Lin Guodong irritably grabbed his hair. “Mom, what are you talking about? How are you doing well? You’ve set up a stall at the end of the alley. If you’re going to remarry Dad, with his extra hundred or so yuan salary, do you really need to go out and show your face, working hard to make a few coins and trying to please others with a smile?”

“If you’re not ashamed, we all are!” Lin Guodong’s tone became heavier.

“Ashamed?” Li Shuping raised her voice, “What’s shameful about making money by selling dumplings with my own hands? The top leaders say that working people are the most honorable! I’m earning money with my hands, that’s honorable!”

Those who say that setting up a stall is shameful are just prejudiced or still hold onto outdated thoughts from the past, thinking that street vendors are from the lower class.

Only Li Shuping knew that those who think setting up a stall is shameful will eventually become a joke.

Others have used street vending to buy their own apartments, while those people, with their families of ten or more, are still cramped in a shared courtyard, and then they start saying only fools buy houses. Why buy property when you have a factory apartment?

“Honorable? What honorable?” Lin Guodong frowned. “The working people they refer to are the workers and peasants. You’re just running a business, you’re a merchant now. You’re doing capitalist restoration, speculating and profiteering. If you get caught, we will all be implicated!”

“Pah!” Li Shuping spat at Lin Guodong. “You’re a regular worker at the machine factory, and yet you don’t even know as much as I do. Now that the country has reformed and opened up, people in the South are doing business everywhere. The government even encourages unemployed people to start small businesses. By your logic, is the government leading a capitalist restoration?”

Lin Guodong was stunned into silence.

How did his mother know so much?

Her reasoning was sound.

“Moreover, those who profit from reselling goods are speculating. I bought flour, eggs, and vegetables, made them into dumplings, and sold them. How is that speculating?”

Things are different now. In the past, farmers selling their produce in the city were considered profiteers.

Now there is a free market in the suburbs, where farmers bring their homegrown vegetables and home-raised chickens and ducks to sell.

Lin Guodong said, “It doesn’t matter if it counts as speculating or not, but your stall cannot stay! Mom, I haven’t asked anything from you, I found my job myself, and I even got Zhang Jiao as my girlfriend myself. Right now, I only ask one thing—save my face and stop setting up that stall.”

Li Shuping looked at Lin Guodong in disbelief.

She raised him, helped him marry a wife, and look after grandchildren, and now he says he hasn’t asked anything from her?

“Lin Guodong, you didn’t rely on me? Did you just pop out of a rock or grow up on air?”

Lin Guodong scratched his head in frustration, realizing his words were wrong, but he quickly added, “I got my job on my own, didn’t rely on you or Dad.”

“The job for the second one, though, was given by you. Even though you were angry and got money from the second one later, you still helped him get the job,” she said.

The job at the garment factory was one that even money couldn’t buy.

“When we were kids, whenever there was something good to eat, we always gave it to the second one. After he went to the countryside, you were so worried about him, you sent him things every month. When the second one got together with Liu Qin, you gave so much dowry just to satisfy him. Let’s be clear, you preferred the second one, and you’ve always been biased towards him.”

Li Shuping looked at her eldest son, Lin Guodong, disappointed.

She never thought that in his mind, she had always been biased towards the second son since he was a child, not just because she gave the job to the second one.

She had always thought she treated both sons equally.

Lin Guodong was her and Lin Yongnian’s first son, and when it was just him, he received all their love and attention.

Even though her attention was divided later with the second son and Xiaoyu, she never neglected him. But now he felt she was biased.

Suddenly, she remembered what Lin Guodong said about her bias towards Lin Jianshe.

“Why did I always give the best food to the second one when he was little?” Li Shuping patted her chest.

“Wasn’t it because when he was three, he went out to play with you and fell into the water, injuring his health? Those two years he was constantly sick with a cough, and I had to take extra care of his health. That’s why I always gave him the best food.”

“Did you forget that you didn’t even get to eat a piece of meat while I made sure you both ate? Your little brother was sick, and your mom sacrificed so you two could eat more. Do you remember that?”

Lin Guodong’s expression froze. Was that really the case? He didn’t remember that.

He only remembered that when they made pork soup at home, his mother always put most of the meat into the second son’s bowl, and his own bowl had far less meat and soup.

“You also know your second brother. He was lazy and didn’t know much about farming. After he went to the countryside, he couldn’t earn many work points,” she continued.

“I just wanted him to earn work points and feed himself, but after a month, he called me, saying he was starving and couldn’t stay in the countryside anymore.”

“What could I do if I didn’t send him things? Should I just let him starve in the countryside?”

Li Shuping stared at Lin Guodong and asked a question from the depths of her soul.

“And your job,” Li Shuping pointed at him, “Do you really think you got into the steel factory on your own?”

“I did get in on my own!” Lin Guodong said loudly.

The thing he was most proud of in life was getting into the steel factory during a time when jobs were scarce, all on his own, without relying on anyone.

He could brag about this for the rest of his life.

“Ha ha ha…” Li Shuping laughed.

Lin Guodong: “…”

He felt that his mom’s laughter was inexplicably strange.

Li Shuping stared at him, smirking. “If I hadn’t known from your dad that the steel factory was recruiting apprentice workers and gone to take care of your father-in-law’s mother in the hospital for a month, do you think that apprentice position would have gone to you?”

“No… No way,” Lin Guodong said, his face pale, shaking his head in disbelief. He couldn’t believe that his most proud achievement wasn’t based on his own efforts, but his mother’s help.

“If you don’t believe me, ask your dad. He knows about this too.”

Lin Guodong leaned against the wall, holding his head, feeling frustrated. Why didn’t she just keep it a secret forever? Why did she have to tell him now?

All these years, he had always felt proud of himself for finding a job on his own, unlike other people his age who relied on their families.

But now he was being told that his job, even his mother had gone and taken care of someone to secure it for him.

It made him feel like a fool.

“Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Lin Guodong gritted his teeth and asked.

All these years, every time he proudly boasted about his job, did she think it was laughable? Did she mock him in her heart?

When Lin Guodong realized his job came from his mother, he felt neither grateful nor regretful about misunderstanding her. Instead, he questioned her with resentment.

Li Shuping remained indifferent, “Your dad was so proud of you for getting into the steel factory on your own, that’s why I kept it a secret from you.”

In that moment, she suddenly understood why Lin Yongnian wanted her to keep this from their eldest son.

It was probably so that the children would think that he, their father, was the best, erasing her contributions as a mother.

In the previous life, Lin Guodong had been very filial and respectful to his father, even scolding her for not taking better care of him.