Chapter 4

  Chen Huaisheng went to the "flower" bird market.

  Nothing else, just acne on my face!

  Pimples! It's been years since I last saw them. Suddenly, she felt a sense of youth, vitality, and endless trouble.

  She has no money now, and even if she had money, there's nowhere to buy what she needs.

  After thinking for half a day, only fresh aloe can solve the problem. Who let most people not hear about aloe gel?

  She checked the sturdiness of the bike basket, then entered the market, ran for more than half an hour and also ate two vegetable buns as lunch. Finally, she found a stall. When asked about the price, she was delighted: This is even cheaper than the change from buying acne cream!

  Carefully holding two pots of aloe, hastily walking back to the parking place - still have to be careful about the bike being stolen, although the price of this bike is only one-twentieth of the high-end road bike I once bought, it's worth four or five months' pocket money for me now.

  Poverty-stricken

  She felt this deeply once again.

  Back home, and then carrying the potted plants upstairs, which is also a physically demanding task.

  Then it's ruined!

  Cut off a thick green leafy piece of 'fat', cut off a small segment with a knife, and then somewhat wastefully remove the outer skin.

  Um, sauce? Directly paste it?

  Chen Huaicheng hesitated for a moment, cut off a thin slice and directly applied it to the red pimple on the side of his nose. Then he put the rest in a bowl and used the handle of a spoon to press and knock, and a lot of colorless juice came out.

  This method is very wasteful, but she forgot to buy some simple tools and could only use it as a makeshift acne water. However, the aloe vera pulp that was squeezed out of the juice she didn't dare to throw away, directly put it into green tea water and ate it!

  After drinking more than half a cup of aloe vera green tea, she began to carefully observe the pimple and skin pores in front of the mirror. Still not particularly ideal - after all, there are few people who have truly perfect skin these days, the vast majority of people, especially young women, almost everyone has some big or small skin problems.

  Facing the mirror, Chen Haosong suddenly thought seriously: should he go study fine chemicals?

  However, before considering whether to choose English language and literature or fine chemicals as her major, she had to ensure that she passed the high school exam and reached the admission score line.

  Study and take exams.

  Even if you've been through it once, starting from scratch again is still a very hard thing!

  Read a book!

  Even if you pass the pre-exam, the high school entrance exam is still required, and the results of the high school entrance exam will directly determine the class division in high school.

  Besides, she doesn't even know if she can get into the international class now.

  After her parents came back, they completely indulged her behavior of buying two pots of aloe vera. This morning, they generously gave her 30 yuan, letting her go out to eat something good after finishing the exam in the morning and play for half a day.

  Chen Haotian had no idea what he could play with at this point.

  Although there is no mountain-like pressure, at the same time, there is no internet, no high-definition, no literary tea house, no customized tourism, and no fitness club... The most deadly thing is that there is no money and central air conditioning! People in a consumer society suddenly returned to the early days of industrial society... That's really not something that can be described as "boring"!

  It can only be read now, this thing doesn't 'waste' money, can kill time and also ensure that you can hold on until buying a subway apartment with a gym and food street downstairs...

  Chen Haotian sighed and began to study the composition of breaking questions and the structure of eight stocks. In this pre-exam, she found that the test questions in Yizhong were obviously based on the requirements of the college entrance examination and TOEFL, and she should have done well, but for the middle school exam, she had to return to the original track of a junior high school student. That is to say, the starting points of the two exams are different, so doing well in one does not mean that you will do well in the other.

  A week later, Dad came home early with great excitement.

  "Niang niang! You got into the international class! You did very well!"

  "Uh, Dad, I still have the high school entrance exam. I want to start and end well, so that no one can say anything." But in fact, her grades are always among the top, although sometimes she may be weak in some subjects, but her overall score is always among the top three or four, plus the mock exams and two simulation tests were all first in class, even if she fails the high school entrance exam, no one will say that she took a "detour".

  After grandma came back, she heard the news from dad and was immediately overjoyed. Without saying a word, she gave her half a year's worth of pocket money. "Good girl, go buy several pairs of good shoes and some nice clothes."

  "I'm still growing, I don't need good clothes. Shoes will be worn out in half a year anyway, no need for them to be too good." She actually didn't want to buy the "good clothes" her mom mentioned, she has always liked original designer works or branded ready-to-wear, both of which are not within their family's current budget.

  "Our little one is really understanding. But don't worry, Mom got a raise."

  "Mom, can you help me save for university tuition? In the future, there won't be any government subsidies, and the tuition will be several thousand yuan per year."

  "Alright, don't worry! Three years is enough for your family to save 10,000 to 20,000 yuan, which will definitely be enough for you to study."

  "...... Uh, how much did I spend on that master's and doctoral degree back then? Was it 100,000 or 120,000? That wasn't even expensive!"

  Mom... now mom and dad, strong, healthy, working hard. Okay, they both need to go to work six days a week, Sunday at home is used for household chores, shopping, cooking... living very tired. Oh, they can at least get off work on time, but their own parents never got to see the sun, getting off work on time was a rare thing, but of course their living conditions were much better, such as multi-mode intelligent washing disinfecting drying machine, just throw it in and don't need to worry about anything, unless you choose the wrong mode and wash your clothes badly.

  ...see you later, mom wiped the sweat off her head and was about to stir-fry a couple more dishes when she thought for a moment, Chen Huai-cheng ran to the refrigerator, took out shredded meat, and then scooped up the eggplant that mom had chopped with a rolling knife.

  "Mom, I'll make a dish. When I went to the bookstore, I saw a cookbook and learned a few things, don't know if it's good or not." She casually cut the large eggplant into smaller pieces again. In the 'meat' mixture, add Shaoxing wine, cornstarch, egg whites, salt, scallions, ginger... um, no black pepper or thyme, so she pinched a small amount of white sugar with her fingers to process the 'meat' mixture. Divide and stir-fry in oil, add soy sauce. Unfortunately, the 'meat' mixture wasn't marinated in cooking wine for six hours in the fridge, but overall it's okay. The egg yolks and remaining egg whites won't go to waste, make a tomato and purple cabbage egg soup, and then chill and mix with fermented tofu... oh, cutting out extremely fine ginger shreds isn't something that can be mastered overnight!

  This simple dinner actually moved Mom and Dad to tears.

  "Niang niang, you should learn to cook, it's better to learn during the summer vacation." Dad ate half of the 'meat' eggplant by himself. Chen Xiao actually made a full big plate thinking of eating it tomorrow. "Or go to KFC and eat a few meals, kids all like that."

  "Dad, I don't want to eat KFC because it causes pimples." Just kidding, the current KFC is not improved and only has palm oil fried chicken and fries, she dare not eat it! It's also not delicious! However, she can try the mixed vegetable salad, of course, the high-calorie, high-cholesterol, and high-trans-fat dressing should be replaced with a flavored yogurt... Hmm, are there any large-grained yogurt now?

  After dinner, Mom kicked Dad to wash dishes.

  Chen Huiyang ate a bit more rice for dinner, so he took off his slippers and washed the floor, then continued to read the youth literature and physics volume.

  The middle school entrance examination has passed quite quietly like this.

  Then Chen Huaisheng took his student ID and ran to the city library, where he enjoyed the ceiling fan, hot water, flushing toilet, and a dollar's worth of green vegetable noodles in an alley with old people and university students. It felt like going back to college entrance exams. The only difference is that now there are notes on everything, Japanese songs, English song lyrics, but most of all are Song Dynasty poems and sharp current events comments. After three years of writing practice, his Chinese characters indeed look much better.

  Two weeks later, the admission notice arrived, and the graduation certificate was also issued.