The Stepmother’s Counterattack: Raising a Child in a Bygone Era
Chapter 299 - 298: Shen Xiangnan’s Wedding Banquet, Another Uproar

Chapter 299: Chapter 298: Shen Xiangnan’s Wedding Banquet, Another Uproar

Shen Xiangnan’s wedding was even more lively and grand than his first one.

Not only did he have the highly impressive dowry of "three turns and one sound" that’s customary in rural weddings, but the house Shen Xiangnan lived in was also renovated inside and out.

The walls were whitewashed, the floor neatly paved with stone tiles, and even the wardrobe and dressing table were replaced with new ones.

From Jia Yuemei’s perspective, Shen Mingzhu could understand.

After all, the bride is a maiden of marriageable age, marrying a middle-aged man who has been married once already was quite a disadvantage, let alone using the ex-wife’s old belongings, any woman would feel uncomfortable about it.

However, these matters had nothing to do with Shen Mingzhu.

As the sister-in-law, she sat in the bridal room for a while, gave Jia Yuemei a silver bracelet, and then excused herself to leave.

No sooner had she left than the relatives from both the Jia family and the Shen family began to nitpick over the gift she had given.

The relatives from the Shen family, naturally stood by Shen Mingzhu, praising her for giving a nice bracelet and for being a generous sister-in-law.

However, the relatives from the Jia family thought the opposite. Shen Mingzhu had given two large pieces of new furniture to a younger brother-in-law on her elder sister’s husband’s side, especially the wardrobe, which cost at least seventy or eighty yuan.

Jia Yuemei was a close sister-in-law, yet she received only a pair of silver bracelets, wasn’t this clearly favoring outsiders over family?

The relatives from the Shen family spoke in favor of Shen Mingzhu, "It’s not just the silver bracelets, she also gave twenty kilograms of wedding sweets, which sell for five yuan a kilogram in the city."

The relatives from the Jia family, however, were unimpressed, feeling that since Shen Mingzhu’s factory produced these soft sweets, the selling price was entirely up to her.

The relatives from both sides were arguing non-stop over the gifts Shen Mingzhu had given, while the bride herself, Jia Yuemei, was happily slipping the pair of silver bracelets onto her wrists.

Long before the wedding, she had made it her business to find out the ins and outs of Shen Xiangnan’s divorce from Yang Lizhen.

In her opinion, Yang Lizhen was a fool.

She didn’t take the opportunity to cozy up to such a wealthy and capable sister-in-law like Shen Mingzhu, but instead acted high and mighty in her in-laws’ house; this was purely idiotic.

She would not repeat Yang Lizhen’s old path, as long as she lived peacefully with Shen Xiangnan and catered to Shen Mingzhu, why worry about not having good days ahead?

...

After leaving the bridal room, Shen Mingzhu thought of looking for Pei Yang and his son, worried that they were not used to the rare trip to the countryside.

Yet, upon searching, she found Pei Yang happily surrounded by the village’s young and strong men, boasting and chatting away.

Pei Ziheng was climbing a twisted sour date tree at the village entrance with some half-grown village children.

The sour date, despite its name, is not the same as a date.

Dates are crispy, sweet, and juicy, with fine flesh and a small, thin pit.

Sour dates, on the other hand, have thick skin, a large pit, little flesh, and are sour enough to upset one’s teeth, retaining the sour taste even when fully ripe.

In Shenjiagou, wild sour date trees are everywhere, and the semi-translucent ripe sour dates are one of the village children’s favorite wild fruits in autumn and winter.

"Son, be careful," Shen Mingzhu called out uneasily from under the sour date tree, admonishing Pei Ziheng up on the tree branch.

Pei Ziheng, upon seeing her, stretched his long, thin arms and broke off a branch laden with sour dates, tossing it to her feet.

Shen Mingzhu picked up the branch and chose a seemingly well-ripened sour date to pop into her mouth.

At the instant she cracked the date skin, a burst of sweet yet sour juice exploded in her mouth, followed by an endless sourness that furrowed her brow.

Shen Mingzhu forced herself to eat two before she lost the desire for more.

After a while, when Pei Ziheng came down from the sour date tree, he pulled out two handfuls of yellow, ripe sour dates from his pockets and handed them to her.

