Chapter 40: Sheng Xiuying Gets Married
Sheng Wanyan shared everything that had happened over the dinner table that evening. When Mother Sheng heard the story, she was so furious that she slammed her chopsticks down and refused to eat another bite.
“Where does that girl get the nerve to have such a massive face?” Mother Sheng fumed. “Her own brothers and sisters didn’t prepare a single inch of red cloth for her wedding, yet she has the audacity to march all the way out here to demand it from her city cousin?”
“And she actually expects you to hand over your brand-new bicycle just to make her bridal procession look more impressive! Why doesn’t she demand a bicycle from her own siblings? Huh?”
The mood at the table instantly turned sour. One thing was certain: Sheng Xiuying’s family would definitely send them a wedding invitation. After all, the extended Sheng family was quite small; Grandpa Sheng only had one older brother, Great-Uncle Sheng. One branch lived in the countryside and the other in the city, so the distance between them wasn’t far at all.
If their branch refused to attend the wedding, the gossiping villagers would surely claim that Grandpa Sheng’s family had let their city jobs go to their heads, looking down on their rural relatives. At the end of the day, they shared the same ancestors. Even if you broke the bones, the tendons still connected the flesh; blood was thicker than water, and they had to show proper respect for the family name.
“Well… it’s probably because her own brothers and sisters don’t have a bicycle or any red cloth to give her…” Father Sheng chimed in carefully.
Mother Sheng shot him a fierce glare. “Shut your mouth.”
Sheng Wanyan couldn’t help but stifle a laugh. Her father was entirely right—Sheng Xiuying’s siblings truly possessed neither a bicycle nor luxury fabrics. He had simply spoken a bit too bluntly, ruthlessly exposing the stark poverty of Great-Uncle Sheng’s household.
“I’ll tell you what,” Grandma Sheng spoke up, her tone calm but calculating. “Tomorrow morning, take your bicycle and ride out to the Hongqi Commune. Go have a nice, long chat with the local aunties out there.”
Hearing her mother-in-law’s suggestion, Mother Sheng’s eyes lit up with instant admiration. Grandma Sheng truly was a master of strategy. She knew exactly how to navigate neighborhood gossip and precisely how to expose Sheng Xiuying’s greedy, wishful thinking to the public.
As for how the local matchmakers and farm wives chose to spread the news once they heard it? Well, that would have absolutely nothing to do with the city Shengs.
The next morning, Mother Sheng mounted her bicycle and set off for the commune well before sunrise. Cycling from the city to the countryside took roughly an hour, whereas walking the same distance would easily take three.
By the time she arrived, the local neighborhood aunties were already gathering to gossip under the massive shade trees near the commune’s Supply and Marketing Cooperative. Mother Sheng walked into the shop to buy a few small items, and it wasn’t long before she casually blended into the crowd of women resting outside.
“Sister, are you talking about that Sheng Xiuying from the Hongqi Second Production Team? The one who’s getting married soon?” one of the aunties asked, leaning in.
“I’m not entirely sure if she’s from the Second Team, but she’s definitely the one getting married,” Mother Sheng replied vaguely. She took great care not to reveal that she was actually a close relative of the bride.
After all, she had only crossed paths with these country women once or twice; who would possibly recognize her unfamiliar face? Even if someone managed to figure out her identity down the road, she wasn’t the least bit afraid. Sheng Xiuying had targeted her daughter first. As a mother, what was wrong with unleashing a little calculated revenge to protect her child? When the full truth came out, the public would only praise her for being a fiercely protective mother.
“Oh, it’s her, alright! That’s definitely Sheng Xiuying from Team Two,” another auntie chimed in, tutting loudly. “I always thought she was a decent, hardworking girl. I never imagined she’d be shameless enough to demand her city cousin provide her bridal dowry!”
“And the moment she opened her mouth, she demanded a premium bolt of red cloth and a brand-new bicycle! Heavens above!”
“Even biological parents can’t always afford to give their daughters luxuries like that when they wed! How does she have the nerve to demand them from a cousin?”
“Exactly! They aren’t even from the same household, they just happen to share a great-grandfather.”
“Hmph, it’s a good thing I never followed through on introducing her to my son. Otherwise, she would have brought endless drama and financial ruin into our household.”
“Right? You really can’t judge a book by its cover these days.”
Listening to the aunties feed off each other’s outrage, the corners of Mother Sheng’s mouth curled into a satisfied smile. Her mission thoroughly accomplished, she quietly slipped away from the gossiping circle, mounted her bicycle, and pedaled back to her factory shift.
In less than twenty-four hours, the scandal swept through the entire commune like wildfire. Once the story broke, every single housewife across the various production brigades had a field day. The juicy rumors passed from mouth to mouth until they landed squarely on the doorsteps of the Hongqi Second Production Team.
Meanwhile, Sheng Xiuying was trapped at home, blissfully counting down the days until her wedding. Her future in-laws had agreed to a handsome betrothal gift of one hundred yuan, and she was already fantasizing about how she would spend every single cent of her personal fund.
