Chapter 462

Zhu Yuyan was woken up by the sound of the street outside, she didn’t probe her head to see, but buried her head into the pillow and continued to sleep strongly.

Because in this hotel building, it is impossible to have a really quiet rest time.

Below this hotel was the dirt street, barely level, and carriages and automobiles came and went day and night, honking their horns – surely there was no such crime as noise pollution at this time of year.

Horse-drawn carriages are rattling bells and yelling curses from their drivers.

The carriages here are public carriages, like buses, and it’s only eight pence from the docks, which is quite a bargain.

The street of the inns is one of the busiest in the city.

Because in the same street, there is a post office, there is this hotel with fifteen rooms, and at the other end of the street there is a post office, which is also an inn, but it is reserved for officials and knights who have a letter of introduction or can prove their identity.

Stagecoaches are of course the safest.

Zhu Yuyan couldn’t stay there because she didn’t have enough proof of identity.

The one she stayed in was a high-priced hotel on this street where people with money could stay – emphasis on money.

She actually hadn’t wanted to act rich, because a celibate woman plus being rich wasn’t a good thing.

But she ignored the fact that a celibate woman was insecure enough in this day and age, and having money or not having money was just added spice to her misfortune. In comparison, being rich was still better than being a poor woman with no money, or she might have been abducted as soon as she got off the boat.

It all started when she got off the plane.

She managed to get on the plane, which was lucky enough. None of her fellow passengers were in the mood to chill out during the journey, so when she got off the plane, she quickly lost track of her fellow travelers as all of them quickly merged into a huge crowd.

In Zhu Yuyan’s conception, stealing* this kind of thing should be quiet, secretive and very hidden, so the number of people must be very small.

But she got off the plane only to realize that this was not what she had envisioned at all.

Under the overcast sky were countless gray people, some of them like headless flies, some of them moving mindlessly along with the crowd, and some of them standing guard right next to the luggage.

Some of them were alone like Zhu Yuyan, while others were dragging their families, men, women and small children, and even more than one family dragging at least four or five small children.

All of them didn’t look too decent, and there was no way to be decent here. Everyone had a face like a vegetable. All were dressed in inappropriate clothing, and upon closer inspection it was realized that all of them, adults and small children alike, had multiple layers of clothing on their bodies, as if they were wearing all of their clothes in order to save space in their luggage.

In the distance there was a huge, cabin-like warehouse where some people were lined up.

Strangely there weren’t many people in line.

She suspected that it was the place used to buy air tickets.

But according to Mr. Su’s instructions, she needed to find a travel company to buy a ticket package to the US first – probably something like that.

And this company had better be an American one.

However, when she raised her eyes and looked around, she couldn’t find any of the imagined housing structures that had been built around the airport; rather, the neighborhood was flat, with nothing as far as the eye could see, except for the large warehouse with people lined up in front of it.

She had to watch the people around her stealthily, trying to find some clues.

She fought back her hunger and thirst – there were no restaurants in this hellhole! No inns either!

It was just a big open space used for airplanes to land and take off, and the only thing that could be called a building was the big warehouse in the distance.

She waited where she was for a day and a night, coming to conclusions by observing the people around her.

First, many of the people in here knew nothing about it, just like she did.

Second, many of them had arrived here in a state of confusion, they didn’t know that this was the Dynasty*.

Third, some of them were fleeing Jews who also wanted to go to America.

Finally, don’t follow people to places you don’t know!

People had disappeared this way before.

There were at least several sets of people she had observed who were here to deceive people, who would find someone to whisper to and then take them away, after which these people never came back.

There was no other way out of here, except with the help of an airplane.

And the only chance might be the big warehouse – but it must be run by the U.S. Army, and it might ask for something that would frighten people, like handing over all their luggage, handing over all their money, or confessing where they came from, or something like that, and if they couldn’t say it, they might be arrested.

That’s what makes these people afraid to come near.

She’s also been quietly questioned and had people try to drag her away.

