The kindergarten wasn’t too far from the affiliated elementary school, and was in the same direction, so Zhuang Tongguang could go to and from school with his younger brother every day.
The owner of the Zhou Ji breakfast stall also recognized the two brothers. When they came, they either ate fried dough sticks with sweet soybean pudding or each had a bowl of small wontons.
The wontons at Zhou Ji stall were all wrapped by the owner’s wife and daughter. It was a small family workshop, and each wonton had a lot of meat filling and thin skin. The younger child couldn’t finish a bowl of ten wontons and would give two to his older brother.
The younger one also didn’t want scallions, so each time his older brother had to slowly pick them out with a spoon.
Boss Zhou simply said, “Then I won’t sprinkle chopped scallions for you, okay?”
But the child shook his head and said very seriously, “No.”
In his world, wontons had scallions that are cut into small green segments that would float on the steaming white soup, with a porcelain spoon scooping up a plump wonton from below.
Although he didn’t eat the scallions, the chopped scallions had to be sprinkled on the wonton soup when it was served.
K thought silently, ‘A child in the sensitive period for order.’
Zhuang Tongguang diligently picked out the scallions for his younger brother. Xin Hexue peeled the tangerine and separated the flesh segment by segment.
“Big Brother, eat.”
He held a segment of tangerine flesh and brought it to Zhuang Tongguang’s mouth.
After Zhuang Tongguang chewed and swallowed, Xin Hexue asked, “Is it sour?”
He pushed the bowl of wontons, now free of scallions, over to his younger brother, thought for a moment, and said, “Not sour.”
Xin Hexue nodded, then reassured, fed a segment to himself, and his little face immediately scrunched up.
“Big Brother, I’ll let you have it.”
He generously gave the remaining large half of the tangerine to Zhuang Tongguang.
………
The kindergarten in the factory area was a low-rise building with a small playground in front, featuring a colorfully painted slide, a red seesaw, and a rectangular sandpit.
Short green walls had blue morning glories climbing at their base, and red-painted slogans were written on them: “Five Stresses, Four Points of Beauty, Three Loves.”
The kindergarten teacher led Xin Hexue inside and clapped her hands. “Starting today, a new child will join our Wild Goose Class.”
“Yay!”
The children below cheered with raised arms.
“Can you introduce yourself?”
The teacher bent down and asked kindly.
Fingers gripping his backpack straps, Xin Hexue smiled politely.
After the self-introduction, another teacher came in from the back door carrying a set of wooden desks and chairs. “Where should the new classmate sit?”
“Teacher!” A boy raised his hand first. “The other groups all have six people, but our Red Flag Group only has five!”
“Then, Xiao Xue, can you sit in the Red Flag Group?”
Xin Hexue looked up at the teacher. “Teacher, anything is fine with me.”
The classroom desks and chairs all faced the blackboard. The children were divided into groups of six, with desks pushed together like “rice seedling beds”, and arranged loosely.
As soon as Xin Hexue put his backpack on the chair, the boy who had raised his hand first came over. “You’re really pretty. Where are you from?”
“Licheng.”
Hearing it was Licheng, the boy shook his head, his brow furrowed, looking arrogant. His build was sturdier than other boys of the same age, and he clearly held the position of the little leader in this group.
“Licheng? I’ve never heard of it. Is it some small place in a remote corner?”
This period was drawing class. The boy threw his pencil to a little follower next to him, ordering him around to sharpen it.
“I see. You’re like Miao Ling, a little country bumpkin from the countryside.”
He started laughing mockingly, and the other little followers joined in the laughter.
Xin Hexue now understood why this particular group had only five people.
He disliked talking to idiots the most.
Xin Hexue ignored him. He just unzipped his backpack, took out his own pencil and a box of crayons. The pencil had been sharpened by Zhuang Tongguang with a sharpener last night. The crayons were also brought from home; Zhuang Tongguang didn’t have drawing class today, so he was using this box.
