Chapter 14 Business

The battle was drawing to a close, sporadic gunfire was still raging, the position was covered with smoke, and the trenches were littered with corpses.

There were about six or seven remaining Viet Cong in the trench, and I led the men to block all the exits, and I yelled from the mouth of the trench to the inside, “Yabu Song Gong Ye, Song Kuan Red Poison Soldier Inside!”

The rest of the soldiers followed along and shouted, “Also Busongong Ye, Songkuan Red Poison Soldiers inside! Yibu Song Gong Ye, Song Kuan Red Poison Soldier!” (Vietnamese: surrendered guns not killed, preferential treatment of prisoners, at that time the front-line combat troops were issued a field manual, which contains some common Vietnamese words with pronunciation in Chinese characters, such as: just stay Nai Lai, meaning raise your hands, do not Ku stay a Nai Lai, meaning raise your hands and do not move. These were used when capturing the enemy and persuading them to surrender, and some others were used to publicize the policies of our army and to speak to the Vietnamese people. (In fact, in the north of Vietnam, with its many ethnic groups, the official language of Vietnam, which was not as popular as Chinese, was not as widely spoken, and most of the Vietnamese soldiers could speak Han Chinese.)

The Vietnamese, surrounded by the regiment, answered with a barrage of bullets deep in the pit.

I threw my helmet to the ground and cursed, “Fuck his little doggy day ancestors, still refusing to let me take them alive.” Turning my head, I issued an order to the soldiers standing behind me, “Cluster grenades, flamethrowers, fuck him all together.” Cluster grenades and flamethrowers are the most effective means of dealing with recalcitrant enemies in pit shelters, first suppressing them with a large number of grenades, then using flamethrowers to kill them.

Bundles of grenades were thrown into the tunnels, and after a series of violent explosions, the Chinese soldiers sprayed flamethrowers against the holes.

Smoke and fire and the smell of burnt human flesh smoked people’s eyes, I carried a submachine gun and led the way into the pit, I want to see with my own eyes these few little skinny chickens like the Vietnamese cubs were burned into what kind of.

In the pit, more than a dozen charred VC corpses were scattered inside, and by this time it was indistinguishable whether they had been blown up or burned to death.

I found a large bundle of cluster grenades that hadn’t exploded yet in the innermost part of the pit, and I hurriedly tried to run out of there with my soldiers, but it was already too late, and there was a dull explosion, and my body was shaken down by the shocking wave of air, and my eyes went black, and it felt like there was a layer of mud pasted in front of my eyes, and I couldn’t see anything anymore.

I desperately clawed with my hands, my heart indescribably panicked, when my wrist was grabbed by someone, and a man said to me, “Comrade, wake up, are you having a nightmare?”

I opened my eyes and looked around, two train attendants and a carriage full of passengers are staring at me, all the faces with a smile, I realized that just now was dreaming, a long breath out of the nightmare just now is still palpitating.

I can’t imagine that I can dream even when I’m riding home on the train, I’ve lost my face this time. I smiled awkwardly at the group, this is probably the most ugly smile in my life, fortunately there is no mirror, I can not see my own face.

The stewardess saw that I was awake, so she told me that I would be arriving at the terminal soon, so get ready to get off. I nodded, carrying their own luggage squeezed to the two carriages connected to the place, do in the baggage bag, lit a cigarette sucked a few mouthfuls, the brain is still attached to those on the front line of the comrades.

Wearing a uniform without a lapel pin and cap badge is not to mention how twisted, walking will not go. How can I explain to my father when I go back? If the old man knows that I let the troops to be whisked back, will not take the belt to whip me to death.

After ten minutes to the station, I walked to the door turned around, did not dare to enter the door, walking aimlessly in the street, the heart calculates how to make up a blind story, the old man that passes.

The day is getting late, twilight dusk, I entered a restaurant want to eat something, a look at the menu was shocked, these years did not eat out at all, now how so expensive food? A plate of shredded meat with fish and spices even cost six yuan, it seems that my demobilization fee of more than three thousand yuan is just enough to eat five hundred servings of shredded meat with fish and spices.

I ordered two bowls of rice and a plate of Gongbao chicken, but also a bottle of beer, the young waitress had to recommend to me what oil smothered prawns, I do not want, she whispered a curse, rolling her eyes and grunted and turned around to give me dishes.

I do not want to talk to her general understanding, I have been a whole ten years of soldiers, sweat and blood, born into death, is worth five hundred copies of fish and shredded meat, think of this a little let a person laugh and cry. But then thought, with those sacrificed on the battlefield in the snowy mountains compared to their comrades, I can still have what do not know the qualifications of it?

