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Dujuan was the daughter of Doctor Hu’s wife from her previous marriage, and also Erya’s closest confidante.
So when Lu Qiniang heard Erya say she was going to find Dujuan, she didn’t think much of it. She only reminded her, “Come back early. Don’t eat at someone else’s house—we’re celebrating the New Year today!”
Erya didn’t answer. Clearly, she had already dashed off.
“This girl…” Lu Qiniang shook her head.
After returning inside, she began rummaging through trunks and baskets, eventually pulling out a stack of red paper.
But the red paper wasn’t in large sheets. Instead, they were all small scraps, the leftover trimmings from cuttings.
“…These are what I saved back when I was at the Zhou Residence,” Lu Qiniang said proudly. “When the Sixth Young Lady of the Zhou family got married, they bought red paper to cut wedding characters. I kept all the scraps. Now look, they’re finally useful, aren’t they?”
Xiao Yan looked at the small red strips and squares of paper, and asked uncertainly, “Are you planning to use these to cut window decorations?”
“I don’t have hands that clever,” Lu Qiniang replied. “Aren’t you literate? Let’s write spring couplets and put them up!”
As she spoke, she murmured softly, “Ever since Heyao joined the army, no one at home could write, so we haven’t put up spring couplets since.”
For families like theirs, who struggled just to fill their stomachs, spring couplets were a luxury.
In the neighborhood, everyone was more or less equally poor, and spring couplets were a rare sight.
If any household put up couplets, the local children would gather around and stare at them for half the day.
Such luxuries were something few people prepared.
Lu Qiniang quickly shook off her melancholy.
It was the New Year, after all—time to think happy thoughts. That way, good fortune would follow them all year long.
“You can write, and these red papers didn’t cost us a thing, so we’re putting up couplets this year.”
“These pieces might be too small for full couplets,” Xiao Yan said.
“If you can’t write long ones, then write short ones—something like ‘May joy greet you when you look up,’ or ‘Happiness upon stepping out the door.’ That kind of thing should be fine! Oh, and the most important one—‘A pen full of fat pigs!’”
This was, after all, the business she’d be relying on for survival next year. Getting a good omen was more important than anything.
Xiao Yan smiled and nodded.
Lu Qiniang took out a pair of scissors and began cutting the paper.
The scraps were truly irregular, so after some discussion, the two of them decided to trim them into uniformly sized squares. Each square would bear a single character, and they’d paste them together—after all, they’d be glued up with starch anyway.
Lu Qiniang carefully cut the red paper and placed the squares neatly on the heated brick bed table. Xiao Yan held the brush, paused in contemplation for a moment, then began writing with bold, flowing strokes.
His writing posture was full of presence, and his calligraphy was strikingly elegant.
Lacking the words to fully express herself—and not being literate in the first place—Lu Qiniang didn’t quite know how to praise his calligraphy.
After a long struggle, she finally managed, “Your characters… each one really looks like one.”
Xiao Yan: “…Was there someone whose characters didn’t?”
“My late husband!” Lu Qiniang said. “When he wrote, I couldn’t understand a thing—it looked like a tangled mess of lines. He said it was ‘cursive.’ I never understood why anyone would want to write in grass, it sounds like you’re cursing someone.”
“I can write it too,” Xiao Yan said quietly, lowering his gaze. “If you like it…”
“You can write that ‘grass’ too? Why do all of you know how to write that grass stuff? It’s so strange…”
“It’s called cursive script,” Xiao Yan explained. “What I’m writing now is regular script.”
Patiently, Xiao Yan began explaining the different styles of Chinese calligraphy.
Lu Qiniang nodded, half understanding: “The messy-looking one is ‘cursive,’ the neat and proper one is ‘regular,’ the squashed-looking one is ‘clerical’…”
A smile flickered in Xiao Yan’s eyes as he nodded approvingly. “You’re remarkably perceptive.”
