1
In the morning on an empty stomach, when the sun has not yet climbed, Xiao He has been sitting in front of the bun store smoking.
The dense undulating, cooking smoke again, is one of the few idyllic scenes of life that people miss. Xiao He was the owner of a bakery that enjoyed the smoke and mirrors, and was also the owner of a small two-story restaurant – of course, that was before the epidemic broke out. Today, he can only sit at the door and smoke.
Before that, every day at five or six o’clock, when a few regular customers came in and sat down, Xiao He always took advantage of the short time when the buns were still in the pot for a few minutes to chat with them about family matters. When the conversation is almost over, he runs into the kitchen and shouts, “Your beef and scallion buns are steamed…”
The lilt of this sentence, as well as the chatting, is learned from Beijing.
He graduated from high school in 2012, did not go to college, and went to Beijing to work alone. He learned to add a bit of tone to every sentence in an old Beijing noodle store – after all, the boss and the patrons all felt that the noodles were authentic when shouted in Beijing. As a result, the northeastern teenager Xiao He was at his most bloodthirsty when his mouth was full of “your noodles!”
Xiao He saw this as a kind of growth, he didn’t feel that he lost anything, at least he learned the old Beijing slice soup words. Of course, he was not willing to squander his good years on “shouting”, he was eager to succeed, eager to fill his dried up dreams with money. 4 years later, he found a business opportunity in a bungalow area in Haidian.
It was the place Xiao He had rented when he first arrived in Beijing, with a humid environment, insects and rats, and a community of more than 2,000 people, almost all of whom were foreigners who had come to Beijing to work. The bungalows here are high and low, with yellow tiles or crimson tiles, and the walls at the corners of the hutongs are plastered with small advertisements, and when you look up at the sky, there are wires coming and going, weaving left and hanging right, connected to many poles.
Xiao He once told me that the “living atmosphere” there made him very comfortable, in his eyes, the style of this community is like a scattered “Kowloon Walled City”, and he could even shoot the interwoven wires “Hong Kong style “the feeling. But this huge dreamer hub is the only one without a bath, where do people go to wash away the dirt of the world so that they can glow with the light of their dreams?
With his own savings in Beijing and his family’s financial support, Xiao He planned to do something big. He wandered around one hutong after another and finally found an abandoned bathhouse – the landlady had no energy to open it and it had been abandoned for many years. Once there should be a hairdressing and facial repair and bath combined together in a high-grade bath, the bath everything he took a picture of with his cell phone: a long wide porch side of the wall, there is a large dusty mirror, the mirror in front of what must have been a barber store, and then social changes, resulting in the landlady had to demolish it half rented out to earn money, and this “high-grade bath “a separate court.
The traces of the entrance of the bath show that there may have been two dark blue thick cotton curtains hung here, one with “male” and one with “female”, which were blown by the passing breeze, revealing a gap that bore hot air like a sigh; the dressing room was very small, and there was also A mirror, compared to the porch mirror, is simply a small home, the perennial water vapor makes it from the edge of the coffee-colored rust spread inward, like the tentacles of plants wrapped around every person who looks in the mirror; inside the real shower room has six or seven nozzles, the floor tiles broken in different ways, from the old and new tiles and cement marks can be seen, where the original can take a bath, only the hot tub was later also demolished by the mother The hot tub was later demolished.
The bath reopened in the hands of Xiao He, he worked here, food and housing here. He never took a picture of his hot and humid bedroom with his cell phone as a souvenir, but I can only imagine that one summer night when he finished cleaning the two baths, he went to the door and locked it, walked side-by-side with himself in the side mirror across the long porch, and fell headlong into the humid and hot bedroom, lying on top of the day’s thick fatigue and persistence.
