They had all grown up.
In the past, Jiang Qiaoxi lived in a tiny apartment in Hong Kong for over six years—that was the largest extent of life he could control.
Now, back in his hometown, they moved into a newly decorated home—just the kitchen alone was larger than their previous rented room.
This was their own home, not belonging to parents or landlords. They no longer had to rely on others, endure, or avoid confrontations. They didn’t have to consider anyone else’s feelings.
“You always bring so much stuff…” Jiang Qiaoxi said helplessly as he entered their home. He was carrying tea, vegetable oil, and the mountain chicken eggs Uncle Yu had given them, placing everything on the floor by the entrance. He changed his shoes, took off his suit jacket, and tossed his car and house keys into the bowl by the door. Lin Yingtao, with her small bag hanging from her wrist, carried a new cotton quilt her mother had made for them into the living room, bending to place it on the sofa.
“Our parents still think we’re young,” Lin Yingtao said as she returned to the entrance to change into slippers and put down her bag. She told Jiang Qiaoxi, “So they worry we don’t know how to manage our lives and must be lacking everything.”
Jiang Qiaoxi unbuttoned his shirt collar. He looked like he was complaining, but his eyes were smiling.
Having parents who cared and worried about him was always a luxury for him.
Jiang Qiaoxi lifted the even more luxurious Lin Yingtao from the floor, holding her waist as her feet left the ground. She laughed as he carried her further into their home.
After showering and shaving, Jiang Qiaoxi brought up taking his mother-in-law for an eye check-up over the weekend, saying he’d feel more at ease after she was examined. Yingtao mentioned she had suggested it several times before, but her mother always brushed it off, making excuses not to go.
The Lin family tended to be laid-back and carefree in their approach to things. Yingtao, influenced by her parents, also had an easygoing side to her personality.
But Jiang Qiaoxi was not a laid-back or easygoing person.
Since becoming part of the Lin family, Jiang Qiaoxi had begun to influence his in-laws’ household in return. He had grown up; he was no longer the little boy sitting at the Lin family’s dinner table, being cared for by his aunt and uncle.
Lin Yingtao was still in the bathtub, her hair covered in foam, playing with a handful of bubbles. “Let’s go back in a few days,” she said. “You can talk to Mom then. She only listens to you. She always thinks I’m just talking nonsense.”
Jiang Qiaoxi, his face now smooth, looked at Yingtao’s reflection in the mirror. “Why does she only listen to me?”
Lin Yingtao explained, “Because she watched me grow up. No matter how old I get, she’ll subconsciously always see me as a child.”
Jiang Qiaoxi asked, “Didn’t she watch me grow up too?”
Lin Yingtao retorted, “Of course, she watched me more!”
Wearing a bathrobe, Jiang Qiaoxi sat back down by the bathtub. He took the shower head and helped his wife rinse the foam from her hair.
“Oh, did you see that super luxurious hotel we passed on our way home today?” Lin Yingtao suddenly asked, her big eyes wide with excitement as she wiped water from her face.
“What about it?” Jiang Qiaoxi looked down at her.
“That hotel is owned by Wei Yong!” Lin Yingtao told him.
“Who?” Jiang Qiaoxi asked.
“Wei Yong,” Lin Yingtao said, her hands gripping the edge of the bathtub, her shoulders covered in foam like a puffy dress. “He used to be like a hooligan at the Qunshan construction site, always bullying others and never studying. You must have forgotten him,” Lin Yingtao noticed Jiang Qiaoxi’s blank stare and realized he didn’t remember. She continued, “He’s doing well now! His girlfriend is super rich, and he even opened a bar!”
“That’s impressive,” Jiang Qiaoxi said softly, adjusting the water temperature.
Lin Yingtao added, “Du Shang is so jealous!”
Their old classmate Fei Linge added Jiang Qiaoxi on WeChat through a headhunter friend. He joked that at first, he thought he had added the wrong person, suspecting someone might be using Jiang Qiaoxi’s photo from Morgan Stanley to catfish people. But after seeing the empty Moments feed, he realized it was indeed Jiang Qiaoxi himself.
“You’ve been back for so long and didn’t even contact me!” Fei Linge said enthusiastically. “There’s a dinner party tomorrow with a lot of big shots from the mainland investment circle. Do you want to come? I haven’t seen you in ages, and I heard you’re looking for partners. I got you an invitation!”
Jiang Qiaoxi replied, “I might not have time.”
Fei Linge insisted, “I have something important to tell you. Please come!”
Lin Yingtao noticed Jiang Qiaoxi’s unusual expression. She finished applying her face cream, took the towel off her hair, and crawled back into bed to ask what was wrong. Jiang Qiaoxi looked up from his phone screen, suddenly realizing how obvious his unease was, as she had picked up on it so quickly.
