Walking the Path of a Workaholic in Cliché Novels (QT) Chapter 102

An Yinong ran over and asked: “How long have you been waiting?”

“We just got here.” The speaker was a classmate wearing a Hawaiian shirt named Zhang Wei. He was the one who had a conflict with the original owner before.

“You look like a good student.” This person was Zhao Gang. He and Zhang Wei were good friends and usually played together. He was also the one who stopped Zhang Wei when he got impulsive.

“I’m a student after all. But Awei and Agang, you guys are dressed very impressively.” Looking at their fluffy, short hair and fashionable bell-bottom pants, they looked like cool teenagers out on the town.

“Shh, don’t call me Awei when you come out, it’s too rustic, call me William.” Awei said that students like to be called by foreign names, thinking that those names were more fashionable.

“Okay. So where are we going first?”

Speaking of this, they became excited. Zhang Wei took a step forward and put his arm on An Yinong’s shoulder: “Let’s take the tram to the pier first, and then take the ferry to the sea. We’re going to see a movie today. My dad heard that I wanted to go out and play, so he gave me thirty yuan.”

“Your dad is so generous. I’m miserable. I only have ten dollars, not even enough for two hair cuts.” Zhao Gang touched his hair. He had just done a full set of hair care, blow-drying and cutting, which cost him six dollars.

Zhang Wei patted his chest and said, “That’s right. Today I’m treating you all. I’ll treat you to ice cream, the most expensive kind.”

Seeing the two smiling happily, An Yinong was too embarrassed to say that he brought several thousand yuan with him. He just asked, “What movies are there?”

“Long Hutang is a story of revenge and revenge. It was played by my favorite actor, the one who played the first disciple of Tian Dao Sect.”

An Yinong had never heard of it, nor had he seen it, but that didn’t stop him from joining the conversation: “Wow, that’s really amazing.”

“Really? You think so too, right? When he fights, it’s really, Ha! Ha! Ha! (gesturing with hands and feet) He’s so handsome! Agang thinks so too, right?” Zhang Wei asked his best friend again.

Zhao Gang thought for a moment and said, “I think the male lead in The Azure Sea is more powerful and better at fighting. He used two swords so fast that you can’t even see the blades. That’s real swordplay.”

They started arguing, each thinking that the star they liked was more handsome, more powerful, and more capable of fighting. Their friendship was about to capsize.

“Watching a movie…” An Yinong recalled the time when he watched a movie in the past.

Although he had been an ancient man for a long time, perhaps because the memory of his first life had been strengthened, An Yinong still remembered his life as ‘An Yinong’ the most clearly and deepest. In An Yinong’s memory, cinemas were generally located in busy urban areas. Some were inside squares, and some were stand-alone cinemas. There were often huge light screens outside, showing trailers to attract audiences.

He just didn’t expect that in this day and age, if you wanted to watch a movie, you had to cross the sea first. Of course, it may also be that the cinema was more to Zhang Wei’s liking. In fact, any cinema would do. An Yinong was now full of anticipation. As a public figure in his past life, he could only go to the movies secretly wearing a mask. Now as an ordinary person, he wondered what surprises the movies of this era would bring.

The three of them took the tram first. It was An Yinong’s first time to ride on a double-decker tram with tracks. The tram charged 50 cents per person, and the conductor would give you the ticket after you get on. What’s more interesting was that when the driver stopped the vehicle, the tram would make a “ding ding” sound.

It was rush hour when they arrived, so they had to spread out and sit in three seats. Many people did not rest on weekends, so the tram was crowded with working men and women wearing white and blue shirts, as well as middle school students like An Yinong who were out for fun.

An Yinong looked at them, and they also looked at him, looking at his delicate face that was magnified by light and shadow, and his eyes that were so bright that they were hard to forget once you had seen them. He was used to being stared at, but maybe it was because of the environment or something, but An Yinong actually felt a little embarrassed.

