1
On the afternoon of November 30, 2019, I received a weibo from Li Xiuling: “Didn’t pass, 2 points short.” A few short words, seemingly very calm, but it is difficult to hide the loss.
I also feel sorry for her: “How can it be so inch? Where can’t you get these 2 points more?”
“Bad luck.” Through the screen, I could hear her sigh.
This is her third time to take the judicial examination. 2016, she took the test for the first time, short of 9 points; the next year, another test, short of 35 points. 2018, the judicial examination reform, changed to “unified national legal professional qualification examination”, Li Xiuling, for some reason did not participate, when ready to fight again next year, found that the rules of the examination changed: from the original The first objective test is passed before you are eligible to take the subjective test one month later.
“This is also considered to increase the difficulty of the previous test at the same time, the two can still average a little, even if the objective score is slightly lower, the two subjects combined will be able to pass the test. After the rules were changed, you have to pass both exams to pass the line.” She described it to me then.
For this reason, in May 2019, she resigned from her administrative post at our small food factory and focused on studying at home for the two exams in October and November.
In October, the results of the objective exam came out and she exceeded the score by 17 points and was overjoyed: “‘The judicial exam’ is known as the most difficult exam ah.” She hopes to pass the subjective exams later, so that she can get the qualification, and then go to the law firm internship, as a lawyer, “lawyer decent, income is also very high, so you do not have to work at the bottom.
But her hopes were dashed once again when she was afraid of what would come.
“In my life, except for the ‘treasury’ exam, everything else has been rather bumpy.” She said in another message.
I could only helplessly comfort: “Life is not as good as it often is. This is no loss, but also learn more knowledge.”
I thought, “If I had known this, I might as well not have quit my job. She is also more than 40 years old, her son is in college, her husband has long been laid off from work, now the exam did not pass as expected, and then it is not easy to find a suitable job, I really worry for her.
2
Li Xiuling said that the “treasury” examination was in the summer of 2001. At that time, she and I passed the exam from the feed factory station and grain station under the grain bureau to a newly established national grain reserve (still under the local grain bureau).
At that time, the units of the grain system had been in the doldrums, in addition to the Grain Bureau office is a career, the rest of the town grain stations, oil mills, flour mills, feed mills, etc. belong to the enterprise, need to be self-sustaining. I heard that the newly established “State Treasury” is fully funded by the Treasury, many people want to get connections to squeeze in. Probably too many people want to go through the back door, coupled with the anti-corruption campaign at the time, the leadership decided to fair competition through the examination. In the end, most of those who got in were college and high school graduates, and there were a few veterans.
In January 2002, we officially joined the new unit. The day we reported to work, thirty of us came to the Grain Bureau office building under a long and neat line, everyone was overjoyed, thinking that from now on the bright road, a lifetime of floods and droughts.
Most of the inductees were in their thirties, and I noticed a young girl in her twenties, one meter six, with a simple ponytail, smiling most happily. She is Li Xiuling, her son just turned one year old, her husband is the original grain station accountant.
In a few days, she brought her son to the unit, we tease the child, learned the child’s name, are very strange: “Your surname Li, your husband’s surname Zhang, how your son but surnamed Ding?”
“I am not actually surnamed Li either, originally surnamed Ge; my husband is not surnamed Zhang either, he is originally surnamed Ding.” She said with a smile, “We both took the exams under someone else’s school registration.”
In those days, getting into a junior college and being assigned a stable job was the ideal of most rural school children and their parents. The high school entrance exams, not only to spend a few more years, the hope of getting into college is even more remote – of course, at that time, secondary school is not to say that you can get into the test, many people have to repeat a few years, test a few times to do.
I am a dozen years older than Li Xiuling, school regardless of middle school, high school, want to repeat a few years with the same exam as freshmen. And she studied in those years, for repeating junior high school graduates, the education department has introduced a strict school registration management system: only allowed to repeat a year, after that it is not allowed to repeat. In the strictest year, the score line of the secondary school exam for repeaters had to be 100 points higher than that of freshers to be admitted to secondary school.
