Please Be More Serious

Ch 5

They chattered for a few more minutes and his aunt rang off. Zhengqing suddenly thought of Mao Huizhu, last time they had met, she had proposed another date, but she hadn’t contacted him since. On Friday, she called and said she had to go home for the mid-Autumn festival, but she’d told him every time she went back home she felt more mentally tired.

Zhengqing understood this feeling; a few years ago he also returned home to visit his aunt, the result was they didn’t seem to gel. He didn’t know why but things felt out of sync.  His aunt treated him too cautiously, as if he was now inlaid with gold. The neighbours came to have a fresh look at him. His other relatives came out of the wood work, pulled their children along saying he should buy them presents. They did not once talk about how they treated him during his childhood. It made him feel disgusted and offended. His aunt nearly made his adoptive aunt prepare a banquet at home, and kept heaping false platitudes on him. It made his aunt very embarrassed.

In the end, Zhengqing pleased everyone by taking them out to a local restaurant to have a feast. From conversations he heard, people did not know the strange woman, but she seemed to want to benefit a lot from his aunt. She was asking his aunt to convince him to help her children with job connections when they went to the city. (Zuben: How tiring.)

 Zhengqing left like a thief in the night, but not before he secretly gave his aunt a sum of money. His Aunt told him not to come so often, in order to avoid trouble, she did not mind not seeing him.

He certainly did not mind not going. There was nothing to do, and there were many young people asking him about good jobs in the city because of tenuous connections. They thought that making money in the city was easy. Zhengqing had lived for many years but he did not know an easy way to make money. His salary was topped with large bonuses, but it had taken a lot of hard work for such achievements, so he felt like he could not help those people. (Zuben: Is all this drivel for word count?)

Since his aunt has asked him not to come back, he did not. His presence caused trouble and bothered her. He was grateful to his aunt so he did not want to inconvenience her life; when his father died young, his mother had worked hard so him to study in good schools. His aunt took care of him and his mother. When his mother was sick, his aunt carried her a long way to see a doctor. All these things she did for them, he kept it in his heart. So, when he began to work, and his conditions improved, he was able to pay off the debts his mother incurred while she was ill. He always regretted the fact that his mother never had a moment of rest while she was alive because of this he worked very hard to earn more and more money. He had promised his mother, he would buy her a big house, but by the time he could afford it, she was gone.

 Zhengqing crossed over to his balcony to look at the large full moon, sadness filling his heart. He moved his parents’ graves to a good cemetery and bought the best grave for them. (Zuben: They are dead, I don’t think they care where they are buried. Isn’t it just to do the appropriate rites and visits?) He could not do much do much for his parents in their life but he hoped to make up for it in their death (Zuben: with fancy graves.) His aunt saying that his parents were anxious made him sad (Zuben: For realz?! Does she have a telephone line to the land of the dead?!)

All the same, he was still young, he would see how things worked out with Huizhu..

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The day of the mid-Autumn Festival dawned bright. In the afternoon, Zhengqing went to the cemetery with a box of moon cakes, fruits and flowers.