“Tiantong is blushing.” Zhang Wei, who was not far away, winked at him.

“Hey.” An Yinong looked out the window and saw a double-decker bus passing by, towing a single-decker bus behind it, both on the tracks. The towing single-decker bus was the ‘first-class seat’, but it was very noisy and usually you couldn’t enjoy the pleasure of a first-class seat.

From afar, clear singing voices could be heard, a voice as charming as the era, the singing was passionate and full of warmth. He saw a traffic policeman wearing leather shoes and green shorts directing traffic on the street. He also saw fashionable women wearing berets, hurriedly walking by with briefcases in their arms.

The female students, wearing black miniskirts, white socks and small leather shoes, were walking and playing. An old woman, wearing a black Tang suit and a headband, was slowly walking behind them with a cane, her face serious and her eyes scrutinizing. There were also a few foreigners in the crowd wearing slim coats. Some of them wore glasses, some wore polka-dot bow ties, and they walked while smiling.

There was also a woman with a child near the foreigner. The woman was wearing light blue trousers and slippers, and her hair was softly curled. The child was wearing a blue floral suit with some trouser legs left open, which didn’t fit her very well, but she had two bows tied in her hair. Although they didn’t seem to be very wealthy, they were all trying to make their lives beautiful and decent.

The tram moved slowly, and with the dinging sound, the scroll unfolded and rolled up little by little, and An Yinong watched it intently.

“Are you interested?” Zhang Wei and Zhao Gang appeared behind him without knowing when. They pointed at a shop with a huge cake sign and said, “The lotus seed paste mooncakes in that shop are delicious, but very expensive.”

“How expensive is it?” An Yinong asked curiously.

“A box costs more than twenty yuan.” Zhang Wei sighed.

“But my family has a mooncake club, and during the Mid-Autumn Festival, I can bring back five boxes of mooncakes. After I give them all away, I still have one box left to eat at home. I like the ones with pure lotus seed paste, but unfortunately, the ones that are left at the end are always the ones with egg yolk.”

“A mooncake club?” An Yinong’s doubts were written on his face.

Zhang Wei and Zhao Gang looked at each other and said, “You don’t even know this? … Well, rich people don’t use this. They can buy it whenever they want to eat it.”

At this time, An Yinong realized that mooncakes in this era were also a major expense for many people from poor families. So they had to buy mooncakes in installments, paying about ten yuan a month for twelve months, and they would get more than five boxes of mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival next year. This was the Mooncake Club Meeting.

Take Zhang Wei’s family as an example. Out of five boxes of mooncakes, one box was given to the policeman and one box was given to the big brother. In this way, they could avoid getting into trouble. The remaining boxes were given to relatives and friends. When they finally got to their own home, there may not be any boxes left, and the flavors they liked were no longer available. That’s why Zhang Wei had so much resentment.

“But this year we don’t have to hold a mooncake party,” Zhang Wei said. “Our family has more income, so we don’t need to buy mooncakes in 12 installments.”

This era was a time when the Hong Kong city’s economy was developing rapidly, and buying mooncakes was no longer a difficult task.

The tram arrived at the station. An Yinong and the other two boys got off. After a few steps, they saw the sea reflecting the sky. They could also see the island across the sea in the distance. There were white ferries traveling back and forth between the two sides.

“Let’s go buy tickets first.”

An Yinong didn’t know anything, so he followed the two of them to line up to buy tickets. The ticket prices were written in red paint on the white sign: first class seat 30 cents, second class seat 20 cents. Zhang Wei bought three second-class seats for a total of 60 cents.

After a while, the ferry arrived and they boarded it. The small ferry was rocking with the waves, and An Yinong felt as if the sky and the earth were also rocking as he sat inside. A middle-aged man sitting next to them seemed to be seasick, his face turned blue as he covered his mouth. Then he took out a tin box and poured out a pill. An Yinong smelled the sweet and sour smell of hawthorn and orange peel.

