Chapter 425

Probably because of the mention of Mr. Su’s father, Zhu Yuyan suddenly became curious, before she never asked him about his hometown, because she felt that his past is not important, since he has left his hometown, she should also take care of his mood no longer mentioned.

As a result, now that she thought about it, she actually did not know where his hometown was and what it was like.

The night was gentle.

She and he, probably both wanted to talk about something that wasn’t the here and now.

So it came to talk about the past.

She asked many questions in one breath.

What was his father’s last name, what was his first name? What were the names of his brothers and sisters? How many people were in his family? Did he have any pets as a child? Was there a maid in the family? Were there many servants who had been in his family for generations, like in Dream of the Red Chamber?

Are there any cousins who have lived in his house since he was a child?

Su Chunjun laughed, wrapped his arms around her, and the two of them sat on the bed together, talking against the pillows.

He said softly, “There are cousins, cousins, cousins, cousins, and many cousins, all dependent on my family’s life. When I was young, I heard the subordinates say that these are poor relatives and I hated them. Now that I think about it, I feel sorry for those who have lost their land and livelihood.”

It was only after he had studied abroad that he realized what the old society was, and therefore understood a lot of new concepts about production relations and labor, and what technological innovation was.

When he returned to China, he wanted to do something big.

“My family name is a hegemony in the area, 90% of the local family name is my family name, divided into hundreds of branches. But none of the relatives are too familiar with each other.”

“My family is a big landlord, every branch has gone out to become an official. One of the family’s motto is to study to become an official, boys are beaten up from childhood to go to school, and girls have to marry an official in order to marry well, regardless of whether the official is married for the second time or several marriages, how old they are, and whether they have any children or concubines. My sister married a man much older than her.”

“With such a family tradition, you can imagine what kind of a behemoth my family is. The atmosphere in the family is very feudal, my sister is wrapped in small feet, the family cousins, cousins, married in the daughter-in-law and concubines are all wrapped in feet. Because the foot-wrapped is only a lady, big feet that are home to work, is poor, since the poor, can not be a scholar’s family, such a family can not be married, not to mention the friendship.”

Su Chunjun said and touched Zhu Er Miss’s feet, smiled and said, “You have not wrapped these feet, I feel good.”

Zhu Er Miss stepped on his hand and said, “Foreign women don’t wrap their feet either. They shouldn’t have their feet wrapped in the first place.”

Su Chunjun: “Yes, foot-binding is a bad custom. Foot-binding is a bad custom. In our place, it is said that only big ladies do not wrap their feet, but in fact, all the girls in the buildings in the town wrap their feet, so are they also big ladies? Whether or not to wrap one’s feet should not be a virtue for a woman, and should not be labeled as such. But the custom is such that no one from top to bottom has ever thought of changing it.”

He sighed.

“Those poor relatives at home, that is, although also tried to study, but did not become an official, father’s grandparents did not become an official can still have a field property and premises and subordinates can afford to read, to the grandson’s generation will not be rich, the field property and premises have been pawned, the subordinates have also been sold, their own in addition to reading nothing, of course, even more unlikely to work as a laborer, but only to the relatives’ home to beg for a mouthful of rice to eat. At that time, my family, because my father wanted to make a name for himself, was willing to take in the up-and-comers among the poor relatives, so as to earn a reputation as a good person, so that others would say that he was a good person. The poor relatives who were kicked out would have to live on the streets and wait for death.”

“I’m not the only one who has people like that. Every family in town has a few poor relatives they can’t mention.” He chuckled.

“I went to school in a foreign country and aspired to start a factory in my hometown when I returned home, so I could give my poor relatives a new path to work. Help them get back on their feet. I thought at the time that this was a hundred-year plan, and that if I did it right, my family could surely become the leader of my hometown again.” He was a little embarrassed at the mention of his former childish thoughts.

Zhu Yuyan, however, felt that this was exactly the kind of thinking that Mr. Su would have, he definitely had ambitions, and wanted to continue to help his family grow, but on the other hand, he also genuinely wanted to help others.

Another way to put it is “win-win cooperation”.

Only by developing more peers and involving more people in his business would it be successful.

Of course, this dream was immediately dashed upon his return to China.

