Chapter 50: Three Suitable Candidates

Chen Zhao told Jiang Yuan, "My parents want to live on their own. When they eventually become frail and unable to move about, we brothers will take turns tending to them."

Jiang Yuan, along with Xie Wangniang and Hao Yu who were listening in, all agreed that Chen Zhao's parents were rare and sensible people.

Not only had they made the resolute decision to divide the household property the moment any latent signs of sibling rivalry reared their heads, but they also refrained from following the example of the vast majority of elderly villagers who chose to live with their eldest son's family after the division.

Residing in the same village—especially given that Jiang Yuan was Chen Zhao's brother-in-law—they had a fair idea of the personalities and character of Chen Zhao's eldest brother and sister-in-law.

Chen Zhao's eldest brother took very much after Elder Chen; he was taciturn, habitually keeping his head down and simply throwing himself into hard work.

His wife, on the other hand, wore a perpetual smile for everyone, excelling at superficial pleasantries while secretly shirking work, constantly looking for ways to be lazy or dragging her feet.

If she only acted this way in front of her sisters-in-law, it might have been tolerable, but the problem was she behaved identically toward her own children.

Any chore she could pass off to someone else, she would never perform herself; if a task was utterly inescapable, she would drag it out and do it perfunctorily.

Take weeding, for example: she would take three full days to complete a task that Wang Xiaozhi could finish in a single day.

With such a daughter-in-law, Old Madam Chen hardly dared to hope that once she herself grew too frail to work, the woman would cast off her lazy habits and wholeheartedly care for her.

As for Elder Chen, he had considered matters far more deeply.

First, he had no desire for himself and his elderly wife to be forced into serving as replacement laborers for their eldest daughter-in-law in their old age, thereby providing her with further opportunities to indulge in laziness and dawdling.

Second, several of his sons had young children who were still of an age requiring supervision. If he and his wife were to live with the eldest son's family, it would become highly inconvenient for them to help look after the children of their other sons in the future.

Elder Chen's primary aim in dividing the property among his sons was to minimize domestic friction, not to wash his hands of them entirely. Therefore, wherever he could still lend a hand, he remained willing to assist his sons.

Since they would receive their own share of farmland during the property division anyway, living independently meant they would not only avoid needing money and grain from their sons for support, but might even occasionally supplement their grandchildren's rations.

Naturally, the eldest Chen couple was far from pleased with this decision.

Chen Zhao's eldest brother worried about being pointed at behind his back for unfilial conduct—that as the eldest son, he failed to provide for his parents' old age.

Chen Zhao's sister-in-law, meanwhile, could not accept that she would henceforth be forced to shoulder half of the household chores. From then on, whether working in the fields or staying at home, any cunning slacking off on her part would directly impact her own family's food and clothing.

The two of them repeatedly tried to persuade the elderly couple to change their minds, but Elder Chen remained steadfast in his resolve to separate and live independently with his wife.

The vast majority of the villagers were already aware of this development. As members of the Chen household, Chen Zhao and Wang Xiaozhi were naturally even better informed about the family's imminent division after the new year.

Aside from the expenses Hao Yu mentioned regarding future schooling costs for the children, Chen Zhao and his wife had another urgent financial need: purchasing a homestead and building a house after the property division.

With so many brothers in the family, the actual share of silver, grain, houses, and land each would receive from the division was quite modest.

If they wished to avoid continuing to live crammed together with their parents and brothers after the separation, they had to figure out a way to raise funds for a homestead and a new dwelling.

Neither Chen Zhao nor Wang Xiaozhi wished to endure the awkwardness of having a crowd of eyes eagerly watching every bite of food that crossed their table, so they planned to approach the village head to buy a homestead immediately following the division.

Even if the money allotted to them was only sufficient to purchase a small plot and construct the most basic mud-brick house, they refused to remain in the old family estate alongside Chen Zhao's brothers once the household split.

Sharing a tacit understanding, the couple exchanged a glance before Wang Xiaozhi, with a sheepish expression, accepted the hardship money from Hao Yu and Jiang Yuan.

She carefully stowed away the silver coins, opened the thin little booklet she and Chen Zhao had used to record suitable candidates, and pushed it across the table toward Jiang Yuan and Hao Yu.

"We managed to find out about eleven unmarried women over the age of twenty in total."

"The first two are from our own Baihe Town, the middle five are from Tang County seat, and of the last four, one is from Zhenjiiazhuang downstream, two are from neighboring Lingshan Town, and the remaining one belongs to that wealthy landlord family in Dongyang Village..."

After briefly introducing the eleven eligible young women listed in the booklet, Wang Xiaozhi proceeded to detail the basic circumstances they had gathered regarding each of them.

According to her, the first candidate on page one, Miss Yang, had the advantages of being industrious, capable, and sharp-tempered, coming from a harmonious family environment; her drawback, however, was extreme poverty coupled with a lack of strong, able-bodied laborers in the household.

The reason this young woman's marriage had been delayed was that her parents had passed away early, leaving her to earn a living to support her elderly grandmother, two younger brothers, and a younger sister.

The second candidate on page two, Miss Wang, boasted an affluent family background, both parents living, and a delicate, charming appearance; unfortunately, her family's reputation was truly abyssal.

According to the Wang family's neighbors, they were not only in the habit of short-changing customers and passing off inferior goods as quality items in their business dealings, but they also fully displayed their mercenary nature in daily life.

They would petty-thieve under the guise of "borrowing," focus solely on the size of a prospective daughter-in-law's dowry when seeking a match for their son, and demand a betrothal gift of sixty liang of silver without hesitation when marrying off a daughter.

Fearing their information might be mistaken, Wang Xiaozhi and Chen Zhao had deliberately consulted several more town residents living nearby about the Wang family grocery store, only to find that everyone utterly despised the establishment.

Some vented about the Wang family's venality, while others enthusiastically recommended an alternative grocery store in town.

Among the next five young women residing in Tang County seat, two had already moved into a convent, reportedly selecting an auspicious day to shave their heads and become nuns.

As for another two, while their elders had intentions of arranging matches for them, their primary prerequisite for a suitor was that the man must hold the degree of a Xiucai scholar.

Sharing an identical situation was the stepdaughter of the wealthy landlord in Dongyang Village; her biological mother was likewise fixated on selecting a scholar with either Xiucai or Tongsheng credentials.

The final eligible candidate living in the county seat had harbored such deep affection for her deceased fiancé—who was also her cousin—that she harbored no intention of ever discussing marriage or wedding anyone for the rest of her life.

Of the two young women from neighboring Lingshan Town, one had a sweetheart who, prior to their wedding, had gone missing during a business trip to acquire goods.

Unable to locate him, his parents had erected a cenotaph in his honor after weeping bitterly, and the two families had officially called off the engagement.

Only the young woman herself stubbornly refused to believe her fiancé was dead, subsequently sabotaging two separate matches her parents tried to arrange for her.

Naturally, Wang Xiaozhi had excluded such a woman—one whose heart belonged elsewhere—from the list of prospective candidates.

Thus, after conducting thorough investigations among the eleven women in her booklet, only three remained whom she deemed suitable for Hao Yu's criteria and likely to successfully form a match.