Reborn to Strive

The sky was still pitch black when he awoke. Last night, Shi Zhen went to bed early, so he woke up rather early this morning. He got up, drew the bolt, opened the wooden door and went out. It was dark, and a little chilly, but everything was undoubtedly real.

    He had returned.

    On an impulse, Shi Zhen looked up at the heavens, wanting to shout for joy, but he couldn’t even begin to express his happiness.

    Taking a deep breath, the cold air hit his lungs and reminded Shi Zhen that right now the most urgent matter to solve was how to make money.

    He and Shi Xinghuo still needed to buy daily necessities. For example, a chamber pot.

    In this part of J City, family planning had been well implemented, and there were hardly any excess births in the village. But, according to Z Province regulations, if a family’s first child was a girl, they could have a second child, so many rural households had two children.

    But some whose firstborn was a daughter didn’t have a second child. On the one hand, no one could guarantee that the second child would be a son, and on the other hand, there was a lot of factory work in this region, and the factories all employed women. Since women could work, naturally they could support the family. Guan Baiyu’s foster parents had only a single daughter, while Guan Jianguo had a pair of daughters.

    Guan Jianguo’s daughters looked to be five or six years old, and were those two children who had been playing at the entrance yesterday. They had short hair, their round faces were tanned dark by the sun, and their dark irises stood out in stark contrast against the whites of their eyes. Altogether, they were incredibly adorable.

    Shi Zhen saw the door next door was open. When he went in to look for Guan Jianguo, those two darling girls were each holding a large bowl with both hands, drinking congee.

    People in this region drank congee for breakfast, and ate rice for lunch and dinner. But they weren’t prosperous, and cooked a single side dish at mealtime. Today, a large bowl of pickled vegetables sat on the table, and the whole family gathered around to eat their meal.

    “Uncle Guan, is there a worker recruitment post nearby?”

    Yesterday, when talking with Guan Jianguo, Shi Zhen had mentioned that he and his cousin came from a neighboring hamlet to look for work here, and to search for a relative. So, he wasn’t asking about work opportunities out of the blue.

    Guan Jianguo might have looked a bit fierce, but he was actually very friendly. “It’s no good to look for work. If you were women, you could head to the chemical fiber textile mill to inquire, but you’re men, and most factories aren’t interested . . . but you could do some unskilled labor.”

    There were still a lot of factories in this part of Anshan Town. In the past, these villages had modeled themselves after Huaxi Village in Jiangsu Province and had built factories in emulation. This hamlet had two rather large factories — one was the chemical fiber plant, and the other was the cement plant. But, factory worker recruitment was mostly aimed at women, and if they were short workers, they would have no issues filling the quota entirely from the local supply.

    Guan Jianguo’s wife had previously gone to work at the chemical fiber plant and was employed for several years. But, after she gave birth, she needed to nurse her babies, and her family didn’t want her to go back immediately, so someone else filled her spot. 

    As for men, the cement plant did employ male workers, but it was not easy to get in. Guan Jianguo had a friend who worked there, but he had asked a local public official to recommend him.

    Fortunately, unskilled laborers were always in demand. Guan Jianguo recalled an opportunity as he was speaking: “I know someone who also drives a tractor, and sells mud. He’s looking for someone to help dig, are you interested? However, he only needs one person.”

    “We’re interested.” Shi Zhen spoke without the slightest hesitation.

    Right now, he had not quite ¥30 left to his name. Calculating it out, it couldn’t even match the spending power of later generations’ ¥300. [China devalued the yuan in 2015, but in 1994, a yuan could go a long way.]

    This ‘selling mud’ consisted of digging clay and selling it to the cement plant.

    For this kind of work, you first needed to locate a clay deposit, and then laboriously excavate the clay and deliver it to the cement plant. It was a lot of work for the tractor driver to dig the clay all by himself. A whole day’s work wouldn’t yield much profit, so he wanted to hire someone to help dig. That tractor driver had originally hired his brother-in-law to help him dig, and paid ¥10 for a day’s work. But the brother-in-law was too lazy. Not only did the tractor driver have to drive his tractor to his mother in law’s house to wait for the guy to get out of bed, after a day of digging, the brother-in-law hadn’t even dug as much clay as he could dig by himself.

    He couldn’t stand it, and wanted to find a replacement.

    Shi Zhen recalled that in his last life, he had been an unskilled laborer in J Municipality making ¥10 a day. That wage was really high, but the work was extremely tiring — the brother-in-law might have loafed on the job, but they definitely hadn’t had that luxury.

    Shi Zhen told Guan Jianguo that he and Shi Xinghuo would first go over together. After familiarizing themselves with the work, Shi Xinghuo would do the job by himself.

    With Shi Xinghuo’s situation, he could only work manual labor, but today’s construction sites were not as safe as in later times, and had many hidden safety hazards. Shi Zhen did not dare let Shi Xinghuo work on a construction site. It would be better to simply let Shi Xinghuo work a simple labor job like digging clay.

    As for himself, Shi Zhen would look for another job.

    Guan Jianguo let Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo finish drinking their congee before he took them over to that tractor driver’s house.

