People are inherently dead, or lighter than Hongmao, or heavier than Mount Tai, and Mao's instantaneous death belongs to the former.

Mao Xiansheng is not a very inconspicuous man, according to his brother, he was a puppet craftsman during his lifetime, and he was usually alone in the puppet workshop at home, and he didn't make any friends. However, according to my observations, not only did Mao Xiansheng have no friends, but the entire Mao family did not seem to have social interaction, because there were only ten people attending the funeral, including me Qiao Wei.

The memorial service was very simple, and the eulogy was not long. In the farewell of the body, I stood in front of Mao Xiansheng's coffin and looked at him again, his face was too ordinary, too popular, if no feature is also a characteristic, then he took this characteristic to the extreme.

And I also confirmed one thing again, I don't know Mao Xiansheng.

Of course, it is possible that Mao Xiansheng and I met before, and then I forgot about him because his appearance was so popular. But if it is such a general relationship, what if I Weishenme will appear in his suicide note?

I also wondered if this would be another set designed by the evil gods to arrest me, but I soon dismissed this possibility, if the evil gods knew where I was and how to contact me, then they could go directly to Qiao Wei's house to find me, instead of writing to me to ask me back to China......

Weird, right?

I have no impression that a man would leave a suicide note, handing over his puppet workshop to me to take care of, and making it mandatory for me to attend his funeral.

Probably out of curiosity, Qiao Wei and I returned to China from England again, to the famous city of Hangzhou.

A week ago, a man named Mao Xiankang sent a letter to Qiao Wei's home in London.

The content of the letter is bilingual in Chinese and English, and the first half of the letter roughly means that a person named Mao Xiansheng committed suicide, and left a suicide note, leaving a distant address in London and the name "Thunder", Mao Xiansheng left the workshop where he worked all his life to Thunder, and hoped that Thunder would come to his funeral.

The second half of the letter is Mao Xiankang's apologies for the act of daring to write a letter, and emphasizes that if the recipient does not know Lei Sheng, then he will not reply, everything is regarded as a misunderstanding, and Zuihou Mao Xiankang also attached his phone number.

Naturally, Lei Sheng is a person, so I also called Mao Xiankang back, he was very surprised when he received the call, he said that he never thought that his brother would have someone in the UK. I also quickly explained that I didn't know his brother at all, and I hadn't even heard the name Mao Xiansheng.

This result surprised Mao Xiankang even more, but Zuihou I still returned from England according to Mao Xiansheng's last wish and attended his funeral.

After the funeral, Mao Xiankang drove Qiao Wei and me to the puppet workshop mentioned in the suicide note.

I don't have much interest in traveling, although Hangzhou is known as a "paradise" on earth, but I have never been here, if it wasn't for the sudden receipt of a letter from Mao Xiankang, I probably would never have come to Hangzhou in my life.

Since I am not interested in traveling, I am naturally not interested in the natural scenery of any places of interest, which also saves Mao Xiankang a lot of trouble, he doesn't need to introduce me to the scenery along the way, just drive and guide the way.

Mao Xiansheng's puppet workshop is located in an antique pedestrian street, where shops on both sides of the street display a variety of handicrafts, and the clerks are all dressed in Ming and Qing dynasty clothes. Mao Xiankang took Qiao Wei and me on the main street of the pedestrian street for fifteen minutes, and then turned into an alley, near the end of the alley, there is a quaint small house, which is Mao Xiansheng's puppet workshop.

The courtyard door of the small mansion was not locked, Mao Xiankang directly pushed the door open, and then let Qiao Wei and I into the courtyard.

As soon as I entered the hospital, a peculiar aroma of wood and oil paint entered my nostrils - I had recently become accustomed to smelling corpses when I walked in the door, and now I felt a little awkward about the sudden smell.

