“This young man is really great. He went to technical secondary school with Tian Tian, so you know his background. He works as a clerk at the county investment promotion bureau. He’s very handsome—tall and lean, with fair and clean skin. Lots of girls had their eye on him back in school. If he’d been looking for a girlfriend back then, he’d probably have a kid by now!”
“I’m not lying to you. If it weren’t for the fact that his mother is somewhat related to my sister-in-law’s family, such a good catch wouldn’t be offered to Tian Tian.”
“Auntie, you don’t have to offer such a great match to me. Your own daughter, Tian Xin, is the one always wanting to marry into a good family. This young man is perfect for her!”
Made it just in time!
Tian Tian looked at her aunt, whose face had instantly soured in the living room, and said with a grin.
“Tian Tian, the young man’s family has their eye on you. Why drag your cousin into this?” Her aunt’s voice rose, with a look of disgust as if to say, You have no manners.
Tian Tian kept smiling. “I’m not just making things up. Auntie, you probably don’t know this yet, but Tian Xin has been running off to the county town a lot lately. I’ve seen her more than a dozen times this month alone. Every time, she’s hanging out with some different bleached-haired guy. She’s so desperate to get married. If you don’t find her a good match soon, you might end up with one of those bleached-haired guys as a son-in-law!”
“What? Impossible! Tian Tian, I kindly try to set you up with a nice young man, and not only do you turn it down, but you also badmouth your own cousin. You graduated from technical secondary school, but this is just a waste of your education.”
With that, Tian Tian’s aunt stood up and stormed off, looking thoroughly offended.
Anyone who didn’t know her might think she was truly angry. But Tian Tian knew her aunt was rushing home to question Tian Xin. After all, her aunt had always wanted her daughter to marry into a good family so she could help support her relatives back home.
Tian Tian’s mother watched her sister-in-law dash off and turned to her daughter: “Tian Tian, was what you said true? Is Tian Xin really hanging out with different bleached-haired guys?”
Otherwise, why would her sister-in-law leave in such a hurry?
Tian Tian headed to the bathroom to brush her teeth and said casually, “No kidding. I’ve run into her several times myself.”
Her mother clicked her tongue in disbelief. Then she asked, “Hey, Tian Tian. The young man your aunt mentioned—is he really that bad?”
If he were good, her daughter wouldn’t have rushed out of her room to turn him down.
——
Tian Tian shook her head.
The man her aunt wanted to set her up with was her technical secondary school classmate named Chen Jiahao. Back in school, his grades were decent, and he didn’t have any major character flaws. After graduation, he was assigned as a junior clerk at the county investment promotion bureau. On the surface, his situation seemed acceptable.
Her aunt cared about saving face and wouldn’t dare set her up with a truly bad person. But Chen Jiahao’s family did have plenty of issues.
In her previous life, on this very day, when her aunt came by to play matchmaker, Tian Tian had been sleeping in and hadn’t managed to refuse in time. That set off a chain of dramatic events that made her famous—or infamous—all over the county. It was one of the reasons she’d ended up taking an unpaid leave from work and moving to Shenzhen to find a job.
Yes, previous life. Tian Tian never expected to be reborn.
One second she was dying from a piece of falling debris that smashed her head like a rotten watermelon, and the next, she was back on the familiar wooden bed in her hometown. Before she could even feel happy, she heard her aunt’s chattering voice, aggressively selling some man. So of course she had to chase her off immediately. Tian Tian had no desire to become a county-wide laughingstock again.
“Mom, that guy’s family is from ‘Xin-Ma-Tai.’ He’s the oldest, with four younger siblings still in school. Plus, his parents are in poor health and need medication year-round. The family is dead broke.”
Around here, “Xin-Ma-Tai” is an acronym made from the first characters of several remote, impoverished town names. Those three towns are the poorest in the county, so people lump them together under that nickname. No relation to the Southeast Asian countries of Singapore, Malaysia, or Thailand that many relatives talk about.
“The moment Auntie said he was my technical secondary school classmate and worked as a clerk at the county investment promotion bureau, I immediately knew who she meant.”
