Chapter Forty-One: Formal Proposal of Marriage

The next day, as the rooster crowed for the third time, Caiyun had already prepared breakfast. "Yulan, get up quickly and eat your breakfast."

"It's not dawn yet, let me sleep a little longer." Yulan rubbed her eyes, stretched lazily, and yawned, lingering in bed and refusing to get up.

"Sleep, sleep, sleep! Everyone else has already gone down to the fields to work. The season waits for no one, hurry up!"

After breakfast, just as the eastern sky took on a fish-belly white hue, Caiyun brought Yuqiang and Yulan to the seedling paddy. "Today I'm going to teach you how to pull seedlings."

"I already know how to pull seedlings!" Before her mother could finish, Yulan took off her shoes, rolled up her trouser legs, and waded into the mud to start working.

Seeing that Yulan was working with practiced form, Caiyun was surprised. "Who did you learn from?"

"Second Aunt," Yulan answered crisply.

"Your second aunt certainly knows how to put people to work."

"Second Aunt said Second Uncle always helps our family out, so she wants me to help her with her work from now on too."

"You can go, but you should have told me first."

Yuqiang thought pulling seedlings was very simple and required no learning. Stepping into the paddy, he imitated his younger sister's movements, grasped a handful of seedlings, and gave a sharp yank—the seedlings snapped in half.

Caiyun called Yuqiang over. "When pulling seedlings, your hands must stay close to the surface of the paddy mud. Grasp the base of the seedlings and pull them toward you. Don't pull too many at once. After pulling them up, you must wash the mud off the roots. This reduces the weight when carrying them and makes it easier to separate the seedlings during transplanting. Once washed clean, just tie them into bundles with straw." As she spoke, Caiyun demonstrated the technique for Yuqiang.

After Yuqiang learned the method, he could only use one hand to pull and gather, making him very slow. Watching his mother's hands constantly reach out and pull back, her fingers nimbly hooking the seedlings, skillfully pulling and dragging them until her hands were full, then bringing her hands together and binding them with straw to instantly form a "seedling bundle," he felt envious.

Yuqiang wanted to try doing it with both hands like his mother, attacking from left and right. He grabbed a handful of seedlings with his right hand and pulled backward, but when he stretched his left hand forward, he failed to maintain his balance and tumbled headfirst straight into the muddy water. He knelt there on both knees, dazed for a long time, unable to react. Yulan burst into uncontrollable laughter. "Mom, look! Yuqiang is kowtowing to you!"

Caiyun took a look and smiled. "Then you kowtow too!"

Yulan asked, "Do I get paid?"

"I'll put it on your tab!" Caiyun's face blossomed into a wide smile.

After lunch, Caiyun's whole family set out to transplant the rice seedlings. Yujun ran ahead completely bare-bottomed, running a few steps before turning back to shout to his mother, "Mom, hurry up!"

"Stop making trouble, go right back!"

"Mom, once the seedlings are planted, how long before they grow into rice?"

"More than a hundred days. Why do you ask that?"

"Once there's rice, we can eat rice bowls every day."

"All you ever think about is eating."

Caiyun had seven mu of land in Xichong, which was the main rice-producing area of Wangjiayu. A crisscross network of ditches and field ridges divided the area into individual paddy fields that gleamed like scattered mirrors on the earth, sparkling under the sunlight so that travelers walking along the ridges could clearly see their own reflections.

Arriving at the muddy field designated for transplanting, Yujun tugged at his mother's clothes. "Mom, will you teach me how to transplant seedlings?"

"Look, what is that over there?"

"Those are ducks."

"They're coming over to eat the rice seedlings. Go chase them away."

Delighted, Yujun immediately rushed toward the ducks, chasing them all the way to a small nearby drainage ditch. Still not satisfied, he jumped right into the water to keep chasing them.

Yuqiang and Yulan followed their mother to learn how to transplant seedlings. Caiyun first explained the basic principles to them: "Four limbs toward the ground and back toward the sky, hold the seedlings and face the paddy; the left hand separates the seedlings while the right hand plants them, keeping vertical columns and horizontal rows."

"Mom, what you just said sounds a lot like the *Seedling Transplanting Poem* our teacher taught us."

"What are the lines?"

"Holding green seedlings, I plant them full across the field, looking down, I see the sky mirrored in the water. True purity is found only in the path of enlightenment, and stepping backward turns out to be moving forward."

"Do you know what it means?"

"Forgot."

"Ask your teacher when you get back, and then tell me."

Next, Caiyun demonstrated for them: her hands danced up and down like dragonflies skimming the water, rhythmically inserting clusters of seedlings into the mud. The newly planted seedlings stood upright, arranged in straight horizontal and vertical lines like soldiers lined up for inspection.

"When transplanting, your hand movements must be coordinated. The left hand is responsible for teasing and separating the seedlings, while the right hand receives them. Your thumb, index, and middle fingers must press together, grasping the base of the seedlings and inserting them vertically into the mud. The depth of insertion should be about two centimeters, and the distance between plants in both directions should be about eight centimeters. At the same time, your feet must cooperate closely; every two rows you finish planting, you must step backward in time." Caiyun explained while providing hands-on instruction.

As the old saying goes, "Rice is delicious, but seedlings are hard to plant." Transplanting was not as simple as pulling seedlings; it looked easy but was difficult to execute.

Yuqiang held a few seedlings and gestured a few times, but always felt his hands and feet refused to obey his brain. He either planted them too deep or too shallow, and his rows looked like writhing earthworms—crooked and winding. Or his hands failed to coordinate, so separating and handing over the seedlings lagged behind the planting, and his backward steps were uncoordinated, and so on.

