Daily Life in the Countryside After Being Reborn-Chapter 290 - 55: In the Palm of the Tathāgata Buddha_4

These matters, Zhuo Feng only knew them approximately. That’s just Feng Xing’s temperament; he keeps things bottled up inside, and as he endures, they eventually pass.

Actually, Feng Xing’s temperament is exactly like his mother’s. This time Old Lady Feng came to Beijing with something weighing on her mind. Because of apple rot, this year’s harvest wasn’t good. Old Lady Feng also missed her son in Beijing terribly. When she argued with Feng Xing’s stepfather over travel expenses to Beijing, she arrived in the city in a huff. With a sour mood already set in, upon seeing Zhuo Feng’s indolence, she naturally lost her temper.

Feng Xing was thinking about these things when a certain section chief at the Social Security Bureau called out: "Feng Xing, come over, print out this account book." Feng Xing studied statistics in college and was assigned to work as a statistician at the Social Security Bureau after graduation. The task of typing and copying should not have fallen to him, in principle.

Feng Xing took over the thick account book, glanced at it a few times; it was the record of this year’s pension fund usage at the Social Security Bureau.

In a secure job, if you want to keep your bowl full, you have to do your own duties. And if it’s not your duty but the leadership orders it, you still have to do it.

"It’s almost the New Year; the accounts need to be sorted out earlier. If we can’t finish today, finish the tasks before going off duty," the Social Security Bureau is considered a laid-back department. Even though it’s a Clean Water government office, there are quite a few idlers inside, including several officials’ distant relatives, all nesting there. They only come to work in the afternoon and drive off before four o’clock. Looking around the bureau, some are manicuring their nails, others are reading newspapers; only Feng Xing is holding a stack of thick photocopy paper, sorting it.

Feng Xing checked the time, just past three o’clock, with over a thousand pages in his hands to print, it would take at least until seven o’clock. Plus with traffic jams, who knows what state his home would be in.

Despite this, Feng Xing still copied page by page, and by the time he had copied about a quarter of them, it was completely dark outside. The stack of paper accidentally fell to the floor, and as Feng Xing squatted down to pick them up, he noticed an entry.

"Section chief, there’s something wrong with this sum of money," Feng Xing pointed at an entry of pension money that had just been paid in this year, a sum which he happened to have handled and organized, so he had a clear memory of it. According to regulations, pension money must be deposited into a special account set up by the state, but in the documents, he was photocopying, the money was not transferred to that well-known special account of the Social Security Bureau workers. Instead, it went into the account of a securities company.

"What’s wrong with that? Storing the money in a special account with no interest, it’s better to use it to play the stock market to get dividends and interest income." The section chief was brewing tea. Disturbed by Feng Xing’s question, he gave him a warning glare.

"The policy stipulates that social security funds cannot enter the stock market; that’s the pension fund. If something goes wrong, it could affect the retirement of nearly ten thousand people." Feng Xing had served many retired elderly people. That generation had worked hard all their life, and in old age, with their children busy at work, unable to provide financial support, the pension became their only source of income.

"You’re just a small clerk, why worry about this? If I ask you to photocopy, just photocopy. I’m telling you, Feng Xing, in a while, the bureau will implement performance evaluations. The last two will have to take a re-examination. If you keep being confused and not flexible, you will be at the bottom of the performance evaluation," said the section chief as he slammed the teacup onto the floor, shattering it, and splashing the dark brown tea liquid onto several pages of paper.

Feng Xing was momentarily speechless, trembling fingers, the photocopy paper with clear black and white text fell to the ground stained with ugly tea marks.

"Reprint the pages that are dirty. Really, you’re so inflexible, just like wood. You’ve been in the bureau for several years now. You do the most work and receive many letters of praise from the people, so why is it that every time during performance evaluations you’re always ranked in the lower middle? Haven’t you thought about why? The reason is in your head. They say you come from the countryside, and you really do come from the countryside. A brain grown from eating clods of earth, useless mud that can’t prop up a wall," the section chief cussed to his heart’s content. There are really people in the bureau who talk nonsense, sticking random labels on him.

Feng Xing bent down to pick up the now damp pages, not avoiding the shards of the broken teacup, letting the sharp fragments scrape bleeding cuts onto his fingers.

The moment he got up, Feng Xing saw three people standing at the office door. An older woman, a younger one, and a child, among them his mother, Zhuo Feng, and Xiao Xian.

Old Lady Feng wore a pair of reading glasses perched on her nose, glasses which Zhuo Feng had just helped her pick out today. With these glasses, Old Lady Feng no longer needed to squint when threading needles or worry about cutting the wrong branches.

But the old lady wished she hadn’t gotten those glasses today, so she wouldn’t have to witness her son’s embarrassment. Her Xingxing, her stubborn son since childhood, who never yielded to anyone while growing up and studying, was being cursed at so badly now, completely indignified.

A surge of hot blood rushed from Feng Xing’s brain to his chest, his heart throbbed with pain, his face turned even redder than a drunkard’s, and the paper in his hand crumpled up.

"Fuck the performance evaluation, I quit," an explosive shout came from the office.

"If you dare to insult my Xingxing, I’ll fight you till the end," the quieter a person is, the more formidable their outburst. As Feng Xing dropped those photocopies, Old Lady Feng had already taken off her shoe, her face flushed red as she, gripping it like a dynamite stick, rushed in front of the section chief and fiercely hit his shiny bald head.

"Oi, my goodness," Xiao Xian mockingly imitated the section chief as the four of them squeezed into the tiny Oto car.

Driving the car, Feng Xing couldn’t help but laugh embarrassingly. He had not expected his mother to smack the section chief with her shoe without any hesitation.

"That’s right, what right does that old baldie have to talk bad about my son? It’s only a bit over two thousand yuan a month. If it doesn’t work out, Xingxing can return with me to Shandong. We could plant a couple hundred fruit trees a year, and that would make more," Old Lady Feng thought. She still considered herself polite; Zhuo Feng had already bought her several bottles of pesticide. If they had been more ruthless, those glass bottles could have blown the section chief’s head open.

Farmers are the least easy to bully, and the only one who can bully farmers is the heavens themselves.

"Mom, I can’t really go back to farming," Feng Xing thought as he left his office. His colleagues from other sections gathered around to watch the spectacle, but upon seeing him, not a single one of them said anything. They avoided him as if afraid to bring trouble upon themselves.

Working in such a place, Feng Xing felt disheartened. Having offended the section chief once, the days ahead would likely be worse. Staying in the unit was pointless, but even if he quit, he couldn’t just walk away in such a humiliating fashion.

"Husband, there’s no need to go back, have you forgotten? We’re the ’property-owning class’ now, we have more than twenty acres of land," Zhuo Feng smiled so wide her mouth almost reached her ears. This year had been particularly comfortable for her.

**

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