Su Chunjun: “My father was an old man who married very late. Men like him refused to marry early, and had to wait until they had made a name for themselves, so that they could get the best wife. My father didn’t come home to marry my mother until he was over thirty, and when my sister married, my brother-in-law was over forty, thirty years older than my sister. They all chose a wife who best deserved them after they had achieved success. If they had married earlier, they would certainly not have been able to marry a wife of excellent family, and this was their common thought.”

He no longer spoke of his native land with nostalgia now, but no longer with resentment either, and told it to his wife as if it were a story, so as to soothe her frightened and troubled mind.

“Though my father married late in life, he had concubines in his family long ago. His oldest concubine died long ago, and there is still a small shrine to her in the house. She was not allowed to enter her ancestral grave, and the spirit place was sent to a local temple in our area that was well-scented, and my mother even took me there to offer incense. My mother is a very good woman, very gentle and kind to the concubines in the family.”

Zhu Yuyan’s eyes widened.

Su Chunjun stroked her hair and said with a smile, “Because my father treated all his concubines badly.”

Zhu Yuyan: “Does he like to beat people?”

Su Chunjun smiled and shook his head, saying, “Not that kind of bad. He, ah, is good at beauty but better at fame, and he likes to give away his concubines to prove how good he is to his friends, how he emphasizes beauty over friendship.”

Zhu Yuyan was stunned for a moment, and then she felt a chill.

She wasn’t a child anymore, she wouldn’t simply think that giving someone away meant letting one woman move on with her life in a different place, such as Miss Jin, who was given away by her father, and what kind of life she was living now.

Su Chunjun: “Most of my father’s concubines didn’t have a good ending. What I remember most clearly is that when I was a child, my family sang in the hall, and my father had a favorite concubine who used to sing opera, so he let her dress up and sing a song to cheer everyone up. I remember that aunt hurriedly rushed to listen to the father’s orders, a face of embarrassment stiff smile, and then hurried back to change the clothes, wriggling on stage, she is not the troupe of people, she sang on stage, only the master in the drums, the rest are dressed up on the playwrights, stood on the side looking at her, she sang and danced on the stage alone, I think, that look, it’s very bleak. ”

Zhu Yuyan can feel, at that time that concubine, must be very embarrassed and helpless.

Su Chunjun: “The hall meeting was very successful, and at the banquet in the night, someone mentioned the aunt at the hall meeting again, I think he just wanted to compliment father at that time, but in the end, my father asked my aunt to come out and sing a song to help cheer up the party, and also let her serve pots of wine to all the male guests, and everyone praised my father, but I was very sad for my aunt.”

Zhu Yuyan softly asked, “Then this concubine, what happened afterward?”

Su Chunjun sighed and said, “I went out to study abroad and I don’t know where she ended up. When I came back, she was no longer at home, listening to what my mom said, I guess it didn’t die, probably either given away by my father or gone for some other reason.”

Zhu Yuyan: “Did your father’s concubines all give them away?”

Su Chunjun shook his head and said, “There were also those who got sick and died. There were those who died giving birth to children, those who died from eating the wrong things, and more who didn’t know how they died. When I was a child, no one told me that I wanted to kill myself too. From the time I understood, there were always three or five concubines that were given away.”

Zhu Yuyan was shocked, “The three or five that were given away, the ones that got sick, died in childbirth, and killed themselves, how many concubines did your father actually have? Is he richer and more powerful than the Jia family men in Dream of the Red Chamber?”

Su Chunjun then laughed, sighed afterward, and said, “The Jia family is indeed rich and powerful, but there is still an emperor above the Jia family, and a host of royal relatives. My family is the emperor of the land in my hometown, and my father is the most outstanding person in my generation. And when I studied abroad my father was over forty, when I came home my father was almost seventy, he lived for seventy years and had ten concubines before and after, is that rare?”

Zhu Yuyan was dumbfounded, “Ridiculous.”

Su Chunjun nodded: “That’s right, it’s ridiculous.”

Zhu Yuyan immediately stood up and said seriously, “Then aren’t you Jia Baoyu? Your father is better than Jia Zheng, so you should be better than Jia Baoyu. You were eleven or twelve years old when you were studying abroad, Jia Baoyu had an attacker and Qingwen at that time, but you didn’t have a maid?”

