Winter Begonia, Chapter 1: The Quarrelsome family and the damning past

Winter Begonia 《鬓边不是海棠红》Bin Bian Bu Shi Hai Tang Hong
Winter Begonia, Chapter 1: The Quarrelsome family and the damning past

 Cheng Fengtai has long been known as Shang Xirui.

Shang Xirui, the class master of the Shuiyun House, is one of the most famous actors today, dressed as a flower girl in a green dress. The number of fans who pursued him was as large as the stars, with the front chest against the back of the row, and could go around the city of Beiping for two hundred laps, so that Shang Xirui was held up as a round of the island ice moon - hanging high above the nine heavens, the silver light shining brightly, everso unreachable.

 If you want to know if Shang Xirui is really that good, the people of Beiping will definitely mention to you that the Empress Dowager Cixi appointed Ning Jiulang as the Shogun of the Pear Garden. After listening to one of his performances, Ning Jiulang sighed and retreated from the theatre, surrendering the title of the first cast Danjue.

 It is said that Ning Jiulang was shocked by Shang Xirui's voice and sighed heavily, and as an opera enthusiast, he thought that a young phoenix voice was clearer than an old phoenix, and that it was difficult to tolerate two beauties in the same world, and that he had no point in going on stage anymore. The first time he saw him, he was a very good man. The fact aside, Ning Jiulang's removal from the best acting throne has completely brought out the fame of Shang Xirui. The newspapers were full of his gossip and biography every day, and ticket buyers gathered in front of the theatre garden to chase and hail him, hailing him as more than a great chairman. Therefore, at the beginning, Cheng Fengtai's impression of Shang Xirui's Xirui was that of a horn, the red horn of the pear orchard that answers to every call.

 But in the mouth of Cheng Fengtai's sister, Cheng Meixin, Shang Xirui, that was a lowly and debauched foxmeister, and because he was a male lovers’ foxmeister, it was ten times more abominable.

 No wonder Cheng Meixin hated Shang Xirui so much. Shang Xirui had a grudge against her for taking her husband. At that time, Cheng Meixin was still the Sixth Concubine of the Northwest Warlord Cao Siling, Cao Siling went all the way to the east to attack the fortress, and broke through the gate of Marshal Zhang, Shang Xirui, dressed in a brocade costume, and sang on the city tower with a face like the sky, and repeated those words over and over again, and sang them with a passionate and forgetfulness - he was not afraid of bullets. The soldiers looked amazed and forgot and actually put their guns down for a moment, pointing out that the man was a madman, right? He must be crazy. It's beautiful and mad.

Cao Siling looked up from under the city tower, and Shang Xirui was singing the line "The Han army has been slightly overtaken, and isolated on all sides", which sounded like a song of praise to Cao Siling. I want Yu Ji alive! So the men did not dare to shoot at will, and it took one more hour to break through the city gates.

 After the city was broken, Shang Xirui did not learn the loyalty of Yu Ji before she killed herself.

 Fortunately, in the final battle, Cheng Meixin won, squeezed out the strong enemy Shang Xirui and boiled to death the Cao Siling's original wife, and she was the current the Lady of Cao. But when she brought up the past, he was still very angry.

 Cheng Meixin is from a foreign family on the Shanghai, but in recent years in her career as a social flower and spouse, her mouth and mind have been refined to be quite vicious and vulgar, but whenever Shang Xirui is mentioned in the background, she will go on to make a couple of unpleasant comments and order the men in the family not to interact with it. However, apart from her husband Cao Siling and brother Cheng Fengtai, she had no other male relatives to strangle. Cao Siling is the one Cheng Meixin dug to curry favor with, and she doesn't dare to say anything against this war commander's husband. This order fell on Cheng Fengtai.

 In the afternoon of this day, in the spacious rooms  in one of the Peking Mansion, a large enamel vase with a few peacock plumes, mahogany carved furniture, a few plum and bamboo chrysanthemums on the walls, all of which are the original furnishings of this old royal residence. The sunset is reflected in the room, and everything seems to be an old gray still life painting. With one elbow propped up on the table and an ivory pipe in the other hand, Cheng Meixin stared at Cheng Fengtai and admonished him, "Don't be like the men in Peking who play in the theater, those underlings who are on the stage and selling their talents, who look at each other and seduce rich and powerful men. If you don't learn, I'll tell you what to do.”

 Cheng Meixin has this strong, no matter how poisonous the heart, a mouthful of glutinous and soft Jiangnan accent will not change.

 Cheng Fengtai stuck both hands in the pockets of his costume trousers and smiled casually as he responded, "I heard you, a male opera singer, what's so funny."

 The point of this sentence seems to be that it's not funny because it's a male actor. If it's a woman, I'd probably be interested in having some fun.

 Cheng Meixin glanced at her sister-in-law next to her, and her sister-in-law, the older Second Mistress Cheng Cheng, was really paying attention, and pushed the slender smoking pole in her hand into the spittoon, poured out a handful of ashes, and looked at Cheng Fengtai with cold eyes.

