Guan Baiyu’s village was next to Anshan Town, and Xiaqiu Township was in the opposite direction.
Shi Zhen was not familiar with Xiaqiu Township, so he asked for directions in the local dialect before walking to the school.
In the 1990s, most people in J City still spoke their local dialect. When he first came to J City, he couldn’t speak the dialect here, so communication was not smooth, and people here didn’t trust him very much.
In order to be able to do business well, he spent a lot of time learning the local dialect. Now he spoke the dialect of Changxi City, and he didn’t sound much different from the locals in Changxi City, so it was convenient for him to do anything.
”Ah Zhen, where are we going? I’m hungry.” Shi Xinghuo, who had always been quiet, asked Shi Zhen.
Shi Zhen said, “Let’s go to the countryside, and I’ll buy shaobing* for you to eat.”
After travelling all morning, Shi Xinghuo, who was a little listless, suddenly became energetic and asked, “What is shaobing?”
”It’s delicious food.” Shi Zhen was not in the mood and simply answered like this.
Shi Xinghuo swallowed and followed Shi Zhen obediently.
Before Shi Zhen could reach the countryside, he saw Guan Baiyu.
Guan Baiyu was completely different from his memory.
When he met Guan Baiyu for the first time in his previous life, Guan Baiyu was nineteen years old, tall and long-legged, and very handsome. But the Guan Baiyu in front of him was different.
The boy was fifteen years old, but he looked at most twelve or thirteen years old, and he was a little too thin.
He was wearing a pair of white clothes that were a little short and had been washed too often. His thin cheeks were slightly sunken, his face was pale and his hair was yellow. He had a pair of big eyes on his small face. He was very thin and pitiful.
In the countryside these days, there were not many well-dressed people, but it was rare to find someone like Guan Baiyu who did not have well-fitting clothes and seemed to be hungry.
Shi Zhen felt that his heart had been hit, and it hurt and felt astringent.
He had known that Guan Baiyu’s life was not very good when he was young, but he didn’t pay much attention to it.
After all, when he was young, he also had a difficult life. Their village could not grow much food, and his family could not eat with ease. They could not eat pork more than a few times a year.
However, he could raise rabbits so he could eat rabbit meat from time to time.
He had always felt that since Guan Baiyu lived in a relatively affluent place like J City, his life would not be too bad, but such a thin Guan Baiyu… did he usually have enough to eat?
Of course, the most important thing now was not this matter, but… Guan Baiyu was still alive.
The person he loved deeply was still alive and well.
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.
After his rebirth, Shi Zhen had actually always had a sense of unreality. At this moment, this sense of unreality finally disappeared, and his heart felt at ease.
He also knew what he was going to do next.
Shi Zhen didn’t look at Guan Baiyu too much, fearing that Guan Baiyu would notice him.
He hadn’t looked in the mirror since his rebirth, but he also knew that his current appearance must not be good-looking.
Although he had already seen Guan Baiyu, Shi Zhen still continued to the countryside because he had promised to buy shaobing for Shi Xinghuo.
There was a lot of food sold in the countryside, including steamed buns, noodles and shaobing.
Shaobing was dough stuffed with lard and green onions, rolled into a thin pancake shape, and baked on the wall of an oven. Of course, some people also wrapped lean meat or prunes in the pancake, just like the famous Jinyun shaobing in later generations.
The shaobing stall also sold fried dough sticks*. The fried dough sticks and the rolled shaobing smelled particularly delicious.
Shi Zhen spent two yuan to buy two shaobing and two fried dough sticks, and ate them with Shi Xinghuo.
Food at this time was all about large portions and being filling. They could buy a satiating shaobing for 70 cents. The deep-fried dough sticks for 30 cents were also very big. The 70 cents shaobings and 30 cents deep-fried dough sticks he bought together were enough to fill the stomach.
After finishing eating, he said to Shi Xinghuo, “Let’s go get a haircut, rent a room, and then find a job.”
When he was young, he was worried about this unfamiliar world and did not dare to spend money randomly. But now he was not so stingy.
His and Shi Xinghuo’s hair used to be cut casually, and it was very messy. Cutting it short would help them look more energetic, and having a place to live would make it easier to find a job.
A haircut cost three yuan per person. After finishing the haircut, Shi Zhen took Shi Xinghuo to the village where Guan Baiyu lived.
He planned to rent near Guan Baiyu’s house.
He had been to Guan Baiyu’s dilapidated house before. There were only two rooms in it. They were small, cramped, and had dirt floors. He couldn’t rent them.
Shi Zhen stood in front of a house about a hundred meters away from Guan Baiyu’s house.
One of Guan Baiyu’s uncles* lived here. He was a very nice person. According to Guan Baiyu, he took good care of him.
When he came back with Guan Baiyu in his previous life, he had dinner at this person’s house.
And he could remember the location of this house because there were two big peach trees planted in front of the house.
