It was obvious that Ye Feng’s parents looked down on her, not even bothering with surface-level courtesy.
Madam Ye’s gaze made Fei Ni feel as if she wasn’t there to meet the parents, but rather someone desperately trying to curry favor with inadequate gifts—gifts that Madam Ye couldn’t even be bothered to glance at.
Without hundreds of people eagerly bringing gifts to the Ye household, Ye Feng’s mother couldn’t have developed such a dismissive and arrogant attitude.
Though Madam Ye worked at the hospital, she wasn’t in a medical position. Her condescension toward Fei Ni wasn’t that of a doctor toward a patient, but rather that of a logistics manager toward those trying to win her favor. She didn’t even need to speak—a single look was enough to convey her disdain.
Fei Ni didn’t feel she was marrying above her station Ye Feng. What separated them was merely a piece of paper—had she been able to take the college entrance exam, she certainly would have passed. Even without a diploma, she was self-sufficient; everything she wore and ate was earned by her efforts. But when their circumstances were weighed on the marriage scale, his parents found her wanting.
Ye Feng suddenly suggested to Fei Ni, “Didn’t you say you could play ‘Shajiabang’ on the piano? There’s a piano right here—could you treat us to a performance?” The last time after hearing the symphonic version of “Shajiabang,” Fei Ni had mentioned she could play it on piano.
Fei Ni immediately understood Ye Feng’s intention. He wanted her to showcase her talent in front of his mother, to prove that his girlfriend wasn’t as uncultured as his mother assumed. Though she was only a high school student and an ordinary factory worker, she could play piano and even sing selections from “Shajiabang” while playing.
Fei Ni had learned piano at school, practicing on the piano donated by Fang Muyang’s grandmother. During lunch breaks, while others rested, she would secretly practice, occasionally playing some progressive pieces. Back then, she dreamed that once she started working and had her own home, she would buy a piano. At that time, a piano seemed an unreachable dream—she only had a few cents for daily spending money, while even the cheapest piano cost several hundred yuan. Moreover, her home was too small to fit a piano. After she started working and had disposable income, she could have bought a used piano from the consignment store for just dozens of yuan, cheaper than a new bicycle, but she still had nowhere to put it.
So she could only play at the consignment store, always choosing progressive pieces. The store employees earned fixed salaries, unaffected by sales, and since pianos were too large to steal in broad daylight, they didn’t watch browsing customers too closely. Fei Ni took advantage of this, practicing under the guise of browsing. Since she played progressive pieces, nobody complained. But since being recognized last month, she hasn’t returned.
Fei Ni didn’t want to play “Shajiabang,” especially not to prove she was worthy of Ye Feng. Did her inability to play mean she deserved to be treated coldly?
Fei Ni smiled, “I don’t feel like playing right now.”
She saw the flash of disappointment in Ye Feng’s eyes and felt some disappointment in him because of it.
Ye Feng’s mother interpreted Fei Ni’s “don’t feel like playing” as “can’t play,” assuming she was trying to show off after taking a few music classes at school.
“Do you practice piano regularly at home?”
Fei Ni knew she was deliberately trying to embarrass her, knowing full well there was no piano at her home, but she answered honestly anyway: “We don’t have a piano.”
Her eyes and tone showed no trace of embarrassment.
Ye Feng’s mother put down her newspaper, becoming more talkative: “If you don’t play piano for a week, you get rusty. This piano was originally meant to be part of Ye Feng’s sister’s dowry, but she said she’d want to play when she visits home, so we had to keep it. Ye Feng helped a lot with his sister’s wedding—he handled getting the vouchers for the record player, television, and radio.”
At first, Fei Ni found Madam Ye’s latter statement abrupt, but she quickly understood the subtext: the Ye family provided generous dowries for their daughters, not just a piano but also a record player, television, and radio—unlike other families who relied on the groom’s family to provide everything.
Auntie Chen came out from the kitchen, and Madam Ye told her, “Don’t make the sweet and sour fish yet—that’s Yingying’s specialty. She’ll want to show off her skills when she arrives.”
