Chapter 33 Part 2

Second Aunt Yang mentioned, almost in passing, that he’d died together with Granny Yang the Third’s youngest son—the two had been close, gone out to work together, and died together on the same site.

Granny Yang the Third lost her last remaining son; Hu Chunlan lost her husband; and a baby not yet one year old lost her father.

Hu Chunlan had borne a girl, and she was young—so her parents- and brothers-in-law, claiming she was sure to remarry, moved to seize the family’s house and land.

Her own family urged her to remarry too, but she couldn’t let go of her daughter. She went to the Old Village Chief as witness, swore she would never remarry, and kept the house and land.

The child was too young for anyone else to mind, so Hu Chunlan stayed in the village doing farm work, raising her daughter alone.

Happily, the village’s overall climate was decent. Petty theft and squabbles aside, no hooligan dared come trouble a widow.

And Hu Chunlan’s daughter Yang Xiaorui had done her proud—one of the village’s rare college students. When she got in, the whole village praised Hu Chunlan as a capable woman who’d raised a university girl; everyone said mother and daughter’s bitter days were finally bearing sweet fruit.

Who could have known that suffering wasn’t finished with them.

During military training at university, Yang Xiaorui felt unwell. She bore it silently until her roommates reported it to the University Counselor, who rushed her to the hospital.

Everyone assumed the training had simply been too brutal. The diagnosis: systemic lupus erythematosus.

Second Aunt Yang didn’t know the disease’s name. “It’s the red patches, on the face. A girl that young, aching like an old woman in all her joints. Chunlan’s so pitiful. What could she do? She’s been hauling that girl from hospital to hospital ever since. Worked so hard to get into university, and never even got to attend…”

The family’s finances had been thin to begin with; Yang Xiaorui had taken out student loans just to enroll. Now sick, treatment clearly came before schooling.

Second Aunt Yang sighed. “Treated and treated, never cured—still on medication, and word is the medicine’s not cheap. Chunlan’s savings are scraped to the bottom. To buy her daughter’s medicine, she’ll do any dirty, heavy work you name.”

“Little Qiao, hire her with an easy heart. Chunlan’s a crack hand at farm work.”

Qiao Ning’s mood had grown heavy. Everyone in this world carried their own bitter load.

He managed a smile. “If you recommend her, Second Aunt Yang, of course I trust her.”

That was all the prompting she needed—a slap of the thigh. “I’ll go fetch her right now!”

Hu Chunlan was a small, quiet woman. Taking the rice-transplanting job, she murmured a couple of sentences to Second Aunt Yang.

Second Aunt Yang relayed: “Chunlan asks—if you’re planting soybeans and sweet potatoes, do you need to hire anyone for that too? She can do it.”

Qiao Ning’s one mu seven fen of dry land had been slated thus: a full mu for sweet potatoes, seven fen for corn and soybeans. Soybeans would rest the soil, but too many and he’d never eat them—soy products couldn’t be a staple, while sweet potatoes and corn could.

But Zhao Anran had paged through the planting handbook put out by the Bureau of Agriculture, which described intercropping sweet potatoes with corn. She brought it to show Qiao Ning and asked if he wanted to try.

Try, then. His land was little, and he wanted to plant everything—if only he’d had more ground, he’d have thrown potatoes in too.

So the full mu of dry land: sweet potatoes intercropped with corn. Of the remaining seven fen: four fen, more sweet potato-corn intercropping; the last three fen, soybeans.

Soybean yields weren’t low—three to four hundred jin per mu was common—so three fen meant a hundred-odd jin. More than enough for one man.

Then, on a whim: if soybeans, why not some mung beans? Mung bean soup in summer—bliss.

Mung bean demand was even lower than soybean’s, so Qiao Ning carved one fen off the sweet potato-corn intercropping plot for mung beans.

Intercropping made the work fiddlier; Qiao Ning had meant to hire it out anyway, and since Hu Chunlan wanted it, he packaged the whole job to her. A couple of days’ delay cost nothing.

No one expected Hu Chunlan to work so hard. She finished the transplanting on day one and marched straight to the soybeans.

In a single day she not only finished the rice but sowed the three fen of soybeans and the one fen of mung beans.

Early the next morning she was back, planting sweet potatoes and corn, working flat-out from dawn. The intercropping was genuinely fiddly—by nightfall it wasn’t done, and she went back out after dinner.

Qiao Ning heard and rushed to stop her, sending her home to rest and finish tomorrow.

In the end Hu Chunlan worked two and a half days. The agreed wage was one hundred eighty; Qiao Ning added twenty and paid two hundred.

She tried to refuse; Qiao Ning said the bonus was for doing the work fast and well.

She had indeed been meticulous and tireless. Twenty yuan in bonus money delighted her no end; she took the initiative to add Qiao Ning on WeChat, saying if he ever had farm work again, he could call her—she could do any kind of work.

Hu Chunlan had heard the village talk too: the Little Qiao of the west end had come home because his health was poor.

Her thoughts flew instantly to her own daughter. Both college students, both struck down by illness—why did heaven torment young people in their very prime?

Hu Chunlan figured Qiao Ning couldn’t manage heavy labor, and there’d be plenty of field work ahead: watering, fertilizing, weeding, spraying if pests came—none of it light.

