Transmigrated Farmgirl's Scheme to Get Rich - Chapter 175
The Return of the Bride II
The two were bickering about this when Mo Zenian entered the courtyard from the alleyway with boxes of food in hand, “Yan’er’s right, you should be more picky when the occasion is right. I’ve bought some dishes for a feast, the newlywed groom should take a seat first!”
Mo Zenian went inside the house with the food boxes, and Mo Yan and Mo Ling could only follow him inside while Zhong Cheng unhitched his carriage.
“Feng’er, quick, take out the bowls and cutlery! I bought dishes from Dengyun Tower!”
He was moving around the house like he hadn’t gotten a divorce with Ms. Liang. Mo Feng came out of his room and ran to the kitchen for bowls and cutlery.
Mo Zenian placed the dishes on the table in the living room, his face full of joy, as if he didn’t feel a single shred of embarrassment.
Ms. Liang stood by the side as she watched him busy himself with arranging the dishes. After Mo Zenian had placed all of the dishes, Zhong Cheng had just unhitched the carriage and came in, so Mo Zenian called him over, “Zhong Cheng, Mo Ling, take a seat. Today, you’ve come back as part of the return of the bride ceremony. According to common convention, all of your relatives should be here, please don’t hold it against them.”
He handed chopsticks over to Zhong Cheng. As it was incredibly hard to punch someone when they were smiling at you guilelessly, he could only accept them and say politely, “Father-in-law, thank you!”
Upon being called ‘father-in-law’, Mo Zenian’s smile grew even brighter, and he beckoned to the table full of dishes, “Feng’er, Yan’er, the children’s mother, quick, come and take a seat. Otherwise, the food will get cold.”
Ms. Liang said coldly, “Manager Mo, you must have gone to the wrong place! What relationship do you have with this family?”
Mo Zenian was still all smiles, “The children are all here! We have time to talk about our personal affairs afterwards.”
“What do I have to say to you? You have to be a fool to think I’ll let you back into the family just because of a few dishes!”
“What does a few dishes amount to? I heard that Feng’er is getting engaged soon, so we need to start building the foundations for his house!”
“How can you care about this kind of stuff?”
“Of course I should care. No matter what, Mo Feng is my only son.”
After knowing that Mo Zheng wasn’t Mo Zenian’s son, Ms. Liang had felt much better. Mo Feng was his biological son, if he didn’t care about him, then no one would!”
The family sat down to have a meal. Due to Mo Ling’s joviality and an earnestness Mo Zenian had never possessed before, the atmosphere at the dinner table wasn’t as oppressing as it previously was. [1]
After the meal was finished, Mo Ling wanted to wash up like she habitually did, but Mo Yan said, “Sis, from now on, whenever you come back here, you’re a guest, so let us do this instead! When you get a sister-in-law, she’ll be the one who does the washing up.”
Mo Feng volunteered to return the food boxes back to Dengyun Tower, but it was apparent to everyone that he just wanted to drive Zhong Cheng’s carriage.
Mo Ling noticed Mo Yan’s face had a sickly pallor, so asked, “Yan’er, are you ill?”
She shook her head, “It’s nothing, I just got a little too angered.”
“How about you stay at mine for two days!” Zhong Cheng also said, “It’s perfect for you to monitor my progress as I build the divider courtyard wall.”
Ms. Liang said, “Zhong Cheng’s parents will be present at their house. Why are you going to their house? It’s not like you aren’t already living in one.”
Zhong Cheng said, “We’re currently discussing splitting families, and we’ll be living our days on our own from now on. We just have to be filial to my parents.” [2]
Mo Yan asked, “How are you planning on splitting families?”
“All three of us brothers have our own courtyards, so we can just live in them!”
“So how about the land, livestock and ducks of the family?”
Zhong Cheng shook his head, and Mo Yan knew nothing good would come out of that.
“My elder sister-in-law takes care of all of the ducks, so they’ll all belong to her family. We have a total of twenty acres of land, and my dad says we’ll split the land by the number of people in each family.”
Mo Yan did a quick count, “There are exactly ten people in your family, so there will be two acres of land per person.”
“My second sister-in-law said that as Mo Ling has just married into the family, we can’t give any land to her, so my family will only count as one person.”
“Why? Since she’s married into your family, she’s part of it, so some of the land should be given to her as well. Did you agree with them saying that?”
“We haven’t written a contract yet, we’re still negotiating.”
“Then how about the livestock?”
“There’s an ox and a horse in the family. My eldest brother will get the ox, and my second brother the horse. Since we already have a work animal, we aren’t getting another one.”
