Inside the morgue of Red Star Rolling Mill Hospital.
Li Donglai lay on the table and wrote a paper all afternoon.
His stomach growled, and he knew it was time to get off work.
Close the pen and notebook and go outside along the stairs.
The cement roads, blue brick walls, and poplar leaves are all covered with a light golden color.
A golden pie hangs from the tops of the poplar trees in the sky.
The workers crowded towards the gate.
Okay, it's time to get off work.
Li Donglai also left the steel rolling mill with others.
Walking onto the dimly colored street, with forty-eight yuan in his arms, he felt like a nouveau riche.
Since you are a nouveau riche, do what a nouveau riche should do.
For example, eating meat.
Li Donglai hummed a little tune and came to Xuanwu Caishikou.
Last time I only had 1 yuan, so I could only buy some eggs, and I wasn't in the mood to go shopping.
This time Li Donglai decided to take a good turn.
After all, he may have to live in this capital for decades.
There are two-story blue brick buildings on both sides of the wide road.
There are also 5.6 single-storey bungalows at the entrance.
The signboard of 'Caishikou Trust Store' hangs on the bungalow.
It was time to get off work, and the workers, who had been busy all day, stopped by the vegetable market entrance to buy some groceries.
The market was crowded with people, and there was a commotion full of fireworks.
As soon as he entered Caishikou, the stone pillar standing in the middle of the road caught Li Donglai's attention.
The complex patterns carved on the stone pillars have become unclear due to the erosion of time.
There are faint black and red marks on the stone pier below the stone pillar.
Li Donglai stood nearby and seemed to smell a hint of blood.
For hundreds of years, this smell has been lingering on the stone pillars, refusing to leave.
This taste is not a smell but a feeling.
Caishikou... Li Donglai slapped his head suddenly.
Isn’t this the place where heads were beheaded in the Ming and Qing Dynasties?
In the play, it is sung that "pushed out of the Meridian Gate and beheaded" actually meant being dragged to the Caishikou "on a red errand" and beheaded!
Every autumn, when everything is quiet, criminals who have been sentenced to death in the capital will be shackled by officials and taken to Caishikou.
In front of the onlookers, he is clearly a typical example.
If the prisoner's family has money, they can give the executioner a few taels of silver as a "farewell".
The executioner will shout: "Master! I will wait for you to leave, and I will also take care of the food you eat and the errands you will do. You can go on your way without worry."
He mastered the strength of his hand very accurately, cutting off the head without turning around.
This makes it easier for family members to carry the body, sew the head on and place the whole body for burial.
If the criminal's family has no money, the executioner will not be polite.
He was beheading with a knife, kicking the corpse with his feet, not even leaving a whole corpse behind.
After liberation, this bad custom was abolished, and prisoners on death row could only be shot.
Caishikou also fell silent.
...
No wonder people buying groceries avoid the pillars, but as a doctor, Li Donglai is not taboo about this.
Entering the food market entrance, there are stalls built with asbestos tiles on both sides.
There are cucumbers, eggplants, toon, bell peppers...
Li Donglai bought a small handful of toon for 2 cents.
Then we came to the meat stall.
On the dark and greasy meat rack, there were strips of fat pork and a few strips of lean meat.
A comrade salesperson with a stubble on his face, wearing dark gray overalls and a large blood-stained apron hanging on his chest, was squatting on a stone, squinting and smoking a cigarette.
Li Donglai asked loudly: "Comrade, how do you sell pork?"
The salesperson didn't even raise his head, biting the butt of the cigarette: "Fat fat is 78 cents, a pound of meat is worth 60 cents. Lean meat is 62 cents."
“Lean meat doesn’t cost meat?”
"No, you ask so many questions, do you want to buy it or not? If not, don't waste my time!"
Without even asking a few questions, the salesperson became impatient.
Li Donglai suppressed his heartless anger and smiled lightly: "Okay, give me a pound of lean meat."
He took out sixty-two cents and waved it in the air.
The salesman carefully placed the cigarette butt on the green brick at his feet and stood up reluctantly.
But he was very agile with his hands and feet. He picked up the butcher's knife and swung it hard.
Put it on a scale and weigh it, it's exactly one pound.
The salesperson used the tip of the knife to poke a small hole in the meat, and then pulled out a handful of straw from the pile of straw next to it.
Those big, oily and rough hands could weave the straw into a rope in just a few clicks.
Thread the straw rope into the meat, tie a knot, and hand it over.
"You take it!"
Li Donglai took the meat, and the salesman squatted on the stone again, picked up the cigarette with a dull head and took two puffs.
Hey, smoke can still emit smoke.
...
Li Donglai stepped on the golden light and returned to the courtyard with pork and toon.
Along the way, familiar people cast surprised glances from time to time.
"Dr. Li, are you going to eat meat today? Yes, there are also toon, stir-fried meat with toon, what a delicious dish."
"Doctor Li, can you two brothers and sisters finish eating such a large piece of meat?"
...
Back in the middle courtyard, the tutoring class has ended.
He Yuyu and Li Xiaomei are picking up the garbage thrown by primary school students.
A group of children stood under the big locust tree waiting for Yan Bugui.
Yan Bugui stood at the door waiting for Li Dong to come.
Seeing Li Donglai coming over, he was about to speak, but his mouth opened wide but no sound came out.
His eyes were fixed on that piece of flesh like nails.
"Uncle Yan, do you want to eat meat?" Li Dong looked at his dull eyes and started to joke.
"I want to..." Yan Bugui swallowed.
Li Donglai said with a smile: "If you want to eat it, buy it yourself. The uncle selling meat at Caishikou is worried about not being able to sell the meat!"
After saying that, he walked straight past Yan Bugui, opened the door, and entered the house.
Yan Bugui also knew that Li Donglai could not share the meat with him, so he could only laugh awkwardly.
He looked behind him and saw that no one was paying attention, so he squeezed into the house.
"Donglai, have you bought the hat? I took all the money from those parents." Yan Bugui took out a bunch of banknotes from his arms, grinned and stuffed it into Li Donglai's pocket.
This is forty yuan!
In fact, when Yan Bugui saw how popular Li Donglai's tutoring class was, he also had the idea of leaving Li Donglai alone and working alone.
But he knew that without Li Donglai to build a bridge and without a little military hat, he would only be asking for trouble by running his own tutoring class.
Besides, the reputation of tutoring classes has now been established.
Among the children we have received recently, many are children of street office and district leaders.
Alas, this Li Donglai is really brave and a capable person!
Yan Bugui thought about it and thought it would be good to be a tutor in a tutoring class.
The human heart is not enough for a snake to swallow an elephant!
Although Li Donglai knew that Yan Bugui did not dare to cause trouble, he still counted the banknotes in front of Yan Bugui.
He noticed that Yan Bugui kept staring at the banknotes, and his heart moved.
Fifty cents, one dollar, one dollar and a half, two dollars...twenty-five...
"Oops, the number is wrong!"
Li Donglai started counting again under Yan Bugui's distressed eyes.
Fifty cents, one dollar, one dollar and five...
This time, Yan Bugui turned his head and looked. He felt that his heart was bleeding.
After counting the banknotes, one cent was enough, Li Donglai took out twenty military caps from the medical box and handed them to Yan Bugui.
