Almighty painter

Chapter 512 No painting
Cao Xuan continued to write and draw lines on the drawing board.

The first lunar month in Shanghai is still a bit cold.

Child Cao Xuan was sucking hard the snot blown out by the wind blowing from the street all morning, while he was lowering his head and painting hard.

He ignored the complaints about the small opening of his suit and didn't even bother to raise his head to deal with it.

If you don't take into account the snot bubbles on your face and the dark marks at the corners of your mouth caused by biting the pen holder.

He has a pretty little face and looks like a master.

If you add these, then...

A cute and cute look.

"Hey, hey, hey... what kind of attitude do you have, how arrogant you are? Twenty dollars will give you such a rude attitude. In Paramount, in Xianle Palace, you can pay three or five dollars. Go to France, let the down-and-out noble lady from Belarus dance, and you will be laughed at all night long.”

"Enough!"

She didn't cry, she just twisted the lace of the white pearl bag on her hand so hard that her fingertips turned white.

The woman pursed her lips and smiled softly.

"My father's health has been getting worse and worse in the past two years, and the newspaper office is also laying off employees. He has nothing to do. The year before last, my grandfather... had to rely on himself."

"If the painting is good, it's not expensive."

It disappeared completely in the blink of an eye.

The man with glasses listens to what the woman says.

He was already clamoring to get his money back.

The man with glasses was getting angry.

Even if you are a foreigner, you have to look at them separately.

Magic City may be the most Westernized and open city in Eastern Xia during the entire Republic of China era.

The woman's face clearly lit up with a glimmer of hope.

He took out the rattrapante pocket watch from his arms again, looked at the time and date, and complained to the female companion beside him.

"But you all..."

"There are many rich people, but only a few can buy it. Do you know how much it costs to get a big house in the French Concession? Ten big yellow croakers! Just the favor fee to the middleman is just one bullion."

Her eyebrows also drooped, and her voice was sad.

Let alone a “foreignized” Shanghai.

"No matter if there are knives or bombs in the world, I will wait for the painting to be satisfactory. If the painting is not good, you are just a child, and I will still scold you. I have the patience."

"Darling, don't worry, the Japanese may not really come in. Besides, although it is difficult to get a house in the French Concession, in the American Concession, my uncle has some contacts with the American ticketing manager of the Tai Feng Steamship Company... He is a very beautiful man. The Star-Spangled Banner is hanging over Hongkou in the United States! The little devils dare to bully the Chinese, but they dare not go to the foreigners if they have the courage. "

She raised her head and stared at him for a moment.

As if he had finally made up his mind, he suddenly raised his head, put his hands around his male partner's neck, and gently touched his cheek with his lips.

Instead, with a slightly embarrassed look on his face, he turned his head and explained.

however.

"Don't be afraid of being late if you have a good meal. There is a portrait for twenty yuan. Let him paint it properly."

As she moved, the air seemed to be momentarily quiet.

The oil-headed Xiaokai bit his ear to his female companion and touched her slender waist.

"I can't lie to you?"

If it weren't for the fact that he was distressed about the money he had handed over before, and that under the porch of the department store more than ten meters away, in order to protect Cao Shentong's safety, Xin'an's family specially invited two strong men in dark long gowns for him. Under the long gowns, there might be strong men with guns. Shuo defends.

"Really?"

The woman said softly, as if to remind her partner, "You promised me."

"It's not that I'm impatient. Ah Hui, tell me, I waited in line for a long time, spent twenty yuan, and stayed here in the cold wind for a whole afternoon. I still want to see how this kid's face is different from the wooden one. You're like a pile of shit, I don't even bother to deal with you, tell me where can I go to find someone to deal with you?"

The woman had a faint smile on her face when she just made fun of Cao Xuan. When she mentioned the news in the newspaper, it was like water droplets evaporating under the sun.

Seeing her gentle and quiet look, the man couldn't bear it.

"Yes."

The female companion lowered her head after being told this.

But he shook his head in a blink of an eye.

"Ms. Su, you also know that the price of a house in the concession is one per day. It's not that I don't help, but this is not a matter of buying a painting for ten or twenty yuan,"

The French and Italians were flirting with each other, and passionate kissing in the street was just normal.

"Let me tell you, the prosperity of Shanghai is just like this. The world is really getting more and more chaotic. Even the devil is not stable. There are wars and bombings. It's scary to think about it."

"In the past few years, we could often see people fleeing from northern Jiangsu. Tens of thousands of people flocked to Shanghai every two days. Now they have become ordinary people in Shanghai, fleeing to northern Jiangsu in batches... When will this chaotic world end?"

On the other hand, the woman holding a handbag next to her gave her male companion a hand and lightly stamped her foot.

