In late March, the Qunshan construction site welcomed a grand event.
Driver Shao from the small car team is young, suave and handsome. He is married to Miss Xie, the company's accountant.
Cai Yue, the general manager of the Qunshan construction site, gave the two new employees a big red envelope. Everyone had heard that Manager Cai had made a fortune recently, and he looked very energetic, with a rosy face when he went to work and came home.
Yu Qiao's family sat in the hotel lobby, helping the newlyweds welcome guests, while Lin Qile's mother was backstage helping Lin Qile comb her hair and put on her flower girl's dress.
"Thank you, Auntie," Lin Qile looked up and said, "You look so beautiful today!"
In Lin Qile's eyes, Aunt Xiao Xie has always been the most beautiful aunt at the Qunshan construction site, just as Uncle Xiao Shao is the most handsome uncle.
If they get married, their marriage will be as perfect and happy as shown on TV.
"Cherry is particularly beautiful today," Aunt Xie couldn't hide her shyness and praised her, "I'll ask Uncle Shao to give you a big red envelope later!"
As a flower girl, Lin Qile walked with the newlyweds onto the red carpet at the wedding.
She had two ponytails, wore a white gauze dress, and had a red hairpin in her hair that looked like a bride's lipstick.
Jiang Qiaoxi was sitting at the children's table, drinking Coke between Yu Qiao and Cai Fangyuan, his eyes fixed on Lin Qile from afar.
The host of the wedding was Xiao Li from the company's security department. He was always the master of ceremonies whenever a worker got married at the Qunshan construction site.
"Today, our Qunshan construction site's little stock god, Lin Yingtao, the daughter of Engineer Lin, is here too!" Uncle Li finished his congratulatory speech to the newlyweds, and suddenly changed the subject to the flower girl, Lin Qile, "To all the friends present today, let's all take advantage of Manager Cai and Lin Yingtao. I wish you all great wealth and good fortune!"
Team Leader Yu drank too much at the wedding banquet. He was always the most emotional when young people from the Qunshan construction site got married. When Driver Shao and Accountant Xie toasted at that table, they were also excited and called Team Leader Yu in unison: "Brother Yu!"
Manager Cai was also drunk, so he picked up Lin Qile and kissed her on the round face passionately.
"Good girl!" he shouted.
The general manager was excited, and the onlookers all laughed and applauded. "Manager Cai, how many times has Taishan Tourism's stock price increased this month?" a colleague asked excitedly.
“It’s almost the ninth daily limit!”
Uncle Cai held Lin Qile so high that everyone laughed and she was happy. When she was put down, Uncle Cai said seriously, "Cherry! Tell me what you want! Uncle Cai will buy it for you!"
"Manager Cai, Manager Cai! It's no use just talking now!" The adults around gathered around, one after another, and gave Lin Qile some advice, "Cherry, go find a pen and ask him to write it down! Otherwise, your Uncle Cai will deny his debt when he wakes up from his drunken stupor!"
The wedding banquet lasted nearly two hours before it ended. The workers went home laughing and joking, and Uncle Yu walked unsteadily and had to be supported by others.
Lin Qile walked behind and said, "Uncle Yu, have you drunk too much again?"
"No!" Uncle Yu suddenly opened his eyes, turned around and said to Lin Qile, "I'm definitely not drunk!"
Lin Qile didn't expect that he was heard by his father, so he smiled and hid behind his father.
Squad Leader Yu smiled when he saw this, took a breath and said, "Cherry, when you grow up and get married, your uncle will definitely drink more than today!"
"More, more!" The groom, driver Shao, supported Brother Yu and said with a smile, "When Cherry gets married, we'll all drink together!"
Lin Qile held his father's hand and they walked slowly towards home.
"Dad," Lin Qile raised his head, "Will I get married like this in the future?"
"How do we get married?" Electrician Lin asked.
"Get married like Uncle Shao and Aunt Xie."
Electrician Lin smiled and squeezed his daughter's hand: "Dad doesn't want you to get married on the construction site."
"Why?" Lin Qile asked.
"Because the workers work very hard." Electrician Lin said to her with his head down.
