Film and Television: The Villain's Life Begins with Joy of Life

Chapter 107 Housing Allocation and College Entrance Examination

Zhuang Chaoying came home from get off work later than usual.

Huang Ling was worried that he would scold their son again, but to her surprise, Zhuang Chaoying remained silent.

During dinner, Huang Ling asked Zhuang Chaoying why her personality had changed. Zhuang Chaoying opened her mouth, but really didn't know where to begin.

From Huang Ling's question, he knew that Zhou Cheng hadn't said much.

He couldn't say that he hadn't changed his personality, but rather that he was afraid of being unable to beat his son.

Zhou Cheng didn't mention the shameful thing that a father couldn't discipline his son, and naturally he was even less inclined to bring it up himself.

Helpless, he could only vaguely reply "It's nothing" to brush it off, and then buried his head in his food.

Huang Ling was completely baffled by Zhuang Chaoying's unusual behavior. However, overall, she breathed a sigh of relief.

As long as the family is peaceful and stable, and life can continue as usual, that's good.

Zhuang Chaoying refused to say, and since her son hadn't been beaten, she naturally wouldn't press him for details.

Life went on uneventfully, and a few days passed in the blink of an eye.

That day, as soon as Zhuang Chaoying entered her home, the gloom that had been weighing on her face for so long was swept away.

The news of the resumption of the national college entrance examination was like a thunderclap in spring, resounding throughout the country.

The resumption of the college entrance examination has a lot of implications behind it.

For Zhuang Chaoying, this news carried even greater significance.

Despite his vocational school diploma and high school teacher status, what exactly is the "teacher" profession in today's world?

Something that's ranked ninth!

The idea that "studying is useless" was still being widely promoted in most cities and vast rural areas at that time.

The resumption of the college entrance examination signifies a shift in the country's development path, a reaffirmation of the value of knowledge, and a restoration of the status of intellectuals.

How could Zhuang Chaoying not be overjoyed that a behemoth that had been running rampant for decades had suddenly returned to normal?

Of course, Zhuang Chaoying was not the only one who was delighted.

Across the country, most ordinary people who have been tormented for too long and yearn for progress are joyful.

The National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) is scheduled for December. According to statistics, millions of students take the Gaokao that year.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with Zhou Cheng; he's just too young.

This year's college entrance examination can be described as the easiest in history, with a difficulty level roughly equivalent to that of elementary to junior high school students.

Decades later, any student who diligently completed nine years of compulsory education would be considered to have achieved a significant advantage in the exams of that era, and would have had no problem gaining admission to Tsinghua or Peking University.

However, these questions, which are almost like "minor subjects" for future middle school students, are now stumbling blocks that can easily eliminate hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.

The excitement of the resumption of the college entrance examination had barely subsided when the farmers were greeted with another truly joyous event.

At the end of October, the cotton mill leaders finally announced the allocation plan and posted the list on the bulletin board in front of the office building.

At night, all the lights were turned off.

Huang Ling and Zhuang Chaoying sat in the dark at the small dining table, whispering to each other in hushed tones.

Zhuang Tunan should be fast asleep on the lower bunk, his breathing even. The little girl, who is alone on the big bed, should also be asleep.

Zhou Cheng lay on the upper bunk, staring blankly at the ceiling with his lifeless eyes, listening to the couple's whispered conversation.

"On our floor, only our family got an apartment. You must keep a low profile these days, you absolutely must," Zhuang Chaoying whispered to his wife.

The hazy moonlight streamed in through the window, falling on Huang Ling's face and illuminating the smile she couldn't suppress.

"Do you need to say anything more? I've already told the kids not to talk nonsense at school."

Zhuang Chaoying also had an undisguised smile on her face, "I didn't mean to hide it. There's no way to hide it anyway. Just don't be too smug, or you'll attract hatred behind your back."

Huang Ling nodded, somewhat dazed, and said with emotion, "I really didn't expect this—"

She only said half of what she meant, but Zhuang Chaoying fully understood what she hadn't said.

These days, housing is extremely important for dual-income families in the city.

That tiny little house has housed their family of five for so many years; you can imagine how stifling their lives must have been.

Now the factory has provided two proper bedrooms, and the adults and children can finally be separated. Their married life, which had been dormant for many years, can finally resume.

Moreover, I heard that the new house also comes with a small yard and a kitchen.

Leaving aside the courtyard, just consider the kitchen. The shared kitchen between the two families was far better than the public stoves where you have to queue to cook nowadays.

This new house means their standard of living will undergo a dramatic change.

After waiting and enduring so many years, we've finally made it through and the bitterness has finally given way to happiness.

"By the way, two families live in the same courtyard. Do you know who your neighbors are?" Zhuang Chaoying asked again.

Huang Ling hesitated for a moment, and after careful consideration, she said, "Song Ying, we're not in the same workshop, so we're not very familiar with each other."

