When Lao Tan came to the barbecue restaurant, Sister Jin had prepared a frying pan and was waiting for him.
It was the same small private room as last time, and the room was warm.
Sister Jin poured wine for Lao Tan and asked, "Are you not busy?"
"It's okay, I'm not busy." Lao Tan said.
"I was worried that you were busy. I didn't chat much the day before yesterday. It snowed today and there weren't many guests. I guess there weren't many tables of guests tonight, so I called you." Sister Jin said, picking up the wine glass, "Here, drink.
One sip, it’s been so many years since we drank together.”
"No, it's been twenty years."
The two clinked glasses.
Sister Jin gave Lao Tan some fried meat slices and asked, "Have you still got in touch with Sister Ma?"
"No. I went to Yangchun when I came back from Binhai. She no longer worked there. She opened a small supermarket by herself, just next to Yangchun. When I went there later, the supermarket was gone, so I lost contact with her."
"We were in contact when she opened a supermarket, and later I called her and changed her number."
This is how things are in the world. We will meet different friends at different points in time, and lose contact at different points in time. When time passes through the years, old friends will meet again. This is the value of friendship.
For people who work in restaurants, because of the instability of their jobs, they have very few regular friends, and they make friends wherever they go. Once good friends meet again, it is like meeting comrades again, and they are cherished very much.
All migrant workers have this experience. Of course, those who have a bad relationship will be left alone.
"Sister, you haven't found a companion these years?" Lao Tan asked.
"Looking for it, but we couldn't go together in half a year and got him again." Sister Jin smiled, as if she was talking about something casual, and then asked: "Is your child quite old?"
"Well, sixteen, I'm in high school."
"Boy or girl?"
"boy."
"Is it good to study?"
"Generally, a sports student, playing ball."
"He must be tall."
"Well enough."
The two of them were drinking and chatting, gradually chatting about some past events in Yangchun.
Back then, Sister Jin was young, beautiful, and tall. She didn't work in the kitchen at first, but paid for goods. Later, Lao Tan's stir-fried vegetables and pickles sold well, and it was too busy for one person, so the boss's aunt transferred her over.
.
It actually agrees with that sentence - men and women work together without getting tired, the two of them cooperate well, and have established a deep friendship in a few months.
Apart from mutual tacit understanding, the main thing to establish friendship is that people are nice to each other. There is no talk of doing more or doing less, and no one wants to get along with anyone. If there is a person who cares about everything and doesn't take it well, he will be angry and troublesome.
At that time, Lao Tan, Sister Jin, and Sister Ma were the best in the kitchen. Sister Ma lived alone in the community opposite the hotel.
Speaking of Sister Ma, she has a story. She was among the second group to work in Japan during the wave of overseas study in the 1990s. She earned a lot of money after working for three years, but the cost was that her husband could not bear the loneliness at home and had sex with other women.
And he took his daughter away with him.
There were a lot of things like this in that era, but more Han men went abroad, while more Korean women went abroad, and the endings were mostly the same.
Lao Tan and the three of them got along well, so they always drank together, often at Sister Ma's house.
Lao Tan helped Sister Jin beat up her ex-husband who came to harass her, and also helped Sister Ma solve the problem when her ex-husband came to make trouble. It's not that Lao Tan came to the rescue when there was injustice. With Sister Zhao's experience, he was also more cautious. Both times, he was
It was done under the instruction of the boss's aunt, and that was all to achieve the purpose of intimidation.
The reward in exchange is the respect and work support of the two women. The most obvious thing is that I no longer have to wash my work clothes, and I don’t have to clean the stove myself, as it is kept clean every day.
At that time, Lao Tan had already rented a house with Lin Yan, but they were not married yet. The two lived a poor but happy life, full of longing for the future.
Lao Tan told Lin Yan about his interactions with Sister Ma and Sister Jin, and Lin Yan also knew them, so she felt relieved.
For a cook, working in a restaurant will inevitably come into contact with women, and most of them are good-looking. Relatively speaking, a restaurant is a relatively open place, and affairs between men and women often happen, so it is good to be able to control yourself.
This is not to say that human nature has fallen, but that the special environment of catering service as a special industry has given people a common view - waiters are always compared to hotel ladies, and cooks are described as hooligans.
Isn’t there a saying that out of ten cooks, nine are coquettish and one is not coquettish?
Haha, there is nothing we can do about it.
We are used to the phenomenon of pure friendship between middle-aged couples, as well as the impetuousness and secret or not-so-secret extramarital affairs of those around us, so we hope to appreciate fidelity in novels, movies and TV shows, and make us cry with joy or sadness.
But life is reality, and reality often makes people helpless and want to break away. This is natural.
Just like people often pay more attention to some crappy celebrities than to scientific researchers who create value for society, they ignore reality and truly meaningful things, and even deceive themselves and others not to admit it, but to satisfy the distant and never-ending reality.
Insatiable vanity.
When I return to reality, I have to continue living day after day, and I feel like I am suffering and cannot escape.
Some people do this all their lives, taking their so-called regrets to their graves; others suddenly wake up and laugh it off, knowing that what they are living now is life, and thus love life even more.
Happiness is very simple, and happiness is not complicated. It’s just a matter of knowing it. It’s useless for others to say it.
When Lao Tan talked about getting cancer, Sister Jin couldn't help but open her eyes wide, and asked with concern how she was doing now. So Lao Tan told her about his two-year anti-cancer experience, which was very sad.
"Is everything okay now?" Sister Jin asked.
"Okay." Lao Tan said: "The main reason is that it was discovered early, and in the early stage, we consulted traditional Chinese medicine, otherwise the disease would not have been cured so quickly."
"It really scared me to death. My scalp went numb when I heard it." Sister Jin pointed to her left breast and said, "Do you know why I stopped working in Yangchun? There was a tumor. I was scared. At first I thought it was a breast gland.
What about cancer?
Later, it was confirmed that the surgery was not necessary. After the operation, I went back to my hometown to recuperate. When I was recuperating, I was fine. I wandered around the county town and found a store, so I rented it and opened a mixed vegetable and pickle restaurant."
Half of Sister Jin's vegetable mixing skills are inherited from her family, and the other half was taught by Sister Ma. As for the pickles, she learned them from Lao Tan.
Her small shop only sells three kinds of pickles: pickled pig trotters, pig ears, and pickled beef. Due to its good taste, it quickly became a specialty in the county, earned some money, and bought a house.
"Small cities are no better than provincial cities. The flow of people is limited. How much can you earn with just those people in a day? Just enough to eat and use, and still have a little surplus. But small cities have one advantage, they are leisurely. You don't have to be as nervous as in provincial cities.
I'm always nervous and can't even sleep well," said Sister Jin.
"That is."
"If we don't move, I can still work. If we move, I can't help it. Besides, I want to take a break after working for these years, and I still earn enough money? Haha, right?"
"yes."
"I've been working at home for half a year, and I've been free and free. It happened that Jin Jin built this barbecue restaurant, and when he saw that I was idle, he asked me to come over and help with the kitchen. I was given a lot of money, so I came over.
I didn’t expect it, so I came over, but if I did, I would still have to sell the store. What can I do to help with this epidemic? I just have to pay for it.”