She reached out to stroke his hair, like petting a baby, and leaned in to kiss him.
Jiang Qiaoxi had always had a long-term goal in his life: to escape his home, this city, and his past. But in the end, he came back.
He had Yingtao now, and his own family.
He could face it all.
The old, discontinued MP3 player wouldn’t turn on, either due to a dead battery or some broken electronic component. As Jiang Qiaoxi drove out, hoping the stored files were still intact, he followed the navigation to the electronics street. Suddenly, Cai Fangyuan called him.
“Brother!” Cai Fangyuan said, “I’ll be in the provincial capital this afternoon. Let’s meet up tonight! I got you an invitation—”
Jiang Qiaoxi frowned, “Fei Linge wants me to go to some dinner party.”
Cai Fangyuan exclaimed, “Is it the one at Wei Yong’s hotel? Damn, then we’ll see each other there!”
Jiang Qiaoxi had thought Fei Linge had something “important” to tell him.
At the dinner party, while Jiang Qiaoxi was chatting with several fund managers, someone called his name. He turned to see Fei Linge, whom he hadn’t seen in a long time, approaching him with a broad smile, dressed in a business suit. Fei Linge, always full of enthusiasm towards Jiang Qiaoxi, looked triumphant.
He had a female companion with him.
It was Cen Xiaoman.
Cen Xiaoman graduated from the University of California, Davis, majoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures. According to Fei Linge, after returning to China, Xiaoman hosted two cultural talk shows on television, gaining considerable popularity and admiration among intellectuals.
Cen Xiaoman smiled. She had always carried herself well, gentle and reserved. Today, she wore a silver-white scale-patterned long dress, exuding an ethereal aura.
Jiang Qiaoxi nodded when he heard “University of California, Davis.” The men around him eagerly began chatting with Cen Xiaoman. It turned out they were all fans of her show.
Fei Linge exchanged business cards with several people and laughed, “No, no, how could Xiaoman be my girlfriend? We’re good friends, old classmates! The three of us, including Jiang Qiaoxi, have been classmates since first grade!”
Cen Xiaoman tucked a curl behind her ear and flashed her camera-ready smile at the managers. She looked up, her eyes suddenly reddening as her gaze met Jiang Qiaoxi’s lowered eyes.
Fei Linge found an excuse to lead the managers away.
Cen Xiaoman stood alone in front of Jiang Qiaoxi.
She wanted Jiang Qiaoxi to look at her, only at her, to see how successful she had become. This made the exposed skin on her back tremble.
Jiang Qiaoxi smiled and said, “Old classmate, it’s been a long time.”
His tone was so gentle, soft, and deep, far from the coldness of his student days. Even his expression was smiling; he used to dislike smiling so much.
Cen Xiaoman didn’t know whether to be happy. She suppressed her nervousness and tried to smile at Jiang Qiaoxi.
But strangely, she felt he sounded so distant.
“It has been many years since I’ve seen you,” Cen Xiaoman said with a smile. “When I went to the U.S. for my undergraduate degree, I thought we might—”
Jiang Qiaoxi interrupted her, “You’re even more beautiful than before.”
Cen Xiaoman, halfway through her sentence, forgot what she was going to say next.
“Oh… really?” she said, pleasantly surprised, her nose tingling.
For many years, Cen Xiaoman had been the only “girl” by Jiang Qiaoxi’s side. They were very young then, naive and innocent. Because Cen Xiaoman was excellent, well-behaved, and obedient, and their parents knew each other, Aunt Liang tacitly allowed her to be friends with Jiang Qiaoxi.
It felt like a privilege. From elementary school through middle school and high school, Cen Xiaoman was always by Jiang Qiaoxi’s side, inseparable from him. Along with Fei Linge, the three of them went to school together, ate together, and attended competition classes. Not only did all their classmates, but even the teachers referred to Cen Xiaoman and Jiang Qiaoxi as the “golden couple.”
However, Jiang Qiaoxi rarely expressed his feelings. He rarely paid attention to her, looked at her directly, praised her, or acknowledged her. But that was just Jiang Qiaoxi’s personality, Fei Linge said. Jiang Qiaoxi was like that with everyone.
“I married our high school classmate, Lin Qile,” Jiang Qiaoxi suddenly mentioned.
Cen Xiaoman, who had just been feeling touched, was caught off guard.
Jiang Qiaoxi glanced at Fei Linge in the distance, then said to Cen Xiaoman, “You must be quite busy, so we won’t invite you over.”
Fei Linge, while chatting animatedly with others, secretly glanced towards another corner of the dinner party.
Xiaoman and Jiang Qiaoxi seemed to be having an engaging conversation. Judging by Jiang Qiaoxi’s demeanor, he was clearly in a good mood.