Tian Tian’s mother had been slightly tempted when she heard the young man was decent, but as soon as she heard he was from “Xin-Ma-Tai” with such a poor family background, she quickly shook her head.
“Yeah, you definitely can’t meet him. Forget about me—even your father wouldn’t agree to you marrying someone like that.”
——
Her mother headed into the kitchen to bring out breakfast.
“It’s Laba Festival today, so I made eight-treasure congee. Your dad had two bowls first thing in the morning…”
Tian Tian listened to the sounds coming from the kitchen and looked around at the familiar furniture in the living room.
The old clock ticked away. The red-and-green wall calendar, the green ceiling fan, the gray-white walls, the comfortable rattan chairs, and the green-and-white mosaic floor—everything was so nostalgic.
Tian Tian felt grateful to have a second chance at life.
“But since the young man your aunt introduced won’t work out, you need to hurry up yourself. You’ve been out of school and working for a year now. While you’re still young, seriously look for a suitable young man. Our family’s situation is what it is. Your father can’t handle hard work, so we haven’t saved much money…”
As Tian Tian ate her sweet eight-treasure congee, listening to her mother’s same old lectures, she surprisingly didn’t find them annoying.
In her previous life, these tired clichés used to drive her crazy. Now, hearing them felt incredibly comforting.
“Anyway, your father and I are no help. You need to be smart and plan for your own future…”
“I know, I know. I have my own plans. I’ve been working for a year now, and I have a new plan for the future. Mom, don’t worry. I promise I’ll make sure my life gets better and better…”
Thinking back to her previous self, Tian Tian felt a little heartache.
…
In her previous life, after graduating from technical secondary school, she worked at a supply and marketing cooperative. Two years later, because she became “famous” all over the county and everyone around her was making good money working elsewhere while the cooperative offered no future, she simply took an unpaid leave and went to Shenzhen to work. Relying on her diploma and work ability, she landed a job at a Hong Kong-funded enterprise as a foreign trade documentation clerk. Back then, Hong Kong-funded companies paid well and had good benefits. She never met the right person, so she stayed single, living a pretty carefree life.
Until the tenth year of working, when the economy took off. Tian Tian suddenly realized that working for a wage wouldn’t make her rich. And in the past ten years, she had missed so many opportunities to get wealthy. The biggest one, without a doubt, was that patch of worthless vegetable land.
At the time, an elderly woman wanted to sell her family’s vegetable plot to her cheaply. But Tian Tian had a good job and the company provided her with a free single dorm room. She had no awareness of buying property or land. It wasn’t until a high-rise building went up on that worthless plot and the subsequent buyer made a fortune that Tian Tian realized just how many millions she had missed out on.
Fortunately, she now had a chance to do it all over again. Tian Tian decided she was going to buy that vegetable plot.
But to buy the land, she first needed money.
She finished her eight-treasure congee in a few bites and went back to her room to dig up her savings.
The results were, of course, not exactly pleasant.
It was January 1984. She had graduated in June 1982 and was assigned to work at the county supply and marketing cooperative. Her monthly salary was 38.5 yuan. But she had to cover her own living expenses and occasionally brought food and drinks home. After more than a year of working, she had saved exactly 192.8 yuan.
Even though money had much greater purchasing power in the 1980s, it was still far from the amount needed to buy that vegetable plot.
She put her savings away properly and sat in her room, thinking about what she needed to do next to get her hands on that land as quickly as possible.
Just then, a red figure darted in like lightning. Tian Tian looked up. Well, well. If it wasn’t her cousin Tian Xin, the one who loved hanging out with those bleached-haired guys.
——
“Hey, didn’t you promise you wouldn’t tell anyone about what I do in the county?” Her voice was low, as if she was afraid someone might overhear.
Tian Tian immediately knew that Tian Xin had gotten an earful from her aunt. She shrugged. “I never promised you anything.”
“You… Aren’t we good sisters? Couldn’t you tell I wasn’t really dating those bleached-haired guys? You went and blabbed to my mom, and she chewed me out. I don’t care—you have to make it up to me!”
