Three or Two Things about Rebirth

"Beautiful, really beautiful!" Old Mrs. Zhang smiled and patted the sofa beside her, motioning Qiu Luming to sit next to her.

Qiu Luming glanced at Fang Yuan and sat over with a smile.

"Her eyes are like falling meteors, and her eyebrows are like soaring green feathers. This girl has such beautiful eyes and eyebrows. You can tell at first glance that she is smart and insightful!" The old lady spoke slowly and her wording and sentences were full of the style of the Republic of China. Qiu Luming couldn't help but feel a sense of intimacy with this slightly plump old lady.

Zhang Weijing sat on the sofa next to Qiu Luming and said to her with a smile, "Many guests will come later, most of them are my father's friends. I'm afraid you'll be bored, so I asked you to come earlier and have some snacks with grandma and talk about what you've seen and heard in the frontier. Grandma loves traveling the most, and she also likes to listen to people tell some novel stories."

"Okay, if Grandma Zhang doesn't mind my poor tongue, I'll tell you about it."

At this time, the nanny brought a tray and put down five or six palm-sized cakes on small plates. There were chocolate, cream, strawberry, mango, etc. She also brought black tea, coffee and other drinks.

Zhang Weijing brought Grandma Zhang a plate of mango cake and a cup of black tea.

Qiu Luming and Fang Yuan were each given a cup of coffee and asked to choose their own cakes. Qiu Luming chose a chocolate one and Fang Yuan chose a cream one.

Qiu Luming picked up a small piece of chocolate cake with his fork. It was so delicious that he couldn't help but take another bite, and then took a sip of coffee.

Old Mrs. Zhang did not move, but raised her chin towards Zhang Weijing, who said with a bitter face, "Grandma!"

The old lady frowned impatiently, and Zhang Weijing immediately used a pair of tongs to put a piece of sugar cube into the black tea cup.

"Hmm?" the old lady said.

Zhang Weijing had no choice but to put another piece in, stirring it with a small spoon, and said, "Grandma, we can't eat too much sweets."

"If you don't eat this or that, what's the point of living!" The old lady picked up a small plate of mango cake, took a bite of the cake, and then ate a piece of mango, and said to Qiu Luming, "Look, look, your family is so poor that they can't even afford to eat, but the cake is only as small as a fingernail! If not, you can pack up my books and sell them, so that I can have a big cake!"

Qiu Luming narrowed his eyes and smiled, "Grandma Zhang, eat less now, so you can have a delicious birthday cake later!"

"Yes, it's my birthday today, and there will be a big cake in the evening!" The old lady smiled immediately.

She didn't ignore Fang Yuan, she looked at her carefully and said, "You are a soldier in uniform!"

Fang Yuan immediately put down his coffee and sat down, "Yes, Grandma Zhang, I am a second lieutenant of the armed police."

"Well done, armed police! Women are just as good as men!"

Seeing that the old lady had already eaten a small piece of mango cake and was about to take the second piece, Zhang Weijing hurriedly stopped her, "Grandma! They heard that you are a student of Southwest Associated University and want to see your photo album!"

"Oh? You must have been the one who said that!" The old lady retracted her outstretched hand and turned to the nanny beside her and said, "Xiao Hu, go get those two photo albums!"

When Qiu Luming heard the words "Southwest Associated University", his heart was filled with emotion.

When the Anti-Japanese War broke out, National Peking University, National Tsinghua University and Private Nankai University moved to Changsha and formed a comprehensive university together. In November 1937, Changsha Temporary University opened, but Changsha was bombed repeatedly by Japanese planes. In February of the following year, the Temporary University moved west to Kunming in three routes. Qiu Luming took the water route, first taking a train to Guangdong and Hong Kong, then a boat to Haiphong, Vietnam, and then transferred to Hanoi to take the Yunnan-Vietnam Line to Kunming.

Unfortunately, before arriving in Kunming, Qiu Luming had unknowingly become the youngest daughter of the Qiu family in the small town of Jiayang.

It was only in the last two years that she learned from books that the school was renamed Southwest Associated University. Later, she read several articles about Southwest Associated University written by Wang Zengqi in magazines, learned some general information about Kunming, and read about interesting stories of her classmates. Of course, when she read that the school was bombed by Japanese planes and that the principal's wife had to buy snacks to get by, she cried a few times.

Now she suddenly found out that the gentle and free-spirited old lady in front of her was actually her schoolmate. How could she not be excited!

Before the photo album was brought, the old lady put down her tea and said, "I'm tired. I'm going to take a nap."

Qiu Luming and Fang Yuan both stood up, somewhat at a loss. Zhang Weijing supported Mrs. Zhang's arm, "Grandma needs to rest for a while, she's been working hard at night!"

"No need for you, just accompany the two girls to look at the photos!" After saying that, he looked at Qiu Luming and the others and said with a smile, "Don't be restrained, the old lady should know better and get out of the way, and you can be at ease too!"

Qiu Luming said, "There will definitely be a lot of guests at the banquet tonight, and you should really take a good rest now. Uh,...we came too early and affected your schedule."

Old Mrs. Zhang waved her hand nonchalantly and went back to her room.

Zhang Weijing sat down in the seat in front of Old Lady Zhang, picked up a photo album that the nanny had just handed over, spread it on his knees, pointed to the photo on the first page and said, "This was taken in the seventh year of the Republic of China, that is, 1917. It was taken when my grandmother was days old. The one holding her was my great-grandmother."

Qiu Luming lowered his head slightly and saw a slightly yellowed photo. In it, a beautiful baby was held in the arms of a beautiful young woman, staring blankly at the camera. He looked very cute.

"How beautiful!" Qiu Luming praised sincerely. Without looking at the gorgeous clothes and jewelry of the mother and daughter, anyone who could afford to take a photo in 1917 must not be an ordinary family.

Fang Yuan sat on the single sofa next to him, carefully flipping through another photo album.

Qiu Luming also wanted to look through the photos herself, but Zhang Weijing kept introducing the content and background of the photos to her. "This is a photo of my grandmother when she was one year old, this one is when she was two years old... This one is a photo of their brothers and sisters."

Qiu Luming couldn't help but point his fingers at the photo, "One, two, three... nine, ten, eleven... Oh my God, fifteen!"

Zhang Weijing's gaze rested on Qiu Luming's chubby right hand with a dimpled surface, and he forgot to speak for a moment.

Qiu Luming didn't know this. She was still sighing about the large family and asked in a low voice, "Your great-grandfather must have had three wives and four concubines. One person definitely couldn't have had so many children."

Zhang Weijing came back to his senses, "Yes, he had one wife and three concubines. My grandmother was the first child born to his youngest concubine, and she had two younger brothers, and three younger brothers and sisters from other rooms."

Qiu Luming thought that someone this pretty was most likely a concubine.

Zhang Weijing continued, "Although my grandmother was born to a concubine, my great-grandfather's wife was a very kind person and did not make things difficult for the concubines. She gave birth to six children herself, and the concubines gave birth to many more. Excluding those who died young, there were a total of fifteen children left."

Qiu Luming was shocked. That was right. The infant mortality rate was very high in the early years of the Republic of China. There were fifteen babies left, and no one knew how many were actually born.

"This is a photo of my grandmother when she was in the girls' high school, and this one was taken when she was in Peking University. She was not the kind of girl who went to school just to marry into a good family. She had very good grades and was one year away from graduation when the Marco Polo Bridge Incident happened. She later went to Southwest Associated University as a senior, but she didn't study long before she went to study in the United States with her husband."

Qiu Luming looked at Zhang Weijing in confusion. He said "her husband" instead of grandfather.