When it comes to our Huaqiao Rongji, that signboard is well-known. Of course, I'm referring to the rice noodle shop opened by our grandfather in Huaqiaotou, outside the East Gate of Guilin. Huang Tianrong's rice noodles, in the city of Guilin, who doesn't know? Which one doesn't know? Grandpa started by selling horse meat rice noodles, two small dollars a plate, a day always sell a hundred plates, come a little later, and eat it. I still remember my grandmother threading those small copper plates one by one with red velvet thread, laughing so much that her mouth couldn't close together, pointing at me and saying, "Sister, you don't have to worry about your dowry in the future." Even those big mansions in Guilin City often come to order our rice noodles, I went with my grandmother to deliver the goods, and the big mansion ladies saw me pretty, talking interestingly, and stuffed a handful of reward money into my bag, calling me "rice noodle girl".
The Huaqiao Rongji that I opened myself doesn't have those scenery. I never dreamed that I would go to Taipei and open a restaurant again. My husband is not a businessman, he was born in the army on the mainland, and I have been the wife of a battalion commander for a few years. Who knew that the battle in northern Jiangsu had beaten my husband to the point where his whereabouts were unknown, and in a panic, our family members withdrew to Taiwan. In the first few years, I asked around, and then I often dreamed of my husband at night, always covered in blood, and I knew that he had gone first. I am a woman's family, living in Taipei, I have to have some plans, and I finally opened this snack shop at the bottom of Changchun Road. As soon as the proprietress became a benevolent girl, I could call their names when I closed my eyes.
Most of the people who come to eat in our store are some small civil servants who eat their own food—clerks of the city government, teachers in schools, and clerks of the district office—all of them have shriveled purses, and they are just some home-cooked food, and trying to squeeze them a few more drops of oil and water is even more difficult than grinding an old cow. However, over the years, it has been all thanks to the help of these poor customers that this store has been propped up.
Among the customers, many of them are our fellow villagers in Guangxi, in order to eat some hometown flavor, they come to us here for many years, especially in our store, all of them are Guangxi Yankees. When everyone chats, it is inevitable that they will be able to climb three or five relatives. Some of them have been eating for three years and five years, and some have eaten until the last bite of food. Like that old man Li, who used to do a big timber business in Liuzhou, people called him "Li Bancheng", saying that he was a house in the city, and he accounted for half of it. The son opened a grocery store in Taichung, threw the old man alone in Taipei, and remitted a check in half a year. He had been cooking in our store for eight years, and he smashed two dozen of my rice bowls, because his hands were pulling chicken feet like crazy, and he trembled when he picked up the bowl. The old guy loves to sing "Heavenly Thunder", and when he sings it, he has a handful of snot and two lines of tears. That night, he ordered a table of dishes by himself, ate all of them, and said that it was his seventieth birthday, and then he knew that he would hang himself the next day. We all ran to see the old man hanging from a big dead tree in the little park at the mouth of our alley, a pair of torn cotton shoes on the ground, and a black felt hat tumbling beside it. I begged his son for the money he owed for food, and I was robbed of it by the knife.
We opened a restaurant to do business, not to open an almshouse, where can we withstand the arrears of these diners, it is also my flattery, and I let Qin Lezi eat in my store for nothing for half a year. He did a good job in the city government, ran to molest other female employees, and was fired, so he went crazy, I think eighty percent is a nymphomaniac! He said that when he was the county magistrate in Rong County, Guangxi, he also begged two little wives. One time he was also fussy with the female customer in our store, so I kicked him out. He walked down the street, tilting his head, squinting his eyes, his right hand stretched out in the air, scratching and fishing, his mouth full of white bubbles, shouting: "Get out!" I don't care about you! The county magistrate is here. One day he went to the vegetable market and touched the milk of a vegetable seller, who took a flat pole and covered his head with a stick, and beat him on the spot until his forehead bloomed. When a typhoon hit in August last year, Changchun Road was flooded, and all the tables and chairs in our store drifted away. When the water receded, a nest of dead chickens and dead cats came out of the big ditch on Changchun Road, some of which were so rotten that maggots were born, and when the sun brooked, a street stinked. When the Health Bureau came to disinfect and salvage, they hooked Qin Leper from the bottom of the ditch, and the sludge he was wrapped in, hard, like a big turtle with four feet facing the sky, and no one knew when he fell into the ditch.
