Siheyuan: My Sister Is Jia Zhangshi

My sister's name is Zhang Xiaohua, but everyone in the courtyard calls her “Jia Zhangshi.”

Sharp-tongued, overbearing, unreasonable: that's how the neighbors describe her.

But they don't know that this “shrew” lost her parents at sixteen and raised her younger brother all by herself. She saved her rations for him and lived on wild-vegetable soup. When her brother left to join the army, she stayed behind in the courtyard, growing from a young unmarried woman into “Jia Zhangshi.”

In 1960, I came home from the army.

Born with superhuman strength and standing six-foot-one, I only had to show up in the courtyard for everyone to crane their necks to look at me. I picked up a System on the train that made me five times stronger, gave me mastery of Baji Fist, and came with a ten-mu Spirit Spring Dimension.

But none of that mattered.

What mattered was that I saw my sister.

She took my hands and looked me up and down three times before finally managing to say, “You've gotten thin.”

I said, “Sis, I'll be here for you from now on.”

Xu Damao took one look at me in the courtyard and didn't dare say a word.

Before long, everyone in the courtyard knew: Jia Zhangshi's younger brother was back.

Yi Zhonghai came to apologize, Xu Damao gave me a wide berth, and Qin Huairu went out of her way to pour cornmeal into my sister's crock.

My sister smiled, her eyes reddening.

For the first time in the many years she'd been called “Jia Zhangshi,” she felt that the name didn't sound so bad after all.

Her name is Zhang Xiaohua. The courtyard calls her Jia Zhangshi. I'm her younger brother.