Su Chunjun thought for a moment and said seriously, “If it were before, I would have said that I didn’t have a concubine. But there’s no harm in telling you now.”

Zhu Yuyan held her breath, already starting to feel uncomfortable in her heart.

Su Chunjun said, “I really don’t have any.”

Zhu Yuyan did not believe it, but her heart felt much better.

She whacked him and said, “You lied to me.”

Su Chunjun: “I didn’t lie to you. It’s true that I didn’t. Half of the reason my father had so many concubines was because he didn’t restrain himself, and it wasn’t because of the family style. The other half is that there is no one in the family to control him, my grandfather never cared about this, my grandmother is long gone. My mom is by nature, too gentle and virtuous for her own good, and she probably thought she had real feelings for my father. My father was also mostly in a playful frame of mind with those concubines, and didn’t treat them as human beings.”

“That’s why my family doesn’t have a family tradition of specializing in arranging for a concubine girl.” After thinking about it, he said, “My brother might have had a first and last with a maid, but it’s something they kept from me and refused to give me knowledge of, so I’m just guessing. After I went out to study abroad, my brother married his wife and I was not there, when I came back, I didn’t recognize my brother’s side of the maid in detail, I didn’t have that effort at that time, I can’t even remember what my brother’s daughter-in-law’s name was or what she looked like now, I should have recognized the family at that time, but I didn’t wait to be familiarized with it, I had already run away, and now there’s just a shadow left in my mind.”

He shook his head and said, “Actually, I don’t blame them for treating me like a stranger, I see them as strange as well. I went out for so long and came back everyone changed. My father is too old to look like a man and dyed his hair black to marry a new wife, my brother and sister all look old and look a generation removed from me, when I first came home, everyone looked like they were new acquaintances, not a single acquaintance could be seen.”

Zhu Yuyan softly asked, “Do you still miss them?”

Su Chunjun reminisced, “I don’t know which one to think about. I still occasionally dream about my hometown, but in my dreams I should still be a child, my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, are all the same as before. I sometimes dream of quarreling with them, scolding my father to marry another, brother and sister do not stop, but my mother is still there, I pulled my mother to take her away. Sometimes I forget all about it, and in my dreams I am close to my father, who takes me to the mountains, takes me riding, trekking in the spring, enjoying the maple, fishing, and when I wake up, I hate myself again for how I could be so good with him in my dreams, how I could forget what he has done.”

Su Chunjun: “Sometimes I think that if my father hadn’t changed, and I went back, they would still be the same as when I left, and I would have really opened a factory in my hometown, and really done something to help the people in my hometown find another way out. But when the Japanese came, I probably would have still thrown myself into officialdom, and everything would have been the same as it is now.”

But at that time, he wouldn’t have Miss Zhu Er by his side, and there would be no way for him to marry her.

Whenever he thought of this, he would break out from into a cold sweat.

“I thought again, if I were to start a factory in my hometown, I would definitely need to come to the big cities to find outlets, or find French or American merchants to market my factory. Then maybe I’d rent your house again and get to know you again.” He said with a smile.

Zhu Yuyan shook his head, “That may not be possible. If nothing had happened to your family, you would be the young master who returned from studying abroad. How could you rent my house? You must have gone to live in a big hotel so that you could talk business, that’s how you would have chosen.”

Su Chunjun added, “Then maybe we’ll meet on the street. When you and mom went to your birthday, didn’t you go to a hotel to eat? Maybe we will meet then. After we meet, I will definitely think, “Where is this pretty lady from? I must treat her to a movie and dinner.”

Zhu Yuyan: “Then you definitely won’t be able to. I never accept invitations from strangers, and my mom won’t let me go either.”

Su Chunjun: “Right, so I can only meet you if I live in your house and become your tutor again.”

It was only the two of us that got married.

Zhu Yuyan recalls Zhu Yanshu telling her that if it weren’t for Su Chunjun, her character would definitely end up alone.

She smiled and said, “My mom has said that you are a good son-in-law that I picked up at my doorstep and God gave me. Otherwise, with my character of hating people and dogs, I would definitely not be able to get married to be an old girl.”

Su Chunjun hummed, “Where do you hate dogs? You are youthful and beautiful, with a bright personality, smart and witty, there are plenty of people who like you, you just don’t know and don’t care.”