To be honest, it's not me who protects us Guilin people, our Guilin place has beautiful mountains and rivers, and the characters are different. Rongxian, Wuning, those corners ran out, grinning one by one. is full of local dialects, and I always think there are some seedlings and seeds. Where can we fight for Guilin people? As soon as you stand up, men and women, who doesn't have a little bit of the aura of mountains and rivers? I said to those old light poles: You don't mistakenly look at my Chunmeng woman, when I was in Guilin, I was still a famous beauty outside the Shuidong Gate! I was in charge of our grandfather's shopkeeper, and the military men of the Guilin camp gathered in groups at the door of our rice noodle shop, like flies seeing blood, and they couldn't drive them away, and my husband took me like that. It is no wonder that we are full of green mountains and green water, and people's eyes have been brightened, and their skin has been washed white. When have you ever seen a place like Taipei? This year's typhoon, next year's earthquake, even if you are a beautiful woman, you can't withstand the torture of these wind and rain!
Among the guests who are serving the rice, Mr. Lu is the only one who is our little fellow villager in Guilin, you don't need to ask at a glance, you know. People know etiquette and mathematics, and he is a very regular reader, and he has been a Mr. Mandarin in Changchun National School for many years. He just came to our store to eat, I remember it was only thirty-five or sixteen, a sven way, his eyes did not rise, his mouth did not open, he sat down and stuffed his head to pick up the rice, only when I served him food, he leaned over and said with a smile: You shouldn't be, boss lady. Mr. Lu was a thin man, tall, with a bit of a rickety back, a nose with onions, and a white face, and his silhouette was still there, and he should have been a very decent look; But somehow, he turned his hair gray first, laughed, and the corners of his eyes were deeply wrinkled, looking very old and a little lacking in blood. I often bumped into him on the street, leading a large group of bouncing elementary school students behind him, and when he was across the street, he would stand at the intersection and run across the street. Somehow, seeing his very patient countenance reminded me of the great tame rooster I had raised, and that rooster had chicks, and that rooster used to hatch a flock of chicks under its wings with its wings open.
After chatting, I learned that Mr. Lu's grandfather turned out to be Mrs. Lu Xingchang. Uncle Lu used to be a Taoist platform in Hunan, and he was a famous benevolent person in Guilin, and he ran the Peidao Middle School outside the Shuidong Gate. Grandma Lu loves to eat our original soup rice noodles in Rong Ji, and I have followed our grandmother to the Lu Mansion.
"Mr. Lu," I said to him, "I have been to a decent mansion in your house before! ”
He smiled, for a long time, and said:
"The mainland retreats, and our own army burns it all out."
"Oh,." I sighed. I still remember that their garden was full of red and white peony flowers.
So, can you blame me for favoring Mr. Lu? People were not good families and good houses in the past, and they also fell into trouble. People are self-contained, and they don't get a word of gossip. Where are the other Guangxi seedlings? Smashed the bowl and smashed the chopsticks, and the chicken and cat screamed. There are endless complaints in my stomach, picking that there is sand in our rice and flies in our dishes. I can't help but be angry, this year, to keep my life is to create, not to give in, but to talk about it! I don't care about their eyes, I always have to add some ingredients to Mr. Lu's dishes, the beef is fishy, and the pork is lean. I always have to cook once a week, make a bowl of hot rice noodles: braised beef liver, louver belly: coriander sesame oil poured, sprinkled with a handful of fried peanuts, hot and served, I dare to say, Taipei can't find a second one, what Yunnan cross-bridge rice noodles! This bowl of rice noodles was given to Mr. Lu for a tooth sacrifice, and I scolded him like this, but it wasn't for Xiuhua.
Xiuhua is my husband's niece, and the man is also a soldier, and he is a platoon commander, and there is no news about the same on the mainland. Xiuhua always refused to give up, waited left and right, knitted twine for others in the hemp bag factory, and knitted calluses on both hands, but she was our Guilin girl in the end, clean and upright. I grabbed her and broke her.
