National Tide 1980.

Chapter 416 Mirage
Some people say that emotional distress comes from people's childishness and irrationality.

This is not the case.

Because even mature, rational emotions can have distress.

The most realistic example is Mi Xiaoran who married overseas.

There is no doubt that compared with Ning Weimin who doesn't take her seriously, Zhao Hanyu who loves her deeply is the real good match.

What's more, Zhao Hanyu's excellent family background can also create convenient conditions for her to study abroad.

So now that he finds out that his unrequited love is wrong, Mi Xiaoran can resolutely turn around and leave, and spend his life hand in hand with another person who cherishes him more. This is definitely a very wise decision.

But I have to say that many things in this world look beautiful.

A distant foreign country will not be a perfect paradise after all.

When Mi Xiaoran, with the expectation of a happy life, carried several boxes of luggage, boarded a flight to a foreign country, and came to New York, the most developed city in the United States.

And become a new member of a Chinese family with a small fortune, entrusting everything to those rather strange in-laws.

The bitterness and joy, as well as the cultural differences and conflicts of ideas experienced, I am afraid that only she can experience it and explain it clearly.

Mi Xiaoran will never deny that when she first arrived here, she had a very good first impression of the United States.

In fact, she was thrilled from the moment she got on the plane and got close to the porthole.

During the long journey of more than ten hours, she did not dare to sleep at all, and her hands were always entangled with Zhao Hanyu.

Because she was afraid it was a dream.

Especially when the plane finally landed at JFK.

Just looking down from the porthole, she could feel her heart pounding.

You know, it was just when night fell, and there was a sea of ​​colorful lights in front of her eyes.

It is exactly like the description in the literary works, as wide as the sea, as brilliant as the bright starry sky.

It is very different from the domestic lighting situation at most.

Think about it, for a person who sees such a difference for the first time, can he not be shocked?

What Mi Xiaoran saw was an unforgettable scene in her life.

Just like the Italians and Irish who came to New York by boat back then, they couldn't help admiring and worshiping the Statue of Liberty.

She also regards the sea of ​​lights she saw in the sky as a symbol of the beginning of her American dream.

On this day, it was Zhao Hanyu's elder brother Zhao Hanzhang who drove to pick them up in person.

When Mi Xiaoran got into the luxurious Cadillac, she was first surprised by the advanced equipment of the car and the comfort of the seats.

She has been in a car several times in Beijing, but it feels completely different compared to a "Cadillac".

Most of the cars in the capital do not have air-conditioning and can only listen to the radio, and even the legs are uncomfortable.

And this kind of real high-end car gives people the feeling that it is large, stable, comfortable and smooth, and it also emits general fragrance from time to time.

When the car started to drive on a smooth highway, Long Island in New York was like a mirage, with flickering lights, and the whole body was displayed in front of Mi Xiaoran's eyes, which opened her eyes even more.

Needless to say, the economic level of the United States in the early 80s was of course embarrassingly different from that of our republic in the early days of reform and opening up.

This year, the average annual income of Chinese people was 740 yuan, while the average annual income of the United States was [-] US dollars in the same period.

This year, 99.5% of households in the United States owned at least one TV set, more than 90% of households had color TV sets, and more than 50% of households had two or more TV sets.

On average, every three people own a car.

To be honest, the Western world represented by the United States has already entered a post-industrial society.

On the other hand, our Republic is still in the difficult trek of the industrialization process.

So whether it is a city running at high speed, busy American citizens, skyscrapers, or streets full of good and famous cars.

It is still a three-dimensional intersection highway with four or five floors up and down, and there are endless car lights on the congested road.

Those were things that Mi Xiaoran couldn't even imagine, so she was naturally dazzled and amazed.

After that, when I came to the Zhao family's villa in Long Island, I was under the square red bricks and green tiles.

The vast garden of the Zhao family, the fully automatic garage, the huge living room with a fireplace, the servants serving the housework, the bathroom with a bathtub, and the sixteen-course feast of delicacies from mountains and seas made Mi Xiaoran feel a brand new feeling. Mental blast.

