Fifty yuan, if you put it 20 years ago, you can buy 10 catties of fine pork, 50 catties of high-quality rice with full grains, and 25 bottles of two pots like red-hot knives straight into the stomach.

But fifty yuan, put it now, can only buy two catties and three taels of inferior pork, twenty-five catties of inferior rice, and the twenty-five bottles of bottled two-pot heads that have witnessed the vicissitudes of life for 20 years.

It seems that in these twenty years, fifty dollars is still fifty dollars twenty years ago.

But everything around him is changing, becoming dust in the East China Sea.

……

Fifty yuan for a lesson, if it is not converted into pork, rice, and two pots.

It's pretty cheap, even cheap.

After all, in these days, what people see, hear, smell, and think is all measured in tens of thousands.

Whether it's a large or small media, or an individual group.

Everyone likes to use the number 10,000 to crown everything they know.

The number 50 alone seems to rarely appear in the videos, information, and news that everyone can see everywhere.

Even if he does, he mostly represents a questionable and tragic past and an ending.

Like now, hearing the number fifty.

The man's first reaction was to wonder if there was something wrong with this chess club.

can sell his knowledge so cheaply.

He followed the young man who was supposed to be his age and looked behind him, and happened to see an old man and a young man sitting in the admissions office of the Canglan Chess Club with something written on it. The old and the young, like two stones, did not move.

He held the hundred dollars he had just waved in his hand, and his palms were sweaty.

He looked at the red-faced peer in front of him again, as if he was struggling with something.

The girl who was held in the palm of his other hand looked at the chess club in the distance very longingly.

The small head and big eyes are full of yearning.

"Can I take a look?" The man seemed to feel the tremor in his daughter's palm, and he let go of the hand that was clenched for a hundred dollars, and said in a relieved tone.

"Absolutely." Although the man across from him was still red, this kind of red was not the shy and embarrassed red just now, but the red of excitement.

The excited red, the red that the man had just embarrassed, and the festive red on the girl's body, seemed to have inexplicably become a raging red, burning this chess club that was only black and white.

……

"Chess." The man looked at the chessboard in front of the chess club and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

As soon as he saw this thing that he was very familiar with, his heart, which was still doubting just a moment, instantly became clear.

However, after this moment of clarity, he became a little hesitant again.

"Can this chess junior get extra points?"

"I can't."

"Then can this chess get extra points for the initial promotion?"

"Neither can we."

"That's... Can you get extra points in the chess college entrance examination? ”

"It's hard."

It was clear that the young woman sitting behind the admissions office looked very business-minded.

She actually used two can't and one difficult to answer the man's question.

However, it also makes her look like a woman who is not very good at lying.

Otherwise, how can these seven words be so categorical?

"Since you can't add points. So what's the use of learning chess? The man asked, a little wistfully.

Indeed, the problem of men is also the problem of every parent.

Parents who are willing to send their children to extracurricular interest classes now, who doesn't want their children to be able to go to school a little smoother in the future?

Now an adult who is willing to cultivate children's elegant hobbies, who does not bet their hopes in this life on their children?

Extra points, the future can be profitable, this should be the expectation that parents are willing to spend a lot of money to cultivate their children.

"Then you asked the child if he liked it?" The woman did not answer the man's question directly.

She asked the question with her chin, pointing to the glowing girl looking at chess.

The man looked at his daughter fiddling with the chess pieces, and there was a struggle in his eyes.

"She doesn't understand!" The man was tempted to say this phrase that all adults would say.

But this sentence was stuck in his throat.

He looked at his daughter with a heartfelt smile on her face, and the words that were stuck in his throat turned into another sentence when he was about to spit it out.

"Dongdong, do you like this chess?"

The girl named Dongdong heard her father's words, she hurriedly put down the "elephant" chess in her hand, and then she shook her head like a rattle and said, "I don't like it." ”

The girl spoke so loudly that her face turned white.

"I really don't like it?" The father looked at Dongdong, who was blushing, and he clenched the hundred yuan in his hand again.

He knew his daughter very well, and it was only when she lied that her face was as white as snow as it was now.

"Well, I don't like it. Dad, let's go eat KFC. Dongdong lowered his head and took the man's hand and said.

Her face turned whiter, so white that she lowered her head, not daring her father to see it.

The hundred dollars that the man had just held in his hand tightened his grip.

His face was also white, and this whiteness was more pale than snow-white.

Powerless paleness.

The woman looked at the two pale faces, and she stretched out her two slender white fingers and pinched the "elephant" that the girl had just put down.

Slammed on the board with a snap.

The snap was louder than the girl had just said she didn't like it.

"Do you know why the elephant has to go to the field?"

"Because, like the prime minister? To protect the general? The man came back to his senses, he lowered his head and looked at the chessboard, and subconsciously said that this is the only answer that is the only correct answer in the hearts of most adults.

