Go back to the prosperous days and become a layman

Chapter 899 The Baby at the Gate
"Let's talk. Even if we can't have it all, we can still get a share." Hearing his mother say this, Tang Zhitong knew that the other party had their eye on their vegetable garden. But that didn't stop him from comforting his mother. It was just an exchange of benefits. Giving up the vegetable garden was fine. After all, he still had vegetables in his space. Substituting one vegetable for another would be enough to supply his family with non-staple foods for a year.

At the same time, Tang Zhitong knew that his mother was not only reluctant to part with the vegetables in the yard, but also even more reluctant to part with the house.

For many people, living a lifetime and earning enough to buy a house is considered a success. Even if they have achieved some success in their careers, the old house is still an unavoidable hurdle when they get older. Tang Zhitong understands her mother's thoughts, but she still insists on her own ideas.

Zhang Guifang watched her son open his mouth as if to speak, but in the end he only sighed and remained silent.

Tang Zhitong saw his mother's expression and felt sorry for her. He smiled and comforted her, "Mom, even if we really have to move houses, we'll choose the ones with big yards. We'll also give you a plot of land so you can plant whatever you want."

"Okay, okay," Zhang Guifang forced a smile, not taking her son's words seriously.

Zhang Guifang was reluctant to leave this place, as it held so many memories of her life. However, her son was about to be promoted to a permanent position the next day, and as a leading cadre, she had to uphold the proper conduct. As his mother, she couldn't help him with his work, so she couldn't become a stumbling block to his pursuit of progress in other areas.

"Next time they come, don't give in or say you disagree. Just tell them to talk to me," Tang Zhitong instructed at the end of the conversation.

As for the gossip among the neighbors, Tang Zhitong didn't mention it, as doing so would only upset Zhang Guifang more.

"Mom is reluctant to let go, so let's just forget about it. We're doing just fine here." That evening, while catching cicada nymphs again, Xiao Wang advised her husband. She knew he had always wanted to move to a place closer to the National Library of China so it would be easier for her to commute to get off work.

Xiao Wang knew that the conditions there would be better, but after seeing her mother-in-law's expression today, she still felt a little reluctant.

"Let's see what conditions and location the chemical raw material company offers. If it's worse than here, we definitely won't move." Tang Zhitong smiled. Making it easier for Xiao Wang to commute to work was one reason, and it was also the most direct reason he could bring up, but he didn't use that reason to persuade his mother today.

Building a bathroom at home can be done under the pretext that Xiao Wang likes cleanliness, but changing houses is not appropriate, lest Zhang Guifang regret it later and feel resentful towards her daughter-in-law.

To be honest, having such an independent courtyard in Tielugu is something many people dream of, but everything has its advantages and disadvantages.

Old Zhu's words from the afternoon still lingered in Tang Zhitong's ears: Why did Mencius' mother move three times, and why do many families take out loans for thirty years to buy school district housing? Isn't it all for the sake of giving their children a better environment?

The neighbors here had argued about water bills before, but after the food rations were reduced and the supply of non-staple foods became insufficient, Tang Zhitong felt that it would no longer be a matter of making a few sarcastic remarks.

Every husband is not guilty, and he is guilty of his crime.

Besides, is it possible for my child to attend Beihai Kindergarten and Jingshan Primary School if I live here?
Tang Zhitong would be happy to take this opportunity to move to a different house.

Of course, this is just an ideal situation, and whether it will actually happen is still unknown, so Tang Zhitong did not tell Xiao Wang all about her thoughts.

The next day, July 1st, was the day Tang Zhitong was to attend his official appointment ceremony.

Ms. Wang got up even earlier today than yesterday because when her husband went to the National Library of China to see her yesterday afternoon, she noticed that his shirt was wrinkled. She planned to iron it a little longer today so that her husband could be dressed neatly and appropriately for this most important moment.

"Whose kitten is lost? It's been meowing for a while now. It sounds like a crying child, disturbing my sleep." Listening to the intermittent, soft meows outside the window, Tang Zhitong stretched and got up to get dressed.

"Who knows? Maybe it just got lost." After brushing his teeth and washing his face, Xiao Wang resumed his work from yesterday.

"Anzi, Anzi!" Just as Xiao Wang finished speaking, Zhang Guifang's panicked voice came from outside.

"What's wrong, Mom?" Hearing her mother's anxious commotion, Tang Zhitong put on her tank top and, without even washing her face, opened the door to the side room.

"There's a child at the gate!" Zhang Guifang pointed towards the gate through the curtain.

"Our front gate?" Tang Zhitong was taken aback, finally realizing the source of the voice. It wasn't the kitten after all. He asked as he quickly walked towards the gate.

"Yes, I heard something was wrong early this morning, so I went out to check. I saw the child as soon as I opened the door a crack," Zhang Guifang explained as she jogged after her son.