However, before her grand delusions could even take root, her fiancé’s family marched into her courtyard, flanked by an angry mob of relatives. They demanded a full reckoning, shouting that she was an unmarried girl with disgusting morals who had brought immense public shame upon their respectable household.
Sheng Xiuying wept and begged, using every ounce of her strength to pacify her furious fiancé. In the end, the groom’s family delivered a brutal ultimatum: the hundred-yuan betrothal gift was officially slashed by half, down to fifty yuan. If her family refused the terms, the engagement was canceled on the spot.
In their village, if a marriage was called off at the eleventh hour under a cloud of scandal, the shame would taint the entire lineage, severely damaging the marriage prospects of every sibling and cousin for generations to come.
Faced with public ruin, Great-Aunt Sheng didn’t hesitate. She instantly accepted the downgraded fifty-yuan offer, and before Sheng Xiuying could even blink, the old matriarch pocketed the cash, refusing to give her a single copper coin.
“Our household hasn’t officially split yet!” Great-Aunt Sheng barked, glaring at her granddaughter. “You actually thought you could hoard that betrothal money all for yourself? Do you think I’m dead?!”
The old woman launched into a fierce tirade, declaring that this money would be locked away in the family chest to help fund her precious great-grandson’s future wedding. Sheng Xiuying was just a worthless girl; she was entirely too young and foolish to be playing greedy financial games under her roof.
Sheng Xiuying’s parents stood by with lowered heads, not daring to utter a single syllable of protest. If they angered the old matriarch, their daily lives in the shared house would become an absolute living hell. At the very least, they currently had enough grain to fill their bellies. In the countryside, as long as a traditional family remained legally unified, every single cent of income had to be surrendered to the elders.
The truth was, every unmarried girl in Great-Uncle Sheng’s household desperately envied Sheng Wanyan’s comfortable city lifestyle. But when you were born into the wrong branch of a family, no matter how much you coveted someone else’s luck, it would never belong to you. Their own fighting spirits had long since been ground into dust by the harsh realities of farm labor.
With the crisis neatly resolved by Mother Sheng’s rumors, Sheng Xiuying was left harboring a deep, venomous hatred for Sheng Wanyan. Yet, she was keenly aware that Wanyan had been entirely serious about cutting all ties with her. She didn’t dare march into the city to settle the score, terrified that any further drama would completely destroy her remaining engagement.
She had fought tooth and nail to secure a relationship with a salesman from the commune’s cooperative. If this marriage collapsed, her ticket out of poverty would vanish forever. She comforted herself with the thought that once she married, moved to the commune, and began receiving her husband’s steady monthly salary, Sheng Wanyan would bitterly regret being so stingy.
Sheng Xiuying’s wedding took place one week later. Mother Sheng strictly forbade Wanyan from attending, fearing that the desperate bride might try to pull some underhanded stunt to salvage her reputation at her daughter’s expense. Instead, Mother and Father Sheng attended as the sole representatives of their branch, ensuring the family maintained proper face. Grandpa and Grandma Sheng were simply too elderly to endure the jarring, day-long bus ride over rough country roads. The old couple had initially wanted to pay their respects to their ancestral hometown, but the sheer physical toll of the journey made them reconsider.
It worked out for the best. Since Father and Mother Sheng had formally requested a day of leave from their factories to make the trip on their new bicycles, no one in the village could accuse their branch of neglecting their familial duties.
When they arrived, Great-Uncle Sheng’s family welcomed the villagers to the wedding feast, but the meager spread only made the guests laugh behind their hands. With more than a dozen hungry people crammed onto each bench, the only substantial dish offered was a watery cabbage stew garnished with a tiny scattering of minced pork. The remaining platters held nothing but coarse cornmeal buns, basic stir-fried greens, a cold vegetable appetizer, and a thin wild-grass soup. There were only five dishes on the table in total, and guests literally had to fish through the broth just to find a single shred of meat.
Father and Father Sheng presented a traditional red envelope containing a polite gift of two yuan. Sheng Xiuying had been dying to smugly flaunt her new husband in front of her cousin, but when she scanned the courtyard and realized Sheng Wanyan hadn’t even bothered to show up, a heavy wave of frustration and defeat washed over her.
As Mother Sheng observed the groom from across the courtyard, she noted that while he stood just over 1.7 meters tall and possessed a refined, scholarly appearance, his eyes betrayed a blatant, ugly disdain for the rural villagers around him. She silently predicted that Sheng Xiuying had chosen horribly, and her future life would be incredibly bleak.
Mother Sheng had done her homework on the groom’s household. It was a massive, overcrowded family, and the matriarch was notoriously malicious. The mother-in-law routinely abused, scolded, and starved her daughters-in-law to keep them in line. And while her youngest son held a coveted position as a salesman for the commune’s cooperative, he was a spineless mama’s boy who obeyed his mother’s every whim.
The groom’s mother was widely recognized across the entire commune as the ultimate nightmare mother-in-law. Mother Sheng could only shake her head, wondering what kind of madness had possessed Sheng Xiuying to willingly leap headfirst into such a miserable trap.
