Siheyuan: From the Start, I Agreed to Support Yi Zhonghai in His Old Age

A slow-paced story without the angst. When Yi Shouxin opened his eyes again, he was in the Yimeng Mountains in 1960. The earthen kang was scorching hot, though the house let in a little too much light. Lying there, he could hear the wind slipping back and forth through the cracks in the walls. Memories of his previous life drifted through his mind in fragments. He wasn’t a good person, but he hadn’t done anything bad either. For the sake of his reputation, he had even donated some money to charity. You had to queue up to be reborn. Chinese people weren’t having children anymore, so spots were scarce. Anyone who wanted to be reborn had to give priority to India and Africa. He wouldn’t consider places like that. So transmigrating into a book was his only option. And his good and evil deeds would be recorded, too. The ghost official guiding him said that his good deeds from the past could be converted into useful items, which he could claim whenever he needed them. Then he added, “Small things can be changed, but major events are irreversible.” Yi Shouxin hadn’t had a chance to ask anything before he was tossed in. He opened his eyes on this kang. When his whole body swelled up and he started having diarrhea again, Grandma dug a piece of paper out from under the kang mat. It had the address of her youngest son, which he’d left with someone after going to the capital decades earlier. For more than twenty years, the old couple had never written a single letter to him. Even on his deathbed, Grandpa forbade anyone from telling Yi Zhonghai. “That coward who only knows how to run away doesn’t deserve to have me mourn him.” Back then, he’d even given the messenger a chicken and told him to tell everyone that his youngest son had died far away. He thought the boy was a disgrace and didn’t even want to mention him. But there was no time to worry about that now. If Shouxin died, the old woman wouldn’t have much reason to go on living either. So they wrote a letter to the address. It contained just one sentence: “I’m your mother. Your father is gone.”