By Xinxin, Japan
Workers’ Heartbreak
In early spring in Japan, the weather can turn cold again after getting warmer suddenly. That day, although it was nearly noon, the weather was still a little cold. There were few pedestrians on the street, so compared to the quiet street, a Chinese-style restaurant was particularly noisy.
In the kitchen, over a dozen workers from China were busy. The sounds of vegetables being chopped, food being fried and dishes being washed mingled with the customers’ shouts from the dining room. Different kinds of sounds filled the air, so it appeared that everyone was very busy, and the atmosphere was very tense in the restaurant.
“Are you a fool? You can’t even do such simple work properly. If you don’t get a handle on it, you’ll get the sack.”
“And you. You fry dumplings so slowly. Didn’t you hear the customer say he couldn’t wait long? You’re really stupid!”
These vulgar sounds of abuse came from a man in the kitchen, and everyone turned their eyes to the man in his 50s who wore a plaid shirt and had sleek hair. This was the restaurateur.
Not far behind the boss, there was a man wearing a white undershirt and a chef’s hat who was cooking: the chef, Lianfu. His job was to constantly fry food, and he did it for more than 10 hours every day. After a few years, he started to suffer from cervical spondylosis and scapulohumeral periarthritis. But in order to make more money he had no choice but to just put medicinal plasters on the affected areas and carry on working every day. Sometimes when he really couldn’t bear the pain, he would go to the kitchen wall and hit his back against it hard to relieve the pain. Another man, who was scooping rice into an iron pan and wore the same clothes as Lianfu but looked older, was Lao Wang. He was the sous-chef and was in charge of frying rice. And he was Lianfu’s fellow villager and the boss’s relative. He had worked longer than any other worker in the restaurant but actually he wasn’t even 50.
A Quarrel Between a Couple
Time flew by. It had been twelve years since Lianfu and his wife came to Japan. At that time, they had cherished a dream of becoming rich and taken money from loan sharks totaling almost 200,000 yuan in order to get to Japan. Afterward, they repaid their loans, and their life was just beginning to get better. However, his wife fell ill due to the heavy work load and went into hospital. He felt very sad because of this.
When she was ill, Lianfu’s wife, Xiaojuan, made a few good friends. They happily talked with her every day, and often gave her a massage. Her condition quickly improved, and at the same time a smile spread over Lianfu’s face.
One day, Lianfu dragged his exhausted body home from work as usual. He greeted Xiaojuan, who was in the kitchen, and then he walked over to the sofa. At the moment he bent down to get the TV remote control on the coffee table, he suddenly saw a book on it entitled God’s Sheep Hear the Voice of God. He picked it up and asked doubtfully: “Where did you get this book?”
His wife stopped what she was doing and came out of the kitchen. She gently said to Lianfu with a smile: “My friends preached the gospel to me and gave me this book.”
Lianfu’s eyes widened, and he pointed at his wife and yelled: “Do you have nothing to do? We came to Japan to make money. Who allowed you to believe in God?”
Xiaojuan said, smilingly: “We believers walk the proper path of life. Only by coming before God can we rid ourselves of pain and live a happy life….”
He interrupted her at once and said: “I went from Shandong Province to Northeast China by myself to work. I repaired tires, did construction work, worked as a boiler worker and ran a restaurant. I took on any filthy or tiring job. Everything I did was for earning more money and living a better life, wasn’t it? However, you don’t think of how to make money but just believe in God.”
After taking off her apron, Xiaojuan sat down on the chair opposite, saying: “All these years, we’ve worked as hard as we could from dawn to dusk every day to make money. As a result, we’re wracked with illnesses. It hasn’t been easy for us to accumulate some savings, and my treatment has cost us some money. Those years when we struggled to make money, what did we gain? Just exhaustion and illnesses. In fact, this was all Satan’s affliction. How much money we possess in life is predestined by God, rather than through our own struggles. If God doesn’t bestow wealth upon us, no matter how hard we work it’ll be in vain. As the saying goes, ‘Man proposes, God disposes.’ All of this is based on God’s sovereignty and preordination.”
Lianfu was left speechless, and thought: “You’ve just started to believe in God, but what you said is pretty weighty. But no, I’m a big man. How can I let you talk me into this?” Then he immediately said: “Even if you don’t think of yourself, you should at least consider our child. In this society, people put money above all else. If we have no money, house, or car, who will marry our son? Having money means having capital, having money is having everything.”
