CH 11.1

“Well, you will have time to learn about this in the future.” Chen Ying nods, not knowing whether he’s comforting Mi Xi or himself. Being an uncle is really not easy—he truly underestimated the difficulty of the task!

Mi Xi just blinks, still waiting for an answer.

“This is a kind of counting.” Chen Ying uses the phone keypad to teach the very basics of numbers, “Look, counting like this, 123, 456, 789, the one in the middle below is 0.”

Mi Xi looks down at the keypad in all seriousness, feeling a little frustrated: even the numbers look different?

“You don’t have to worry about this, I will teach you later. It’s really very simple.” Right, it should be very simple. To be honest, Chen Ying is a little uncertain, too. 

He plugs the phone back into the charger and points it out to Mi Xi. “These small boxes represent the power of this phone, and it cannot make calls without power. Look, it only has two boxes now. Plug this in and let it charge. You can use it when the boxes are full. Do you understand?”

Actually, Mi Xi doesn’t understand it too well, but she understands the basic thing: use it when the little boxes are full. She just needs to know this.

“Okay,” Chen Ying looks at his watch again, “I’m going out for a while. You take a shower, change clothes, and go to bed.” He suddenly remembers that he forgot to buy pajamas for this girl. “Are there any pajamas in the clothes that your Aunt Su prepared for you?”

Mi Xi’s expression is blank. Chen Ying shakes his head, “I’ll go to your room and take a look at your clothes.”

In Mi Xi’s room, the bag of clothes is still thrown on the floor, and the bag itself is still unopened. Mi Xi follows behind, feeling guilty. She has been lazy and did not clean up—now she feels ashamed.

Chen Ying opens her bag, takes out her clothes, and sees that she really has a set of pajamas. Su Xiaopei was really meticulous. He opens the closet, takes out a few hangers, hangs the other clothes on the hangers, and beckons Mi Xi to come over and take a look. “You have to tidy up your closet by yourself. Hang the big clothes like this, and fold the small ones so they don’t get wrinkled, and put them in the drawers.”

Mi Xi nods. But by now, Chen Ying—by default—doubts how much she actually understands. He points to the set of pajamas thrown on the bed, “Go take a shower, then wear this. This is called ‘pajamas’. Has your Aunt Su taught you how to wear it?”

Mi Xi nods, and Chen Ying automatically asks again, “Did she teach you not to wear those things when you sleep…” Bra. Bra, underwear—he doesn’t say the words, actually chokes. Forget it, the old man is right: it’s hard to say something to a young miss. He waves his hand, “I mean, don’t wear the suit you are wearing now when you sleep, you should change into your pajamas, so that you will be comfortable when you sleep.”

Mi Xi’s face is a little red. She really feels uncomfortable talking to a man about what to wear when going to bed. Really, very uncomfortable! But this world doesn’t seem to have a taboo about this, and she has to work hard to follow the local customs, so she restrains her shyness and awkwardness, and nods yet again.

Chen Ying points to the closet, “Tidy it yourself, hang up all the clothes we bought. Then quickly take a shower and go to bed.” After speaking, he’s about to go out, but after thinking about it, he turns back to say, “You have to cover yourself with the quilt when you sleep.” 

Mi Xi nods with a straight face, red with embarrassment. She watches Chen Ying leave the room and wants to ask him where he’s going this late at night but then thinks that she shouldn’t ask too many questions, and that maybe she wouldn’t understand even if he tells her. She obediently focuses on packing up her things, tidying things up with caution.

Chen Ying goes to his study and calls Feng Xin. 

“Miss Feng, I’m sorry to disturb you at night. That’s it. When you come over tomorrow, can you buy some basic textbooks for children to learn arithmetic? Learn Arabic numerals and simple arithmetic, um, the nine-by-nine multiplication table may be too early, but if you have it, please bring it with you. Hmm, there is also an exercise book? Ahh, for children to learn to write. Hmm, there is a pen grip corrector? What is that? The thing that corrects the posture of holding the pencil? Oh, I really didn’t know that there are these things now, so do bring them together. No, no, there is no other child: it’s Mi Xi. Well, it’s like this, Miss Feng, Mi Xi, she’s a child of a distant relative. She grew up in the countryside. Her family was too poor and she didn’t have the opportunity to read any books. She has grown up so much and her education has been delayed. Now she can’t go to school because she won’t be able to keep up with the classes, so I have to trouble you to teach her some homework every day. Let her have a basic understanding of arithmetic, teach her how to use electrical appliances, and have the ability to take care of herself in daily life.”