Ye Feng asked, “Why is she coming?”
“I’ve always treated Yingying like my own daughter. This is her home too—she can come whenever she wants. I hope she’ll stay with us permanently.”
Fei Ni finally understood why, despite the Ye family’s obvious lack of welcome for her, the housekeeper had been busy in the kitchen since early morning—it was for another guest. This Yingying must be their preferred daughter-in-law candidate.
Ye Feng could no longer tolerate his mother’s attitude, but wanting to avoid direct conflict, he said to Fei Ni, “Let’s go to my room and see if there are any books you’d like to read.”
He knew Fei Ni had been hurt, but her face showed no sign of it, maintaining its gentle expression. This gentleness was a form of subtle pride—compared to it, his mother’s overt arrogance seemed crude. It was this gentleness that had first attracted him. He had been surprised to learn Fei Ni worked at the hat factory, and even more surprised when he visited her home. Her home was so narrow, smaller than his bedroom, but for Fei Ni’s sake, he had repeatedly endured the cramped quarters.
The phone rang—from Madam Ye’s tone, it was Yingying calling.
Over the phone, Madam Ye mentioned she had specially saved some lychees for Yingying to eat when she came.
Fei Ni hadn’t seen any lychees during her half-day visit. She remembered her first time eating lychees—Fang Muyang had given them to her, saying nobody in his family liked them and they would spoil soon. Many classmates had received lychees from Fang Muyang; she was one of them.
“I should go now,” Fei Ni said. Since she wasn’t welcome, she saw no point in staying.
“Weren’t we planning to eat here? After lunch, I’ll go wherever you want to go.”
“I’ll eat at home.”
As Ye Feng tried to convince her to stay, his mother spoke up: “If she has things to do, don’t force her.”
Madam Ye finally showed a hint of a smile, pointing to the pastries and tea Fei Ni had brought: “You should take these back for your parents.”
Fei Ni didn’t decline, directly picking up the pastry box and tea canister. Halfway through turning around, she suddenly said, “I didn’t drink from the teacup, so you can just pour it out—no need to specially disinfect it.”
Earlier, when Auntie had served tea, Ye Feng and his mother had white porcelain cups, while Fei Ni was deliberately given a glass one.
Fei Ni left without hesitation, and Ye Feng chased after her. He grabbed her arm, his tone half-pleading, half-demanding: “Let’s go back—just give me face on this.”
His parents hadn’t given her any face, but Fei Ni didn’t want to point this out. She still smiled: “I prefer eating at home. If I used your family’s bowls and chopsticks, your mother would have to specially disinfect them—that would be too much trouble.”
“Auntie Chen just grabbed whatever cup was handy—it’s not what you think.”
“It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with being hygienic—after all, she doesn’t know what contagious diseases I might have. She just didn’t need to make it so obvious, as if afraid I wouldn’t notice.”
Though Ye Feng knew his mother had done it deliberately, he insisted it was a misunderstanding. He didn’t want Fei Ni and his mother to be at odds since they would have to live together after marriage. If he insisted on moving out to start his household after marriage, his work unit would give him a room, but seeking limited housing when he had plenty of space at home would harm his reputation. Besides, the conditions at home were far better than outside.
Fei Ni didn’t want to argue anymore, her voice revealing undisguised weariness: “Right, your mother didn’t mean it. Go back and eat.”
“Weren’t we going to eat together? Let’s go for Western food—my treat.”
Ye Feng followed Fei Ni downstairs without saying goodbye to his family.
Seeing that Ye Feng was going to accompany her, Fei Ni’s tone softened: “Go back. I don’t want to eat out today.”
“Wherever you’re going, I’ll go with you.”
“Ye Feng, I think we both need to reconsider.”
“I have nothing to reconsider. My mother’s attitude doesn’t represent mine. You’ll be marrying me, not my parents. Isn’t it unfair to reject me because of them?”