"What do you say?" The woman looked at the girl who was still bowing her head, and her voice was much softer and gentler.

"I... I—" The girl was visibly overwhelmed.

She pinched the corners of her clothes, and she could only helplessly step on the washed white travel shoes under her feet, drawing circles one after another on the ground.

She wanted to follow her father's words and say that he was like a prime minister, and he was going to the field to protect the most important general on the chessboard, but when she was just pinching the chess, the elephant in front of her was the cute elephant of the zoo.

The cute elephant was her favorite animal, and the best memory of the family when her mother did not leave their father and daughter.

Although she wanted to follow her father's words, after she finally drew countless circles, she whispered: "Because the field is a banana field, the greedy elephant only walks the field!" ”

The girl looked up, and her white face was a little more imaginary.

"Good." Although the girl's words provoked the adults around her to inadvertently raise the corners of their mouths, they seemed to be laughing at her answer a little naïve.

But! Who's to say that she is necessarily wrong?

Does the elephant have to be the prime minister who is strategizing?

Couldn't the elephant be Dongdong's favorite elephant?

Can't an elephant be something other than a prime minister and an elephant?

Who stipulates that every word in chess must be their literal meaning?

Who is it that has to use the dogma of rules and regulations to constrain a child's imagination?

Who is it! It stipulates that the hobbies and hobbies that children choose now are all for the purpose of making a lot of money in the future! There is a chance! I can add points! And ready?

Who is it? is using the so-called reality again, so that innocent and romantic children and parents who are full of hope for the future are lost in the reality that is not real at all?

……

"And on what day is the horse leaving?" The woman didn't smile, she looked at the girl and asked another question.

The girl seemed to be encouraged by the good one, and she tilted her head and said boldly, "Because, the horse is bouncing." ”

"Good."

"Then why, before crossing the river, the soldiers can only walk vertically?"

"Because, they have to listen to the command."

"Then why can the soldiers walk vertically or horizontally after crossing the river?"

"Because, they want to scout the enemy!"

"Not bad! Then let me ask you one last question, why can't the soldiers retreat even if they cross the river? ”

"Because, they were born to protect the family behind them! So they can't go back! ”

The girl's answer was no longer ridiculous.

She broke free from her father's large, warm and rough hands, and walked alone to the chessboard, her eyes shining with a light that a man rarely sees in a girl's eyes.

She picked up "Handsome" and giggled.

"This handsome man is me, and the soldier is my father."

"Because, in order to protect me, my father never backed down."

"This is an elephant, a zoo elephant. This is a horse, and it's a zoo horse. Because, my dad used to take me to the zoo on weekends! ”

"These two are supposed to be my rag dolls."

"When my dad wasn't home, only the rag doll was with me."

"As for this car, it should be Dad's bicycle, and every day Dad will ride the bicycle fast and take me to school and pick me up from school."

Dongdong picked up the last cannon, and when she wanted to say something, she didn't say anything in the end, she gently put the "cannon" in its place.

Perhaps, the status of this cannon in her heart is not necessarily worse than other chess pieces.

Even in her heart, the status of this cannon is as heavy as that of a soldier.

That's why she put this "cannon" in her original position, just like in her memory.

……

The woman listened quietly to the girl's giggles, and listened quietly to the girl's explanation of each piece on the board.

She opened her beautiful eyes and looked directly into the girl's big simple eyes, and she asked, "Then do you like chess?" ”

The smile on the girl's face froze.

"I don't like it." The girl said from the bottom of her heart.

She looked at her stunned father on the side, and took his hand again, her little white hand held her father's calloused hand, and she smiled sweetly.

"Because, my dad doesn't like it."

"No, I like it." The man, looking at the sweet daughter who was smiling, he didn't hesitate this time, and he didn't do any struggle.

He completely let go of the hand that was holding the hundred-dollar bill, and this hand no longer held the so-called reality.

Instead, he gave his daughter a hard hug.

"Whatever you like, I like it."

……

When I left the chess club, it was almost dusk.

The man held the girl's hand, and his head was suddenly raised very high.

It is as dazzling as the hero that every child dreams of.

The girl next to him lowered her head, as if she had done something wrong, and did not dare to raise her head.

"Dongdong, shall we go to the zoo tomorrow?" The man listened to the traffic around him and watched the river flow in front of him.

His heart suddenly swelled with pride and ambition to look at the world.

"Really?" Dongdong raised her head, the look on her face was surprised and happy, and it was with the guilt of just letting her father pay for it.

She's redder like a cherry.

But the father did not bow his head, every father should not bow his head, or rather, every man should raise his head.

"Really, we haven't been to the zoo in a long time." The man walked with steps, like an insignificant soldier on a chessboard, step by step, down-to-earth, towards the end.