Guan Baiyu really didn’t like his little grandma.
People of his grandma’s generation had a very hard life in the past, and everyone had some problems. For example, his grandma was very protective of food. When she got older, she would hide any delicious food and eat it herself.
As for his second grandma, Guan Jianguo’s mother, she was very stingy and was reluctant to spend even a penny on regular days.
And the little grandma who just left liked to take advantage of others.
But if she just liked to take advantage of others, Guan Baiyu wouldn’t dislike her… Guan Baiyu was so dissatisfied with her because she kept talking about “Kaikai” all the time.
Kaikai’s name was Guan Kai. He was two years younger than Guan Baiyu and the same age as Guan Baiyu’s adoptive sister. He was thirteen this year.
They were from the same family and lived very close to each other, so they would play together when they were young. However, when Guan Kai was born, the family planning policy happened to have just been implemented, so their family only had this one child. This little grandma was very fond of Guan Kai. She loved him very much.
Guan Kai was so pampered growing up that he had a bad temper. When he played with others when he was a child, he would cry whenever they didn’t follow his lead. When he cried, he would go to his grandmother to complain.
Then Guan Kai’s grandma brought Guan Kai everywhere to make trouble for others and quarrel with their parents.
Later, no one in their group wanted to play with Guan Kai.
Guan Kai was unhappy again and went to complain to his grandma that no one else would play with him. Guan Kai’s grandma came to trouble him and asked him to take Guan Kai to play. After that, if he didn’t follow Guan Kai’s will, such as beating Guan Kai in a game of cards, Guan Kai would be unhappy, and Guan Kai’s grandma would come to lecture him.
His grandma brought him back and raised him, but after all, he was not a member of the Guan family. His grandma actually didn’t like him very much and couldn’t stand up for him in these matters. He didn’t know how many times Guan Kai’s grandma said this to him since he was a child.
This little grandma also liked to gossip about people behind their backs. She always told people that he suppressed* his father, his mother, and the whole family, so no one wanted him.
She also falsely accused him of treating Guan Kai badly and beating him up, when obviously he never fought at all.
There were many similar things, and Guan Baiyu didn’t know where to start for a while. Finally, he told Shi Zhen about a recent incident. “During the Chinese New Year, the river water was low, so I picked up some crucian carps from the river. But she actually said that her grandson found them and took all my crucian carps away.”
Guan Baiyu felt a little depressed when he talked about this.
Now that everyone’s life was getting better, they would buy some meat and fish to eat during the Chinese New Year. But except for the Chinese New Year’s Eve reunion dinner when he went to his adoptive father’s place to eat meat, he usually didn’t have the opportunity to eat meat.
The small crucian carps caught had more bones and less meat, but they were still meat.
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.
Shi Zhen didn’t know about these things. In his previous life, Guan Baiyu rarely talked about these relatives, and when he did, he rarely spoke ill of them.
Also, when people became adults, they generally no longer held grudges about such trivial things.
Putting his arms around Guan Baiyu, Shi Zhen patted his back. “Next time I will buy a big fish for you to eat. As for your little grandma, we will never give her meat again.”
”Okay.” Guan Baiyu responded. In fact, he wanted to stop Shi Zhen from giving the little grandma meat just now, but he was afraid that if he stopped it, his little grandma would spread bad words about Shi Zhen all over the village.
After the pig head meat was done braising, Shi Zhen saved a little marinade and meat to eat tomorrow morning. He processed the rest as before and put it in the big basin.
The next day, Shi Zhen took a pot of pig head meat, a tall stool, a small stool, plus a knife, scale and other small things, and walked to town with Shi Xinghuo.
When he arrived in town, Shi Zhen found a place outside the farmers’ market, placed the stainless steel basin on the taller stool, and prepared to sell pig head meat.
He and Shi Xinghuo arrived early. It was only 6 a.m. in the morning, but there were already many people coming to the market to buy groceries. Shi Zhen did not put on airs and greeted them. “Do you want pig head meat? Cold-cut pig head meat is two yuan a catty!”