"My brother's biggest hobby is making puppets, and he is very particular about the choice of wood and pigment for the puppets, not only the quality of the materials themselves, but also the smell is also a key part of his consideration, in his words: puppets are the same as people, and no one wants to associate with people who smell bad." Mao Xiankang introduced.

After passing through the small courtyard of more than 20 square meters, there is a workshop hut. The door here is locked, but the lock is not complicated, and Mao Xiankang only used the simplest key to open the door.

At the entrance of the workshop is a display hall, which is filled with all kinds of puppets. Most of these puppets are human beings, and only a few of them are anthropomorphic small animals. Among the many character puppets, they are also clearly divided into two categories, one is an exaggerated cartoon image, and the other is closer to a real person, but no matter what kind of classification, these puppets look very cute, whether their expressions are crying or laughing, sad or noisy, they all look very happy.

"Are these puppets made by your brother?" I asked.

Mao Xiankang nodded and said, "These are all outside." My family has been doing puppet shows since my grandfather's generation, and the puppets used in the performances are all handmade by our family, and I still remember playing puppet shows with my father pushing a cart for children when I was a child, and I can recall that I was basically happy every day. ”

"Didn't you go on with the puppet show?" I asked again.

"Nope." Mao Xiankang smiled lightly and shook his head, "I was really interested in puppets when I was a child, but I didn't like them very much when I went to middle school, and when I got to college, my life basically had nothing to do with puppets." My brother has always been fond of puppetry, but he obviously prefers puppetry to puppetry. ”

"Are these puppets worth anything?" I asked.

"Well...... Mao Xiankang picked up a 20-centimeter-tall cartoon doll wearing a princess dress, and then asked me with a smile: "How much do you think this is appropriate?" ”

"I don't have much research on this, if I want to bid casually, it will be about 100 miles." I said.

"Almost, cartoon puppets of this size usually sell for about 70 yuan, and smaller ones will be cheaper. However, there are also more expensive ones, such as this one. Mao Xiankang walked to the side of the exhibition hall next to a wooden soldier with a height of about one meter and a half and said: "This kind of large puppet used as a furniture display can generally be sold for more than 300, if the shape is not cartoon but more detailed, it will cost more than 500." ”

"And how many can your brother do a day?"

"If you prepare the materials for the start of the day in advance at night, you can make four large models of fine puppets a day, and the cartoon ones are faster because there are some molds that can be used, and the speed is faster, generally three or four can be made in an hour, and the more detailed ones need to be carved by hand, but his speed is also very fast, and one can come out in about half an hour, after all, he has been making this thing since childhood." Mao Xiankang said.

"Oh! And what about the cost? How much is the benefit? ”

"It's a handicraft job, and it's this jishu that sells at a very low cost. My brother is quite picky about the raw materials, even if each puppet has about 80% of the net profit, and the larger the model and the finer the shape, the higher the profit. However, if you include the time cost, the profit is basically the same, which is 80%. ”

"Can these puppets be sold when they're done?" I continued to ask.

Mao Xiankang nodded and said: "My brother has opened an online store, and the sales are very good, and sometimes he has to hire people when he can't take orders." A few days ago, he also took in an apprentice, the one in a black suit who had been standing next to me at the funeral, so that the two of them could catch up with the progress by working together. ”

I did a simple calculation, assuming that Mao Xiansheng worked eight hours a day, all of them were cartoon puppets, and if he did three in one hour, there would be 24 in a day, and each would sell for 70 yuan...... 1,680 yuan, and then remove 20% of the cost, the profit is nearly 1,400 yuan, and it is more than 40,000 yuan a month.

Although money is not the only measure of happiness, earning 40,000 yuan a month should be not bad for an ordinary craftsman, which is several times more than the white-collar workers who work in foreign companies. And Mao Xiansheng likes to be puppets, and nothing makes people happier than turning his hobby into work.

Would such a person choose to commit suicide? weishenme: After he commits suicide, he will hand over this puppet workshop to me? What do I have to do with him?

I couldn't figure it out at all.