Zhuang Chaoying sensed the underlying meaning in his wife's words: "Not good?"

Huang Ling slowly explained, "When she was young, she was a well-known beauty in the factory. She was very pretty and fashionable. It's said that she had a sharp tongue and was quite fierce. Her son was in the same class as Xiaoting, and Xiaoting said he was very naughty and was often criticized by the teacher."

She paused, then added, "It's that guy who dumped his son at the Party Secretary's house a few days ago to fight for a house—"

"It's her," Zhuang Chaoying exclaimed in realization.

As Zhou Cheng listened to the couple talking about Song Ying in hushed tones, their words tinged with worry, he couldn't help but want to laugh.

Song Ying is the core character of another main family in the TV series "The People of the Alley".

Song Ying was well-known throughout the cotton mill.

Just recently, she and her son were crammed into a staff dormitory, and the children's bedwetting caused complaints from their roommates.

In a fit of anger, she picked up her child and went to the factory manager's house that very night. She put the child down there and let the child cry and scream, forcing the factory manager to solve her housing problem.

After a protracted battle lasting several days, she finally managed to get a house.

Of course, it's more accurate to call it an "exchange" rather than a "division".

Song Ying's husband, Lin Wufeng, was a worker at the compressor factory, and their family originally lived in the factory's dormitory.

However, the compressor factory and the cotton mill were too far apart, and Song Ying worked three shifts, which didn't match her husband's work hours at all. With her child being so young, taking care of the child became a huge problem.

The commute is too long, and the children suffer because no one picks them up from school on time. Once, during a bad weather, they almost got into danger.

They lived with their children in cramped dormitories at the cotton mill, and were constantly disliked by everyone.

In addition, there were no good schools near the compressor factory, so for the sake of her child's future, Song Ying had the idea of ​​exchanging houses, that is, exchanging the house at the compressor factory for the house at the cotton mill.

In order to get things done smoothly, Song Ying's husband, Lin Wufeng, initially used personal connections and gave gifts to Secretary Zhang of the cotton mill.

Unexpectedly, the secretary only cared about accepting gifts and did nothing at all.

This forced Song Ying to overturn the table and throw caution to the wind to make a scene.

Fortunately, under pressure from all sides, Secretary Zhang finally relented, and Song Ying was able to obtain the cotton mill's house through a "quota swap" process.

Although Song Ying achieved her goal, the price she paid was not small.

Not only did she lose all the honors and awards given to her in the factory, but her reputation was also ruined.

After all, only a minority of people know the inside story. Most people only see her crying, making a scene, and threatening suicide in order to get a room, and even daring to leave her child at the leader's house to threaten him.

Thus, the label of "troublemaker" was firmly placed on her head, completely overshadowing her former title of "factory beauty".

Huang Ling is still worried about Song Ying, this "troublemaker," and doesn't know how much this new neighbor will affect her life in the future.

In the TV series, before Huang Ling met Song Ying, she was always the type to swallow her anger and endure grievances, whether at her own home or at Lao Zhuang's house.

It was after meeting Song Ying and witnessing her public-spiritedness, kindness, and straightforwardness that she gradually developed the courage to rebel, thanks to Song Ying's support and example.

The couple were still dreaming about their life after moving into their new house, bathed in the dim moonlight.

Zhou Cheng pulled himself out of his thoughts, cleared his mind, and let himself fall into a deep sleep.

Time marches on day by day.

Although the factory's housing allocation list has been posted, it will still be a while before we can actually get the keys to our new homes.

During this period, Zhou Cheng was extremely irritable. He had to "act like a madman" at school during the day, and he couldn't find a moment of peace when he got home.

For a full ten years, the country did not hold a college entrance examination, and reference books on the market were almost extinct.

Now that the college entrance examination has been reinstated, the vast majority of people have absolutely no idea how to register, how to prepare for the exam, or how to fill out their application forms.

Zhuang Chaoying is a math teacher at the high school affiliated with the cotton mill, and naturally became the consultation center for the entire alley.

Within two months, the doorstep of the dealer was almost worn down by the crowds, with people coming to ask questions and borrow lesson plans in an endless stream.

The house only had one room, a tiny place, and groups of kids, from teenagers to adults in their thirties, kept pouring in. Even the lower bunk where Zhuang Tunan was lying was used as a makeshift desk.

When Zhou Cheng got home, he couldn't even lie down on his bed, and the normal life of the entire Zhuang family was severely affected.

If it were up to Zhou Cheng's temperament, these people wouldn't even think about stepping through this door without paying a consultation fee. But in this particular era, talking about money is almost equivalent to a crime.

Huang Ling had opinions, but she could only keep them to herself, after all, these people held the greater good in their hands. She could only repeatedly comfort herself, after all, the college entrance examination was related to the future of the candidates, and they were all children of colleagues and acquaintances. She had to endure, endure, and endure some more.