That’s right, Fei Linge thought, that Lin Qile was no match for Xiaoman—any man with eyes could see that. Jiang Qiaoxi used to be just a student, only focused on math, but now he has seen the world.
“I… I did hear someone…” Cen Xiaoman stammered, furrowing her brow. “But… are you married?”
Jiang Qiaoxi held out his left hand, the wedding ring visible.
Cai Fangyuan, dressed in a suit, entered from outside. Just as he was about to look for someone, a strikingly beautiful woman quickly rushed past him.
Seeing the handsome Jiang Qiaoxi standing opposite, Cai Fangyuan waved, “Manager Jiang!”
Fei Linge had promised Cen Xiaoman’s mother to accompany her all evening, but Xiaoman insisted on leaving. Fei Linge hadn’t even spoken to Jiang Qiaoxi yet.
He chased after her along the corridor and out of the hotel’s main entrance. Grabbing Xiaoman’s arm, he exclaimed, “It’s impossible! Jiang Qiaoxi can’t be married… Aunt Liang would never agree to it!”
Cen Xiaoman, pulled back by Fei Linge, had tears streaming down her face. She looked up at him.
Her fish-scale long dress reflected the hotel’s neon lights, a dazzling mess.
Fei Linge’s heart ached. Faced with Xiaoman’s tearful eyes, he felt helpless. Hurriedly, he reached for his phone.
“I’ll… I’ll call Aunt Liang right now—” he said.
Suddenly, Cen Xiaoman asked, “Can you still reach Aunt Liang by phone?”
Fei Linge paused, looking up at her.
Cen Xiaoman gave a bitter smile as cars sped by on the street behind her. “Aunt Liang stopped looking after us long ago.”
At the banquet, Jiang Qiaoxi stood with his old friend Cai Fangyuan and several investors, listening to Cai Fangyuan’s animated jokes. Jiang Qiaoxi kept smiling.
Cai Fangyuan introduced him to others, saying, “Jiang Qiaoxi and I, we’re true childhood friends! We used to be on the same construction site. Him, me, and his wife, we all grew up together!”
Someone curiously asked, “What do you mean by construction site?”
Cai Fangyuan explained, “It’s a project site, for building power plants—”
Jiang Qiaoxi patiently clarified, “We’re all children of power plant construction workers.”
An investor chimed in, “I know about that! My relatives work in the power industry! They might even know your parents!”
Fei Linge stood outside the hotel window, frowning as he watched Jiang Qiaoxi through the glass.
His phone buzzed with a message from Cen Xiaoman’s mother, saying Xiaoman had just arrived home.
“Linge, Xiaoman is a silly girl. Thank you for your help.”
Fei Linge scrolled through his phone, finding the message he’d sent to Aunt Liang Hongfei half an hour ago. If Xiaoman hadn’t mentioned it, he wouldn’t have noticed that his New Year’s greetings to Aunt Liang over the past few years had gone unanswered.
The Jiang Qiaoxi in Fei Linge’s memory was nothing like the amiable, approachable person before him now. In the past, Jiang Qiaoxi always wore a gloomy expression, spending his days either studying or attending advanced math classes. Fei Linge and Cen Xiaoman rarely spoke to him, fearing they might interrupt his train of thought.
They acted like Jiang Qiaoxi’s guardians, maintaining a “pure” environment around him. They were very young then, and Aunt Liang’s words seemed like imperial edicts, always so correct: Jiang Qiaoxi was a genius, he needed to participate in competitions, and shouldn’t be disturbed at school.
Though they were just children, they were given a strange “privilege,” even if Fei Linge didn’t understand what it meant. Jiang Qiaoxi never expressed any opinion about it. Every day, he silently walked home from school with them, attended math classes, and silently coexisted with them.
Before they knew it, from elementary school through middle school and high school… they had spent twelve silent years together.
There were only a few times when Jiang Qiaoxi had shown anger towards Fei Linge.
It happened in their second year of middle school. As usual, Fei Linge had opened a love letter from Jiang Qiaoxi’s desk drawer. He enjoyed reading these, feeling responsible for “protecting Jiang Qiaoxi.” But the contents of that letter not only reached Aunt Liang but soon became known to everyone, causing laughter. When Jiang Qiaoxi returned from competition and saw the remnants of the letter, he looked at Fei Linge as if a small flower he had been waiting for had finally bloomed, only to be blown away by Fei Linge’s careless wind.
As Jiang Qiaoxi exchanged WeChat contacts with several investors, he suddenly received a message from his wife. Yingtao asked when he’d be home: “Did you eat enough there? Should I prepare some late-night snacks for you?”
Jiang Qiaoxi replied, “I didn’t eat a thing.”
Lin Yingtao asked, “Why didn’t you eat?”
