The 1970s: Military Family Beauty

Jiang Dapeng knew Hu Xiuqing's unreasonable personality better than anyone else. He was usually busy with work and was often not at home, so he turned a blind eye to many things and tolerated them.

Now, in front of his mother, Jiang Dapeng couldn't use the excuse of working overtime to leave. He could only try his best to suppress his annoyance and said casually, "This is not a joke! I didn't even try hard."

Hu Xiuqing kept yelling, "You didn't use enough force? Why would he cry out in pain if you didn't use enough force?"

Jiang Dapeng had no choice but to lower his head and ask, "Qing, did it hurt you?"

"Ouch," Jiang Guoqing's nose and eyes squeezed together. "Why hit me on the butt? How can I sit like this?"

Hu Xiuqing became even more excited: "Look! He can't even sit still! And you said you didn't use enough force! How can you be so cruel? Huh? You're not at home at all, and when you come back you're brutally beating your son. Do you know that beating your son hurts the mother too? Who are you beating me for?!"

Jiang Dapeng was stunned by this irrelevant accusation: "I didn't even try hard! Xiuqing, don't listen to the kid's nonsense!"

Hu Xiuqing didn't listen at all: "Who are you beating the child for? Don't think I don't know!"

Jiang Dapeng didn't want to make a scene late at night and just wanted to calm things down quickly: "Okay, okay, I hit you too hard, take Qingqing back to the room and go to bed."

"Hmph! You're quite perceptive!" Hu Xiuqing raised her head. "If it weren't for Qingqing's sake, I wouldn't have suffered this loss. Come on, Qing, I'll take care of you before you go to bed."

Grandma Jiang was becoming more and more surprised as she watched. How could she just listen to whoever was reasonable?

It was clearly Hu Xiuqing who was making trouble out of nothing, so how did it become like she was compromising?

What's the matter!

Jiang Furong stood at the kitchen door with a plate of roasted sweet potatoes and asked, "Qingqing, are you hungry? Auntie roasted some sweet potatoes and saved them especially for you. Do you want to eat them now? Or tomorrow morning?"

"I want to eat now!" Jiang Guoqing turned around abruptly, pulled himself out from under Hu Xiuqing's arms, and ran to sit down at the table. "Sister, I'm a patient. Pick out the burnt ones for me!"

Jiang Furong put the plate down briskly: "They are all here, pick whatever you want, I'll get you a spoon."

Jiang Guoqing looked left and right, then put his nose close to it and took a deep breath: "It smells so good! I want to eat it all! Ahhhh, eat it all, hahahaha."

Grandma Jiang, who was sitting at the table, looked at her grandson silently, shaking her head. She had no mood to coax him and didn't even want to say a word.

Jiang Dapeng had noticed something was wrong with his mother's expression a long time ago, so he had no choice but to awkwardly step forward and slap Jiang Guoqing on the butt again: "Didn't you just say it hurt so much that you couldn't sit still? What's wrong? Does the smell of sweet potatoes make it go away?"

Jiang Guoqing shouted again exaggeratedly: "Ouch, you spanked me again!"

"Qingqing, is this Ga Zi's lyrics?" Jiang Furong asked before Hu Xiuqing got angry. "It sounds so familiar to me!"

Jiang Guoqing smiled foolishly: "Huh? You found out?"

Jiang Furong smiled and said, "I didn't notice it, I just felt like I had heard it somewhere before."

Jiang Guoqing shook his head proudly: "I'm so happy that you can even figure this out! Okay, I'll give you a sweet potato as a reward!"

"You're so nice to me? Then let me feed you!" Jiang Furong smiled and sat down next to Grandma Jiang, breaking open a roasted sweet potato. "Look at this one, the one with a black mark is sweet. Auntie said this kind of sweet potato is used to make candy."

"Really? I want to eat, ah~" Jiang Guoqing opened his mouth wide, waiting for his sister to feed him.

The two sisters talked and enjoyed the meal.

Hu Xiuqing was left aside, her face turning pale and blue. After a while, seeing that no one paid attention to her, she waved her hand and went back to her room.

Jiang Dapeng sat down at the table as if nothing had happened, picked up a sweet potato and broke it open. "Red flesh? It's sweet! Mom, did you bring this here? It must be heavy to carry it all the way here."

Grandma Jiang snorted and said, "Furong bought this when she went to the provincial capital to pick us up."

Jiang Dapeng took a bite of the sweet potato and swallowed it. "Mmm, it's sweet. The sweet potatoes in the provincial capital are different! Furong is quite good at shopping."

Grandma Jiang said angrily, "That's right! Furong saw that we had too much luggage to carry and was afraid we would miss the bus, so she bought some sweet potatoes from someone and asked the sweet potato seller to push his wheelbarrow to take us to the bus station with both the potatoes and our luggage."

When Jiang Dapeng heard this, he quickly climbed up his mother's pole and praised his daughter: "Wow, Furong is quite capable of thinking of ways, not bad!"

"It was more than good," Grandma Jiang recalled the day she arrived. "We didn't feel tired at all. Furong met us at the station. We bought sweet potatoes and got a wheelbarrow right after we left. We got a ride on a local cart in the county town. When we got to the gate of the courtyard, someone helped carry our luggage home. Furong is incredibly resourceful! I've never met a girl so resourceful."

After saying that, Grandma Jiang rolled her eyes at the door of Hu Xiuqing's bedroom and curled her lips.

Jiang Dapeng pretended not to see and said to his daughter, "Furong, when you were little, grandma loved you very much and took you with her everywhere. Now it's finally your turn to take grandma for a walk."

Jiang Furong smiled and replied, "Okay."

Jiang Guoqing rushed to say: "Dad, I can take grandma out to play too!"

Grandma Jiang's expression, which had been tense for a long time, relaxed. She said with a half-smile, "Guoqing is really sensible. He's worthy of being a child of the Jiang family. He's like your father, okay!"

Jiang Dapeng put down the sweet potato peel in his hand and clapped his hands. "Tomorrow is Sunday. The service center will have meat in the morning. I don't have to go to work. I'll go buy a pound of pork early tomorrow morning and we'll make dumplings. The production team's vegetables have also arrived. I'll buy some cabbage and radishes. After making dumplings, I'll start pickling pickles."

Grandma Jiang curled her lips and said, "By the time you pickled the daylilies, they'd already gotten cold. Xiao Cui had already pickled the cabbages yesterday."

Jiang Dapeng was amused: "Oh, it's different with my mom and sister here!"

"It was Furong who asked someone to pull it back, and Xiao Cui and I just followed behind." Grandma Jiang did not take credit for it, but kept praising Jiang Furong's contribution.

In this family, those who are capable of working and finding solutions are actually trying to be humble and coax those who are unreasonable. This really confuses right and wrong. They have to be straightened out, otherwise the eldest grandson of the Jiang family will be led astray.

Jiang Dapeng knew that his mother had never liked Hu Xiuqing, and her relationship with the Hu family in the village was average. Even though they were relatives, they didn't interact much. But what could he do? As long as the family didn't fight when they met and could get along on the surface, it was enough.

Jiang Dapeng tried to find something cheerful to say, "Furong, how did you get into the platform? I don't think I ever taught you how to buy a platform ticket."