“There are policies above and below, and many repeaters are topping the school registrations of those who dropped out and pretending to be freshmen for the exam. Others were already in their third year of junior high school and re-enrolled a school register from their first year.”
In 1992, Li Xiuling took the secondary school exam for the first time, and none of the whole school got into the secondary school. The next year, she repeated the exam, and naturally failed again in the year of the strictest school registration system. In the third year, the teacher found her a similar-looking dropout girl, “I took the school registration of this fresh girl named Li Xiuling, and entered the grain school, from then on it became Li Xiuling.”
“How come there are so many dropouts to compare photos with?” We asked curiously.
She said, “We are relatively remote there, and there are very few girls who have reached the third year of school, so there are many dropouts who can be compared, and there is always one that looks more like your photo. The teacher is also happy to find you, the examination is also the honor of the teacher and the school. In those years, impersonating someone else’s school registration exams, people do not feel anything.”
“Your parents were not bad, not patriarchal enough to make you drop out of school.”
She said that her father was a native doctor, the family originally good conditions, but because of a change, the father was stimulated to mental illness can not practice medicine. She is the youngest, then only one or two years old, above the two older brothers and one sister are in elementary school. The second brother is particularly smart, but because of family difficulties to pay tuition fees by the teacher punished, simply dropped out of school, and then because the family needs someone to do farm work, the mother also pulled the sister back from school.
“In the end, only the older brother insisted on studying until the college. When family conditions eased a bit, my older brother convinced my mother to let me study, and then he graduated and went back to town to teach, and with his financial support, I was able to continue my education until junior high school.”
Li Xiuling did not disappoint his big brother’s expectations, and finally got into the grain school. I thought it would be a straightforward path from here on out, but I didn’t expect her to be assigned a job in 1997.
After her dispatch card reached the county department, she was rightfully transferred to the Food Bureau according to the principle of counterpart assignment, and then waited to be assigned to a specific unit; she was self-aware that rural children with no background like her did not dare to think they could stay in the city units, and only hoped to be assigned to work in the grain station in her hometown.
I thought I would soon be able to implement the work, but there was no movement. Every week, she would ride a broken bicycle, 50 or 60 miles round trip to the grain bureau to ask for news. On the way, looking at the lofty office building of the Food Bureau from afar, she felt a sense of intimidation, and the little sense of superiority she had when she was at school was lost, leaving only humility.
When she entered the building, she timidly knocked on the door of the personnel section, carefully phrased her questions about the progress of her work assignment, and often received only a cold sentence: “It hasn’t been studied yet, go back and wait.”
From July graduation until January of the following year, she went to ask twice a week, her face tanned and red in summer, her lips chapped by the wind in autumn, her hands frozen and numb and painful in winter, but still no news of the assignment. People told her: the bureau leadership changes, the absence of a hand, no one to shoot, are not assigned it.
She could not help but feel indignant and wanted to scold, but did not know who to scold, and did not dare to scold anyone. Once, she went from upstairs step by step to the storage of bicycles under the carport, a nameless fire made her kick the bike to the ground, squatting down and burying her head between her knees and crying silently.
Eventually, the female head of the personnel section, seeing her frequent visits, probably out of pity, let her temporarily come to the bureau to help organize the material. So, from February 1998, she began to “help work” in the bureau, living in her brother’s house. At this time, the bureau said that there was no budget for her salary, and that she could only wait until she was assigned to a specific unit, and then she would be compensated from there. She accepted the offer – it was better to have something to do than to wait.
A few months later, she was finally assigned to a grain station in her hometown, as expected. The head of the personnel section gave her a certificate, so that the grain station to compensate her for four months of help in the Bureau of wages. But the leader of the grain station disagreed: “You help in the bureau, the bureau should give you wages. We can only count your salary from the time you came to the unit.”
When she heard this, her heart was half cold: “So I’ve worked for nothing for several months?”