She could charge less. She was strong; nothing she feared more than idleness.

Qiao Ning agreed with a smile, settled her pay, and hurried home.

His own household had been in chaos of the productive kind these past days.

The septic tank was built, its piping buried. The outdoor toilet’s exterior walls were up, sited in the corner to the left of the entrance—no matter that it sat far from the house, with an indoor Master Bedroom bathroom on the way anyway.

Now they were remodeling his rooms. Qiao Ning’s bed had been moved into the Storeroom for the time being—that’s where he slept at night.

Mercifully, the Storeroom was big and empty: it swallowed a second bed plus all the furniture from both bedrooms with room to spare.

But a third bed would have been truly sardines, so the other one went into the main hall for now.

The wall between his bedroom and Grandpa’s had been demolished—one enormous room now.

For this bedroom Qiao Ning planned wood flooring, far more comfortable underfoot—and eventually a shaggy long-pile carpet for his leisure zone.

These days Qiao Ning scoured the internet for bedroom layouts, saving whatever he liked, stress-testing feasibility with He Jiaming, and settling the final plan.

As originally conceived: one huge bedroom, keeping the Master Bedroom entrance—the door on the left upon entering the main hall—and sealing the inner door.

Inside, by the window: the big desk, staying put, though he could dress it up later—a little desktop bookshelf, a vase with cuttings from his courtyard flowers, whatever he pleased.

He’d also stolen time to plant every flower division Zhou Chunmei had dug up for him. She seemed delighted to meet someone who wanted to plant everything, and when delivering the flowers had thrown in two mint plants, asking if he wanted them.

Want them? Of course. No use planned yet—plant first, think later.

And that very first night, Qiao Ning had secretly mixed Spirit Spring Water for the newly planted flowers, and hadn’t forgotten the osmanthus and Sichuan pepper trees behind the house either.

The vegetable seeds had just been watered; he didn’t dare sneak them extra yet, afraid of drowning them. Next watering, maybe.

Back to the desk: once the renovation finished, he planned a beanbag couch and a small tea table beside it—lovely for reading there, with the light being so good.

Farther in, Qiao Ning’s bed: sunlit without hugging the window.

Nightstands would be custom-made; there had never been any. The wardrobe too.

The wall facing the bed would carry one whole row of wardrobes. He hadn’t planned on so many—but the internet was unanimous: maximize storage, and half the posters were people regretting not building enough closets.

Qiao Ning owned few clothes—very few. Two wardrobes would be plenty. But with the entire internet chanting, and the bedroom big anyway, he’d ordered an oversized wardrobe run.

Farther in still: the Master Bedroom bathroom, far larger than the courtyard one. Qiao Ning planned a bathtub—soaking at his leisure. Heaven.

He could even be decadent and pour Spirit Spring Water into the tub. A Spirit Spring bath—who but he would ever know such luxury?

Nobody in this village had one of those!

He had his excuse ready, naturally: frail body, doctor’s orders, frequent warm soaks.

Dong Xiaohui had even come to ask whether it was like the martial-arts dramas—some medicinal bath?

Qiao Ning told him to watch less TV and read more books. Dong Xiaohui gave him a hmph and fled.

Beyond the Master Bedroom bathroom lay Qiao Ning’s zone of absolute personal freedom.

Carpet, a projector, a gloriously deep movie sofa.

His shopping cart had also gained a snack cabinet, a mini fridge—destined for exactly this room.

He’d browsed Lego and jigsaw puzzles too; anything he liked went straight into the cart.

Once the renovation wrapped, he’d buy it all and play at his leisure. He had time now, and a space that belonged to him, for toys that belonged to him.

That was the bedroom plan. As for the overall renovation—the old house was a brick-and-tile house, blessings and burdens both.

Blessings: it breathed, and the floor-to-ridge height kept it airy, never oppressive—plus warm in winter, cool in summer.

Qiao Ning remembered running in from the summer heat as a child and feeling the coolness wrap him the instant he crossed the threshold.

Winter depended on indoor heating, but outdoors was always far colder; stepping out to the toilet, he’d shiver head to toe.

The obvious flaw: dust. Solution: a ceiling.

But Dong Zhiyong advised against a flat one—it bred rats, and with a wood stove kept in the kitchen, a flat ceiling would be smoke-stained within months, and ugly.

It was He Jiaming who solved it: a sloped plank ceiling following the roof ridge. Dust-proof, and true to the house’s character.

Kitchen smoke would stain it eventually, but a little smoke-color on wood was only natural.

The kitchen’s other renovations were simple. Qiao Ning had no particular demands—grab a well-reviewed layout online and copy it. The kitchen was huge; every function zone, all of it.

The appliances went into the cart as well—fridge, range hood, Dishwasher, the basics, sure, but also microwave, oven, induction cooker, food processor, nothing spared.

Not that he planned to seriously study cooking. He simply wanted to own them.

Two lifetimes, and this was the first time furnishing a house of his own. Qiao Ning felt a distinct whiff of revenge spending.

Happily, he had money: after earmarking funds for building materials, furniture, and bathroom fixtures, his balance still sat comfortably above six figures.

In that case—

Little Qiao wants it, Little Qiao gets it!