Chapter 37

Coming out after evening study, Li Lan wasn't surprised to find Li Cheng waiting at the door. "Let's walk back together."

Li Cheng looked at her. A whole period had passed and she was still worked up about what she'd heard, and her eyes were shining. "Li Lan, they're saying you're in the training squad. Is it true?"

Li Lan smiled. "It's true. I was going to tell you after class — I hadn't expected it to get round this fast." Not the whole school, perhaps, but by now most of the first year presumably knew that Class 3 had a student in the training squad.

Knowing it was true and hearing her sister say it were different things. "Really? So the training squad — that means recommendation to Tsinghua or Peking."

At the nod Li Cheng grabbed her hand and set off for the dormitories. "Come on, quickly — we're ringing Mum."

Li Lan pulled her back, and to the puzzled look said, slyly, "The holiday starts after the exams, so it's barely two days. Why not tell them face to face? Give them a surprise."

Li Cheng stopped, thought about it, pictured their parents' reaction to being told in person, and laughed. "That's evil of you."

Li Lan was serious. "How is that evil? There's no ceremony to a phone call. Good news should be shared in person."

Li Cheng gave her a withering look and got a smug one back. It was only with family and close friends that Li Lan was ever this relaxed.

Then, hurrying to catch up as Li Lan walked on, "Tell me about Guangzhou. I've never been anywhere."

Back at the dormitory Zhao Xinxin came to confirm the news too. Having gone to school with both of them since childhood, she was mostly just pleased. With both of them there, Li Lan handed over the presents she'd brought from Guangzhou: two similar but not identical watches, finely made.

Zhao Xinxin was surprised to be included. "You got me something as well?"

"Of course. Same as Chengcheng's. See which you prefer and take one."

They each picked one and put them on. Li Cheng turned her wrist over. "It's nice. What make is it?"

One of the room-mates looked at the boxes on the table and named a brand. "Those are several hundred each."

Both girls jumped, and Zhao Xinxin took hers straight off. "Li Lan, that's far too expensive. You wear it." She'd assumed a few tens of yuan; several hundred was nearly a month's living costs.

Li Lan produced another. "Keep it. I've got my own. And they were discounted when I bought them — barely a hundred and something."

Reassured, Li Cheng said, "That's what I thought. You haven't got several hundred a watch. A hundred and something is still steep, mind." She looked pained about it. Lovely, but steep.

Li Lan glanced at her. Careful with money now, and in later years never happy unless it carried a label.

---

A day of revision and two days of exams went quickly. Before the holiday Li Lan received the schedules for the chemistry and biology finals and went home reassured: with dates in hand she could simply turn up at the assembly point, though the two camps were only two or three days apart, which meant a certain amount of travelling back and forth.

With Spring Festival close, some of those working away had come home early, and the train was noticeably fuller than usual. Guarding her bag, Li Lan followed the crowd off, and found her parents waiting in the usual place — beside a brand-new minibus.

They took the extra luggage and led the three of them to it. Li Cheng looked twice. "Dad, whose car is this? It's so new."

Chen Ying put the bags in the back, laughed, and said with satisfaction, "It isn't anybody's. It's ours."

Li Cheng stopped with one foot on the step. "Ours?"

"That's right. Two months since you've been home, isn't it. Try not to be too startled when we get there." And she stopped deliberately halfway, leaving them hanging.

Li Lan worked it out at once: the supermarket must be open, and the minibus was for collecting stock. Having seen the large supermarket her family ran in her last life, a small one now produced no particular feeling.

Li Cheng was another matter. She knew they'd been going to open one, but until she saw it there had always been a suspicion of being humoured. At the thought that it might really exist, she couldn't keep still. "Is the supermarket open? What's it like?"

Her parents exchanged a look, entirely satisfied with the reaction, and said in unison, "You'll see when we get there. Where's the surprise if we tell you now?"

Zhao Xinxin pulled the bouncing Li Cheng back down. "It's half an hour. Stop it. And haven't you got news of your own?" She knew the plan, and had kept it from her own parents on the phone to preserve it.

Chen Ying turned round from the front. "Xinxin, what news is this?"

Which put Li Cheng in the enviable position, arms folded, of saying, "We're not telling. Wait till we're home."