At this time, a young man in the finance office, Zhang, gave her an idea: “You pay for the guests, I will invite you to invite the leaders, invite them to dinner, and have the certificate issued to you by the Bureau of Personnel Section Chief, the months of wages should be given.”
Under the Zhang’s arrangement, the 4 months of wages really got in hand. Because of this opportunity, one after another, Xiao Zhang became her husband. After working in this grain station for 4 years, she met the “national treasury” examination, and she took the exam from the grain station up.
After listening to her, I couldn’t help but sigh a “you this way, it’s not easy”. I also joked, “The good thing is, now we are also considered to have a lifetime security.”
Li Xiuling nodded fiercely.
3
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned. Not long after the work, we heard that “the treasury did not approve the storage indicators,” which means that the new unit does not belong to the financial allocation, but still only self-financing. In addition to two colleagues who once had a career, the rest of us had to console ourselves: better than the previous unit will become.
In 2005, the higher authorities to cut staff to increase efficiency, began to let some people buy out laid off. It was not our turn, but the leadership actively respond to the call, let us rely on the principle of voluntary, “If you are willing to buy out, you will be given the required compensation for the buyout, from then on to disassociate with the unit, become a free society. If you don’t want to buy out, you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars as a ‘capital contribution’.
The so-called “pool money”, also known as “job security fee”, is a deposit given to the unit, to be returned to the employee only after a few years. The two buckets of rice inside and outside, one in and one out is more than 100,000. After weighing the pros and cons, I became one of the people who took the initiative to buy out the layoffs – not that I couldn’t afford to pay the tens of thousands of pooled money, but my thought was: I’m a bachelor’s student, can’t I find a job?
And Li Xiuling felt that her schooling and job were not easy to come by, and she did not want to lose this job because she was completely laid off after the buyout. She just went to work a few years, a few months ago, seven scrapes, just on the edge of the county from the farmers to buy a home base, built a small two-story building, no money to decorate, a rough house to live in. For this reason, she and Zhang tried to borrow money to pay the 50,000 yuan of pooled funds.
However, after a few days, the leadership of the fund-raising money rose to 80,000, requiring that the next day must be handed over, or do buyout layoff procedures. In such a short time, where to get 30,000 yuan? Had to, including Li Xiuling, there are several people can only buy out laid off.
So far, our group of the same period into the unit, half of the people laid off.
Soon after, the reform of the system to deepen the development of the following grain stations also began to reduce staff and increase efficiency, Xiao Zhang also from the grain station buyout laid off.
Children are small, both husband and wife were laid off, so they had to find their own jobs. Li Xiuling found a job in a gold store sales clerk, she went to work, while transporting children to kindergarten, but also attended the correspondence course of study in law at the University of Electrotechnology, and finally obtained a correspondence degree. Zhang tried to open a small furniture factory with a friend, the main production and processing of office desks and chairs, but less than a year to break up the business. He had to leave his wife and children, south to Shenzhen to find job opportunities.
In 2007, Li Xiuling also took her 6-year-old son to join her husband. At the beginning of her visit to Shenzhen, she worked as a waitress in a restaurant, in a hot pot restaurant as a helper, every day from early morning to late night, do not hesitate to work hard.
A few years later, an acquaintance of Zhang’s company saw that the industry is very hot, the boss makes millions every year, and would like to pull a few people to work alone. Under the repeated persuasion of that acquaintance, Xiao Zhang also joined, but also invested more than 100,000. As the saying goes, “business is good, guys are hard to set aside”, and ultimately, because of the complex relationship, several people can hardly continue to cooperate.
Couple a combined, in this industry has also fumbled for several years, why not start their own business alone, “people earn a few million a year, we even earn a few hundred thousand it, but also better than working?”
After much investigation, in 2010, they opened a small factory, both as administrators and technicians, but also when the assembly workers and sales, every day from morning to night, at least the factory operation up, and slowly have earnings. The next year, they used the money earned to buy a car to facilitate business. In the first two or three years, although it was hard work, but their annual net profit of 300,000, better than part-time jobs.
