northernbook Chapter 29 Two Letters to Relatives in Another City
Chapter 29 Two Letters to Relatives in Another City
Time flies! In the blink of an eye, Yuqiu's wedding day is almost here, with only about a week left.
The Zou family had prepared the new house and all the necessary items well in advance, including things for the Lunar New Year.
Weddings are all held in the family's own house. Just book a professional chef from the village who specializes in weddings and funerals in advance.
The wedding ceremony and the vehicles must be arranged according to the old customs and traditions of the village!
A few days ago, Zou Jun rode his big-bar bicycle all over the place, visiting the two villages in the north and south to celebrate his and Yu Qiu's wedding date.
Yang Hong was the only one left from the older generation of the Yang family. The younger generation, including Yang Zhannan and his siblings, mostly lived in their hometown in other places, so there was no need for them to travel long distances to deliver messages.
The only close relative of Liu Shulan in the village, her third aunt, had also parted ways with the Yang family because she had raised Li Feng's son. In the middle of the night, the whole family ran away back to their hometown in another province. As for Liu Shulan's sisters, they either lost contact with her a few years ago or died of illness.
The only one from the village more than 30 miles away is Xiaomei, who stayed in the Yang family to avoid having more children than allowed. She just decided not to leave because Yuqiu's wedding is coming up soon.
Relatives from afar would write letters ten or twenty days in advance, and then put the envelopes in the green mailbox in front of the commune post office.
A regular letter costs only four cents. A third letter costs eight cents.
A letter by regular mail takes at least three days to arrive, and at most more than half a month.
No signature is required for the delivery and receipt of regular mail.
Registered mail is more accurate. If you're worried about loss or it's important, choose registered mail; the postage is two cents. The writer needs to go to the local post office to mail and register the letter.
If there was an urgent matter and there wasn't enough time to write a letter, you would have to go to the post office and send a telegram that was charged per word. There were also telegrams that could be sent quickly, but they cost a lot more.
Telegrams were charged per word and could be transmitted in just over three hours. Each word cost four cents, which was later gradually adjusted to fifteen cents.
To send letters, items, or telegrams, or to receive items from relatives in other places, one had to go to the commune post office to process and collect them.
Yang Yuhan wrote letters to her uncle and elder sister in other provinces more than ten days in advance and mailed them at the Tuandingshan Commune Post Office at the same time.
The contents of the letter written to my eldest sister's family were:
Dear older sister and brother-in-law, how are you? I hope your whole family is doing well.
Our whole family is doing well, so don't worry about us.
I wrote this letter today for no other reason than that Yang Yuqiu and Zou Jun, a young man from the same village whom she knows well, are getting married soon. Their wedding date is set for the 20th of the twelfth lunar month.
It's currently the off-season for farming, so it's wonderful that my older sister, brother-in-law, and children can all attend this wedding! If it's inconvenient for them to come, they can come another time.
Okay, that's all for this letter!
Sincerely, salute!
My younger sister is Yang Yuhan.
1979 January 1
After writing the letter to her eldest sister's family, Yang Yuhan immediately wrote the same letter to her uncle's family, who lived in the same province but a different village as her eldest sister.
A dozen days after the letter was sent, a postman in full military green uniform stood at the gate of the Yang family's house.
The postman was dressed in military green clothes, dark green cotton shoes, and a dark green cotton hat with ears.
The young postman steadied his bicycle, removed his dark green cotton glove and placed it on the seat, then quickly opened the large dark green bundle hanging next to the back seat.
Then, he rummaged through the many letters in the large bundle for a short while, and took out two letters at the same time, handing them to Yang Yuhan, who was standing beside him waiting to receive the letters.
Yang Yuhan took one white envelope and the other a yellow one. Then she said, "Thank you, postman."
The postman smiled slightly at her, then quickly packed up his large bundle full of letters, put on his cotton glove, turned his bicycle around, straddled it with one leg, and said back, "Goodbye, little girl."