Nowadays, there were many food shops in the town, but they only sold steamed buns, soup dumplings, shaobing, fried dough sticks and the like. There were only three shops selling cooked food, and these three shops set up stalls outside the market like Shi Zhen.
However, those stalls were larger and sold a lot of items, such as roast chicken, braised chicken, braised duck, dried tofu boiled in brine, vegetables and chicken with tofu, etc. Those stalls sold more than a dozen miscellaneous items in total.
But no one sold pig head meat.
In addition, the items sold at those stalls were not cheap. Shi Zhen had seen before that many people went to them to buy dried tofu that had been fried and then braised. It was mostly soup and it only cost one yuan.
His pig head meat was not expensive and unique.
The residents in town were not very interested in pig head meat. Many of them didn’t like to eat fatty meat. However, some farmers who rarely came to town to buy groceries were still very interested in pig head meat.
The key thing was it was cheap.
These days, when most people bought food, they bought cheap food instead of delicious food.
People came to Shi Zhen one after another to buy pig head meat.
Shi Zhen admitted that doing business in this era was much easier than in later generations. If nothing else, if a shabby stall like his was set up twenty years later, no one would come to buy.
But here, a pig head was sold out in less than an hour.
Shi Zhen gave pretty much everyone an extra fraction when he cut the meat, and sold twelve catties of cold-cut pig head meat for a total of twenty-one yuan.
What he lacked most now was a cycle rickshaw. Without a cycle rickshaw, he couldn’t bring many things to town to sell. He could only bring pig heads one by one…
Shi Zhen went to the market and bought three pig heads, and left the stools with Butcher Zhu before returning home.
It was only 8 a.m. when Shi Zhen got home. He cooked another pig head, then at 11 a.m., went out and took it to town to sell.
Before leaving, he also put another pig head into the pot, filled it with the right amount of seasoning, loaded enough firewood, and left it to simmer. This way, when he came back from his trip, the pig head should be almost finished braising.
While doing this, he also steamed the remaining rice from last night on the steaming rack – Guan Baiyu had to attend school for half a day on Saturdays, and would be home later.
Today was Saturday, and there were more people in town than usual. The pig head that Shi Zhen brought this time was sold out in a short amount of time.
He didn’t waste any time and went home immediately.
When Shi Zhen came back this time, Guan Baiyu was adding firewood to the stove, and the pig head in the pot was almost finished.
Shi Zhen sat down to rest and said to Guan Baiyu with a smile, “Baiyu, I have sold two pig heads today, and I can sell another one later! I can earn ten yuan from selling each pig head, so I can earn thirty yuan a day in the future.”
These days, an ordinary worker made just over two hundred yuan a month. If he could make thirty yuan a day, he could make a thousand yuan a month.
By then…the cycle rickshaw would be available.
Guan Baiyu’s eyes lit up.
Shi Zhen was in a good mood, but he was also really tired.
For most of the day, he had almost no time to rest, especially since every time he carried the basin to town, he had to walk for half an hour, which was a bit too much for him even if he was in good health.
At 3 p.m. in the afternoon, Shi Zhen and Guan Baiyu went to town with the third pig head.
They did not set up a stall this time, but went to the place where Shi Xinghuo dredged up river silt. They sold out the pot of pig head meat there.
This time Shi Zhen still sold it for 1.50 yuan per catty, but did not give the workers an extra fraction of meat when cutting. But even so, Wang Chengfa and the others were not dissatisfied. The town was still small at this time, and there were not many outsiders. They already knew that there was a stall selling pig head meat at the farmers’ market, and they also knew that Shi Zhen was selling it for two yuan per catty outside. In this case, they had already taken advantage.
After selling out, Shi Zhen went to buy a pack of noodles and planned to celebrate by eating noodles at night.
Wheat was not grown much in the south, so anything made with flour was more expensive.
For example, dumplings were eaten as a dish here.
A few years ago, some people would cook a bowl of noodles mixed with soy sauce and lard, put it in the middle of the table as a dish, and eat it with rice.
