Spring Breeze Twenty Years

Chapter 99 Sleeping on a Cold Bed

The silly boy sleeps on a cold kang (heated brick bed), relying entirely on his strong constitution.

There are many widely circulated rhymes in Northeast China, such as "Four Reds and Four Greens," "Four Joys and Four Sorrows," "Four Sufferings and Four Tires," and "Four Injuries," which refer to four things that are very harmful to the body. One of them is sleeping on a cold kang (heated brick bed).

The kang (heated brick bed) is a specialty of the cold regions of Northeast and Northwest China. In essence, it is a living facility used for heating in rural areas. In fact, the kang is connected to the ground. If you don't light a fire, it's no different from sleeping directly on the ground. In winter, the ground is frozen for one or two meters. You can imagine how uncomfortable that is.

That is to warm the earth with our bodies.

In the afternoon, I spoke a few words with Sister Xia in the shop. The two of us played with firecrackers and sparklers at the shop entrance for a while until 4:30. Sister Xia had to pick up her child and left. Xia Maosheng took Xiaowei to cook some vegetables on the shop's coal stove. The two of them ate a bite and then he went to his aunt's house. Xiaowei waited alone in the shop, and the longer he waited, the colder his heart became.

With no other option, he tore up some cardboard boxes and laid them on the kang (a heated brick bed), then spread the quilts from the kang on the cardboard boxes, took off his shoes, and crawled under the quilts.

I waited until after 11 p.m., during which I managed to doze off twice, but was woken up by the cold both times. It was truly a miserable experience.

It was almost midnight when the door opened, and Xia Maosheng came running in, grinning and waving his hands. He said, "I ran into my crush! I stayed at her place for a while. What should we do? Go out and find a place to stay, or just sleep here?"

Xiao Wei glanced at him and said, "Are there any shops open here?" This is just like Xiao Wei's hometown, a small county town. It's not a scenic spot, so there are no outsiders. By eight or nine o'clock, the streets are basically deserted. You can't even find a person, let alone a shop.

Xia Maosheng chuckled a few times, lifted the blanket Xiao Wei had laid underneath him, looked at it, and said, "Cardboard won't do. Get up, some wooden boards will do. I'll boil some water."

Xiao Wei crawled out of the warm bed, rolled the blanket up into a roll to slow down the heat loss, and then put on his shoes and got out of bed.

When they came to the outer room, the stove had already gone out. Xia Maosheng went to the corner of the wall to look for some firewood, put it in the stove, and used oil paper to start a fire. It took him a long time to get the fire going. With the fire, the room felt a little warmer.

A teapot of water was placed on the stove, and the two of them sat by the stove with their hands in their pockets, smoking. Xia Maosheng said, "My aunt came home late today. When I finished talking to her, it was almost ten o'clock when I left. It's been two months since I last saw her, so I just stayed by my partner's place for a while. Don't be angry."

Xiao Wei laughed and said, "Why get angry? You can just collect my body if I freeze to death here anyway."

Xia Maosheng scratched his head sheepishly, stammered for a while, and then said, "Okay, I was wrong. I'll treat you to a meal next time, okay?"

By the firelight, Xiao Wei looked around the room and said, "Does your sister's shop make money? Why does it look so messy?"

Xia Maosheng poked the stove with an iron hook and said, "We mainly purchase things for schools and the government. If we sell them retail, we can't make much money. We'd be starving. A student spends less than five yuan a semester. Although we're called a city, we're really just a county town, and a poor one at that. If it weren't for the mining bureau, we'd be a complete rural area."

Xiao Wei said, "The mining bureau is so big, I've seen so many factories and equipment, how could it be poor?"

Xia Maosheng laughed and said, "I forgot you've never left the city. The mining bureau isn't under the city's jurisdiction. Its rank is even higher than my aunt's, but the mine is here, and the county doesn't have the money. Just like where you are, Beigang and Angang are state-owned enterprises, so the local government can't manage them and doesn't get any money."

Xiao Wei said, "The workers live here, don't they spend their wages? The money's still there, isn't it?"

Xia Maosheng shook his head and said, "This place is too small. Business can't take off. Look at the people on this street. They've all gone to Jinzhou. It's convenient to go to Jinzhou. They buy clothes, shoes, houses, and appliances there. No matter what we do, this place can't catch up with that place. It's the same in Beixi, Li Guangzhao's Fushun, and An Saijun's Liaoyang. The rich people all go to Fengtian to spend their money. It's just that your place is big and has a lot of people, so you can always leave some behind. We're too small here."

Xiao Wei nodded and said, "It is small, not even as big as our county town. To be honest, I'm quite disappointed. Do you think it'll work to hold a class here? I have a very doubtful opinion."

Xia Maosheng nodded and said, "It's definitely not going to work here. We'll be lucky to get a few people here. Let's go to Chaoyang. We asked my aunt to help us with connections. We're under Chaoyang's jurisdiction here."

The fire in the stove gradually grew stronger, the flames rose, and the firelight danced and reflected on the two people's faces. The teapot on the stove made a hissing sound, and finally, there was a bit of warmth in the room.

Xiao Wei stretched and twisted his body, saying, "They're all frozen solid. One day when you're drunk, I'll bury you in the snow for half an hour so you can experience what it's like."

Xia Maosheng chuckled and leaned closer to whisper, "Hey, um, have you and your wife done 'that' yet?"

Xiao Wei paused for a moment, then asked, "Which one? What about that one?"

Xia Maosheng put down the stove hook, grinning lewdly, and said, "This."

Xiao Wei scratched his head, thought for a moment, then mimicked the gesture and asked, "What's this?"

Xia Maosheng clicked his tongue, licked his lips, and said, "Exactly, did you sleep in the same bed?"

Xiao Wei asked, "What are you gesturing like that when we sleep in the same bed? Nobody can understand it!"

Xia Maosheng scratched his head, then suddenly laughed and said, "Are you still a virgin? Haha, honest kid, you two are together every day, why don't you make a move? If I had your chance, I'd have a kid by now."

Xiao Wei said "Oh" and then realized what Xia Maosheng was talking about. He shook his head and said, "Xiao Hong is in school. Getting into university is easy. We finally managed to climb out of the mountains. How can we ruin it over something like this? It's only a few years. We've already agreed that she'll get her marriage certificate after she graduates. What can't we do then?"

Xia Maosheng asked in a low voice, "Then you don't want to?"

Xiao Wei was a little embarrassed and asked back, "So you slept with your boyfriend? Damn, you're not going to tonight?"

Xia Maosheng chuckled and said, "It won't last long. She only works a few days a month, and half of that is taken up by her period. Hey, let me ask you something. You know, we've already done 'that,' so why won't she let me see? She makes me turn off the lights as soon as I come in, and only lets me pass after I'm all dressed. If I try to turn the lights on, she gets all worked up. Why do you think that is?"

Xiao Wei looked at Xia Maosheng and said, "I don't know, how would I know? Why don't you ask her?"

The teapot on the stove made a louder and louder noise, and the area around the stove warmed up. Xiao Wei stretched his legs comfortably and said, "It's so nice to be warm. You're not cold, are you? Not only are you cold, but you're also tired. You have to stay alert."

Xia Maosheng stood up to find a bowl and said, "Drink some hot water and put a wooden board on top. That cardboard won't do any good."

Xiao Wei asked, "Why isn't there a fire in the house? Can't the kang (heated brick bed) be heated?"

Xia Maosheng walked back with a bowl and said, "There was no stove pit, so we demolished it. We never intended for anyone to live there anyway."