Even though she had learned English, French, Russian, and Japanese, and was already considered multilingual, she still didn’t understand the man’s words, so she shook her head and refused him.

When someone tried to pull her away and tried to take her suitcase, she took out her gun and shot the man in the stomach.

The crisp sound of the gunshot immediately attracted the American soldiers, who came over with their guns raised, Zhu Yuyan immediately stepped back and raised her gun to the sky, raising her hands, the suitcase was trampled under her feet.

And the guy she fired a shot against his stomach was struggling to get up and escape.

Zhu Yuyan shouted, “I don’t want to cause trouble! I just want to teach him a lesson!”

The American pointed his gun at her, “Put the gun on the ground and step back, ma’am.”

Zhu Yuyan put her gun on the ground and slowly kicked her suitcase back.

Her gun was a lady’s □□□, still American.

The Americans saw it as soon as they picked it up, they stared at her twice and said, “Ma’am, please follow us.”

Zhu Yuyan lifted her suitcase and followed.

And the man who tried to rob her, because he was shot, did not escape, and when the Americans asked him questions, he could not speak English, did not know in was saying something out loud, and finally was taken far away by the Americans.

Zhu Yuyan was taken towards the huge warehouse.

She was brought to a table where she put her suitcase on the floor, stepped on it with her feet and put both her hands on the table.

This action of hers amused the American who was in charge of interrogating her.

He put her □□□□ on the table and said, “Ma’am, if you can answer my questions, then I will give you back your gun.”

Zhu Yuyan nodded, “Okay.”

“What is your name?”

Zhu Yuyan: “Cinderella Sue.”

–Don’t ask, to ask is to be middle-aged.

This English name was raised when she went to an aristocratic school back then, originally it was just called in class, then the whole class was pulled to study in the United States, which surprisingly became her passport English name – the passport was run by the school!

When she got her passport, she was dumbfounded and wanted to ask her teacher why she didn’t ask her if she wanted to change her name before she got her passport.

As a result, she studied abroad for half a year with this shameful name, and was called by both Chinese and foreigners every day, and then she even got used to it.

Su is Mr. Su’s Su.

Before she left, she thought about how to design her English name, and thinking about Mr. Su, she put his last name at the back, so that even if he was not there, it was still the same as he was with her.

The American asked, “Your English is very good, you have lived in the United States?”

Zhu Yuyan could only graft on her own experience in modern times at this point, this was something Mr. Su did not know and something she could not confess, the only thing she hid from him.

She nodded, “I once studied in America for half a year.”

The American was surprised, “Oh, study abroad? What country are you from.”

Zhu Yuyan: “Chinese.”

American: “You don’t look Chinese.”

Zhu Yuyan: “My family is rich.”

This explanation was like saying nothing, but saying to the American – I am rich – is as communal as saying to the Englishman – my father is a Sir.

And this American accepts this explanation.

American: “What are you doing here? Why are you alone?”

Zhu Yuyan then said that her father had died, her mother had gotten married again, she had gotten married, and then she was now leaving her husband in order to go and depend on her relatives far away in America, who were said to be very rich.

Zhu Yuyan: “They are supposed to take care of me. They also sent me a letter.”

The American didn’t scrutinize the letter she held out too carefully, just looked at the envelope and put it down.

American: “So you want to go to America? How do you want to go?”

Zhu Yuyan: “I want to buy a checkbook from a travel company.” –She remembered that Mr. Su had used that word correctly, though she wondered why a travel company would sell checkbooks.

She added, “From an American company.”

The American smiled, “Not here.”

Zhu Yuyan’s eyes instantly widened – Teacher Su, your pointing was wrong!

Zhu Yuyan immediately discarded Teacher Su’s teaching and asked directly, “Then how do I get to America? There must be some way.”

The American, however, did not answer this question, but continued to ask her about studying abroad.

She had to talk to him.

“School? The school was a big bungalow, very big, with big classrooms.”

“There were about two dozen of us.”

