This Person Will Go Far in the Future

@MengYiTangChao: There's a waitress at our restaurant; we all call her Old Li. She's chubby and smiles at everyone. The restaurant stays, but the waitresses come and go. In the twelve years the restaurant has been open, she has worked there for ten.

She earns about four to five thousand a month at the restaurant, and her husband takes on odd jobs at construction sites, making a decent income too. After her daughter started high school, she would go work at various restaurants every winter and summer vacation. Old Li tried to stop her, saying her parents could easily support her. But the daughter felt she should go out and earn her own money.

During her three years of high school and six vacations, she worked either at fast-food joints or at Wang Laosan's Lamb Skewers.

The year before last, she got into college. In her very first month, she went to help out and serve food in the campus cafeteria, and worked part-time at restaurants on weekends. By the time the second semester started, she told Old Li not to pay her tuition anymore, saying she had saved up enough.

Her roommates who couldn't get out of bed would ask her to bring them food. She was quick on her feet. After doing this many times, her roommates felt bad and would send her red envelopes of two or three yuan. She accepted them without hesitation, neither humble nor arrogant.

She paid her own tuition in the second year as well, outright refusing the money Old Li tried to give her. Last summer vacation, she used her own hard-earned money to take her younger sister on a trip to Qingdao. She planned the itinerary herself, figuring out where the fun places were and how to save money.

When she was in high school, she came by the restaurant a few times. She was very polite, always greeting me with "Hello, Uncle" whenever we met. We'd ask her to stay for a meal, but she would always say she had already eaten, and then ride her bike off to work.

This year, she didn't even ask for living expenses anymore. On Mother's Day, she sent Old Li a huge red envelope instead of buying flowers. The note on the red envelope read: "Mom, you've worked so hard."

Old Li showed it off to us, and then started crying: "I didn't want her to go work; we can afford to support her. I just wanted her to have a happy college life."

I told Old Li: "No matter how she does academically, rest assured, she will be an incredibly awesome person in the future."