"At the beginning of human beings, nature is good, nature is similar, habits are far away"
A little boy about four or five years old was standing by the window of the school, tiptoeing, peeping in with his head up secretly. Sometimes the sleeves slid down, revealing a fat white lotus root-like arm.
His hair was tied up high in a small ball and tied with a red rope. He has a round face, a high nose bridge, delicate features, red lips and white teeth. Anyone who sees him should praise him.
"Xiaobao, why are you here again? If you disturb third uncle's class, grandpa will beat you."
Meihua was about to go home after cutting the pigweed, when she saw her younger brother lying outside the school in the village, she was so frightened that she hurried forward and dragged him to leave.
"Second sister, I don't want to disturb third uncle's class, I just want to see what the big hall brother and the others are learning every day."
Yan Chu, now the child named Xiaobao obediently took the hand of his second sister Meihua and walked home, without any intention of making a fuss.
"Do you miss reading too?"
Meihua is eleven years old this year. She is quite tall, but she is a little thin. Wearing ill-fitting clothes, she looks like a stick.
But she has a good appearance, with an oval face and big eyes. Although her skin is darker, it does not conceal her beautiful facial features.
The siblings look somewhat alike, at first glance they were born to the same parents.
Girls from rural families can marry at the age of twelve or thirteen, and marry at the age of fourteen or fifteen. In small places, only those families who are really poor and want to keep their daughters for two years to help the family will keep their daughters. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, I will only allow people when I am an old girl.
Therefore, Yan Meihua, who is still a child in the eyes of later generations, already has the posture of an adult at this time.
"The family has had a good harvest in the past two years. When you are six years old, your grandparents may agree with you to go to school."
She was carrying a basket of pigweed taller than Yan Chu, and she moved swiftly, just like a normal person. She was obviously used to doing farm work. Looking at her younger brother with hope in his eyes, Yan Meihua didn't hit him too much, but treated him He provided appropriate encouragement.
In fact, Yan Meihua did indeed look like this.
The village where they live now is called Yongning Village. The Yan family is the common surname in Yongning Village. It is said that the ancestors of the Yan family fled to this wasteland. He brought his wife and children here to take root and multiply. It was only then that this piece of land was reclaimed into the rich and beautiful small village that it is today. Therefore, the person surnamed Yan in the village was really the same ancestor eight hundred years ago.
Later, some people with foreign surnames moved to this village one after another, and the surname Yan gradually ceased to be the only surname in this village.
However, in Yongning Village, the head of the Yan family is the head of Yongning Village. This will never change. It is inevitable that the Yan family has more say in the village than people with other surnames.
The ancestor of the Yan family was very forward-looking. He encouraged the juniors to study. In his later years, he even asked his descendants to vacate part of the fertile land. The descendants of the Yan family studied for hundreds of years, and the two dynasties changed, but the family rules of the Yan family have been passed down from generation to generation until now.
Among the nearby villages, Yongning Village is the only one that has its own school. Except for the children surnamed Yan, other families can come to study in the school if they are willing to pay.
Their school is not that big, and most of the people who are in charge of teaching are people whose surname Yan has been admitted as a scholar and concentrate on preparing for the exam.
Usually, after being admitted to Tongsheng, children will no longer stay in the school to study, but will choose to go to the county school. However, the basics are done in the village school. Since the founding of the Jin Dynasty, the Yan family school has cultivated There are two Jinshi, three Juren, seven scholars and several Tongsheng, which is already a very good result, and because of this, some families in the town will specially send their children to study in the ethnology of the Yan family. What I like is the learning atmosphere here and the ability of the master.
The Jinshi of the Yan family is from the branch of the patriarch. Now he is a fourth-rank official, and his official title is not particularly high, but he is a Beijing official. Because of the existence of the other party, even the county magistrate and prefect are more polite to the people of Yongning Village .
In this area, Yan's surname is a very good signboard. You don't have to worry about being bullied when you go out, but that's for the outside world. For the inside, people with the same surname Yan don't get that much preferential treatment.
Yan Meihua's grandfather and patriarch are still cousins, and they can still call him grandpa when they meet the patriarch.
The patriarch's father was the eldest son, and he inherited the position of patriarch logically. Yan Chu's great-grandfather was the second son, and after his elder brother inherited the position of patriarch, their lineage became a side branch.
Their grandfather was the only son, and inherited thirteen acres of high-quality paddy fields, seven acres of medium-sized paddy fields, and twenty-four acres of sandy land from their great-grandfather. There is more than enough. Compared with some clansmen and villagers who can only eat and wear, their family can go to the pork shop in the town to cut a few taels of pork from time to time, or buy some small game with the hunters in the village to satisfy their hunger.
Yan Huai, that is, Yan Chu's grandfather, and his wife, Yan Jiangshi, have two sons and a daughter.
The eldest son, Yan Changxue, studied for a few years in his early years and was able to read and write. Now he works as a shopkeeper in a tavern in the town, earning nearly 800 cash a month. His wife is Liu Fuchun, a girl from a neighboring village, who just married into the Yan family. In the first year of his life, he gave birth to an eldest grandson to the Yan family, and he has a lot of face in the Yan family.
Now the couple have two sons and one daughter. The eldest son Yan Yu is thirteen years old this year, the second daughter Yan Chunhua is eleven years old this year, and the youngest son is as old as Yan Chu. He was born only one month earlier than him. Because of his old age, he is very much loved by the couple.
Because Yan Changxue worked as the tavern in the town, it was troublesome to travel back and forth. After Yan Fu was admitted to the Tongsheng and went to the county school, the old man Yan and the Yan Jiang family paid for a small yard in the town, a total of fifty taels. That money almost wiped out the savings that the old couple had saved over the years.
