Chapter 28: On The Train
Sure enough, Mao Jinqian, who usually always grinned foolishly, looked quite intimidating when he put on a straight face and got angry, just with those two thick, comical eyebrows furrowed together.
With his sudden roar, not to mention the three adults and one child in this carriage who didn’t even dare to breathe heavily, even the people in the neighboring carriages stuck their heads out one after another, their eyes filled with both fear and an uncontrollable desire to watch the excitement.
“Comrade, sorry, the child is too naughty and dirtied your bedding. Um, how about I swap with you?”
The couple had a seven- or eight-year-old child, and the husband had a gentle and polite demeanor.
The wife had permed hair that was the most fashionable in Shanghai City, with bright red lipstick on her lips, and she habitually looked at people with slanted eyes, full of a sense of superiority.
“What’s the big fuss about? Which child isn’t naughty and mischievous? This thing wasn’t taken from yours, it’s still right there, as if it’s something rare…”
“Yuan Hongmei!”
“What’s wrong, where did I say anything wrong? Several adults wanting to argue with a child!”
Looking at the child shrinking behind the parents, still occasionally making faces at the three of them and provocatively going “yueyueyue” from their mouth, Mao Jinqian’s fist made a series of crisp cracking sounds.
Zhang Ze, also with a grim face, coldly replied that it was unnecessary. Recalling that incident from many years ago, he couldn’t help but raise his hand and forcefully pat his shoulder in silent comfort.
Taking a deep breath, Mao Jinqian walked forward without a word and sat down directly on his butt, ignoring the footprints on the sheet.
The glaring footprints up there, how could he not tell they were from a child by their size? It was precisely because he knew that he momentarily couldn’t control the sudden surge of misplaced anger from the bottom of his heart.
He tugged at the corner of his mouth in self-mockery; sure enough, he still couldn’t let it go, couldn’t forget.
So to this day, he had no plans to start a family or have children, because he, who had no tolerance left for children… didn’t deserve it.
“Brother Zhang?”
Seeing the obscure look in his eyes as he glanced over, silently shaking his head without a word, Su Ning understood and nodded, asking no more.
“Ning Ning, you sleep on the lower bunk, I’ll sleep on the middle bunk above.”
“Okay.”
Zhang Ze didn’t rush up; in the middle of the day, the train interior was like a large steamer basket, unbearably hot, plus various indescribable smells, making it impossible to sleep even if he wanted to.
He walked to Mao Jinqian’s side, plopped his butt down right next to him, squeezing him to the edge, while he himself sat boldly in the spacious middle spot.
At this point, the sensible man had already let his wife and child climb onto his bunk, and when it was his turn, he reached for the nearby iron railing frame while repeatedly apologizing to the two sitting men.
As for the wife’s occasional muttering, the innuendo-laden words were ignored with great experience.
Having just gone through a parting and now encountering this not-so-happy incident, Su Ning rubbed her slightly swollen eyes from crying and sat down on the bunk opposite the two.
“Brother Zhang, Brother Mao, give me that opened small bag.”
Calling it a small bag was only relative to their other luggage; in reality, it was far from small.
Li Hehua was afraid the meals on the train wouldn’t suit her taste, so she prepared quite a lot of food, probably using up all the stored goods in the kitchen at home.
Fortunately, before leaving, she quietly left behind plenty of grain and vegetables, even specially picking two or three kinds of seasonal common fruits, each about ten catties.
To have a reasonable excuse, she repeatedly went out several times right in front of them, coming back dragging and carrying either several large snakeskin bags or large leather suitcases, saying they were necessities for the long trip.
In reality, by the time they left, she had already swapped them out, replacing with things like clothes and quilts prepared early in the space to cover up.
—When they got home and saw, Grandpa Fu and the others would probably be startled, right?
Thinking of Ying Ying and Tingzi’s clamoring appearances, Su Ning couldn’t help but curve the corners of her mouth.
Inside the opened bag were several aluminum lunchboxes; just the smell alone was rich with scallion pork flavor. Opening them revealed they were packed full of dumplings.
Besides the dumplings in the lunchboxes, there was a stack of scallion oil pancakes wrapped in oiled paper and about twenty tea eggs.
“Gulp~”
No one knew who started it, but there were loud swallows of saliva one after another.
“Mom, dumplings, dumplings, I want to eat dumplings!”
“Woo, damn, it smells so good. Pork dumplings? Oh man, this aroma is going to kill me with hunger!”
“Not a holiday or festival, and showing off on a train? It’s just pork dumplings, made like no one’s ever eaten them!”
“…”
Instantly, everyone who smelled this aroma couldn’t hold back, and more than a few had eyes red with envy and jealousy.
Some smarter and quicker ones immediately pulled out their dry, hard rations and gnawed on them fiercely, closing their eyes tightly with an indescribable look of satisfaction on their faces.
“Sister-in-law’s cooking is still so good!”
Zhang Ze and Mao Jinqian also swept away their inexplicably low moods, their eyes gleaming as they looked at the basin of plump white dumplings.
“Ning Ning, shall we eat this now? Not saving it for dinner?”
“Eat it while it’s still warm. Auntie also made mushroom spicy sauce; we can get a few portions of rice from the dining car tonight and eat it with that, it’ll be great too.”
“Alright, listen to Ning Ning!”
She took out three tea eggs and, with the lunchboxes in hand, handed each of them a box of dumplings plus one tea egg.
If it weren’t for that earlier scene, the three might have felt a bit embarrassed and definitely would have shared some with those in the same carriage.
Now… they just buried their heads and ate.
Everyone pretended not to hear the crying and making a fuss of the child jumping and yelling on the upper bunk, nor the woman’s innuendo-filled coaxing and cursing.
Mao Jinqian was even more mischievously naughty, childishly praising in all sorts of ecstatic ways while eating, which provoked even louder crying and cursing from above.
It was clear that he really hated this kind of bratty child.
Su Ning and Zhang Ze exchanged a helpless glance, both protectively choosing to close their eyes and cover their ears at the same time.
“That… comrade.”
Lying on the upper bunk above Su Ning’s head was a young fellow around twenty years old.
He wore a military green vest with a white short-sleeved shirt over it, a neat flat-top haircut, and upright features in the most popular square face style of the time.
“Can I trade some dumplings or a tea egg with you?”
Wu Ming cautiously made the request, feeling a bit embarrassed, but he really couldn’t hold back anymore; if he couldn’t eat even a bite, he’d be itching with anxiety all night!
Li Hehua had stuffed a box with thirty or forty dumplings, which, given Su Ning’s appetite, wouldn’t even be finished after skipping two meals.
Rather than saving them for the next meal or even the one after, it was better to kill two birds with one stone.
So after hearing this, Su Ning hesitated for less than a minute before happily nodding in agreement.
“Thank you, thank you!”
Hearing her agree, Wu Ming was overjoyed and thanked her repeatedly, immediately hugging his military green shoulder bag and quickly flipping down.
Not only did he give plenty of ration coupons, but he also enthusiastically insisted on adding some of his own biscuits and pastries.
After finishing the lunch, the few chance-met people clearly became more familiar, not only simply exchanging their names but also chatting about where they had come from and where they were going.
Especially upon learning that he had just visited the cemetery to sweep the tombs and was now preparing to return to his hometown in Xiangnan for work.
Zhang Ze and Mao Jinqian, who still had endless feelings for the military deep in their bones, felt their good feeling toward him soar even more because of his military family background.
