Don't talk about young love

Author: Chang Yan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-04-01
Features: That youthful and naive affection, after being purified and weathered by time, can extend to when? Her once innocent feelings, with the passage of years, have yet to develop into the love she desires. Youthful love is ultimately just an unfulfilled longing, so she casts aside the past and no longer waits.
Content Highlights:
1. On a snowy day, she met him.
The small alleyway was uneven, with deep and shallow ruts from. If the temperature hadn’t dropped to zero degrees Celsius, the ground would have been frozen solid, and she might have been stepping in mud. Mid-October, snowflakes began to fall, and she looked up. The sky was a vast expanse of gray and white, with countless tiny snowflakes swirling about. It wasn’t particularly beautiful—just dull and gray, like scattered paper scraps, only revealing a hint of snow-white brilliance when they landed on the ground.
She had already walked for five minutes, but the alley was still long with no end in sight. Xu Ying glanced at the boy leading the way and couldn’t help but ask, “How much farther is it?” The boy turned and smiled, “Almost there. It’s just ahead.” He was seventeen or eighteen, with a kind smile. Xu Ying silently thought, Running all this way to find a part-time job, she had to make a few phone calls to confirm the location. But after entering the alley and walking a hundred meters, she didn’t see a single decent-looking business front. She had to turn back to the grocery store to call again.
The person who answered the phone had changed. It wasn’t the loud-voiced man anymore but a younger boy’s voice, clearly not much older than her. Before she even found the place, he had readily agreed to come out to meet her. She wondered if he was the boy now leading her through the ruts.
After passing an intersection, she still had to go further. Xu Ying looked ahead and couldn’t help but wonder if one day, a newspaper would report something like, “A recent college graduate working alone was tragically misled to a remote location and murdered. Her body was found several days later.” Ah, she had little money, but there were still over a hundred yuan in her drawer. She’d leave it for her younger brother. Some of those comics, novels, and tapes could go to her two best friends, and a little for her brother as a keepsake. Why wasn’t her brother a girl? Then she would have treasured those treasures so much. Her parents might break down every time they saw her clothes in the future. It would be better to burn them all and be done with it. Her brother would become the only son and could move into her room from the south room. It would probably become a messy pigsty.
“See? That big oil tank over there is where it is.” The boy smiled again as he turned around. Xu Ying snapped back from her thoughts and looked ahead. Wow! What a sight! The employer had mentioned an oil tank in the yard, which was the job location. She had thought it was some kind of half-person-high stone jar, but it turned out to be a huge train oil tank, standing proudly in someone’s yard. It was quite striking, but she had gotten halfway through the alley and didn’t dare go further, so she hadn’t seen it.
Entering the small courtyard, Xu Ying followed the boy, looking around as they walked into a single-story house. The room was crowded with migrant workers sitting on a heated kang (traditional bed). They were eating, and the table was steaming hot and lively, making her instinctively want to touch her stomach. It was freezing out, and she had only eaten a dry bread for lunch. She felt cold all over. Would these people, so simple and warm, invite her to sit on the kang and have a hot bowl of soup?
“Uncle, the person is here.” The boy smiled and squeezed into the corner of the small room. There were three or four boys his age standing near the window, and one much younger, about seven or eight, probably a neighbor’s child playing here. Xu Ying stood at the doorway, peering inside. A burly, fierce-looking man got off the kang and came out to look at her. “Just you?”
“Mm.” She nodded and tried to raise her voice, “I was referred by the labor market’s Window 12. They said there’s a job handing out flyers, paid by the hour.”
“It’s paid by the day, not the hour.” The man cut her off. She paused. “But they said it was by the hour—two hours a day, twenty yuan.” That’s why she was attending an accounting class in the morning and looking for a part-time job in the afternoon.
“My place is paid by the day—half a day is seven yuan, a full day is fifteen. If you finish early, you can go home.” Xu Ying quickly calculated. She had to attend ten days of accounting classes, which included two weekends, totaling four full days. It seemed doable, so she nodded. “Okay.”
The man went back into the room and took a stack of narrow paper slips from an old cabinet in the corner. He came back and said, “Check it. Half a day requires six hundred flyers.” Xu Ying hesitantly took them and looked. “Is this for gas ads?” she asked, confused. The intermediary had said it was for medicine ads. They were lying!
“Yes, there’s a residential building to the east. You can see it from outside. We’ll start with that side today.” “Oh.” Xu Ying replied, thinking that in this unfamiliar place, how would she find east? She’d figure it out later.
“Can you handle this? You need to insert it into the security door, leaving a quarter of the paper exposed so I can check. Otherwise, how will I know if you’ve actually handed it out or just thrown it away?” The man demonstrated at the doorframe. The employer must have been tricked! Xu Ying thought, and again replied, “Oh.”
“I had a few others handing out flyers here, but you arrived late, so they all left in the afternoon. Come early tomorrow, and I’ll take you around the various residential areas.” She nodded again. “Mm.”
“Do you know how to ride a bike?” he asked. “Yes.” She hesitated. “But I don’t have a bike.” “Well, let’s talk about that later.” The employer clearly wanted to go eat. “You can start with these in the afternoon. Come back tomorrow.”
“Do I come back to pay after I’m done?” he impatiently asked. “It’s paid every three days. Why are you in such a hurry?” Xu Ying froze. “But, but the window said it’s paid daily when I came.”
“It’s three days here.” The employer emphasized. “Everyone who comes here is paid every three days. Don’t worry, I won’t cheat you.”
“Ah.” She glanced around the room again. Someone on the kang smiled. “Don’t worry, you won’t owe anything. Go ahead and hand them out. It’s snowing outside, so go home early once you’re done.”
Her heart warmed, and Xu Ying smiled too. “Okay, I’ll come back tomorrow.” The employer said, “Alright, first, pay twenty yuan as a deposit.”
Huh?