After the cake was baked, they added water in the oil pan and brought it to a boil. Then, she threw in a handful of chopped green onions and shrimp skin before adding some noodles.
“Maisui, go and get your father to have his meal.”
She remembered that Han Qingsong had walked all night, so he must have been hungry the entire time. He probably didn’t want to trouble her, so he told her not to cook last night.
As a result, when Maisui didn’t return, Erwag said he would go and take a look.
Soon, Erwang came back, “Mother, there’s a meeting in the Brigade. The aunty knelt down in front of our father, begging him to let her son go.”
Lin Lan raised her eyebrows, “What’s the use of kneeling? Should we just kneel down if we make a mistake? If your father didn’t come back last night, our family would suffer— money would be stolen or people would be injured, and yet she dares to kneel?”
Erwang nodded, “Right? How stupid.”
After a while, Han Qingsong led Maisui and Sanwang back. Dawang also came back from mowing the grass.
Lin Lan, “Wash your hands and eat.”
When Han Qingsong left, he had already fixed the legs of the table and nailed a long wooden bench. With two wooden piers, he could also sit there and eat.
Lin Lan gave him a large bowl of noodles as the remaining children would eat whatever they liked. They could have flatbread if they didn’t want noodles.
“It’s all fine noodles this morning. Our family doesn’t eat two kinds of rice(1), they all eat it openly.”
(T/N: This means that there is no difference to what any family member eats. No one is favoured and no one is biassed, so they will share the same food and eat the same things.)
The children ate happily, looking forward to eating white noodles in the future, “It’s delicious! The flatbreads are so delicious!”
In the morning, when Old Lady Han heard that Old Three was coming back, she was so excited that she was about to walk the ground barefoot. She shouted, “Quick, go and tell him! Tell him to bring the Fourth Child back home!”
The youngest aunt pouted and said unhappily, “My third brother truly doesn’t give a damn about us the moment he separated his family. Now that he’s home, he doesn’t even visit father and mother.”
He brought goodies home and gave them all to that shrew?
The eldest brother stopped and said, “Mother, I saw the third brother in the Brigade. He will come over later, don’t worry.”
“Why do I have to wait? He doesn’t even visit his parents when he gets home? If this was done in the past, going out and coming home would always require a kowtow to the parents,” Old Lady Han was very unhappy.
The eldest sister-in-law said, “Mother, what you’re talking about is the past times where violence was always occuring in a family. Don’t let anyone hear you say that.”
Old Lady Han was very upset since she was always bossed around by the eldest couple once she said something to vent her anger. She was dissatisfied, but even she knew better than to retort.
Old Man Han also came in from the outside, “These black-hearted thieves dare to come to their house to steal things. Not to mention that foreign thieves are easy to block and domestic thieves are difficult to guard against. Hah, I can’t believe that the thieves were from the same village.”
After listening to him, the family knew that when Han Qingsong came back last night, a few thieves happened to be trying to steal something from his house. Fortunately, they were caught.
The eldest sister-in-law patted her chest, “How dangerous. Fortunately, the third child was back; otherwise, it would have been scary. Were the younger children scared?”