 Cheng Meixin hurriedly pursued: "Not only are opera singers not allowed, but also dancers and singers are not allowed to mess around with. Sister-in-law is so beautiful, she has already given birth to two little girls, and you still don't know what to do? You can't be a man without a conscience!"

 She forgot that Cheng Fengtai's birth mother, the original second wife of the Cheng family was a songstress. Fortunately Cheng Fengtai did not pay attention to it either, and took a citrus and peeled it and passed it to her with a smile: "I know! Sister, you come here once in a while, half the time you just spend it to scold the play and half the time to discipline the younger brother, this temper is becoming more and more similar to brother-in-law." While talking, he wiped the foreign match and lit a cigarette for the older Second Mistress Cheng. The second grandmother had a faint smile in her eyes, and she loved the way her husband had done these small and intimate things for her, as if Cheng Fengtai was bending over and flattering her. She sipped the smoke on the fire, but said, "Can't I use it if you leave me alone? A lord, in a hurry to do some servant work, does not know his own self-respect."

 Cheng Meixin broke a petal of tangerine and put it in her mouth, laughing, "My younger sibling doesn't get it, he is hurting his wife."

 The older Second Mistress Cheng glanced at Cheng Fengtai and said that she couldn't stand to look at him, but her face was smiling. Cheng Fengtai always smiled with a casual smile, until he really felt the smoke air later. The two women, a Shanghai official accent, a northeast big stubble smell, one by one stalked after one another, as if singing a burlesque. In the back room, the Third Sister Cha Cha’er woke up in the middle of sleep, rubbed their eyes and ruffled the door curtain, saw the big sister Cheng Meixin, froze and tried to go back. Cheng Fengtai hastily beckoned her, "Come here, Cha Cha'er."

 She was a lonely girl who had never been able to deal with her big sister since she was a child, because she looked down on her personality and style. Cheng Fengtai patted his knee, and Cha Cha'er sat up with a crooked body, burying her face in her second brother's chest in a daze, not even looking at Cheng Meixin. Cheng Fengtai braced her waist and shook it twice with both hands, frowning, ''Sister is here, why didn't you say hello? Huh?" But there was nothing in his tone to blame. Cha Cha’er grunted in her nose, kind of saying hello to her sister.

 If this had been placed in the past in Shanghai, Cheng Meixin would have been scolding her a long time ago. However, she knows Cheng Fengtai's temper well, and although he is fond of his sisters, the only one who is really at the tip of his heart is this Cha Cha'er. She was brought up by him, and the two siblings had the deepest bond. To criticize Cheng Fengtai is nothing; to criticize Cha Cha’er is to poke Cheng Fengtai in the heart, and he would go on to light the fire. The world is not the same as it used to be, and Cheng Meixin doesn't want to offend the rich merchant's brother, so she scolds him in her heart, calling him a bastard girl who doesn't know how to behave and is a cheapskate like her brute mother. The two are smiling at the two half-siblings who kissed and hugged each other warmly, and then thought with contempt: a songstress, a barbarian, they are all the way.

 When his father's factory closed down and went bankrupt while the family was still in Shanghai, his father died in depression, and the first wife hung herself in the face of this mess. None of the four children in the Cheng family came from a single mother; Cheng Meixin was the first wife daughter, only eighteen years old at the time, and she had a brother and two sisters underneath. The mother of her younger brother Cheng Fengtai, who was originally a red songstress on the Shanghai Bund, she was not used to staying at home, so after giving birth to her son she went to Hong Kong to resume her old business. The third sister, Cha Cha'er's mother is a Uighur mother, she comes and goes, and Cheng Meixin barely sees her at all, having heard that she has gone abroad to France. The last of them, a fourth aunt of humble origins and a fourth sister in swaddling clothes, plus the mother family nanny, that was a whole family. The bank sent someone to take out everything in the house that was worth more, the piano, the silverware, the electric fan, even the marble standing basin in the garden, all of it was taken away. When the servants saw this situation, they quit their jobs, and Cheng Meixin stopped them in front of the garden and shouted, "I'll pay you in time. What are you doing? Leaving us like this?”

 In order to keep her house and pay her maids, she went to work as a high class social worker.

 She is not the most beautiful person in Shanghai, but she is a western styled, speaks English, wears dresses, she is wholesome, enjoys herself and has fun. The most important thing is that she is the great lady of the Cheng family, the phoenix of the fallen rich family, everyone wants a taste. Cheng Meixin remembered that her first time selling herself was with an old friend of her father's, an old man she had always called Uncle. That time she got six thousand dollars - six thousand dollars that, in the past, was just a night used by her mother playing mahjong in and out, and now she was being asked to trade her virginity for it.

 Cheng Meixin still remembers that night, she forced herself to hold back her grief and anger and persevere all night, and she got up in the morning, her body was very sore and tired, but still made a long detour to buy Cao Siling's chestnut cake to take home. They used to have milk and cake in the mornings at home, so now they do too, as a family. She did this not out of love for her younger siblings, it was for herself. It turns out that all the glory and riches, the loss of a little bit of the routine was killing Cheng Meixin’s heart, and she has to try desperately to keep the status quo. By comparison, the night's payoff was nothing.