Yulan also felt that the seedlings in her hands had a mind of their own, being planted crookedly and out of alignment, with some even floating on the water's surface.

Under their mother's patient guidance, the two gradually figured out the logic, grasped the basic techniques, and slowly grew accustomed to the work.

"Mom! Mom!..." Yujun cried out in distress from the drainage ditch nearby.

"Yulan, go over and see what's wrong with your younger brother."

Presently, Yulan pulled Yujun over by the hand. "Mom, a leech has crawled into younger brother's belly button."

"What did you say?" Caiyun didn't seem to hear clearly.

Yulan repeated it.

Curious upon hearing this, Yuqiang ran over to take a look. Caiyun told Yuqiang that in such situations, one must not pull it forcibly, or the leech would easily snap and leave its head inside.

Caiyun gently and repeatedly patted the area around his belly button with her hand, but the leech simply refused to come out, and other methods proved ineffective.

Seeing that Uncle Zhao nearby was resting on the ridge and smoking a cigarette, Yuqiang ran over and begged for the cigarette butt. After taking a few puffs from it, he pressed the burning ember against the leech a few times. Shortly after, Yuqiang pinched the leech and gave it a gentle tug, and it slid right out.

"Sister Zhang, we've come to help you plant seedlings." Liu Yunfeng and Wang Honglei waded into the field, picked up seedling bundles, and prepared to plant.

"Have you finished transplanting your own fields?" Caiyun asked.

Yunfeng replied, "We have very little land, we're all done."

"Thank you for helping out. Yuqiang, Yulan, you two go ahead and plant over there."

Yuqiang was already exhausted, his whole body aching with soreness, and this was only the very beginning; he had no idea when all this land would ever be finished. He was overjoyed to see Yunfeng come over to help, but the moment he saw Wang Honglei enter the paddy, a sudden wave of nausea washed over him. Hearing his mother's words, he didn't move an inch, and only Yulan, who was standing closest to her mother, stood up.

At that moment, Honglei said, "Yulan, come with me to the front, alright?"

"Okay! Thank you, Uncle." Yulan was overjoyed at the arrival of reinforcements.

Caiyun continued talking with Yunfeng. "Little sister, does Honglei treat you well?"

"He treats me quite well, it's just that his temper is a bit hasty."

"Well, men all have a bit of a temper. As long as he treats you well and you like him, that's what matters."

"He has a good heart and treats my two children very well. That's what brings me comfort."

"Your fields are too small; you could open up a few mu of wasteland on the western mountain and grow some dry-land crops."

"Can we do that?"

"Go find Wang Hongbing. As long as he agrees, it'll be fine."

"Honglei doesn't have a very good relationship with him. I suspect he won't agree."

"That man loves being flattered. Just shower him with a few compliments and his head will start spinning."

"But I just don't know how to flatter people."

"Just say this to her." Caiyun whispered a few words into Yunfeng's ear.

Upon hearing this, Yunfeng nodded. "Alright, I'll give it a try."

Yuqiang chimed in, "Auntie, don't listen to my mom. You don't need anyone's permission to grow crops on wasteland."

Obviously displeased, Caiyun snapped, "What do you know? Grown-ups are talking, don't butt in."

Yunfeng quickly smoothed things over. "Yuqiang, Xiaomei often looks for you guys to play. When you're free, come over to our house to play too, okay?"

"Alright!"

Caiyun said, "Yuqiang, go throw all the seedling bundles off the ridge."

After Yuqiang walked away, Caiyun asked Yunfeng, "Does your Xiaomei have a fiancé yet?"

"No. Some people came to propose marriage a few days ago, but I didn't agree."

"What do you think of our Yuqiang?"

"What is Yuqiang's Chinese zodiac sign?"

"He's a tiger, thirteen years old."

"My Xiaomei is a horse, nine years old."

"She shares my zodiac sign! As the old saying goes, 'The horse makes a fine wife for the tiger.' A female horse and a male tiger make a wonderful match—it's a match made in heaven!"

"What happened to Yuqiang's head?"

"Not long after he was born, we noticed his head was a bit crooked. At the time we didn't think much of it, thinking it would naturally straighten out after a while, so we never corrected it, and it turned out like this. But it doesn't affect him in any way."

"It's just that it looks a little... you know."

"I think Xiaomei seems to really like Yuqiang; she's always coming over to find him."

"Yes, she's always chattering away in front of me about 'Brother Zhu this' and 'Brother Zhu that.' It seems the two children are fated."

"If you think it's suitable, go back and discuss it with Honglei."

"No need to discuss it, I make the decisions in this house, it's settled."

"Thank you, dear sister, for thinking highly of me. I will treat Xiaomei just like my own daughter."

"You're my benefactor and my fellow hometown native, there's no need to be so polite. But the old traditions still have to be observed."

"Of course. The local custom here is a bride price of sixty yuan and six bolts of cloth. How does that sound?"

"You and I are both from Fengyang, and over there we value the number six for smoothness and good fortune."

"Alright, we'll do it your way: a bride price of sixty-six yuan."

"Sister, don't be upset—I'm not doing this for the money; what I want is our longing and affection for our hometown."

"I know. I'm overjoyed that you're willing to marry your daughter into our Chen family, how could I be upset! In the next few days, I'll ask Old Red to act as a matchmaker and formally propose. How does that sound?"

"Sounds good!"