Winter Begonia, Chapter 6: The Men in Huang Family's card game

Winter Begonia 《鬓边不是海棠红》Bin Bian Bu Shi Hai Tang Hong
Winter Begonia, Chapter 6: The Men in Huang Family's card game

A few days later, in a card game, rich idlers who ate, drank and had fun gathered together. Cheng Fengtai told Fan Lian about what happened at the Huibin Pavilion, along with the Second Mistress's rebuke, and heard Fan Lian clapping his hands, "My sister is so cool! I always wanted to scold you when I see you messing around, but I don't dare. It's still my sister who did it!"


Cheng Fengtai smiled, "Don't you dare curse me one! I'm grateful to your sister, and thankful Dade has no temper, what a thing you are!"

Fa Lian said back, "You can't say that. When I think about the time I gave my sister a dowry - ooh! It's not a dowry, it's a separation of families’ coffers! Taking away so much gold, silver and antiques, and leaving me with an empty shell that won't move. Did I say anything, brother? That's all the affection I've got for you, brother-in-law! You'll have to allow me this small reprieve."

Cheng Fengtai slapped him hard on the back: ''You are looked after by a little mistress, what can you say? No one paid any attention to you even if you said it."

Fa Lian slapped him back, "I'm the only one here with a young wife? You've got a nerve to say that to me!"

The owner's house on this day is also a Chinese style house, which is in a former forehead house. All the royal residences of the former Qing Dynasty are now bought by the newly rich merchants. The two of them were teasing each other, and after turning two corridors, Cheng Fengtai caught a glimpse of a young man in a white coat sitting in the flower hall across the pond.

Cheng Fengtai said with bewildered eyes, "Whose family is this reading boy from? How... he looks like a little showman."

Fa Lian pushed his glasses and looked at him with joy: "You're not just a little showman! Brother-in-law! Or can I lend you my glasses? You've just been talking about people for half a day and you don't recognize them now?"

Cheng Fengtai was still full of confusion as Fan Lian patted him on the shoulder, "This is Shang Xirui ah!"

Cheng Fengtai furrowed his brow and looked carefully, shaking his head, ''It's him? Not like, not at all."

"Where isn't he alike?"

"I looked at him that day, and he looked like a woman in every move, and that divine aura in his eyes - alive and well - was Noble Consort Yang. But today he turned out to be a little schoolboy."

Fa Lian nodded, "It is so. That's what a play is."

Cheng Fengtai stood in the corridor and looked at Shang Xirui twice more closely.

After dinner, the owner's house proposed a card game, three connected parlors played big drums and the people played mahjong and bridge, and in the garden there was a dance floor with all kinds of entertainment and the entire place was lively. Cheng Fengtai played two bridge decks and was caught by Fan Lian and forced into playing mahjong. Shang Xirui, on the other hand, always sat with his master in the calm room and listened to the big drum song, while listening to the beat and humming along with it, he liked all kinds of plays, and would do some of them.

The owner, Master Huang, is an old man in his sixties, living in a former Qing Dynasty mansion full of Western furniture, eating Western food in a pair of western coats, which is very similar to Cheng Fengtai. Master Huang was already old, his old eyes were faint, but his face had lost none of its lusters.

Master Huang patted the back of Shang Xirui's hand and smiled, "Then, Boss Shang would sing us a song number too?"

Shang Xirui said, "Different trade, words apart. I'm so desolate and uncultivated in singing songs. How can I perform it?"

The girl who sang the big drum book tilted her head slightly and gazed at them to hear them speak. Master Huang grabbed Shang Xirui's hand and shook it, smiling, ''You don't know him? This is Shang Xirui, Boss Shang."

The girl was full of amazement and looked at Shang Xirui again, her eyes were wide open: ''How could I not know! I'm still a fan of Boss Shang's drama!" One stomped his foot and she complained, "Oops! Master Huang, you called me here today to fool me! It makes me look bad in front of Jiaoer!"

Everyone laughed. Shang Xirui also laughed and drew his hand out from Master Huang to greet the girl, “I don't dare to be so daring. It's the same as the saying, "Separate lines are like separate mountains. The girl is on that side of the hill, also the best in singing."




Shang Xirui only knows how to act Opera by himself and does not often attend such noisy parties where he will be asked to play an opera in order to preserve his voice. In the end, he can't be considered a man of honor. So several people in the audience knew Shang Xirui by name but not by face, and when they saw his true face today, they were not willing to let him go. Shang Xirui really didn't want to sing, the weather had turned cooler these two days, and he had an old disease and his voice wasn't very sharp. But it's impossible to push him away, and he's just an entertainer, and it's his job to put on a show that will satisfy the crowds.

Shang Xirui stood up slowly and said, "What do you all want to hear? How's about the Peach Blossom Fan?"

