Zhao Ermei's hometown is rural, but it is next to the town, because of her special growth experience, she has felt the difference between the town and the countryside since she was a child.

Her hometown is in the north of Qinglong Town, and there is a slate bridge that is no more than a few dozen steps long from the market of Qinglong Town, but the two sides of the slate bridge seem to have different scenes of social life.

To the south of the bridge is the lively street market of Qinglong Town, and she can see the scene of people coming and going every day, but the north side of the bridge is demarcated out of the scope of the market and belongs to the countryside, so it is like a lonely corner, crowded and built with many villagers' simple houses, which is a place that few people visit and care.

A few decades ago, Qinglong Town was just a market with a head and tail length of no more than 100 meters, and the narrow bluestone paved streets could only accommodate two or three people walking side by side. Because of the old and dilapidated stone streets, they have become potholes. There are a few scattered shops on both sides of the street, except for some small shops that do tailor business and rationale, the most conspicuous are the supply and marketing cooperatives and grain stations.

The facades of the supply and marketing cooperatives and grain stations are significantly larger than those of the others, and on the whole street, only their doors are hung with signs made of black and white wooden boards, because they are collective and national. The common people do not distinguish between the collective and the state, and in their eyes they all belong to the public. The regular workers of the supply and marketing cooperatives and grain stations are all urban people who receive wages, that is, people who eat public meals. The common people call them public households, they have urban hukou and fixed salary income, and their children not only have urban hukou, but they can also become regular workers in the future through the method of taking up posts or recruiting them internally.

Top jobs and internal recruitment are a system that existed in the 80s and early 90s of the last century. After the parents retire, their children will work in place of their parents, so that the children can take over the position of their parents in the original unit, and they will become public again. Most of this situation appeared in administrative units, public institutions and state-owned enterprises in the eighties of the last century. In today's view, this is an inconceivably unreasonable and extremely irrational system, and even after many years, you can still smell the smell of feudal hereditary in it.

Several of Zhao Ermei's classmates are the children of supply and marketing cooperatives and grain station workers, and these friends seem to have snacks that can never be eaten. These people who live in the south of the bridge don't know Zhao Ermei's thoughts, they are the people that Zhao Ermei, who grew up in the north of the bridge, is the most envious. When Zhao Ermei was struggling with whether to continue studying or find a way out, they had already become the "second generation" who ate imperial food with the efforts of their parents.

Since elementary school, Zhao Ermei has felt the difference in life between the two sides. After middle school, Zhao Ermei often looked at the stone bridge lying quietly at the door of her house in a daze. Why is there such a big difference between bridges? She thought that if she wanted to change her life, she must cross this bridge, and even if she couldn't become a member of the public family, she had to find a way to make herself a city person. Since then, this knot in her youth has begun to accompany her life.

After graduating from junior high school, Zhao Ermei did not continue to study in high school. It's not that her parents don't let her go to school, it's that she chooses employment. Because at that time, some new companies began to recruit from the society, and she felt that this might be a rare opportunity for her, at least to help her enter the city life of her dreams.

Zhao Ermei found her cousin Liu Ping, who worked in the county, and with his help, entered a new Xinfeng textile factory run by the government. Although she was only a temporary worker, it was a huge change for her. In the envious eyes of her classmates and friends, she felt as if she had become a member of the city, and a sense of happiness and satisfaction naturally arose.

The ingenious Zhao Ermei made rapid progress, and soon after entering the factory, she became the apprentice with the best skills recognized by the master. She is also a particularly diligent girl, without the squeamishness of the city people, always working overtime, and therefore being rated as an advanced individual every year, which makes her feel a kind of self-worth, but also feel a kind of joy and happiness of being respected. Her unbalanced heart was greatly comforted, and this comfort brought her a kind of spiritual satisfaction and a strong sense of self-esteem.

The work and life in those years were the happiest times for Zhao Ermei. But as time went on, she found that some of the people who had been in the factory with her had become permanent workers, and their wages were more than twice as high as that of temporary workers. After inquiring about it, she learned that those female workers who had become regular workers had no hope of becoming regular because they had an urban hukou, while she had no hope of becoming a regular worker because she had a rural hukou.

As if in the cold winter, being poured off her head by a bucket of cold water, Zhao Ermei felt a bone-chilling air. The usual sense of happiness and satisfaction on the face disappeared in an instant, and with it came an unbalanced sense of loss and helplessness.

She still goes to and from work as usual, but always walks in front of her colleagues with her head down, no longer talking and laughing as she used to. Zhao Ermei finally felt once again that her rural hukou had become a fetter for her pursuit of happiness, and in front of her hukou, she really felt the taste of inequality, and this inferiority complex was once an unforgettable pain for her.

In the early days of reform and opening up, not only did the gap between urban and rural areas not narrow, but there was also a marked imbalance in the speed of development and the change in social outlook, and this state of reality virtually widened the gap between urban and rural areas again.

