had been passed down from generation to generation until now.
Among the nearby villages, Yongning Village was the only one with its own school. Except for a child surnamed Yan, others could come to the school if they were willing to pay.
Their school was not too big. Most of the teachers were the Yan clan’s Xiucai56Xiucaia person who has passed the county-level imperial exams and Juren57Jurena successful candidate in the imperial provincial examinations. They wanted to supplement their family expenses by teaching and studying.
Usually, the children who were Tongsheng58Tongshenga candidate who has not yet passed the county-level imperial exams would not stay in the school anymore but would choose to go to the county school. However, the basics were all learned in the village school. Since the founding of the Jin Dynasty, the Yan family school already trained Jinshi59Jinshia successful candidate in the highest imperial civil service examinations, three Jurens, seven Xiucais, and a certain number of Tongshengs, which was already a pretty good achievement. Because of this result, some families in the town would send their children to the Yan family to study. What they fancy was the learning atmosphere here and the master’s ability.
The Jinshi of the Yan family belonged to the head of the patriarch. Now that the official lauded the Fourth Rank, his official title was not expressly high, but he was a capital official. Because of the other party’s existence, the county magistrate and the prefect were polite to the Yongning Village’s people.
In this area, the surname Yan was a good sign. You did not have to worry about being bullied when going out. But it was external. Internally, if you had the same surname Yan, there would not be so much preferential treatment.
Yan Meihua’s grandfather and patriarch were still paternal cousins. When they met the patriarch, they could call him grandfather.
The patriarch’s father was the eldest son and logically inherited the patriarch’s place. Yan Chu’s great grandfather was the second son. After the elder brother inherited the position of patriarch, their family became a side branch.
Their grandfather was an only child. He inherited 13 mǔ453 mǔ0.49 acres of high-quality paddy fields, 7 mǔ617 mǔ1.15 acres of medium-quality paddy fields, and 24 mǔ5124 mǔ3.96 acres of sandy land from his great-grandfather. The food crops harvested from these lands were enough for the whole family to chew for a year, even more than enough. Compared with some people who could only adequately provide, their family could go to the pork butcher’s shop in the town to cut a few taels of pork from time to time or buy some small game with the hunters in the village to eat to their heart’s content.
Yan Huai, Yan Chu’s paternal grandfather, his wife Yan née Jiang, had two sons and a daughter.
The eldest son, Yan Changxue, studied for a few years in his early years and knew how to write. Now he worked as a shopkeeper in a tavern in the town, earning nearly 800 Yuan a month. His wife was Liu Fuchun, a girl from a neighboring village, who gave birth to the Yan family’s eldest grandson in the first year of marriage, and she had some status in the Yan family.
Now the couple had two sons and one daughter. The eldest son Yan Duan was 13 years old this year, and the second daughter Yan Chunhua was 11 years old this year. The youngest son Yan Tao was as old as Yan Chu. He was born one month earlier than him. Because he was an older son, he was very doted on by the couple.
Because Yan Changxue worked as a tavern manager in the town, it was troublesome for him to travel back and forth. After Yan Duan became Tongsheng and went to school in the county, Father Yan and Yan née Jiang paid for a small courtyard worth fifty taels in the town. That money almost emptied the savings of the old couple over the years.
Since then, Patriarch Yan’s family had lived in the town on the whole, and he had to wait until the Chinese New Year or other festivities to come back.
Yan Changxi, the father of Yan Chu’s body, now stayed in Yongning Village to help the old couple Yan with the crops in their field. His wife, Li Qiuyue, was also from a neighboring village. The couple was not very contentious, and they never dared to raise any counter-advice to their parents’ orders. This fact also doomed them to be ignored and bullied in this family.
They had three daughters and a son, the eldest daughter Meihua, eleven years old, the second daughter Taohua, eight years old, and last, the youngest daughter Lanhua, seven years old. Yan Chu was the youngest child. Before he was born, Li Qiuyue had a hard time in the Yan family because she did not have a son. Because of that, they hardly speak up. Looking at the old couple’s blatant biased eyes, they did not dare to have the slightest opinion.
Oldman Yan and Yan née Jiang’s youngest daughter, Yan Mudan, got married early. Her husband was quite capable of doing small business by himself, and it had grown bigger and bigger over the years, and the family had moved to the county.
Yan Mudan had a pair of children. She did not think highly of her second brother, who was digging in the field. She did not have any relatives to the children in the main branch and second branch of an extended family.
