“How much for this white vest?” Chen Qiaoyu asked.
The white vest was the kind that many people on the construction site were wearing that day. People in the 1970s also liked them—wearing one under a shirt was a fashionable look.
“Fifteen yuan each. If you buy two, I’ll give them to you for twenty-eight,” the old woman said, handing a stack of vests for Chen Qiaoyu to look through.
Chen Qiaoyu thought for a moment and chose two.
She settled the bill: 48 yuan. The red hundred-yuan note was instantly broken, leaving her with only small change.
Chen Qiaoyu left the elderly couple’s stall carrying a black plastic bag full of socks, feeling a pang of heartache.
Money was easy to earn here, but also easy to spend.
If she went back to Yaojia Village and told people she had spent forty or fifty yuan in one go, they’d laugh and say she was daydreaming.
Before leaving, Chen Qiaoyu had asked the elderly couple where she could buy cheap clothes and pants. Now, following the old woman’s directions, she headed toward one end of the pedestrian street.
Before long, she spotted the stall the old woman had described—a plastic sheet spread on the ground with a mountain of clothes piled on it.
The stall owner turned out to be a man. He had set up a cardboard sign and was sitting right on top of the clothes mountain, shouting through a loudspeaker: “Nineteen, nineteen! Everything here is nineteen!”
“Nineteen yuan! You won’t lose money, you won’t get scammed—but you will get yourself some decent clothes! Don’t miss out as you pass by!”
Chen Qiaoyu couldn’t help but laugh when she heard the sales pitch.
Now more familiar with the buying and selling process here, she asked the owner, “Boss, is everything really nineteen yuan?”
The owner swept his hand across the pile: “Everything here is nineteen! Over there are the twenty-nine and thirty-nine ones.”
Chen Qiaoyu looked over and saw some priced at forty-nine and fifty-nine as well.
Sure enough, you couldn’t escape these “shrewd merchants” anywhere.
Still, at least the prices were clearly marked, and this was indeed the cheapest clothing stall she had come across.
She squatted down and started rummaging through the pile with the crowd.
She needed to pick out a top and a pair of pants for herself, something to wear next time she came.
After digging around, she chose a pair of black wide-leg pants. The fabric felt a bit smooth and quite comfortable, and the length reached her ankles.
She also picked out a dark blue long-sleeved shirt—the thickest one on the stall.
It looked to her like laborer’s cloth, but softer. She heard someone nearby call it “denim shirt.”
Whatever the fabric was, as long as it was cheap and durable, it was fine.
The outfit cost her thirty-eight yuan, leaving her with forty-three.
Later, she passed a stall selling elastic band sandals. Spotting the familiar hollow plastic sandals—considered “old-fashioned” by people here—Chen Qiaoyu’s eyes lit up.
She spent twenty-six yuan on two pairs: one for herself, one for Qing Yang.
Now she had only seventeen left.
Once again, Chen Qiaoyu marveled at how quickly money disappeared.
She had thought one hundred and fifty yuan would last a long, long time. But there were still so many things she hadn’t bought, and she was already out of money.
Never did she imagine that one day she’d be clutching seventeen yuan and still feeling strapped.
In the end, she spent ten yuan on a stack of notebooks for Qing Yang. The notebooks were a bit ugly, but there were six in the stack, fairly thick, and the paper felt smooth.
She spent six yuan on a bundle of pencils—twelve of them.
That left her with a single one-yuan coin. In the end, she couldn’t bring herself to spend it and carefully tucked it into her pocket.
If she could never come back here again, this coin would be her last memento and proof—proof that she wasn’t dreaming or going crazy, that she had truly arrived in a future era.
And just like that, one hundred and fifty yuan was spent entirely. Chen Qiaoyu headed up the mountain, carrying several bulging plastic bags.
The setting sun painted golden-red evening clouds across the sky, their light falling on Chen Qiaoyu’s young face. The fine beads of sweat seemed to hold the sky’s entire brilliance.
Standing on the low hillside, Chen Qiaoyu took one last, deep look at the lights of the pedestrian street before resolutely walking toward the old site of Yaojia Village.