“Huh?” Lu Qiniang looked at him in surprise and delight, pointing at herself. “You think I’m perceptive? Xiao Yan, you really know how to flatter someone. My late husband always says he’s never met anyone as slow as me, hahaha…”
“You’re not slow. You’re very smart.”
“Hehe, how are you so smooth with your words? You’re praising me so much, I feel like my heart’s blooming!” A faint blush crept up Lu Qiniang’s face. “My late husband’s amazing too—when he talks or handles things in front of others, he’s really impressive.”
But he looks down on you, and you’re still so happy… Xiao Yan sighed quietly to himself.
“Which style do you like best?” he asked her.
“regular script”
“Alright.”
Xiao Yan wrote each character with care, one stroke at a time, while Lu Qiniang watched intently from the side.
But whenever he asked for her opinion, she would quickly avert her eyes in embarrassment. “I only recognize that one character that looks like someone doing the splits—what can I even tell from this? If you say it’s good, then it’s good.”
“Splits?” Xiao Yan asked.
“It’s the character for ‘person’—that’s the only one I recognize,” Lu Qiniang replied.
Xiao Yan laughed.
That was actually a very fitting description.
He could tell that Lu Qiniang genuinely wanted to learn how to read, but was likely too shy to admit it. So he said nothing, and simply read aloud each character as he wrote it.
“Liu — chu — xing — wang —
‘Six— livestock— flourishing— thriving.’”
“Wu — gu — feng — deng —
‘Five— grains— bountiful— harvest.’”
“Chun — se — man — yuan —
‘Spring— colors— fill— the garden.’”
Lu Qiniang’s lips moved slightly as she silently repeated the characters to herself, trying to memorize them.
By the time he finished, she suddenly asked, “Where’s my ‘A pen full of fat pigs’?”
“‘Flourishing livestock’ works just fine.”
“No no, I want ‘A pen full of fat pigs’! I can’t even understand the rest, and pigs definitely won’t understand it.”
Xiao Yan was both amused and exasperated. “It’s not meant for the pigs to read.”
“I’ll read it to them, so they’ll eat and sleep more and grow fat quickly. I’m really good at raising pigs,” Lu Qiniang said, her eyes bright with excitement. “Xiao Yan, let me tell you, pigs are especially smart…”
Once she started talking about pigs, it was as if she had opened a floodgate. She went on from helping sows give birth to fattening up piglets, and then onto preventing swine fever…
“Right, you still need to write me one that says ‘The pigs won’t get sick.’”
“Why not write ‘immune to all diseases’?”
“Good, good, good, this one’s perfect. As expected, it’s the scholar who knows best. Write that one.”
This was something she could understand, and the pigs would definitely understand it too.
Once Xiao Yan finished writing, Lu Qiniang quickly made some paste and, excitedly, took the part about the pigs to paste on the pigsty.
When she returned to the rest of the couplets, ready to stick them up, she suddenly realized she had forgotten what the other parts said.
Unfortunately, Xiao Yan had grown tired and was now reclining on the bedding with his eyes closed, pretending to rest. He seemed to have dozed off, and Lu Qiniang didn’t have the heart to wake him.
Thankfully, Xiao Yan had already arranged the characters in sets of four, making it easier for her.
She decided to just paste them at random—after all, the “fat pigs in a full pen” part had already been put up. As long as she didn’t end up sticking something about pigs on the sleeping area, she wouldn’t embarrass herself.
So, Lu Qiniang began haphazardly pasting them everywhere.
Xiao Yan had only rested for a moment, but when he woke, there was still a trace of drowsiness in his eyes.
This… this shouldn’t be stuck on the head of the bed!
It would have been perfect to put it in the yard, but sticking it on the bed meant the meaning would become ambiguous.
However, when he mentioned to Lu Qiniang that it should go in the yard, she had simply said, “It’s all the same, spring is everywhere. I think this is just fine.”
Xiao Yan could only console himself—perhaps he was the only one in the house who would think of such a sordid interpretation.
Well, then, he decided to just pretend it didn’t exist…