At this time from the outside came in another guest, he wore an imitation of the U.S. imported toadstools, I saw him dressed in the time is very fashionable, so I looked twice.

That person also saw me, rushed to me for half a day, came over to sit on the opposite side of my table.

I thought to myself what’s wrong with this person, so many empty tables do not go, have to come over and I squeeze what, is not a hooligan want to find my trouble? Fuck your grandmother, is scratching my itch, I hold my breath, but also want to find someone to fight, but look at his appearance and a little familiar, most of his face is covered by large toadstools, I can not think of this person who is.

The man pushed the big toadstools on the bridge of the nose opened his mouth and said to me: “Heavenly King covers the tiger.”

I said this word how so familiar ah, so smoothly replied: “Pagoda to subdue the river demon.”

The other side asked: “Why is your face red?”

I put up my thumb and replied, “I’m in a hurry because I can’t find my daughter-in-law.”

“Then how come it’s white again?”

“I was scared because I married a tigress.”

We both hugged each other at the same time, and I said to him, “Fatty, you didn’t expect the Central Red Army to come back, did you?”

Fatty was so excited that he was on the verge of crying, “Old Hu ah, all aspects of our Red Army finally met again in Shanbei.”

We had passed letters quite a few times in previous years, but separated by thousands of miles, we had never met. I can’t imagine that we met in the restaurant as soon as we returned to the city, which is really a coincidence.

The fat man’s father than my father’s officials, but unfortunately * time did not hold the whole, died in the cowshed. A few years ago, the fat man returned to the city to find a job, dry more than a year because of the leadership of the fight, he became a body of a dumpster, from our side to the north to dump pop song tapes.

How many years have not seen, we both drank red neck thick, I will make up this thing to forget, back home, after the wine, the truth, the thing after my father said, I can not imagine that he did not get angry, but very happy. I thought to myself that this old man, the older he gets, the less he realizes that he is happy to see that his son doesn’t have to go to the front.

Re-transfer office arranged for me to go to a food factory as a deputy chief of security, I stayed in the army for too long, do not want to go to work and leave work this kind of regular life, did not go. With the fat man together with a partnership to go to the north to do business.

Time flies, looking into the eighties, we are three children more, business is getting worse, not to mention saving money to marry a wife, eating is fast becoming a problem, often have to look for money to solve the urgent needs of the family, according to the Third Plenary Session of the saying that the country has basically solved the problem of food and clothing, but I feel that we are still living in the pre-liberation, exploited by the oppressed, do not eat and wear not warm.

This day the weather is good, cloudless, the two of us a person wearing a pair of sunglasses, wearing large bell-bottom pants, in the streets of Beijing pushed a tricycle, the car set up a board, full of cassettes, with a broken tape recorder pulling two broken speakers wah-la-wah-la playing the then Taiwan pop songs.

A female student wearing glasses came over, picked half a day, asked us: “There is a Wang Lumpy Xerxes?”

This before we have been on the goods, two days ago sold out, the fat man cheekily said to her: “Aigoo I say sister, this is what era, but also listen to their songs, you listen to Teresa Teng Chien Baihui Zhang Aijia? Come to a few disks back to listen to, to Chairman Mao to ensure that how good to listen to how good.”

Female students look at the fat man does not look like a good person, turned his head and left.

Fatty complained in the back of the cursing: “This stupid, pretend to be a fucking what Ya kind of, but also fucking want to listen to the gold shuttle silver shuttle, Ya long as a fucking with the shuttle.”

I said how do you now speak with an accent that has changed to a Beijing accent? Speak Mandarin shall not be, pretending to be what the capital people. Now Beijing’s business is too difficult to do, in a few days we run to Xi’an.

Fatty wanted to argue that his ancestors were from Beijing, but before he could say anything, he suddenly pointed to one end of the street and shouted, “Fuck, the industrial and commercial ones are coming to sweep, hurry up and run.”

The two of us pushed the tricycle and ran, seven turns to run to a street, I looked around, how do we unknowingly run to Panjiayuan antique market?

This street is full of trading old things, and even the old Chairman Mao’s badge, the red treasure book are collected. Like what a variety of bottles and jars, old clocks and watches, old pocket watches, three-inch gold lotus wearing old embroidered shoes, piles and piles of copper, snuff bottles, a variety of old furniture, pipes, paintings, carved research table, ink and yellow paper, old pipes, cricket cans, porcelain, lacquer, gold, silver, copper, iron and tin jade jewelry, as long as it is the old stuff, basically what have.