At 7 p.m. on March 14, 2022, J City local station.
The female host in her early thirties was wearing a suit and broadcasting the news. “Mr. Shi Zhen, a well-known entrepreneur in this city, passed away in the hospital at 5 a.m. in the morning on the 12th at the age of 46.”
The host gave some information about Shi Zhen and added, “In the past twenty years, Mr. Shi has donated 170 million to charities. According to Mr. Shi’s will, after his death, all assets under his name will be donated to charity…”
The TV screen turned to the scene of a memorial service.
Shi Zhen was a large taxpayer in J City, but the memorial service was arranged very simply, which was in line with his habit of being diligent and thrifty.
But now, the simple memorial service was packed with people.
These people were old and young, male and female, poor and rich, and all of them looked sad.
They were all people who had more or less been helped by Shi Zhen.
Shi Zhen had no children. In addition to making money in his life, he had been dedicated to charity. Making money itself seemed to be to make money for charity. How could such a person not be respected?
…
At 5 a.m. in the morning on March 12, 1994, under the newly built Wenhua Bridge in J City.
Wenhua Bridge spanned a large river in the suburbs of J City.
In the past few years, J City had been undergoing a lot of construction. The river had a slope protection built with stones, and a spacious bridge had been built over the river, which allowed four cars to pass side by side. There was also a sidewalk on both sides.
The bridge was very big, and the tunnel under the bridge was naturally not small either.
The children of the surrounding farmers had loved playing on and under the bridge since the bridge was built. There were also beggars who set up shacks and lived under the bridge.
Shi Zhen woke up from the cold.
J City was located in the Yangtze River Delta*, with long summers and short winters, but it was still a bit cold in March. Even if Shi Zhen wore a large cotton-padded jacket and wrapped several snakeskin bags around his body, he still couldn’t stop the chill coming from all directions.
After all, the place where he lived was not a warm house, but under a bridge.
After he woke up, he looked around, wrapped the snakeskin bag around him, stood up and sat down against the stone beside him, motionless.
Shi Zhen was no stranger to this place.
When he was eighteen years old, he took his cousin Shi Xinghuo away from the small mountain village where they lived. First they walked on the mountain road for half a day, then rode on a tractor for half a day, and then took a bus for a day. Finally, they made it to J City. There was not much money left.
He was reluctant to spend money to stay in a hotel, and he didn’t feel that the place where they slept at night had to be a house, so he chose to stay under a bridge in the suburbs of J City, which was newly built and was still surrounded by farmland.
He and Shi Xinghuo lived under the bridge for almost a month. After finally finding jobs, they moved to live at the construction site.
Shi Zhen was also born in the Yangtze River Delta.
Z Province had been divided into seven parts by mountains, one by water and two by fields, since ancient times. There were wealthy places along the coast and small villages in the mountains.
At the time of his death, Z Province was already very developed, and his home village had also developed into a good place for tourism and vacation. People in the village came out to work and opened farmhouses, and they all had enough money to become well-off. But in the 1990s, these isolated mountain villages were still very poor.
The road hadn’t been built yet, so it was inconvenient for people in mountainous areas like his home village to go out, and people didn’t like to go out. Year after year, they grew just enough food to eat, and just lived day by day.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
The only source of income for people in their village all year round was from selling mushrooms – every household in their village would grow mushrooms using the old method passed down from their ancestors. When the mushrooms were grown and dried, they would be picked in bundles and exchanged for money.
For a long time, Shi Zhen thought that he would farm in the mountains for the rest of his life. He was in good health, worked quickly, and was good at growing mushrooms. He would definitely be able to save money. When he saved enough money, he could marry a wife and then have a child to farm the land and grow mushrooms like him.
But in the 1990s, changes in the outside world still affected their village to some extent.
He was the first one in the village to come out to work.
Last year, a trainee teacher in his early twenties came to their village. The trainee teacher was from J City. When he came to their village, he was shocked by their poverty.
The teacher taught in their elementary school for more than a month. After eating pickled vegetables mixed with shiitake mushrooms for more than a month, he suddenly suffered from appendicitis.