Since then, Yan's family has basically lived in the town, and they basically have to wait until the holidays to come back.
Yan Changxi, that is, the father of Yan Chu's body, is now staying in Yongning Village, helping the old couple of the Yan family to tend the crops in the field. His wife Li Qiuyue is also from the neighboring village. With a muffled voice, he never had the guts to raise objections to his parents' orders, which meant that they were not taken seriously in this family and were ignored and bullied.
The two have three daughters and one son. The eldest daughter, Meihua, is eleven years old, the second daughter, Taohua, is eight years old, and the youngest daughter, Lanhua, is seven years old. Yan Chu is the youngest child. Before he was born, because there was no son, Li Qiuyue's life in Yan's house was very difficult, and because she had no son, neither of them spoke forcefully, seeing the blatant partiality of the old couple, they did not dare to have the slightest opinion.
Old man Yan and Yan Mudan, the youngest daughter of the Yanjiang family, were married early on. Her husband is quite capable, and he runs a small business. Over the years, the business has grown bigger and bigger, and his family has moved to the county.
Yan Mudan has a pair of sons and daughters, and she doesn't think highly of her second brother who digs food in the fields on weekdays, and she doesn't have the same affection for the children of the second family as the children of the eldest family.
But Yan Mudan's life is not so easy. A man becomes bad when he has money. Her man has taken two concubines since his prosperity. The women also felt disgusted, and one of them even brought out a concubine. Whenever Yan Mudan came home, she would mention those three women whom she hated so much.
Yan Mudan fully supports her nephew's study and progress, and she also wants to produce a scholar from her family. If this is the case, her man will not shame her so unscrupulously.
Yan Fu, the eldest son of the eldest son, was the child whom everyone expected to grow up.
He has shown a talent for reading since he was a child, and he passed the boy's test at the age of eight. The master of the county school is optimistic about him, and everyone thinks that his future is bright, including the Yan clan. , given a lot of funding.
However, Yan Fu is already thirteen years old this year, and he has repeatedly failed in the next few court exams. Fortunately, he is still young. Although many people think that he is not as spiritual as he was when he was a child, they still firmly believe that for this eight-year-old For children who have passed the boy's examination, it is only a matter of time before they are admitted to the scholar.
At this time, providing for a scholar is definitely not an easy matter. Even with the support of the clan, Yan Mudan smuggled things home from time to time. Hard work, let alone two.
The Yan family has not yet separated, so all expenses come from the public house, but it is said that it is the money from the public house, but in fact it is better to say that it is the money of the old man Yan, his wife and the second child's family.
Yan Changxue has a salary of 800 wen per month. During the holidays, the tavern will distribute some meat and rice oil, but the money and food have never been handed over to the public. The money earned by Lishoushou has always been directly in the hands of Yan Jiangshi.
Occasionally, during the slack season, Li Qiuyue and her daughters earned a few tens of pennies through networking, and the money earned by Yan Changxi from the short-term work in the town and county had to be ordered by Yan Jiang to hand it over. It may not be possible to find ten coins.
Yan Meihua thought better than her foolish and filial parents, so although she said it was easy, she didn't know whether her younger brother could go to school or not.
With the character of the uncle and aunt, if there is another scholar in the family, it will definitely be their youngest son.
Grandpa and grandma are used to partiality, so it's not certain what will happen then.
The two siblings, one tall and one short, walked towards the house slowly, because they were hiding something in their hearts, and when Yan Taohua walked in front of them, the two of them didn't notice.
"What do you want, Second Sister?"
Yan Taohua waved at Yan Meihua, then took out a small piece of soybean cake from her bosom, and stuffed it into her younger brother Yan Chu's mouth.
"Eat quickly, my aunt is back, she rewarded me."
Yan Taohua has a rather aggressive temper, and she is not close at all to that aunt who likes to look at people with her nostrils. Every time she comes back to get something, most of it is for grandma and uncle and his family. It's like cutting meat, so every time Yan Taohua said that her aunt gave her something, she liked to say that it was a reward for her.
"Grandma is back?"
Yan Meihua didn't think there was anything wrong with her sister giving food to her brother instead of herself.
First of all, she is the eldest sister, so she should have let her younger brothers and sisters go, and second, if it wasn't for the birth of her younger brother, their life would be even more difficult, so not only Yan Meihua, but the three older sisters in the family all love this younger brother Added.
"Not only my aunt, but also my uncle and auntie, they seem to be talking about sending Yan Chen to study. My younger brother is only a month younger than Yan Yan, so why don't you say that you want to send my younger brother to study. "
Yan Taohua's face was filled with indignation, her grandparents were getting old, the land of the house was basically taken care of by their parents, the money earned by the uncle's family was only enough for the family's expenses in the town, and they were used as cows and horses for the eldest cousin to study. It's less than a good sentence, now there is another little cousin, their family owes them, grandparents are too partial, Yan Taohua is not convinced.
"You said uncle and the others were talking to grandma about sending Er Bao to school?"
Yan Meihua thought several times in her heart: "Taohua, you go to the field and call your parents."
After all, she looked down at her younger brother.
"If there is a scholar in the family, it must be you, Xiaobao."
Yan Meihua's expression is firm. Yan Chu had already seen this scene once when he accepted the plot of this world, but the emotion he felt in personal experience is completely different from that when he was watching the world from a horse.
Yuanshen is very lucky to have a sister who loves him so much. He doesn't know how to cherish them. He will help him take good care of them. In this life, he will not repeat the mistakes Yuanshen made.