"Mom, for you to eat," he said.

Shen Mingzhu looked at these sour dates and suddenly realized, her son had picked them especially for her.

During her pregnancy with Guoguo, she particularly craved sour flavors, but after giving birth, she no longer fancied sour foods. Not wanting to disappoint her son’s kind intentions, Shen Mingzhu cheerfully said, "Let’s find a bag to collect them, and I’ll take them home to make you some sour jujube cakes."

Pei Ziheng nodded, his dark eyes sparkling brightly.

Seeing the mother and son heading back, other children also giggled and flocked around them to return together.

Due to environmental and economic limitations, village children were often dirty, some with runny noses streaking across their faces, but the smiles on their faces were pure and clean, their eyes full of curiosity and envy when they looked at Shen Mingzhu.

After marrying into the city, Shen Mingzhu not only got a college education and started a factory as a boss, but also helped the villagers make money, quickly becoming a legendary figure in the village.

Looking at these rural kids, Shen Mingzhu felt a pang of discomfort.

If they couldn’t receive a good education or leave Shenjiagou, in a few years, they would end up like the older generation—facing the loess back to the heavens, toiling as farmers in the soil for their entire lives. Even if they later had the opportunity to work in the city, they could only do the most backbreaking jobs for the meekest wages.

The fate of the vast majority of them seemed to have been sealed from birth.

"Everyone, go and pick sour jujubes, the yellow ripe ones, and exchange them with me for pencils and new exercise books," she proposed.

"Yay!"

"Let’s go pick sour jujubes!"

Watching the children scatter like wild rabbits, Shen Mingzhu’s face lit up with a faint smile.

Without the implementation of compulsory education, tuition, textbooks, pens, and exercise books were significant expenses for these rural kids.

When the villagers heard Shen Mingzhu wanted to pick sour jujubes, Shen Chaobei immediately took a sickle to the back mountain, cut two fresh bamboo poles, stripped them of branches, tied on a net bag, and went to help her gather the fruit.

Pei Yang also went along and used a bamboo pole with a net bag attached to envelop the branches laden with sour jujubes, gently shook it, and all the ripe fruit fell into the bag.

In this way, they quickly filled a whole bamboo basket.

Shen Mingzhu was delighted. However, cries suddenly rang out from a nearby hillside.

A child had fallen while climbing a tree to pick sour jujubes!

...

"Mingzhu, my Goudan was trying to help you pick sour jujubes when he fell. You need to take responsibility!"

"Were it not for your incitement, my Goudan wouldn’t have climbed the tree on the hillside."

Faced with the accusations of Shen Goudan’s family, Shen Mingzhu offered no superfluous explanations, simply agreeing promptly, while attentively waiting for the village barefoot doctor to tend to Shen Goudan’s injuries.

When Shen Baolan heard that Shen Mingzhu had caused an accident, she didn’t even wait for her postnatal period to end, and holding her son, she rushed over to the Shen family home to watch the commotion.

She arrived just in time to hear Shen Mingzhu agree to take responsibility for Shen Goudan’s family, and she sidled next to Goudan’s mother, whispering in her ear.

While whispering, she looked at Shen Mingzhu with glee, clearly harboring ill intentions.

"No bone problems, just some superficial skin wounds. Apply some herbal poultices and it’ll be fine in a few days," said the barefoot doctor.

Shen Mingzhu, as well as the others present, all sighed in relief.

Village kids are tough, and luckily, he had fallen onto a pile of straw made from cornstalks.

Otherwise, falling from a tree seven or eight meters high to the ground could have easily led to broken bones or internal injuries.

Under Shen Baolan’s provocation, Goudan’s mother asked Shen Mingzhu for fifty yuan in compensation.

In a place like Shenjiagou, fifty yuan was not a small sum.

However, Shen Mingzhu had no desire for lengthy discussions and simply wanted to pay to settle the matter.

After all, it was due to her lack of foresight and failure to anticipate the risks; she considered it paying for a lesson.

Unexpectedly, the village chief stood up and berated Shen Goudan’s family.

"Just a little scratch on the kid, just chew up some herbs and slap it on. Asking for fifty yuan right off the bat, are you hoping to get rich off this mishap?"