However, as the market became more and more competitive, the products produced could not be sold if they were not sold on credit. And once the credit sales, payback is a big problem. Since 2012, many dealers began to default on payments, from a few thousand to tens of thousands, and even more than 100,000 have. Later, more and more merchants owe money, Li Xiuling and his wife had to spend more energy to collect.
In 2014, a dealer owed them thousands of dollars of goods, Li Xiuling repeatedly to the store to ask, the other party for various reasons to put off. The last time they went, the building was empty. Li Xiuling had to wander around the nearby market helplessly, when she suddenly saw a new store sign with the dealer’s name and phone number written on it.
Li Xiuling greeted her with a smile: “Boss, you have moved without telling us, we can also congratulate you ah. It is a matter of a few thousand dollars, so long, you let us run how many times? We haven’t got a penny. It’s almost New Year’s Eve and the workers are going to be paid, so why not give it to us this time?”
But the man said impatiently, “Are you tired of this? I don’t have any money, do I?”
Now Li Xiuling got angry: “Will you give it today? If not, I will give you publicity in front of your store, see if you still open?”
In the end, the man only gave 1000 yuan. Li Xiuling insisted, “Do not give the end of the money, I will live in your store.” Saying that, she sat on his counter in anger. The scoundrel actually called the police, saying that Li Xiuling disturbed his business. The police came and said, “You are an economic dispute, you can sue, but you can’t affect the normal operation of others.”
Helpless, Li Xiuling had to go away in anger.
“Prosecution? How easy it is, the black and white IOUs are here, he does not want to give you, you can do nothing, prosecute for nothing, spend time and energy to win the lawsuit, the final money can not come, but also spend more lawyer fees.” Zhang is also helpless, “it is not no prosecution before.”
Going forward, the matter occupies a lot of the couple’s time – no money, do not give, drive a luxury car, live in a mansion of rich people, also do not give. It would have been difficult to operate the small factory, because of a large number of deadbeats, bad debts, began to fall into difficulties, the money saved in previous years is almost finished.
4
The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of services and services to the public.
“My son’s study is a big deal, we can’t delay it.” Li Xiuchen discussed with her husband, she must come back and accompany her son to high school, “high school 3 years is the key, let it go on, the future of the child’s future is ruined.”
In the past decade, the county has undergone radical changes, and the southern edge of the city has become a “new district”, with many high-rise buildings. Li Xiuling’s family is still living in the small, gray, two-story building, and still rough – at first there was no money to decorate, and then a little money was put into the factory to do working capital, no time to take care of other things. Seeing this, Li Xiuling touched the scene, thinking that she is already forty years old, after the ups and downs, but back to square one.
Forty years old, she is still trying to get certified
She sat down on a simple cushioned chair in the living room, unable to care much about sentimentality, she had to think about the next road to take. Her son’s school is close by, she has to make three meals a day, so that her son can come home for dinner, so that he doesn’t take advantage of the time to slip away to the Internet cafe. For this reason, she went to a small logistics company near home as a clerk.
Said clerk, in fact, what odd jobs to do, but the salary is only 1500.
“This boss is really a strange one, if he has something to do not come to work, will put the bucket of water tickets are locked up, even the water is not given to people to drink. In the summer, if you want to drink water, you have to buy it yourself, and several employees are very opinionated.” Li Xiuling said.
Considering that she can go home from work and cook, she can only insist on doing it. She came to the office early every day, cleaned up, and began to work non-stop. But the boss is too calculating, often at noon when the end of the day let Li Xiuling to deliver, sometimes from the south of the city to the north of the city, she rode a bicycle round trip to spend a lot of time, often delayed to cook for her son, mother and son had to make do with a meal, after the meal she was too late to clean up, and rushed to work.
One day at noon, Li Xiuling was about to leave work, and the boss arranged for her to deliver. Li Xiuling really can not stand: “This is the end of the day, you still let me go to send pieces. If you want to send, wait until I come to work in the afternoon, I can’t cook in time!”
