Chapter 224: The Hapless Big Sister 39
Zhong Guoqiang, who was lazy and fond of eating, only worked at the shoe factory for three days before complaining that the job of a porter was too exhausting and refused to do it.
After that, Ma Xiaolan helped him find several other jobs.
With his low educational qualifications and laziness, Zhong Guoqiang was unwilling to do tiring work and couldn’t handle easy jobs, leading him to change jobs multiple times a year, and in his twenties, he had achieved nothing.
By his twenties, other boys his age had wives, some who married early were already fathers, enjoying success in both career and family, but Zhong Guoqiang was still single.
For his marriage prospects, Ma Xiaolan was so anxious that she had blisters on her lips every day, yet there was nothing she could do.
The girl she fancied disliked Zhong Guoqiang for being lazy and greedy, and his family was poor, with five people squeezed into a thirty-square-meter one-bedroom apartment.
After marriage, there wouldn’t even be a place to live.
No one was willing to marry into the Zhong Family.
While Zhong Guoqiang’s marriage hadn’t been settled, Zhong Guohao ran into trouble again.
Zhong Guohao’s situation was even worse than Zhong Guoqiang’s.
In this life, Zhong Guoqiang only repeated his third year of junior high school once before dropping out and entering society.
Zhong Guohao was like Zhong Guoqiang in his previous life, repeating the third year of junior high for three years without gaining admission to high school, and then he dropped out and stayed home doing nothing.
Zhong Guoqiang could still work in a factory and earn some wages, but Zhong Guohao wouldn’t work a single day, claiming that factory wages were low, the work exhausting, and uninteresting, as he daydreamed at home about finding a factory role that paid more.
Zhong Damin, seeing him lazy and idle at home, lost his temper and hit him a few times, but it’s unclear if it stirred Zhong Guohao’s rebelliousness, as he started going out daily, occasionally bringing home some money.
However, he wasn’t working; rather, he mingled with a group of delinquents, following them in petty thefts or extorting pocket money from students.
One time, Zhong Guohao was caught stealing money from a woman’s purse on a bus, and he was captured by a group of passengers.
Ma Xiaolan cried until she fainted several times.
This incident also affected Zhong Damin’s work.
Due to poor parenting, tarnishing the steel plant’s reputation, the leadership called Zhong Damin over for a severe reprimand and canceled his qualification for a level increase.
Workers at the steel plant gained level increases based on seniority, one level every three years, and it happened that Zhong Damin was due for an increase this year but lost it due to Zhong Guohao’s sentence and endured harsh criticism, making him return home and hit Ma Xiaolan hard.
Since the family had no money and lived in tension, Zhong Damin had formed a habit of hitting his wife.
When upset outside, he would return home to hit his wife, which quelled his anger, and ever since Zhong Family’s mistreatment of Yuan Chun was exposed, Zhong Damin faced much ridicule and ostracism from colleagues, resulting in Ma Xiaolan enduring frequent beatings.
With Zhong Guohao’s sentence, it became even harder for Zhong Guoqiang to find a marriage partner.
Sixteen-year-old Zhong Yuanfen, performed slightly better than her brothers, and just managed to get into a vocational teacher school, enrolling in the same major Yuan Chun once studied.
However, she was unlucky this year, encountering a national policy reform.
The biggest change was the cancellation of urban household commodity grain distribution, meaning city residents would directly buy grain from markets without ration coupons, at prices higher than commodity grain.
The second change was the cancellation of subsidies for higher vocational students by the state, from this year onward, higher vocational students needed to pay tuition and cover their living expenses.