 With the cake in her hand, Cheng Meixin pushed open the door of the dining room, which had floor-to-ceiling windows on one wall. The morning light came in and shone on his brother Cheng Fengtai's body, illuminating his hair and skin and giving his entire being a kind of holy beauty. Cheng Fengtai wore only a white shirt and sat at the dinner table with his arm around the maid’s waist. His face was nestled against the woman's breast, motionless. The woman seemed to be soothed by his suckling, both hands were kneading his shoulders, narrowing her eyes and moaning softly. The sight in front of her eyes was very erotic and greatly stimulated Cheng Meixin's body and mind which had been ravaged last night. She stood there for a while, looking at them, and suddenly found out that Cheng Fengtai was not doing that kind of thing - he was suckling milk!

 Cha Cha'er was still young at the time, sitting with her legs dangling at the side, looking expressionlessly at her second brother and nanny, and back at her big sister.

 Cheng Meixin's heart was shaking with exasperation. She stifles sobs and sleeps with the old man outside, and Cheng Fengtai, her only brother, not to mention sharing something for her, is still eating milk at home from his nanny in his arms! This shameless, dirty bastard! Did she sell herself so that he could continue to live comfortably as a young master? It's not that easy!

 Nana opened her eyes and saw Cheng Meixin running away with a scream to cover her clothes. Cheng Fengtai jumped down from the table in a daze, he himself felt quite embarrassed, red-faced, took the cuff and wiped the milk in the corner of his mouth: Sister......

 Cheng Meixin swallowed her throat and smiled kindly as she put the chestnut cake on the table, calling Cheng Fengtai's English name: “Edwin you are so naughty, still stealing milk with your younger sister at such a big age. You hungry? Tell them to burn some sweet cereal and all come over for cake.”

 At the dinner table, Cheng Meixin mentally pondered all the ways to betray her younger siblings. The two sisters are too small to be sold as beautiful. Her brother is beautiful, more beautiful than she is - a pity it's a younger brother, and she doesn't know of any rich businessman in Shanghai who likes to play with boys. Cheng Meixin flipped through all the wealthy people she knew north and south, and finally came up with someone on the northern borderline, a savior-like one.

 She took Cheng Fengtai's hand and looked at him earnestly, "Edwin, I want to... I want to call your northern fiancée, Miss Fan, to Shanghai. For you guys to get married.”

 Cheng Fengtai frowned violently, nearly spitting milk out of his mouth, and his hand drew out to slap on the table: “No way!”

 Cheng Meixin took him by the hand again: “Sister knows that Miss Fan is several years older than you, and a country girl. When father mentioned this marriage, this sister was on your side and opposed it for you, wasn't she?  We also have two sisters, and this family. If you don't marry her, your family will die!”

 Cheng Fengtai exclaimed, "How can I spend my life with that kind of girl! You don't know that! She...she's still got her little feet bound!”  [1] Xiaojiao is Chinese abandoned traditional of bound feet... its nasty and just plain humiliating

 The servant and Fourth Aunt saw the sibling quarrel and took the children away long ago, leaving the sibling duo in the dining room. Cheng Meixin silently shed tears for a while, thinking that if she didn't use some extraordinary means, she might not be able to do so. She unbuttoned her chest to reveal the traces of last night's affair, and wept sadly in her eyes, saying, "You're already a big boy, do you know how this came about? Do you know where, with whom, and what your sister was doing last night? Oh! My dear, if I hadn't made the sacrifice, we'd be on the streets. Now it's your turn, isn't it?”

 There are no more words to speak of the pain and regret in Cheng Fengtai's heart. The following year, he married Miss Fan, who became older Second Mistress Cheng Cheng. The Cheng family had made a comeback and was even richer than during their father's generation.

 Cheng Meixin ate the last orange petal, thinking that if it wasn't for her clever arrangement, these two stupids wouldn't have had the good life they have now. She laughed and said, "Third sister seems to have grown taller again. Why aren't you in school yet?"

 Cheng Fengtai said, "Cha Cha'er didn't get along well there; I hired a teacher to teach her at home. Wait for two years, once she get older and go to school and go straight to middle school."

 The older Second Mistress Cheng puffed out a cigarette and interjected lazily, "What's so great about a foreign school? The little girl kid mingled and fussed around. Even after graduation, the Cheng family can't let the third girl go out to work, so what's the use of studying for her? Might as well save the money."

 Cheng Fengtai very much disagreed with the older Second Mistress Cheng's argument, but it was not convenient to argue with her, saying, "We'll see, if it's fun to read it, then come back if it's not, that's fine."

 Cheng Meixin laughed at the older Second Mistress Cheng, "Second Brother is still spoiling Third Sister like this."

 The older Second Mistress Cheng looked at her husband and smiled.

                                  ~ Winter Begonia ~

             

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 T/N this is a Crappy Translation... You were warned!