Reborn with a Cell Phone 2007

This orange tree was planted when the Ji family built a new house, when Ji Zhenhua was just in junior high school. Every year, the orange tree always produces a lot of sweet fruits. Ji Shumiao still remembers that when she was a child, when the oranges were ripe, she would sit on Ji Zhenhua's neck and reach out to pick the sweetest fruits on the branches.

Now this orange tree has just borne fruit. The thumb-sized dark green fruits sway gently with the movement of the tree roots.

Ji Zhenhua avoided the main root of the orange tree and dug with the hoe after another. After digging about half a meter, he heard a different sound when he dug with the hoe again.

There is something!

Ji Zhenhua and his wife looked at each other, both with joy in their eyes.

Ji Shumiao was equally excited, she really wanted to know what it was.

Soon, a rectangular object wrapped in layers of oilcloth appeared in the soil. It was much larger than the small box that Ji Shumiao thought it was.

Ji Zhenhua jumped into the pit and tried to carry the thing out, but he failed. He complained in a low voice: "What is that? It's so heavy."

Qin Rong looked around to make sure there was no one around, and whispered, "Why don't we take it apart here and see? What if we need to continue burying it here?"

That's right.

Ji Zhenhua began to peel off layer after layer of oilcloth, which was wrapped in several layers of plastic cloth, the kind used in vegetable greenhouses. It took him a long time to see the true appearance of the object inside - a one-foot wide black-bottomed mother-of-pearl makeup box.

Ji Zhenhua opened a drawer and quickly pushed it back. He was completely stunned and looked at Qin Rong stupidly, unable to close his open mouth.

Qin Rong was not much better—Oh my God, that flash of golden light just now, was it from a drawer of gold bars? !

"Guoguo!" Ji Shumiao pointed at the makeup box and said, "Yellow Guoguo!"

If you stay still any longer, you'll be discovered.

The couple recovered from their shock. Qin Rong jumped down into the pit and wanted to help lift the makeup box up, but Ji Zhenhua picked up the makeup box and ran into the house at great speed. Qin Rong hurriedly pulled Ji Shumiao to follow.

Emmm, suddenly I can move it.

Ji Zhenhua placed the makeup box on the old wooden table, then hurried back to the orange tree and filled the soil back up.

"Oh my God," Qin Rong's hands were shaking as she stroked the makeup box, "Oh my god, my grandma, my coat, my jacket, it shocked me and my great aunt."

Ji Shumiao: "..."

Gold can unleash a person’s potential, and even my mother’s rap talent has been ignited.

Ji Zhenhua came back with a hoe, bolted the door from the inside, rubbed his hands and came to the table: "Are you ready?"

Ji Shumiao raised his hands: "Ready~"

Ji Zhenhua: "Please reveal the secret, mom!"

Qin Rong took a few deep breaths and opened the compartments and drawers of the makeup box one by one. She was shaking more and more violently towards the end.

Gold bars, pairs of jade bracelets, jade Bodhisattvas, jade hairpins, gold hairpins inlaid with large gemstones of various colors, and a pair of gold and jade ruyi...

Although these things had become somewhat dull due to lack of maintenance, the scene of filling the entire table was still shocking. For the first time, Ji Shumiao's family of three had a concrete understanding of the four words "a house full of gold and jade".

Ji Zhenhua went to borrow a large backpack from a fellow villager, put the makeup box in the basket, went to the bamboo forest to dig some bamboo shoots, spread some bamboo shoot shells on the surface, and carried it back to the Qin family.

Before leaving, the couple took Ji Shumiao to burn a few incense sticks for the ancestors of the Ji family in the main hall and the yard.

They chose a less-traveled path to walk back to Qin's house. Halfway through the journey, Ji Shumiao pointed to a small red brick and cement bungalow not far away and said, "Brother Lang's house."

Qin Rong craned her neck to look around: "The house is well protected."

Ji Zhenhua sighed: "My brother-in-law's elder brother and sister-in-law are helping him look after him, so how can it not be good?"

The brother Lang that Ji Shumiao mentioned, whose full name is Ji Shulang, is the son of his aunt Qin Yun and uncle Ji Shiqian. It was fate. Uncle Ji Shiqian and Ji Zhenhua have known each other since they wore open-crotch pants. If you count the generations, Ji Zhenhua has to call him "uncle". Ji Zhenhua met Qin Rong because when his aunt and uncle were dating, they were both shy and embarrassed, so they both called "light bulbs" to accompany them to give them courage. After a while, Ji Zhenhua and Qin Rong fell in love, and thus had a love story.