For these reasons, many people had to eat something made with flour when they visited the town. Whether it was steamed buns, shaobing, deep-fried dough sticks, or noodles and wontons, it was not a visit to town without eating some flour-based food.
However, Shi Zhen bought noodles mainly because Guan Baiyu liked to eat noodles.
When the two of them lived together, if he didn’t go home for dinner, Guan Baiyu liked to eat various kinds of noodles. Of course, the kind he ate the most was vermicelli.
”Should we mix the noodles with sauce or make soup noodles tonight?” Shi Xinghuo was also very interested in noodles.
Shi Zhen said, “Mix the noodles with the marinade I saved before and we can eat it.” The marinade of the pig head meat had a strong flavor, so it was delicious when mixed with noodles. Cut some pig head meat on top… Guan Baiyu and Shi Xinghuo would definitely like it.
Shi Zhen bought noodles because they cooked faster than rice. He was tired and hungry and wanted to eat hot food quickly.
He put the noodles in the pot and added some green vegetables. When the noodles were ready, he scooped them up and mixed them with the marinade. He ate two large bowls in one go.
Shi Xinghuo also ate two large bowls, and even Guan Baiyu, who had the smallest appetite, ate much more than usual.
After eating, Shi Zhen continued to braise a pig head – he wanted to make money as soon as possible.
Last night, when Shi Zhen was braising a pig head, Guan Baiyu’s little grandma came over, and tonight…
Not long after Shi Zhen started braising, several people came.
Guan Baiyu’s house had braised pig heads for almost the whole day today. Many people came and went and smelled the aroma. Now they came over and wanted to see what smelled so delicious.
Many people also wanted to buy some back.
***
T/N: I’m really uncomfortable that the author called what happened to Guan Baiyu growing up a trivial matter. What the little grandma did to Guan Baiyu was not okay. It was severe emotional abuse and she perpetuated it by forcing him to play with her trash grandson. Like she wonders why no one wants to play with her grandson and bullies the orphan to play with him because she knows she can. So messed up. I don’t care how much she loves her grandson, this kind of shit is not okay. She can love Kaikai without bullying other children. This is also the first time (I think) that the author has explicitly stated Baiyu’s adoptive grandmother didn’t actually like him much, which is sad as I was hoping he had at least one person that cared for him growing up.
*Suppressed in terms of luck or fate. It’s an old Chinese superstition and was common to say this to children you didn’t like. Similar to the term broom star or disaster star.
The little grandma….well, I hope she gets what she deserves. It is one thing, that she bullied an orphan into basically being the servant of her spoiled, bad tempered grandson. A terrible thing, but I still think that stealing food from said orphan, who is perpetually on the verge of starvation, deserves a special place in Hell. Even now, when she came for the pig head meat, it was pretty bad, even though Guan Baiyu clearly has someone to take care of him and probably won’t starve. But back then? When he was all but starved by his adoptive parents, and everyone had to know that he just has no means to get more food? That’s just horrible. To steal hard earned food from a starving, unloved orphan…. Personally I would rather give up my own food and go hungry for the day, than ever do something like that. And while this is just fiction, unfortunately there are people like this little grandma in real life.
Exactly 💯 I already dislike this characters. Although it is said that the adoptive parents allowed them to be together. In the MCs perspective, only the ml knows what goes beyond the scene. Mc is neglectful so no wonder his bf is being bullied. as you said, the little grandma is really rude like imagine you had to starve because some annoying and selfish people shamelessly stole the food you earned?? I’ll probably throw some rocks at them. 😭
Thank you for the chapter!!! I’m looking forward on how the story goes by over time!!😊🤗❤️
Thank you for translating this
Thank you for the update ❤️💯
Ah it hurts my heart, but I’m hopeful about Guan Baiyu’s future
I’m glad in this lifetime shi zhen gets to personally witness and find out about guan baiyu’s early life and his relationship with his shitty relatives. Hopefully the
*they’ll make it out of there soon ><