Winter 1922, Shanghai.

The sky is very cold and the dirty snow that accumulates on the ground after winter is easy to freeze when it comes to sunset. As soon as the road is icy, the rickshaw is difficult to run, and it is easy to fall without two steps.

Among the many rickshaw masters in front of Paramount on the beach, there is one of the youngest, who is sitting in the corner of the car. This child looks black and thin, like a monkey, with strong flesh all over his body, and he has a physique that can only run out of a rickshaw day and night. It doesn't look tall, as if it hasn't grown up because of its young age. The other masters had cigarettes in their mouths, and he just stared at the façade in front of him, pursed his mouth and didn't move.

His name is Shen Yigong, he just turned seventeen last month, and he is from Chuansha.

Shen Yigong wrapped the two thin short shirts on his body and curled up in the rickshaw while hiding from the wind and waiting for customers, he calculated the account in his heart, the money his father owed to the casino was enough to pay it off tonight, and when he took the money and paid off the bill, he would buy medicine for his mother. After my mother entered the winter, she coughed badly, had no money to see a doctor, and was busy all day long, and when she woke up, she stayed in the grass hut to sew clothes and dismantle quilts for other young ladies and wives. There are so many copper coins in Shanghai that you can find someone else to do this kind of work.

A gust of northwest wind swept over, making Shen Yigong shiver for a while, he rubbed his hands and let out a breath of white air, and looked up at the colorful neon signs. He couldn't read, but he thought the color of the lamp was beautiful. The revolving door is like a windmill, people flow in and out, it just turns in place, and from it comes out of it so faintly that Shen Yigong faintly smells the woman's fat powder and the man's tobacco.

It was a world very different from his life, a world he couldn't even see. Shen Yigong stared straight at the revolving door with a pair of eyes, he couldn't expect to be there one day, the only thing he could count on was that the people who came out at this time could wave at him and use his car.

The door turned.

A pair of lovers walked out of the door, the man was tall and big, and the woman was a bird. As soon as the lovers came out, they stood slightly on the front steps of the door, and the rickshaws around them were like swarms of fish swarming over them. Shu Shen rushed the fastest with a bow, squeezed in the front with all his might, and shouted in fluent Shanghainese: "Mr. Mrs., do you want to take the car!" ”

The man recruited two yellow envelopes, one for himself, and the other for the woman's finger and pointed at Shen Yigong: "You follow the one in front of me, you know." ”

Shen Yigong saw the slender beauty sitting in his car in a white fox fur robe, nodded and replied to the man, "I know, I know." ”

This train is not far away, a small mansion two blocks away. Shen Yigong ran out of sweat, and the man looked happy when he came over to take his lover and get out of the car, and he even had a lot of tips. Shen Yigong actually likes to take on this kind of business, beautiful women are light and easy to pull, and it is always men who often call rickshaws for beautiful women, most of these men want to show themselves in front of women when they find an opportunity, and they will definitely be willing to spend more money to earn face.

After running this trip, Shen Yigong thought in his heart, it was almost over, and he could go home to accompany his mother. When he turned to leave, the snow had stopped, and he heard a sentence floated out of a child in the alley: "On the winter solstice, eat glutinous rice balls, and people will be reunited after eating glutinous rice balls!" ”

Shen Yigong carried the change, and suddenly smiled: "Buy some bean paste filling, go back and make dumplings for my mother!" ”

It was dark, and the boy pulled the rickshaw and ran happily to the Suzhou Creek. In the middle of winter, his head was full of hot sweat and white steam.

On the bank of the Suzhou Creek is a large area of broken tiles and broken walls, one squeezed into the other, each trying to grab an extra acre and a third of land. Some people didn't even have tiles, so they simply pulled two broken mats and used them as roofs. Shen Yigong pulled the car and trotted briskly along the ramp, and when he saw the neighbors, he smiled with people first: "Aunt Wu, sell wontons!" ”

Aunt Wu saw him but her face was panicked, and she dropped the soup spoon in her hand and ran towards him: "You're back with a bow!" Your mother has an accident, so hurry up and go home and take a look! ”

Shen Yigong's face changed, he got out of the car and ran towards home, and heard a chaotic noise coming from the alley from a distance, and the sound of roof tiles breaking enamel was like a thunderbolt in his heart.

"Mother-mother!"

There were more and more people in front of him, and when they heard Shen Yigong's voice, they all turned their heads to make way for him. The ground was muddy and slippery, Shen Yigong ran staggeringly, the originally noisy crowd gradually calmed down, people closed their mouths, and countless pairs of eyes fell on this young man.

A group of thugs in black shirts walked out of the dilapidated thatched hut, and Shen Yigong rushed to the group of people with all his strength: "What are you doing!" I said I'd pay it back, what are you doing here? ”

The guy in the lead slapped him in the head and hit him directly to the ground. Shen Yigong didn't care about the embarrassment, he only noticed the one he knew in the gangsters, and hurriedly crawled over like a dog and hugged the man's legs: "Brother Sheng!" I've saved up all the money, and I'll be able to pay off my father's debt now. Don't touch my mother, it has nothing to do with my mother! ”

The oily-haired and fat-faced old rascal kicked the kid away: "Why the fuck did you go there earlier, waiting for you to pay it back?" Your legs are gone, and I gave you two days of grace, but I don't do good deeds. If you don't come to find it, I don't know if your mother can pay it back! ”

He flipped the money bag in his hand and spat down.

