【Serial】The Growth Story of a Chemical Engineering Designer-50

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(Fifty) A few days before the holiday, Li Mengyuan announced in the dormitory that his place was ready, and he would move there during the National Day holiday. Huang Lei and the others were all very excited; they expressed their envy and asked Li Mengyuan to take them out for a meal. Ye Wenhui also envies Li Mengyuan; after working for five years, Li Mengyuan was finally able to settle in Quancheng. As for himself, he has nothing at the moment and doesn’t know how long it will take before he can reach a similar situation as him. Li Mengyuan was the first colleague Ye Wenhui met. Though he didn’t talk much, he was a very down-to-earth person who took good care of the others in the dormitory; he could be considered the big brother there. Now that he was suddenly going to move away, Ye Wenhui felt somewhat reluctant to see him go. Shufen also had time off, and she arrived in Quancheng a day early. Before her leave, she agreed with Ye Wenhui that they would go home together during the holidays. The day she arrived in Quancheng happened to be the day of Li Mengyuan’s dinner party. While eating, Li Mengyuan was in high spirits, constantly talking and laughing. When he had drunk enough, he picked up his glass, stood up, and said, \"After the holiday, on October 10, 2010, which is the third day of the ninth lunar month, I, Li Mengyuan, and He Xiaoyu will go to get married licenses; we are going to get married.\" ” Upon hearing this, everyone became excited and started to congratulate them. He Xiaoyu also stood up and, together with Li Mengyuan, accepted everyone’s blessings; the two of them would occasionally exchange glances. Ye Wenhui could see that their eyes were both a bit moist; a relationship that had finally led to success, after going through who knows what difficulties. Shu Fen also started to wipe away his tears with laughter, which led everyone to tease the two of them. Early in the morning on October 1st, Ye Wenhui and Shu Fen arrived at Quancheng Bus Terminal. With the onset of autumn and gradually cooling temperatures, the bus terminal was nevertheless a place of great activity. The two of them avoided the crowded crowd and queued up to buy tickets to board the train; it was similar to the situation during the Spring Festival travel rush. It was the first time for Ye Wenhui to take a bus home from Quancheng, and it was also the first time for Shu Fen to go to Ye Wenhui’s home. Although it was a return to his hometown, it felt as strange as going to a foreign place. Shu Fen was a bit nervous and kept asking Ye Wenhui about his family’s situation along the way. Ye Wenhui answered every question. The bumpy ride made people drowsy, and after more than two hours, they finally arrived at the bus station in their hometown. It is a very small county town, and the newly built bus station fails to hide its old-fashioned appearance; the few buildings erected outside the station seem to indicate a transformation in the city. From childhood to adulthood, Ye Wenhui attended school and lived here, but he has few memories of the county town. His hometown is located in a village 20 kilometers away from the county town, and in his mind, the outline of the county town isn’t any clearer than that of Quancheng. Over the years, even though I have come here many times a year, it has been difficult to overcome the innate sense of strangeness. It was the busy farming season; the two of them rode home, surrounded by a landscape covered in gold, filled with the scent of ripe corn. Seeing the people working hard, Ye Wenhui thought again of his parents’ hard work when he was young. Over the years, generation after generation of people have worked hard from dawn to dusk, sweating their brows on this land; the yellow soil has nurtured generations of people. Yet today, it fails to bring dignity to those who toil. Batch after batch of rural youths flock to the cities in pursuit of fame and wealth that serve no real purpose and are beyond their control. In Ye Wenhui’s eyes, over the past twenty-odd years, the outside world has changed dramatically, yet everything here remains unchanged. The exodus of many young people has left this land increasingly lacking in fresh vitality; it fails to change as times change, leaving those who try to bring about change to encounter a sense of strangeness. He thought to himself that his unfilial descendants had, from the day they were born, been prepared to abandon this land; it was about to become a forgotten place. Though it was their homeland, there was no future for it, and all they could do was silently recall in their hearts how it used to be. Ye Wenhui thought again: Not only this land, that city of springs, but even Beijing and Shanghai – isn’t it the same in those places as well? In the turbulent waves of society, generation after generation strives and progresses, all in an effort to reach the heights atop those waves. People come and go, profits flow in and out; in the midst of turmoil, tradition is shattered, and as things rise, order is reestablished. Whether things change or remain the same, people are no longer what they used to be. The so-called hometown exists only in the past. Thankfully, there are also familiar names here. Shu Fen also came from a farming family. They talked in the car about how she used to work in the fields as a child; when everyone in her family was busy, she would cook and start the fire at home by herself. Ye Wenhui also told Shu Fen about his own childhood. All of this seemed both distant and yet very close, and when one delved into these memories, it felt as though they had just happened. Knowing that Ye Wenhui and the others were coming back, Ye’s parents put aside their farming tasks and started preparing meals from early in the morning; many regular relatives and familiar neighbors also came to help. Although Ye Wenhui and Shu Fen were prepared, upon entering, they saw a large crowd in the courtyard, which surprised both of them. They were all relatives and neighbors; although it had been a long time since they last met, there was no sense of strangeness between them right away. Ye Wenhui introduced Shu Fen to each of them one by one. With so many people around, Shufen entered that state where she politely addressed everyone as grandfather, grandmother, uncle, and aunt, while also asking after their well-being, as if this place were her own home. It didn’t take long before she became familiar with everyone there. Several aunts laughed heartily, praising Shufen for being “true to herself,” which in the local dialect means honest and straightforward. Back in his hometown, many older people still held the belief that studying would guarantee a job assignment, and that a job was like a golden bowl of food. During meals, they kept asking Ye Wenhui what kind of work he did, how much money he earned per month, and what position he held now, leaving Ye Wenhui unsure of how to respond. Ye Wenhui told them that his current job was in chemical engineering design, and they asked what kind of company that was and what tasks were involved in it Ye Wenhui had to make a great effort to explain what he was doing, before they finally understood and said, “So you were painting carpets, huh! Having studied for so many years, I still end up painting carpets; Xiao Cui from our village, who has only finished middle school, has been painting carpets all along. ” According to them, after studying for so many years, Ye Wenhui would surely become a **official upon graduation – how could he go and do work involving carpet weaving? Xiao Cui was Ye Wenhui’s classmate from childhood; she has loved drawing since she was young. When series such as \"The New Legend of White Snake\" and \"The Return of the Condor Heroes\" were popular, they were still in middle school, yet she was already able to draw portraits of Zhao Yazi, Aaron Kwok, and Li Ruotong based on postcards, creating images that were extremely realistic and very similar to those on the postcards. In the eighth grade, she began drawing portraits of her classmates – she did these drawings in her exercise books; each portrait was completed in less than a class period, and they looked almost identical to the real people. Her classmates all asked her to draw portraits for them. There might still be some of the portraits she drew in a box somewhere at Ye Wenhui’s home. But at that time, academic subjects were everything; although she was good at drawing, she struggled with her academic work. The teachers said she wasn’t focusing on her studies properly, and her classmates thought her drawings were interesting but saw no practical use in them. During the middle school exams, she failed to get into high school, so she went to work at a carpet factory in the village. Since she was good at drawing, in addition to embroidering carpets, she could also create designs based on drawings, which allowed her to earn more money than others. She has been doing this for over a decade now; she married a young man from a neighboring village who worked as a carpenter. By now, her children are about to start elementary school. Thinking of this, Ye Wenhui couldn’t help but sigh; with Xiao Cui’s talent and strong interest, if there had been any good opportunities back then, how could she have ended up making carpets? Regarding the misunderstandings among the villagers, he simply admitted it with a smile, saying, “More or less.” ”There was no defense offered.