Erquan Yingyue (novella) Zhang Baotong

On the day of Qingming, some people set off firecrackers before dawn. Ah Bing walked from the street where the morning fog had not cleared, bought some burning paper in front of a small shop, and then walked out of the street and walked straight to Huishan along a field path. Because I was always thinking about what happened last night, I walked more than ten miles before I knew it, and I came to a slope at the foot of Huishan Mountain. This is a large old cemetery, full of messy and barren weeds, in the Qingming noon sun, showing a dead silence of desolation and desertion. Ah Bing walked in the cemetery for a while and found his father's grave. He knelt down in front of the grave, lit the burning paper he had brought with him, and burned it one by one. After the coarse yellow burnt paper burned, it flashed a bright light, and then shrank into a small piece of black ash, which was blown away by the mountain wind in the wild. With tears in his eyes, he silently looked at the boundless long blank clouds, recalling his pitiful and tragic life. In his memory, there was only a father, but no mother. He had never seen his mother, and he didn't know what she was like, except that she had been gone since he was very young. He also asked his father, but he only told him that his mother was dead. Moreover, this incident had a very big mental blow to his father, so that he almost lost his confidence in life, and became a Taoist priest in the Leizun Palace. Therefore, in his young mind, his mother seemed to be a mystery in the depths of his soul.

His mother died, his father died, leaving him alone, making him feel like a kite with a broken string, no support for life, no support for the soul, and even no place to live. Thinking of this, he raised his head to the sky and let out a long sigh, and immediately, tears welled up from his eyes.

Suddenly, he remembered that a few days ago, the owner of a troupe who came from Suzhou to perform Pingtan came to him and wanted to hire him. At that time, he didn't agree, considering that the troupe was too small and from other places. Thinking about it now, I regret it very much. If he joins the troupe and has a normal economic income, he can take Ah Hong out to live together, so as not to let Ah Hong be angry and scolded with Uncle all day long. However, I don't know where this troupe has gone.

At this moment he heard someone calling him, and he looked up to see a bright red light flickering in the bright yellow rape flowers on the other side in the distance. He knew that Ah Hong had come looking for him, wiped his tears with his sleeve, stood up from his father's grave, and stared straight at the red light. After a while, Ah Hong ran to Ah Bing out of breath and said to Ah Bing breathlessly, "I haven't found you for two or three days in a row, but this morning I heard from the shopkeeper who bought burnt paper in the shop that you bought some burnt paper and left, so I knew that you came here." ”

Because he was still in a sad and sad mood, he didn't want to speak, so he just lowered his head and didn't say anything. Ah Hong looked at the freshly burned paper embers in front of the grave, was silent for a while, and then said to Ah Bing, "Let's go back." Ah Bing let out a long sigh and said, "I don't want to live in your house anymore. Seeing Ah Bing's sad and complaining appearance, Ah Hong's eyes were also a little red. She looked at Ah Bing with a charitable and compassionate gaze, and said comfortingly, "I know you don't want to go back, but if you don't go back, where can you go?" Ah Bing looked into the distance, but everywhere he looked was an ethereal and illusory scene. Yes, the world is so big, is there no place for him?

After a long silence, he said, "I want to go out and break in, and if I do well and earn some money, I can take you out." Ah Hong nodded, but she said, "But, what are you going to do?" Ah Bing said, "I want to be a buddy with the troupe." A few days ago, the troupe that came from Suzhou wanted me to go, saying that he would give me ten yuan a month. Ah Hong shook her head and said, "It's good, but I'm afraid that people will leave here a long time ago." ”

Then, Ah Hong said worriedly, "Yesterday afternoon, the guy from the Meiyuan Tea House came to the house and said that a rich man from the countryside came to listen to my singing, and said that he would pay a lot of money. But I thought this person seemed to have some bad intentions, so I didn't agree. Later, someone went to the peach courtyard to find my father, and my father forced me to go to the company's house. But I insisted on not going, and my father was so angry that he picked up a bamboo stick and beat me. As he spoke, he rolled up his sleeves and let Ah Bing see the scars on his arms. Ah Bing saw that Ah Hong's arms were full of purple scars, and he was so angry that he gritted his teeth and rattled, but he was still helpless, so he could only use his cuffs to wipe the tears in Ah Hong's eyes.

Ah Hong took Ah Bing's hand and said pleadingly, "Brother Ah Bing, you take me away, I won't be able to stay in this house for a day." Ah Bing shook his head lightly and said, "I don't want to take you away and fly away, but even if you go far away, you have to have a place to stay." As he spoke, he used his hand to comb Ah Hong's hair stuck to his eyes with tears, and comforted him, "You bear with it for a few days, and when I find that class actor, I will take you out." Ah Hong felt that Ah Bing's words were reasonable, so she nodded.

After Ah Bing broke up with Ah Hong, he returned to the hut of Yang Laoqi, who was spoiling shoes at the corner of the street, and saw that Yang Laoqi was busy nailing people's shoes, and the door did not enter, so he walked towards the dock on the other side of the street. Just after the spring rains, the water level on the river rises very high and is a little muddy, as if it is about to overflow the embankment. The shore is a wide open slope paved with bluestone slabs, and a large road leads from the street to the dock of boats on the shore. The dock of the boat is made of tree trunks with no branches removed, and it stretches out more than ten meters into the river.

Standing high on the street and looking down, you can see boats coming and going on the river, and from time to time there are boats docking at the dock on the shore. On some docked ships, some loading and unloading coolies are unloading or loading goods on shoulder trucks to the shore. When the docked ships have finished unloading or loading, they will immediately set sail and sail north to Yangzhou or south to Hangzhou. Of course, there are also some ships that are permanently docked here. The boats were always decorated with lanterns or colored paper, and on the sheltered decks, there were square tables and stools for the guests to serve tea, and young women dressed in red clothes twisted their waists and walked back and forth from time to time in the cabins, attracting the men who wanted to find pleasure in them.

Compared with the pink courtyard on the shore with its eye-catching signboard, this kind of brothel parked on the water can't help but look a little shabby, and the women on the boat are all peasant women from the mountains. But the prices here are very cheap, and for half a dollar or three or two, you can get the enthusiastic and attentive service of those young and able-bodied women. Therefore, the boatmen who come from the south to the north and the hard laborers on the shore like to come here in the evening.