Jiang Qiaoxi said, “Nobody ate anything.”
Lin Yingtao said, “Sneak a few bites when they’re not looking. Don’t go hungry!”
Outside in the corridor, Cai Fangyuan was on a phone call.
“Listen to me,” Cai Fangyuan said, standing by a flower stand, speaking to a planner on the phone. “Do you remember those Water Margin cards we collected as kids? The ones with characters from Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms… We used to buy boxes and boxes of instant noodles just to collect those cards! Right? Why not turn that into a game?”
The planner hesitated, “But… how would we profit from that? Just collecting cards?”
“Can’t you think for yourself?” Cai Fangyuan was exasperated. He turned in a circle and lowered his voice, “Remember that thing from a few days ago, where you spent over a hundred thousand? That AKB whatever Mayuyu thing! Think about it! Expand your mind! Where did you spend all that money? Why did you spend it? … Yeah, exactly, why do you guys spend money on things you can’t touch and girls you can’t date? Think about it! Think hard! You’re making games, you need to think!”
Suddenly, someone called out from behind, “CEO Cai!”
Cai Fangyuan’s plump figure turned, still holding his phone. He exclaimed in surprise, “Oh, Boss Wei!”
The hotel owner, Wei Yong, had opened a small private room next to the main banquet hall. It was quiet, with few people inside. He was chatting with Cai Fangyuan when Jiang Qiaoxi entered. Wei Yong quickly stood up, warmly shaking Jiang Qiaoxi’s hand and inviting him to sit.
“We sold the houses in the headquarters’ neighborhood too early,” Wei Yong lamented to Cai Fangyuan. “I heard they’re building a park there. The property values are bound to increase by one or two thousand.”
Cai Fangyuan poured tea for Jiang Qiaoxi, asking if he had been drinking earlier. Jiang Qiaoxi shook his head, saying he still had to drive home.
Cai Fangyuan glanced at him and smiled.
“Come on, as if you’re short on money,” Cai Fangyuan said to Wei Yong.
“Jiang Qiaoxi,” Wei Yong suddenly addressed him, “Cai Fangyuan and I were quite close back in Qunshan, but I don’t think I’ve ever really talked to you.”
Jiang Qiaoxi suddenly remembered Wei Yong riding his bicycle past them in Qunshan. Back then, Cai Fangyuan would always cower behind Yu Qiao.
Jiang Qiaoxi said abruptly, “You remind me of someone.”
Wei Yong laughed heartily, “I know, is it what Lin Yingtao said? That I look like an ugly version of Andy Lau?”
Jiang Qiaoxi glanced at Cai Fangyuan and said, “You look like my landlord in Hong Kong.”
Cai Fangyuan slapped the table, and then scrutinized Wei Yong’s face. “Damn… you’re practically the long-lost brother of my first investor! I should introduce you two!”
The banquet outside was winding down. Wei Yong poured some drinks and started reminiscing about childhood with Jiang Qiaoxi and Cai Fangyuan.
“Thinking back, I miss those days,” he smiled. “When I first arrived in Qunshan, there weren’t many people at the construction site. Every weekend, Uncle Lin—that’s Lin Yingtao’s father, your father-in-law!” he said to Jiang Qiaoxi, “He’d take us boys cycling to go fishing! You two weren’t there yet. Man, I got so sunburnt! Uncle Lin was such a good man. While fishing, he’d lecture us—as if those fish in the pond would ever bite!”
Cai Fangyuan laughed, glancing at Jiang Qiaoxi.
Wei Yong said to Jiang Qiaoxi, “I remember clearly when you first transferred to Qunshan. One day, little Lin Yingtao came to me all fired up, with her two braids, hands on her hips, telling me I absolutely must not bully you.”
Jiang Qiaoxi raised his eyebrows, chuckling in surprise.
Wei Yong protested innocently, “Honestly, I never bullied anyone regularly! I just teased my brother Fangyuan sometimes!”
Cai Fangyuan covered his face, laughing and cursing.
Jiang Qiaoxi left the hotel and lit a cigarette before getting into his car. He took out the business cards he had received earlier and flipped through them, pausing at Fei Linge’s. Looking at the name now, it didn’t seem as unpleasant as before. Jiang Qiaoxi tapped the cards against his hand and placed them in the storage compartment.
When Lin Yingtao learned the banquet was held at Wei Yong’s hotel, she anxiously said, “Come home quickly… don’t stay there any longer!”
Jiang Qiaoxi, with his hands on the steering wheel, stopped at a red light. Enjoying the evening breeze, he smiled and said, “What, are you still afraid someone might bully me?”
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Our Generation – Chapter Note:
“AKB Mayuyu”: On June 8, 2014, the results of AKB48’s 6th General Election were announced, with Watanabe Mayu from Team B winning first place.