Shanghai Embroidery Lady

Chapter 64
After arriving at Qianmen Street, the driver boldly asked Meng Haoxiang if he could go to a teahouse for a break, and Meng Haoxiang agreed.Ye Zijin thought to himself that the driving master in Peiping was indeed extraordinary, and he was different from the trembling and respectful old Wu.

Ye Zijin and Meng Haoxiang came to the dim sum shop named "Daoxiang Village". This is a time-honored shop, and the three golden characters on the ebony plaque look simple and heavy.Two lines of poems are written on the two pillars in front of the gate - "The village is surrounded by mountains and pine leaves are dark, and the wild gate is facing the fragrance of rice and ramie".

There are a wide variety of dim sum here, including all kinds of exquisite pastries from the north and the south. Now it is spring, and the seasonal dim sum includes Dingsheng cake, apricot sesame cake, wine glutinous rice cake, white sugar snow cake, meat snow cake, spring cake, etc.

Meng Haoxiang walked around and asked Ye Zijin, "I want to buy some Peking specialties for Master Hua and the Wilton couple. Do you have any good suggestions?"

Ye Zijin looked at the various snacks, thought for a while, and said, "Master Hua's taste is rather bland, you can buy some Dingsheng Cake, Jiuniang Cake and Pine Nut Wang Qian Cake to take home. As for the Wiltons, they The taste is sweeter, you can buy the rose lard cake and almond shortbread in season.”

Meng Haoxiang was silent for a moment, then suddenly asked: "Have you eaten all of these?"

Ye Zijin blushed, realizing that she had exposed her playful and gluttonous nature in her childhood, she smiled awkwardly and said, "I have tried these kinds of dim sum, and they taste pretty good..."

In the end, Meng Haoxiang bought the kinds that Ye Zijin mentioned, and asked the shop assistant to put them in a box and wrap them up.

When the two came out of the pastry shop, Meng Haoxiang suddenly stopped and looked at a stall selling candied haws outside the gate of Guanyin Temple.

"Candied haws... Candied haws..."

The candied haws seller was a grey-haired old man, and his long cry echoed in the street like a bend, bringing a simple and strong atmosphere of the market.

"Do you want to eat candied haws?" Ye Zijin asked, looking at Meng Haoxiang with wide eyes in disbelief.

Meng Haoxiang came back to his senses, a lonely smile emerged from the corner of his mouth, he shook his head and said, "No... let's go."

Ye Zijin suddenly pulled him back, "If you want to eat, go buy it, it's not like your Boss Meng's style to be shy."

Ye Zijin said as she walked towards the stall selling candied haws. To be precise, she also wanted to try it. She hadn't eaten authentic candied haws in Peking for a long time.Meng Haoxiang had no choice but to follow with the snack box.

The business of this stall selling candied haws is booming, and a group of children eagerly gather around the stall, clamoring for adults to buy it.The children who took the candied haws couldn't wait to lick them, and then bounced and played with each other.The old man was very busy making candied haws while yelling.

"Let's go buy it." Seeing that there were too many people, Ye Zijin was reluctant to squeeze.

Meng Haoxiang touched his pocket, and said with embarrassment: "I don't seem to have enough money, I almost spent on the snacks just now. Can you lend me first?"

Ye Zijin almost dropped his jaw to the floor in shock, did the boss of the dignified Baohui Foreign Firm not bring enough money?Seeing Meng Haoxiang's serious face, Ye Zijin slowly took out a few Xiaoyang from his handbag and patted them in the palm of his hand.

Meng Haoxiang took the money, and squeezed into the crowd with the box in both hands, looking at the things in his hands while moving in, and being careful not to squeeze the children.Looking at Meng Haoxiang's back, Ye Zijin suddenly felt a little strange.At this moment, Meng Haoxiang seemed to have lost the halo of that boss Meng, and became no different from ordinary people, and he didn't seem to be so serious and indifferent to reject people thousands of miles away.