It was noon when they returned to the Qin family. The family had lunch in harmony. In the afternoon, people came to chat from time to time. Qin Rong and Ji Zhenhua remained expressionless and even took some time to go to the town police station to inquire about the procedures for transferring their household registration.

Ji Shumiao did not go, as she was called away by her friends in the village to go fishing for lobsters. These girls were about her age, and they had played together before, so she basically remembered their names.

Tie one end of the thin line to a wooden stick and tie a small piece of chicken intestine to the other end and throw it into the water in the fish pond. Whether you can catch fish depends entirely on your interest.

"Yanzi, did you kill a chicken and eat it?"

"Well, Grandpa killed one for his birthday."

Ji Shumiao sat on a small stool nearby, holding her chin and listening to the girls chattering. She was old (mentally old), and she really didn't have the energy to participate in such a topic.

"That's great. My family hasn't eaten chicken for a long time. My grandma only buys pork once every three or four days, and each time she only buys a little bit for me and my two brothers to eat."

“I really want to eat meat every day!”

"I heard from my cousin that they have meat in their cafeteria every day, braised pork, sweet and sour spare ribs, beef, chicken legs, and hamburgers! They eat it every day!"

"Stop talking, my mouth is watering!"

"I want to go out and work too!" a girl named Haixia said loudly, "I will be in grade 6 soon. After I finish junior high school, I can go out and work to earn money!"

Ji Shumiao: "..."

In the previous life, these girls also went out to work so early. Some returned to their hometowns to get married and have children after three to five years, while others married far away. Ji Shumiao never came back after graduating from university, and gradually there was no news from these girls. He didn't know whether they were all living a stable and happy life.

However, choosing to work instead of studying for this reason is putting the cart before the horse.

"But, there are more delicious foods in university cafeterias." Ji Shumiao said, "The better the university, the more delicious foods there are. Also, after finishing junior high school, you can only work in a factory or as a waiter, which is hard and tiring. But it's different after going to university. You can be a doctor, teacher, scientist, and you can choose more jobs and see a wider world."

Some of these girls had never even been to the county town, and their knowledge of the outside world was limited to what they saw on TV and what adults told them. When they heard Ji Shumiao say this, they remembered that she had returned from Beijing.

"Miaomiao, what is Beijing like?"

"Beijing..." Ji Shumiao thought for a moment and said, "Beijing is the capital, it is the Beijing of all the people in the country. But in fact, Beijing is the Beijing of Beijingers, the Beijing of the rich."

It may seem too cruel to say this to a group of ten-year-old girls, but the lessons taught by real society are even crueler.

"When I first arrived in Beijing, I lived with my parents in an asbestos-tiled house. It was small and dark, without windows and no air permeability. It was worse than the houses in our village and even smaller than the main room of my grandparents' house." Ji Shumiao recalled, "In the summer, it was like a steamer. I couldn't sleep at all. There was no kitchen, so we could only cook outside on a wood stove. The eaves were very small, so when it rained, we had to cook under an umbrella..."

"Ah? It's so shabby, why do your parents want to go there?"

The Beijing described by Ji Shumiao was obviously far from what the girls imagined. They thought that as long as they went out to work, they could live the kind of life they saw on TV, with meat on every meal, endless beautiful clothes to wear, living in a bright and spacious house, and perhaps even driving a car.

"For a living." Ji Shumiao said helplessly, "When my mother first went there, she worked in a laundry shop and earned 1,200 yuan a month."

"So much!" Yan Zi exclaimed, "My parents only give grandma 100 yuan a month for living expenses, and your mother earns this much a month."

Ji Shumiao: "But do you know how much the clothes she washed are worth? One piece of clothing costs hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands. The winter in Beijing is so cold, her hands are covered with frostbite, swollen like carrots, but none of the clothes she washed are hers."

Ji Shumiao explained the principles he had learned in his previous life to these girls in a simple and easy-to-understand way. This afternoon, he caught two lobsters, but persuaded five girls who vowed to work after finishing junior high school.

Today's merits are complete.