Xiao Wang overheard her mother-in-law and husband's conversation, and without even ironing her shirt, she lifted the curtain and followed her husband out the door.

The west wing was not far from the main gate. The bolt on the main gate was pulled open, and the door was ajar. Zhang Guifang had not closed the main gate again.

Tang Zhitong opened the door, and there was a wicker basket placed at the entrance, lined with wheat straw, and on top of the straw was a baby wrapped in old clothes.

Tang Zhitong's first reaction was not to pick up the child, but to avoid the basket, walk outside and look around to see if anyone was secretly watching them.

"What kind of parents are so heartless? They don't even want their own child?" In desperation, Tang Zhitong even used his cheat code, but there was nothing unusual within its range.

Zhang Guifang didn't say anything. After all, she was a mother. Seeing her child crying, she couldn't bear it. She reached out and removed the straw around the child and picked him up.

"It's not even a month old yet, is it?" Little Wang looked at the wrinkled little face, his heart felt like it was being squeezed, and a look of pity appeared on his face.

"She's not even a month old yet, the cradle cap is still stuck to her head." Tang Zhitong took two steps back, peeked out, and saw a small amount of cradle cap mixed in with the soft baby hair.

Cradle cap is a scaly substance formed by the accumulation of dead skin due to excessive sebum secretion. With improved living conditions, some children have a large cradle cap on their heads, but this baby only has a small cradle cap, which clearly indicates that the baby was not well-nourished before birth.

"Anzi, what should we do?" Zhang Guifang tried to comfort the child and stop the crying first, patting the baby gently, but it didn't work.

Zhang Guifang knew that the child was hungry, but she dared not feed him anything other than milk. Her own third child had died because she had no milk and could not find anyone who could. In desperation, she fed him some millet oil, but the diarrhea did not stop and he died.

"I'm afraid we need to feed him something." Tang Zhitong scratched his head. The baby was clearly hungry, and the best way to soothe him would be to put an emulsion delivery device in his mouth, but his family didn't have the equipment to produce emulsions!

“Do you think I don’t know how to feed him? And what are you going to do with this child? Forget it, it’s still a human life. Take two eggs and go to the Jia family’s house in the backyard. See if you can ask your sister-in-law to come and nurse the child.” Zhang Guifang glared at her son and ordered. Asking for help requires the right attitude; bringing the child would be moral blackmail. “Okay.” Tang Zhitong nodded and quickly went back into the house to get the eggs.

Tang Zhitong agreed with her mother's approach. Although it wasn't her own child, it was still a human life, and they couldn't just stand by and do nothing.

"Wenwen, go get a stool. I'll hold the baby and wait here for a while," Zhang Guifang instructed her son, then assigned tasks to her daughter-in-law.

On early summer mornings, the temperature outside is a little lower than inside, which is more child-friendly.

Besides, Zhang Guifang also had her own thoughts. How many mothers are truly heartless? She hoped that the child's mother hadn't gone far and would come out to take the child back after hearing the commotion.

Tang Zhitong came and went in a hurry, carrying two eggs in his hand as he went to the Jia family. The two families were separated by several courtyards, with Donghuashi Street running through the middle.

"Aunt Jia, there's a baby less than a month old who was abandoned at the alley entrance. The baby is very hungry and keeps crying. My mother couldn't bear to see it and asked me to come and ask your sister-in-law if she can feed the baby a little bit." Tang Zhitong arrived at Jia's house and stood at the door. Before speaking, she reached in with her hand holding two eggs.

"Oh dear, what kind of mother is so heartless? We can't just stand by and watch, since we've run into this. You and Anzi go over there." While Aunt Jia told her daughter-in-law that she couldn't just stand by and watch, she didn't hesitate at all, snatching the eggs from Tang Zhitong's hand as if she were grabbing them.

"Sister-in-law, it's right in front of my house. You go over first, I need to say a few words to Uncle Zhu." After leaving the compound, Tang Zhitong pointed to Sister-in-law Jia, but stopped at the entrance of the Information Center.

"Children? What children?" Old Zhu was good at grasping the key points, and his remaining eye gleamed with an eager thirst for gossip.

"Uncle Zhu, the important thing is whether anyone brought a basket over this morning?" What Old Zhu was concerned about was not what Tang Zhitong was concerned about. Upon hearing Old Zhu's words, Tang Zhitong's heart sank. It was most likely that no one had seen it.

"I didn't see any. Another child being abandoned? I haven't seen that in years," Old Zhu said, shaking his head with a sigh.

"Then I'll inquire some more." Hearing what Old Zhu said, Tang Zhitong decided to go to the police station. This matter was strange. Abandoned babies were rare in Beijing, but it was even stranger to wrap the child up and leave him at one's own doorstep, as if the person was certain that they could raise the child and afford to raise him.