Shi Zhen walked forward and saw an old lady holding the soles of her shoes sitting at the door, and beside her were two girls about four or five years old, who were using fragments of red bricks to draw pictures on the cement drying yard.
The two children were still young and drew simple circles.
”Grandma, I would like to ask, are there any rooms for rent around here?” Shi Zhen asked in dialect with a smile, “My brother and I want to rent a room to live in.”
The old lady was a little surprised. “You want to rent a room?”
People twenty years later would not be surprised by the idea of renting out a room, but at this time, rural people really didn’t see many renting rooms.
”Wait a minute.” The old lady put down the insoles in her hands and shouted into the house, “Jianguo, someone wants to rent a room!”
Guan Baiyu’s uncle was called Guan Jianguo. He was in his early thirties. Although he was not tall, only about 1.65 meters tall, he had broad shoulders and a broad back. His arms were full of muscles. He looked very powerful at first glance.
His job was to drive a tractor that loaded goods, and he earned money by transporting bricks and mud to others.
This was manual work, but one could earn a lot of money. Twenty or thirty yuan a day was the norm. If one worked harder, they could earn fifty or sixty yuan a day, but they might not have steady work every day.
When he learned that Shi Zhen wanted to rent a room, he immediately asked Shi Zhen if a room in his own house would be okay.
His house was also an ordinary two-story building, a square one with two rooms in the front and back, but the upstairs and downstairs of his house were completely built. Two of the four rooms upstairs were used as bedrooms, and the remaining two could also be used as bedrooms. They stored food and other things in the rooms downstairs.
Guan Jianguo said that he could install a lock on the door of one of the two south-facing rooms in his house and rent it to Shi Zhen for 30 yuan a month.
Shi Zhen agreed.
Shi Zhen spoke the local dialect and was not very old. Guan Jianguo felt at ease with him. After Shi Zhen gave him thirty yuan, he immediately started organizing a room and installed a lock on the door so they could lock it from the inside or outside.
Not only that, seeing that Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo didn’t have beds, he also found two old door panels and a few benches, and made two single beds for Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo to sleep on.
After some tidying up, the whole afternoon passed.
Guan Jianguo’s house had a cement floor and plaster on the walls. Although there was not much inside, for Shi Xinghuo, it was the best house he had ever lived in.
”Ah Zhen, this is a cement floor!”
”This house is so big and spacious!”
”Are we really going to live here in the future?”
When Shi Xinghuo was outside, he was usually silent, but if there were no outsiders, he would occasionally chatter.
In the past, Shi Zhen always found Shi Xinghuo annoying, but this time he responded one by one.
In his previous life, Shi Xinghuo worked with him on a construction site. He worked to exhaustion every day, lived in a room with more than a dozen people, and ate basically vegetables and tofu, with some lard at most.
Then he died.
He died too early, and he never lived a single day without lacking food and clothing, and he didn’t eat much of such things as meat buns and shaobing.
And Guan Baiyu.
He had to support himself at a young age and didn’t even have time to study if he wanted to…
But it was all going to be okay.
”Ah Zhen, I’m hungry.” Shi Xinghuo looked at Shi Zhen.
Shi Zhen said, “The meal should be ready soon.”
He had told Guan Jianguo about dinner before, and Guan Jianguo said he would put more rice in when cooking and bring him some rice later.
Sure enough, after a while, Guan Jianguo brought two large bowls of rice and a large bowl of dried garlic leaves mixed with tofu.
Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo were not picky eaters, so they sat in front of Guan Jianguo’s house and finished their meals.
The two little girls were no longer playing at the door. Some flowers and plants were placed in the circle they had drawn with red bricks.
It turned out these…were plates.
It was getting dark, so Shi Zhen took Shi Xinghuo back to the house and lay down on the makeshift beds.
The first day of rebirth was very busy, but Shi Zhen was in an unusually good mood.
Later on in his previous life, he was a little indifferent to many things. He was able to make money all the time because he made some reliable investments in the early days. After Guan Baiyu’s death, he never worked on a construction site again, but he always invested in real estate development, and he also bought a few pieces of land and built several stores… Thanks to the rising housing prices in J City, he made a lot of money and also had money for charity.
While people were alive, they should always do something for the world.
He was glad that he did that.
Being able to come back to this time might be a reward from the heavens.
***
T/N: Wow, I feel like so much has happened in the first 4 chapters, but it’s only just wrapped up Shi Zhen’s first day of rebirth.
*Shaobing (烧饼):
*Fried dough sticks (油条 youtiao) – super popular breakfast food in China:
*The term used specifically is 堂叔 (tang shu), literally cousin uncle. Tang is used to denote cousins of the same surname as explained in Chapter 1 (Shi Zhen calls Shi Xinghuo tang ge, i.e. older paternal cousin brother) and Shu means uncle. Here, it means the person is Guan Baiyu’s adoptive father’s cousin and Guan Baiyu calls him tang shu (cousin uncle), but to make it easier to read, I will just use uncle.
Shaobing sounds good, going to look up a recipe.