In her heart, perhaps only the big landlord Liu Wencai could have such a house.

In this way, when she was delighted to find that Zhao Hanyu's parents treated her with a very kind attitude, they seemed to have a good impression of her.

Although life is still full of many unknowns, she is already convinced that happiness just falls from the sky.

Your beautiful life is about to start from here, from this moment.

It's a pity that as time passed, her thoughts quickly changed.

Because this is a Hakka town after all, and she lives in her husband's house.

In the situation of relying on others, there are too many obstacles and restrictions in all aspects that make her uncomfortable and difficult to integrate, but she has to wrong herself.

First of all, there are many inconveniences in life.

As we all know, in the United States, buses often only run in urban areas, and there are no buses if you leave the urban areas a little further.

Even if there is, there is only one bus every one or two hours.

So if you don't have a car in the United States, or you don't know how to drive, it means that you are missing a leg, which is extremely inconvenient.

However, if you want to get a driver's license, in addition to learning to drive, you must first have a legal identity.

In Mi Xiaoran's situation, she filled out the marriage registration form and handed it over to the Zhao family's lawyer.

It will take three months to get a temporary green card, and one year to get a formal right of abode.

Of course, also because of identity issues, it is impossible to work part-time to earn money without a work card.

In this way, the only thing Mi Xiaoran can do is to go to a language school to learn the language and improve her English.

But unfortunately, since Zhao's family is in a wealthy area of ​​Long Island, the place where she goes to school is also far away.

Not only is it inconvenient to go back and forth, but Zhao Hanyu needs to pick him up, which will waste a lot of his time.

The key is that most Chinese in the United States still speak Teochew and Cantonese.

Originally, there were not many teachers who knew Chinese in the language school. Even if there were, they would not speak Mandarin, and they would write in traditional characters.

This is even the case with the Zhao family.

So Mi Xiaoran is almost at odds with each other.

Not only did she have to supplement her English, but she also had to learn Cantonese frantically. The progress was still slow, and she was extremely strenuous.Wouldn't it be uncomfortable?

But what is even more uncomfortable is the inferiority in status.

This is not an exaggeration at all.

Although all Americans hate the word "social class" and keep saying that there is no class difference in their country, they are a paradise of democracy and equality.

But money dominates everything and the superiority of white supremacy has always coexisted.

Therefore, no matter from the perspective of economy or skin color, people who come here from the Republic are all at the bottom and are the least respected.

Mi Xiaoran had just arrived at the language school, and felt the taste of it.

Because wherever she went, whenever she saw that she looked like an oriental, the long-haired foreigners would always ask her.

"Japanese? Or Singaporean?" Once answered "NO!".

The other party will continue to guess persistently, "Is that from Hong Kong City? Haha... from Baodao..."

"NO! CHINA!",
The other party suddenly turned pale with shock, "How is it possible? Isn't your country very poor and the quality of civilization is not high? How could you come from the mainland of China?"

What made Mi Xiaoran even more sad and powerless was seeing people order dishes like this everywhere.

This situation is the same even in the Zhao family.

Just because Mi Xiaoran's family has no possibility of giving her financial help, the Zhao family will always need to feed her back.

The eldest sister-in-law Lin Yuzhen's natal family is a small boss who makes plastic toys.

No matter how hard Mi Xiaoran tries to please her in-laws, she can't compare to her sister-in-law's status.

Like every important matter in the family, the parents-in-law would only discuss it with the eldest daughter-in-law, and Mi Xiaoran didn't even know about it.

Even the servants at home only regard Lin Yuzhen as the master of the house.

In their eyes, Mi Xiaoran is just a lucky mainland girl who married into the Zhao family.

Under the superficial politeness of the servants, the perfunctory and contempt in their hearts cannot be concealed, and they will show up from time to time.

So the only thing Mi Xiaoran can do is to wait, to wait until he can do nothing, to get his legal status.

