Chapter 3: Going to work

He had never imagined that life in that era would be so difficult. It has not been easy for his mother. It was not easy for her children to grow up to work, her daughters were all married and she had to retire in two years.

Her husband, Wang Licheng's father, had an accident. When my father was helping to unload the goods in the factory, he was hit in the head by a flagpole that suddenly fell and died on the spot.

Later, the investigation found that the car's handbrake was broken and the truck slipped and hit the flagpole. The flagpole hit Wang Licheng's father.

Originally, there was still a year before my father would retire. He told his mother before that he would find a job after retirement and help his son save money to marry a wife.

That time my mother fell ill, fortunately my sisters helped take turns taking care of my mother. The mother is also a high-spirited person, presumably she will suddenly recover if she spends the money for her son to marry a daughter-in-law.

My mother retired early and the factory lost some money. His parents belonged to the same factory and his mother's early retirement was also requested by Wang Licheng when he went to the factory. He also added half of his father's length of service to his mother's.

Wang Licheng ran for a long time for this. The father's working experience is 26 years, and the mother's working experience is only 17 years. This gives the mother 30 years of working experience when she retires.

He thinks what Wang Licheng has done is great. In this era, the longer the working age, the higher the salary, and the higher the pension.

After retiring, Wang Licheng didn't let his mother go out to work, and it happened that the third sister was pregnant at this time. The mother of the third brother-in-law died early and there is only the one father in the family, who works in the Armed Forces. The third brother-in-law was transferred with his father and there is no relative here to help take care of the third sister. They are all men and don't understand anything.

Therefore, the mother can stay at home with peace of mind and from time to time make some delicious dishes to make up for the third daughter.

The third son-in-law will also give her some money to help make some children's clothes and diapers.

In this era, it is rare for children to wear new clothes. Liu Fengzhen took the money and planned to return the money to her third daughter in a few days. Clothes and diapers, she let the eldest daughter and the second daughter sort out some good ones.

Wearing one piece of clothing several times was normal at that time.

Today, her son stayed in the room for a day and Liu Fengzhen was a little worried. At dinner time, “Licheng, are you still feeling unwell? Do you want to go to the hospital again?"

"No, I'm fine." He knew that his current behavior was a little suspicious and Wang Licheng liked to go out on weekends. In fact he had nothing to do when he goes out; he just didn't want to stay at home.

In the second year after entering the factory a very enthusiastic eldest sister from the factory, Mrs. Wang, introduced her to a girlfriend.

That girl is Li Lanfang, 25 years old, one year older than him and the two have been friends for more than a year. At that time, they would go out to play on weekends, either watching movies or shopping and the salary of only 50 Yuan a month was basically gone.

Even so, he plans to wait another year and when he reaches the legal age, the two will get married. He told Li Lanfang of the idea. As a result, Li Lanfang said that her family did not agree. If she waited another year, she would be 23 years old.

Li Lanfang broke up with him unilaterally. During this time, Wang Licheng's father had an accident. When Wang Licheng had settled everything at home and wanted to go to Li Lanfang again, he heard the news that Li Lanfang was getting married.

When he was dating Li Lanfang, no one in the family knew about it. Now that they were separated, he didn't want his mother to worry, not to mention that his father had just passed away.

Wang Licheng still goes out on weekends as usual. Most of the time, he wanders the streets or goes to the park to watch old people play chess and sometimes he does other things. To put it bluntly, there is nothing to do.

His current city is Pucheng, a county-level city. His father is from the county town and his mother is from the countryside.

The current house of his family was built in 1979 and this land was distributed to Wang Licheng's father, the third son.

Next to his house is the uncle's house and behind is the other uncle's house. When grandma was still around, the three of them were relatively close but after grandma passed away, the relationship became colder. After my father passed away two years ago, I haven't had much contact with each other.

Grandpa died early and grandma died six or seven years ago. I heard that there is a younger sister under my father. She married a soldier and left with the army. She hasn't come back for many years and her contact information is long gone.

He went to bed early tonight and got up early for work tomorrow. This night he had another dream, dreaming that when he was a child; the four of them went out to play together and came back late to be beaten by their father.

At seven in the morning, his mother woke him up.

He had fried rice and leftovers from last night this morning. The night before he had to go to work, his mother would cook more meals for the next morning. Eating noodles at work means he is not very hungry.

After breakfast, he pushed out the black bicycle with bars parked in the living room. Bicycles are the means of transportation to work in factories. The factory is relatively remote and is far away. It takes 15 minutes to ride a bicycle and at least half an hour to walk.

He used to ride a bicycle to and from high school in his previous life and felt that riding a bicycle would be easy. But the bike under my feet is not easy to ride at all. The seat is high and there are horizontal bars in the front. In the past, Wang Licheng would spread his legs, raise his right leg and go around from the back seat. This practice is very indecent to him, who was a woman before.

Then the bike was heavy and it was very strenuous to ride. The road is not good and my thighs and buttocks are numb.

It took 20 minutes to ride to the factory today. In the morning, work is relatively leisurely and their technical maintenance workers will check the machine tool before get off work on Friday, so the possibility of machine failure on Monday morning is less.

At noon, I ate in the factory cafeteria with a few technicians and then went back to the office together to take a nap on the table.

