Volume One, Chapter 12: The Household Register

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Faced with the nurse’s sudden enthusiastic inquiry, Dong Qianqian felt somewhat at a loss. Brother? Since when did she have a brother? Was this some new method of espionage interrogation?

She recalled her walking posture earlier that day—surely she hadn’t made a mistake. Like everyone here, she strode forward with long steps, her arms swinging naturally. She had deliberately changed her old habit of looking down when meeting people, now greeting them with a smile before speaking.

There was no obvious fault in her behavior, so did the nurse somehow sense something off about her?

With a cold gaze, she looked at the nurse, a strong sense of wariness welling up in her eyes. She feared hearing something earth-shattering that would reveal her as nothing more than a lost soul.

Li Xue noticed that after asking her question, Dong Qianqian abruptly stopped smiling and turned a cold face. Realizing her warm approach had been met with icy rejection, she scolded herself inwardly for being impatient.

She should have befriended the girl first before prying into her family affairs.

Why did she always get things wrong at crucial moments?

Dong Qianqian ignored the nurse’s internal turmoil. In ancient times, if someone asked about your family, you could simply remain silent or stall. Or even fabricate stories—after all, news traveled slowly, and a person might never leave their hometown in a lifetime.

But in this new world, with newspapers, telegrams, telephones, and post offices constantly disseminating information, concealment was impossible. Those with intent could always find ways to verify the truthfulness of your words.

If she lied deliberately, it would likely backfire.

So she boldly flipped to the main page of her household registration booklet and pointed to Dong Jianxi’s name.

“Brother? I don’t have a real brother. If I do, it can only be him.”

Li Xue glanced awkwardly at the girl’s family details—turns out she was from a blended family. A stepmother, a stepson, and a stepdaughter, all close in age. No wonder she responded so coldly to that question.

It was no surprise the family trusted such a beautiful girl to come to the hospital alone to handle procedures.

Clearly, her family didn’t care much about her; she was the living embodiment of having a stepmother and stepfather.

Realizing she had inadvertently touched a painful, hidden wound, Li Xue felt deeply apologetic toward this extraordinarily beautiful young woman.

She then took the initiative to invite her out to eat as a way to make amends, and perhaps to subtly inquire whether there was a brother in the military.

Li Xue had not given up; given their uncanny resemblance, maybe they were cousins or something.

But Dong Qianqian avoided the offer like the plague. She hadn’t yet mastered a socially acceptable way to eat.

What if she chewed each bite thirty times and was seen as abnormal? She needed to observe how others ate to imitate flawlessly.

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Without waiting for Li Xue or the nurse handling the handover to finish explaining the situation, Dong Qianqian quickly left. Coincidentally, no sooner had she gone than Dong Ercheng appeared.

“You don’t have the household registration booklet; we can’t confirm your urban residence status. We can’t let you receive subsidies. Please come back after you’ve got the proper documents,” Nurse Wang Ying said impatiently to Dong Ercheng, who was there to register for hospitalization.

She hated such stubborn, argumentative people. She had to explain the same thing seven or eight times before they understood.

After a day’s shift, she felt ten years older.

“I have a letter of introduction stamped by the Rongguang Steel Factory. It proves I have urban residency. Why won’t you process my registration?”

Since there was nothing left at home and all proof documents were gone, he only had ten yuan in his pocket, which he had almost spent.

But Lin Xuehua suddenly wanted a fried egg, and he heard other pregnant women say the canteen sold eggs at cost price.

They just needed a handwritten hospital admission note from the front desk nurse. Dong Ercheng had to go back to the factory, write a letter of introduction, get it stamped, and bring it back.

Unexpectedly, the young nurse didn’t consider it an official document, which infuriated him.

He slammed the letter on the counter, shouting, “Bring your supervisor! The whole country uses letters of introduction! Why not here? Are you trying to restore capitalism?”

Wang Ying didn’t expect the matter to escalate so much and immediately panicked.

She hurried to find Li Xue to cover for her but found Li Xue had already left.

In the large canteen, people sat orderly at scattered tables, enjoying their breakfast with relish.

Dong Qianqian bought a brown sugar egg with the note and tasted the white porridge, steamed egg, and a plate of pickled radishes she had bought for nine jiao and five fen.

She deeply doubted the so-called imperial kitchen chef’s ancestral skills. The porridge didn’t bring out the rice oil’s flavor; it even mixed old and new rice together.

The steamed egg, or “Furong egg,” was the simplest dessert in the world but was slightly overcooked.

The sauce inside was too strong, overpowering the egg’s original taste.

The shredded carrot pickle was mediocre, nothing to make one’s taste buds dance.

Yet some people came specifically for the carrot pickle and finished every bit.

If this was the standard for a master chef, then why couldn’t she be one?

After all, she had once learned baking and pastry-making in an imperial kitchen and had seen plenty of red dough work.

Although she had never done it herself, having observed closely, she shouldn’t be far off.

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After the reform and opening up in ’78, she might as well open a restaurant. With her skills, business wouldn’t be a problem.

But she needed a backup plan in case no one came.

She had to find a way to buy some land to rent out. Thirty years later, although Pudong developed rapidly, there was an old saying: better a bed in Puxi than a house in Pudong.

But to Dong Qianqian, Pudong and Puxi were equally important. The character for “demolition” was written with golden strokes, symbolizing the full benefits of the era’s prosperity and her ride on the fast track of development.

But first, she needed to save money. The Dong family’s bankbook was untouchable.

Dong Ercheng would definitely go to the bank to replace it; having it herself was useless.

The gold and antiques also had to be kept for emergencies. She only had about 800 yuan in cash, but a pile of bills.

Some of those bills had time limits; she had to figure out how to spend them quickly.

There was also 1,600 yuan in compensation money left by the original owner’s mother, which she couldn’t touch.

The original owner’s mother, Zhao Yunlei, was the daughter of a capitalist family who had studied abroad. During those tumultuous ten years, she used various gifts of family property and land to become an upstanding, progressive activist, boldly voicing supportive opinions, and through outstanding contributions became the county magistrate of Huaihe.

While pregnant, to clear her friend’s name of accusations of capitalist treason, she traveled to the capital to testify in court.

On the way back, she was caught in a shooting incident, shot multiple times but barely survived long enough to give birth to Dong Jianbei, the original owner’s younger brother.

This compensation money was secured by Zhao Yunlei’s friend Wang Meijuan. It was mainly a gesture of pity for Dong Jianbei, who was so young and motherless. This was why the original owner lost her mother.

Although the bankbook was kept by the original owner, Wang Meijuan had clearly told the 13-year-old original owner that this money was primarily compensation for Dong Jianbei.

The original owner’s own compensation was her arranged marriage to Xu Tianlei. Wang Meijuan even brought the then-24-year-old Xu Tianlei before the original owner, making him swear to love and protect the 13-year-old girl.

Thinking of this made Dong Qianqian furious. Wang Meijuan probably thought she had done everything she could for the siblings, but it was precisely her arrangement that doomed the original owner’s miserable life.

To force a relationship between two people eleven years apart in age—even if Xu Tianlei was her own nephew, and he had no objections—the original owner strongly opposed it.

So much so that whenever Dong Ercheng spoke, the original owner would eagerly push the marriage aside.

To her, they were two generations apart. How could someone who could be her uncle marry her?

As for the 1,600 yuan compensation, it utterly destroyed the sibling bond between the original owner and Dong Jianbei.