Unlike the villages at the foot of the mountain, where demolition had begun, the village tucked in the ravine was eerily quiet. Not even stray cats or dogs came around—only weeds taller than a person.
Chen Qiaoyu wove through the mountain path hidden by wild grass, carrying her plastic bags. Despite being extremely careful, the bags kept getting snagged and torn by branches and thorns.
Chen Qiaoyu’s heart ached at the sight, but she tried to console herself: “It doesn’t matter anyway, since I can’t take the bags back with me. If they’re torn, they’re torn…”
She finally made it to the old Chen family house just before dark. There, she carefully sorted through her haul from the day.
She couldn’t take the plastic bags back with her. Some were torn, some had letter patterns or designs on them—all of them had to be set aside.
Chen Qiaoyu thought for a moment, then took off her shirt and used it to wrap the socks, shoes, notebooks, and pencils, tying the sleeves and hem together to make a bundle.
Then she poured the boxed meals into the kraft paper bag that had held the roast duck. With the rice covering it, the aroma of the duck wouldn’t easily escape.
As for the empty lunch boxes, plastic bags, and bottles, Chen Qiaoyu tucked them all into the stove cavity.
They were perfectly good items. Even though Zhou Xiaoling had said they were disposable, Chen Qiaoyu couldn’t bear to throw them away.
After carefully checking herself over to make sure nothing was amiss, Chen Qiaoyu placed her hand into the shallow round hollow on the stove.
“Whoosh—”
In the blink of an eye, Chen Qiaoyu, clutching her bundle of supplies, appeared in the kitchen of the old Chen family house in 1979.
The last traces of sunset had faded from the sky, and the room instantly grew dark.
But Chen Qiaoyu’s eyes gleamed in the darkness—everything she had bought had come back with her!
What a relief!
What is the worst thing that can happen to a person?
When the person is gone, but the money hasn’t been spent.
She had decided to spend every last cent of her wages from hauling bricks precisely because she was afraid she’d come back and still have money left unspent.
If that had happened, it would have been unbearable.
Chen Qiaoyu hefted the heavy bundle in her arms and couldn’t help but smile broadly. “Thank goodness I made it back. I was a little worried I wouldn’t…”
Keeping that last coin wasn’t just for memorabilia either—she was also afraid that if she couldn’t come back, she’d need that money to buy eggs!
This old house was strange. The proof of passage turned out to be handing over chicken eggs and duck eggs.
Country folk went to bed early. They got up before dawn to work and went to sleep once it got dark. By now, there was no sound to be heard outside.
Chen Qiaoyu sat quietly in the old house kitchen for a while. After confirming there was no one outside, she crept toward Qingyang’s room with her things.
But the moment she stepped out of the main hall, she saw a figure standing in the courtyard.
Chen Qiaoyu: “!”
Zhong Sinian, bare-chested: “?”
In the darkness, their silhouettes gradually became visible to each other.
Chen Qiaoyu was clutching a kraft paper bag full of rice and a whole roast duck to her chest, with a large bundle strapped to her back.
Hunched over and stooped, she looked just like a thief.
Meanwhile, Zhong Sinian stood bare-chested in the yard, holding up a bucket of water to rinse himself off for a bath.
Their eyes met, filled with panic and embarrassment.
Seeing Zhong Sinian topless, Chen Qiaoyu quickly turned her back—but then remembered the conspicuous bundle on her shoulders that only drew more attention, and reluctantly turned back around.
“Zhong… Educated Youth Zhong, you’re taking a bath?”
Zhong Sinian’s hand, still holding the wooden bucket, stiffened in midair. “…”
Chen Qiaoyu: “…”
She could throw that mouth of hers away.
For a long moment, there was silence.
Then, burning with embarrassment, Chen Qiaoyu turned around and, like a one-humped camel lugging a massive bundle, trudged toward Qingyang’s room.
Thankfully, the sound of splashing water soon filled the air behind her as Zhong Sinian began his bath. His view was obscured by the water, and he didn’t look her way again.
Chen Qiaoyu felt around the windowsill for the key hidden under a brick, unlocked Qingyang’s door, and stepped inside, deeply mortified.
One really shouldn’t do anything shameful.
Do no wrong by day, meet no naked man by night.