Huang Ling was tolerant, but Zhou Cheng rarely was.

In his eyes, these future pillars of society were nothing but a fart.

Not only did they refuse to pay, but they didn't even offer a small gift. It's one thing for a young person to be ignorant of social etiquette, but a person in their thirties who doesn't understand? Who would believe that!

They simply knew that Zhuang Chaoying was concerned about her reputation and was a kind-hearted person who couldn't bring herself to refuse people, so they shamelessly went to her door to solicit business for free.

Getting free tutoring is one thing, but sometimes you even have to get free tea.

Zhou Cheng had chased people away a few times, almost kicking them out the door with a broom.

But in order to make a living, these people all knew the "way of forbearance". No matter how much he scolded or chased them away, they stuck to him like a leech.

He receives hundreds or even thousands of emotion points every day. Although he doesn't care much for these ordinary emotion points, it's better to have some than nothing.

Moreover, every time he chased someone away, he could get some lottery-related emotional points from Zhuang Chaoying.

Zhou Cheng's antics, though numerous, were not entirely without effect.

At least everyone now knows that the Zhuang family has a "little tyrant" that no one can mess with, not even Zhuang Chaoying, the father, can control.

Whenever "Little Tyrant" returned from outside, the crowd would spontaneously make way for him.

"Little Tyrant" never went out. He would lie down on his bed, and apart from the sound of him discussing problems, no one dared to utter a single word of idle chatter in the entire room.

At the end of December, 5.7 million students across the country entered the examination halls, and Zhuang Jia's home finally became quiet again.

After two months of making a fuss, Zhou Cheng didn't come away empty-handed.

At least he learned a lot of current information from the candidates who came to his door, and he also read a lot of the books and magazines they brought.

After arriving in this era, his primary task and goal were relatively consistent: to improve his life.

And to improve one's life, one needs money.

So he kept thinking about how to make money.

He looked down on the meager sums of money the students had at school, and given his current age and status, he couldn't make money honestly through any other means.

The only viable option was to publish some poems and articles in newspapers and magazines.

However, the standard of royalties in this era was very cautious and low, adopting a "one-time payment, no print run royalties" model. Depending on the author's reputation and quality, the royalties were only between two and seven yuan per thousand words.

The same applies to paintings and photographs; the remuneration ranges from a few yuan to more than ten yuan, but never exceeds several tens of yuan.

The intellectuals of this era were easily satisfied and dared not complain. In their view, it was already good enough if they could make money by writing and painting.

After all, if we go back two years, those who dared to write and paint would at best get a beating with rattan or bamboo sticks, and at worst get peanuts to go with their drinks.

Although there were countless restrictions and limitations, Zhou Cheng had no other options.

There are only a handful of legitimate ways to make money, and writing and publishing are considered the most respectable and least troublesome.

He could certainly use his abilities to engage in business and smuggling, make quick money, and get rich, but the money he made in that way couldn't be made in the light of day.

If you spend too much and people notice something amiss, you'll inevitably be reported behind your back, and one day you might be accused of being a spy and have to be investigated.

As for keeping a low profile and hiding expenses, well, in this era where you can smell the meat between your teeth, it's too difficult to enjoy yourself secretly.

So overall, creating and submitting original works is still the most feasible option.

While publishing your work won't make you rich, it does have one significant advantage: it makes it easier to conceal your identity.

On the surface, he was just a fourth-grade elementary school student, and there was very little he could write about that was appropriate for his age. However, he was able to use other people's identities.

Anyway, you don't need to go to the door in person to submit articles. Just leave a mailing address, choose a pen name, and create a fake identity, and that's enough to get by.

He doesn't expect to become a great writer through his writing; he's content to make a little improvement in his life with his pen.

If you really want to make big money, just wait a few more years.

Once the spring breeze of reform and opening up has fully taken hold and taken root in people's hearts, making money will be incredibly easy for him, given his knowledge and skills.

Just as Zhuang Chaoying was about to relax after the college entrance examination, a notice from the Education Commission came directly to him.

Because he had taught at a high school for many years, came from a good family, and was a member of the Communist Party, he was selected by the Municipal Education Bureau to participate in the local isolation marking work.

When Zhuang Chaoying received the notice, she was in a daze and could hardly believe it.

After all, he himself only graduated from a vocational school, and the words "college entrance examination" always held a sacred and solemn aura in his mind.

Before the Education Bureau handed him the envelope containing the letter, he never imagined that one day he would be directly involved in such a national-level event.

The principal solemnly asked for his opinion at the school, and Zhuang Chaoying's answer was resolute and without the slightest hesitation.

Zhuang Chaoying felt extremely honored and excited.

Upon returning home, he couldn't wait to tell his wife, Huang Ling, the news.