Sometimes when the factory is busy, they will send a few people to help in other departments. Most of the recruits were apprentices. In the past, Wang Licheng was often recruited.

In the afternoon, several machine tools broke down. Machine tools have frequently broken down in recent years. The machine is old and it is time to replace it with a new one but the factory cannot afford to replace it with a new one. This is what the master told them that they are technical maintenance workers and they are responsible for repairing when there is a problem.

Wang Licheng encountered the problem of machine tool failure which is relatively simple; something fell into the machine and got stuck. This kind of problem is relatively common and I have experienced it many times in my dreams.

I removed the jammed part, cleaned it up, put it back on, and tuned the machine. The whole process only took 30 minutes.

Recently the factory had to rush a batch of cloth and now the task is almost completed and it cannot be stuck at this time.

In the morning, Liu Fengzhen washed the dishes and was washing the clothes that her son had changed last night when someone knocked on the door.

They were two women in their 20s and 30s wearing long-sleeved dresses. Liu Fengzhen had seen them in the hospital the day before yesterday.

"Excuse me, what this is this?" The two of them, with their big bags and small bags full of net bags and a cardboard box, were all out of hand.

"Hello auntie, we came here to thank Wang Licheng. He saved our children."

Liu Fengzhen saw that the two of them were being polite and she let them into the living room without looking down on her expression. She poured two glasses of boiled water for the two of them in brand new glasses.

"Auntie doesn't have to be busy, let's sit down and leave."

The two were Fan Zeng's mother Liu Hongmei and Xue Kai's mother Zeng Lihua. Fan Zeng and Xue Kai were the two drowning children rescued by Wang Licheng.

Liu Fengzhen sat cautiously on the stool without speaking.

"We came here today for no other purpose, just to thank Wang Licheng. These things are a little bit of our family's thoughts."

"Licheng went to work or not at home, we can't ask for these things. You have already paid for the medical bills."

Liu Hongmei's husband Fan Yecheng specially asked them to come here at this time. The day before, Wang Licheng rejected Zeng Lihua's husband Xue Zhiyong's money in person. Fan Yecheng touched some of Wang Licheng’s personality. If Wang Licheng came here when he was at home, he might not accept these things, so they specially chose a time slotted for work.

They did not expect that the son would not accept it and even the mother would not accept it.

"Medical expenses are what we should have. We thank Wang Licheng for these things. We are not at ease if my aunt doesn't accept them!", Liu Hongmei is a member of the Women's Federation and usually deals with women a lot. The task of communicating with Wang Licheng's mother was entrusted to her.

Liu Fengzhen was originally a rural woman. After marrying Wang Licheng's father, she would only take her children to do housework and farming. Wang Licheng's father introduced her to work in the factory, and she worked for 17 years. She has lived for 50 years and rarely contacts strangers; she doesn't even know how to communicate with these high-ranking city people.

Hearing them say they were not at ease, she was a little at a loss.

"Auntie, take these things! We have somewhere else to go later."

Liu Fengzhen got up and watched them go, but didn't say a word.

She carried the things they brought to her room downstairs. Except for a bag of fruit, everything else was in jars. She had never seen it before and was illiterate. She didn't know what it was.

Even if she knew what it was, she wasn't ready to move it so she had to wait for her son to come back to show him.

She didn't even know if it was right to accept these things. The son should not blame her!

Her husband is gone, her three daughters are married and now her son is her only support.

She was lucky to be able to marry into the city back then. Because the younger brother in the family is still young, there is no need to rush to ask for money to marry a daughter-in-law. I just heard that there is a son of a family in the city who wants to marry a daughter-in-law but the betrothal gift is a little small.

Her mother thought that the city was better than the country and that having a daughter in the city would help her son in the future. In this way, Liu Fengzhen was married into the city.

Although the husband's family said they were from the county town, they also moved here from other places. They had no foundation and the homestead was bought later.

According to her mother-in-law, they spent most of their savings in order to buy the homestead. Later, several sons wanted to marry wives and the money was almost spent.

Her husband's two sisters-in-law are from the town and only the youngest daughter-in-law is from the countryside.

At that time, Wang Licheng's father was very old. The two brothers in the family spent almost all their savings on marrying a wife and they could not get much money for the betrothal gift.

Finally, Wang Licheng's father fell in love with Liu Fengzhen. The most important thing was that Liu Fengzhen's family doesn't want a lot of dowry gifts and Liu Fengzhen is the most outstanding in the few dowry gifts.

When she first married into the city, she was not used to it so she could only do as much as possible. At that time, the husband's family was not separated. She woke up early every day to make breakfast for the whole family.

Later when she became pregnant, the situation in this family gradually improved. Her mother-in-law is also slowly getting better. She didn't go to school and was illiterate. Many things were taught to her by her mother-in-law.

The house they live in now was built in 1979. When my father-in-law died in 1978, my mother-in-law divided the family. At that time, the uncle's family had the largest share of land, and the mother-in-law followed the uncle and the other brothers had no opinion. Until my mother-in-law passed away six years ago, the uncle sponsored the funeral and the second uncle's family and their family helped out.

The relationship between their sisters-in-law could still maintain a superficial harmony during the lifetime of the father-in-law and the mother-in-law. When my in-laws passed away one after another; I heard them speak ill of herself behind her back several times.

Because of her background in the countryside, she has always been looked down upon by them.

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