But the boss did not comply: “You just turn a corner by the way and send it.”
“Is this a side trip? I wouldn’t have said that if it was on the way, it’s an hour round trip, and I have to contact people, and I have to wait. You keep doing this, I can’t do it.”
She couldn’t stand it anymore, and left the company after less than three months of work.
But this idle is not the way. Xiao Zhang a miserable business in Shenzhen, outside the total amount of money owed to add up to hundreds of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of inventory can not be sold, into other people’s raw materials but to pay cash, the company has reached a difficult situation.
Li Xiuling had to find a new job. In the harsh winter, she ran around in the streets and alleys, seeing job advertisements and went to consult. Finally she found a store selling windows and doors and was able to get to work on time. The store owner, also a woman in her forties, told her that in addition to the basic salary, there was a commission based on sales. There was also a male clerk, Wang, in his thirties, who was lukewarm to Li Xiuling’s arrival.
Every day, Li Xiuling braved the cold, cycling to construction sites and neighborhoods to sell windows and doors, taking note of potential customers one by one, and then calling them one by one to come to the store for inspection. When receiving customers in the store, she was tired of introducing and selling products. However, a month down, the performance is all Wang counted to his own, Li Xiuling no commission. Li Xiuling felt unreasonable, especially because there are many customers she pulled from outside: “customers into the store, who received, reached a deal on whose performance, can not be counted on you alone.”
Wang disagreed: “I’ve been working here for two years, you want to share my profits as soon as you come?”
Li Xiuling found the boss and said about the idea of performance commission distribution, and the boss said to consider it. After the Spring Festival, Li Xiuchen went to the store again, the boss changed his face: “You do not have to come to work, the store does not need so many people, Xiao Wang a line.”
“Why didn’t you say so before you went on vacation?” Li Xiuling was a little angry, “Otherwise, I could have found a job earlier.” Seeing that more talk is useless, she finished settling the pitiful salary and left without looking back.
5
Xiao Zhang came back this year in the Spring Festival. The factory in Shenzhen has become unsustainable, the money owed can not be recovered, no liquidity. The backlog of products not sold on credit, credit sales will not come back to the money, the dilemma. For this reason, the husband and wife complain about each other, can not say a few words and then argued.
“At the beginning of the honest work, will not end up in this situation. You, listen to others, one step wrong, step wrong!” Li Xiuling said angrily.
“Who am I doing this for? I am still for this family? Who could have known the situation would turn out like this?”
After the festival, Zhang looked around the county and saw a similar factory doing quite well in the east of the city, so he proposed, “Why don’t we also move things back and do it locally.”
“How big of a market can you have locally? It’s such a big place, and you want another piece of the pie? Is that possible?” Li Xiuling objected.
However, Zhang still wants to do the last struggle, he has come a long way to those stocks, raw materials, equipment, etc. from Shenzhen to transport back, the whole house piled up to the roof, just the packaging boxes are piled up half the room.
“Look at those boxes, when you do not let you order you have to order, and others to determine you want to order again is not good? Spent so much money in vain.” Li Xiuling did not complain in a good mood.
Zhang was also angry, and the two inevitably began to fight again. Job is not good, business and failure, home to see those almost abandoned products piled up the house, Li Xiuling’s heart is like hot oil rolling over: “Look, these things, let you dispose of in the local, you have to pull home dry, for nothing so much freight, now piled up in the house, look at all disturbed! Electronics, soon obsolete, piled up here to sell rags can not be sold, not as good as when thrown on the road it!”
“You are a horse’s back, what’s the use of talking about this now?” Hearing Li Xiuling’s nagging, Zhang also said angrily, “This life can not live, divorce is good!”
“Divorce, divorce, who’s afraid? I’m a horse’s ass? Did I ask you to dispose of it locally in the first place? You still hold out hope to come home to do? The family is such a small market, a little brain to think about it will know that it can not be, and what is the result?”
