Chapter 30 Rare Guest

When I returned to Hangzhou, the weather was still very cold.

The shop was as deserted as ever. When Wang Meng saw my haggard face, he didn’t even recognize me at first and mistook me for a customer. I could only smile wryly.

The discussion with my friends hit me hard and left me feeling uneasy, but I couldn’t ask Uncle Three about it again—he’d probably say that I was overthinking it. With no place to vent my misery, I stayed in the shop every day and played chess with the boss next door. We talked about all the various things that happened this year, and how everyone’s shops were doing poorly. We also lamented the fact that such a leisurely life meant that we had to live off of the profits we’d already accumulated.  

Oddly enough, after I arrived in Hangzhou, I didn’t think much about all the things that bothered me before. Maybe it was because the city itself offered a sense of comfort.

I didn’t see Uncle Three for a long time, but Fatty came to visit several times and asked me to handle some things for him. This guy wasn’t the type to sit idle—he made a lot of money, but squandered it so quickly that he soon ran out. After I asked him about it, I found out that all of his money was going towards a shop in Beijing that he was setting up. Things weren’t like they used to be, where you could happily live off of ten thousand yuan, but he brought a few customers with Beijing accents to my shop several times, and even gave me some goods to sell, so I assumed that his business was taking off and he was earning a lot of money.

One particular day, I was playing chess with the boss next door and he had taken all but two of my knights. I clenched my teeth and prepared to hold out until dinnertime, but then I suddenly heard someone cursing outside. When I looked up, I saw that it was Fatty. Apparently this guy’s business was doing very well.

The boss next door had done business with Fatty before and ripped him off a lot, so as soon as he saw Fatty coming, he immediately ran away. Feeling glad that I wouldn’t have to lose any money now, I asked Fatty why he was so angry.

He cursed up a storm as he told me what happened. Apparently, he had brought two porcelain vases to Hangzhou, but one of them broke on the train ride over and he couldn’t find anyone to compensate him for it. Now all he could do was sulk.

We had become well acquainted with each other after everything, and I felt like I knew him pretty well by now, so I laughed and taunted him for cramming himself onto a train when he could have flown instead. What was he thinking?

Fatty cursed, “What do you know? There are tons of restrictions when flying now. I’m also a prominent figure in Panjiayuan, so the cops keep an eye on me. A lot of international events will take place in Beijing over the next few years, so they’ve been cleaning the place up over the past few days. They come to my shop every day and make it impossible to do business. That’s why I’ve been coming south to expand my business. Jiangnan⁽¹⁾ has a lot of trade so I can make a lot of money. But the women in Hangzhou are too fierce—I talked to one on the train to relieve my boredom and she ended up slapping me in the face. Then my fucking vase broke. Who the fuck said that Jiangnan women were as gentle as water? She almost killed me. If anything, I’d say they’re more like strong acid.”

Fatty talked about this kind of thing often, so I already had a general idea of what happened—a skinny girl wearing heavy makeup was probably sitting next to him on the train and complaining about the smell in the air. Of course, the smell was from Fatty’s stinky feet. He was already feeling bored, but then he became annoyed by her complaining and so he started taunting her, “Young lady, you’re so beautiful, but why are you so skinny? Your pant legs are like two dangling propellers that’ll start spinning as soon as the wind blows. If you fart, you might even create enough wind to generate electricity.”

She probably slapped him before he could get all the words out. I found the whole thing hilarious and told him that he was lucky he didn’t get dragged to the police station. He might not know it, but there was a crime called hooliganism in this world⁽²⁾, and what he did would definitely fall under it.

Fatty just grinned and said that if the cops saw what she looked like, they’d call him a victim instead of a hooligan.

“You know, you don’t have to come in person in the future,” I suggested. “There is this thing called express delivery. How about you invest a little money and start your own courier company? You’ll not only make the money back quickly, but as soon as the logistics are sorted out, it’d be easy to send a few grave goods along with the vehicles.”

Fatty didn’t have the brains for business management, and didn’t like listening to such complicated things, so he refused to talk about it with me. After shushing me, he said, “What do you know about making money? It’s not that I’m being stingy, I’ve just been really bored these past few months. You say that it’s pointless to spend the money you earn, but guys like us have to help each other out in this business. This is the true meaning of life. By the way, your uncle was a mediator lama until recently, right? Why hasn’t there been any news from him?”

I told him that I hadn’t been in contact with Uncle Three very much. To be honest, it felt like there was a gap between us after that incident—he didn’t want to see me, and I didn’t want to see him. Even when we happened to meet a few times, I didn’t have anything to say to him.

Fatty didn’t seem to care and just said, “Well, if he comes across anything interesting, give me a call. My bones have been itching for something to do after being idle these past few months.”

I smiled while thinking to myself, after all that talk, you’re still only interested in money. But aloud I said, “You have such a strange disposition. After all that money you made, why are you so dissatisfied?”

“There’s always a taller mountain out there, always someone better than you,” he replied. “Panjiayuan is living proof of that—it’s a sea of generous customers, each a secretly rich person hiding all the good things at home. They say that you need to strive for something in life, so why can’t you strive to be richer even if you already have money?”

I laughed and told him that there was certainly some truth to that.

At this time, a person suddenly poked their head into the shop and asked in a cheerful voice, “Boss, are you open for business?”

Fatty, who was idly scratching his leg, looked up and sneered when he caught sight of the person, “Oh, it’s you?”

When I turned to look, I saw that it was A Ning. She was wearing a crop top and jeans, giving off such a different vibe from when we were out at sea that I didn’t even recognize her at first.

A Ning and I hadn’t spoken since we returned from Changbai Mountain. I did ask around to see how she was doing, but never heard anything back. And now she had suddenly come to me. Needless to say, I was very surprised.

A Ning glared at Fatty but ultimately ignored him before gracefully walking around my shop and saying to me, “Not bad. The antiquated atmosphere is very charming.”

This is an antique shop, I thought to myself. What, were you expecting surrealism décor? But instead of voicing my thoughts, all I said was, “Such a rare guest. What can I do for you?”

She gave me a slightly disappointed look—probably sensing my attitude—and then paused before saying, “You’re very straightforward. In that case, I won’t bother being polite either. I came to see if you’d invite me out to dinner. What do you say?”

<Part I: Chapter 29><Table of Contents><Chapter 31>

****

TN Notes:

(1) Jiangnan is a geographic area in China referring to lands immediately to the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze river.

(2) Hooliganism was a crime initially codified in Article 160 of the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China between 1979 and 1997. It was known as a “pocket crime” (a catch-all offense) because it was so broadly defined and ambiguously worded that prosecutors could apply it to almost any activity they deemed undesirable, even if it may not otherwise meet the standards of criminality. Here’s the statutory language: Where an assembled crowd engages in brawls, creates disturbances, humiliates women, or engages in other hooligan activities that undermine public order, if the circumstances are flagrant, the offenders shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than seven years, criminal detention, or public surveillance.

****

My bad guys, I didn’t mean to go MIA for so many days. I was just too tired after work 😅