There's nothing bad down there. Shang Xirui then began to sing. His voice broke through the house like a silver bottle, and the sound of dancing in the garden was covered by the sound of his opera drama. On this late autumn night, the moon is in the sky and the stars are falling, and with a clear voice that goes straight up to the sky, there is really a feeling of freshness and clarity. A round dance serenade, compared to Shang Xirui, is instantly reduced to the sound of chaos, unpleasant to the ear. Only Shang Xirui's icy voice is worthy of the moon's clear breeze, and it is a song of the changes in the Guanghan Palace.

The sounds of chatter in the card room all gradually lightened, and people were sticking their ears to Shang Xirui's singing. The voice was so clear that the smoke of the full room seemed to be washed away by it. Cheng Fengtai, holding a cigarette roll, was listening too. Listening to Shang Xirui's performance this time, he felt a subtle sense of having met someone from his hometown, which was very intimate.

When the singing was over, the dancing lords and lasses ran in. The head maiden looked deeply at Shang Xirui, then pounced on Master Huang and hooked his neck, saying, "Papa Papa, lend us this opera singer for a while, just for a while."

Master Huang patted her, "Call him Boss Shang!"

"Good, good, boss Shang boss. I've taken the boss away and will pay you back later!" said and gave her dad a kiss on the cheek.

The teenage boys and girls pushed Shang Xirui out the door without a second thought. Master Huang stroked his cheeks, which had been patted by his daughter, and said to the people around him, "That's strange, these young people, when did they ever know how to listen to an opera play!"

People smiled and Chang Fengtai said, "I don't listen to opera plays because I don't see any good ones. Who wouldn't love to see a good one, one like Boss Shang, can it be compared with a standard look and a fine performance?" The words inexplicably had an ambiguous meaning in everyone's ears. Master Huang thought with great approval and smiled as he narrowed his eyes with his beard.

Cheng Fengtai watched Shang Xirui was swept out of the hall by them, thin and a dash of moon white figure, the frosted new willow man was generally handsome, Young Miss Huang stuck to his side a dozen than necessary, immediately appeared with her thin waist round breast, breathing brutal, like a stupid big sister. When they passed through the mahjong room, Young Miss Huang saw Cheng Fengtai and ran to put her arms around his neck and said, "Second Brother Cheng, come out and dance with me later."

Cheng Fengtai was pounced on by her and leaned forward, the cigarette in her mouth nearly scalding the back of her hand as she busy sucked two puffs and extinguished the fire: "No way!"

Young Miss Huang said, "Why, why, why! You dance so well!"

Cheng Fengtai pinched her face and smiled, ''That's right! What's the point of dancing when I'm already so good at it? I'm going to practice my card skills now!"

The next person smiled, "Miss, don't pester the Second Master, he didn't bring his sister out tonight, without this lucky star, he lost from the opening game until now, all that he lost is there on the table, he would not want to leave the card table."

Young Miss Huang ants her chin: "Then, Fan Lian, you come out!"

Fa Lian sat opposite Cheng Fengtai again today, staring at the cards with incomparable concentration, and it seemed that he was the one with the red eyes: "I'm not going either!"

Young Miss Huang Willow raised an eyebrow: ''Hey! You!"

The others smiled, "Brother Lin is in great shape today. It looks like he's going to make his brother-in-law lose his pants! He wouldn't want to be further from the card table! Miss, go play outside, it's so smoky in here, don't choke yourself."

Young Miss Huang glared at Fan Lian, let go of Cheng Fengtai, and went out to play. A moment later, Shang Xirui's icy voice lit up again, not knowing what it was singing as if it was Yu Tangchun.

Cheng Fengtai lit a cigarette and squinted at Fan Lian: ''Why don't you go out and play? Afraid Young Miss Huang will look at you?"




Fa Lian glared at him, ''What are you talking about in a human house! I don't go out and play because I want to win back what I've lost in the past hours. How about you, holding your ground so badly, you really want to be pantless today?"

Cheng Fengtai said, "Me? I don't like being with little kids."

Hearing this, Aunt Huang's at the table next to her turned her head and said, "That's not right, our young miss is only seventeen years old. What is Master Cheng? Twenty-two or twenty-three? You are only a few years short of selling out to the older generation."

Cheng Fengtai sighed, "Not to mention the age. I always felt I was getting old and enough to be called Young Miss Huang’s father." The phrase is clearly cannibalistic. Aunt Huang's backhand slapped him twice and she smiled: "You’d almost be like her father, it's beautiful."

Fa Lian followed him and sighed, "I always like to hang out with you, so I feel old too."

The two men let out another relative sigh.

Cheng Fengtai's young family master has been through the cold and hard times, and afterward, he has been supporting himself in the business world, and his heart has surged for countless years. As the son of an old-fashioned family, Fan Lian has grown up with the wit to discern things and is quite resourceful and skilled in both issues of the heart and personality. Although they are only in their early twenties, they managed to get mixed in a group of middle-aged people to socialize, they are also as smart and slippery as fishes, no one dares to underestimate them.