Ye Feng had a face well-suited for being a husband—handsome and reliable. As a section chief at the Radio Industry Bureau, in an era when televisions, record players, and radios all required purchase vouchers, many people sought his help. Yet his face showed no trace of arrogance. Fei Ni felt he was different from his parents and decided to give him another chance.
Fei Ni ended up dining with Ye Feng at the same restaurant where she and Fang Muyang had first visited.
It took her several seconds to confirm that the young man two tables away was Fang Muyang.
She knew exactly what he looked like, but couldn’t understand why he was here again. Sitting across from him was a man in blue casual clothes, his white hair indicating he was at least fifty years old.
Fang Muyang also saw Fei Ni. They locked eyes for several seconds before Fei Ni looked away first.
The man across from him asked, “See someone you know?”
The middle-aged man was Director Fu from the publishing house, an old classmate of Fang Muyang’s mother—they had attended the same training program.
“A friend.”
Fang Muyang called the waiter and ordered additional dishes for Fei Ni’s table: a cream-baked fish, braised beef in a clay pot, and two plates of ice cream.
He told the waiter, “Put these extras on my bill.”
Director Fu asked him, “Want to go say hello?”
“She probably doesn’t want to talk to me right now.”
Director Fu couldn’t help but admire this young nephew of the Fang family. After a decade of changes, only Fang Muyang, despite years of re-education by poor and lower-middle peasants, still maintained his young master’s ways—if he had two coins today, he wouldn’t save them for tomorrow. Even when someone didn’t want to acknowledge him, he’d still deliberately order dishes for them to get their attention.
He wanted to discuss Muyang’s mother with him. Back when he and Muyang’s mother were university classmates, she had taken him to a Western restaurant where the food was much more authentic than here. But the past held too many taboo subjects, much of it inappropriate for public discussion, so he could only pick and choose what to say.
Years of ups and downs had taught Director Fu to speak privately in a way that only his intended listener could hear clearly, his voice reaching precisely to Fang Muyang’s ears while remaining inaudible to others.
“Your parents thought there were too many intellectuals in the family and wanted you to become a worker after junior high. If you can get into a factory, you’ll have fulfilled their wishes.”
What Director Fu said was true, but what he didn’t explicitly state was that Muyang’s current status at the training program was as an educated youth, meaning he could be sent back to the countryside at any time. If he first became a factory worker and then transferred to the training program to draw comics, it would be a different situation entirely.
“The training program can’t provide you with dormitory housing. See if the Youth Office can help you appeal to the Housing Management Bureau to allocate one room from your family’s former house to you.”
If the college entrance examination had been reinstated just one year earlier, Fei Ni would have had other opportunities to change her fate, and she wouldn’t have married Fang Muyang.
Fei Ni was the third child in her family. Sickly since childhood, she was pampered by her older brother and sister—when sharing an apple among the three of them, she would get half.
After graduating from high school, her brother answered the call to join the “Down to the Countryside” movement and went to Inner Mongolia. He could have taken over his parents’ factory position, but he couldn’t bear to see his sisters suffer. The family could only have two factory replacement positions at most, and he wanted to save them for his sisters. Fei Ni’s second sister took over their father’s position at the No. 2 Textile Factory, and two years later, Fei Ni replaced her mother at the hat factory.
After starting work, Fei Ni saved all her wages and food coupons after paying for household meals. Whenever she met educated youth returning from Inner Mongolia for family visits, she would take out her saved money and food coupons to buy ordinary cookies by the pound, packaging them separately in tin cans wrapped in newly-made clothes. She would exchange the remaining local food coupons for national ones and ask people to deliver them to her brother along with the cookies and clothes. She thoughtfully included new towels and soap for him to wash his face. In every letter, her brother would tell her to stop sending cookies—he had enough to eat, but there were too many starving people around him to share with. He told her not to send food coupons either, as he could manage his meals, and especially not to send clothes since he rarely got to bathe, making nice clothes a waste.
