Once Young - CH 1.3

Xiaochuan is always clean, with beautiful eyebrows and eyes, and even a clear smile. His shirt always smelled of good soap, neat and neat. He doesn’t have one sock high and one low, and he doesn’t wear white sneakers into gray ones.

People in our yard all said that Uncle He’s family would give birth and raise a son who was so spirited, obedient, and sensible. Indeed, I don’t remember anyone Xiaochuan had been arguing with. He wouldn’t do boring pranks like other boys, nor was he silently gloomy like Xin Yuan. He is a quiet and sane boy, born with light.

Uncle He and Aunt Li are both workers, and the couple have never read any books, but Brother Xiaochuan has been with whom, he has been fond of reading since childhood. Brother Xiaochuan has read a lot of villain books. His pocket money never buys snacks such as sticky candy or toys such as bubble gum. He uses it to rent books. For five cents a book, he often rented ten copies to go home and read slowly.

I slipped into his house and pestered him to tell me stories, such as “Yang Family General”, “Yue Fei Biography”, and “Liao Zhai”, all of which he could tell vividly. I especially like to listen to “Journey to the West”. Whenever Brother Xiaochuan says “Tang Seng and his apprentices are four… “, I will burst into laughter.

I also like ” Dream of the Red Mansions”[1], I know it is better to be a young lady than a maid. Brother Xiaochuan had a deck of playing cards from “A Dream of the Red Mansions”. He handed me Daiyu and Baochai, and I took them, and handed them to my silly eldest sister, and I threw them on the ground. We often put on this show and make the adults in the yard “giggle”. They all know that I like to stick to Brother Xiaochuan. Sometimes my mother teases me on purpose and says she doesn’t want me anymore, so I pick up my rag doll and run to Brother Xiaochuan’s house in a hurry, and they laugh even harder. Brother Xiaochuan’s mother, Auntie Li, is also very kind to me. Every time I go, she will bring me something delicious. She is from the south and can make a kind of noodle candy in the shape of a little rabbit. The inside is glutinous rice noodles, the outside is covered with a layer of sugar, and the eyes are dotted with hawthorn red silk. I can eat three in one go. Aunt Li also joked that she wanted me to be her daughter-in-law, but they didn’t take it seriously, only I was serious an willing.

In the courtyard opposite our house, there lived a former high-ranking official of the Kuomintang. I called him Grandpa General. He spent more than ten years in Qincheng Prison, and was later released through United Front work. He never got married in his life, he was the only one living in the small courtyard, and he raised all the flowers and plants in the courtyard. The Grandpa General fell ill during the war, and his legs and feet were weak. Brother Xiaochuan always went to help him water the flowers, so I followed.

There is a large water tank in the courtyard, which is filled with cold water for watering the flowers. But Grandpa General and Brother Xiaochuan would not let me do this, for fear that I would fall into it. For this reason, Brother Xiaochuan also told me the story of Sima Guang smashing the tank [2], which was much earlier than learning it in elementary school textbooks.

There are grape trelllis and figs in the yard, as well as Canna[3] and Clivia[4]. He Xiaozhou, standing among the flowers and calling my name with a smile, is the first light in my life.

[2] : A famous anecdote relates how the young Sima Guang once saved a playmate who had fallen into an enormous vat full of water. As other children scattered in panic, Sima Guang calmly picked up a rock and smashed a hole in the base of the pot. Water leaked out, and his friend was saved from drowning.

[3] :                                                                                                                                      [4] :