"Good girl," I said, "you have a relationship with Ah Wei, and it is good for you to be distracted for the rest of your life." But when you look at your aunt, it's a good example for you. Don't I have a relationship with your uncle yet? Today, your aunt and so on have become like this-it's not that I regret it, I knew it was so, I made up my mind more than ten years ago, even if Ah Wei is still here, you may not see him, what if he is gone? Your hard work, good girl, I'm afraid that it will be used in vain. ”
Xiuhua finally moved her heart, hid her face and cried bitterly. It's someone else, and I'm too lazy to do a lot of things, but Xiuhua and Mr. Lu are both from Guilin, and if the two are matched, it will be an excellent marriage. As for Mr. Lu's side, I even inquired about his home. His landlord, Mrs. Gu, is my mahjong partner, that Hubei mother-in-law, with a knife mouth, the world falls into her mouth, don't think about being superborn, but she is protective of Mr. Lu in every way. She said that she had never seen a man with such rules, saving food and money, except for pulling strings and humming a few board plays, she didn't have any hobbies. Every night, there are always five or six elementary school students who come to tutor. The money was used to raise chickens.
"Those chickens are Mr. Lu's grandparents and grandparents!" Mrs. Gu smiled, "Your family hasn't seen him waiting for those chickens yet, that patience!" ”
Every Chinese New Year, Mr. Lu would carry two large cages of Luhua chickens to the vegetable market to sell, one by one with bright red crowns and shiny feathers - always weighing five or six catties, I also bought two, and cut a large bowl of fat on the buttocks. According to Mrs. Gu's estimates, over the years, Mr. Lu's savings are at least forty or fifty thousand, and his wife can afford it.
So on Chinese New Year's Eve, I detained both Mr. Lu and Xiuhua, made a table of Guilin dishes, and scalded a pot of hot Shaoxing wine. I pulled and pulled, pulled and pulled, and pulled together. Xiuhua was a little interesting, although he pursed his mouth and smiled, but Mr. Lu was such a big man, but he was ashamed, I encouraged him to drink two glasses with Xiuhua, and he blushed.
"Mr. Lu, what do you think of our Xiuhua?" The next day I stopped him and asked. He hesitated for a long time and couldn't answer.
"We Xiuhua praise you!" I looked at him and smiled.
"No kidding—" he stammered.
"What are you kidding?" I cut him off, "Please invite me, I'll be your matchmaker, I'm ready to eat this cup of wine-"
"Boss lady," Mr. Lu suddenly lowered his face and said solemnly, "Please don't mess around, I'm on the mainland, and I've been engaged a long time ago." ”
After saying that, he twisted his head and left. I was so angry that I trembled all over, and I couldn't speak for a long time, there are such uncreated men in the world! He still wants to eat the steaming rice noodles I made! Who is not three hundred and five months of food money? It's all fatty pork! Later, several times he came to talk to me, I ignored it, until Xiuhua got married, and married a very rich businessman, I slowly lost the breath in my heart, in the end he is from Guilin, if it is a foreigner!
One in September, on a hot day in the autumn tiger, I sweated in the store for a day, and at five or six o'clock in the afternoon, I couldn't stay up, so I handed over the shop to our master, took a fan, and walked to the small park at the entrance of the alley, to blow the wind, breathe. Under the elm tree in the park, there are a few stone benches for people to rest on. I caught a glimpse of Mr. Lu sitting there alone. He was wearing a sweatshirt and a pair of wooden shoes, his head bowed, and he was concentrating on pulling the strings. As soon as I heard that he was actually playing our Guilin opera, I couldn't help but feel itchy. Once upon a time in Guilin, I was a big opera fan, Xiao Jinfeng and Seven-year-old Red sang operas, and I went to see them every day.
"Mr. Lu, you can also play in Guilin!" I walked up to him and said.
He hurriedly stood up and beckoned me, and replied:
"It's nothing, I sing it myself."
I sat down next to him and sighed.
"It would be nice to listen to Xiao Jinfeng sing again."
"I love to listen to her play the most." Mr. Lu replied with a smile.
"That's it, her "Back to the Kiln" sang people's hearts!"
I said that I begged Mr. Lu for a long time, and he adjusted the strings and sang a paragraph of "Xue Pinggui Returns to the Kiln". I didn't expect him to sing Danjiao, with a very clear voice, a little Jinfeng: Eighteen years old Wang Baochuan - I can't help but feel a little stinging when I hear it.