Xiao He remembered what happened at that time, it will reveal a big, treacherous smile: “At that time, a lot of people came, I will do the card, in the online learning of fast money back, quite reasonable, right? I am most happy to give the child card, the child (card) always lost, I am a small business, the most expected is the customer lost card. I’m not going to give a replacement, hey, only a new one, I also do not give a penny cheaper.”
As the narrative unfolds, smile and gaze some: “At that time I thought people would not be so much, who knew that a rubbing is rubbing a day, there are many people did not give money, or did not give rubbing money, I also confused to people rubbing.”
When he said the word “did not pay”, my heart seemed to be slowly chopped with a knife, as if a child pointed you to a deserted intersection and said “he stole my lollipop”, you asked him “where is the person “, he said timidly “ran away, did not catch up”. Xiao He said, his bath at the time “bath with rubbing” is 25 yuan, and do a monthly card is only 150 yuan, less than 2 months, he “back” nearly 30,000 yuan. This money for Beijing, it is no big deal, but for Xiao He, but like seeing the hope, run a single what can not care, he only want the community of more than two thousand people, all come to him to take a bath card.
He did not want to spend a lot of money to repair those often do not come out of the water or out of the water on the scattered flowers of the nozzle, they use a toothbrush dipped in vinegar, a day brush, Beijing’s water quality is too hard, even so, “not too good”; he also could not afford to pay someone to unclog the sewers often blocked over the years, preferring to grind the ground, with their own bought water pipes and cement to connect back and forth to change, so often thirty to forty days can not use the toilet; square floor tiles cracked into tortoise stone, he did not go to change – not can not change, just a change can not start.
“Those years is really water circuit plumbing gas, everything will do.” He said.
I asked him, is there no female scrubbers? Xiao He’s treacherous mouth again: “I want to give them rub, people can not let ah – I want to hire one, and then thought, can not afford to hire, forget it. So there has been no female scrubbers.”
As it turns out, he was right to engage in the “quick return of funds”, he quickly paid back the family money. I guess that may be his family left him wedding money, otherwise it would not be so quick to give him, so he joked with him: “You find a female scrub, two people are not a companion.”
“A companion to suffer from poverty?” Xiao He faced my question directly, the answer is not a sense of humor. “A rub rub a day, fingertips a day down soak even fingerprints are not, but also run single, the faucet is often broken, you do not know how much work! At that time I took dishwashing detergent brush dishes, brush the bowl, hands shed a layer of skin, the next day have to wear gloves to people rub.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
“It hurts! First it stings and scratches, then it hurts, and then it swells. Which good girl with me ah?”
After saying that, Xiao He lit another cigarette.
2
When the bath is just on the right track, the fire in Daxing, attracted the “Planning Office” and “Comprehensive Management Office”, the boiler was smashed, the bath was also closed.
“You did not think to go to plead?”
“I fucking did! I went into the community yard and saw countless pancake carts, countless teppanyaki machines, countless lamp signs, I was afraid, I went back ah …… “finished, his lips trembled and lit a cigarette.
I want to say a word of comfort, but never find a suitable. Perhaps there is no right or wrong in this kind of thing, the so-called great times, that is, who does not put the little people in the eyes of the times.
A small good man in the Northeast of the difficult years
Later Xiao He took the claim like so much and saved not much money, bowed out and went back home. Retreat back, he did not find a suitable house again to open the bath, in my grandmother’s home next to the community to do breakfast.
Breakfast and bath are two forces, one is to stand a day, rub a day, a busy morning, idle an afternoon. Xiao He always enthusiastically shouted Beijing childish voice of the northeast, get up early and bread buns, run to sell near the university, into the neighborhood to sell.
Doing pasta, Xiao He is a layman, but the good thing is that hardship has taught people a serious way of life. Xiao He also followed the master in Beijing to learn a few hands “bun work”, he blew with me: “We are good to learn, more than one craft is always more road.”
