Font Size:
But Jiang Lan was an upright person who always greeted people with a warm smile. Though the community loved to talk about her, most of the conversations were positive. When she was young, she hadn’t liked to smile, thinking it was frivolous. But then she met him in Shanghai. He was always smiling, as dazzling as the sun in a crowd, radiating a glow that no one could ignore. He told her that smiling was a form of social etiquette, and that a smiling person could easily win a person’s friendship. Under his influence, Jiang Lan slowly learned to smile, and over time, it became a habit. Later, her love for him turned to hatred, and she destroyed every trace of their past—except for this habit. Oh, and the child—the child who looked so much like him but had a completely different personality.
Thinking of her daughter, the smile on Jiang Lan’s face faded and disappeared.
Jiang Lan had just turned the corner when she ran into her neighbor, Aunt Han. “Little Jiang, hurry home! Something terrible has happened!” Aunt Han gripped her sleeve tightly and whispered, her voice urgent.
“What’s wrong?” Jiang Lan asked, a little confused, as her smile was broken by the other woman’s urgency.
“You’ll see when you get home!” Aunt Han pulled her toward the gate, but not before adding a warning: “Now, listen to me. No matter how angry you are, you can’t hit her. Just talk to her. Huiwan is such an honest child. How could she not fall for that smooth-talking hooligan?”
Listening to Aunt Han, Jiang Lan had a good idea of what was happening. Her face clouded over, and she yanked her hand away, almost sprinting home. Aunt Han didn’t mind being left behind. She just helped close the gate after Jiang Lan and turned to the crowd of onlookers. “Go on, get out of here. This has nothing to do with any of you.”
A young man in the crowd asked, curious, “Wait, Aunt Han, is that really Shen Sanqian sitting in the Xu family’s living room?”
“Of course it is! I saw him myself this afternoon. Shen Sanqian showed up at their door with pastries, cigarettes, and wine, and Engineer Xu opened the door for him,” Aunt Han’s daughter-in-law, Yao Cui, piped up.
Aunt Han was furious. She hit her daughter-in-law. “That troublemaker is sitting right in there! You’re yelling his nickname out loud. Do you want him to come out here and give you a beating? He doesn’t have a habit of not hitting women! Let’s go home!” she said, dragging her daughter-in-law back inside. The rest of the crowd nervously touched their noses, remembered Shen Sanqian’s reputation, and scattered, afraid of getting into trouble themselves.
Meanwhile, Jiang Lan stormed into her home and saw Shen Sanqian sitting in the living room. Her husband, Xu Weishan, sat nearby, his face pale. On the coffee table were two boxes of pastries and two packs of Peony cigarettes. When he saw her, her husband’s face showed a look of relief. The young man…
…Shen Sanqian, who stood up and politely greeted her. “Auntie Jiang, you’re back?”
Jiang Lan ignored him and turned to her husband. “What’s going on? Why is he in our house?”
Xu Weishan opened his mouth to explain, but he was afraid his wife would get even angrier and hit their daughter.
“Engineer Xu doesn’t seem to know the whole story. I’ll tell you,” Shen Tingjun said, his smile as friendly as ever. “I came to inform you two that comrade Jiang Huiwan and I are officially in a relationship with the intention of getting married. The next time you see me and Little Jiang together on the street, please don’t mistake me for a hooligan harassing a young lady and try to chase me away. We’re in a proper relationship now.”
The young man’s smile grew even wider, but Jiang Lan’s forehead was already veined with anger. She looked around, searching for her daughter. When she saw that the door to her daughter’s room was tightly closed on a hot summer day, she knew her daughter was hiding inside.
Without a word, Jiang Lan went to the door and kicked it twice. When it didn’t open, she grabbed the iron shovel from behind the door. Xu Weishan and Shen Tingjun rushed forward, one trying to calm her and the other to stop her.
“Jiang Lan, put the shovel down! It’s heavy; you’ll hurt yourself!”
“Auntie Jiang, it’s not necessary. Really. Your daughter is just dating me. It’s not a matter of cleaning house,” Shen Tingjun pleaded.
Blocked from getting to the door, Jiang Lan threw the shovel at it instead. It hit the door with a loud thump, and the small glass window shattered.
Inside the room, Jiang Wanwan was curled up on the bed, shaking and covering her head. Oh my god, she thought. Didn’t her mother go to a university? This is more like a military academy graduate!
After throwing the shovel, Jiang Lan seemed to explode. She turned her rage on the door and began to curse at her daughter. “Jiang Huiwan! Get out here!”
“Are you not brave anymore? You have the guts to date a hooligan, but you don’t have the guts to face your mother?!”
