After Fu Ying finished speaking, silence fell over the entire family.
Mom Fu muttered, "Why didn't her teacher say anything sooner? If I'd known she wouldn't be able to attend high school here, I would have stayed in our hometown with Fu Ying and Fu Zhe instead of coming out to work odd jobs."
Regret weighed heavily on Mom Fu's heart. Had she known that keeping her children with her would cut off their path to further education, she would rather have endured hardships back home, farming the land. A child getting a proper education mattered far more than working for a wage.
Brother-in-law Fu, whose name was Wang Changjie, chimed in then, "Of course the teacher wouldn't tell you. If they told you, and then everyone packed up and went back to their hometowns by the second or third year of middle school, how would they ever recruit enough students?"
His words plunged the family into an even heavier silence.
Indeed, why would any school make a big fuss about telling students and parents that non-local household registrations made it exceedingly difficult to attend high school here? Fu Ying had also wondered why her teachers had never mentioned this issue, and why certain parents knew enough to transfer their children away in the second semester of the second year.
Thinking back on the makeup of her class, nearly half were from other cities within Guangdong Province and were eligible to attend regular local high schools, so they had no need to transfer. As for the remaining out-of-province classmates, some families simply wanted to place their children in school so teachers could keep an eye on them. Another portion, perhaps just like Fu Ying's family, remained unaware of the situation or simply waited until the high school entrance exams were over before heading back.
Many of those classmates who returned to their hometowns came from families that knew one another; quite a few hailed from the same village or town, and their parents had likely communicated among themselves. But Fu Ying's family lived far from those classmates and came from a completely different province. Ignorant of the regulations and having never looked into them, Dad Fu and Mom Fu had been kept completely in the dark. Moreover, Fu Ying recalled that parent-teacher meetings were rarely held during middle school, and as the entrance exams drew near, the school had never organized anything like a "pre-exam parent mobilization" event. While part of the reason was undoubtedly that many parents were too busy working for hardly any to attend, another part might have been the school's fear that parents would exchange information and pull their children out en masse to return home.
No wonder the higher the grade level, the fewer students remained in middle school! There had been seven classes in the first year, five in the second, and only two left by the third year! At the time, Fu Ying hadn't thought deeply about it, and Dad Fu and Mom Fu had simply assumed the school was struggling to recruit students.
Dad Fu broke the silence. "I'll see if Yu Xiang is asleep yet. If he isn't, I'll have him ask around in the next couple of days to see if Xiao Ying can go straight back home for high school."
To parents like Dad Fu and Mom Fu who had spent their lives working away from home, their hometown offered only poor relatives in similar circumstances, with no high-ranking officials or influential figures to speak of. Their only glimmer of hope lay in Yu Xiang, whose home was in the county seat and who knew a wide circle of people.
Yet upon hearing this, Fu Ying felt far from optimistic.
Yu Xiang had originally had no connection to the Fu Family whatsoever. Fu Yu's husband, Wang Changjie, had come to Guangdong Province to work alongside relatives and had married Fu Yu. Yu Xiang's wife shared the same grandfather and paternal cousins with Fu Yu's husband, making them distant cousins-in-law. When Yu Xiang's family moved to Guangdong to seek opportunities, these familial ties brought them into contact with Dad Fu and Mom Fu.
Yu Xiang was someone who walked a gray line between the underworld and respectability. Without a proper job, he dabbled in a little bit of everything and knew all sorts of people. He possessed no grand influence or real power, yet for minor matters, he could usually pull enough strings to get things resolved.
Dad Fu and Mom Fu had asked him for favors on several occasions—some of which had succeeded while others failed. Still, remembering these obligations, Dad Fu treated him with great courtesy and always thought of him first whenever help was needed.
Fu Ying herself had once asked him to handle a small favor that ultimately fell through due to an unexpected snag. At the time, Fu Ying was working as a tour guide, and her Greater Bay Area travel endorsement had expired, so she needed a renewal. The regulations in Yunnan Province required the applicant to appear in person or mail the original ID card along with a written authorization letter, whereas Guangdong Province did not yet support 24-hour renewals back then. Fu Ying had no choice but to mail her ID card and authorization letter to Yu Xiang's house. Yu Xiang had already confirmed receipt and promised to take care of it in a couple of days. Yet after waiting a full week, there was still no word on whether it had been successfully processed. When Fu Ying asked Dad Fu, he told her that both Yu Xiang and his wife had been locked up, apparently because the daughter from Yu Xiang's ex-wife had committed marriage fraud, running off after collecting the bride price. In any case, the couple had been inside for a year or so by then, and their three subsequent children were being raised by relatives.
The most direct consequence of this incident for Fu Ying was that she had to completely reissue both her ID card and her travel permit, a hassle that required her to make two separate trips back to her hometown to sort out.
Consequently, Fu Ying harbored deep doubts about turning to Yu Xiang for help, though she could not bring herself to voice her misgivings directly to Dad Fu and Mom Fu.