“Why aren’t you talking?”
Perhaps Xin Hexue’s reaction was too bland, making the other boy feel like he had punched cotton.
He leaned in again, chattering, “Even though you’re a country bumpkin from the countryside, you’re quite good-looking. I don’t mind; I’ll allow you to be my little brother from now on.”
Xin Hexue just felt like there was a bug buzzing near his ear and waved his hand.
“What do you mean by that?!”
The boy slammed the table, about to make a scene.
“Su Zhuang, be quiet. And, stop fidgeting; did you put nails on your chair?”
The teacher patrolling the classroom warned.
The boy, whose name suited his appearance (Zhuang meaning sturdy), sat back down.
After the teacher left the area, Xin Hexue turned his head and declared solemnly, “I won’t be your follower.”
He moved his small chair away from the spot next to Su Zhuang.
Su Zhuang reached out to grab him, but Xin Hexue slowly raised his eyes and stared at him. Su Zhuang subconsciously stopped.
“You’re really rude,” he said to Su Zhuang. “Also, you have vegetable leaves on your teeth.”
Xin Hexue moved his chair further away, lowered his head, and began coloring seriously on the white paper, leaving Su Zhuang with a face as red as a monkey’s bottom. “You… you… just you wait!”
………
The feud between Su Zhuang and Xin Hexue was thus formed.
Probably due to a kind of shame-turned-anger mentality, of ‘if I can’t have it, I’ll destroy it,’ and also to maintain his status as the king of the kids, Su Zhuang decided to show this pretty country kid his power.
After drawing class ended, the teacher asked the group leaders to collect the drawing papers. For the next period, they would go to the small playground to play games.
“What did you draw?”
Su Zhuang strode over to Xin Hexue’s side with his chin up, like a strutting rooster.
Xin Hexue was coloring the last leaf of a small tree green when Su Zhuang snatched the drawing paper away. “Stop drawing! The teacher said to collect them already!”
The green crayon in his hand almost made a line on the paper, but he let go in time.
The corners of Xin Hexue’s mouth turned down, his expression becoming unhappy. “Give it back.”
He had drawn the loquat tree next to Grandma’s house and hadn’t colored the loquats yet.
But Su Zhuang held the drawing paper high, let it drift lightly to the ground on purpose, and before Xin Hexue could pick it up, stepped on the little house in the drawing with his foot.
Immediately, a gray, dirty mark appeared.
Xin Hexue clenched the crayon in his hand and raised his voice. “Teacher!”
The classroom was noisy with children’s voices after class, and the teacher standing by the door didn’t hear. Su Zhuang quickly grabbed the rabbit fur collar of Xin Hexue’s cotton-padded jacket.
“Don’t even think about telling the teacher! Let me tell you, my dad is a section chief! If I get scolded because of you, my dad will make sure your parents can’t eat their food and have to walk away with it!”
He probably meant ‘can’t eat their food and have to take it away’
**A Chinese idiom meaning to make things difficult for someone.
He hated people who were both stupid and nasty. Xin Hexue fumed.
………
A large area of the small playground was occupied by Su Zhuang and his gang of followers. They were playing wildly there: pick-up sticks, grabbing stones, and throwing sandbags.
Xin Hexue saw them digging in the sand, even poking sticks into the soil, getting their hands dirty with dust and rolling in the sand.
Seeing this, Xin Hexue’s delicate brows furrowed tightly. When those people called him to play together, he quickly shook his head.
He would not be a little slob.
A little girl with twin pigtails asked him from under a tree, “Xin Hexue, do you want to play with us?”
Next to her were a few other girls she played with, playing cat’s cradle.
“Okay.”
Xin Hexue went over and joined them, and learned that this pigtailed girl was Miao Ling. Her parents were educated youth in the southwestern mountain area before, and Miao Ling was born there. Fortunately, not long after she was born, the policy changed, so she returned to Lingzhou City with her parents two years ago.
