Changes in life at 81

  Lin Zhenhua's crossing is quietly changing the fate of many people. As a very common saying goes, a butterfly flapping its wings unintentionally can lead to an unexpected storm.

  If it weren't for Lin Zhenhua, Lan Wufeng might still be a thief now, being summoned by the police station every other day, and getting beaten and scolded as a regular occurrence. Now, he already has assets of 20 to 30 thousand yuan, and is considered a rich man in the small county town. A girl who had borrowed an eraser from him in elementary school has started secretly dating him again, although their relationship only goes as far as holding hands cautiously, but this is enough to make Lan Wufeng dizzy with happiness.

  Xiong Lijun was also a person whose fate had been changed. His family was rural, and a distant relative who had become a minor official helped him get a job at a state-owned enterprise out of gratitude for the help his family had given him when he was young. However, he had no interest in this kind of life that repeated year after year, day after day, and studying technology was also a headache for him. As a result, he became a porter with the lowest status.

  If it weren't for Lin Zhenhua, Xiong Lijun might have been stuck in the porter's position forever. With his income and family background, he probably could only marry a wife from the countryside and become one of the countless single-income families struggling to make ends meet.

  However, fate changed the moment Lin Zhenhua appeared. Xiong Lijun gave up his hard-won state-owned enterprise employee status and became a self-employed individual who was looked down upon by others but secretly envied. In just half a year's time, he received 300,000 to 400,000 yuan in dividends from the Xinxin store, and his family had already started preparing to build a house. His beautiful girlfriend was now holding his arm, excitedly discussing what kind of wedding ceremony they would have.

  Now, the only thing that troubles him is whether he can borrow the latest Beijing Jeep from the factory on his wedding day. His girlfriend has already said that if there's no car to sit in on their wedding day, it would be too humiliating.

  He had to go ahead of time to give some things to the director of the factory office, Kong Haijiang, and let him keep the Jeep on that day. Xiong Lijun was secretly calculating in his heart.

  The fate that changed the most was Lin Fanghua, my sister. From the bottom of the class, she jumped to become the first in the class and third in the grade, a dark horse. Lin Fanghua almost had a feeling of being in a different world.

  Lin Fanghua never thought she could jump to such a high position, those classmates who were ranked behind her in the past were always people she admired but couldn't reach, and now she can actually look down on them.

  She clearly remembered that on the first day her brother came back from serving in the army, he had promised to tutor her for a year and help her achieve at least a top three ranking in her grade. At the time, she thought this was just her brother bragging, but before she knew it, she had actually achieved it.

  Apart from the rapid progress in her studies, the changes in her life also made Lin Fanghua feel like she was dreaming. Originally, due to her parents' absence, she and her brother could only rely on a small amount of consolation money from the factory to survive, although eating wasn't a problem, but any luxurious consumption was not dared to be hoped for. When her grandparents were still alive in the countryside, they would occasionally secretly support them with a little bit of money without telling their uncle, but after her grandparents passed away, this support also disappeared. She remembered that one year during Chinese New Year, Wei Suping had bought her a few meters of flowered fabric and made her a new cotton-padded jacket, which made her happy for half a year.

  Since her brother came back from the army, life has been changing almost every day. Her brother tried his best to earn money and spent it on her without hesitation. Compared with other classmates in the class, Lin Fanghua felt that she was the most spoiled one. Her brother had once said a sentence to her, "Raise sons when poor and daughters when rich", she secretly asked other girls, no one had ever heard their parents say similar words.

  One time, a close friend brought over a magazine to show her, which had a photo of a foreign girl with a Walkman clipped to her waist and wearing headphones, looking intoxicated. The friend said: "If my parents would buy me a Walkman, I'd do anything they asked."

  Lin Fanghua was holding back and didn't dare to speak, because she had a Walkman just like that. Her brother had said that this might be the only one in the entire Jiangnan Province. At that moment, she really wanted to say to her best friend: My brother bought me one, he's the best brother in the world, I'm willing to do anything for my brother.

  Lin Fanghua knew that her brother didn't need her to do anything now, even household chores, he had taken care of everything. The purpose was to let her focus on reviewing and preparing for the college entrance exam. She knew that her brother's greatest hope was for her to get into the best university in China, she must achieve this, she couldn't disappoint him.

  Lin Zhenhua's guidance was only an external cause for Lin Fanghua's improvement in grades, her own hard work was also a very important internal cause.