Xiao He rented the store, although small, but the street, both sides of the street is two neighborhoods, two neighborhoods are government units of the family building, more elderly, more government personnel, with “not often do breakfast” characteristics. The elderly in these two communities are almost all taken over by their children’s retirement status, life is mostly semi-autonomous, is “children’s children”, both boring and uncomfortable, looking at the blessings, but also like an invisible shackle. The elderly are more or less willing to add some fun to their boring old age, so Xiao He’s quick wit and talkative nature is well appreciated by all.
He prepares four kinds of buns every day: pork and mushroom buns learned from a noodle shop, beef and scallion buns improved from halal restaurant beef roast pork, and chicken and vegetarian buns he learned on his cell phone. Every time he mentioned the improved beef and scallion, he would think of the imam who taught him to wrap the roast pork, and smiled when he finished, his eyes shining with a silky light, remembering from afar the few good people he had met.
Xiao He also said to me, “Go into the meat, people know that you open a breakfast store, are recommended to you blood neck meat or trough head meat.”
As a medical student, I heard a shock, never thought that no one wants the meat on the neck will be mixed into the meat filling.
Xiao He explained to me: “I do not know what the original blood neck meat can be, lymph is how, and then know when the straight disgust – if you eat bad, how to lose conscience, ah, if I adulterated those meat you can not eat out, as every day to come.” Xiao He told me in detail about the practice of blood neck meat: the normal process of curing meat and filling, adding additives like “a drop of incense”, “Meat King”, the dose is calculated according to the mood, and then to the normal filling mixed with thirty to fifty percent of the blood neck Meat froth, or even if bold, can be mixed with more.
“You really do not mix some blood neck? That may save a lot of cost ah.” I said to him.
He grunted and said dismissively, “It’s either a retired old man or a kid going to school, there’s no need for that, if it opens in the street, I’m not sure.”
The way he spread his hands to reveal his “trade secrets” to me was as if he was showing off to me: I could have done this, but I didn’t. This is his way of speaking as a child, seemingly deceitful, but in fact innocent, telling you clearly: I do bad things you do not know, but I did not do. The way to do it, proudly like a TV series years ago, Wang Zhiwen played the black boss finally ambushed when the eloquent talk.
I can only sigh, society is forging people unusually fast.
3
Every day, Xiao He will put five or six “special” beef and scallion buns in the highest cage drawer back to the cage once, that is the favorite of Master Wang, “swirled with flowers of the buns, steamed through the cage drawer, the oil soup to the buns collapsed the bottom, get a sip of the mouth can swallow “. This kind of bun, he has to be specially prepared for Master Wang every day, if one day Master Wang did not come, the next day Xiao He will “criticize” Master Wang did not contract spirit – after all, such a big steam strength of the bun, not many customers love to eat.
There is also a 2 chicken bun plus a vegetarian bun “set”, also to be prepared in advance of the ordinary working day. “Nowadays, kids are so busy that they can’t even eat breakfast in peace.” He said, “Just look at it, every day there is a woman holding a fat kid whose eyes are not yet open.”
The woman won’t let the child eat pork buns for fear of gaining weight, and won’t let the child eat beef buns, saying they are juicy and don’t wash well on the school uniform, but she never buys herself beef and pork ones.
I have admired Xiao He’s sophistication in observing his guests. He was not impressed, there are a few disappointed: “Life – like when I was in the noodle shop, some people often come, love to eat thick and thin noodles, more spicy more cucumbers, love a little sugar and garlic or something; or people to rub, who skin is tender, who eat strength, do not grasp the understanding, people come back next time? “
Finally, he also showed off a little and said, “This is life experience!”
I think, indeed, this is his life experience, a simple, no need to condescending sentiment, for the goodness of life, out of the intention of survival, and for the benefit of all. He steamed buns from the cage drawer, collected money, and served his familiar patrons plates of their favorite pickles. He looked at the old people sunbathing under the wall, will also come over to talk, he clearly know, which is a retired old cadres, to timely comment on current affairs and politics; which is a retired teacher, to chatter a few now children’s school problems; which is a chess basketball, something to follow a game. In short, ushered in between, Xiao He is at ease, is the most trusted by the elderly on both sides of the street to know people.
