Twenty-sixth, "cultivation" during winter vacation

  Back home for winter vacation, there are almost three weeks until Spring Festival. Fanghua stays at home every day doing chores and preparing goods for the festival.

  Because the research institute is located in a remote mountainous area, it's very inconvenient for employees to go out. So every year before the Spring Festival, the institute would send cars to collectively purchase various New Year goods outside and bring them back to distribute among households with loudspeakers announcing the allocation by unit. Although there's a saying that "those who make atomic bombs are not as good as those who sell tea eggs", the welfare of military-industrial units is still quite good.

  Fanghua almost always goes with her brother to pick up goods under their parents' names, such as cod, frozen chicken, frozen duck, eggs, apples, pomelos, and oranges. There are also rice, green beans, soybeans, melon seeds, peanuts, and glutinous rice flour. Then, she has to fry the cod, stir-fry the melon seeds and peanuts, and make peanut paste and sesame paste in preparation for making tangyuan fillings.

  She had often watched her mother do these chores in previous years and roughly knew how to do them. Sometimes, she would sit at the entrance of their home, basking in the rare winter sun, and gently pound sesame seeds with her hands. The fragrance of the sesame seeds filled the air as her body felt warm and cozy from the sunshine, making life feel so simple and peaceful. Her past and present lives seemed like a dream, unaware of what night it was tonight.

  Lin Fanghua was doing a thorough cleaning at home when she found that her mother had kept many things she used to use. There were dolls and picture books from childhood, clothes and skirts she wore, hair clips and ribbons she wore, and several large boxes of textbooks from school, even the art sketchbook from elementary school was well-preserved. Looking at these familiar things, Lin Fanghua felt a lump in her throat. It can be imagined how much her mother loved her, keeping these old useless items as if they were treasures.

  But some things are really not worth keeping anymore. After getting her mother's agreement, Lin Fanghua gave away some still usable toys, clothes and books to the children of neighboring rural families. However, she also kept some leftover fabric scraps and ribbons, planning to make something with them.

  The women of my mother's generation were all very capable, not only working with men on an equal footing, but also inheriting the traditional virtues of Chinese women in their daily lives. They could make clothes according to paper patterns, operate sewing machines to make clothes, and make pickles, stinky tofu, tomato sauce, sausage, dumplings, tangyuan, and steamed buns. They were really good at managing the household, keeping everything in order.

  However, with such a capable mother, the daughter often can't do anything. Lin Fanghua used to be incompetent in everything, and even basic household chores like cooking and doing laundry were barely passable.

  Now, she has decided to change all this. So during last summer's and this winter's holidays, whenever she was at home, she would follow her mother in learning household chores. Many of the family's New Year goods were made by her this time. Cutting and sewing are a bit difficult, but she still tries to do some needlework, thinking that it might be beneficial for her future career as a surgeon.

  This time, she used to practice making hair ties. Thinking of this point is also because her short hair cut in the summer has grown long enough to tie a ponytail behind her head. When she looked for rubber bands to tie her hair, she realized that at this time, only simple yellow rubber bands were available for tying hair. Girls who love beauty are all wrapped around with various colored yarns on the rubber band by themselves. Of course, some hair ties sold have decorations such as small flowers, small animals, and small colorful balls, which are too bright and childish to suit the taste of college girls.

  When in school, many long-haired girls used a piece of embroidered handkerchief tied to the ponytail on the back of their head as decoration. Beautiful hair clips and decorations were also sold, but due to material issues, they were still a bit expensive, and few students could afford them. The kind of hair tie with a circle of flower cloth sewn inside with an elastic band had not appeared yet. Lin Fanghua wanted to make this kind of simple technology content, with many patterns, hair decoration. It just so happened that she could use the leftover fabric found this time, which was also a good way to reuse waste.