A trace of obvious impatience flashed across the man's face.

But if you look at the stuffy British people, or the conservative areas in the southern "Bible" states in the United States, except for places like New York, the overall atmosphere tends to be restrained.

This kind of thing is quite outrageous.

And on the streets of the Magic City in the 1930s.

Even married husbands and wives will be gossiped about if they do this in public.

The woman didn't know how much courage she mustered up in her heart to make such a move.

A fleeting hug.

His cheeks, as delicate as white porcelain, were already completely red, but the man's body only stiffened slightly before returning to normal.

He took the opportunity to grab the other person's hand and hold her in his arms.

Cao Xuan just put away his pen and raised his head at this moment.

Such a scene fell into the eyes of a child like him, making him slightly stunned for a moment.

The teacher said that Demon City is a city full of love and desire.

A person can fall in love with the next person in the next second for various reasons.

Children don't have so many moral constraints in their hearts.

At a time when everyone's lives are undergoing tremendous changes.

Saw a man and a woman embracing.

It should be quite a heart-warming scene.

But for kid Cao Xuan, there are still too many things that he cannot understand.

The woman being held in his arms was very beautiful, with a slight oval face and five eyebrows as slender as if they had been lightly traced with a pencil.

Also very young.

She is said to be a woman, but in fact her features and eyes look like those of a sixteen or seventeen year old.

She's just a girl, or the age of a schoolgirl.

Look at the pearls on her earlobes and the silver bracelet on her wrist.

Listening to her soft voice, her words are like Xiaojiabiyu, but she still has the air of being assertive, "If you draw well, you can have all the knives in the world. If you draw poorly, I can say that even to a child."

She was probably also a daughter of a scholarly family.

In peaceful times, she should be the kind of delicate Shanghai lady whose family holds it in their hands for fear of falling, and holds it in their mouth for fear of melting.

But what made her go shopping with a man on Nanjing Road instead of studying at Fudan Girls' High School?

The man next to me.

Judging from the conversation, he was probably a young and popular figure in Wuling who had been praised on the stage. Maybe he was a dandy who returned from overseas, or maybe he was a manager of a foreign company.

Two people who are completely unrelated to each other, at the moment when they embrace each other.

Do they really love each other? Do they really have no love for each other?
Will they really grow old together again?
Or is it a helpless combination in chaos?

Cao Xuan didn't understand, maybe no one in the whole city could understand it among the pedestrians who were coming and going.

Who knows.

Who cares. It just seems like there is an illusion.

Time stretched out for a long time at this moment, and even the air around him became deserted and quiet.

The Rolls-Royce slowly crossed the long street, and the flying goddess with wings on the front of the car separated the surrounding crowd like the tide.

The manufacturer named its model "Silver Ghost".

This is not only because of its silver-plated aluminum body that has been manually adjusted and assembled by craftsmen.

It is also because every car that comes off the production line is a "40/50HP car" within the manufacturer's internal model. When driven, it is as quiet as a ghost floating in the middle of the night.

"It is precisely because of it that Rolls-Royce is called the best car in the world" - said the cover page of "Autocar" magazine in 1907.

When two beautiful imported cars stopped not far in front of him.

Only then did Cao Xuan pay attention.

Quiet, that was not his imagination, but the surroundings had really become quiet.

Just like coaxing sheep, police officers from the patrol room dispersed the noisy crowd gathered in front of the department store.

Fourth-class patrol officer in old Shanghai.

Western patrols, Chinese patrols, Indian Sikh patrols, and Vietnamese patrols.

Those who maintained order around were not even hired Chinese or Indian or Vietnamese patrolmen.

The leader was actually the British patrol Inspector Abel with a small beard in the public concession.

Abel looked arrogant and led his men, "directing traffic" like chickens, driving away the onlookers and clearing a field for the car.

After paying the money, the woman who was waiting to receive the painting looked a little angry, as if she wanted to argue with the other party.

But the male companion beside him only glanced at the car, gently tugged on the woman's arm, and dragged her away without saying a word.

He recognized it.

That's the "Shanghai King" car.

In the old magic city of the 1930s, who was the most powerful person in Shanghai?

He is the local emperor of Shanghai.

You have to answer Du Yuesheng. Maybe Du Yuesheng himself, who said the "bucket bucket theory" and mocked himself as just a chamber pot that Chiang Kai-shek could use and throw away after use, was so frightened that he couldn't sleep at night when he heard this statement.

This is to kill him!

This answer asks different people, different scholars, different perspectives, and has different answers.

But whoever compiled the "list of powerful people", at least the owner of this limousine must be one of the top people on this list.

It is the car owned by the owner of the luxury estate at No. 2409, CN District, Shanghai Bund, a bank executive, and the richest British man in Shanghai.