Only then will these troublesome situations of hers be resolved, and everything can start again.

Unfortunately, she miscalculated again.

Soon, the identity was obtained, and she also went to take the driver's license test, and her in-laws even bought her an old second-hand car.

But at this time, her parents-in-law urged her and Zhao Hanyu to have a child again.

Thinking that her going to school has no practical significance, it is better to help the sister-in-law manage the housework at home from now on, and concentrate on caring for her husband and raising her children.

This is what really scares Mi Xiaoran.

She didn't want to travel all the way to the United States, just to be a free nanny and give birth to many children for the Zhao family.

From now on, I will have no freedom at all, and I will depend on the Zhao family's eyes for every move I make.

The greater danger is still a few years later, women will get old, and men who are not old will get bored.

Once she loses Zhao Hanyu's affection, she doesn't know what capital she still has to pursue happiness.

But she eats and drinks for nothing and uses other people's money for nothing, so what right does she have to object?
So I can only agree first, smile and perfunctory, and slowly wait for the opportunity to change my life.

For this reason, she inevitably had a kind of sadness in her heart that she had sold herself at a price, and there was no way back.

In the last three months of 1982, her life in the Zhao family completely lost its fun, as if it was a strange planet.

She was very homesick, eager to return to the safe and warm little bed at home in the capital.

At this time, she had only been in the United States for three months.

She knew very well that what was in front of her was not months, but years.

So she was afraid - facing the cruel distance, and the time that was more cruel than the distance.

Finally, time passed day by day, my language skills improved, and I made more friends.

This made Mi Xiaoran's life in the United States a little more convenient and he got used to it, but the pain of homesickness did not get better at all.

Because during this period of time, she watched the morning news and evening news of the three major channels, but only saw two news about the mainland of the motherland.

And she misses not just the caress of her family, the camaraderie of her friends, but the whole culture—everything about her.Cultural isolation goes far beyond language barriers.

She wants to understand, accept and adapt, but she instinctively refuses and resists.

This kind of feeling may be difficult for people who have not experienced it personally.

Even because of the international long-distance, the special telephone in the telephone building must be used to connect.

Mi Xiaoran's only way to relieve her missing family members is to write family letters that report good news but not bad ones.

Then there is daze and cranky thinking.

Gradually, thoughts and longings turned into a subconscious mind.

She often dreams about relatives and friends, and when she wakes up in the morning, she feels empty in her heart.

Perhaps this made her develop the habit of rushing to the shower room as soon as she got up, as if to wash away all the emptiness and confusion with water, and then picked up her schoolbag and went to the classroom.

But fortunately, her husband, Zhao Hanyu, who loves her deeply, brought her another opportunity to welcome a new life.

Under her constant and deliberate inducement, Zhao Hanyu put aside his interest in playing and didn't plan to help his family manage the business. He started looking for a job.

Finally, the day before New Year's Eve, with his excellent academic qualifications, he got an employment notice from a financial loan company with an annual salary of [-] US dollars.

So on New Year's Eve, at eight o'clock in the evening of New Year's Eve in Beijing and seven o'clock in the morning of New York's New Year's Eve,
It is very different from the family of three, Master Mi, Aunt Mi and Mi Xiaohui, watching the color TV and eating New Year’s Eve dinner.

Mi Xiaoran, who lives in New York, doesn't care about missing her family at all, and is trying her best to pester her husband Zhao Hanyu on the bed, asking for her New Year's gift.

"Please, dear, after today, can you tell your family? No matter what, you must stick to our decision, okay..."

"Okay, okay, don't worry, no matter what, I will definitely take you with me when I go to work in Manhattan. I also hope to become a two-person world as soon as possible. I won't lie to you, I have already started to let the agent find the house... "

Zhao Hanyu's answer reassured Mi Xiaoran somewhat.

But to be honest, this Spring Festival is probably the most difficult one for her.

Because the Zhao family will never let them live according to their own will...

(End of this chapter)