Secret Love Nest '21

Year End

Me: (throwing the pair of shears on the ground) This is ridiculous. (glaring at my GrandMa) I know I told you to get young people to do manual labor here in your home, but I didn't say WE are those young people. This is not it.

GrandMa: (scoffing) Stop flapping your dumpling hole and keep working!

Me: This is force labor!

Qing: Careful, you might start thinking this is slavery. Which is gross because this is not slavery.

Me: Yes, this is not slavery but like those slaves in the past, I am also not willing to do this work. We do this and for what?

GrandMa: So I'll have vegetables to cook for dinner tonight.

Qing gestured at my GrandMa to agree to her point. I want to kick the dirt under my feet in his direction.

Qing and I are wearing working overalls and rubber boots as we slave away in my GrandMa's vegetable garden. Early this month, I called my GrandMa to complain to her about pushing herself to her limits while working around her home to the point where she hurt her back. I told her to get some young people around our village to help her do manual work like harvesting in her garden.

My GrandMa finally listened to me and got two young-ish men to labor on her garden. Those young-ish men are me and Qing.

Its Winter here in hellish Heilongjiang and my GrandMa has forced me and Qing to work for her. We are here because as we agreed, Qing and I will be spending Christmas with my family and New Year with his. This will probably be a tradition for us as New Year is such a big event on Qing's family while Christmas is something I have always anticipated coming even though its not as celebrated as other holidays here.

Anyways, back to us gardening.

Qing: She didn't force me. I volunteered for this.

Me: Yeah? Well good for you. I hope you realize in the end that that gnarly old woman right there (pointing at my GrandMa) is fleecing you. She'll make us work like carabao and for what? For some tea and cookies.

Qing: (grinning) Woah, there will be tea and cookies? Thats amazing.

GrandMa: I made some flatbread too. You can have that with the ground pork in chili oil I made.

Qing laughed in delight. My grandmother is promising him food and he's happy. I'm marrying a lunatic.

Its insane because Qing could earn about a quarter of a million in just one deal he can close for half an hour back in Beijing. But here in our hellish Heilongjiang, we have been crouching and bending our bodies by the vegetable plots for close to two hours now and he's happy to receive cookies and flatbread for a day's work.

Its insanity.

GrandMa: (in a singsong way) Those who's not working won't eat.

Me: (sneeringly) Thats fine. Give Qing all the cookies and flatbread.

Qing: (gathering the last of the carrots) You said it! All the flatbreads are mine now!

Oh my head! Oh my blood pressure! I wonder what my punishment from the heaven will be if I wish Qing to drown or choke in flatbread.

(You'll lose your husband to be. That'll be your punishment...)

Right. Right! I cannot wish any harm on Qing. We have to be married. We've got to. We are all looking forward to it.

Still, I cannot take his sweetness to my grandmother and vice versa.

After hours of laboring in my GrandMa's garden, we managed to get the last of her carrots, radishes and onions as well as the cabbages. We went back inside for the promised hot tea, cookies, flatbread and spicy sauteéd ground pork and garlic.