Chapter 15 Antique Market

Fatty has a piece of family heirloom jade pendant, has been with the body, this piece of jade is a head of the Northwest Field Army to his father, when the head of the troops into Xinjiang, in the Niya Oasis eliminated a group of bandits, this piece of jade is that the bandit leader close to the band. Said the jade pendant, in fact, the shape is not quite like, the shape of the ancient and strange, carved with some messy patterns, like a map, like the text, I do not know what it is actually used for.

This piece of jade fat man to me many times, my family used to have a lot of antiques, when I was a child I listened to my grandfather told a lot of knowledge of goldstone and jade. However, I can’t tell the age of the value of this piece of jade.

Fatty wants to sell this piece of jade for some money to do business, was I stopped, this is your father left you, can not sell don’t sell, we are not to the point of desperation, really can not I find the family to ask for money, anyway, our old man and old lady back to pay a lot of wages.

The two of us saw a vacant place on the side of the road, so the three wheels parked over, in the neighborhood to buy two bowls of boiled pork as lunch.

Marinated hot roast is a pig boiled soup, which are some of the large intestine and so on, soaked in chopped hot roast, more than a dollar a bowl, both economic and affordable.

I put too much spice in this bowl, spicy tears and snot all out of my eyes, spitting out my tongue and gasping.

Fatty ate two bites of me said: “Old Hu, these years I wanted to take you out to get rich, I did not think that now the national economy is revitalized, the situation is not a small good, but a great good. Unlike when I first started practicing, there were no more than three pop song tapes for sale in Beijing. Really a little tired of you, your father is retired before already a division commander, enjoy the treatment of deputy municipal cadres, you might as well go back and let your old man go through the back door, to arrange a job for you in the authorities, so do not suffer with me.”

I patted the fat man’s belly and said: “Brother, I also tell you a heartfelt words, if I really want to go to the authorities can go at any time, but I dare not go, do you know why? I’m afraid ah, if I sit still in a place, full of thought can not think of anything else, all my dead comrades, they are in front of my eyes swaying around, a see them, my intestines are fast pain break. We are now hustling to do a little business, but also can put the mind to think of something else, or I will not be nervous.”

In the army for so many years, other did not learn, learned to inspire morale, I comforted the fat man: “We are not bitter now, this is not still have halibut can eat it, think of the years I was in the Kunlun Mountains, that motherfucker is really called bitter it. One year, the Spring Festival, everyone is homesick, many recruits secretly cry. Division Commander saw that this is not bad, hurry to give everyone to pack a dumpling, improve the food. That dumplings to eat, said you may not believe it, the Kunlun Mountains do not have any green vegetables, vegetables are more expensive than gold, but there is a lot of meat, all a meatball dumplings. The altitude is too high, the water can’t boil, the dumplings are raw, the meat inside is red. Can you imagine the flavor? I ate 70 or 80 dumplings, and they almost didn’t kill me. I had a craving. I hadn’t eaten anything cooked in those years, and I was craving it. The next day I was sent to the hospital, I couldn’t digest it, my stomach was like iron. Do you remember what they say in Red Rock? The night before a revolution is won is always the coldest. Our business can’t be like this all the time. If we can’t sell tapes, we can sell something else. Just like Chairman Mao said: if Mount Lushan won’t let us go, let’s go to Jinggangshan, if the PLA won’t follow me, I’ll go to the Red Army.”

I turn on the tape recorder, the two big speakers immediately played music.

Since the tape recorder was rather shabby, the sound quality was very poor, and even the most beautiful songs came out of it like a broken gong.

But Fatty and I do not think it is difficult to hear, anyway, better than the two of us sang, Fatty after I had some in-depth ideological education work, the mood is also cheerful up, with the rhythm of the music pawing the calf, open throat hawking: “Look at it, take a look at it ah, the original Hong Kong and Taiwan, chopping the arm and leg sale, lose money to earn ah … … …”

Passing pedestrians and the surrounding business stalls all cast a curious look at us, we have a stall next to the man selling antiques, he came over to us to say hello, a smile in the mouth reveals a big gold teeth, big gold teeth pulled out cigarettes, to us both sent a circle.

I took the cigarettes to see: “Yo, grade is not low ah, American cigarettes, Marlboro.”

Dajinya gave me a cigarette while saying: “two masters, in the Panjiayuan old things market selling pop songs, can with the four nine cities are not the third person can come up with, you two are really the first one.”

I inhaled a large mouthful of smoke, from the nose sprayed two white smoke, this American smoke is strong, I looked up to the big gold teeth said: “You do not take this to squeeze us, our brother and sister is to avoid the Commerce and Industry Bureau, inadvertently ran here, rest a while on the go.”

As a result, both sides of a plate Road, catching the situation is not an outsider, Dajinya family in Hainan Island, formerly in Yunnan inserted, father’s generation is the People’s Liberation Army to live in the past when they went south. The bottom root of the family are three wild, a say your old family is which of which, the elders of the family is a few columns of several columns, which division which regiment, the relationship is not far.

However, Dajinya’s father is not a cadre, his father is a folk pouring craftsmen, and then let the National Army captured the strong, Xu Beng battle, that is, the Huaihai Campaign, his troops and the uprising to participate in the People’s Liberation Army, he himself has been in the army as a cook. In the Korean battlefield to the leg to freeze, fell a life-long paralysis, after the reform and opening up, from Hainan moved to Beijing, collect some antiques to do some business.

Will say as good as will listen to, he said a good sound, what bucket of craftsmen, is not a grave digging thieves it, these other people can not hear, but I grew up was brought up by my grandfather, these things he did not less to me to say.

The connoisseur stretches out his hand, then he knows whether there is. Then to the depths of a theory, I asked the big gold teeth: “your old man did touch the gold lieutenant, there is no touch out what big dumplings to?” (Big dumplings is a cryptic language circulating in the grave robbers, like bandits in the mountains can not talk directly about their own murder and arson, there is a set of black cuts, dumplings refers to the tomb of the corpse is relatively well preserved, did not rot, touching the big dumplings is to say that they have run into trouble, referring to the zombies, ghosts and other unclean things, dry dumplings refers to the tomb of the corpse is rotting to only a pile of white bones, and meat dumplings, is to say that the body is worth a lot of money things. (saying that corpses have a lot of valuable things on them)

When Dajinya heard this, he immediately looked at me with respect, and insisted on inviting Fatty and me to eat shabu-shabu at Dongsi, so we could talk about it in detail. So the three of us packed up our things and ran to Dongsi together.