"Third Sister Wang has waited for eighteen years, and Xue Pinggui has been waiting-" Mr. Lu took a break, and I breathed a sigh of relief and said to him, Mr. Lu smiled and didn't make a sound.
"Mr. Lu, whose fiancée is your young lady?" I asked him.
"It's Luo Jinshan's Luo family."
"Oh, it's their girl—" I told Mr. Lu that in Guilin, I used to go to Luo's house to buy their brocade, and their business was very vigorous at that time. Mr. Lu listened silently, and did not answer, and after a while, he whispered thoughtfully:
"I grew up with her, and she was my classmate." Mr. Lu smiled, two wrinkles appeared in the corners of his eyes, and as he spoke, he lowered his head, adjusted the strings again, and pulled them up casually. The sun went down, the sky was dark and red, and a gust of wind blew on his body, warm and damp, and Mr. Lu's gray hair trembled. I leaned on the back of the stone bench, closed my eyes, listened to Mr. Lu's throat babbling with a little sad string sound, hazy, and fell asleep. Suddenly, I saw Xiao Jinfeng and seven-year-old Hong playing "Back to the Kiln" on stage, and suddenly Xue Pinggui became my husband again, and ran over on horseback.
"The hostess—"
When I opened my eyes, I saw that Mr. Lu had already put away the strings and stood up, and it turned out that the sky was already full of stars.
For a while, Mr. Lu suddenly looked jubilant, and his pale face was flushed with a layer of red. Mrs. Gu told me that Mr. Lu was actually decorating the room and adding a big red silk quilt.
"Isn't there good news, Mr. Lu?" One day I saw him sitting alone, smiling, and I asked him. Mr. Lu's face turned red, and he took out a letter in his arms for a long time, the envelope was thick and yellow, but it was folded properly.
"It's her letter—" Mr. Lu swallowed and whispered, his throat choking.
He told me that his cousin in Hong Kong had finally made contact with his fiancée, who had already arrived in Guangzhou.
"Ten strips, exactly fifty-five thousand yuan, I wouldn't have been able to make it up sooner—" Mr. Lu stammered to me. After talking for a long time, I realized that he was talking about scalpers smuggled in Hong Kong, and it costs ten gold bars to bring a person into the country. As Mr. Lu spoke, he clenched the letter tightly with both hands and refused to let go, as if he was grasping his life.
Mr. Lu waited for a month, I saw that he was so desperate to wait, talking to him, he was also in a trance, sometimes sitting there alone, suddenly lowered his head, and laughed to himself. One day, when he came to dinner, he sat down and took a bite, got up and went out, and I noticed that his face was gray and his eyes were red. I hurried out to stop him.
"What's the matter, Mr. Lu?"
He stopped, his mouth opening one by one, babbling, and he couldn't say a word for a long time.
"He's not human!" Suddenly he cried out with a cry, and then he gestured with his hands and feet, and the more he spoke, the more anxious he became, and as if he had an olive in his mouth, he said a great deal of inexplicable things: his cousin had swallowed his money, and he asked someone to ask, and his cousin said that he did not know such a thing.
"I've been saving for fifteen years—" He said after a long pause, hehe sneered, and muttered to himself. Little by little, his gray hair was unkempt, and somehow, I suddenly remembered the Luhua chickens that Mr. Lu raised, every year during the Chinese New Year, he always stood in the vegetable market, holding a big rooster with a bright red crown and black and white ideas, and he fed those chickens so fat.
For about half a year, Mr. Lu has been thoughtless, he was a quiet person, and now he has not a word, I saw that his face was thin and the size of a palm, so he resumed the bowl of hot rice noodles I gave him for the tooth sacrifice, who knew that he even had no appetite for my rice noodles, and there was always half a bowl left. There was a period of time, for two weeks, he did not come to our store to eat, I thought he was sick, was about to see him, but in the vegetable market met his landlord Mrs. Gu, the Hubei mother-in-law saw me, grabbed my arm, walked, a line of giggles, spitted twice, scolded:
"These men's homes!"
"What's the news again, my Grandma Gu?" I made her arm hurt straight, this bag inquired, whose daughter-in-law stole a man, she seemed to be guarding under someone's bed.
"What does that mean?" She smacked again, "Mr. Lu is such a person, and he is also doing such nonsense." Your family can no longer guess who he is with? Ah Chun! The washerwoman. ”
"My mother!" I couldn't help but shout.
