Chapter 2: Reborn

Isn’t this the house in my parents’ home before I got married?

I looked down at my hands. Although there were many calluses in my palms, these weren’t my hands, the ones that were weather-beaten, with thick and large knuckles.

Subconsciously, I reached out and touched my cheek, feeling the softness of my palm.

My heart pounded, and my breathing quickened.

I quickly got out of bed, put on my shoes, and rushed to the mirror hanging on the wall.

In the mirror, my skin was a darkish wheat color, my eyes were large, and although I was thin, my face still had a bit of baby fat that hadn’t faded.

This is… my younger self?

I stared at the face in the mirror, my pupils contracting rapidly.

Didn’t I use the three-step method to boil a pot of chicken soup and perish with the Chen family?

How did I return to my youth?

I pinched my face.

Feeling the pain, and seeing the clear fingernail marks on my cheek, I smiled, and as I smiled, my eyes welled up.

Was it my deep obsession before death, or was it God’s grace? I’ve returned to my youth!

Remembering my mother’s large belly, this was the year I was sixteen, 1983.

The Qiao family situation is quite complicated. Even now, with Qiao Jiangxin, a teenager, there are over ten people in the family living together without splitting up.

Grandfather Qiao Jiuwang, just turned sixty, is still a strong peasant. At eighteen, he married his wife, Yang Mei, under the arrangement of his family. They had two sons: the elder son, Qiao Youfu, and the younger son, Qiao Youcai.

When Qiao Youfu was about ten years old, Yang Mei passed away. Two years later, with the help of relatives, Qiao Jiuwang got together with Lei Honghua, a villager who was also a widow with a daughter.

After they married, Lei Honghua gave birth to two sons and a daughter for Qiao Jiuwang: Qiao Jianhua, Qiao Jianguo, and Qiao Fangfang.

Qiao Jiangxin’s father is Qiao Youcai, the younger son of Qiao Jiuwang and his first wife, Yang Mei.

The elder brother, Qiao Youfu, is now 38 years old. Because he has ringworm on his head, he remains unmarried. He died at 49 in my previous life, unmarried and childless.

Qiao Youcai is 37 years old. He married Liu Afang and had Qiao Jiangxin. When giving birth to Qiao Jiangxin, Liu Afang injured her body and later miscarried a child. After more than ten years, Liu Afang is finally pregnant again.

My eyes darkened. This younger brother, due to my mother’s pregnancy malnutrition, was born with poor health and lacked sufficient breast milk. He was weak and had several accidents at home. He died before he turned two.

And I also died trying to save this younger brother, for that hundred…

With eighty yuan in betrothal gifts, she married into the Chen family before she turned eighteen, marrying the twenty-five-year-old Chen Wende.

The Chen family was also a large family. Chen’s father was in poor health, and Chen’s mother had to take care of him, while Chen Wende’s younger siblings needed to study.

Chen Wende, the eldest son of the Chen family, was gifted at studying. A few years earlier, when the national college entrance examination was reinstated, he became the only college student in the village. However, for unknown reasons, he was expelled from school after only two years and became despondent.

Chen’s mother, after carefully selecting from far and wide, set her sights on Qiao Jiangxin, the diligent eldest granddaughter of the Qiao family.  She approached Qiao Youcai and his wife, taking advantage of their distress over their youngest son’s medical expenses, to propose marriage for Qiao Jiangxin.

Although she knew clearly that her son Chen Wende had a crush on Chi Suzhen, the Chen family couldn’t afford the three major appliances and the betrothal gifts required by the Chi family, and Chi Suzhen wasn’t the kind of hardworking woman who could work in the fields and support the entire Chen family.

Chen Wende was handsome and refined, and he was the only person in the village who had attended university. Qiao Youcai and Liu Afang believed this was a good match, and after asking Qiao Jiangxin’s opinion, they agreed to the marriage.

Ultimately, the youngest son didn’t survive, Qiao Jiangxin entered a pit of fire, her father couldn’t handle the blow and his health deteriorated, and her uncle, in order to raise money for her father’s medical expenses, did hard labor and ruined his own health.

After marrying into the Chen family, Qiao Jiangxin worked tirelessly, cultivating the family’s fields, managing the household chores for the entire family, and supporting her scholar husband, in-laws, and younger siblings.

Her “underappreciated” husband, Chen Wende, seemed oblivious to the family’s dwindling rice supply and his wife’s patched-up clothes. He spent his days locked in his room writing his obscure poetry.

The whole family firmly believed that Chen Wende’s manuscripts would bring money, but what they received were repeated rejections from publishers.

Qiao Jiangxin, like a man, carried vegetables to sell, carried bricks at construction sites, and did odd jobs, earning one or two yuan at a time.

She repeatedly encouraged her frustrated husband. Finally, after more than a decade, people’s lives improved, and people had spare money. Chen Wende abandoned his poetry and essays and, at Qiao Jiangxin’s suggestion, began writing novels, becoming an overnight success.

The Chen family’s life underwent a dramatic change. They had large apartments, fine food, and health supplements, but they looked down upon their hardworking wife who had toiled in the fields.  The divorced Chi Suzhen also returned.

Chen’s father and mother felt they owed their son, believing they had made him marry an uneducated country girl. They treated Qiao Jiangxin with disdain, and her younger siblings felt that this sister-in-law had held back their extraordinary brother.

Even their own son, Chen Zhi, everyone felt that Qiao Jiangxin was not worthy of Chen Wende. They all wished for her death so that Chen Wende and Chi Suzhen, this ill-fated couple, could reunite.

But she was utterly alone.

With everyone’s tacit approval, Chi Suzhen moved in. Chen Wende took Chi Suzhen on trips, buying her scarves worth thousands and bracelets worth tens of thousands.  Chi Suzhen sang while he played the qin; she danced while he provided accompaniment.  The lovers, separated for thirty years, were reunited.

Meanwhile, Qiao Jiangxin, who had dedicated her life to the Chen family, knelt down and begged Chen Wende for 10,000 yuan for her mother’s surgery, but he refused.

The entire Chen family forgot that when the villagers encroached on their land, it was Qiao Youcai’s brothers and Liu Afang who, wielding hoes, argued fiercely and reclaimed the two plots of land for the Chen family.

When there was no rice in the pot, to maintain Chen Wende’s reputation, Liu Afang secretly delivered food late at night, time and again, hiding it from the villagers…

Finally, after Liu Afang died in her arms, Qiao Jiangxin was utterly despairing.

She bought three packets of “Three-Step Fall” rat poison from a vendor in the vegetable market and made a pot of soup for the Chen family to eat.

Watching them writhe in pain on the ground, begging for mercy and repenting, she set the house on fire amidst their pleas, perishing with the Chen family.

Before Qiao Jiangxin could recover from her thoughts, her stepmother-in-law, Lei Honghua’s, shouts rang out from outside.

“Qiao Jiangxin, still playing dead in there? Don’t you see everyone who works is almost back? You’re almost of marrying age, and you’re still pretending to be sick, shameless thing! Your grandfather is sixty years old and still working in the fields under the scorching sun!”

Hearing the shouts, a flash of crimson crossed Qiao Jiangxin’s eyes. If the Chen family were the devils who drove her to the brink, then Lei Honghua was the culprit who brought ruin upon her family.