    The tractor driver was about the same age as Guan Jianguo, and was in the same situation as Guan Jianguo. He worked hard, saved money, and bought a tractor to make a living. Hearing Guan Jianguo’s introduction of Shi Zhen and his cousin, he was willing to employ them, but he told them: “Even if you are two people, I still only pay ¥10 altogether for one day’s work, and if you work slow, I’ll pay less.”

    Shi Zhen readily agreed.

    In his past life, when Guan Baiyu had introduced him to Guan Jianguo, Guan Jianguo had already stopped driving a tractor, and drove a station wagon instead. When Shi Zhen had approached Guan Jianguo to ask about renting a room, he had actually already thought of using Guan Jianguo’s social connections. Letting Shi Xinghuo seek work moving goods was all part of his plan. Of course, if he couldn’t find other work temporarily, he could also dig clay.

    Digging clay and loading goods were similar kinds of work.

    Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo sat on the tractor. When they reached the excavation site, they put their heads down and got to work.

    In their hamlet, they were accustomed to a life of labor, so even though they looked thin, they had plenty of physical strength. Even though Shi Zhen had earned plenty of money in his previous life, he actually did not enjoy it much. At this moment, even though he was doing physical labor, he didn’t mind at all.

    With the two of them plus the tractor driver all hard at work, it didn’t take long for the three of them to load the tractor with clay, leaving the guy a bit dazed by the speed. Previously, when he and his brother in law had worked, it took the whole morning just to fill one load.

    Once the tractor was loaded, he had to drive to the cement plant to deliver the clay.

    While he was driving to the plant, Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo didn’t slack off, but used mattocks to continue excavating.

    When the driver returned, they shoveled clay onto the tractor once again.

    When selling clay, the more you can sell, the better. Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo were particularly hardworking, and not only did that person take them to his house to feed them lunch, but he also paid them ¥15 at the end of the day.  Afterall, he had made a much larger profit today than he was used to.  As far as lunch went . . . he was a rural person. Except for driving the tractor and tilling the land, people today didn’t eat communally like in times before. [This is referring to the Mao era canteens.] They all did their utmost to raise crops on their fields, and the produce was sufficient to provide for their meals.

    When the guy gave them ¥15, Shi Zhen accepted it.

    While he and that guy were working, they talked the whole time in the local dialect. Shi Zhen asked about all kinds of things, among them Guan Baiyu’s situation.

    These years had not treated Guan Baiyu well.

    Guan Baiyu’s foster father and his biological father used to fight when they were small, so their relationship was not good. When Guan Baiyu’s father had grown up in the Guan Family, they had received money to raise him. That amount of money in the 50s and 60s was not a small amount for the Guan Family, and it had saved their lives. Guan Baiyu’s foster father was treated poorly in contrast, so naturally the relationship between his father and biological father was terrible.

    Later, when Guan Baiyu was brought back, though the foster father added him to their hukou, he was unwilling to provide for him. And when his own daughter was born, he was even less willing to acknowledge Guan Baiyu.

    But in the eyes of the villagers, he had already done his duty. After all, Guan Baiyu had grown up just fine, and wasn’t forced to work.

    He might be alive, but he didn’t get enough to eat. Guan Baiyu also needed clothes and shoes, needed to buy school supplies, etc. If the family didn’t give him any money, then he couldn’t buy any of it. So all this time, Guan Baiyu had always worn other people’s cast offs.

    When the tractor driver talked about Guan Baiyu, he was sympathetic, but didn’t think the foster parents had done anything wrong.

    Nor did Shi Zhen bear any grudge against Guan Baiyu’s foster parents. In the last life when Guan Baiyu interacted with his foster father, though they weren’t close, there was no animosity in their dealings with each other. And, when Guan Baiyu later followed Shi Zhen, the man and wife had never pestered him for money. While Guan Baiyu was attending high school, they had lost money raising chickens, and afterwards concentrated on tilling the land, relying on the income from selling vegetables to slowly improve their livelihood. After Guan Baiyu’s foster sister finished junior high, she stopped attending school, and studied hairdressing, later opening a hair salon and making a decent income.

    At the time of Shi Zhen’s death, the foster sister had already moved her hair salon from Anshan Town to Changxi District in order for her son, who had just passed the entrance exam for Changxi High School, to more easily get to class. 

    That night, Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo got out the food they brought from the mountains. They hadn’t yet finished eating the rice noodles and preserved hare meat.

    After they ate, Shi Zhen looked at Shi Xinghuo: “Ge, I’m going out for a bit. Stay here and wait for me.”

    He needed to find Guan Baiyu and chat with him a bit.

    After seeing Guan Baiyu at midday yesterday, he had constantly been pondering how he might get in contact with him. Now, he had thought of a good plan.

    Shi Zhen knocked on Guan Baiyu’s door.

    Guan Baiyu quickly opened it, and looked at Shi Zhen in bewilderment.

    Shi Zhen faced him with a smile, “You’re Guan Baiyu, right? I’m your cousin.”

Note from the translator:
Now that Shi Zhen and Guan Baiyu have met again, I’ll post one final chapter this week, before slowing to a regular pace of a couple chapters a week. If I manage to build up a good cache of translated chapters, then I’ll increase the output, but I also have to do my other job and make $$.

Chapter Notes:

If you want to know why they’d dig up and sell clay to the cement plant, here’s more info on how cement is manufactured: https://www.cement.org/cement-concrete/how-cement-is-made