Shi Zhen came to Anshan Town four years later in his last life. The Anshan Town at that time was very different from the Anshan Town now.
Shi Zhen looked at this small town that was a bit strange to him, and there were also people looking at him.
The eighteen-year-old young man was wearing clothes that were common ten years ago. His skin was tanned and his hair was too long and messy.
But even so, that face waa still attractive.
His eyebrows were dark and thick, and the tips of his eyebrows were high and naturally unruly. His straight nose bridge and strong facial lines were indescribably harmonious.
What attracted the most attention was his pair of deep eyes, like an eternal abyss deep in the mountains, with no bottom visible.
Even passersby couldn’t help but take a look at him.
Shi Zhen didn’t pay attention to the looks of these people. He looked around, chose a direction, and walked forward.
Guan Baiyu was three years younger than him and was only fifteen this year.
His biological father died early, his mother was unwilling to raise him, and his adoptive parents didn’t like him either. He had no money. Although he was admitted to high school, he dropped out after only one year. After that, he began to work around to support himself and take self-study exams.
Right now… Guan Baiyu, who was fifteen years old, should be in his third year of junior high school.
Anshan Town was a large and wealthy town. It had one of the top three elementary schools and junior high schools in Changxi City, and even a high school.
But Guan Baiyu didn’t study in town. He studied in the countryside.
The quality of education in elementary and junior high schools in town was very good, but the quality of education in rural schools was very poor.
In this era, there was a shortage of teachers everywhere. The teachers he had when he was studying could not even speak Mandarin well and often taught them incorrectly. Although J City was relatively wealthy, the schools in rural areas were still not very good.
So even if Guan Baiyu did very well in school, he only ended up in an ordinary high school.
At this time, there were no buses to the countryside in Anshan Town, but there were many cycle rickshaws* carrying passengers.
There were many people in town who made a living using a cycle rickshaw.
Riding this kind of rickshaw was not expensive. It only cost a few yuan to go where he wanted to go.
But Shi Zhen only had seventy-one yuan and fifty cents left at the moment and was reluctant to spend more.
He took Shi Xinghuo and headed to the village where Guan Baiyu lived.
Guan Baiyu’s village was not far from Anshan Town. It only took 40 minutes to walk from the bus station.
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.
In his previous life, around 2008, Guan Baiyu’s village was demolished.
Shi Zhen walked all the way west.
After leaving Anshan Town, the road became much smaller. The cement road was only a little over one meter wide, and it was basically impossible for cars to pass.
Nowadays, few families had cars, and a motorcycle was considered a luxury item.
This cement road was built along the river. To the south of the road was a river. There were a few wild mulberry trees growing sparsely on the slopes of the river.
To the north of the river, there were small yards surrounded by fences, full of vegetables. To the north of the small yards was a cement drying yard, and further to the north were two-story buildings.
The small buildings with white walls and black tiles all looked similar. Occasionally, a few of them had some mosaics on the walls, or some diamond patterns made of green glass bottle fragments, which made them look particularly different.
Anshan Town had a large population, and there were also many people in the countryside. In the drying yards of the houses, there were many old people chatting with their children.
Shi Zhen had been here with Guan Baiyu in his previous life. Although the scene at that time was very different from now, the roads were the same and he still knew the way.
Shi Zhen didn’t stop until he reached a small house.
There were basically brick and tile houses along the way, but the walls of this house were made of rammed earth, and it only had one floor. Looking at it, it must have been built for decades at least.
This house was not in a row with those small buildings. It stood alone next to the cement road.
This was Guan Baiyu’s house.
Guan Baiyu’s life experience was pitiful to say the least.
His biological parents were originally from Anshan Town.
In the early years, when people in town had children and there were no elderly at home who could take care of them, they would send them to the countryside and pay some money to find a nanny to take care of them.
Guan Baiyu’s biological father was sent to the countryside by his grandfather in the 1950s to be raised by Guan Baiyu’s adoptive grandmother.
Guan Baiyu’s biological grandmother died in childbirth, and his biological grandfather soon married another wife. Guan Baiyu’s father was almost forgotten in the countryside and was not picked up until he was a teenager.
After being picked up, Guan Baiyu’s father was not used to living at his biological father’s (Guan Baiyu’s grandfather) house, and would often go to his nanny’s house in the countryside. Later, Guan Baiyu’s grandfather got angry and simply sent Guan Baiyu’s father to an engineering team, letting him follow the engineering team around to build roads and bridges.
Guan Baiyu’s father lived like this until he was almost thirty years old. When he was repairing the water tower, he fell from the water tower and died.
As soon as he died, his wife ran away, leaving only a child waiting to be fed, who his own mother did not want to raise.
It was 1979, and Guan Baiyu’s grandfather’s family had long since moved to Changxi City. It was very, very far away for the Guan family who lived in the countryside of Anshan Town. But when old lady Guan learned that the son she had raised was dead, she still came and picked up the unwanted child, named the child Guan Baiyu, and registered the child with the Guan family.
Old lady Guan’s biological son was one year older than Guan Baiyu’s father, but he had never had any children since getting married.
Old lady Guan brought Guan Baiyu back just because she wanted her son to have an heir.
But old lady Guan’s son didn’t want to raise Guan Baiyu, especially since not long after Guan Baiyu came to the Guan family, his wife got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter.
Some families favored sons over daughters and treated their adopted sons better than their daughters, but Guan Baiyu’s adoptive parents did not. They only liked their own flesh and blood and were too lazy to take care of Guan Baiyu.
Guan Baiyu was raised by old lady Guan. Although he called them his parents, he was not close to the Guan couple. The Guan couple had always been poor, had no money, and had no extra kindness to give to Guan Baiyu, so Guan Baiyu’s life had never been very good, and he eventually had to drop out of high school.
