country bumpkin

The Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on the 10th day of the eighth lunar month, is October 3rd. Yunya has been back in the village for three days now, and half of her holiday is already over, but she hasn't done any of her homework.

Mu Shuyun asked, "Yun, how do you feel about going to school? Is it tiring?"

Yunya said with a bitter face, "Going to school is no fun at all. In class, the teacher asks questions, and if you can't answer them, you get scolded and beaten. After school, you have to go home and do homework, which is very tiring."

Mu Shuyun didn't know how to educate her child; she believed that the most important thing was for her child to be happy and healthy.

She said, "Well... half of the holiday is already over, and you still haven't done your homework. How will you be able to finish it when school starts? Will the teacher hit you if you don't finish?"

Yunya sighed and said, "I'm sure I'll get beaten up, and our teachers are all very fierce. Our Chinese teacher hits people with bamboo sticks, it hurts so much. Our math teacher hits people by twisting their ears and kicking their legs, it's terrifying."

Mu Shuyun felt another pang of heartache after hearing this. Cui Chuyun quickly went to do her homework. She didn't want Yunya to get beaten.

After finishing breakfast, Yunya slowly and dawdled as she went to the living room to do her homework. Half an hour later, Yunya said she was thirsty, and Mu Shuyun quickly came over to pour her some water.

After finishing her water, she reluctantly continued doing her homework. After working on another math problem, Yunya started scratching her head and cheeks, looking like she'd been bitten by a flea.

Mu Shuyun went to clean and came back to find Yunya like this. Curious, she asked, "Yunya, what are you doing? Why did you stop writing?"

Yunya frowned and said, "Grandma, this math problem is too difficult, I can't do it."

Mu Shuyun had never been to school, and she didn't know how to teach, so she could only say, "Write down what you know first, and leave the rest for later!"

Just then, Caixia arrived. Xianghong and Xiangyang also arrived. They saw Yunya doing her homework. Caixia and Xianghong, who were already in school, said they would go home to get their homework and come over to do it together.

When Xiang Hong ran home, she brought her younger brother with her. She asked her grandmother to play with her brother while she went to Yun Ya's house to do her homework.

Caixia's house is close by; it's only a 5-minute round trip. Xianghong's house is a bit further away.

After turning a corner, it takes about 10 minutes to complete one one-way trip. By the time she returned, Yunya and Caixia had already finished several problems.

All three girls were in first grade and used the same textbooks. Yunya took the problems she didn't understand to the other two and asked them for solutions.

After watching for a while, Caixia said, "Oh dear! This is so difficult, I can't do it either."

Yunya looked at Xianghong again. Xianghong thought for a moment, then wrote the answer on the cover of the notebook and showed it to them.

Yunya still didn't understand and asked Xiang Hong why it was interpreted that way. Caixia, however, understood and excitedly explained it to Yunya.

Xiang Hong watched the two of them discussing the problem, and then she started doing her own homework.

By the time the two of them had explained the problem, Xiang Hong had already written several pages of Chinese vocabulary words.

Yun Ya and Cai Xia looked at Xiang Hong's Chinese homework. The characters were written quickly and well, neatly and cleanly, and were just the right size to fill the grid.

The two of them exclaimed in unison with envy, "Xiang Hong, your handwriting is so beautiful!"

Yunya then said, "Our class monitor writes just like you—neat, tidy, and so fast! It's so enviable. How do you do it?"

Caixia also looked at Xiang Hong with a thirst for knowledge.

Xiang Hong smiled and said, "It's not as good as you all say, it's just average. But I think there must be some tricks to writing well."

Yun Ya and Cai Xia looked at her at the same time, listening attentively to what she was saying.

"First, you have to write big. If the characters are too small, you can't even see them clearly, so how can they be neat? But you can't write outside the grid."

"Secondly, the characters should be written with straight lines. Wrong characters look like worms and are disgusting."

"Finally, it's all about writing and practicing more. Only when you're familiar with the strokes will you avoid making mistakes. If you don't make mistakes, you won't need an eraser, and your writing will be neat and clean."

The two of them looked enlightened, as if they had just learned something.

Caixia said, "Oh, I see! Then I'll write big characters from now on and not leave the lines."

Yunya chimed in, "Yes, yes, yes, I won't write in small characters anymore either."

Then I saw the two of them put away their math homework and start writing Chinese characters.

Take out the grid paper, open the textbook, and start copying the vocabulary list. Word list cards are also placed next to it.

Xiang Hong wasn't paying attention to the two of them; she quickly started doing her homework.

When I got tired of writing, I looked up to rest and saw Yunya's notebook.

The characters above are all written with their top edges touching the grid, which makes me uncomfortable. It feels like the house is too small to fit an octopus, so its tentacles are sticking out.

Xiang Hong looked at Cai Xia again; her handwriting had the same feel to it.

Xiang Hong was speechless for a moment, wanting to laugh but unable to. What kind of genius students were these? If she were their teacher, she would be so angry that her liver would hurt.

Xiang Hong couldn't help but say, "The notebooks you bought are too small; they can't hold all the characters you write."

Yunya didn't realize she was being teased and asked in confusion, "Oh, are there bigger grid notebooks? But all the other students are using this kind of notebook. I can't be different, right, Caixia?"

He then looked at Caixia, hoping to get a similar opinion from her.

Caixia couldn't help but burst out laughing. "Haha, hahaha..."

Yunya looked at Caixia curiously, "Caixia, what are you laughing at? Did I say something wrong?"

Caixia laughed and said, "You silly goose, Xiang Hong is laughing at us for writing characters that are too big to fit in the grid."

Yunya looked at her own handwriting, then at Caixia's, and finally at Xianghong's. Upon comparison, it was indeed true that both her own and Caixia's handwriting were sticking out.

Yunya looked embarrassed, but within seconds she immediately regained her playful smile and joined Caixia in laughing.

Xiang Hong initially felt a little embarrassed about teasing them, but hearing Yun Ya's laughter made her laugh too.

The three little girls were laughing and giggling together.

Mu Shuyun was picking vegetables in another room when she heard the laughter of three children coming from the living room, and she laughed along with them.

At this moment, she felt that with Yunya around, there was laughter, and with children at home, life had color.

When it was lunchtime, Caixia and Xianghong did not go home, but had lunch with Yunya instead.

Mu Shuyun prepared four dishes to entertain the two little guests. Caixia chewed on a fried lotus root sandwich and mumbled indistinctly, "Delicious, really delicious."

Xiang Hong was also holding chopsticks in one hand and fried lotus root slices in the other, eating with great relish.

Yunya boasted, "This fried lotus root sandwich is Grandma's specialty. There's a seasoned meat filling sandwiched between two slices of lotus root. It's so crispy and crunchy, it's impossible for it not to be delicious."

Caixia nodded repeatedly in agreement with Hong, her mouth full of food, leaving no room to speak.

After eating the fried lotus root slices, they picked up a piece of spicy chicken with their chopsticks. The numbing and spicy taste made the children's mouths water.

Maybe it's the spicy flavor that's stimulating, or maybe it's the numbing sensation that's making it go numb; in any case, it's all about the panting and slurping sounds.