Ye Zijin waited for a while, Meng Haoxiang finally got out of the crowd holding two sugar-coated hawthorn skewers, walked up to her and handed her a red hawthorn skewer.

"Get in the car and go back?" Ye Zijin asked.

Meng Haoxiang spared one hand to hold candied haws, "Go back after eating."

Ye Zijin pursed her lips, carelessly biting the icing on the mountain red.But he saw Meng Haoxiang eating very seriously, he had already bitten a red hawthorn, his bulging cheeks were twitching, his mouth was full of sugar residue, as if he was concentrating on tasting.

Ye Zijin was about to bite off a piece of icing, but was overwhelmed by Meng Haoxiang's eating, how could he eat like that?
Meng Haoxiang quickly finished eating a candied haws. Seeing that Ye Zijin still had half of it left, he asked, "Why don't you eat it? Isn't it delicious?"

Ye Zijin forced a smile, "No, I just didn't expect you to like candied haws so much..."

Meng Haoxiang was silent for a moment, and a look of sadness flashed in his eyes, "Actually, when I was a child, my mother would buy me a bunch of candied haws every Chinese New Year, but after she died of illness, I never ate any more."

Ye Zijin's heart suddenly trembled, and she apologized slightly, "I'm sorry, I..."

"Today's candied haws are very sweet. I owe the money first, and I will pay it together with your translation fee. I will never owe you." Meng Haoxiang raised his eyebrows, and a smile appeared on his lips.

Ye Zijin looked up at him calmly, feeling a faint pain behind the smile.

The frosty color in Meng Haoxiang's eyes melted a little, and the color of his pupils was bottomless.He turned his head to look at Guanyin Temple, and asked Ye Zijin, "Do you want to go there?"

Ye Zijin nodded quietly, a bitter feeling welled up in her heart, Meng Haoxiang's expression actually reminded her of the scene when Er Niang and Aunt Zhou died, that kind of pain, he must have experienced the same...

The two walked into the temple, where green pines and cypresses were planted all over the temple, and a pine tree in the center grew particularly lushly, with intertwined roots, and its branches and leaves were like a cover, with the potential to go straight into the sky.The thick trunk is wrapped with red silk, and the soil under the tree is still filled with unburned incense.

"Do you believe in Guanyin?" Ye Zijin asked Meng Haoxiang standing under the pine tree.

Meng Haoxiang glanced at the kind-browed and kind-eyed Guanyin statue enshrined in the hall from a distance, and said: "I don't believe in gods, but I always wear a Guanyin jade pendant, which was left to me by my father. He wants me to be an official, Guanyin Guanyin, Official seal."

"Is your father an official?" Ye Zijin suddenly became curious.

Meng Haoxiang's chest was suffocated, and he said with a smile: "If he is an official, he will definitely not want his son to be an official. My father is just a pawn of the Beiyang Navy. He also followed. He wanted me to be an official, thinking that if he became a high official and had real power, he would be able to implement the policy of strengthening the country, but he was wrong, how could the Qing royal family let the power fall aside."

When Ye Zijin heard him talk about the Qing royal family, she couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable. She had heard Ama talk about that humiliating history, and the Yehenala family was reviled by the world because of it.

Sensing the change in Ye Zijin, Meng Haoxiang realized that some of his words were aimed at the Qing royal family, and he immediately changed his tone and said in a relaxed tone: "Actually, my family is full of loyalists. My grandfather was one of the guards of the Dagukou Fort back then. A pawn, died in the Battle of Dagukou, my father was a soldier of the Beiyang Navy, and died in the Sino-Japanese War of Sino-Japanese War. But I was just a punk, and I shamed my parents."

Ye Zijin only smiled lightly, and said: "Boss Meng, why should you underestimate yourself? Even if you are just a commoner, as long as you have the world and the country in your heart, you are a real hero. Besides, with your current status in Shanghai, how can you say that you are insulting your parents. "

The solemnity in Meng Haoxiang's eyes gradually dissipated, he stared at Ye Zijin, and said silently for a moment: "I only heard that the rise and fall of the world is everyone's responsibility, it seems that it has nothing to do with you women."