Shi Zhen happened to be looking for his sister, who was in sixth grade, at the time. When Shi Zhen saw the trainee teacher suffering, he carried him out of the mountains that night and sent him to the county hospital for surgery. After that, the teacher kept talking to him and persuaded him to go out to work.
He was not someone who was content with the status quo. As a young man, he had ambitions that could not be accommodated in his thin body. In addition, there were already people in the nearby villages going out to work… He immediately decided to go out.
However, he had no money at the time, so he planted mushrooms for a year to save money. After the Chinese New Year, he took his cousin* Shi Xinghuo out.
Coincidentally, he also turned eighteen this year.
He and Shi Xinghuo came to J City and saw a world outside that shocked them.
There were small buildings of five or six stories everywhere here, and occasionally they could even see taller buildings. There were many cars here, and the people here were all well-dressed.
The fire in his heart was ignited, and strong emotions rushed out from the bottom of his heart – he wanted to make money. He wanted to buy a car, and he wanted to live the life of a rich man!
For a long time after that, he kept moving forward bravely toward his goal.
Shi Zhen blew out a long breath, and the hot air condensed into white mist in the morning light.
At this time, a rustling sound came from the side.
Under the bridge, not only did he and Shi Xinghuo live there, but also an old lady. The old lady was a beggar. She built a small nest under the bridge using things like bamboo, wood and plastic sheeting. She carried a cloth bag during the day, begging for food nearby and coming back to sleep at night.
The old lady was a little afraid of him and Shi Xinghuo. Although he and Shi Xinghuo were poor, they thought they were different from such old beggars. In addition, they didn’t understand the language here well. In their previous life, they lived together under the bridge for almost a month, and they had no relationship with each other. They never even exchanged a few words.
Yes, a previous life.
Everything he saw before him was extremely real. If there were no accidents, he should have returned to twenty-eight years ago, when he was eighteen years old.
Shi Zhen took a deep breath.
Cool air was sucked into his lungs. He raised the corners of his mouth and wanted to smile, but he didn’t.
The old lady next door built a small stove outside her den with broken bricks and carefully plastered it with mud. She was currently cooking congee* on the stove with trembling hands.
Shi Zhen looked at her for a while, then stood up and began to clean up the broken bricks, cement blocks and other construction debris under the bridge.
There were a lot of these things here. Shi Zhen had not taken care of them before, but today he moved them all out and piled them in the corner.
He also picked up some broken bricks that could still be used and stacked them neatly next to the old lady’s shack.
He made a lot of noise, and Shi Xinghuo woke up. He stood up in a daze and asked, “Ah* Zhen, what do you want to do?”
Shi Zhen responded, “Clean up this place. You can help.”
Shi Xinghuo said, “Oh!”
After Shi Xinghuo responded, he started working with Shi Zhen, asking a few words from time to time. “Do you want this?”
”Where to put this?”
Shi Zhen answered him, and he shouted, “Oh!”
Shi Xinghuo was four years older than Shi Zhen. When his mother was pregnant with him, she got what they called icteric phase hepatitis A. She took a lot of medicine. He didn’t know if it was because of this, but Shi Xinghuo was a bit stupid when he was born. After six years of elementary school, he could only recognize a dozen words, and he had to rely on his fingers to calculate addition and subtraction within ten.
Therefore, although Shi Xinghuo was Shi Zhen’s older cousin, he listened to Shi Zhen in everything.
The reason why Shi Zhen took him out this time was firstly because Shi Xinghuo was obedient enough, and secondly because Shi Xinghuo’s parents begged him.
Shi Xinghuo was famously stupid in their village and even in several nearby villages. Who didn’t know that when he was studying, he could only draw circles in the exam?
Their family didn’t have much money, so it was difficult for Shi Xinghuo to find a wife. His parents wanted him to try his luck outside. If he could earn a thousand or eight hundred yuan*, he might be able to find a somewhat handicapped wife.