Yang Yuhan gave him a fake smile and watched as the postman's bicycle sped off down the dirt road to the west!
She glanced at the envelope; the white one contained her eldest sister's address, and the yellow one her uncle's address.
Then she ran into the east room of the south wing.
Every time there was a letter from home, the original owner would sit on his grandmother's warm kang (heated brick bed), stubbornly copy down what they read aloud, and then send it out. Then, when letters from relatives in other places arrived, he would stubbornly read them to him again.
As for the other students in the courtyard, they were too lazy to write this rubbish, and they were too lazy to read letters from home to their parents.
My grandfather attended a private school for a few days when he was a child, but after a while, he just learned how to make straight wooden boards, which are the tools used by carpenters.
Saying that others are too lazy to write is just giving themselves face. They probably can't even write a diary, and they usually get zero marks on their school essays.
Yu Han placed both letters on the edge of the kang (heated brick bed) in the east room. Yu Qiu leaned against the kang cabinet, knitting a red sweater with both hands. She looked up at the large characters on the two envelopes and said, "Dad, Mom, these are two letters. The one from my eldest sister's family is a white envelope, and the one from my eldest uncle's family is a yellow envelope."
Sitting on the heated kang, Liu Shulan mended old trousers and said weakly, "It's quite fast. Yu Han wrote back to you so quickly. I wonder if your eldest sister mentioned in the letter that she would be attending your wedding? She hasn't been back to her parents' home for several years."
Yang Zhannan sat on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed) against the kitchen wall, rolling cigarette ash. He listened to the woman's complaints, then smirked and glanced at the woman sewing trousers. He then continued rolling the yellow cigarette paper in his hand.
The woman glanced at him at a 180-degree angle, then complained, "Your eldest sister was born unlucky. She got married early, and her health has been poor since she was little. Every winter, her asthma gets worse. And that's not all; she also lacks someone's love and care!"
"Pah!" Yang Zhannan spat out a mouthful of saliva after finishing rolling the cigarette onto the open end of the small old notebook he was rolling. He then gently rubbed the paper with his thumb, sealing the opening with his saliva.
"Mom, I'll open it and read it to you right away!" Yang Yuhan said excitedly.
She was about to open the two envelopes to read the contents when Yang Zhannan, who was sitting on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), stopped her. "You have to take them to your grandparents first, and then bring them here. What's wrong with you? Isn't this how letters used to come from home?"
Yang Yuhan grinned and muttered to herself, "How would I know about your family's petty affairs? How old-fashioned! Your family still writes letters? My family lives in a small villa with a telephone in the house. Humph!" She grabbed two envelopes and ran out.
"What are you muttering about in such a low voice? Don't waste the family's money on school tomorrow." After he finished speaking, he twisted the paper knot off the other end with two fingers, lit it with a match, and started smoking. He smoked for a while, but no white smoke rings came out.
He casually cursed, "When Lao Si came home, every time I smoked a Lao Guang cigarette, there would be a string of white smoke rings. What's wrong with him now?"
Then he added, "Could it be that neither of the two families mentioned in the returned letters are coming back?"
Liu Shulan sat on the heated kang and continued mending old trousers, giving him a lazy glare.
Yang Yuqiu was knitting a sweater with both hands. She glanced at them and then couldn't help but laugh.
"You're still smiling? In a few days you'll be married into your husband's family. Once you're there, you can't just keep smiling at your mother-in-law all the time," Liu Shulan said coldly.
"Mom, who's upset you this time? Okay, I'm going to Grandma's room to see what the letter is about."
"Then hurry up and bring it back as soon as you've finished reading it to the two elders."
"Mom, so you were just eager to read my eldest sister's letter, that's why you're not happy. Okay, I'll go get the letter for you right away." Yuqiu put down her knitting needles and half-finished sweater, got off the kang (heated brick bed), put on her shoes, and immediately went to the east wing.