In the next two years, Guan Baiyu’s adoptive father would borrow money to raise chickens in an attempt to make some money. As a result, the chickens all died of illness and he lost all his money.
He himself had tightened his belt to live, so how could he care about Guan Baiyu?
Guan Baiyu lived in a small old house, which totalled only sixty or seventy square meters. Behind the old house, there was a two-story building where Guan Baiyu’s adoptive parents lived.
The small building was made of brick and tiles, but it only covered an area of about 80 square meters. There were two rooms each in the front and back of the ground floor. The second floor only had two rooms in the front – originally, they were planning to build two rooms in the back as well, but because there was not enough money, the rooms were not built, so only a platform was plastered.
There were two rooms on the second floor. Guan Baiyu’s adoptive parents and their daughter lived in one room each. Of the four rooms downstairs, the first two rooms were for eating, raising silkworms, and storing food. The two rooms at the back couldn’t be lived in because there was a platform above that was not tiled. The ceilings of these two ground floor back rooms thus always leaked. So they used them to raise pigs.
Calculating this, there was no place for Guan Baiyu to live.
Guan Baiyu had been living in that mud-walled hut with old lady Guan before. After old lady Guan died two years ago, he still lived there alone.
These were things Shi Zhen learned about a long time ago, but now that he thought about them, they were still fresh in his mind.
The door of the mud house was closed, and there seemed to be no one at home. Shi Zhen sat down on a big stone on the side of the road, feeling a little dazed.
He was at the station before and asked about today’s date, and found out it was Saturday.
There were no lessons on Saturday, so he came over in a hurry just to see Guan Baiyu.
But he forgot that students also had to study for half a day on Saturdays. It was about 11a.m., and Guan Baiyu was probably not out of school yet.
11a.m., Xiaqiu Township.
Xiaqiu Township was a township below Anshan Town. There was a primary school, junior high school, and a large health clinic in the township.
In the past few years, all women in nearby villages came to the township health clinic to give birth. This year, there was a rule that they had to go to the town hospital to give birth.
There was a street in Xiaqiu Township with various shops. Whether one wanted to buy oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, various groceries, or fish, shrimp, and pork, they could buy it here.
Xiaqiu Junior High School and Xiaqiu Elementary School were at the end of the street.
At this time, the elementary school had let students out, and a large group of children rushed out of the school carrying schoolbags.
A small number of students were picked up by their parents, and the remaining students went home by themselves. Some rode bicycles, and some walked home together in twos and threes.
The junior high school next door hadn’t let out school yet, and it wouldn’t be over for another twenty minutes.
Class 1, Year 3.
Twenty years later, in Xiaqiu Junior High School, although most students would not be admitted to regular high schools, they would go to technical high schools after graduating from junior high school, and many would go on to study at junior colleges.
But at this time, 90% of the people in Xiaqiu Junior High School would not continue to study. Even in the third year of junior high school, many people had stopped coming to school and were working in factories outside.
The school was also divided into advanced and slow classes. The advanced class was for those who planned to continue studying after completing the third year of junior high school. The teacher would pay close attention to education. The students in the slow class would not continue to study after junior high school, so the teacher would not care much.
Those students didn’t want the teacher to take care of them either.
Class 1 was an advanced class. Although it was an advanced class, as school was about to end, the students in the class could not sit still. They had already secretly packed their schoolbags. When the bell rang and the teacher left, some people rushed out.
Guan Baiyu also stood up following the trend. At this moment, his deskmate suddenly stepped on his chair with his schoolbag on his back, then stepped on Guan Baiyu’s desk, then jumped off the desk and left with a sneer.
There were still textbooks on Guan Baiyu’s desk that had not been put away, and a big footprint was printed on them.
The desks in the classroom had been newly replaced, from the previous desks for two people to one for each person. However, the desks were still paired* and divided into four columns next to each other in the classroom.
The first and fourth columns were placed against the wall.
In other words, for the two people in columns 1 and 4, if the one against the wall wanted to go in and out, the one by the aisle had to give way.
Every week, students would change their seats one seat to the left, and those sitting against the wall in the fourth column would move to the first column. This meant that everyone would sit against the wall at some point or have to get up for their deskmate at some point.
Just getting up was nothing, but Guan Baiyu’s deskmate Yan Jiangtao didn’t like him very much.
When Guan Baiyu was sitting against the wall, he wanted to go to the toilet after class. Yan Jiangtao sat on the outside and remained motionless, refusing to let Guan Baiyu go out.
When Yan Jiangtao was sitting against the wall, if he wanted to go in and out and perceived Guan Baiyu to be too slow, he would kick Guan Baiyu’s chair or simply step on Guan Baiyu’s table to get out.
”Why is Yan Jiangtao like this?” The girl sitting behind Yan Jiangtao muttered dissatisfiedly. When Yan Jiangtao was sitting outside, he would not let Guan Baiyu go to the toilet after class. Every time, she and her deskmate would pull the table back and let Guan Baiyu out so he could go to the toilet.
Guan Baiyu smiled at her, wiped the book with a rag, put it in his bag and left.
Behind him, there were people who felt sorry for him, some who didn’t take him seriously, and some who didn’t like him.
***
T/N: Lots of background information continues to be introduced – all becomes important later on. Guan Baiyu’s adoptive grandmother (the nanny who raised his biological father) is often just referred to as his grandma later on (without specifying adoptive). Guan Baiyu’s biological father’s and grandfather’s surname is not revealed in this chapter, so it was written that way deliberately.
*Cycle rickshaw:
*basically just means even though they are single person desks now, you still have a deskmate/seatmate because the desks are placed next to each other in pairs.
The author is way too verbose 😂 I’m not interested in all the minute details about the bridge and classes and so and so forth.