“Impression of the school? Not much of an impression, I just stayed in school and didn’t go out. They didn’t let us go out.”

“The school didn’t teach us anything, I think that school was just for cheating.”

The Americans laughed when they heard this and asked her again what her impression of America was.

Zhu Yuyan, who had been to the United States for the only time in her life and had never seen a skyscraper and had only been locked up in a small, deceitful school, asked her what her impression of America was.

“It’s hot, it’s sandy, there’s dirt everywhere, and there’s undeveloped wilderness everywhere.”

That was really the truest impression.

From the time she arrived in America, to the time she left, the only impression she had was one: why is it so desolate?

The American continued to ask her what delicious food she had eaten in America.

Zhu Yuyan frowned and replied, “Potatoes? Corn? Fried potatoes?”

It’s not that she didn’t want to answer more richly, because at present the food in the United States is also insufficient, just as in the United Kingdom is the rationing system, she read in the Shanghai Pictorial American experts are advocating that people give babies eat mashed potatoes, because mashed potatoes are rich in all the nutrients that babies need.

It was clear that experts were very bricklayers wherever they went.

She suspected that if she told this American that she was studying abroad at the time she could just eat fried chicken and fish until she got tired of it he would get angry.

The American also asked her what music she liked.

She said she didn’t like music and wasn’t interested in singing.

The American then hummed a piece, she listened for a while and suddenly remembered it was a dance number from Gone with the Wind.

She said tentatively, “Vivien Leigh?”

The American then laughed and asked her if she liked the movie.

She said, “It’s okay, I haven’t seen many of them.”

Actually, I’ve seen them and forgotten about them.

American: “You don’t like Vivien Leigh?”

She nods, “I do, she’s very pretty, her dresses are nice.”

The American then asks her if she likes art, and she immediately says, “Don’t ask me about painters, I don’t know anything about painting! And don’t ask me about novels, I rarely read them.”

The American showed her an American pictorial with a picture of a man standing in front of a painting on the cover.

This painting was too famous.

Zhu Yuyan: “The Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci.”

The American then asked her, “Ma’am, you said you don’t understand paintings.”

Zhu Yuyan: “If you ask me again what else Leonardo da Vinci painted, I won’t know.”

The American then laughed, opened the magazine and pointed it out to her, and she recognized another painting, The Last Supper, but when the American said that it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci, she was surprised and asked, “Is it? That I really didn’t know.”

The American then laughed and asked her if she played the piano.

She said helplessly, “I can only play ‘Little Star’.”

She then pretended to play it on the table.

The American then asked her if she believed in God, and she said, “I have a Bible in my luggage and a cross, and I believe in God, but I can’t memorize the canons of the Bible, and I can’t speak the Holy Word.”

It was such a relief to her that the Americans didn’t delve into the question of God.

The American asked enough questions and said to her, “Ma’am, I’m sure you’re not a bad person, but there’s no way you can get a flight to America here, none of the planes here will go to America. I suggest you go to a place where it is easier to catch a plane.”

Zhu Yuyan immediately said, “Of course, sir, I have benefited greatly from your advice, so please be sure to point me in the right direction and I will repay you.”

Finally, she got a plane ticket for a thousand dollars, got on the plane, and here she is.

With that hand-signed ticket, she was given a room in this hotel.

But it’s been almost a month, and she still hasn’t been able to wait for her flight to America.

And there are many, many people like her stranded here. Countless women and men are hoping to go to America. But very few of them actually make it.

Most of them have spent all their money and have to stay here and work.

Zhu Yuyan has been holding out for a month now, she pays the rent once a week and doesn’t know how long she can hold out.

And as long as she couldn’t pay the rent, she would have to move out, and that would be a disaster, there wasn’t a third cheaper hostel here, and in those places, even worse things would happen to women.

The dollars she had brought with her were almost spent, along with some pounds. And the jewelry was all hidden in a compartment.

She didn’t know how much longer she’d have to wait.