The children of electric construction workers are born, grow up, and go to school on the construction site. After graduation, they return to the construction site again, marry and have children with the people on the construction site, go out early and come back late, day after day, year after year, moving from one city to another, until they can no longer work and finally retire.
Lin Electrician and his generation of electric power construction workers have devoted almost their entire lives to national construction.
Lin Qile said: "But I like construction sites!"
After hearing this, Electrician Lin rubbed her head.
Throughout March, the stock called "Taishan Tourism" was like a bull that no one could stop, running wildly in the stock market. Lin Qile was sitting on her small bamboo mat reading a large encyclopedia given to her by Uncle Cai. She looked up and said to Jiang Qiaoxi, "Do you know what 'water chestnuts' are?"
Jiang Qiaoxi was still working on his math Olympiad problems. He had just reached a critical point when he heard Lin Qile's words. He didn't even look up and said, "I don't know."
Lin Qile began to read the book: "... A thousand layers of reed leaves and sailboats, a dream of water chestnuts and water shield soup... The world howled alone, and the horse galloped in the west wind." She thought for a moment and said to Jiang Qiaoxi, "This must be "The White Horse Roars in the West Wind!"
Jiang Qiaoxi didn't listen very attentively, and nodded vaguely and said "hmm".
Lin Qile said: "Then do you want to know what '莼玼' means?"
Jiang Qiaoxi said: "I don't want to know."
Lin Qile blinked his big eyes: "Then I will tell you too."
Lin Qile stuttered as he read out the words one by one: "The word 莼烏 means water shield soup and sea bass sashimi, which are the hometown delicacies that the poet missed very much—"
When Jiang Qiaoxi raised his head helplessly, he saw Lin Qile swallowing his saliva with a look of longing on his face.
"Have you eaten it?" Lin Qile turned around and asked him pitifully.
Jiang Qiaoxi shook his head.
Lin Qile put down the book in her hand, rested her chin on her knees, and played with the Poppy Elf at her feet.
Jiang Qiaoxi continued to work on his homework when he heard Lin Qile suddenly say, "Then your name will be Jiang Yulu from now on!"
Jiang Qiaoxi looked up in confusion.
He saw Lin Qile still pinching the elf's face with his fingers, mumbling its new name. Jiang Yulu. Jiang Yulu. Lin Yingtao, Jiang Yulu.
On a weekend afternoon, Yu Qiao came to Lin Qile's house to play football with Jiang Qiaoxi. Lin Qile happened to be going to his house to get some new fried shrimp chips, and a group of children went out together.
Grandma Zhang and Grandma Yu were sitting in front of the TV knitting. When they saw Lin Qile coming in, they both greeted her. Lin Qile asked, "Grandma, where is the fried shrimp chips that Auntie put?"
Just after asking, Lin Qile looked down and found that Yu Qiao's little cousin Yu Jin, who was in kindergarten, was sitting between the two old ladies, also holding a few knitting needles and poking attentively in the wool.
"Yu Qiao!" Lin Qile took Yu Jin's hand and walked out of the door, shouting towards the figures playing football on the main road, "Why don't you take Yu Jin to play football? Look, he's actually knitting!"
Yu Qiao heard her words from afar and saw that Yu Jin's little breasts had also come out. He laughed so hard that his shoulders shook.
Before dinner, Lin Qile told Jiang Qiaoxi that she felt Yu Jin must be very unhappy: "I have never seen Yu Qiao take Yu Jin out to play. As a brother, how can you not take your brother out to play? It would be fine if you play some games that boys often play."
She tied the piece of wool that Grandma Yu gave her into a loop and put it around her fingers.
After a while the thread became tangled into a mess.
Yu Qiao and Du Shang came again at night. As soon as they entered Lin Qile's hut, they saw Jiang Qiaoxi putting aside his Olympiad math problems and patiently accompanying Lin Qile in turning over a piece of woolen rope.
Yu Qiao immediately kicked Lin Qile on the back and said, "I asked Yu Jin to knit a sweater, but you asked Jiang Qiaoxi to play with you."
Adults may not understand what Lin Qile and his friends are playing every day, or what is going on in their heads. In early April, two small incidents occurred at the Qunshan construction site.
