Chapter 463

Zhu Yuyan came downstairs at eleven o’clock, going to the restaurant for breakfast.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t get up earlier, but there was no point in getting up earlier. The hotel served two meals a day, one breakfast, one dinner, and no lunch-because working people didn’t need to eat lunch.

A joke.

But it’s true. There were countless people working here, and Zhu Yuyan had observed that most people here didn’t eat lunch, and there were very few restaurants, except for this hotel, which doubled as a restaurant, or else they had to go to a tavern, which was full of men and prostitutes, and she could never go to a place like that.

So she had to eat at this inn, and was forced to get used to two meals a day and a strange diet.

It wasn’t that the food wasn’t good, it was far more plentiful and tasty than what she ate at home, but all of it could be summed up in one sentence: everything fried in butter.

But everything here could be summed up in one phrase: everything fried in butter. Everything fried in butter was the highest form of cuisine, and everything not fried in butter was boiled, and none of it tasted good. She’s had boiled potatoes that smelled like dirt and vegetables that weren’t washed at all, and compared to boiled or not boiled, buttered everything is really the only option.

The second condiment that has the same status as butter is pepper, and it’s perfect when it’s sauteed in butter, otherwise you’re likely to be served something that jumps between no salt and a bottle of salt, and it’s hard to tell if the chef has forgotten to put salt in before you eat it, or if he’s put too much salt in.

There was also coffee and tea, and apart from coffee and tea, the only thing you could drink was alcohol.

Hot water is non-existent, and if you ask for a glass of water, it is likely to be a glass of river or well water, and you can see worrying floating objects in it.

Zhu Yuyan had been staying here for over twenty days and had gotten to know all the people in this inn.

It wasn’t that they were all good people or bad people. But a few of them were absolute liars.

There was a fat woman who said she was an American, but she shouldn’t be, her accent was very hard to recognize. She tried to trick Zhu Yuyan from the first day she met her by asking her to buy her a cup of coffee.

Zhu Yuyan immediately refused in a petty way, saying she was very poor.

This woman immediately turned into a kind-hearted person, saying that she must have gone to join her relatives, and tried to get into her room to read her letter. She said, “I am an American, I was in the United States when my grandfather was there, and my father even fought in the Civil War. I know all the cities in the U.S. like the back of my hand, dear, so if you want to find relatives, I can tell you where to look.”

Zhu Yuyan pushed her out, or kicked her out, I should say, and then said to her gently, “Get lost and stay away from me, trash.”

After this fat woman was beaten up by her, she stopped pestering her when she saw her again.

She continued to hang out at the hotel every day as if nothing had happened. Since she neither lives here nor eats and dines here, she wanders around the hotel every day just to scam people.

There was another man, who also claimed to be an American, and his accent was a bit strange.

His way was to disguise himself as a suitor, and he bought her coffee the first time they met, then bought her a piece of cake the second time, and then sent flowers to her room every day.

Zhu Yuyan’s only words for him were, “Get lost.”

But this gentleman insisted on not leaving, and his skin was as thick as a city wall.

Zhu Yuyan was considering whether to shoot him or not, when the hotel owner hinted that he could help her solve this little problem, as long as she was willing to pay for it.

Zhu Yuyan immediately decides to shoot the man herself – but unfortunately misses.

The suitor, who insisted on not rolling, ran away.

Zhu Yuyan approached the innkeeper and asked him, “Can I buy some bullets from you? I need to replenish a little.”

Since Zhu Yuyan was too oily, she was finally able to live in peace and quiet in this inn. The suitor who insisted on not rolling came back here for dinner later and continued to scam the woman’s money, still smiling and nodding at her when he saw her, but never coming over again.

The innkeeper no longer stared at her like she was a curiosity; he still stared at her, but at least his gaze wasn’t so revealing.

Occasionally, he said a few human words, such as, “There are too many people waiting here for airplanes and ships to America, and most of them are disappointed.”

This, Zhu Yuyan knew.

In fact, the airplanes and ships going to America on this island came every day, but the problem was that there was no place for them.

She had been trying to find the American travel company that Teacher Su said could buy checks, and there was indeed one here, but it didn’t look like it was selling tickets, but rather like it was selling people.

On top of that, she looked for all the American companies on this island and found that most of them weren’t run by Americans.

And even the ones run by Americans weren’t all in serious business. Most of them still did black jobs like smuggling and slave trading.

The companies that looked like they were doing serious work weren’t run by Americans – no wonder they say America is a nation of robbers.

She found two companies that said they could send her to America, and both of them, one run by a Swiss who sells jam and the other by a German who sells books, had fled the war to get here.

She was still negotiating with the people from these two companies, and she didn’t dare get on their airplanes or boats until she was sure they were sincere and safe.

And going through their doors to get into the U.S. would, of course, be smuggling.

Both were saying that they could bring her into the U.S. as an employee of the company, which is the most common way to smuggle people into the U.S. these days.