Huang Ling was also a little stunned after hearing this, and didn't know what to say for a moment.

However, after slowly coming to terms with it, what welled up in my heart was more of a sense of pride and honor.

Zhuang Chaoying hurriedly began packing her things, and Huang Ling also hurriedly followed suit.

After a flurry of activity, the bedding was neatly tied up. Huang Ling then carefully checked it again, stuffing in everything she could bring from home.

Zhuang Chaoying used a carrying pole, with bedding on one end and a synthetic leather luggage bag full of daily necessities on the other. She lifted it onto her shoulder and weighed it; it had some weight, but it wasn't too heavy.

"You'll be grading papers for many days this time and won't be back. Should we tell the children?" Huang Ling asked him hesitantly.

Zhuang Chaoying thought for a moment, then shook her head and said, "Although it's not a classified mission, it's still of great importance. Let's not tell the children yet, lest they go around spreading rumors."

Huang Ling pursed her lips and nodded, her expression revealing a hint of unease.

This is the first time she and Zhuang Chaoying have been separated for so long since they were married.

Although Zhuang Chaoying gets confused when it comes to his parents, he is, in general, a rare good man in this era.

After all, it's common for men to beat their wives these days.

Despite their arguments over the years, she and Zhuang Chaoying have never laid a hand on each other, no matter how angry they get. They have almost never even used foul language.

Based on this alone, Zhuang Chaoying surpasses 99% of men.

They have three children, so Huang Ling has genuine feelings for him.

Zhuang Chaoying noticed Huang Ling's anxiety and gently comforted her, "Don't worry, this is a great thing. It's just grading papers. We'll be back after we finish. This is the first time the national college entrance examination has been graded since it was reinstated. What do you call this? This is an unparalleled honor."

Zhuang Chaoying smiled, and Huang Ling finally relaxed her brows and nodded gently.

Soon, Zhuang Chaoying carried a shoulder pole and walked out of her house.

Outside, Zhou Cheng and Zhuang Tunan were being pulled by Zhuang Xiaoting and her friends to act as human stakes, holding up rubber bands for the girls to jump on.

Seeing Zhuang Chaoying carrying a shoulder pole and bulging bedding, the little girl stopped jumping and turned her head to ask curiously, "Daddy, where are you going?"

Zhuang Chaoying paused for a moment, then replied vaguely, "I'm going on a business trip. I'll be back in a few days."

Zhuang Tunan found it strange. He had never seen his father go on a business trip before, and seeing him carrying bedding, he asked, "Dad, where are you going on a business trip? Is it far away?"

Huang Ling, who had just followed him out of the house, quickly chimed in to help him out: "Tu Nan, don't pry. It's too much trouble to explain. Anyway, your dad's away on a business trip, he'll be back soon." Zhuang Tu Nan said "Oh," and didn't press the matter further.

Zhuang Chaoying turned her gaze to Zhou Cheng.

Over the past two months, the tense relationship between father and son has eased considerably.

Especially during the time when students were all stuck at home, he witnessed Zhou Cheng's amazing learning ability firsthand.

If it were just physical strength, he would be shocked, but not necessarily that much. But Zhou Cheng's ability to grasp concepts instantly, apply them to new situations, and remember everything he read—his extraordinary learning ability—was truly remarkable!

"Jingcheng, listen to your mother at home and don't cause trouble. Take good care of your brother and sister," Zhuang Chaoying solemnly instructed.

Zhou Cheng nodded casually.

Zhuang Tunan looked at his father speechlessly, wondering if his father had said something wrong.

What does it mean to "take care of your older brother and younger sister"?

Shouldn't it be the other way around, with him, as the older brother, taking care of his younger brother and sister?

Zhuang Chaoying took another deep look at her three children, and just as she steadied herself on the carrying pole and turned to leave, Zhou Cheng suddenly spoke up from behind.

"Dad, when you come back, remember to bring all the toothpaste tubes from the guesthouse. They're two cents a tube at the recycling center, which is just enough to buy candy for Xiaoting."

These days, toothpaste tubes are made of either tin or aluminum, which can be exchanged for money at recycling centers. They have a fixed market value and are considered a true "hard currency" among children, who usually save them up to exchange for candy.

Zhou Cheng didn't care about those few toothpaste tubes, nor did he care about those few cents.

But if you give this to your younger sister so she can exchange it for money and choose her own candy, it feels completely different.

This is a unique mark of children in this era. They earn that sweet treat by saving it with their own little hands and running around to exchange it. It has a completely different meaning from something they directly buy with money.

"Okay!" Zhuang Chaoying agreed without hesitation. He took a few steps with the carrying pole, then suddenly stopped and stood still.

He gripped the carrying pole, turned around abruptly, his face filled with surprise and disbelief: "Jingcheng, how did you know I was going to the guesthouse?"

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