I also asked him, why not go to the university canteen to package a canteen, that more money ah. He said to me, “I didn’t think about it, but I think college students are too wasteful nowadays, and it hurts me to look at the leftovers, and I’m used to living a hard life, so I can’t see anyone being wasteful.” I poked him with words: “Then no one in your store wasted? Money is not less for you to get!”
Xiao He replied very plainly: “Old men and women really do not waste.”
I think, he did not go to the university cafeteria to do, perhaps not just the problem of students waste – he has been to the big city to fight all the way, has long been aware of the almost instinctive stereotypes brought to people’s minds by education. In the university cafeteria, the money may not be too much more than now, but when you see people about the same age as yourself are playing, reading and doing problems, the future of life there are countless possibilities, he will not have a sense of helplessness – he already had a “business failure The “experience”, early to become a “social” – just like people who did not do well in the college entrance exams, every year in June will be secretly regret a little like that.
“Mr. He, why were you so stubborn back then, you just didn’t study?” I asked again.
He always don’t look away, don’t (ignore) me.
In the following days, Xiao He began to make simple chokecherries for some construction sites in the afternoon during free time. In his bun store opened more than a year later, my grandmother yelled that the bowl of the bun store downstairs has a pattern, perfect for her kind of elderly people who have little hand strength to grab.
I went to the bakery that afternoon and saw Xiao He Dao Ming about it. I wanted to buy a few bowls for my grandmother, who knew that he said graciously: “The elderly need you to take one or two, buy it can not talk about, not a few money.”
I was embarrassed, bought enough buns to eat for several days, and took two bowls back. I did not expect that after ten days, Xiao He went to the store to the elderly over 60 years old, each sent a bowl – although a total of a few money, but for a small bun store, is also a big deal.
I asked him how he came up with this trick, he just bared his teeth and said two words: “means!”
A playful braggadocio, let people also sound warm. Later I understood that the bowl, in fact, not only means, but also carries a goodwill – bun store in the two neighborhoods of the elderly are so popular, still need to use what “means”.
And, this bowl, should still be Xiao He to say goodbye to the elderly.
4
After sending bowls to the elderly, Xiao He changed to a regular restaurant.
He invested almost all of his money, rented the upper and lower two floors of nearly 230 square meters of the house, the monthly rent of 6,000 yuan, simple decoration and spent 130,000.
Xiao He is convinced that everyone is convinced that the world is finally going to give a return to the children who are trying to catch up – compared to his peers, Xiao He is indeed still a scarred child – he wants to earn a lot of money to get back his aggravation of the previous years.
2019 down, the hotel is not a boom, but also smooth sailing. At the end of the year, Xiao He like other businesses hit the “New Year’s Eve dinner” routine, to engage in 388, 588, 888 New Year’s Eve dinner set. Xiao He good business affordable, full reservation is reasonable.
In mid-December, I met him at his restaurant when he was eating, his hair and face smeared with grease, his nails stuffed with black mud. He crossed his legs and shouted to me: “Bring old men and women to eat at my place for New Year’s Eve! Keep your seat, you can be sure to keep the 5:30 to 8:00 point!”
I went forward and pushed him, but unfortunately did not feel from his pocket to smoke, and he teased two sentences, found that he spoke nothing Beijing taste.
Perhaps the virus was already in Wuhan at this time, but it did not affect the song and dance of a fifth-tier city in the northeast. Xiao He purchased a large freezer that night to store vegetables, he heard that some restaurants prepared 500,000 to 600,000 “material” ready to do a big job, he only hate their own money, not so many ingredients, so the pig’s nose into the onion, a decent way to move the vegetables in the basement to the freezer, to give themselves relief.
