Little Lei certainly did not reveal to the three children that his father would spank him every time he returned home after a fight with his peers. In fact, he had lost count of the number of slaps his little butt had suffered. Nevertheless, Little Lei was not afraid of his father as his grandmother would always coddle him and his mother would protect him. Therefore, he never succumbed to the punishment. Despite the fact that he was punished repeatedly, he continued to create trouble, which again, brought him another round of spanking.
Lu Yi took the photo frame from Little Qi and held it before himself. Immediately, his eyes were brimming with tears.
“I have faith in you. You’ll come back, right?”
“Just like how you believed in me and waited relentlessly for me to return. Eventually, I came back.”
“You’ll come back.”
“I always had faith in you.”
Another set of fireworks exploded in the sky. The fireworks faded away, revealing a pure white scene where everything was blanketed by snow.
When Yan Huan opened the door, the snow had been falling for a while. The earth was once again wrapped in white, but all she could feel was the chilliness. She grabbed a broom before she began to sweep the snow aside to clear out a pathway in front of the door. Most of the villagers would not leave their houses during the new year. They rarely visited their relatives, not to mention during this snowy weather. If the weather was nice, it might be possible for them to visit each other. However, it was difficult and extremely dangerous to walk on the roads in the mountains under the heavy snow. Moreover, after what had happened to Jin Gen recently, most of the villagers opted to stay on the low and had become more vigilant. They refused to leave their houses if there was no major event.
She continued to clean the pavement as she swept the snow aside. If she was in the Sea City, she would have used the snow to build a snowman. On the contrary, in the village, the accumulated snow was nothing more than a pile of snow. They would leave the snow as it was until it melted away naturally.
She closed the door, continued to clean her house and her yard. Finally, she entered the kitchen. She began to make a fire to cook some leftover dumplings from the day before. She only had to briefly cook the dumplings before she could eat them.
She opened an old cabinet and took out some dumplings, but quickly found out that the dumplings had been frozen due to the chilly weather. She touched the skin of the dumpling and was not surprised to find that it was completely hardened. Although she did not own a fridge, she reckoned that there was no difference for her to keep the dumplings under room temperature.
She put the frozen dumplings into the pot. The dumplings were ready to be served when Changsheng and his mother woke up. Yan Huan took a few dumplings for herself and kept the rest for Changsheng and his mother.
Changsheng was rather happy with Yan Huan when he saw the big bowl of dumplings in front of him and his mother. He thought she was a potential wife after she left all the delicious food for him. Notwithstanding the fact that she was not pretty and limping, he preferred Yan Huan than the other ladies who liked to criticize the others but clumsy in doing things themselves.
As Changsheng’s mother was sizing her son and Yan Huan up, she was pleased.
They could hold the wedding ceremony this year, and hopefully, she would have a grandchild in her arms by next spring.
Yan Huan picked up a dumpling, brought it to her mouth and took a bite. In fact, she did not eat much as she was not really hungry. Judging from the dark circles under her eyes, she had not been able to sleep well last night.
It’s Chinese New Year and I miss home.
I miss home very, very much.
She took another bite of the dumpling, but she did not enjoy it. She was filled after eating two dumplings. Nonetheless, she still forced herself to finish the rest of the dumplings in her bowl, hoping that it would take the edge off her hunger and she could skip lunch later.
This was how the villagers celebrated Chinese New Year. They did not have much entertainment, nor did they have televisions and cinemas. Without any entertainment, they usually spent their days eating dumplings or snacking on peanuts. All this made up an average new year for the villagers. Meanwhile, the children’s happiest memory would be the time when they received one or two pennies as pocket money.
The snow continued to fall and only stopped on the fifth day of the festival. However, the weather became even colder.
After changing her clothes, Yan Huan took advantage of the nice weather and went outside to collect some firewood. The winter was extremely cold this year and there was not much firewood left in Changsheng’s house. Initially, it was enough for them, but the firewood supply had been exhausted at a greater speed now ever since her arrival. They needed to warm an extra person and cook another bowl of rice. Since nobody visited their salon now, she spent all her time collecting firewood. The firewood could not be used right away as they were mostly damp. They had to be dried for a while before they could be used to make fire. The firewood would be enough during the winter if she continued to collect firewood on a daily basis.
Owing to her diligence, Changsheng’s family had never run out of firewood. They had not faced any ordeal during this winter. At the very least, they never felt cold when they slept in the winter night.
Yan Huan poured the cooked water from the pot into a basin before she soaked both her hands in the water. The water was extremely hot and she was finally able to endure the heat after a few attempts. The water was cooked with the eggplant stems, a traditional remedy that had been passed down for generations to treat frostbite. The frostbites on both her hands were extremely bad. Some of them were scars from before while the rest were recent wounds. Even though her condition had gotten better after she moved into Changsheng’s house, both her hands were still a pitiful sight to see.
Perhaps because she had always been constantly collecting firewood, her hands never truly healed. Sometimes they were itchy, and sometimes they were extremely painful. Changsheng’s mother found some eggplant stems for her to boil with the water, so that she could use it to bathe her hands whenever she was free. Even though she had been doing it every day, there was not much improvement. She was not confident that the remedy would work, as she had not tried the remedy for a long time. However, she was satisfied as long as the condition of her hands did not worsen
She removed both her hands from the basin. Her fingers had swollen so much that she was nearly unable to bend them. Luckily, her hardest times had passed. All she had to do now was to wait for the spring to come, the weather would get warmer by then and her hands would heal naturally.
Yan Huan had dealt with frostbite on her own before. It took her about three months to fully recover from it. It was only February now. Her hands would probably heal in another month or two. By that time, she might possibly be able to leave the mountain and return home.
In fact, she never told Changsheng’s mother about this, because in her opinion, those who wished to leave would leave and those who wished to stay would stay regardless. It was not important whether she chose to tell them or not as the end result would be the same in either case — she would leave the village.
She was imagining all the entertaining events she would have if she was currently in Sea City, including the Spring Lantern Festival which was not celebrated by the villagers. Away from the village, people celebrated the Spring Lantern Festival by eating tang yuan on the 15th day of the first month of the lunar calendar. However, it was nothing more than an usual day for the villagers. Perhaps they did not even know that today was the Spring Lantern Festival.