The party went on until a quarter past ten when Shang Xirui took a break to sing while in the garden. Cheng Fengtai had lost over three thousand dollars in the house, his butt was sitting up and his brain was a little up. He drank the remaining tea in the cup, extinguished the cigarette butt, and beckoned to an inner nephew of the Huang Family: "Come! Great nephew comes take my place in two pairs, and I'll go and relieve my innermost anxiety."

Aunt Huang’s wife wanted to hit him again: "What great-nephew? He's three years older than you! That's very kind of you to call him great nephew!"

Fa Lian was so eager to slap the table and shout, "Brother-in-law, don't go! You're in a losing streak lose!"

Cheng Fengtai grabbed two chips and smashed them over his head.

Outside, the garden was hung with festooned lights, the girls and boys stopped dancing and the group gathered in a circle to watch Shang Xirui sing. Cheng Fengtai glanced up at them and found that their eyes, drunken, were clearly looking at people a bit more than drama. Shang Xirui's lunar white lapel was spotted by someone, holding a branch of bright red early plum, a bit of red in the snow, like a well-colored brooch, very chic and striking. He was more tired now than singing in an opera garden because there was no stage for him to take a break.

"Young Miss Huang, really can't sing."

Young Miss Huang said, "Let's dance then!" After saying that, he reached out to Shang Xirui and actually wanted to dance with him.

Shang Xirui froze and didn't go to accept Young Miss Huang’s invitation, he would rather sing than dance: "Then...I'll sing one more fold for everyone."

Cheng Fengtai looked amused, this group of student girls looked at the new style, the most shameless, Shang Xirui was about to be embarrassed by them alive. So he decided to do the good deed of sacrificing his life to save the country pride again, separated the crowd, and smiled, "Master Huang waits for him to come back, you are still holding him back? Disperse and if you want him to perform then go to the theatre later." In order to avoid getting into a war of words with Young Miss Huang, he went up and grabbed Shang Xirui and left. Young Miss Huang fished out two small operas with anxious hands but failed to catch them, so she stomped her feet.

Shang Xirui's wrist was in Cheng Fengtai's hand, only a little thin and slightly chilled, like meat made of jade. The expression on his face is also cool and moist, sometimes absent-minded, slow in speech, without the slightest trace of the charm of rumors, which is simply more bookish than Fan Lian’s Sheng Ziyun, a serious college student.

Cheng Fengtai led him across the garden and across the small bridge to a secluded part of the pond and smiled, "Boss Shang really went along with them, singing for over an hour, I was so tired of you listening."

Shang Xirui smiled and said something, but he couldn't get up once his throat to work and choked with a frown. Cheng Fengtai waved his hand, "Hey! Don't talk. I also escaped from. We'll just stay in silence for a while." A passing maid was summoned on one side and smiled faintly, "Please, miss, bring us a hot cup of tea." Soon the maid brought hot tea, and Cheng Fengtai took it and handed it to Shang Xirui. Shang Xirui never ate tea and snacks from outside, fearing that someone would give him something that may hurt his voice. Being in the vanity profession, one has to be careful. However, with this cup of tea brought to him by Cheng Fengtai today, he felt at ease for no reason, sitting on a stone bench and sipping it slowly, his throat was much more relaxed. Cheng Fengtai picked up a handful of rocks and stood on the edge of the pond playing with water floats, the reflection of the moon condensing into a glowing jade disk on the surface of the water, broken by him as a target. The two men really do not speak quietly, and in the distance is the sound of noisy amusement, they are here with the lotus pond breeze, cool and quiet, but instead, have a dream-like feeling. Shang Xirui looked at Cheng Fengtai's silhouette in the moonlight and thought to herself that this brother of Cheng Meixin was nothing like Cheng Meixin. Such straightforwardness, coolness, thoughtfulness, and a chivalrous heart are also better looking than Cheng Meixin... really good.





Cheng Fengtai suddenly bumped eyes with him as he turned around, smiling and palmed the stone in his hand.

They were silent for a moment, and immediately someone came to them, who slapped his hands as he walked and smiled loudly: "Ah! Master Cheng is hiding here! Your brother-in-law has been shouting for people to take you back there!"

Cheng Fengtai raised an eyebrow at Shang Xirui and smiled bitterly, "I have to go back, I have to get my pants right now. How about you?"

Shang Xirui said, ''I'll go in with you. I've pushed Master Huang several times, I'll be sure to accompany you to the end today."

Cheng Fengtai smiled, "Then you will sit beside me and I will make sure no one dares to pull you again."

Shang Xirui nodded.








~ Winter Begonia ~





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T/N My translation is subpar... I tried my best