“Oh, the pig farm! So they have that much pork. It’s really hard to get pork on our island. But we never lack for fish.”
At the New Year’s Eve dinner table, Xu Jianxi animatedly told his family about daily life on the island. In his description, the island was overflowing with food. Coconuts everywhere, and the sea was full of seafood. One cast of the fishing net brought in more than they could eat. Foraging by the sea, the seafood was practically free for the taking.
It all sounded very appealing. The two children from the eldest branch were especially captivated, drooling as they tugged on Xu Jianxi and shouted, “Second Uncle, I want to go!”
The others at the table had different reactions. Seeing Xu Jianxi’s dark, thin appearance, they could tell he’d had a hard time over the years. But it was the New Year, so no one wanted to say anything to spoil the mood. Except, of course, for Xu Jiandong and his wife. Their expressions simply didn’t fit with the rest of the Xu family.
Bai Lan thought they might cause more trouble, but the couple remained quiet until the meal was over. It seemed Xu Jianxi’s iron fist had truly frightened them.
The happy days passed like this for three days. On the morning of the fourth day, Xu Jianxi started going out. Everyone assumed he was just out for a stroll. But from that day on, Xu Jianxi began leaving early and coming back late. If he hadn’t been living right next door, Bai Lan would have almost forgotten he existed.
“Jianbei, why is your second brother coming back so late every day?”
Xu Jianbei shook his head. “He didn’t say. Mom and Dad asked, and Second Brother said it’s about island business.”
Bai Lan was just curious and asked casually. After that, she brought up how Datou was doing with his driving lessons.
“I heard from Third Brother that Datou is learning very quickly. He’ll probably be able to take the licensing exam next month.”
Xu Jianbei said, “After he gets his license, we’ll send him to the transport company as a temporary driver. At least he’ll have a legitimate job.”
Hearing this, Bai Lan couldn’t help but sigh. “It’s hard for temporary workers to get permanent positions. Take Yanzi, for example—the recycling station is full of people with connections. I heard quite a few people sent gifts to the station chief’s house for the New Year. Uncle Qin is an upright man and didn’t send anything. Yanzi said her chances of becoming permanent are probably hopeless.”
There really was no solution for that kind of situation. It wasn’t as if they could go around reporting all their colleagues for gift-giving.
Before going to sleep, Bai Lan was still reflecting on how lucky her own four siblings were. Each of them had a permanent job and didn’t have to go through the trouble of pulling strings and sending gifts.
But the next day, while Bai Lan was working in the textile factory’s back kitchen, someone rushed over and said, “Bai Lan, come quick! Your second sister is in the workshop fighting with someone!”
——
Second Sister Bai Li—someone as gentle as that—getting into a fight? Not only Bai Lan, but everyone in the back kitchen who knew the Bai family knew that the second daughter was soft-tempered.
Someone like that getting into a fight? More likely, she’d be the one getting beaten.
Bai Lan thought the same thing. Afraid that her second sister might have been badly hurt, she didn’t even bother to wipe the flour off her hands. She followed the messenger and ran straight to the workshop.
But when she got there and saw her second sister pinning a slender woman down, Bai Lan was shocked.
The people around were all trying to persuade Second Sister: “Bai Li, let go of Xu Meili first.”
“That’s right! Aren’t you two good sisters? Just talk it out if there’s a misunderstanding. Fighting isn’t good!”
“Yes, yes! Talk it over calmly.”
Hearing that everyone was telling Second Sister to let go, with not a single person asking why she had hit someone in the first place, Bai Lan felt uncomfortable.
She immediately pushed through the crowd and shouted, “Second Sister, did this woman bully you, and you finally fought back?”
Bai Lan knew her second sister well. Unless she was working overtime, she usually went straight home after work to help their eldest sister take care of the kids. She was quiet and introverted—no one had ever mentioned her having any close friends at the factory. Now someone was claiming they were “good sisters”? It sounded suspicious.
Bai Li’s face was bright red as she held Xu Meili down. The voices of the onlookers made her ears ring. But her younger sister’s voice was different. Hearing it, she immediately looked up at her little sister, her eyes lighting up. “Little Sister, you’re here! This person… Xu Meili, she…”
Seeing her second sister struggling to speak, too angry to get the words out, Bai Lan knew something truly outrageous must have happened.
Just then, the workshop supervisor appeared.
Seeing the scene before her, the supervisor immediately asked what was going on.
The team leader’s account was fairly impartial. She said that during work, Xu Meili had said something. Bai Li shook her head. Xu Meili said something else, and the people around started stirring things up. Then Bai Li got angry, cursed at Xu Meili a few times, and after that, no one saw clearly what happened, but the next thing they knew, the two were fighting.
By now, Bai Lan had gotten a good look at her second sister’s condition. Dressed in winter clothes, it was hard to tell if she’d been hurt underneath. But there were several bloody scratches on the back of Second Sister’s hand from fingernails.
