Farming Happiness: Husband, Come and Plough the Fields

Chapter 5 : 好日子

Good Day

“You this little …”

 

Mrs. Old Li stopped abruptly halfway through her scolding, so angry that she threw away the broom in her hand and said angrily, “You’re the same as your sickly mother! You’ve been hooking up with men since you were a child!”

 

This is a bit of a harsh statement, In Da Qi, a woman’s reputation is of utmost importance, if this were to fall on deaf ears

Li Haitang’s reputation would be tarnished and she would be poked in the back or criticized behind her back. If she was too young to think, she might have hanged herself with a rope.

 

“Grandma, my father is not the seed of the Li family?”

 

Li Haitang laughed instead of being angry. What kind of a grandmother would say that her own granddaughter is hooking up with a man? However if you think about it, if your father, Li Dahe, is not the seed of the Li family, then you are indirectly saying that the old lady of the Li family committed adultery.

 

Before the old lady of the Li family could react, Li Haitang changed her tone again, a wise man will not fight when the odds are obviously against him or in other words, a wise man doesn’t fight against impossible odds. She had not left home since she arrived here and had only a vague impression of everything in the village, which was not conducive to escape.

 

“What wicked ideas are you trying to come up with again?”

 

Old Madam Li gave her granddaughter a suspicious look and was wary. She had the impression that Li Haitang was weak and silent, but now that she had failed to commit suicide by hanging herself, her glib talk had become more powerful.

 

“Grandma, I just wanna walk around the village.”

 

Li Haitang lowered her eyes and spat silently in her heart. In modern times, there is a release time from prison, but she was detained in the house, the room was dark and gloomy as she could not see the sunlight, so she was also suffocating to crazy. 

 

Seeing that the old lady of the Li family did not speak, she made another excuse, “After I marry, I will not know how often I can come back again….”

 

“Ai, let your eldest aunt accompany you to go for a walk around the village.”

 

The Li family old madame used her hand to shield herself from the sunlight, looked away again, and said quietly, “Today is a good day.”

 

Li Haitang did not understand, nor did she look deeper, now her mind was all about how to escape before the wedding, she did not have a single coin in her hand now, without money, she would be in an (extremely) difficult situation as she had no one to rely on when she went out, she was also afraid that she would starve to death.

 

The Li family was a tiger’s den and could not stay there for long. Her mother had relatives, but they were far away in the capital city of Da Qi.

 

The original’s mother’s life is a tragedy in her own right, her mother’s family is in the capital city of Da Qi and is said to be a family of a functionary (i.e. educated middle class in Qing times). This is another story of a young lady from an official family who falls in love with a poor scholar. The family strongly opposes it, so the young lady has to elope with the scholar and is abandoned halfway.

 

Without the face to go home, the young lady meets a villain and is rescued by a man from a farmhouse, who eventually pledges to marry her. 

 

This lady with cruel fate is the mother of Li Haitang, who is not related in any way with Li Dahe and simply has no connection with each other at all.

 

Grandmother and uncle’s family might be able to join them to go and seek a refuge. The necklace Li Haitang wears around her neck is a token of trust, but the northern frontier is a thousand miles away from Da Qi’s Capital, and the journey will require a lot of money for transport and dried food, and she is now empty-handed, so it is a fantasy to get out of town.

 

Before Li Haitang’s mother died, she once took her hand and said she had two wishes that had not been fulfilled.

 

Firstly, she wanted to confess her mistake in front of her family members. She had come this far because she had not listened to her family’s advice, and she regretted it so much that she asked her parents to forgive her and just pretend that they had never had this daughter.

 

Secondly, what she is most worried about is about her little brother, Li Jin Hu, who was born in the countryside and can only be a crop farmer. If there is a chance, we must send him to school.

 

“Haitang ah, why or what is the need for you to keep suffering like this?”

 

Liu, the eldest uncle’s mother, put down her handiwork and wiped the drop of water from her hands on the sides of her coat, “Do you have to see it to let your heart die (give up) ? What good is that Sun’s widow’s son? To put it bluntly, he’s just a little white boy (an attractive young man)!”

 

Liu rambled on, dragging Li Haitang out of the door.