  She soon made her first finished product. She wrapped the new hair tie around her ponytail after circling it twice in her mind. Lin Mama praised that Fang Hua's creation was very convenient. With her hair tied up, she looked more spirited and prettier. Anyway, with nothing to do, Lin Fang Hua spent a few days making ten hair ties, preparing to give them to the long-haired girls in her dormitory and class after school started. Among them, she specially designed and sewed one for Luo Man Li. Because Luo Man Li had fair skin, she liked wearing green sweaters and coats. Lin Fang Hua chose a piece of dark green flower cloth and a piece of light green gauze, cut it into suitable long strips, folded and sewed them together, with elastic inside. She also decorated some small shiny pieces and beads on the outside. The whole product was beautiful, delicate, and elegant, making Lin Fang Hua like it very much.

  She had originally wanted to practice embroidery. However, upon further consideration, firstly, there was no one to teach her and if she were to practice cross-stitch it would be too simple; secondly, in reality, embroidery and performing surgery are still vastly different. The thread used for suturing in surgery is completely different, a skilled embroiderer would not necessarily be able to sew wounds beautifully.

  Lin Fanghua remembered a popular leisure activity on the internet and in schools - pen spinning. To talk about pen spinning, it's actually a kind of trick that people play with their pens when they're bored while reading books. Later, it seemed to appear in the 007 series movies. Even students in the 80s and 90s played with pen spinning, but the moves and popularity weren't as crazy as during the internet era. It wasn't until a Japanese person established the first pen spinning website in 1997 that this leisure activity was widely promoted and became popular globally. When Lin Fanghua taught class, she often saw the girls below her spinning pens in their hands, which not only distracted people with the movement but also disrupted classroom discipline with the occasional sound of dropping pens. For this reason, she specifically prohibited students from pen spinning in class. However, later on, out of curiosity, she browsed pen spinning forums, watched tutorial videos, and even practiced a few simple moves herself.

  It suddenly occurred to her that this exercise was actually a good way to train finger reaction, flexibility and promote hand-eye coordination. During the winter break, she had nothing to do anyway, so she often practiced pen spinning while watching TV or during leisure time in the evening. She hadn't practiced connecting movements before, but individual finger movements were still familiar, such as rotating her thumb and index finger, and after a few tries, she quickly regained her old feeling.

  Nothing is difficult, only practice makes perfect. Lin Fanghua believes that after practicing, she can also perform those dazzling and intricate movements that the masters do.

  Brother Lin Zhengyu didn't stay at home much because the various research rooms in the institute were holding a welcome volleyball match. As a professional, he was invited to be a referee, and the equipment department where Lin Dad worked also asked him to be a coach. So he went to practice ball during the day and refereed at night, busy almost not going home.

  Sometimes when there's nothing to do at home, Fang Hua would go to the office building or the dormitory area to play. She also often went to the basketball court and waited for her brother to finish his game so they could head back home together. However, it was boring and cold standing on the sidelines during winter, and she didn't want to play volleyball herself. So Lin Zhen Yu found a basketball for her to play with at the nearby basketball court.

  Lin Fanghua played alone, of course, she could only practice shooting. Anyway, it was neither tiring nor hurt her hands, Lin Fanghua didn't have any resistance to it like she did with volleyball. At first, she was having a great time playing by herself. Later on, Lin Zhengyu accidentally discovered that his sister's shooting posture was quite laughable, and often used the "old lady style" of using both hands to put the ball into the basket, but surprisingly her hit rate was still pretty high.

  He couldn't help but correct her shooting posture and skills a few times. Unexpectedly, she had high comprehension and was able to make ten shots in a row near the free throw line. He let her practice a few times near the three-point line and found that she could also make ten shots in a row from there. Now, he believed his sister's marksmanship training results were real. A great shooter should have some common talent with a great archer. Moreover, as a sports major himself, how could his own sister not have any athletic cells at all?

  Lin Zhengyu was eager to teach his sister Lin Fanghua how to play basketball. However, Lin Fanghua poured cold water on him again. She said that at her height of just over 1.6 meters and being older, what's the point of playing basketball? It's just a game anyway. Lin Zhengyu taught her to practice dribbling and shooting hoops, but she only practiced for a bit before losing interest, thinking it wasn't fun. On the other hand, she was very interested in the dull task of free throw shooting and kept practicing tirelessly, probably treating it as a target-shooting game.

  Lin Zhengyu looked at his older sister's attitude and couldn't help but feel helpless, blaming himself for not cultivating her athletic talent well when she was young.