Chapter 11 The Fallen Men on the Sino-Russian Train
Xia Fatzi's experience is similar to that of many unfortunate masters, first bought goods on Silk Street in Beijing, most of them were leather jackets and down jackets or something, and then sold them all the way to Moscow on an international train.
"You don't know how difficult it is to buy tickets for this train now, the $265 train ticket has risen to 1,500 yuan on the black market, and my sister and I went to the train station to book tickets two months in advance in order not to delay her school, and I bought it. Xia Fatzi recalled while knocking melon seeds.
"The ticket for this train is not easy to buy, but my train ticket is from the unit and I don't have to buy it myself, the unit and the railway station have long been contacted, and the tickets for expatriates like us are booked in advance. Ma Li said.
"Hey, it's better for you to eat public food, like us who do business, but it takes a lot of effort to buy a train ticket. In order to check in my luggage, I had to wait in line for four days and four nights in a row. When Fat Xia said this, he showed an expression of wanting to die.
"What are you thinking, why is your face so ugly?" Jia Lei asked.
He used to see a lot of things like queuing to buy tickets when he was selling tea eggs at the train station, and it wasn't a big deal.
"You don't know, there is no limit to the weight of luggage on our trip, and everyone knows that doing business in Moscow can make a lot of money, so they desperately stuff luggage into the car. When I came, the carriage of that train was full of luggage, and the carriage and the aisle were full of luggage, and there was no place to walk!" Xia Fatzi recalled with a white face.
"Huh, is there no weight limit for luggage now?" Jia Lei asked in surprise, which seemed to be a little different from what he remembered.
"Yes, this trip with extra luggage only needs to pay the check-in fee, but the luggage car is limited and there is only one group of carriages in total, so everyone puts their luggage in the box, and the bed and floor are full of luggage. If you can't put it in the box, you put it down in the carriage, and some people just sleep on the luggage. The bags were stacked up to the ceiling!" Xia Fatzi recalled.
"The carriage is crowded like this, how can you go out to eat and go to the toilet?" Jia Lei asked curiously, and the fat man Xia didn't make a sound with a white face.
"Just crawl over from the duffel bag!" Xia Xiaomei saw that his brother didn't answer, and said by herself.
"Climb, how can you climb with your brother's size?" Jia Lei glanced at Xia Fatzi in surprise when he heard this.
"Haha! Let me tell you, my brother fell off the top of his luggage several times when he first climbed his luggage, and he didn't even dare to drink water when he came back after he went to the toilet once. Xia Xiaomei smiled and began to expose her brother's shortcomings.
"Don't say it! can't you stop your mouth with melon seeds?" said Xia Fatzi angrily.
Xia Fatzi was half angry when he thought of the fact that he didn't dare to eat or drink water in order to go to the toilet less. You know, he was forced to pee in a beer bottle and throw it out the car window.
Fortunately, the speed of the train at that time was not high, and it was less than 60 kilometers per hour, and occasionally opened a window and threw something, and there was no accident.
"Hahaha......" Everyone laughed when they heard this, although Xia Fatzi blocked the rest of Xia Xiaomei's words, but everyone could easily make up for Xia Fatzi's situation at that time.
"Alright, I'm too late, so let's stop talking. Go to sleep!" said Fat Xia with a red face and embarrassed to stand up, and then he ran back to his car in a gloomy manner.
"Oh, I heard you guys just talk about the toilet or something, I want to go there now. Ma Li jumped down from Xia Xiaomei's upper bunk.
"I'll go too, but fortunately, when I go back, the Huaxia masters have exchanged all the goods for money, so we can walk in the carriage so easily. Xia Xiaomei stood up and stretched her waist and said.
"You think it's good that the carriage is empty now, if you wait a while for the train to limit the weight, and you are not allowed to bring unlimited things into the carriage. Your brother should probably be crying!" Jia Lei said with a smile.
"Weight limit, can't it, haven't I heard of this news?" Xia Xiaomei asked strangely.
"You don't need to hear about this at all, just think about it!" Jia Lei said.
"Tell me, what's going on?" asked Mary anxiously.
She was planning to resign from the unit after she went back and come out to be a full-time master.
"The fuel for this trip is coal, right?" asked Jia Lei.
"Yes, this carriage is full of soot, anyone can smell it. Xia Xiaomei said.
"The power of this car is all provided by coal, and if the luggage is too heavy, it needs more power and burns more coal. Coal refueling is a manual job, and the size of the boiler is limited, and the coal on the car is also limited. If the train is too heavy, it will run very slowly, or even at all. The above will definitely not let this happen, and the weight will definitely be limited when the time comes!" Jia Lei said.
"Is this really the case? How can the train not be able to run because the luggage is too heavy? Can't the conductor fill more coal?" Xia Xiaomei asked.
"He's right, haven't you noticed? The speed of the train is much faster now than when I came from China, and when I took this train in China, the speed of the train was about as slow as the bus. It's all weighed down by those luggage!" Marley said.