January 24, New Year’s Eve as promised, the banquet as promised, from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. the next day, Xiao He’s hotel turned over 63 tables, he kept sending friends, each with a tooth-baring smile emoji.
January 25, the province launched the “emergency response to public health emergencies,” less than a week, “the ban on group meals”.
This is where Xiao He’s circle of friends broke off.
I went to him because I needed to stock up on food. Thinking that he probably has a lot of vegetables to hoard in the restaurant waiting for mold, I sent him a WeChat to ask: “Brother, do you have pork? And coronary? Now the supermarket can not buy ah!”
He ignored me.
I then asked, “Brother, do you have a mask?”
Still no reply.
Later that night, he replied to me with certainty: “(The ban) is only until the 15th of the first month! Can still not let the people eat?”
By the 15th of the first month, he sent me two WeChats.
“Brother, do you have a mask?”
“Brother, you need any dish you come to get, not bad for you this.”
Every day after that, Xiao He still sits at the door of his hotel, as if waiting for the paperwork of the snow, looking to God to let the epidemic pass. He was thinking about the 130,000 for the renovation, while thinking about the dishes hoarded in the freezer, and he said he thought of Beijing again, and everything was not going well.
When we met again after New Year’s Eve dinner, we both wore a blue mask. He was still sitting with his arms nestled deep in his stomach, his palms wrapped around half his face from the chin up. When he saw me, he popped out the words: “What you need, just take it, no money, anyway, it’s not new.”
The two of us walked one after the other in the hot restaurant on New Year’s Eve, two large freezers on either side emitting a succession of “buzzing” sounds. I took a lot of dishes, he leaned against the wall to see my hands carrying dishes, laughing: “I am money every day na, now the dishes are also wilted, several power outages, fish is also melted and frozen, make out dishes must be fishy – hiss, this fucking God does not let people live ah. “
I can only talk to him about the situation: “are slowly getting better, the figures are decreasing every day.”
“Waiting for the resumption of work, it is estimated that another seven or eight days will be fine!”
Said seven or eight days, all of a sudden it lasted two months. I did not go back to Xiao He to get the food, I deeply regret my recklessness, feel that time to get the food, as if a dude in front of the old man to discuss the inheritance of the general unkindness, this unkindness is small, but also cruel.
Xiao He is still sitting withered day after day. In his circle of friends, he forwarded daily, one after another, the tragic situation of many places closed restaurants due to the epidemic, as well as those who used some big business owners wailing remarks as a gimmick of the headline party. One after another, the closing signs were as heavy as if someone had put a black box over their names.
I clicked on an article titled “Orange Hotel Founder Wu Hai: I am a small and medium-sized business I will not live to see April”, the words are earnest, the number of specific, read the whole article shocking.
Xiao He cursed and lamented in his circle of friends, and even lamented like an irrelevant commentator on the Internet. I think it is very understandable – every step of his way, almost linked to the network message, relying on the set of online teaching “fast money back” to make their business bigger, he does not have any discernment for the network, see the clouds is rain, not the slightest doubt. Now, open the phone are bad news, fighting to Xiao He eyes.
Like in Beijing, everyone suffered the same thing, the virus will not open a convenient door for him alone. Like that time, Xiao He chose to give up, too many people are concerned about him, but almost no one knows the extent of the festering wound in his heart. I believe his renunciation has a bitter release, his experience makes him not have a teenage heroism, he honestly spread his hands, accept all the banter.
5
On March 3, 2020, the provincial catering was approved to resume work.
Just a day before the notice was released, Xiao He also posted a message in his circle of friends seeking to sell boiler cookware and two 80 to 90 percent new freezers.
I hastily called to tell him the good news, but he was not a bit surprised: “Hey, I saw it, yeah, finally I can open the door, but I may still have to go to open a breakfast restaurant.”
“Dude, it’s not that bad, you can’t even have tens of thousands of dollars to turn over, right?”