Men should get married, and women should get married. Zhao Ermei, who has a graceful figure and a good face, is always surrounded by all kinds of courteous suitors. But there is only one inherent criterion in her heart, that person must be a city person who can bring her happiness, however, this prince charming has not been able to appear for a long time. The people she likes don't look down on her, and the people she likes don't look down on her. Those Prince Charming, when facing Zhao Ermei's rural hukou, chose to escape and retreat.

For most Chinese, marriage is never a matter of one person, but of a family and how many families are associated with this family. Regardless of whether Zhao Ermei is willing or not, the enthusiastic relatives are even more anxious than her to Zhang Luo's marriage, tirelessly matching her again and again, and finally let Zhao Ermei, who is not high or low, meet with Yao Dabao in the neighboring village.

Yao Dabao is three years older than Zhao Ermei, and he took the college entrance examination the year he graduated from high school, and became a loser by five points. If you are born in a wealthy family and repeat your studies for a year or two, you may still be able to hope that you will be admitted to university and eat the imperial food that everyone envies. However, he Yao Dabao did not have the opportunity to choose this way, because his father was sick, his mother was old and weak, and he had two younger brothers and a younger sister who needed him to take care of him.

Some people stumble or collapse in hardship, while others choose to fight and be reborn. Yao Dabao woke up from his initial loss, he was not depressed, and life did not allow him to be depressed. Because if he is depressed, a family will be in danger of being destroyed.

Yao Dabao not only carried the burden, but also seized any opportunity that the times could give him to turn over, so that he could achieve his first goal in life. His first goal is to earn money, in addition to earning money or making money, because he understands very well that life has taught him that with money he can get rid of all kinds of difficulties, and with money he can change his precarious fate.

Yao Dabao secretly swore in his heart that he must be a rich man. He is not the kind of person who is ambitious, and he has no capital to be opportunistic, so he can only get up early and start from a small business in a down-to-earth manner.

Some people look down on the poor countryside, and some people see gold mines in the poor countryside of the countryside. Those abundant and cheap agricultural and sideline products are the gold mines in Yao Dabao's eyes. Yao Dabao saw the existing resources around him, and also made use of the existing resources around him, he started from chickens, ducks, fish, shrimps, melons, fruits and vegetables, as long as he could make money, he thought of ways to do it, and tried his best to do it.

Yao Dabao will do whatever business he has money for. Some people call him a butcher when they see him, some call him a fishmonger behind their backs, and some people call him a vegetable seller with their mouths open and closed. In the eyes of the Chinese, traffickers are always associated with negative things. Yao Dabao himself doesn't see it that way: "You can call it whatever you like, you can be a trafficker, as long as you can make money, as long as you don't be a human trafficker, don't be a criminal trafficker, and be a trafficker for a lifetime, I'm willing to be a trafficker for a lifetime." ”

A few years have passed, and several classmates who were once closest to Yao Dabao have completed four years of college, and after graduation, they have been assigned to the agency, become a public family, and hold an iron rice bowl. Yao Dabao has been running around in the wind and rain for four or five years, and finally he can be regarded as a human being. He no longer worked as an unclear dealer, and bought two storefront shops in the street market of Qinglong Town with the money he had saved through hard work.

Yao Dabao not only opened a decent department store, but also consciously or unintentionally competed with the supply and marketing cooperatives across the street. In the past, the supply and marketing cooperatives that relied on monopoly management to dominate the near and far markets of Qinglong Town could not adapt to this kind of competition, and soon became crowded, and their business became bleak day by day, and finally came to the verge of bankruptcy. However, Yao Dabao's business is becoming more and more prosperous, and he has become a well-known boss near and far.

Zhao Ermei met with Yao Dabao under the arrangement of relatives and friends, and Yao Dabao's initial impression on Zhao Ermei was still positive, she felt that although he was not her ideal object, she felt that he was still a real person. After listening to the matchmaker's introduction, Zhao Ermei was finally tempted. Although Yao Dabao does not have an urban hukou, his conditions are much higher than those who have an urban hukou.

On the day agreed by relatives and friends of both parties, Zhao Ermei and Yao Dabao got married. Tough days feel slow, and festive days pass quickly. A few days after the wedding, the holiday was about to end, Yao Dabao said thoughtfully: "It's too hard for you to work as a temporary worker in the city alone, I think it's better to quit this job and come back to do business with me." In this way, it is relatively free. Save you from working the morning shift and the evening shift, and you don't feel anything when you're young, so what should you do when you're old and can't do it anymore? ”

Although Zhao Ermei felt that what Yao Dabao said was also reasonable, she was still reluctant to give up her job in the city, and she must be unwilling to let her give up that job now, and besides, she would not easily give up her dream of being a city person, because that was her spiritual sustenance.

On the third day after marriage, Zhao Ermei was going back to work, which made her wake up from the joy of being married. Although she saw disappointment in his eyes, she finally chose to return to the city in her heart, to the environment she had long been familiar with. She felt that the city was a river, and she was like a fish, and she could no longer leave the river to live ashore.

(Next Preview: Chapter 14: A Life of Hope)