“So basically, you’re getting nothing and being forced out of the family with empty hands. How much money have you earned in these years? It’s bound to not be a small sum! Have they already spent it all? Why is it that when your parents decide to split families, that none of the family’s possessions have anything to do with you?!”
Mo Yan was so incensed that she started coughing, but Ms. Liang said, “A good man doesn’t need what he receives when his parents split their families, and a good woman doesn’t wear her wedding dress. You’ll have to live the rest of your days on your own, and what you get from splitting your families won’t last you a lifetime.”
Mo Yan asked Mo Ling, “Sis, do you believe this as well?”
Mo Ling replied, “It doesn’t feel right to start an argument immediately after marrying into their family. If they really decide to split families like this, then we’ll just live our days separately in the future, and see who has a better life.”
“If you actually decide to split families like this, everyone in the village will laugh at you for being foolish and easy to bully, so they’ll bully you even more in the future. You absolutely can’t split families like this, ask the governing official to enact justice.”
“The governing official is my second sister-in-law’s uncle.”
No wonder she acted so brazenly, it was because she had a backer! So it seems like getting justice will be impossible! In that case, they’ll have to split families clearly and definitively, so there won’t be any semblance of association remaining.
“Go ask governing official Wu if there’s anything we can argue about on the proposed contract for splitting the families.”
As it was still relatively early, Mo Yan and Mo Ling went to the Wu family. Governing official Wu was sweeping his yard, and when he heard them ask about family splitting contracts, asked them to enter and explained to them in detail.
Aside from the financial aspects of splitting families, the children also had to take care of their parents. The parents may choose to live with one of their children, or all of the children may have to take care of their parents in a rotation.
Zhong Cheng’s parents could still work for now, so didn’t need to be taken care of and could even help out. Therefore, everyone would want to live with them. However, Zhong Cheng’s eldest brother was disabled, and his wife was generous. As his parents also wanted to spend more time with their grandchildren, they would naturally want to live with their eldest son.
They were already living together, so it was the most suitable option. However, when they grew older and weaker, they would also be the responsibility of their eldest son’s family, while the other two sons only had to come over periodically.
The notion of splitting the acres of land by the number of people was unreasonable, not to mention the part where Mo Ling wouldn’t be included in that count. No matter what, this had to be changed.
In the countryside, there was a saying: If you marry a woman into the family, you have to be responsible for her. A bride becomes part of the family as soon as she marries into it, so how could you not give her any land? This wouldn’t fly no matter where you lived.
The division of livestock was unfair as well. They couldn’t just say that the family which already had a work animal shouldn’t get anything, but instead, they should sell all of the work animals and divide the money equally, so anyone who wanted one could buy it using the money they received.
After returning from governing official Wu’s house, Mo Yan asked, “Have they decided when they’re splitting the families?”
“What are you going to do? You can’t interfere with this.”
“I’ll let it slide if they decide to split the families fairly, but if they don’t, I will interfere!”
Zhong Cheng’s elder sister-in-law was an honest and generous person, so these nefarious ideas must’ve been thought up by his second sister-in-law!
“Sis, remember, you can’t take anything that shouldn’t be yours, and you can’t give away anything that should belong to you.”
The situation in the Zhong family was akin to the Three Kingdoms, and each of the sons’ situations had their pros and cons. The eldest brother seemed to be the least successful on paper, but with the support of their parents and more acres of farmland than the other two sons due to their two children, they’ll receive the most property when they split the families and their lives will be the easiest.
The second brother’s family was similar to Zhong Cheng’s, but their earning power was nowhere near his and Mo Ling’s, so they wanted to get more of the family’s property.
In actuality, if the three brothers just worked together, their lives wouldn’t be too bad, but Zhong Cheng’s second brother and his wife were just too calculating.
“Sis, when they decide on when they’re writing the family splitting contract, give me a notice in advance.”
“Are you really going?”
“At this time, there should be someone going from your natal family, but since Mo Feng can’t be relied on to do anything, I’ll go instead.”
P.S. Mo Ling’s dreams of a blissful domestic life away from her overbearing mother, may have just landed her into more household politics.
[1] I assume this is referring to the first time Mo Zenian was shown on screen to join the Mo family at the dinner table.
[2] Splitting families is…well, I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but from what I garnered from my previous work (‘Married to a Disabled Man in the 70s’ completed over a year ago shill over), it’s basically what it says on the tin. It’s probably how Chinese families managed to not become even more massive than they were back then.