"Miss Xia, this is not something that can be solved by the flight attendant adding more coal! Our company is engaged in foreign trade, and I have to go back and forth between China and Moscow every quarter to make a report, so I am very familiar with this car. The power and heating of this train came from burning coal, and in the Siberian winter, even the sewers of the toilets would freeze.
So you need to keep adding coal along the way. A round trip requires about 135 tons of coal, and there are a total of 27 crew members on this train, and each person needs 4-5 tons of coal for a round trip. They already have to do so much work, and they will be exhausted if they add more coal!" Shen Ning said helplessly.
"Each person can add more than five tons of coal! Don't forget that the driver, the flight attendant, and the cook can't do the work of adding coal, and there are workers in the car who specialize in burning boilers. But even if the workers are willing to work, the boiler doesn't have that much power!" Jia Lei said.
"If things really turn out as you say, then what should my brother do?" asked Xia Xiaomei at a loss.
"This ...... We can't help it!" Shen Ning shook his head and said, the atmosphere suddenly fell into embarrassment.
"Oh no, I can't hold it anymore! Girl, let's go quickly. Ma Li's eyes rolled and Xia Xiaomei walked out, so that the awkward atmosphere was broken.
"Anyway, that's something that will happen later, so you might as well tell your brother about our conversation and let him make two more trips before the train is still heavy." It's a sum of money to be able to earn!" Jia Lei kindly reminded Xia Xiaomei.
"Hey, thank you. Xia Xiaomei became happy and said in the corridor.
****
Jia Lei finally woke up to the sound of the wheels of "Click! Click!", and stretched out to the sun outside the window.
"I've been really tired for a while, but after leaving Moscow, I was finally able to get a good night's sleep. Jia Lei said with a yawn.
"Jia Lei, are you up, do you want to wash your face?" asked Xia Xiaomei, who lived opposite.
"Yes!" Jia Lei nodded and said.
"Then you'd better call your family to go with you, there is no place to put a basin and towels in that sink, you can only wash your face with your hands holding water, you ask your family to help you hold the basin towel or something. And the whole train has a toilet with a faucet, you have to hurry up! Otherwise, you won't be able to wash it when there are too many people. Ma Li reminded Jia Lei.
"Okay!" Jia Lei nodded and walked out.
Sure enough, as Ma Li said, there were a lot of people in the car, and when Jia Lei was on the hard sleeper car, he really saw the kind of dumped man who was full of goods under the bed and even the bed was full of goods as Xia Fatzi said, these people were not willing to spend a lot of money to sit in the soft sleeper car, so they could only buy a hard sleeper ticket without a door.
"What strange things did they buy?" asked Jia Lei curiously when he walked over.
In this carriage, several people brought a bunch of antelope horns and piled them under the bed, and some people bought some plants to pile aside.
"Children, are you curious about what this is? This is the antelope horn, which has the effect of calming the liver and calming the wind, clearing the liver and brightening the eyes, dispersing blood and detoxifying, and is a particularly precious Chinese medicinal material. It is mainly used for liver wind internal movement, epilepsy convulsions, pregnancy eclampsia, febrile convulsions, epilepsy madness, headache and dizziness, eye redness, warm and poisonous spots, carbuncle swelling and sores. The man with antelope horns said with a smile.
"I know it's a medicinal herb, but what are you buying it for?" Jia Lei asked puzzled.
"This is a good thing, it will be sold for hundreds of yuan at home, and the country will not let it be killed now! But in country E, this thing is thrown away as garbage, and it doesn't cost much when you buy it, and it won't be confiscated by Maozi if it passes through customs." It's also lightweight, and it's worth a lot more than other people's telescopes, razors, etc. The middle-aged man smiled and said that the common sense that his family was an ancestral old Chinese medicine doctor had helped him a lot.
"Oh, I see. Jia Lei suddenly realized, and then he continued to line up to wash his face.
"I found that all of our people are geniuses, and all kinds of strange goods can be discovered, and even such a remote and unpopular medicinal material can be obtained from the hands of the Soviets!
"Boss! Let me remind you that the day before we got on the bus, the Soviet Union was gone. Mo Bei said solemnly.
"Didn't I change it for a while......" Jia Lei said embarrassedly.
****
Of course, Jia Lei was not the only one who did not change, and when they passed by a local train station in the morning, the Soviet Union logo was still hanging on the station sign.
"It's not early, we should go to dinner too!" Mo Bei said as he touched his rumbling stomach.
They woke up in the morning with only a little of the overnight bread and sandwiches they had brought with them yesterday, and now they are hungry.
"Have you been to the restaurant here, do they still sell food?" Jia Lei asked immediately.
"It's just that the things sold are a bit expensive, after all, this car can be supplied at various stations in China, so there is still food on the car. Luo Nan said that he had already gone to investigate.
"As long as there is something to eat, let's not be short of money!" Jia Lei said indifferently. I want to chat with more like-minded people about "{?$article_title?} ", WeChat pays attention to "excellent reading literature", chatting about life, looking for confidants~