In 1994, the monthly salary of ordinary employees in J City was about two to three hundred yuan, but in their remote mountain village, it was very difficult for everyone to earn even ten yuan a month. One thousand yuan was enough to pay the bride price*.
Shi Zhen had been saving some money over the years. He came out with a total of over one hundred yuan this time. Shi Xinghuo’s parents also gave him twenty yuan. After excluding transportation expenses and other expenses, he now had eighty-nine yuan and five cents remaining.
This amount of money was not small at this time. They lived under the bridge before, mainly because he was afraid of being hungry if he couldn’t find a job, so he didn’t dare to spend it randomly.
He was always careful.
Shi Zhen was the most capable fighter among the younger generation in their village and had a great reputation. Although Shi Xinghuo was stupid, he was quite strong. The two of them didn’t clean the area under the bridge before because it didn’t occur to them. Now that they were immersed in work, within an hour, the place was cleared.
The originally messy bridge tunnel now looked much better.
After sorting this out, Shi Zhen started to pack up his belongings again.
The total belongings of him and Shi Xinghuo were not much. He put their clothes and shoes into snakeskin bags, took out a bag of fried rice noodles and a pickled rabbit leg, and handed them to the old lady who had already finished cooking congee and was eating it.
He brought a lot of food with him when he came out. He made pickled rabbit legs by raising rabbits himself and made fried rice noodles by frying the rice and grinding it into powder in a mill.
This was what he and Shi Xinghuo had been eating these past few days.
The old lady was shocked when she received the food.
Shi Zhen picked up his snakeskin bag and said to Shi Xinghuo, “Let’s go!”
”Oh!” Shi Xinghuo responded loudly.
Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo left. The white-haired old lady with a stooped back swallowed her saliva when she saw that the stones and bricks under the bridge that had always tripped her feet before were gone.
Shi Zhen didn’t have a watch and didn’t know the specific time now, but the sun had already come out and it was probably past 7 a.m.
Shi Xinghuo felt a little aggrieved. “Ah Zhen, I want to eat rabbit legs.”
Shi Zhen said, “Rabbit legs are not delicious. I will buy you meat buns.”
Shi Xinghuo was immediately happy. “Oh!”
Shi Zhen took Shi Xinghuo toward the bus station.
Next to the newly built station in J City, there was also a newly built hospital. Although the surrounding area was empty, it had become popular and several breakfast shops had opened.
The small soup dumplings cost 1.50 for a basket and the large meat buns were 3 for 1 yuan. Shi Zhen looked at them and bought 12 large meat buns for four yuan.
The meat buns were about the size of an adult’s fist. Most people would be full after eating three. For girls with small appetites, one was enough.
But both Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo were big eaters. If they let go, Shi Zhen could eat five or six in one meal.
Shi Zhen gave Shi Xinghuo six meat buns, and Shi Xinghuo started to eat them while holding them. “The buns here are so delicious. I have never eaten such delicious buns before.”
Wheat was not grown in their village, and no one made flour. Shi Xinghuo had followed his parents to the market in a nearby town and had eaten steamed buns a few times. No wonder he was happy to eat ordinary meat buns now.
Shi Zhen was very hungry. He finished his six meat buns in one go and took Shi Xinghuo into the bus station. He went to the window and asked in J City dialect*. “Do you have tickets to Changxi City?”
”Yes, there is one every half hour. It leaves at 8 a.m.”
”I’ll buy two tickets.” Shi Zhen took out ten yuan and bought two tickets.
J City was a prefecture-level city*, and Changxi City was a county-level city under J City.
There were many top 100 counties in the Yangtze River Delta, and Changxi City was one of them. In Shi Zhen’s previous life, he mainly developed in Changxi City.
In fact, he started to make a fortune in a town below Changxi City.
That town was called Anshan Town, where the person he loved most lived.
***
T/N: This novel is by one of my favorite authors (Jue Jue) and hits many of my favorite tropes of rebirth, second chances and the rags to riches story. I marked this as Modern on CG because none of the other genres fit well, but most of the story takes place in the 1990s, a period of rapid economic development in China and not what I would usually consider modern (Although I guess it’s more modern than the popular 60s/70s/80s novels).