The first thing was that Manager Cai’s son, Cai Fangyuan, cried and wanted to run away from home in the middle of the night because his collection of Xu Ruowu’s photo albums was discovered by his father, who tore them into pieces and flushed them into the sewer.
The second thing was that it was Lin Qile's birthday and she wanted a comic book of "The Lion King", but Lin the Electrician took a leave of absence and went to all the bookstores in Gunsan City to look for it, but couldn't find it.
Finally, he bought a set of comics of Journey to the West. Lin Qile was a little disappointed and rolled around at his father's feet again.
Cai Fangyuan attempted to run away from home but failed. He sat on the sofa in Lin Qile's house and cried with his face covered. He was as sad as if his wife had died. Manager Cai was really angry. He did not try to comfort or persuade her. He scolded Cai Fangyuan for being so young and only looking at such useless things.
But Cai Fangyuan is neither stupid nor foolish. He is ten years old and he has a girl he likes.
Electrician Lin was confused. When he heard Cai Fangyuan crying out the name "Vivian", he asked, "Who is Vivian?"
Duchamp hesitated and said, "Yes, she is a female star."
Lin Qile held her Journey to the West comic book and said, "She is a very pretty female star!"
"What does she look like?" Electrician Lin asked Cai Fangyuan.
Manager Cai is very busy with work and has a lot of things to deal with every day. Naturally, he does not have as much "free time" as Electrician Lin to listen to what these growing but still immature and naive children are thinking.
Lin Qile and a few others accompanied Cai Fangyuan home. Cai Fangyuan choked up on the way and said to himself: "When I grow up..."
Yu Qiao asked, "How did your father find out about you?"
Cai Fangyuan complained: "How should I know? I hid it under the mattress!"
They exchanged hiding methods. Probably since the beginning of human reproduction, how children hide from adults, how students hide from teachers, how husbands hide from wives, or how wives hide from husbands - these are all eternal topics.
Lin Qile held the "Journey to the West" comic book in her arms. Cai Fangyuan was fine, so she planned to go home to find Jiang Qiaoxi.
"Cherry," Duchamp said, "didn't you wear a black hairpin a few days ago?"
Lin Qile turned to look at him and nodded.
"But Jiang Qiaoxi doesn't like black," said Lin Qile.
Dushan frowned and said, "I like it!"
Lin Qile looked at him with wide eyes.
Lin Qile opened the comic book in his hand, took out the black hairpin that was used as a bookmark, walked over and pinned it on Dushan's hair, and said generously: "Then I'll give it to you!"
In June, the big international news on TV was the North Korea-South Korea summit.
"The 55-year-old ice on the Korean Peninsula melted away in the smiles of the two heads of state. This day is destined to go down in history!"
Lin Qile and Jiang Qiaoxi were playing with rabbits in the backyard. Lin Qile secretly leaned his head to look into the living room. An uncle in a suit and tie was sitting in the living room with his head bowed.
Electrician Lin asked in the living room: "Are you making money doing this now?"
The uncle said, "I'll take it one step at a time. Now that I'm laid off, I have to find a way to support my family."
Mother Lin asked him, "Is business good outside?"
The uncle said, "I also want to do some small business, but I am short of money, so I can only save some money first."
After the uncle left, Lin Qile walked into the living room. She saw several paper bags of things placed next to her sofa.
The word "Amway" is printed on each paper bag, but I don't know what is inside them.
"You've already bought everything he brought," my mother whispered in the bedroom, "Why do you still want to lend him money?"
Electrician Lin smiled and said, "I know him well, he will definitely return it."
Lin Qile finished dinner and walked into the kitchen with her empty bowl. She saw her mother trying to wash the dishes with dishwashing liquid from the blue bottle of Amway.
"Dad," Lin Qile turned around and asked, "Who is that uncle today?"
Electrician Lin smiled and said, "Don't you know him?"
Lin Yingtao shook her head.
Electrician Lin said, "That's your Uncle Wang."
"I went to the factory with my father back then," said Lin, smiling sympathetically. "He was laid off and had no job, so my father had to help him."
Lin Yingtao asked: "Why was he laid off?"
Every time she asked "why", her father would always give her a few words of answer, never perfunctorily. But this time, her father was silent. He said, "Yingtao, you and Qiaoxi should go do your homework."