Xu Meili, for her part, quickly said, “Bai Li started it first. If you don’t believe me, you can ask anyone else on the production line.”
The other female workers—some nodded, some stayed silent. This scene clearly indicated there was more to the story.
Bai Lan had no patience for these people’s hesitation. She looked directly at the team leader. “You said that after the women around stirred things up, my second sister got into a conflict with this… Xu Meili, right?”
The workshop team leader recognized Bai Lan and nodded. She didn’t really understand why Bai Li had suddenly lost her temper and hit someone either. It was completely unlike the Bai Li she knew.
“So then, what exactly were you all stirring up?”
Bai Lan turned her gaze to the female workers on the same production line as her second sister. These were all textile workers—several people to a line, working with semi-mechanized equipment. The workshop was loud with machinery noise and thick with dust; if you spoke too softly, you might not be heard.
So it definitely wasn’t just these few people. Workers on the neighboring lines must have heard the conversation too.
But those female workers hemmed and hawed, clearly unwilling to speak. Finally, Bai Lan looked at this so-called Xu Meili. She really had no idea who this person was. Where had she suddenly come from?
At that moment, Bai Li spoke up. “Little Sister, Xu Meili has been saying that her brother likes me and wants me to be her sister-in-law. I’m not interested, but these people all say I’m dating Xu Meili’s eldest brother…”
As soon as she said this, not only Bai Lan but also several of the leaders who had come to mediate looked deeply troubled.
Spreading such rumors about someone in public like that—no wonder a normally mild person had lost her temper.
“We didn’t…”
Of course, the female workers denied it, one after another, insisting they hadn’t spread any rumors.
Bai Lan looked at these female workers, then at Xu Meili, and roughly understood what was going on.
“Director, the factory must deal with this matter seriously. Spreading baseless rumors about a female comrade’s reputation is an extremely vile act.”
With that one sentence, Bai Lan had already framed the nature of the incident.
This finally made Xu Meili, who had been stubbornly denying everything, realize her fear.
“I didn’t! It’s not my fault! I just think Bai Li is a really good person—gentle and good with children—so I wanted her to be my sister-in-law.”
Gentle = easy to control
Good with children = free babysitter
Especially since Xu Meili looked to be about twenty years old. Her eldest brother had to be at least twenty-one or twenty-two. Back in those days, most men that age were already married with children.
So what was someone like that, with a sister like this, really after in pursuing Bai Lan’s second sister?
Bai Lan soon found out what they were after.
——
“Xu Qiang is an administrative staff member in the steel mill’s technical department. He got married at sixteen. Now he’s twenty-two and already has three daughters. His wife died in childbirth with their third daughter. I’ve heard his family is pressuring him to find a new wife quickly so he can have a son…”
In the Bai family’s main room, Xu Jianbei relayed what he had found out. Before he could even finish, Bai Lan’s father slammed his hand hard on the table. That anyone would dare pair his daughter with such a man was an outrageous humiliation.
Bai Lan’s expression was equally grim. Sure enough, what she’d heard in the factory that morning about “gentle” and “good with children” really meant exactly what she’d thought. And damn it, this Xu Qiang—she remembered now. In Bai Ping’s wealth-building notebook, this person’s name had been linked with her second sister.
Back then, she’d guessed that he might be Second Sister’s love interest in the original story.
After today’s events, Bai Lan knew it for sure. In the original plot, odds were that Second Sister ended up marrying a man like this. Just thinking about it made Bai Lan feel as sick as if she’d swallowed a fly.
She didn’t have anything against widowers with children. What disgusted her was this kind of man who desperately wanted a son and ended up killing his wife in the process. Moreover, becoming a father of three by age twenty-two—this Xu Qiang’s wife must have spent their entire marriage either pregnant or recovering from childbirth.
Someone like that was simply appalling.
“When did Xu Meili start talking to you about setting you up with her brother?”
Eldest Sister Bai began questioning Bai Li carefully. This was very important. If it had started a long time ago, it meant the other party had truly been scheming for a while. If Bai Li hadn’t exploded today, she might have ended up marrying such a man without ever realizing what was happening.
Not that Eldest Sister was exaggerating—her second sister really was that easy to take advantage of.
“She started saying things two or three months ago. At first, I didn’t pay much attention and just refused. But later, she kept going on and on in my ear about how excellent her brother was, how hard his life was, how pitiful his children were…”
Eldest Sister Bai: “And you actually pitied them?”
Bai Li had indeed felt pity. But she knew better than to cross certain lines. When Xu Meili invited her to go see the children, she refused outright. After that, Xu Meili kept bringing the kids to the factory. Bai Li couldn’t avoid them no matter how hard she tried.
Eldest Sister Bai listened to her second sister’s account and, exasperated, reached out and poked her on the head. “You, you really need to be more strong-willed, you know?”