The richest man once bought a block of land at the intersection of Nanjing Road and Huangpu River in the most expensive area on the Bund in Shanghai, just to build his own mansion.

The mansion was named "Cathay", which was the name for Dongxia in Marco Polo's Travels. It was also the most glamorous and decadent place in the whole of Shanghai.

After liberation, Cathay was taken over by the people's government as public property and given a more widely known name - "Peace Hotel".

It is said.

The richest man was once a close personal friend of King Edward VII.

Later British scholars even directly named him "The Last King of Shanghai" and called him the last emperor of Shanghai.

Du Yuesheng's master Huang Jinrong kowtowed to his brother, and the Chinese inspector Cheng Ziqing of the Concession was his immediate boss, the Western police inspectors.

He was just like Abel, nodding and bowing in front of the car to smooth traffic.

The door of the car in front opened, and the captain of the patrol bent down, trotted over, and opened the door for the car behind.

The person sitting in the car that Inspector Abel invited down so respectfully and like his own father was not even the King of Shanghai himself, but just a tall and thin British man wearing a straight dark tuxedo and gloves as white as snow. .

He seems to be just a butler.

"My wife invites you to be a guest at home."

The foreign butler didn't even look at the crowd around him.

He walked up to Cao Xuan, bowed slightly, took out an invitation from his arms, and made an invitation gesture.

Cao Xuan lowered his head to draw without moving his buttocks.

The housekeeper frowned slightly, feeling a little unhappy.

He was used to seeing people showing off their reputation, just like throwing a handful of rice at hungry chickens, and immediately nodding and flattering people would flock to him.

This kind of kid who left him alone made him a little angry.

but.

This is a guest invited by the host, and it is not convenient for him to have an attack.

The butler turned around and took out a small white box from the Rolls-Royce compartment.

Holding his hands, he stepped forward.

He deliberately bent down and placed it on the ground not far in front of Cao Xuan, under the steps of the department store.

"Mr. Cao, this is the writing fee my wife has given you."

There was a hint of arrogance in his tone.

When I saw clearly the true appearance of the jeweled box that the butler held out.

After being driven aside by the patrolmen, the crowd watching from a distance suddenly let out a burst of uncontrollable exclamations.

Rice circle, star chasing, rewards.

These are not concepts unique to the modern Internet era.

During the period of the Republic of China, the wealthy wives and wealthy ladies of high-ranking officials and noble families used the technique of lifting people up and chasing stars.

It can be said that the Eight Immortals crossed the sea and hundreds of flowers bloomed.

Just on all the major stages in Shanghai.

There are more than ten different ways of praising people, including literary praising, martial praising, front-stage praising, behind-the-stage praising, literary praising, economic praising, applauding praising, gold praising, and marriage praising.

No less than today's star-chasers.

The so-called simplest form of financial favor is to pay for a reward, or hold a banquet in private and invite celebrities to your home to boost your reputation.

It is said that Mei Lanfang sang "The Drunken Concubine" on the Shin Kong Grand Stage two years ago. With just such a look, as soon as she appeared on the stage, she sang with full tune.

There were as many as forty or fifty shining pure gold rings thrown onto the stage by the groupies.

And the objects the butler placed on the ground were no less stingy than the forty or fifty big gold rings.

It was an ivory jewelry box with extremely fine carvings.

The surface of the box is inlaid with six round and jade-sized pearls.

Inside the box lid, there is also a small watercolor painting of the Pearl River Delta with blue sky and blue water and merchant ships flying in and out.

(Note: Ivory pearl jewelry box, 2023, exhibit in the special art exhibition "The Sasson Family" at the New York Museum. It is the private collection of the wife of the richest man in old Shanghai.)
Among the people watching around, the knowledgeable people gasped.

This ivory jewelry box alone, plus the jingling jewelry inside, could be exchanged for a large courtyard with two entrances. Not to mention 50,000 French francs, but 20,000 or 30,000 yuan, that would be enough.

What a rare act of generosity.

As long as Cao Xuan bends down and picks it up, Cao Shen Tong will be able to draw the title of Ten Thousand Gold, and it will be considered a perfect success.

one second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Hundreds of pairs of eyes stood on tiptoe watching this, but in full view of everyone, Cao Xuan still lowered his head and did not move at all.

The butler's face suddenly darkened.

And Xiaokai, who saw this scene from a distance, suddenly stopped being angry and didn't feel bad about the twenty yuan he had just handed over.

"Awesome!"

He secretly gave a thumbs up gesture.

Look, Cao Shendong not only didn't give him face, he didn't even give tmd Shanghai King's face, and he was so convinced.

(End of this chapter)