After hearing this, Xiaojuan replied: “God is the Creator. Every person’s entire life is arranged by Him, including our son’s marriage. All we need to do is face it all calmly.”
What she said made Lianfu pale with anger. He paced around the room with his hands behind his back, and then pointed an accusing finger at her and said: “You really don’t take anything in. From now on, we’ll just go our separate ways. You mind your business and I’ll mind mine.” Then, he walked into the bedroom and banged the door shut.
Thereafter, he started to give Xiaojuan the cold shoulder. She read God’s words, while he watched TV. Sometimes, he picked on her because he was very angry. When Xiaojuan attended meetings, he said she was disturbing his rest. He originally thought that his unkind treatment would cause her to give up her belief, but unexpectedly, she didn’t yield at all when it came to believing in God.
Secretly Reading the Book of God’s Words
Several months passed, and Lianfu found that Xiaojuan was completely different than before. In the past, she frequently made a scene with him over trifling things; now, even though he picked on her, she not only didn’t quarrel with him but instead showed more consideration for him. He felt puzzled, and wondered if God’s words were really able to make people change so much. He decided to get to the bottom of it all.
One day, when Xiaojuan wasn’t at home, Lianfu went to the coffee table and picked up the book of God’s words, while paying attention to the sounds outside. He opened the book and flipped through it. He came upon the following passage of God’s words by chance, “The fate of man is controlled by the hands of God. You are incapable of controlling yourself: Despite man always rushing and busying himself on his own behalf, he remains incapable of controlling himself. If you could know your own prospects, if you could control your own fate, would you still be a created being?”
Reading this passage, he thought about those words that Xiaojuan had often said to him since she started believing in God: “Man’s destiny is determined by Heaven,” “Man’s everything was all given by God,” “Man’s fate is in God’s hands,” and so on. Whenever he listened to this, he was full of conflict. Because he believed that “One’s destiny is in his own hands,” and that he would make some money as long as he learned many skills and did many jobs, he rushed around and strived for money all the time for all those years. But he still didn’t earn much money and got many illnesses instead. For example, his back hurt unbearably like there was a big stone on it. He thought, “Could it be that a person really can’t control his or her own fate, just as is said in the book?”
When pondering this question, he suddenly heard the creak of the door opening. So, he closed the book and put it back in a hurry. Just then, Xiaojuan pushed the door open and entered the room. Lianfu stood up, pretended as if nothing had happened, and paced up and down. He thought to himself: “I can’t let her notice that I have secretly read her book, or else how will I save face?”
His wife walked toward the sofa and glanced at the book which was under the coffee table. A quite smile played about her mouth. She asked him: “Have you been reading my book?”
Lianfu turned red and white in succession and felt flustered, but he still answered with assumed calm: “No, why would I read your book? I don’t believe in that stuff.” After drinking some water, Xiaojuan turned around and walked toward the kitchen. Only at that time did he take a deep breath and feel relieved.
Afterward, whenever Xiaojuan wasn’t at home, Lianfu would secretly take that book of God’s words out and read it, and then put it back where it had been.
News Came That Lao Wang Was Critically Ill
One day, when everyone was busy preparing food in the kitchen, the boss went to the door of the kitchen from the office, which was on the left of the kitchen, holding a cell phone. With a grave expression on face, he slowly said to everyone: “Lao Wang isn’t going to make it. He’s in the advanced stages of lung cancer and won’t survive long. In order to earn money, he worked hard all his life. Now, just when his living conditions have improved, he’s got such a terrible disease. And he is only 49 years old.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a dead silence fell in the kitchen. Only the sound of food frying could be heard.
One of the waitresses, wearing a dark blue T-shirt and a bandanna around her head, stopped trimming vegetables and said with an air of regret: “I heard that Lao Wang has lung cancer but thought that he could live a few more years. It’s all happened so fast.”
An older waiter said with resignation: “Heavens! Lao Wang earned money all his life, but he has never enjoyed a day’s blessings. What has his life been for?”
The news that Lao Wang was about to depart from this world caused Lianfu to feel a stab of pain in his heart. When he turned and looked to his left, where Lao Wang had once stood, his nose twitched. They once cherished the same dream and walked the same road; now, in the blink of an eye, this guy who’d worked with him was about to depart this life. He couldn’t help but sigh with emotion and thought: “Everyone works his ass off and spares no effort to make money, but who is able to predict how far death is from us while we struggle to make it? Now, death is coming to Lao Wang. Who will be next?”
To Be Continued …
Part Two: He Found a Happy Life (II)