Which of course made her mother far more curious. She looked at Li Quan, who shook his head to indicate he knew nothing either. "Chengcheng, I'm your mother. What news needs keeping from me? Say it now, say it at home, what's the difference?"

Li Cheng proved immune to every approach, and held out all the way to insisting it would be said at home with her grandparents present.

So with an entire vehicle consumed by mutual curiosity and nobody willing to give ground, they reached Beiguan — ten minutes faster than usual, Li Lan noted, and she strongly suspected her father had been driving quicker out of impatience.

The minibus stopped in front of a row of three-storey buildings, and Li Cheng got out unable to believe this had once been the pit behind the old house. Seeing the supermarket sign above it, she turned to her parents. "Is that ours?"

At their nod she gave a cheer and ran in, and Zhao Xinxin was surprised too. "Two floors?" Her family's new house was next door, so she knew it was three storeys — but she hadn't expected a supermarket on two of them. Surely the only one of its kind in Beiguan.

Inside, Li Cheng could barely take it in. She'd been in supermarkets before, but somebody else's and your own are not the same thing — and theirs was beautifully fitted out, no different from one in the city.

She ran back to her parents with the important question. "Mum, do I have to pay for things in our own shop?"

Li Quan waved a hand, laughing. "No. Take whatever you want."

She cheered again and went off to choose snacks.

Li Jingyu, hearing the commotion from the third floor, came down — he'd caught the conversation through the window — and arrived just as Li Cheng was heading for the food. He towed her further in. "Come with me. There's one thing you have to try—"

Watching the two of them go, their parents turned to Li Lan and Zhao Xinxin, who hadn't moved. "Lanlan, Xinxin, aren't you going to pick something? Anything you like, it's free."

Li Lan had no particular interest, and Zhao Xinxin was too polite: it wasn't her family's shop and she hadn't the nerve. "No thank you. My grandmother's waiting for me at home, so I'd better go — I'll come and buy things in a few days."

Chen Ying checked the clock; it was indeed dinner time. "She's waiting for you? It's getting dark, your uncle will run you back." And she called across to Li Quan, who was in the act of fetching Li Lan a roast sausage. "Li Quan, take Xinxin home first, her grandmother's waiting."

He handed Li Lan the tongs, with instructions. "Do your own, Lanlan — get one of the ones with the skin split, they're the best." She nodded, and once he'd gone put the tongs back where they came from.

Not that she disliked them. Some things you can eat too many of, however good. It had been a winter holiday last time too, and roast sausages had seemed a fine thing then, so she'd volunteered to man the machine and sell them — and by the end of the holiday, never mind how sales had gone, she'd made herself thoroughly sick of them. One occasionally was fine now. More was not.

Seeing the tongs go back, Chen Ying asked, "Don't you like them?"

"It's not that. We're about to eat, aren't we? I'd rather have dinner."

"We're eating at your grandmother's — there isn't time to cook, and they've missed you both these two months."

Li Lan nodded. The first meal home was generally at her grandparents', and she was used to it.

---

The building was a simple three-storey shop-house, neither large nor small: business on the first two floors, the family on the third. Chen Ying was ambitious and set on running the best supermarket in Beiguan, and their own plot not being big enough, she'd rented the neighbour's as well. Trade looked decent — even the clothing section on the second floor had a fair number of people browsing.

As Li Lan and her mother went up, Li Cheng and Li Jingyu came up too with armfuls of snacks and drinks, and on the third floor Li Cheng made a series of delighted noises: no more small earth-walled rooms, and a proper flushing lavatory at last. Heaven knew how much she'd hated the old one, especially in the rain, when you had to hold an umbrella. The less said the better.

Having toured it, she found the bedroom she and Li Lan were to share. "Mum, why are Li Lan and I still in one bed?" There being only three bedrooms, she was aggrieved.

Li Lan rolled her eyes privately. We were still sharing a bed the year I was reborn. Separate rooms are a long way off.

Chen Ying came in. "You're hardly ever here. Two rooms would be a waste. And look — you've got the good big one."

Li Cheng thought about it and conceded. Apart from their parents' room, theirs was the largest; Li Jingyu's was small and hadn't even got a window. Having been round it all, she was thoroughly pleased with the new house.