However, Yan Mudan’s life was not so easy. Men become worse when they have money. Her husband had accepted two young concubines since they developed. Although they would not shake her status, she felt sick when she looked at the two enchanting concubines. One of them was a common woman. As long as Yan Mudan went home, he would mention the two women she hated.
Yan Mudan fully supported her nephew’s progress in study. She also wanted to have a scholar of her own. In this way, her man would not be so shameless to her.
Yan Duan, the eldest son of the branch family, was the one who was held by everyone and looked forward to growing up.
He had shown his aptitude for reading since he was a child. He passed the Boy Examination36Boy Examinationthe qualification test for taking the scientific examination in the imperial examination period at the age of eight. The master of the county school thought highly of him. Everyone felt that his future was bright, including the Yan Clan, who had given a lot of financial support to the clan’s children with a promising future.
But Yan Duan was already 13 years old. He failed several times in the later imperial exams. Fortunately, he was still young. Although many people thought he was not as smart as he was when he was a child, they nevertheless firmly believed that it was only a matter of time for this eight-year-old boy who passed the Boy Examination to be Xiucai.
At this time, providing for a scholar was unquestionably not a simple matter. Even with the support of the clan, Yan Mudan sneaked things from time to time at home. Yan Duan’s expenses in the county town were still too much for the Yan family. A scholar had already made the family work so hard, let alone two.
The Yan family had not separated yet, so all the expenses came from collectively owned. But the collectively owned money was the money from the old couple and the second brother’s family in reality.
Yan Changxue earned 800 Yuan in wages every month. During the Chinese New Year or other festivities, the tavern would also share some meat, rice oil, and other things, but the money and grain had never been seen before handed over to the public. The money earned from the harvest of Yan Changxi, the second eldest son of his family, always went directly to Yan née Jiang’s hands.
Occasionally during the farming off-season, Li Qiuyue and her daughters made a few decorative knottings to earn some money. The money earned by Yan Changxi’s short-term work in the town and the county had to be handed over by Yan née Jiang’s order. It was not always possible to find ten coins.
Yan Meihua knew better than her foolish and filial parents, so although she said it lightly, she had no idea whether her younger brother could study or not.
If there were another scholar in the family, it would be their youngest son with Uncle and Aunt’s disposition.
Their grandparents had become accustomed to being biased, so it was not sure what would happen then.
Those two, the brother and sister, one tall and one short, slowly walked towards their home because they had something hidden in their hearts. When Yan Taohua came to them, they did not notice her.
“What’re you thinking, Second Sister?”
Yan Taohua waved to Yan Meihua, then took out a small piece of mung bean cake from her arms and stuffed it into her younger brother Yan Chu’s mouth.
“Eat quickly. Aunt’s back. She gave it to me.”
Yan Taohua’s temperament was rather aggressive. She was not close to that aunt, who liked to look at people with her nostrils. Every time the other party came back to get something, most of them were for their grandparents and uncle’s family. Giving them a few cakes was like cutting meat. So, every time Yan Taohua said that her aunt gave her something, she liked to say it was a reward.
“Aunt is back?”
Yan Meihua did not feel anything wrong with her younger sister giving food to her brother instead of herself.
First, she was the elder sister, and she should let her younger siblings have it. Second, if not for her younger brother’s birth, their life would be more difficult. So it was not Yan Meihua alone, but the three elder sisters in the family loved their younger brother very much.
“Not only Aunt but also Uncle and his wife. They seem to be saying that they want to send Yan Tao to school. Little Brother is one month younger than Yan Tao. Why don’t they say that they want to send Little Brother to study?”
Yan Taohua was indignant. Their grandparents were old. The land in the family was primarily taken care of by their parents. The money earned by the uncle’s family was only enough for his family’s expenses in the town. They could not get a proper sentence when they worked like cows and horses for the big cousin to study. Now they had another little cousin, and their family owed them. Their grandparents were too biased, so Yan Taohua did not give in to them.
“You say that they and Uncle are talking to our grandparents about sending Second Treasure to study?”
Yan Meihua thought several times in her heart: “Taohua, go to the field and call our parents.”
After that, she looked down at her younger brother.
“If there’s a scholar at home, it must be you, Little Treasure.”
Yan Meihua’s expression was firm. Yan Chu had already watched this scene once when he accepted this world’s story, but the emotion he felt was completely different from when he was watching the world.
The original self was very fortunate to have his sisters, who loved him so much. He did not know how to cherish them. He would help him take good care of them. In this life, he would not repeat the mistakes made by the original self.