The number of such times, the two are desperate. Not long after, really went through the divorce procedures.
After that, Li Xiuling found a driving school office work, the salary is good, is far from home. She had to let her son eat in the canteen at noon, and then go home at night.
After a little stability, Li Xiuling saw the news of the judicial examination, thinking that they also have a correspondence undergraduate degree in law, they proceeded to “people to middle age and then punch a”. Xiao Zhang went to work in the provincial capital, every time you see the abandoned products in the house, Li Xiuling heart or a burnt.
The son just entered his third year of high school, the teacher called to inform Li Xiuling, said the child’s performance fell a lot during this period of time, “on that time at noon, he can also run to the Internet cafe, and often late for class in the afternoon”. Li Xiuling heard, scratching her heart and thinking of her original intention of returning to the town, she quit her job at the driving school and found a job as a supermarket stocker near her home, regardless of the salary, at least to keep an eye on the little ancestor.
Every morning before 7 a.m., she and five or six other people in the store to carry the vegetables to the vegetable section, and then the vegetables organized on the shelves, some of them also need to personally tie bundles. After that, she can go to the beverage area she is responsible for, and began to set up goods, replenish the goods, scrubbing, sanitation. During the chores, she finds time to go home and cook for her son, and occasionally sneaks into his school after work to see what he is doing.
However, the supermarket efficiency is worrying, more than 1,000 yuan of wages, dragging two or three months still not issued. The staff could not help but ask the store manager, the store manager smiled: “I also want to pay it, wait a little longer.” Li Xiuling also had no choice but to work hard.
In June 2018, after sending her son to the examination room, Li Xiuling and Zhang went to the Civil Affairs Bureau for remarriage procedures. After all, people in middle age, and the son’s involvement, both sides calmly thinking, or to go through the rest of their lives together.
Soon, the son’s college entrance exam results came out, got into the local key universities. Li Xiuling also counted a sigh of relief, think their hard work in the past few years was not in vain.
After that, Li Xiuling also came to the provincial capital and found an administrative job in a food factory near Xiao Zhang’s workplace. Not long after, at her invitation, I also came to work in this factory. After being laid off from the “national treasury”, I also went around and around for many years, doing various kinds of business, and eventually also moved around to various places to work.
Li Xiuling’s work is complicated, busy every day, one person as three people with, often 8 or 9 o’clock at night before the end of the day, but also subject to all kinds of aggression. In order to take the bar exam for the third time, she quit this job in May 2019 to focus on preparing for the exam, but the results were not as expected.
6
Life goes on.
During the period of waiting for the results after the objective exam last year, Li Xiuling had gone to work in a small factory with a salary of more than 2,000, a large amount less than when she worked in a food factory – she was then considering being able to resign at any time after knowing the results.
The food factory was not far from her home, and when I went to see her on her day off, she was practicing typing on the computer, and she stopped to take me to buy food, “Let’s have hot pot for lunch, right?”
We went to a nearby supermarket and bought a hot pot base, a fish and a few vegetables, and she bought a rolling pin from a street store, and the shopkeeper said 8 yuan.
“No, how can you give back that much for a few dollars?”
“Then it’s 6 dollars.”
Seeing that the shopkeeper still didn’t agree, she said, “Then 7, you can’t let even 1 dollar go, right?”
“Stop it, I’ll give you a wire ball.”
“You really know how to do business.” Li Xiuling laughed.
When we got home, Li Xiuling washed the vegetables and mixed the soup, cut the fish into pieces and marinated them, and the aroma of the hot pot soup overflowed. The two of us ate and chatted as the hot pot gurgled and steamed up.
“What are you going to do next?”
“Of course I’m going to continue with the exam, this job I have now, it’s simple manual labor. I’m sure I won’t have time to read and study, so I’ll do this, work part-time while studying, and then quit two months before the exam. I also want to improve the typing speed, before typing is very slow, affecting the answer.”
From her home, the weather is no longer so cold, I silently wish her all the best.
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