  In the whole class, Lin Fanghua can be considered one of the hardest learners. The study plan made by her brother, she did it without any discount. Her brother once joked with her, saying that she should take her own book to compare with other students' books and see whose book had the darkest page edges. She really went to compare secretly, and then proudly found that her book was the one with the darkest page edges. Her brother said that the depth of the color of the page marks is directly proportional to the high school entrance examination scores.

  However, Lin Fanghua also found that her brother's theory was entirely based on being strict with others and lenient with himself. She took out the textbooks her brother used when he was in junior high school and compared them, only to find that they were almost like new, with some pages still uncut from the printing factory. After all these years, they still looked like they did when they came off the production line.

  But it was this brother who didn't read books, when guiding her to do analytical geometry and trigonometric functions, was almost more proficient than the most awesome math teacher at Fenghua Middle School. How did all these changes happen?

  There is still one person who, unlike the previous ones, didn't simply feel happy. Her thoughts were like a phrase from Lin Zhenhua's song: The east rises with the sun, and the west rains, half clear, half cloudy. This person was naturally Yang Xin.

  Yang Xin has now become a skilled CNC machine tool operator, and with time, she will definitely become a technical backbone, which will be very prestigious in the factory, and her income will also be very good.

  Almost everyone in the factory knew that Yang Xin was having an affair with Lin Zhenhua, because she would often run to Lin's house and help him with household chores. In response, Yang Chunshan and his wife only vaguely reminded her not to be unfaithful, but did not restrict her.

  Lin Zhenhua would occasionally give her some money, letting her take it back to supplement the family expenses. At first, she firmly refused, but Lin Zhenhua kept putting it in her pocket. After many times, she no longer resisted futilely, and only felt sweetly in her heart. Her cultural level was not high, and she didn't know such elegant phrases as "it's easy to ask for priceless treasures, but hard to find a loving husband", but she could feel that Lin Zhenhua had a deep affection for her, which made her deeply trapped in the happiness of love.

  What made Yang Xin feel uneasy was that Lin Zhenhua was too capable. When Lin Zhenhua was first assigned to be a porter, she had thought about how to pull him up, with a heroic and tragic mindset of a beauty saving a hero. But in the more than a year since then, the "turtle spirit" emitted by Lin Zhenhua made her feel dizzy.

  Lin Zhenhua initially revealed his astonishing lathe and electric welding skills, followed by designing rolling gear machines and submerged arc welding machines, becoming the factory's technical backbone. Next, he somehow managed to persuade Americans to donate a CNC machine tool to the factory, and his operation of the CNC machine was as if it were second nature to him. Before people could recover from the shock of all this, Lin Zhenhua took on the labor service company and miraculously turned what was originally a loss-making collective enterprise into a profitable giant.

  Yang Xin also had some close female friends, who warned her that a great guy like Lin Zhenhua would definitely be the target of many girls' affections, and if Yang Xin didn't hurry up, someone else might snatch him away. One friend was particularly dramatic, secretly advising Yang Xin to find an opportunity to "sleep" with Lin Zhenhua, so he would have to take responsibility for her. This simple yet effective method has been tried by many bold individuals from ancient times to the present, and even in that relatively conservative era, such things often happened.

  Yang Xin would never use such a method to tie down Lin Zhenhua, on the one hand because she didn't have the audacity, and on the other hand because she was increasingly losing confidence in herself.

  She was just a temporary worker who graduated from junior high school, while Lin Zhenhua, although not highly educated, had extraordinary skills and was already the deputy head of the technical department. In terms of appearance, although young people privately ranked her among the top few girls in the factory, she never dared to confirm whether she met Xi Shi's standards in Lin Zhenhua's eyes.

  As the saying goes, a woman dresses for her own pleasure. Yang Xin had something on her mind and started paying more attention to dressing herself up every day. With the money Lin Zhenhua gave her, apart from giving some to her parents, she was able to save a little, which she used to buy all sorts of new skincare products, cosmetics, hair bands, and sandals. She also often studied the outfits of female stars in "Popular Film" magazine and imitated them as much as possible.

  Apart from physical grooming, Yang Xin was also eager to narrow the knowledge gap with Lin Zhenhua. She rummaged through dusty boxes and retrieved her old textbooks, secretly reviewing them in preparation for taking the TV university or correspondence university exams. However, this effort only brought her frustration and low self-esteem, as she discovered that she couldn't even understand what she was reading.

  People who are happy and worried, are all working hard to move forward, they all know that life is changing themselves, and they can also change their lives. They, like all Chinese in the early 1980s, may still have confusion in their hearts, but they have already seen the distant hope of light in their eyes.

  That's right, this is an era full of confusion, and it is also an era filled with hope.

  It is the best of times.