Chen Ying pauses, and listens to Feng Xin report a few things that she can prepare right away, and thinks that it’s pretty good. “Okay, that’s it. You bring it here tomorrow. By the way, Mixi has a strong self-esteem. You have to be patient. Like what I told you today, you should follow her as much as possible with her words and accent, and then explain to her how it is spoken here. Her hometown is far away in the mountains, and she generally doesn’t have contact with the outside world. She is also a girl. As you know, there are still some old traditions in some rural areas so Mi Xi knows less1. Please be more patient with her.”

Feng Xin, on the other end, agrees. Chen Ying is very satisfied when he hangs up the phone. He goes back to his room to change his clothes. When he’s about to go out, he passes the hallway bathroom. He looks at it and calls to Mi Xi’s room, “Mi Xi, put aside the clothes you used today after taking a shower. Let Feng Xin wash it for you tomorrow.” 

Mi Xi rushes out, but she doesn’t speak after hearing Chen Ying’s words, simply bites her lip. She’s a little reluctant. She doesn’t know the people here well, and she wants to wash it by herself, but she’s afraid of embarrassing herself.2 So she just nods, planning to ask Feng Xin for advice tomorrow.

Chen Ying walks to the living room, sees that the shopping bags are gone, and goes back to Mi Xi’s room to check. There are no such things on the bed, presumably she had put them all in the closet. Empty shopping bags and boxes are neatly arranged on the table.

Satisfied, Chen Ying whistles as heads for the exit. He opens the door and says, “Hurry up and take a shower, then go to bed early.”

Turning around, he sees Mi Xi being silent, simply standing in the huge living room looking at him. Chen Ying meets her eyes and thinks that there should be something more to say, but he didn’t expect this so he just casually says, “Don’t go out, okay? I’m leaving now, bye-bye.3” 

He steps out, remembers something again, and turns back around to say, “‘Bye-bye’ means ‘goodbye’, um, ‘until we meet again’, um…” Ahh, what is he even saying?

“I’m sure we’ll meet again some day,” Mi Xi replies tentatively. But it’s strange to say that they’ll meet again some day when he’s just leaving the house.

“Well, yeah, it’s pretty much that.” Chen Ying also feels very strange.

“Uncle, good travels,” Mi Xi salutes.4

“Okay,” Chen Ying turns to leave. “Wait a minute.” He remembers that he was called ‘uncle’ several times today—it’s embarrassing! Turning back, he says, “What did I tell you to call me?”

“Chen Ying, good travels,” Mi Xi adjusts her words obediently.

Damn, why does it sound so weird when you say it that way? Forget it, let’s just have good travels—he knows she really doesn’t mean it that way. Chen Ying waves his hand, locks the door, and finally leaves. 

While taking the elevator, he is still thinking, is this little miss gonna be okay alone at home? Well, it should be fine; she was at home by herself during the day. 

Now that he thinks of it, should he have taught her how to turn on the TV just now? Or else, what will she do if she gets bored? Forget it, what’s boredom? Children should go to bed early. Didn’t the ancients all go to bed early and get up early? She didn’t sleep last night, and only slept for a while at noon, so she should go to bed early.

After becoming an uncle, life has become too fulfilling—he can barely stand it ah!5  

________________

FOOTNOTES:

1 I think he’s referring to old school, patriarchal ideas to explain why Mi Xi would be ultra conservative when compared to modern women. 

2 She’s the eldest di daughter of a general’s household. Never mind using a washing machine here, did she even know how to wash clothes back home? O.o 

3 Chen Ying uses the loan word ‘bai bai’ as in the English ‘bye-bye’. 

4 This whole conversation is awkward because the phrases for ‘goodbye’ that Chen Ying says are also variations of ‘until we meet again’ which is quite formal if taken literally, but he just wants to casually say ‘bye, see you later’ lmao. Mi Xi’s response is an idiom and is even more formal. Until she eventually lands on a version more like ‘bon voyage’ or ‘godspeed’ (❁´◡`❁) 

5 He’s probably a little sarcastic here with ‘fulfilling’. ‘Stressful’ or ‘chaotic’ seems more like it lmao