“Make what up? What’s that got to do with me?”
Tian Xin said, “If you don’t make it up to me, I’ll have my friends camp outside your workplace.”
Tian Tian laughed mockingly. “Go ahead. We’ll see who ends up embarrassed. You’re keeping those bleached-haired guys as backups. What do you think will happen when they find out?”
In her previous life, even after Tian Xin got married, she never went short on backups. She was something else—able to balance them all and make each one believe he was her true love. Even after she eventually married, they all thought she had been forced into it by her mother. After all, Tian Xin’s husband worked at a bank, while they were just unemployed street punks.
But the real reason Tian Xin was able to marry her husband? It came down to Tian Tian herself.
Yes, in the previous life, Tian Tian took an unpaid leave and went to Shenzhen in 1986. But just a few months later, she came home for a visit, and her uncle’s family came begging for a favor. In the end, she sold her job to Tian Xin cheap. With that job, Tian Xin married a man who worked at a bank. And until the day Tian Tian was killed by the falling object, Tian Xin’s husband had already become the county bank’s branch manager. They weren’t filthy rich, but they had at least a million yuan.
Of course, Tian Tian didn’t envy her. But shortly before she died, she happened to run into Chen Jiahao and found out that after her humiliation all over the county back in the day, he had compensated her with 10,000 yuan. And that 10,000 yuan had ended up being pocketed entirely by her aunt’s family.
Her own family never even knew!
Ten thousand yuan in 1986! Just thinking about it made Tian Tian’s heart ache.
After learning the truth, Tian Tian rushed home wanting to settle accounts with her aunt’s family. But wouldn’t you know it—on the way, a flowerpot fell from a high-rise building and smashed her right back to this very day, the day her aunt came to introduce Chen Jiahao to her.
What could she even say…
Tian Tian felt like a bit of a sucker. She decided she wasn’t going to be that sucker in this life. She decided to head to Shenzhen to make money two years early. As for her job, she would sell it outright—no way would it benefit Tian Xin.
Tian Xin heard the threat in Tian Tian’s words and fell silent. She wasn’t stupid. Her backups were all from the county, and they didn’t really know each other—otherwise things would have fallen apart long ago. If Tian Tian really spilled the beans, she wouldn’t be able to stay in the county anymore. And then those pretty clothes and accessories would be gone.
“Ah, sis, my dear good sister. I was just kidding around with you!” After thinking it through, Tian Xin put on a sweet smile, sat down right next to Tian Tian, looped her arm through hers, leaned close to her ear, and pretended to be all sisterly. In a low voice, she said, “Hey, sis, let me tell you. That Chen Jiahao my mom tried to set you up with today? His family is from Xin-Ma-Tai. He’s related to my aunt by marriage. His family is really poor. Whatever you do, don’t agree to it!”
“See? We’re good sisters. I wouldn’t tell you this kind of inside info otherwise. So, can we just let what happened today slide?”
Tian Tian looked at her cousin’s flawless, smiling face and sighed inwardly. Sure enough, although Tian Xin wasn’t good at academics, she really knew how to handle relationships.
Just like that, she sold out her own family to mend fences with Tian Tian!
Tian Tian put on a fake smile too. “Well, I wouldn’t know about that. Anyway, I don’t want to get married right now. No matter who introduces what kind of person, I won’t agree to it.”
If she started complaining about her aunt to Tian Xin, Tian Tian knew her cousin would sell her out in a heartbeat.
Seeing that Tian Tian wasn’t biting, Tian Xin didn’t say much more. She chatted about this and that for a bit before finally leaving.
Tian Tian watched her cousin’s carefree figure disappear and suddenly remembered that among Tian Xin’s backups, one of them had a family that ran a sugar refinery. It was Laba Festival today, and there weren’t many days left until the Lunar New Year. She could take advantage of that to add a little income to her own little nest egg.
In her previous life, her aunt’s family had cheated her out of 10,000 yuan. In this life, she was going to get it back.
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