Volume 1: Reborn in the 1980s, selling lunch boxes with my mother Chapter 61 Grandma Hu's Philosophy of Life
Hu Qiongfang walked into the house with red eyes.
As soon as he entered the door, he knelt on the ground and kowtowed several times to Grandma Hu and Grandpa Hu.
Her elder and younger brothers, who had always loved her, did not help her up.
This is what I should kowtow to.
After bowing their heads, their parents accepted it, and all the past grudges were wiped out.
Without the Jiang family in the middle, Hu Qiongfang is still the most favored youngest daughter of the Hu family.
Grandpa Hu was a spirited old man with short hair. The space between his index and middle fingers was yellowed by cigarette smoke. When he smiled, his eyes looked exactly like Hu Qiongfang's, and it was obvious at first glance that they were father and daughter.
Grandma Hu had a head of gray hair, which was neatly combed into a small bun at the back of her head and fastened with two flat black hairpins in a cross shape. She was dressed very neatly and even changed into clean clothes.
The two elders tried hard to hold back their tears until Hu Qiongfang finished kowtowing. Then they dragged Jiang Tian and Jiang Cheng to kowtow to their grandparents. Only then did they stand up, hugged the mother and her two children, and burst into tears.
Hu Jianguo and his brother also had red eyes. Jiang Xiuxiu wiped her tears and went forward to persuade them: "Dad, Mom, let my little sister and her family go home to drink some water. They have come all the way here without even a bicycle ."
The more he spoke, the sadder he felt, and he cursed the Jiang family in his heart.
Especially Jiang Leping!
She just didn't believe that the Jiang family couldn't even come up with the most basic gift money.
How could you send your second child, Jiang Lesheng, to school if you have no money?
To put it bluntly, I just want to bring home a beautiful wife without spending a penny.
Maybe he was attracted by the Hu family's only precious daughter and wanted to marry Hu Qiongfang home first. If the couple's life becomes difficult at that time, can the father-in-law just watch his precious daughter suffer in her husband's family?
Grandpa Hu's ability is well-known in the surrounding area.
When the household contract responsibility system was first implemented, other families just grew crops honestly, but he was different. He grew sugarcane, watermelons, and strawberries, and let his two sons take them to the provincial capital to set up stalls, earning much more from it than growing crops.
The Hu family also has two sons, both of whom are good at farming.
With such a prosperous family, it is no wonder that Hu Qiongfang was a favorite in the eyes of matchmakers when she was young. Unexpectedly, she was finally won over by the eldest son of the Jiang family.
However, the Jiang family never expected that Grandpa Hu and his wife were not so easy to control.
Jiang Xiuxiu didn’t understand why her parents-in-law wanted to break off relations with her sister-in-law before, until she witnessed the selfishness and coldness of the Jiang family, she began to understand.
If the parents-in-law really couldn't bear to part with their sister-in-law and tried their best to give her money, the money would most likely end up in the hands of the old woman from the Jiang family. Just like the situation now, when the two brothers divided the family property, wasn't all the money taken away by the brother-in-law?
Anyway, if it were Jiang Xiuxiu herself, she would definitely spend her money only on her own children.
When she heard that her daughter had taken her two children out without even a bicycle, Grandma Hu wiped her tears, pinched her daughter hard twice, then went into the inner room and took out a biscuit box from the box.
When I opened it, there was a stack of ten-yuan and fifty-yuan bills inside.
Grandma Hu handed the money to her daughter and sighed, "These were originally the dowry your father and I saved for you. You evil creature, you ran away with a man without saying a word, and you don't even want the dowry, right?"
Hu Qiongfang cried so hard that she couldn't speak.
After crying, she wiped away her tears and pushed the money back.
"Dad, Mom, you take this money back. When I left, I agreed with his family that they would not give me any betrothal gifts, and I would not bring any dowry. Over the years, I have been filial to my mother-in-law, taken care of my brother-in-law, and gave birth to a son and a daughter for the Jiang family. I have done enough for the Jiang family, and there is no reason for you to supplement the dowry."
The two sides pushed each other back and forth, and Grandma Hu was about to get angry. Jiang Tian suddenly thought of something, tugged at the corner of Hu Qiongfang's clothes, and whispered a reminder -
"Mom, just take the money. Don't we have some vacant space on that piece of land on the provincial road? We can use the money to build two more shops. If we don't need them, we can rent them out. We can use the annual rent to support our grandparents."