Because she was yellow, although she supposedly had experience studying in the United States, the fact was that she hadn’t really spent any time in the United States in this world, and the United States had just abolished the slave laws, and although not all continents had agreed to it, it was undoubtedly more difficult to enter the United States. And one of the things that was extended from the abolition was that people of color were not allowed to enter the United States, because the United States would be worried that you were a slave of the slave trade.

Once you were discovered by customs, you were immediately thrown out of the United States.

Thrown out of the United States, not deported. Because the situation in China is complicated right now, and the US isn’t even going to get involved unless it’s necessary, so they’ll probably just send her to some random place, throw her off the boat, and leave her.

This is also the reason why a large number of stowaway immigrants are afraid to show up, because the US doesn’t want to take them in.

There were too many people who wanted to go to America now, which made going to America an impossible task.

In fact, Zhu Yuyan no longer insisted that she had to go to America now.

Originally, her destination was not that complicated, the question was that she had to avoid Japan. The United States is indeed a good choice, because he is the only country that has not yet been invaded.

She began to think about England.

The UK had the same problem as the US, also she was not good at entering the country right now and would be blocked as a slave.

But as long as she could prove that she was British, or had relatives in the UK, it would be much easier.

So she had been going to the telegraph office every day since last week to send telegrams to George’s High School in England, looking for Mr. Tehran.

Mr. Tehran was the name Professor Dai used when he studied abroad, and now the name was inherited by Shi Wuwei.

As long as Shi Wuwei could receive the telegram, she would be able to get a pass to England.

That was the only thing she could do now, to wait for the telegram to come.

She ate a butter-fried potato with coffee in the dining-room, and then she walked to the post-office to send the telegram, and when it was sent she went to the stagecoach station to borrow a newspaper to read, and only after she had whiled away the afternoon at the stagecoach station did she return to the hotel for another butter-fried potato, and, if she was lucky, a butter-fried fish.

The stagecoach had the most recent papers, but most were a month or two, or a week or two, behind.

Wanting to take her chances, she rummaged through the pile of papers for most of the day and found that they were all the ones she had read.

There were also handwritten notices on the walls of the stagecoach looking for people, most of them hopelessly out of date. She also looked through them without incident by time, and saw a few she hadn’t seen yesterday. Some people didn’t have the money to send a telegram, so they put their hopes up and wrote a handwritten finding notice, hoping it would be seen.

She also wrote two, but not at all hopeful, but at least it’s a possibility, in case Shi Wuwei or Mr. Su came here, or Mr. Dai saw it can also ah, it’s not impossible.

At least there is a million to one possibility, right.

After leaving the stagecoach, she didn’t go back to the inn today, instead she went to the tailor store and bought a few shirts. She bought the cheapest ones, of course.

There were more tailor stores here than she thought, or at least she hadn’t thought about it until she came here; there were only two hotels, one still a public stagecoach stop, and a post office, yet there were three tailor stores.

These three tailor stores were all handmade tailors, capable of making the complete gowns needed for a gentleman to attend a ball, including leather shoes and saddle making tanneries.

Zhu Yuyan had come in on her second day here when she was out shopping and observing, and at that time she had bought a woman’s hunting dress, the only pantsuit a woman could wear.

Since then, she had become a customer of this tailor store, and to this day, it was already her fourth visit, each time buying shirts and shorts.

“Ms. Su, it’s a pleasure to see you, what do you need today?” The owner of the tailor store was a young man, he also wanted to go to the United States, but couldn’t go for the time being, so he simply opened his store here, and he didn’t expect to make any money, and as a result, he didn’t leave.

His dream was to go to Hollywood, to make clothes for those stars.

Zhu Yuyan said, “Then you’d better go to France, there is no fashion soil in America.”

The tailor said, “Yes, that’s what they all told me. But I remember that France is still at war, so I don’t dare to go there.”

Zhu Yuyan’s persona in this place was also that she came here to escape the war, and she shared a common language with 80 percent of the people here. That’s why she was also on speaking terms with the tailor store owner.

She bought two shirts, and the two of them chatted about the patterns on the collars, the beggars and crooks on the streets, and the ships at the docks.

Zhu Yuyan: “I hope they send some new food, I’ve been eating potatoes for twenty days.”

Tailor Shop Owner: “I wish they’d send over a little cheap wine so I could afford it.”

Zhu Yuyan: “You’re dreaming.”

How can there be cheap wine now.

The tailor store owner nodded and sighed, “I’m dreaming.”

In the evening, Zhu Yuyan makes her wish come true and eats a new food: canned beans.

Although she didn’t like stewed beans, she was really tired of potatoes and asked for a serving of this.

She ended up adding a serving of fried potatoes with butter. Still this was delicious.

At the pier, Su Chunjun was walking down the gangway.

He had given the captain heavy gold to divert his course to Hawaii as soon as he got the telegram.

The captain succumbs to the gold bars and dollars and exclaims, “I’ve never seen a crazier man than you.”