After sorting out the plans to rent a house tomorrow, Yan Fei was in high spirits.
Unfortunately, his good mood didn’t last long. Before he could get to campus, Yan Fei saw a few figures at the school gate from a distance and suggested to Xu Xiaoyan behind him, "Why don’t we go out and play a bit longer? We came back a bit early today!"
"What do you mean early?" The girl was puzzled. "They are about to lock the gates. You can’t always let me lie that you helped me over the gate. Everyone in the dorm is asking you to show them!"
"I haven’t always let you lie, yesterday only marked the second time," Yan Fei felt helpless. He continued riding towards the school gate. "That Little Dark-skinned Girl from your dorm is waiting at the school gate! I think she’s waiting for us."
"Really? Let me see..." The girl leaned forward to see. She even forgot about his habit of giving her dormmate a nickname already. "Gosh, she already brought someone here. We’ve been running around all day, she must be worried since she couldn’t find us. She must have something important."
Indeed, Little Dark-skinned Girl had an important matter.
The person she brought who intended to be a street vendor wasn’t a stranger but her own parents.
The reason why she waited for Yan Fei was very simple: They had no idea about how to sell things.
This family of three arrived in the morning, already found a place to stay. As soon as they had unpacked, they brought out the fried peanuts they prepared to give it a try.
As for popcorn, they didn’t have a popcorn-making stove, they didn’t have money to buy one, so they couldn’t sell it for now — based on their idea they want to consider selling popcorn once they make some profit. In case they lose money, they are ready to go home any time — they have grandparents at home taking care of Little Dark-skinned Girl’s little brother!
The reason they didn’t know how to sell is also very simple. Because they followed Yan Fei’s suggestion, weighed and packed peanuts, then carried them in baskets and walked around the sidewalk selling them.
If everything was laid out on the ground, that would be seen by everyone. If you are carrying a basket around, unless someone is really paying attention, who would know they are selling stuff?
This issue is quite simple. All you need to do is shout out loud a few times.
However, this shout posed a big challenge for those who came all the way from remote mountainous regions to the provincial city.
People from remote areas have a natural sense of awe towards big cities, especially the provincial city. They always feel that they are inferior just by arriving, even before they got there, they were already feeling high-strung.
Walking on the street with their goods, seeing all these well-dressed people speaking words they didn’t understand, their sense of awe was so strong that it could only be described as shivering with fear.
Especially when some students occasionally pass by, reciting something like "the dark night gives me black eyes, but I use it to seek light". This only made them feel more profound and ashamed of their rustic image — yes, this was an era where literary youth were having their heyday. Even if you didn’t have a penny in your pocket, as long as you can recite a couple of poems, write several pieces of literary works, you wouldn’t worry about girls throwing themselves at you like moths to flame.
Even for an awkward single person that stuttered, as long as you could get a tofu-block-sized of text published in a magazine, you would feel like you were driving a brand-new four-wheel tractor stationed at the entrance of the village — all the young ladies and married women would give you an extra look, maybe the village belle was secretly crushing on you!
Of course, this convertible tractor would soon go out of style, and everyone will require a canopy and running on gasoline. After some more time, the convertible style will come back in fashion, but it still needed to run on gas, and the lower the chassis the better.
In short, Little Dark-skinned Girl’s parents came to sell stuff, but they couldn’t bring themselves to shout out, unable to open their mouth. Maybe they were ashamed, or fear of embarrassing their daughter who is also a student at Provincial University, or perhaps they felt that selling small goods on the street is a loss of face — in fact, for those not from that era, it’s pretty hard to understand their mentality. They were going to starve, but they couldn’t bring themselves to shout out loud to sell their goods.
So it came as no surprise that they didn’t manage to sell anything.
Even though Yan Fei was from this era, he couldn’t understand their mentality: They were about to starve, so why bother about being embarrassed?
But he had enjoyed these past few days hanging out with his girl. Seeing her sympathy towards the pair of parents who were clearly too humbled to even look people directly in the eye and the hopeful gaze of the Little Dark-skinned Girl from her dorm, Yan Fei decided not to bother speaking any further.
Luckily, the dorm was about to close, so this matter wasn’t quite urgent. He advised them all to go home and rest first, and he would consider solutions in the evening.
As for any solution, Yan Fei was not in a hurry, because he had something planned for this evening.
Today, he and his girl went to the Yellow River levee and had a great time. Of course, mostly the girl enjoyed, and as long as she was happy, he was too - as for him, observing these so-called natural sceneries was just okay.
However, he did have a little regret while playing around. The girl saw a dish in a restaurant called "Three Ways to Eat Carp" and claimed that it was a famous authentic Yellow River carp.
Yan Fei was unhappy seeing the girl, who was clearly envious, insisted that she didn’t want to eat it because of the expensive price.
So even though he didn’t let her try it at that time, he had decided to catch some Yellow River carp at night. Even though he couldn’t make as good a dish as the restaurant, he could still make Red-braised Carp for his girl to taste, which shouldn’t be a problem.
Is it too much for his wife to want to eat a Yellow River carp? Even if she wanted to eat a shark from the sea, an eagle from the sky, or a tiger from the mountains, that wouldn’t be asking too much, right?
At night, there were very few people along the banks of the Yellow River. Plus, with Yan Fei deliberately avoiding places where people might come, he could do anything in the river without worrying about being seen by others.
At the beginning, he was worried that there might be some dangers in the river, so he transformed into a Kronosaurus straight away. However, it didn’t take long for him to realize that it was unnecessary.
This place was after all quite close to a city, so there were unlikely to be any large fish. Even the giant salamanders could be considered kings of this area of water.
In the dark, the plump giant salamanders moved swiftly and gracefully. Yan Fei, who was accustomed to the change of the water flow and had previous experience catching fish, easily found an area where there were plenty of fish.
Sometimes he would transform into a little Sarcosuchus and stealthily attack, other times he would transform into a large Serpentine Kronosaurus and stir up the bottom of the water, frightening those fish hiding there.
It didn’t take long before there were quite a lot of fish in the empty pond on Vegetable Garden Island.
He wasn’t in a hurry to deal with the fish, as long as he prepared them before leaving to meet his girl in the morning. Now, he should focus on something else.