“Don’t pay attention to Su Zhuang, he always likes to bully people.”
Miao Ling and the other girls advised him.
Miao Ling looked very unhappy. “He just relies on his dad being some section chief in the administration department, in charge of the boiler team’s wages and housing allocation.”
The other girls nodded.
“That’s right, that’s right, he’s so annoying! My dad works in the boiler team. He scolds other people’s dads for being uneducated and only knowing how to clear coal ash!”
“He himself is uneducated too.”
Miao Ling said indignantly, “Anyway, don’t play with him. Just ignore him.”
Xin Hexue lowered his eyelashes. He remembered his aunt saying that his uncle worked in the boiler team, and it was indeed very hard work, he often came home from work with his face covered in coal ash.
Miao Ling asked, “Did you hear what we just said?”
Xin Hexue looked up and smiled. “Mhm. Shall we play?”
Cat’s cradle was like a magical kaleidoscope. An ordinary string could change in thousands of ways, and two hands could make it transform into beautiful patterns of many styles.
Twining, turning, threading, picking.
Catching, moving, winding, turning.
With a flick of the wrist, and the patterns changed like magic.
“You have nimble hands and you’re smart!” Miao Ling said happily. “You learn the patterns after being shown just once!”
In contrast, some boys who had seen it before and wanted to learn a few moves to show off were all like clumsy idiots.
Xin Hexue said modestly that it was because they taught him carefully.
Just as the atmosphere was harmonious, a sandbag was thrown from behind, hitting Xin Hexue’s back with a “bang” before drooping to the ground.
Xin Hexue turned around, silently looked down, and saw the dust-covered sandbag.
“Throw it back quickly!” Su Zhuang and his group of little followers laughed in the distance. Su Zhuang even took a few steps forward and said provocatively, “You’re not weak, are you? No wonder you go play things only little girls play!”
A girl behind them said angrily, “You… you just don’t play it if you can’t! We can throw sandbags too, and the sandbags we sew are much prettier than your dirty ones…”
The girl next to Miao Ling, who had been speaking loudly, suddenly stopped.
The sandbag hit Su Zhuang on the forehead and fell straight down, leaving a red mark.
Xin Hexue patted the dust off his hands and pursed his lips.
Furious, the other party ran over and grabbed Xin Hexue’s hair.
“Hey, hey…” Miao Ling cried out, “Su Zhuang is going to hit someone!”
………
Xin Hexue smoothed his soft, black hair, carrying his small backpack as he waited at the school gate for Zhuang Tongguang to pick him up on his way home from school.
A few older children, clearly from the affiliated elementary school, passed by the kindergarten gate. Xin Hexue let go of the teacher’s hand. “My Big Brother is here. Teacher, I’m going home now. See you tomorrow.”
He flew to Zhuang Tongguang like a tired bird returning to the forest, and spread his arms. “Big Brother, hug.”
Zhuang Tongguang was startled, then hugged his younger brother accordingly. “What’s wrong? Was the first day of kindergarten not good?”
His younger brother pouted and stayed silent.
Zhuang Tongguang immediately looked nervous and asked if someone had bullied him.
Xin Hexue just shook his head. “Big Brother, carry me on your back.”
Zhuang Tongguang handed his schoolbag to a classmate walking home with them. It so happened that among the classmates walking together today, one lived in the same tube-shaped apartment building and could help carry Zhuang Tongguang’s schoolbag. “Thanks.”
He squatted down, felt the weight press onto his back, then carried his younger brother and walked towards home.
Xin Hexue wrapped his arms around his older brother’s neck, buried his head, and hid the tears in his eyes.
At that time, the teacher pulled them apart before the situation could escalate, but he lost a strand of hair!
When Zhuang Tongguang asked again, Xin Hexue said it was because he was homesick at kindergarten.
He rubbed against his older brother’s shoulder, like a little cat who had lost a territory battle outside and had a tuft of fur scratched off.