Bai Baowei, seeing how dejected his twin sister looked, couldn’t help but say, “But Second Sister did explode today, didn’t she?”
Bai Lan said, “Thank goodness she exploded today. Otherwise, with Xu Meili’s methods, everyone around probably would have thought you were dating her eldest brother.”
This wasn’t an exaggeration—it was the truth.
Later that morning at the factory, Bai Lan had carefully questioned those female workers who had been stirring things up. She found out that they genuinely thought Bai Li was dating Xu Meili’s eldest brother, which was why they had been teasing her. They hadn’t done it deliberately to cause trouble.
If people around already had that impression, then one day, if Xu Meili used some dirty trick to trap Second Sister, everyone would likely assume Second Sister had gone along willingly.
The thought was terrifying. In fact, Bai Lan even suspected that in the original story, Second Sister had been framed by Xu Meili and forced to marry Xu Qiang.
With Second Sister’s outburst today, the factory leadership had dealt seriously with Xu Meili and the female workers who had stirred things up. At the very least, the whole workshop now knew that Bai Li had absolutely nothing to do with Xu Meili’s eldest brother.
“The factory gave you two days off. Stay home and rest, take it easy. Learn from your eldest sister and your little sister—develop a stronger backbone. As for me, I’ll go find out more about this so-called Xu Qiang and see just what kind of garbage he really is.”
Bai Lan’s father had the final word, and the rest of the Bai family all voiced their agreement.
Bai Lan didn’t stay for dinner at home either. After talking things through, she and Xu Jianbei headed back to the Xu household.
But as soon as they stepped outside, they saw many neighbors in the courtyard staring at them, curiosity written all over their faces.
Bai Lan knew how these people’s mouths worked. She didn’t hide anything and explained the whole situation clearly in a few sentences.
If she didn’t make it clear, she was afraid these people might get the wrong idea and think Second Sister really had something to do with that degenerate, Xu Qiang.
After hearing Bai Lan’s account, everyone let out a collective gasp.
“Oh my, so there are people who pressure a young girl like that? That Xu Meili is absolutely wicked, isn’t she?”
“Exactly! In the old society, I had an aunt who was trapped by a good-for-nothing using the same kind of tactics.” Aunt Wan spoke with righteous indignation.
This old aunt was usually quite gossipy herself. It was rare for her to speak so fairly, and Bai Lan couldn’t help but nod in agreement.
Not just in the old society, not just in the 1970s—even after the year 2000, things like this still happened from time to time. Bai Lan remembered that the class beauty in her middle school had been ruined by rumors that she was dating the school bully. From initial resistance to reluctantly agreeing to go out with him, the people stirring things up had played the biggest role in the whole process.
In the end, the class beauty’s grades plummeted, and when the school bully got tired of dating her, he moved on to a new girlfriend.
Anyway, Bai Lan had felt back then that aside from the school bully himself, the people who spread and stirred up those rumors were the most disgusting.
But Bai Lan was also wondering—in the original story, there definitely hadn’t been this scene of Second Sister hitting someone. Otherwise, Second Sister wouldn’t have ended up marrying Xu Qiang. So what had caused Second Sister to change?
——
Back at the Xu household, dinner was ready.
Unusually, Xu Jianxi was at the table. And on the table sat a pot of glistening, fatty braised pork.
Seeing the couple return, Miao Daju didn’t pry into Bai Li’s matter. She smiled and called out, “Come on, come eat! This meat was brought back by Jianxi. Very fresh.”
Xu Jianxi added, “That’s right. This meat is from a good pig, freshly slaughtered. I went to that hidden pig farm in the mountains today. Wow, that place has no shortage of pigs.”
Hearing that the pig farm was supplying meat again, Liu Meiling’s eyes lit up. She nudged Xu Jiannan. The couple both prepared to go back to get more pork. The few days before the New Year, thanks to a stable meat supply, they had made a huge profit.
Bai Lan thought it was a bit strange that there was so much meat again. Hadn’t all the pigs been sold out before the New Year? Surely it would take at least six months to a year for piglets to grow to full size.
This made Bai Lan even more certain that the pigs at that farm were coming from different sources—not all of them raised there on-site.
Though it was strange, having a stable meat supply was a good thing for now.
Xu Jianxi didn’t continue talking about the pork. Instead, he brought up his mission from the island. One of the procurement tasks was to buy a batch of special nails for fishing boats from the screw factory.
Hearing they were for fishing boats, Xu Jianbei shook his head. “Those nails have pretty high material requirements. The factory doesn’t have them in stock—they’d have to be made to order. Second Brother, has your organization sent a procurement letter to our factory?”
“They sent it, before the New Year. But today I got a notice from the farm telling me to go to the steel mill and see if their materials meet the farm’s requirements.”
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