Shen Yigong endured the pain on his body and got up, and hurriedly ran into the house. But as soon as he entered the door and saw the mess all over the ground, he felt the cold go up from his knees and straight into his lungs. The hooligans outside divided their cigarettes, took the money, laughed and left, while the young men inside trembled and crawled into the dark house. Finally saw the person on the ground clearly through the glimmer of light outside, Shen Yigong inexplicably felt that his legs were weak and wanted to shout, but his throat seemed to be blocked by something, and he couldn't make a sound.

Brother Sheng was about to leave with his doglegs, when he suddenly heard a roar from the broken house behind him. Then the boy rushed out of the house, grabbed his stick, and was about to swing it at the heads of the group. But before he could fall this stick, two hooligans rushed over and kicked him in the stomach. Shen Yigong fell into the mud on his back, turned around and tried to grab the stick to get up, but his chest was immediately stepped on, and his face was beaten fatly.

"Little Red Guy, your wife can't get up by choking on her own. Lao Tzu went to collect debts, but he didn't go to kill him, if you want to blame yourself for this matter, why aren't you at home in the middle of the night? Going on, why is your dad gambling outside and owing money to others? Don't blame us, don't blame yourself, you don't have a good reincarnation, and you won't find a father! Brother Sheng followed him impatiently and kicked him in the head, and then grabbed a handful of change from the money bag and threw it into the mud and snow, "Bow your head and pick it up slowly, Lao Tzu is kind, and give your mother some coffin money." It's bad today, let's go! ”

Shen Yigong struggled to get up, blood trickled down the wound on his forehead, trickled into his eyes and blurred his vision, and the mud seeped into the wound, making it painful. He gritted his teeth, his dark eyes staring fiercely at the departing backs of the group. The surrounding crowd dispersed little by little, and Aunt Wu next door came, seeing the battle of this group of people from a distance, and cowardly turned away at the moment when Shen Yigong's eyes met.

After several fruitless struggles, he lowered his head, picked up the copper coins in the mud one by one with his dirty hands, and pinched them in the palm of his hand.

The crowds in the slums were gone, and the snow fell one after another, covering the shoulders and eyebrows of the young men. He clenched the money tightly, and with great difficulty got up and limped into the house. His mother's body was still lying on the cold ground, already hard. Shen Yigong entered the room, knelt down beside her, and reached out to pick up his mother's thin body, his face pressed against her forehead.

After a long silence, he slowly took out a broken paper bag from his arms, the bean paste had long been ruined by mud and blood. Shen Yigong wiped his fingers on his clothes, dipped a little bean paste and sent it to his mother's lips: "Mother...... On the winter solstice, eat glutinous rice balls...... After eating the rice balls, the people were reunited. ”

He also picked up the dirty bean paste and stuffed it into his mouth, mixed with the sweet taste of the bean paste, in addition to the mud and blood, but also a little salty.

"Mother......

Shen Yigong gritted his teeth and didn't want the tears to roll down, but he couldn't control it at all. He shivered and shivered, but he knew it wasn't because of the cold wind in the cracks of the broken house.

"Mother——!

On the night of the winter solstice in 1922, the neighbors by the Suzhou Creek saw Shen Yigong here for the last time. The next morning, when Aunt Wu came out of the stall, she passed by his house and took a look, it was empty, the previous things were clean, and the kid didn't know where he went. Some people say that Shen Yigong took his mother's body back to the countryside, and some people say that after this kid took the money to bury his mother, he found an errand in the French Concession. But no one can say for sure, this kid now has no father and no mother, rootless duckweed is floating around, where did he go, and finally turned from a sigh in other people's mouths after tea and dinner to nothing.

Until more than half a year later-

The poor people by the Suzhou Creek came and went, walked and came, and there was not much left that knew about Shen Yigong's family. A young man selling fruit used to run through the rickshaw with Shen Yigong, and he came back and told Aunt Wu that Shen Yigong was not dead and had not returned to his hometown in the countryside. He's in Shanghai. He said that he saw Shen Yigong among the people of the Blue Dragon Society on the street. That kid is now tall and big, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, and a pair of eyes that are as vicious as a wolf. He said that when he saw Shen Yigong, the sharp knife in his hand was stabbing into the stomach of the raw brother who was guarding the stall at the Qianmen gambling hall.

Hearing a sigh, Shen Yigong was also generous and gentle back then, where would he pick up a knife to cut people, and there were really a lot of changes. Others sighed for a while, and then stopped talking about him, as for what Shen Yigong had experienced and encountered this year...... Where will outsiders care? The only thing that is very happy and quite flavorful is that he Shen Yigong avenged himself.