Back to the 1980s: Helping My Struggling Mom Shatter Her Illusions

In her previous life, when Mother was twenty, she listened to a matchmaker's sweet talk and married a man who was a master at putting on an act.

Before the wedding, he swore, "In five years, I'll buy you a big brick house in the city." After the wedding, he sold roasted sunflower seeds, letting his buddies eat them all without paying; he bought a small truck for hauling jobs, then slept until noon before setting out. In the end, he secretly sold the truck to gamble and cheat on her...

Mother gritted her teeth, pedaled a tricycle through countless scornful looks, and raised me all by herself.

Then, in a twist of fate, I was reborn in 1986!

My birth mother, Chen Yanqing, was only ten years old, a hopeless math student who ranked near the bottom of her class and a tomboy who threw potatoes around the courtyard with her seven-year-old brother over two frozen persimmons.

I looked at my honest grandpa, who drove an old Jiefang heavy truck and, having just become a ten-thousand-yuan household, wanted to lock his money away for twenty years;

I looked at my sweet grandma, who was afraid of shots and sneaked candy, only to get cavities and whimper in pain;

Then I grabbed my fool of a birth mother, who was still on the courtyard ground playing with round cards:

"Chen Yanqing, it doesn't matter if you can't learn arithmetic. I'll teach you to drive a big truck, run a whole fleet, and see the wider world!"

Later...

The Chen family's Guangchuan Courtyard became a logistics artery stretching across the north;

My little brother grew to be six foot one, a mechanical whiz and a sister-protecting maniac;

At twenty, Chen Yanqing wore short hair and a trench coat, drove a Santana, and became the respected queen of the freight business across the surrounding villages and towns.

That year, the young man with slicked-back hair and a powdered face came to propose again, painting her another rosy picture:

"Yanqing, I promise I'll buy you a house in the city with my own hands within five years!"

Twenty-year-old Chen Yanqing gave a cold laugh, set down her teacup, and slapped the account book down in front of him.

"You borrowed the suit you're wearing, and you sleep until the sun's high every day. What are you going to buy it with, your head?!"