Long footnotes below. Sorry – I tried to keep them short, but then I recalled how little my non-Chinese friends understand about Chinese culture, currency, language, etc. and realized how many things needed explanation.
*Yangtze River Delta (taken from wikipedia): The Yangtze Delta or Yangtze River Delta is a triangle-shaped megalopolis generally comprising the Wu Chinese-speaking areas of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang and northern Jiangxi.
*堂哥 (tang ge) – cousins of the same surname, so Shi Xinghuo is his older paternal cousin. This is sometimes translated as cousin brother in other novels.
*粥 (zhou) – congee, which is basically Chinese porridge. Made with boiling rice and water; you can add various other ingredients to make different types of congee.
*阿 (Ah or A’) is a prefix Chinese people use in front of names to indicate closeness. Similar to using xiao (small), but Ah is used more often for peers and xiao for children or a pet name.
*Yuan is the term used for Chinese currency, just like dollars in America or pounds in Britain. I’ll still use cents for anything less than a yuan as it’s 100 “cents” to a yuan, but technically it’s not cents, it’s fen in China. For currency conversion for those not familiar with Chinese currency, $1USD is roughly equivalent to 7 yuan.
*Bride price – opposite of a dowry, a bride price is paid by the groom’s family to the bride’s family.
*Dialect – China is huge and has many dialects. Many people around me think China only has two dialects – Mandarin and Cantonese… when people say Mandarin today, they’re referring to standard Chinese, i.e. the formal national language of China taught in schools. It is essentially the Beijing dialect. This will be very important in this story as in 1994, the time setting of this story, China was still developing and many people had not received formal education, meaning many people could not speak Mandarin or didn’t speak it well – they could only speak their local dialect as that was what they heard and used growing up, just like how all of us learned our mother tongue and it would be hard to suddenly use another language. Things are totally different now as almost everyone in China has learned Mandarin either through school or watching television, etc. Back then, before things like TVs, radios, etc. became widespread, it was hard to spread the learning and use of Mandarin and although it was the national language, many people still used their local dialect. Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo aren’t from J City, so in Shi Zhen’s original life, he didn’t know the local dialect (that’s what the earlier paragraph meant by him not being familiar with the language here). However, he learned it later, which is how he is able to speak to the ticket seller in dialect. Shi Zhen is speaking in the local dialect because he doesn’t want to be treated as an outsider.
*Taken from wikipedia: “A prefectural level city is a “city” (Chinese: 市; pinyin: shì) and “prefecture” (Chinese: 地区; pinyin: dìqū) that have been merged into one consolidated and unified jurisdiction. As such it is simultaneously a city, which is a municipal entry with subordinate districts, and a prefecture with subordinate county-level cities and counties which is an administrative division of a province.
A prefectural level city is often not a “city” in the usual sense of the term (i.e., a large continuous urban settlement), but instead an administrative unit comprising, typically, a main central urban area (the core city, city as in the usual sense, usually with the same name as the prefectural level city) surrounded by rural areas, which together are divided into districts, and some surrounding counties or county-level cities governed by the prefecture-level city on behalf of the province, which all have their own urban areas surrounded by their own rural areas. The urban areas of the surrounding counties are usually smaller than the core urban area, and towns also form small urban areas scattered in the rural.”
There are some more nuances and you can google if you’re interested. But basically, even though Shi Zhen is “leaving” J City by bus, he is still within the prefecture level area governed by J City, so don’t get confused when he keeps referring to it in future chapters.
Interesting First chapter!
Thanks for the update ☺️🥰
I respect translators whos not only genuinely translate but diligently put effort to give their readers educational notes, we can actually learn a little bit of past/modern culture or history. Very interesting.
Thanks for your detailed footnotes! This story has really piqued my interest
Very cool, thank you for the notes and the translation! This story sounds good so far ☺️
Thank you for all the cliff notes.