I couldn’t stop Xiao He. I realized that he borrowed the money for hoarding vegetables, and didn’t start work for nearly two months, but the landlord didn’t give him a rent reduction – who made the landlord also in the restaurant business. Moreover, the workers of the restaurant are to be at home to farm, and can not hire people to start work for a short time. Xiao He can only give up, and is a decisive stop-loss, give up a stable source of customers, give up a flourishing restaurant, give up his entire fortune to buy appliances and the 130,000 renovations, perhaps so, but also to retain a breakfast store’s old capital.
The last day of the sale, I caught up with. Xiao He expressionlessly put one after another small induction cooker on the floor, that expression, probably in the year when the bath in Beijing, the porch of the long mirror also reflected.
“Take a look, 30 yuan a piece.” He spread his hands and said to me feebly.
I weighed up a few knives that I normally wouldn’t use at home and gave him 100 yuan. He took the money did not push back: “You na – I thought this knife will have to throw away, I did not expect someone still know the goods ah.”
“You do not need kitchen utensils to open a breakfast restaurant? Do not keep a few pieces ah?” I asked.
Xiao He looked at me, looked at his feet and muttered, “No!”
When we left for the night, there were only a few pots and pans left, and Xiao He struggled to step on each stainless steel object and kick it out heavily, like a gas leak.
I shouted at him, “You don’t close the roll-up door, do you?”
He stretched the mouthpiece in his pocket and said to me, “Who can steal?”
His Beijing accent was back, and he was smoking and shaking, much like Wang Baoqiang’s Mr. Tree, like a tree that hadn’t grown well and had been struck by lightning, like a thing that no longer fought against anything.
I wanted to ask Xiao He if he needed to lend him some money to tide him over or something, but after thinking about it, also dumb in the heart – in a few days after I decided not to take vegetables from him, he sent me a WeChat to tell me “don’t come”, vegetables ah meat ah what, were taken away by his original suppliers “big brother”.
I later arrived when I saw the empty scene: two “buzzing” freezers empty, the original shiny display cabinets on the big dishes sign also do not know where to go. Xiao He is young, know all the way to friends are called “brother”. He said, “They came, talk to me, with a smile on his face, took away, I did not stop.”
As he mixes the bun filling does not mix “blood neck meat”, those suppliers of “set” he is not involved. But his hotel rose to prominence, so when he heard that he closed the store, a bunch of people came to see his joke – you are not kind to send dishes, then I will take them all away, anyway, your hotel is not open, I also took away the vegetable plate by hand.
Xiao He has little desire to talk to these types of people, send out also clean. He is surrounded by poor relatives, want to borrow money to turn around, or to rely on these “brothers”, but this “robbery” plus ridicule, so Xiao He to these numb, gloating people, also lost confidence.
Just like Camus’ “The Plague”, when the epidemic is in full swing, we slowly become accustomed to it and seek to protect ourselves, but perhaps after the epidemic is over, our lives will continue to be the same, and the mutual struggle between people will not change.
Postscript
The most recent contact I had with Xiao He was when I sent him a WeChat asking him what he wanted to do next.
He replied to me many days later, “I’m going to drive a big car, run long distance, earn money while I’m young.”
I wanted to tell him that if the original bun store was still dry, it must be particularly crowded. But Xiao He told me, “Those people are waiting to see my joke, they specifically called me to say that the second half of the meat and vegetable prices have risen, and told me that if I still want to do, I will find a house.”
Xiao He was furious, he and these “brothers” tore his face, hating them in the very period did not help him a hand, but also look at his jokes. Never had a cold heart turned into an outbreak of anger, he can no longer do in the city and catering related things, and even indignant to go to the market supervision bureau to report these people. But the words have come to this, and there is no more.
The old neighbors on both sides of the street, always thinking about Xiao He can come back to open a store, what store is good, the main thing is that the child is likeable, but the same did not follow.
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