Chapter 121 – Extra 3

 

Mini Theater (Part 1): The First Meeting Gift

The year Ming Xi and Liang Jiancheng got their marriage certificate, Professor Liang was not in Haigang, so they could only inform him by phone.

Ming Xi called first, rather than Liang Jiancheng.

After the call ended, the professor sent another message. It was extremely brief—just three words: “Meeting gift,” followed by a string of six digits.

Ming Xi stared at her phone, pondering it repeatedly. For the first time, she was completely baffled. What did those six digits mean? Could it be the amount of a red envelope for her? But that didn’t seem right—there were several 4s in the number, and people in Haigang were particular about such things, avoiding the number “4” in gift money…

Professor Liang had always been very proper with etiquette. He wouldn’t be so careless.

So what on earth did it mean?

Ming Xi showed the message to Liang Jiancheng, who immediately understood.

A week later, Liang Jiancheng took Ming Xi to Old Liang’s house in Haigang. In the wardrobe of his bedroom, using the password from the professor’s message, Liang Jiancheng opened a cube-shaped safe.

With a click, the lock released, and the door slowly swung open. Inside were neatly arranged belongings passed down through generations of the Liang family.

Ming Xi’s eyes widened in shock. Was Liang Jiancheng taking her to rob his own home?

What robbery? It was clearly Old Liang giving his daughter-in-law a gift—just in a self-service format.

“These belongings were originally kept by my mother. After their divorce, she returned everything to Old Liang. He wasn’t comfortable telling you directly, but his intention is for you to take over their safekeeping—and treat it as your meeting gift as his daughter-in-law,” Liang Jiancheng carefully explained his father’s meaning.

Then he took out two intricately carved boxes from the safe and placed them in Ming Xi’s hands.

“…” Ming Xi hadn’t expected to receive her “meeting gift” in such a way.

Half an hour later, the two of them sat casually on the floor, going through the items one by one—there were so many silver dollars, so many ancient coins, and stacks of yellowed land deeds (mostly no longer valid, but valuable as collectibles).

What a wealthy family! Ming Xi couldn’t help but marvel. No wonder the professor owned Western-style apartments—his ancestors had clearly been affluent.

Liang Jiancheng joked, “That’s true. Back in those days, Old Liang didn’t suffer much growing up. The greatest hardship in his life was probably raising me when he was young.” That, perhaps, was what shaped his father’s temperament.

Ming Xi smiled.

Suddenly, a gold-inlaid jade bracelet slipped out from a piece of brocade. The jade was smooth and lustrous, and golden threads formed a peony pattern—judging by the craftsmanship, it was likely from the Republican era.

Liang Jiancheng picked up the bracelet, took Ming Xi’s hand, and slipped it onto her slender wrist. He smiled with satisfaction. “Looks good.”

Ming Xi raised her wrist to look at it. The bracelet felt heavy, resting on her wrist with an air of enduring wealth and elegance.

In the end, despite being generously given the safe’s password, Ming Xi only took one item as her gift.

And although Liang Jiancheng had brought her here to “rob the house,” they still showed restraint.

Most of these belongings held more meaning than material value. As long as Old Liang was still around, it wasn’t their place to take over their safekeeping.

 

Mini Theater (Part Two) – The World Expo

In 2010, the streets were filled with hot pants, floral dresses, and flowing bohemian-style skirts.

Ming Xi rarely wore such long dresses—mainly because they were inconvenient. But there was one photo: taken at the World Expo, where she and Liang Jiancheng held Little Ming Lang in their arms in front of the China Pavilion.

In that photo, Ming Xi wore a casual, free-spirited long dress—a rare sight—while Liang Jiancheng was dressed in a clean, relaxed outfit of a crew-neck shirt and jeans.

Dressed like that, both of them shed their usual seriousness, appearing more easygoing and approachable.

In their arms, Little Ming Lang stared at the camera with wide, round eyes—his expression cautious and slightly confused—his chubby little hand tightly clutching Liang Jiancheng’s clothes.

At that World Expo, Mingzhou’s flagship products were also among the exhibits. At first glance, the photo looked like nothing more than a simple snapshot of a young couple traveling with their child. But it carried a deeper significance as well.

That day had originally been a sunny Saturday. According to their plan, Ming Xi and Liang Jiancheng were supposed to take Little Ming Lang to the zoo. However, due to a last-minute need to negotiate key issues regarding two exhibitions, their schedule had to be changed, and the family of three ended up going to the China Pavilion instead.

When Ming Xi and Liang Jiancheng—dressed in casual clothes and looking like relaxed, first-time parents—appeared at the exhibition site, it truly caught their employees’ attention.

Especially Xinyu—when she saw this warm scene, she quickly picked up her camera and pressed the shutter, capturing this heartwarming photo of the family.

Behind them, the China Pavilion stood grand and majestic, its vermilion dougong structure striking and unique—its sense of grandeur blending perfectly into the beauty of family life.

 

Mini Theater (Part 3): Two Queens, One King, and One Prince

A few years later, Liang Jiancheng had a daughter under his knee, named Liang Sirui.

She was a very clever little girl, observant and fond of asking questions. At just three years old, she could already ask something like: “Why does my brother have the surname Ming, but I have Liang? Is my brother someone else’s child?”

Liang Jiancheng didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. After a pause, he deliberately tested her: “If your brother was born to someone called Uncle Liang, then who exactly gave birth to your brother?”

“…Dad!” Little Sirui answered correctly.

“Smart.” Liang Jiancheng curved his lips slightly, quite satisfied with both children’s intelligence—though their ways of thinking were completely different.

Three-year-old Sirui had developed a rudimentary understanding of the fairy tale world after listening to many fairy tales told by her early childhood education teacher. For example, one day she seriously summed up their family members and told her father, “We have two kings and two queens in our family.”

Sometimes even Liang Jiancheng couldn’t keep up with his child’s thinking. Patiently, he asked, “Which two kings? Which two queens?”

Little Sirui: “Mom and I are queens, and Dad and big brother are kings.”

“Oh!” Liang Jiancheng smiled. He had originally thought Ming Xi and Gu Shuangyang would be the “queens.”

Then, in front of Ming Xi and his son, his smile softened even more as he corrected his daughter: “Dad isn’t a king. Dad is a prince—your mom’s prince.”

Ming Xi was in the middle of eating a whole wheat sandwich. Caught off guard, the bacon inside nearly slipped out.

Meanwhile, Ming Lang—who was already becoming a young teenager—was utterly stunned. Then he coolly shook his head: “…An old prince!”

Looks like in the future, this family might have to rely on him after all.

 

Translator’s note:

It’s finish!!! It’s my first (slightly) modern novel that I translated. Even though I was quite young at that time, the background era of this story feels particularly nostalgic to me. Anyway, I don’t know what my next translation will be, I kind of want to choose something that has been abandoned and finish it off, but haven’t even start looking yet. If you have any suggestion of Chinese novel that has been dropped by the previous translator and want me to continue it, please drop it in the comment.

See ya in my next translation project, hopefully…

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