As soon as Jiang Tian opened her mouth, both Grandma Hu and Grandpa Hu looked over.
They had heard that the old lady of the Jiang family had asked her granddaughter to drop out of school and go back to farm on the pretext that the family had no money. She also told the villagers that it was because Jiang Tian was too stupid to study. Pah! Their granddaughter was very smart.
Who says that only those with good grades are considered smart?
Grandpa Hu looked at his granddaughter with satisfaction.
Since she was able to think of turning her dowry into a storefront next to the provincial road, her granddaughter seems like her own granddaughter.
Grandma Hu didn't want to argue with her daughter about this, so she just made the final decision and stuffed the money into her granddaughter's arms.
"Take it! Your mother is a fool. She doesn't want the money. Don't learn from her. No matter it is money from your parents or your husband's family, it is yours only when it is in your hands. Do you understand?"
As soon as these words were spoken, both aunts couldn't help laughing.
The Hu family is different from many rural families. Nowadays, most families in the countryside generally do not split up as long as the parents are still alive.
Even if only one of the parents is still alive, the children have to wait until the old person passes away before sitting down to discuss the division of the property.
But the Hu family is different.
Both Grandma Hu and Grandpa Hu firmly believe that life is earned by one's own life, not taught by parents.
Therefore, after his two sons got married, Grandpa Hu personally presided over the division of the family property. He divided the family house, land and savings into three parts, giving one part to each son, and let them fight for their own success with their wives.
In Grandpa Hu's words: Now even the state has called for household contract responsibility system, and let the rural people do their own thing, so how can the state's decision be wrong? This method must be better than eating from the same big pot, otherwise why should we have household contract responsibility system?
While he was presiding over the division of the family property, the mother-in-law, Grandma Hu, called her two daughters-in-law aside and taught them "how to tame their husbands."
"When a man has money, his bones become lighter!"
"Mom knows that both of you are good, virtuous and capable. When the family is divided, you should keep all the money in the family in your hands. Just give the men food and drink, and don't let them have any money!"
"You two should discuss and handle the important matters of the family, and don't be reluctant to spend money when it's necessary. It's not that I, as a mother-in-law, am harsh in my words when it comes to things that shouldn't be spent. No matter whether it's your biological parents or us, your parents-in-law, they are all outsiders in the end. You two are the ones who have to spend your whole lives together. Don't separate from your husband because of outsiders!"
In short, the tips for training husbands that Grandma Hu taught her two daughters-in-law are:
First, take control of the family finances and don’t let your man become a bad person.
Second, don’t be stingy where money should be spent, and don’t be stingy where money shouldn’t be spent, such as women giving money to their parents’ home or men secretly giving money to their parents-in-law, such things must not be allowed to happen!
When a relative encounters difficulties, the couple should discuss it with each other and not give all their family assets to others without any consideration.
It’s no wonder that since the separation of the family, the two daughters-in-law have been running their own small families very well. They don’t even need the old people to nag them, as they are just thinking of ways to make money.
You have to make money.
The parents-in-law made it clear that they didn't want to interfere in their small family. After the division, whether they lived well or not depended entirely on their own abilities.
When Jiang Xiuxiu and Chen Xiaohong were at her parents' home, they heard about how some people in the village were bullied by their parents-in-law after getting married, and had to endure unreasonable sisters-in-law and two-faced sisters-in-law. They all hoped that they could separate from their parents-in-law as soon as possible after getting married.
However, after the family really separated, perhaps because "far away things are more fragrant than near things are stinky", after being separated from their parents-in-law, they began to think about the benefits of being with their parents-in-law.
This is the wisdom of Grandma Hu in life.
Sometimes, if children are not allowed to experience the pain of fighting alone, they will never know how much benefit can be gained if their parents and siblings unite.
Now, although the three companies have separated on the surface, in fact many things are still mixed together.
But the two aunts knew about the dowry that belonged to Hu Qiongfang since the day the family was divided. No one except Hu Qiongfang could touch this money.
However, the two sisters-in-law expressed their support for the mother-in-law's approach.
Because when they divided the family property, the mother-in-law did the same thing, giving them a sum of money so that they could have the confidence to support a small family.