“You act like a scared little quail every day, but now your true colors are showing!”
“You’re just like your father—both of you are heartless scoundrels!”
“I should have choked you to death when you were born so I wouldn’t have to be humiliated by you today!”
The normally elegant and poised Jiang Lan was now screaming like a madwoman, spitting with rage and completely disregarding her image. The hooligan in question, Shen Tingjun, was not happy about this. How was it embarrassing to be dating him?
“Auntie Jiang, I think you’re going a little overboard. This isn’t the feudal era anymore. We shouldn’t be scolded for falling in love!”
“No wonder Little Jiang didn’t dare to tell you. With you like this, I don’t even want to leave her here; I’m afraid she’ll be gone tomorrow. For Little Jiang’s sake, I think I’ll just take her with me tonight and we can get a marriage license tomorrow.”
In the midst of all this tension, Shen Tingjun’s words were like pouring gasoline on a fire. Jiang Lan turned her attention to him, pointing her finger and yelling.
“I can curse the child I gave birth to for ten months however I want!”
“And you have the nerve to lecture me?! You’re the one who lured my daughter into a relationship with you, and you think you’re justified?!”
“I pitied you because you lost your mother as a child and had no one to teach you manners, so I never bothered with you, but don’t think I’m afraid of you! You act like you’re so great all the time!”
“If you didn’t have a factory director…”
…father, you’d be nothing! You’d have been sent off to a labor camp long ago!”**
Xu Weishan tugged hard on his wife’s sleeve and stepped in front of her, terrified that Shen Tingjun’s anger would finally boil over. But when he looked at the young man, his face was still smiling—a chilling, broad grin that showed a flash of sharp white teeth.
“Yes, I’m a terrible person! I lie, cheat, and hit women. Who knows, maybe one day I will be sent to a labor camp. No smart girl would ever be with a rotten person like me. So, I should be thanking you, Auntie Jiang.”
The young man stepped closer, leaning in to stare at her, his smiling eyes filled with pure malice. “If you hadn’t forced Little Jiang to sign up for the Great Northern Wilderness, she’s so timid she would have never gotten involved with me, even if I gave her my roast chicken business! You’re so heartless, Auntie Jiang. The Great Northern Wilderness is so hard that it even made a coward like Jiang Huiwan come and make a deal with me.”
“Did I lure her in? No! I just made her a business offer. I paid and put in the effort to get her name removed from the list and find her a job. All she has to do is marry me. If you ask me, I’m the one losing out in this deal. But I can’t help it—I like her!”
Shen Tingjun leaned back, a satisfied look on his face as he watched Jiang Lan’s face turn pale. The look was one of undisguised arrogance and cruelty. “So, really, it’s all thanks to you, Auntie Jiang.”
Jiang Lan looked at the young man’s face. The smile was so piercing it made her feel dizzy. Why was he smiling? Was it scorn? Was he mocking her for her foolishness? That smiling face suddenly merged with a face from her past. A voice in her head began to blame her over and over again.
“It’s your fault!”
“It’s all your fault!”
“You were the one who pushed your daughter into the abyss with your own two hands!”
“Someday, she’ll walk your same path and become another you!”
Amid the constant accusations, memories of the past flooded her mind. A skinny woman holding a young child walked in a dimly lit, damp alley, surrounded by whispering, jeering people of all shapes and sizes. The woman hurried to the end of the alley and looked up, her face both familiar and strange. That’s not me, she thought. Then who is it? It’s my daughter. It couldn’t be; it shouldn’t be. Jiang Lan screamed the questions in her head, but the voice never answered. Eventually, her consciousness faded to black.
Jiang Lan fainted. Xu Weishan held his wife, completely lost. Shen Tingjun’s malicious smile froze on his face. Jiang Wanwan, who had run out when she heard the commotion, looked on, confused.
Xu Huirong, who had just returned home, was shocked to see her mother unconscious. She ignored Shen Sanqian and yelled at her father. “Dad, what are you standing there for? Take her to the hospital!”
Everyone in the courtyard began to move. Her father tried to pick up his wife but stumbled. “I’ll do it,” Shen Tingjun said. He effortlessly picked up his future mother-in-law, whom he had just angered into fainting, and ran toward the nearest hospital in the South City. Jiang Wanwan and the Xu family followed in a frantic dash.
While the Xu family was in a state of chaos, across town at the West City Textile Factory housing complex, Hu Xiuxiu, who had been unconscious with a high fever for three days, finally opened her eyes.
I hope you like the story! Let me know your thoughts in the comment section. TIA!