That woman, no one has seen it yet, a pair of tits hit your face first, and it was only twenty o'clock, and a butt was full of rumbling. Rubbing up his clothes, his flesh was bouncing. Two winter melon milk, seven up and eight down, drumstick-like, when they saw a man, they crooked their mouths and squinted eyes. I remember that time in the vegetable market, a young man selling vegetables, somehow offended her, she deceived people with a pair of big tits first, and made the young man stumble a few times backwards, crackling, a few bubbles of saliva, spitting out people's faces, scolding when he broke his voice, fuck your old hen crooked! That kind of spicy, that kind of wave.
"Ah Chun delivered clothes for Mr. Lu, and as soon as he came, he went into his room, and I knew that this Taiwanese woman was very inappropriate. One afternoon, I walked by Mr. Lu's window and heard humming and screaming, and I thought something had happened. I padded my feet and looked through the cracks in the curtains, phew-" Gu Tai hurriedly spat on the ground, "In broad daylight, the two of them are so naked in the room, and that dead woman is riding on Mr. Lu, her unkempt hair is like a lioness!" Bumped into this kind of thing, boss, talk about your family, is it bad luck? ”
"No wonder, you've been playing cards lately, and you've seen a baby." I can't help but laugh, this Hubei nine-headed bird loves to explore people's selfishness.
"Chew maggots!"
"Mr. Lu," I sighed, "I have found a washerwoman to serve him, and his clothes and sheets will not be washed in the future." ”
"It's the fault of the world here," Mrs. Gu slapped her face, "She serves Mr. Lu?" Mr. Lu just held her in his hand as if she was a living baby, and now her clothes are not washed, her nails are rubbed red, and she sits there listening to the song on the radio, but Mr. Lu is tired like an old cow and horse, and buys a stove and cooks for her every day. The most annoying thing is that Mr. Lu even washes the bed sheets by himself, where does he wash them cleanly? Hanging in the patio, one red piece, one yellow piece, I don't know how disgusting it looks like. ”
The next day, I met Mr. Lu and Ah Chun on the street, and they walked towards me. Ah Chun walked ahead, raised her head, raised her big breasts, dressed in red and willow green, and had two bright red rouges on her face. Sure enough, even the toenails were painted with Kodan, a pair of wooden exhibitions, splitting and crackling and reverberating, very standard and arrogant. Mr. Lu followed her with a basket of vegetables, and when he approached, I looked at it and was startled. I thought he was wearing a black hat, but I knew that he had dyed his gray hair black, and it was not good, and it was hard to open; His face was probably coated with alabaster, so white, but his eyes went down, his eyes were black, and there were two big black holes left on a miserable white face. Once I watched his "Baoyu Crying Spirit", sitting in the front row, as soon as he sang and cried, the wrinkles on the old face covered with white powder all appeared steeply, and a mouthful of blackened cigarette teeth was exposed. Mr. Lu passed by me, twisted his head, pretended not to know, and walked away after the Taiwanese woman's ass.
The matter between Mr. Lu and Ah Chun, our people on Changchun Road have reversed, I mean that Mr. Lu was injured by Ah Chun in that public case. Ah Chun stole people in Mr. Lu's room, stealing the shoe-shining horse boy, Mr. Lu ran back to catch it, the horse boy kicked him to the ground and ran away, Mr. Lu got up and slapped Ah Chun twice.
"That's how it got into trouble!" Mrs. Gu told me that day, "There are such fierce women in the world? Have you seen it at home? She rode on Mr. Lu with three feet and two jumps, and even tore and tore off, biting off most of Mr. Lu's ear. If I hadn't run to the street and called for help, Mr. Lu would have died at the hands of that mother-in-law! ”
Mrs. Gu kept shouting that she was unlucky, and that kind of ugly thing happened at home. She said that according to her temperament, she was going to kick Mr. Lu out that day, but Mr. Lu was so beaten that he couldn't move while lying on the bed. After Mr. Lu recovered from his injury, he returned to our store to make rice. A handful of bones were left on his body, and a few bruises on his neck had not yet faded; The earlobe of the left ear is gone, there is a piece of white tape on it, his dyed hair has not been washed, the new hair and feet on both temples are still gray, but there is a black lid on the top of his head, I don't know how funny it is, the Guangxi old people who make rice in our store are all squeezing their eyebrows and winking at him and laughing.