Soon they reached the shore. An Yinong stepped on the plank, which had not yet completely calmed down, and swayed as he walked. After he got on the shore, he actually felt a little uncomfortable.

Zhang Wei turned around and looked at An Yinong’s appearance and laughed: “Do you think he looks drunk?”

“I think so.” Zhao Gang agreed.

“Young master, it’s a good thing that you are not from a Tanka family, otherwise you would sleep and eat on the boat, and you would be ‘drunk’ every day?” Zhang Wei came over to help An Yinong, but the latter was already fine. He was more curious about the Tanka family.

“Are you curious? You can go to a fishing village, there are many of them. They regard the boat as their home, live their life on it, wear bamboo hats and sing saltwater songs. That’s it.”

The three of them walked and talked all the way to the door of the cinema. This was a three-story Gothic Western-style building with exquisite reliefs and colorful glass windows everywhere.

Outside was a huge platform surrounded by flowers, plants and trees, with corridors on both sides. Although there was no light screen to play trailers, there were huge hand-painted posters with handsome men and beautiful women, the name of the film and a list of actors. There were many people coming in and out of the cinema entrance. Apart from couples, the majority were students like them. There were also many vendors here, selling food, drinks, celebrity posters, and flowers.

An Yinong also saw functional facilities such as toilets and public washbasins, which were not much different from those in later movie theaters.

At the movie ticket booth, there was a long light box with a piece of paper pasted on one side with 5.5 written on it, which was particularly eye-catching when the light through it. An Yinong read it word by word and found out that it meant five dollars and fifty cents for a movie ticket.

“Movie tickets are too expensive, so I used to go to video halls to watch movies, but they are not as comfortable as in cinemas,” said Zhang Wei.

Afterwards, Zhang Wei went to buy tickets, three front-row seats. The front-row seats were cheaper, three dollars and fifty cents. The movie ticket was for the next show, and they couldn’t enter the theater until half an hour later.

“It takes an hour and a half, and we can go out for dinner after watching the movie. I know a restaurant that sells delicious barbecued pork rice,” said Zhao Gang.

As they walked outside, they saw an ice cream machine.

“They’re selling ice cream over there. I’ll go buy three cones.” Zhang Wei went to the vendor next door and bought ice cream, the kind with a cone-shaped biscuit and a roll of ice cream. It only cost 40 cents.

“Thank you.” An Yinong took the ice cream and licked it. He shuddered. The ice cream was icy and had a very distinct sorbet texture. It didn’t have the smoothness of modern pure milk ice cream, but it had a unique flavor.

“You’re welcome. I said I’d treat you.”

The ice cream in his hand was quickly eaten up, leaving only the last bit of crispy crust. An Yinong continued to look at the people around him while taking a bite.

Most of the people who came to watch the movie were couples, and their eyes were full of affection. Their clothes were more fashionable and beautiful than the office workers they met before, and the various combinations were also popular in later generations.

After he finished eating the crispy cone, he saw a soda stand nearby, so he used his change to buy three glass bottles of soda. He had to deposit 30 cents with the vendor, and he could get the deposit back after returning the bottles.

“I told you it’s my treat.” Zhang Wei stared at the bubbling soda, wanting to drink it but forcing himself not to.

An Yinong tilted his head back and drank half the bottle. The stimulating feeling of the carbonated drink touched his mouth. He narrowed his eyes and said, “Aren’t we friends? Friends should share.”

“Don’t you want it? If you don’t want it, give it all to me.” Zhao Gang reached out to take the second bottle, but was slapped back.

“Go, go, go, who said I don’t want it?”

The three of them were talking and laughing. An Yinong took a step back while playing, but he didn’t notice that there was a staircase behind him: “!”

He fell backwards, but he didn’t fall to the ground. Instead, he bumped into the person behind him and fell into his arms. A faint sandalwood scent enveloped him. An Yinong raised his head and looked into a pair of sharp phoenix eyes.