In her brother’s sixth year as an educated youth, Fei Ni’s second sister married a coworker from the No. 2 Textile Factory. Their parents had no objections, but Fei Ni disagreed, worried her sister would suffer. Her brother-in-law was an only son living with his paralyzed mother in a small room in the dormitory building.
Her second sister said love was more important than anything, but Fei Ni argued that love was spiritual—she could think about him without marrying him, but her body couldn’t share a small room with a paralyzed old woman indefinitely. Fei Ni’s theory of separating spiritual and material matters failed to convince her romance-oriented sister. Her sister discovered like Columbus the New World, the materialism hidden beneath her younger sister’s innocent face.
Her sister still married the accountant. Fei Ni used her saved fabric coupons to buy material she had long desired but couldn’t justify purchasing. She finally bought it and, using buttons she had collected, made a dress and a shirt as wedding gifts for her sister.
Originally, their family of five had squeezed into a dozen square meters in the dormitory building, one room divided into two. When Fei Ni entered junior high, they began separating rooms by gender—she, her sister, and her mother lived in the inner room, while her father and brother occupied the outer room. After her brother left for the countryside and her sister married, the home finally felt less crowded. Her parents, feeling sorry for their youngest daughter, gave her the inner room to herself while they lived in the outer room.
The kitchen and bathroom were shared, and the water room was always crowded when washing clothes. Staying silent among crowds was a luxury, and Fei Ni passively learned to make small talk.
What she found most unbearable was the mixed smell of rapeseed oil and lard that would drift through the corridor and into her nose every dinner time.
Only books could offer her comfort. The bookstore’s selection was limited, so she found university textbooks from an old man who collected waste materials, and after wearing them out, she began memorizing dictionaries. English and Russian dictionaries—she even found entertainment in their example sentences. Once, she discovered Shakespeare among a pile of discarded items. Reading was her only pleasure; though books didn’t hold houses of gold, and despite never ranking second in her class throughout her education, when it came to recommending workers and peasants for university, she wasn’t considered. At dawn, she still had to return to the hat factory to make the same style of hats day after day. Sometimes she thought she might be better off joining the “Down to the Countryside” movement—at least the countryside was vast and not so cramped.
The propaganda said, “The vast world offers great opportunities.”
But that was just a thought. She had heard that villagers didn’t welcome educated youth coming to compete for their food. Her brother in the countryside could barely maintain a basic subsistence. He had been there for seven years with no hope of returning to the city. She wrote to him, encouraging him to work hard and strive for a worker-peasant-soldier university recommendation.
When not working, Fei Ni spent her time either reading or using her sewing machine to make clothes for others. With the money she earned and fabric coupons she exchanged, she made a Dacron shirt for her mother and sister, bought two pairs of nylon socks for her father, and made a pleated skirt for her brother to give to the village party secretary’s daughter, hoping to increase his chances of getting a university recommendation. She saved shampoo, face cream, and soap for her brother to use as gifts, while she used plain soap to wash her hair.
Factory leaders had discussed with her the possibility of transferring to the factory office. But nothing came of it—someone else was transferred instead, the finance section chief’s daughter who pronounced “chengche” as “dengzhe.” Sometime later, the section chief’s daughter was recommended for university. Fei Ni continued making hats at the factory.
Since the abolition of college entrance exams, universities have admitted many semi-literate people with only primary school education, Fei Ni thought bitterly. But if given the chance to be their classmate, she would gladly accept.
No one gave her that chance.
Despite knowing English and Russian, being able to recite Shakespeare’s sonnets, and teaching herself calculus, no one recommended her for university. If others knew she was reading Shakespeare, they would likely label her as a backward element.
She read in the newspaper about a girl who spent two years caring for a disabled young worker from her factory during her spare time. The girl was recognized as an advanced worker and gained a university recommendation.
Fei Ni wasn’t a noble person, but if it meant getting into university, she would willingly devote herself to caring for strangers at her own expense.
She was tired of making hats every day—that wasn’t the life she wanted.
Thinking of Fang Muyang, who had also been recognized as an advanced worker, she decided to visit her classmate in the hospital.