Two days ago, I bumped into Mr. Lu at a bus stop near Changchun National School. He was leading a group of elementary school students from school, walking down the street. The group of elementary school students were chattering and fighting, and Mr. Lu was walking in front, when suddenly he stopped and turned around and shouted:
"Don't make a fuss!"
His face was purple, his neck was thick red, and the green tendons on his forehead were stacked, as if he was angry or something. The schoolchildren were startled and stopped, but one of them laughed heartily. Mr. Lu stepped up to her, pointed to her face and shouted:
"You dare to laugh? Do you dare to laugh at me? ”
The little hairy girl shook a pair of pigtails and swayed and laughed even harder. Mr. Lu slapped the little hairy girl in the face, knocking her to the ground, and crying "Wow-" Mr. Lu shouted and jumped, pointed to the little hairy girl sitting on the ground, and scolded:
"You little ghost, you dare to bully Lao Tzu? I'm going to hit you, I'm going to hit you! ”
As he spoke, he reached out again to pull the little hairy girl's braids. Those schoolchildren were so frightened that they cried and screamed. Pedestrians on the road surrounded them, some coaxed the children, but two male teachers from Changchun National School dragged Mr. Lu away. As Mr. Lu walked, his arms still dancing freely in the air, his mouth full of white bubbles, and shouted:
"I'm going to beat her to death! I'm going to beat her to death! ”
That was the last time I saw Mr. Lu, and the next day, he died. When Mrs. Gu entered his room, she thought he was sleeping on his desk, his head resting on the desk, holding a tube of brushes in his hand, and a stack of students' composition books piled up next to his head. Mrs. Gu said that the coroner had examined for a long time, but she couldn't find anything wrong, so she filled in "heart palsy" on the cause of death column.
Mrs. Gu told me that in the future, when someone from the living came to look for a house, I should never tell anyone that Mr. Lu had died in her house. She invited monks and Taoists to her house to recite the scriptures, and I also went to buy money paper candles and burned them in front of our store. Mr. Lu has been in and out of our store for five or six years. Old man Li and Qin Luzi, I also burned a lot of money paper for them.
I took Mr. Lu's account and owed me two hundred and fifty yuan. I went to the police station to get the permit, and then I went to Mrs. Gu to get some Mr. Lu's things as collateral. If we are in a small business, where can we afford to lose this spare money. Mrs. Gu came to greet me with a smile on her face, she must have thought that I was going to play cards with her. When she found out what I meant, she sneered and said:
"And your share? He owes me money for the house, who do I ask for? ”
She shoved the key into my hand and went straight to the kitchen. I walked into Mr. Lu's room, and it was empty. There are several old books piled up on the desk, and a broken brush is stuck in a pen holder. That Hubei woman doesn't know how many things she secretly had! I opened the closet, and there were a few white shirts hanging inside, with the collar flipped up, and a few pairs of yellowed women's briefs tucked into the corner of the closet. I looked around and found that Mr. Lu's string was still hanging on the wall, covered in dust. Next to the string, there are a few photos hanging, I took a closer look, the largest one in the middle, isn't it the flower bridge outside our Guilin Shuidong Gate? I hurriedly climbed up, took the picture down, walked to the window, wiped the glass frame with the corner of my coat, and looked at it carefully by the light. Sure enough, it is our flower bridge, under the bridge is the Li River, the two stone dragon pillars at the head of the bridge are still there, and there are two descendants standing next to the pillars, a man and a woman, the boy is Mr. Lu, and the girl must be the girl of the Luo family. Mr. Lu was also wearing a student uniform, delicate and clean, and wore a student duckbill hat. When I looked at the Luo family girl again, I couldn't help but secretly cheer. Sure enough, it's our Miss Guilin! The water show of that body, a pair of penetrating and penetrating eyes, it is really pitiful to look at. The two of them, shoulder to shoulder, clinging tightly, smiling, both of them were only eighteen or nineteen years old.
In Mr. Lu's room, I couldn't find anything valuable, so I took the photo away, I want to hang it in our store, and in the future, there will be Guangxi compatriots to come, I can point out to them, once upon a time, my grandfather opened the Huaqiao Rongji, on the side of the Li River, at the head of the Huaqiao Bridge, on the intersection.