As Tang Zhitong hurried off to the police station, Chu Chunxue, who was fetching water nearby, watched his retreating figure thoughtfully…

When Tang Zhitong and Wang Yang returned to their front door, a group of neighbors had already gathered around to watch the commotion.

"They look quite pitiful. Why don't we let Anzi and his wife raise them? They've been married for two years and still haven't had a baby. Maybe this is their lucky charm."

"That's right, that's right, it's still a human life. What's that saying again? Saving a life is more virtuous than building seven pagodas. It's good to raise a child out of goodwill. This is a girl, she won't fight for the inheritance, and she can even help take care of the children when she grows up."

The two were talking quite loudly. Tang Zhitong had just turned into the alley from Donghuashi Street when he heard their commotion.

Having been neighbors for many years, Tang Zhitong could tell from their voices that these two were the neighbors Old Zhu had mentioned yesterday who had exposed his secrets to the chemical raw materials company.

Standing beside her mother-in-law, Xiao Wang listened to their sarcastic "well-intentioned advice." Her eyebrows furrowed, and she no longer cared about raising the child. She blurted out, "You're promoting feudal superstition! Whether we can have children is none of your business. If you're so capable, then take care of your own family first. And you, you have such a wicked mouth. Why don't you take the child home and accumulate some good karma?"

If the child had appeared at his doorstep two hours earlier, Xiao Wang wouldn't have been so confident.

Before becoming pregnant, Xiao Wang had mentioned adoption to Tang Zhitong, but her husband refused.

Although she cited Aunt Li's adoption of orphans as an example, her husband's statement, "Those are the children of martyrs, different from ordinary orphans," dampened her enthusiasm.

"Look at this, everyone! Why are you swearing? Am I immoral? If I were immoral, I'd have two! You don't have one! You've really been ungrateful for my kindness!" This guy wasn't one to back down either, and he stubbornly argued back with Xiao Wang.

Iron Wheelbarrow said that someone here said Anzi's wife was the daughter of some leader. She had heard about it, but she didn't believe it at all.

What kind of leader would be so blinded by greed as to marry their daughter off to a lowly laborer?
She had disliked Tang's daughter-in-law for a long time. Look at her with her chest puffed out and her butt swaying. What good family could raise a daughter like that?
In the past two years, the Tang family has built a house, bought bicycles, and even a sewing machine. The Tang family claims to others that the young couple earned the money themselves, but she doesn't believe it. How can someone so young earn so much money?

Who knows where this money came from? Maybe it's from this daughter-in-law... Hmph...

Tang Zhitong stopped listening to everything. He really wanted to use surgical sutures to physically sterilize the two of them, but doing so would be truly immoral. In the end, reason prevailed over the darkness in his heart.

There was no need to talk too much with these unreasonable people. Tang Zhitong subtly shook her head at Xiao Wang, telling her to keep quiet for the time being. She then took over the baton and fired at the two of them: "This is strange. Beijing is such a big city, how could a perfectly good child be abandoned at our doorstep? Whoever advised us to raise the child, even if it wasn't abandoned by her, is still involved in this matter."

"Chief Wang, should the police station investigate in this direction?" Tang Zhitong asked, then looked at Wang Yang.

Wang Yang didn't look at Tang Zhitong, but instead scanned the faces of the onlookers as he replied, "That's indeed the case."

Upon hearing Wang Yang's words, the onlookers reacted in various ways; some were calm, while others watched the two men's reactions with schadenfreude.

"Why are you looking at me? If I had a daughter, I wouldn't be willing to throw her away!" The one who said "accumulate virtue" was not ashamed at all, staring at the others with wide eyes, while the one who said that Tang Zhitong and his wife hadn't had any children for two years looked away.

"If you can't bear to throw it away, then take it back and raise it! All you do is talk the talk," Tang Zhitong teased her.

Under Wang Yang's gaze, the man reluctantly shut his mouth. Wang Yang's eyes swept across everyone's faces, and he put a temporary end to the matter: "If anyone knows any clues, please go to the police station as soon as possible to explain the situation. You can get extra points in the year-end evaluation of the 'Five Good Courtyards'."

After saying that, Wang Yang pointed at the person who had been avoiding eye contact and ordered, "You, come with me to the police station."

"Director Wang, I'm innocent! I didn't throw this child away." Meeting Wang Yang's gaze, the man cowered, tears welling up in his eyes, whether from anxiety or fear, it was hard to tell.

"Whether you threw it or not, go to the police station and explain yourself." Wang Yang's tone left no room for argument. After saying that, he waved his hand and said, "It's early in the morning. The men in the family have to go to work and the children have to go to school. Stop watching the commotion and go home to cook!"

(End of this chapter)