Seeing her smile so sweetly, Xiao Changyi also slightly curved his lips and said, "Before I met you, I had no plans to take a wife and have children."
An Jingxin’s heart instantly felt unbearably sweet, but then she replied coquettishly, "It’s a good thing I came here, or else you would have ended up alone for the rest of your life!"
Xiao Changyi actually nodded, "Mhm." After pausing, he continued, "Thank you for coming here, and thank you for being with me."
An Jing grinned, "I’m also thankful for you, thankful that you came back, thankful that I was able to meet you." She paused, then asked, "But if I can bear children, and I give birth to a daughter for you, would you resent her?"
Xiao Changyi sighed helplessly, "Jing Er, stop troubling yourself." Having her alone was enough for him.
If she could give birth, he would be happy whether she had a boy or a girl; there was no question of resentment.
And An Jingxin understood this very well.
"I just can’t understand why women have such low status here." While saying this, An Jing tightened her hold on Xiao Changyi’s hand.
Xiao Changyi did not know what to say. Things had always been this way here.
"Actually," An Jing murmured softly, "my ancestors also favored boys over girls, and that kind of thinking still exists where I’m from. I’m not surprised to see it here, but I can’t understand it—aren’t women people too? Are we just accessories for men? Merely tools for childbearing? Don’t you see that men are also born of women!"
Xiao Changyi was silent.
Xiao Changyi immediately responded, "You and I are equals." After all, he was still a man of his era, where people were classified into hierarchical ranks, and the idea of everyone being equal did not exist.
An Jing also knew that deeply ingrained beliefs were hard to change, but the fact that her husband was willing to do this much for her made her very happy, "I won’t ask too much of you; as long as you do this, I’ll be completely satisfied."
"This isn’t because you asked for it, it’s because I want to," Xiao Changyi said, gazing intently at her.
An Jing was momentarily stunned, then her smile blossomed like a flower. With such a husband, what more could a wife desire?
To make vermicelli, one must first turn sweet potatoes into potato starch.
So, after cleaning the sweet potatoes, An Jing and Xiao Changyi started crushing them, and it almost took a whole day to grind the clean sweet potatoes into pulp.
The crushed sweet potato pulp was then placed into several vats, where water was added and the mixture was filtered through a cloth bag twice, aiming to separate the skin and starch.
The filtrate was left in wooden barrels to settle.
Once the liquid in the barrel had clarified, they poured off the water, discarded the oily powder on the surface of the starch sediment, and took out the lower layer of starch to dry.
After drying, it became starch powder.
Just making this starch powder had taken An Jing and Xiao Changyi one whole week, something that wouldn’t have happened in an average household if Xiao Changyi hadn’t indulged her.
An Jing was making vermicelli not to sell but to eat at home, for she loved eating vermicelli, especially the modern hot and sour glass noodles.
Of course, what mattered most was that she wanted to make them for her husband.
Her husband had never tasted such a thing, so no matter how troublesome it was, she wanted to make vermicelli for him to try. If her husband also found it delicious and took a liking to it, then next year they would plant more sweet potatoes and make more vermicelli.
Now that the potato starch was ready and all the other preparations were done, An Jing was about to start making the vermicelli, but before she could begin, Shi Xiaolan came over for a visit and told her that Mrs. Hongxia and Liu Yingen had been drowned in a pig cage by the people from Jiuping Village.