Anjie and Jiang Defu come from different backgrounds, and their relatives are also very different.
Jiang Defu was born in the countryside, his relatives are a group of simple and a little overdone peasants, while Anjie's relatives are generally educated city people, and the two are very different in their lives.
When Anjie's relatives came to the island, they always brought things in large bags, and Jiang Defu's relatives came to his house to eat "big plates" after learning that he had become a high official.
In the face of completely different relatives, Anjie's way of handling is naturally different, she is thoughtful and enthusiastic when facing relatives in the city, and she does not quarrel or laugh when facing relatives in the countryside, just prepares food and drink, and most of the rest of the time is cold-eyed.
At first glance, Anjie's treatment of rural relatives is indifferent and ruthless, and when you think about it carefully, you find that Anjie's indifference and ruthlessness hide great wisdom!
Anjie himself also has a job, but after coming to the island with the army, all of Anjie's professional skills are useless, he can only give birth to children one by one, and the burden of supporting the family all falls on Jiang Defu, fortunately, the treatment of officers in that era is very good, and senior officers like Jiang Defu do not have to worry about life at all, so the life of Anjie's family of nine is full of taste.
When Jiang Defu's rural relatives poured into the island like locusts, Anjie never skimped on eating and drinking, but he did not speak to them, and most of them watched all this with a cold face.
Anjie seems to be cold and ruthless, but in fact, he brakes with stillness.
In some ways, like these rural relatives, she was a person who did not earn a salary and ate white rice, so it was unwise for her to express any opinion on her own kind, at least in person.
Therefore, she adopted the method of cold treatment to deal with these relatives, relatives eat like fighting, she does not say, relatives eat and spit on her mouth, relatives go along with some soap towels when they leave, she does not say, but Jiang Defu stepped into civilized life for many years, and some of them could not accept the bad habits of rural relatives.
Jiang Defu has been controlled by Anjie everywhere in his life, and his bad habits in the countryside have long been slowly corrected with the influence of Anjie, but the only thing he has to contend with Anjie is the behavior of "spitting when eating", and no matter how Anjie satirizes him for more than ten years, he has not changed.
However, the visit of relatives in the countryside has changed this problem.
In the original work, it is written:
Their eating posture is very similar to my father's, the left hand holding the bottom of the bowl, the right hand that holds the chopsticks across the waist, and my father is simply poured out of a mold. It's just that they eat more fiercely than my father, and they have more impatience than my father. The chopsticks that frequently attacked, the momentum of turning the plates and bowls upside down, made it difficult for us at the same dinner table to adapt and accept. We pressed our eyes together to our father, whose head was inch short under this bundle of eyes. Father plunged his face into the bowl like an ostrich burying its head in the desert. The father relaxed his masseter muscles, chewed slowly, and the click in his mouth was suddenly inaudible.
Anjie's policy of treating relatives coldly has successfully pushed Jiang Defu to the front line of empathy, and Jiang Defu has truly felt the bad habits of rural relatives and the doubts of his children about these bad habits.
In the end, he really couldn't stand these rural relatives, so he wrote a letter to his nephew in his hometown, not knowing what method this nephew used, and there were far fewer rural relatives who came to the door in the future.
Anjie's trick is really high, she uses indifference to transfer the pressure brought by rural relatives to her husband, she just needs to wait slowly, wait for this bit of nostalgia to be eaten by locust-like relatives, and when her husband can't bear it, he will naturally solve these problems personally.
In this way, she not only did not hurt her husband's face, but also maintained her lofty posture.
Anjie was a picky and condescending person, and this gesture ran through her life.
The reason why she chose silence in front of her husband's rural relatives was that on the one hand, she did not want to lose face, and on the other hand, her small sacrifice could be exchanged for greater gains.
The husband's relatives came to eat a few meals and steal some soap towels and other small things, while her brothers and sisters came and took away more expensive things than this.
Every time Antai and Anxin came to the island, they took a lot of things in large bags, ate and wore everything, and only took a few pieces of carry-on clothes when they left, so that they came to lightly packed, which made the Jiang Defu family feel embarrassed.
Although AnXin and Antai did not take anything with them, their children, as long as they were not seriously unqualified for medical examinations, were arranged to the army or the Workers' and Peasants' and Soldiers' University, and in that era, such a place was much more precious than a large bag of things.
It is Anjie's relatives who get too much, so Anjie leaves three points of room for even if he is dissatisfied. One point of respect for their own pride, one point of respect for the help of the husband, and one point for the husband and wife for many years.
At first glance, Anjie's treatment of rural relatives is really cold and ruthless, but if we are in it, we may not have done a good job, although she is born arrogant, but she has her own logic in dealing with human feelings. She clearly understands her position in this family, she should not say what she should not say; she knows the way of dealing with the world, and she should not do what she should not do for the time being; she knows better how to weigh the pros and cons, and the benefits received by her relatives are by no means comparable to those of rural relatives who eat a few meals.
In the book, Anjie does not have a perfect personality, but looking at her way of dealing with the world, you can't say that she is wrong, and you even have to learn from her: see your role, find the source of the problem, and then weigh the pros and cons to deal with the problem properly.