Chapter 88: Chapter 88: To go or not to go
Mei Yiliang helped put the bicycle on the top of the shuttle bus, offered the driver a few cigarettes, said a few words of gratitude, and bought bread and ham to the car. He watched the car drive out of the station before going back.
The bus was not full, so Feng Yiping found an empty seat at the back, put the money he had with him into his inside pocket, and then fell asleep.
He was really sleepy, as he had only slept for a few hours the night before.
The shuttle bus bumped along the whole way, stopping twice to let the people on board go to the toilet. Feng Yiping never moved. There was no way he could, being young and full of energy.
He slept really well. It was only after 2 pm when the shuttle bus stopped at the county bus station that he woke up with a yawn and a stretch.
It wasn't until he got off the bus that he felt hungry. Pushing his bicycle out of the station's large iron gate, he smelled the aromas coming from the stalls on both sides and felt even hungrier.
The bread and ham would be just right to take to the little ones. He rode his bicycle and, relying on his memory, found the beef noodle restaurant next to the Electric Power Guest House next to People's Square.
This legendary beef noodle restaurant is unremarkable, with no sign and a dark door.
The whitewashed walls of the shop have now turned a dull yellow. There are three tables on each side, with wooden stools scattered around the tables. The tables and stools, to put it nicely, have a sense of age and depth, and to put it bluntly, they are quite old, probably not much younger than Feng Yiping.
I don't know if it's because the waiters are lazy, but there are cigarette butts and tissues on the concrete floor. ƒreewebɳovel.com
If you don't know him, you'll probably turn around and walk away when you see this. But everyone in the county knows that this is the beef noodle restaurant with the best taste in the whole county, without exception, and also the one with the best business, again without exception.
It's hard to find a seat once it's time to eat. No other noodle restaurant can compare. Later, it was rumoured that poppy husks were added to the beef broth, but that didn't matter, everyone was still flocking there.
In middle school, Xiao Zhijie paid for it, and they ate there twice. He later brought his wife and children to visit several times, and they were full of praise every time.
Feng Yiping locked his bicycle and walked in. It wasn't meal time, so there were no customers. Two oscillating fans nailed to the walls on either side creaked and whirred. A man and a woman, two waiters, each occupied a table and were sleeping on their stomachs. No one greeted him.
Feng Yiping shouted, 'Boss, a bowl of beef noodles.'
The sleeping girl looked up at him with a dazed expression in her eyes. Feng Yiping smiled at him and repeated, 'A bowl of beef noodles.'
The girl kicked off her slippers, shuffled to the kitchen door, and shouted inside, 'One bowl of beef noodles.'
Not long after, a large bowl with a few missing teeth was served. Feng Yiping picked up a pair of chopsticks from the chopsticks holder on the table, wiped them with the paper towel in the paper tube, picked up one chopstick and tasted it. This is the taste! The noodles are chewy, the meat is fragrant and not greasy, and the soup is fresh and thick without being mixed.
Feng Yiping was like someone released from prison, slurping away. Before long, a large bowl of noodles was down his throat. He wiped his mouth and raised his hand to the girl, saying, 'One more bowl.'
'To go?'
'No, I'll eat it,' Feng Yiping said with a smile.
'Oh,' the girl glanced at him, probably thinking that Feng Yiping really was not what he seemed, and shouted into the kitchen again.
After finishing the two bowls of beef noodles, Feng Yiping felt at ease and extraordinarily happy, and he also found the little girl, who had no sense of service at all, more agreeable.
After leaving the noodle shop, he rode his bike slowly around the county town.
He looked at the county government, the courthouse, the county winery, the Experimental Middle School, and the No. 1 Middle School of the county, and it only took him half an hour to look at them all.
Although the gate of the county government was also grey and inconspicuous, there were still armed police standing guard, so the grade was immediately raised.
At the county brewery where Feng Weidong works, you can smell the alcohol from afar. It is said that the river in front of the brewery smells like alcohol.
As for the Experimental High School, he lost both of his final exams to a classmate here, and he doesn't know which floor he is on.
As for No. 1 High School, in two years, if he fails to get into the city high school, he should study here.
Finally, he passed the nursing school, but of course Feng Hongbing did not get into No. 1 High School. I heard that after the semester started, he went to the nursing school. I don't know what they were thinking, a grown man studying this.
Finally, he returned to the bus station. He weighed two pounds of bananas and two pounds of grapes at the fruit stand. These two kinds of fruit are not sold much in the town.
He stared at the scale intently. There was no way around it. With these vendors in front of the station, if you don't watch them, you can't expect them not to short-change you.
When it came to paying, he had to use some persuasion to get the owner to round down the price by 50 cents.
In the past, he would never have haggled over such a small amount, but now that he was starting over, he still needed to practise these skills.
The buses to the towns below all sold their tickets directly on the bus.
He walked all the way over and saw the bus to the neighbouring county. He paused for a moment, as he had taken this bus before.
Hey, should I go now? Let's see how fat Zhang Yan has become.
But Zhang Yan's family hadn't moved to the side of the road yet, they were still in the village. He was a stranger, and it would be hard to find an excuse to go in.
Besides, when they had met, her family's old house had already been demolished, and he didn't know exactly where it was. It wouldn't do to go to the village and ask someone, that would just arouse suspicion.
However, he really wanted to visit Zhang Yan. The reason was that Zhang Yan's personality had changed a lot since childhood. According to her own words, she was very good at climbing trees when she was a child.
In the countryside, children who could climb trees and loved to climb trees generally meant that they were more naughty and more capable. For example, Feng Yiping, the famous good boy, could not climb trees very well, while Feng Wen, who caused trouble, often climbed up paulownia trees to dismantle magpies' nests.
I really want to see how mischievous Zhang Yan is now. It would be best to film it, so that this detailed first-hand information is meaningful.
Should he go or not? He hesitated for a long time, but decided that it was better not to go for now. He already had a plan for how to meet in the future, and going now would be too abrupt.
Besides, he was now a model student with a very positive outlook on life, and had not developed any abnormal mentality.
In case he changed his mind, he immediately got on the bus to the town.
When he got on the bus, the ticket seller saw that his bike was small and insisted that it should be counted as a person's ticket.
Feng Yiping took this as another exercise and used his three-inch-long tongue to argue with the ticket seller for several minutes. Finally, he got the price down to half price. When the ticket seller gave in, a sense of accomplishment came over him. The satisfaction was not something that could be measured by just a few dollars.
It was almost 6 o'clock when the bus arrived in town. He went to the butcher's and picked up two catties of fresh meat. At the end, he asked the owner to round down the price by 40 cents. He felt that he had been very successful in bargaining today and was proud of himself.
After another half hour, he finally arrived at Meijiawan.
From afar, he saw his grandfather holding Rui Rui and waving at him from the roadside. When he saw him arrive, his grandfather scolded him, asking why he was so late. He explained that he had been delayed after wandering around the county.
He gave Rui Rui some bread that his uncle had bought, and he and his grandfather went to a public phone to call Lao Cai and tell him to tell his uncle that he had arrived home safely.