Precious Root and Golden Egg - Chapter 4
When I was in my last year of middle school, my eighth brother turned five. My parents took him to the neighborhood committee to register his household status.
His name was unlike those of my other brothers, but it was the most fashionable boys’ name of his generation: Wangge—Prosper, Big Brother.
The other new entries in the register were no less impressive: Help-Brother-Flourish, Protect-Big-Brother, Love-Big-Brother…
More cultured parents used classical words for the eldest brother, such as Meng and Kun, instead of anything so blatant. Hence names like Honor-Meng and Revere-Kun.
Other parents couldn’t be bothered to disguise their intentions at all. They named their children Brother’s Slave, Brother’s Dog, Brother’s Ox, Brother’s Horse.
Someone bumped into my parents as they left the committee office. Dad saw “Xu Brother’s Dog” in the man’s household register and brushed his clothes off in disgust, as though bad luck had rubbed off on him.
“I hate parents who play favorites. We treat every child exactly the same!”
Indeed. According to my parents, all the brothers in our family were equal.
I had inherited the house and car and held all the family savings, but they insisted that I was the greatest victim of our many-son household.
My younger brothers might have no assets, but they could earn a little money and enjoy comfortable, carefree lives. I, meanwhile, had to bear the psychological burden unique to men.
Oh, right. My brothers were men, too.
But we weren’t the same.
They were merely the basic model.
I was just so very, very manly.
Perhaps the melancholy air I had acquired from shouldering the family’s destiny was simply too irresistible. Shortly before the high-school entrance exams, I received my first love letter.
As you know, however, there were no girls in our school.
Under the old rules, if I had been a girl, the teacher could have told the sender, “Such natural talent! Beautiful writing, but you’d be better off concentrating on your studies.”
If the sender had been a girl, the teacher could have said, “A natural-born slut! All you know how to do is seduce boys!”
Unfortunately, we were both exalted Glories of the Ancestors.
“N-n-n…” The teacher’s eyes twitched violently. His brain had clearly hit a bug and crashed. “Naturally made for each other!”
Sadly, that secret crush came to nothing.
Once the other boy’s eight brothers got hold of this ammunition, they acted decisively. At the cost of two dead and six wounded, they stripped him of his position as heir.
The brutality of that nine-prince succession struggle. Honestly.
Anyway, the fourth son eventually ascended the throne and inherited the family’s two dilapidated tile-roofed rooms and one secondhand tractor.
The tractor was on an installment plan.
After this episode, Mom was full of anxiety.
“Yaozu’s this old, and he’s never even seen a girl!”
Dad remained serenely confident.
“City people are open-minded. They must love having daughters. The countryside will have more boys, the cities more girls! Once Yaozu moves to a big city, he’ll have his pick of rich girls!”
Unfortunately, people in the big cities were thinking much the same thing.
I narrowly lost to Golden Egg III and entered a prestigious provincial high school with the second-highest score in the province. There, classmates from immensely wealthy families held forth.
“City apartments are too small. Where would a daughter sleep? But country people are always having girls to sell. My monthly allowance could buy me ten Zhaodis—ten little ‘Bring Us a Brother’ brides!”
In their fantasies, each side saw the other as a gift hamper just waiting to be unwrapped.
Then, at the end of that year, a census revealed the truth.
There were no girls.
No. Girls.
The whole world was stunned.
Fortunately, fixing the sex ratio no longer involved probability—or even science. All anyone had to do was dream!
Incentives and cash prizes sprang up everywhere, encouraging parents to choose daughters in their prenatal dreams. The prize pool kept growing. It was staggering.
Choose a daughter, and you qualified for a VIP maternity suite, a million-yuan bonus, and travel packages. During the pregnancy, your entire family could stay in five-star hotels for free, dine at top restaurants, and fly with ten major airlines at no cost.
You could even win a luxury apartment in a top-tier city, a limited-edition sports car, or a yacht.
Applicants poured in. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Crisis solved.
Ten months later, hundreds upon hundreds of baby boys emerged, bawling, into the delivery rooms.
The participants spread their hands.
“Seriously? Seriously? You thought those little perks would make me give up having a son?”
Furious, the organizers hired an entire regiment of lawyers to sue them.
But the babies had been born. The planes had landed. The holidays had been taken, the hotels stayed in, the restaurant meals enjoyed.
Even the million-yuan bonuses had been spent—with ten-to-one leverage on top.
In court, the participants spread their hands again.
“No money. Sons, though? We’ve got stacks.”
And so the first grand edition of Humanity’s Self-Rescue Plan came to an inglorious end.
Before long, the second plan was rushed into service.
