Maisui quickly looked at the bicycle and exaggerated,”Aiya, you knocked over the handles though.”
Sanwang was so frightened that he hurriedly looked at the bicycle’s state.
Lin Lan smiled and said, “No it didn’t, don’t scare him.”
Dawang caught up and upon seeing Sanwang fall like that, he tried not to smile but ended up twitching his eyebrows. Afterwards, he took the initiative to take the bicycle and seeing that the handlebar was crooked, he straightened it before pushing it inside.
Sanwang excitedly stated that he could ride a bicycle using the base of the girder as a support, asking his Second Brother and Sister to learn from him.
Maisui, “That is fine and all, but do you know how unsightly your stance was, especially when your butt was practically hanging in the air?”
Sanwang, “Eldest Brother does it too! When I ride it, my butt is facing the ground, so how is it unsightly?”
The curious child Xiaowang started to imitate the movements of both his Eldest and Third Brother to see which position was considered more ‘unsightly’.
Lin Lan was going to die of laughter from the children’s chaotic energy. Every day, it almost seemed as if her wrinkles increased at a faster rate than other adults.
Erwang shouted from the house, “It’s time to eat, the pork ribs smell really good!”
“Rice glutinous and ribs!” Sanwang yelled and ran into the house, saying, “What kind heart does Diao Yide have~”
Xiaowang corrected him, “Glutinous rice and ribs, Diao Deyi.”
The others just laughed.
It wasn’t until 6.30 in the evening that the family managed to sit around the table to have their meal.
Steamed pork ribs with glutinous rice exuded both the sweetness of the rice and the meaty aroma of the pork ribs. The meat fell from their bones when they lightly bit them. The family chewed the full, juicy and rich meat before vanquishing the bone marrow inside.
After eating the meat, they mixed the excess glutinous rice and mushrooms before sharing it. One person could have two spoonfuls and as the sticky, sweet rice lingered on their taste buds, the children praised the fragrance and the taste of the sweet treat.
“Glutinous rice is really delicious.”
Eating glutinous rice for the first time left a deep impression on the children. They ate their fill until they were full as they all smiled.
Sanwang, “In tomorrow’s diary, I want to write about steamed pork ribs with glutinous rice, so don’t compete with me.”
Today, Sanwang and Dawang haven’t written diaries for the day because they went to watch the ruckus happen back at their grandmother’s house and also had fun with the bicycle.
Han Qingping asked the children to write a diary every day. Their homework was to write down the interesting events that occurred during the day with no less than 100 words.
Other children would only go to school, go home to eat and sleep. If anything, they would write about their family members fighting or their younger siblings wetting the kang. Maybe some might write about their experiences in tolerating beatings from their parents or getting yelled at from being late to school; either way, there was nothing interesting going on.
The freshest addition to the pile was the publicity activities in the village.
Maisui and Erwang never worry about their writing compositions as they could find new things to talk about every day.
It could be a different program on the radio or some new insight on how to run this morning, who made a mistake and was scolded and beaten as a consequence. Sometimes, they would write about someone making some jokes, but the most important aspect was writing what sort of delicious food their mother had made for the day. Occasionally, they too, wrote about how Director Han seemed to have the slightest hint of a smile forming on his lips or the items that he bought for his wife that day…
With so many materials to go around, they could elaborate infinitely with just a few points.
But Sanwang and Dawang were worried.
The two of them often tried to see what other students wrote. Otherwise, Dawang would write that Sanwang was stupid whereas Sanwang would write about Dawang being beaten.