Ye Zijin shook his head, there was a kind of stubbornness between his brows that refused to bow down, "Boss Meng is too contemptuous of our women when he said that. In ancient times, Mulan joined the army in place of his father, Fan Lihua quelled the border chaos, and Qin Liangyu led the army to go out. A man can be ambitious everywhere." , the concern is the survival of the country, so women must only stay at home and take care of their husbands and children?"

Meng Haoxiang looked at her warmly, and felt that she was cute when she was serious.He appreciates the grandeur of Ye Zijin, which is relatively rare in southern women. Only the vast land in the north can nourish the pride and gully in her heart. This is her attractive characteristic, which is flexible and gentle without losing that touch of toughness and fierceness. Like Taoranting's reeds swaying in the wind.

"That's not what I meant. It's the Republic of China now, and of course women can do what they want. Well, aren't you going to worship the Bodhisattva? Let's go." Meng Haoxiang turned around and walked into the main hall.

After worshiping the statue of Guanyin, Ye Zijin began to ask for a lottery. In the past, Aunt Zhou would always ask for a lottery when she came here.

Ye Zijin held the bamboo tube with both hands and shook it reverently, a thin bamboo stick flew out of the bamboo tube, landed on the ground and bounced twice.

Ye Zijin carefully picked up the bamboo stick and went to the abbot for help, while Meng Haoxiang waited for her outside.

The old abbot took the bamboo stick and asked, "Girl, what do you want?"

Ye Zijin thought for a moment, but she still couldn't escape her daughter's family's most concerned thing, so she whispered: "Marriage."

The old abbot looked at the bamboo stick, sighed suddenly and said: "The vast mist is misty, and the two paddles are in the middle of the moon. The pearl has tears, and the sea of ​​​​clouds is boundless. This is the next sign."

Ye Zijin was confused, and asked the abbot, "How to explain this lottery?"

The old abbot rubbed the bamboo stick in his hand, and slowly said the word "Broken Bridge", "Broken Bridge was parted, and I looked back with tears on my breasts. Alas, girl, your life is full of changes. Cherish the people you meet and keep the clouds." You can see the moon when you open it."

The old abbot's words seemed to put a big stone on Ye Zijin's heart, so that the clouds would open to see the moon?Could it be alluding to the second young master...

Out of the main hall, Meng Haoxiang saw that Ye Zijin's complexion was not very good, and he added a little bit of relief in his words, "The signing of these things is always mysterious and mysterious. They are all unfounded words, so don't believe them. My mother once asked Someone calculated for me that I would be a carpenter and stay with wood all day long, but it turned out to be nonsense. My life was always picked up from the gate of hell by myself, and I never believed in the theory of fortune telling. "

Ye Zijin smiled in a trance, and didn't mention the matter of signing the document just now.The two continued to walk in the monastery. The path was quiet, the vegetation was lush, and the temple was elegant. The tall pines and cypresses set off the red walls and gray tiles, and it was quite an artistic conception of deep flowers and trees in a Zen house.

Meng Haoxiang and Ye Zijin came to a gazebo to rest. The gazebo was covered with vines as light as purple smoke, and some vines hung down from the top, like lavender bead curtains.Beside the pavilion was a stout ginkgo tree, its dense foliage gleaming like splinters of gold in the sun.This ginkgo tree looks quite old, and the trunk needs two or three people holding hands to encircle it, just like the guards standing in the temple, steadfast, despite the weather and the changes of the world.

Ye Zijin saw that there were still many red, green and green purses hanging on the tree. These purses containing wishes were hung on the branches at different heights, and the red tassels fluttered in the wind.

"Do you want to hang a purse up there too?" Meng Haoxiang pointed to a meditation room not far away, where another statue of Guanyin was enshrined, and someone was selling purses and red paper outside the door.

Ye Zijin also went to buy a red purse embroidered with magnolia flowers on a whim.She turned around to avoid Meng Haoxiang, wrote a line of words on the red paper, and carefully folded the ink into her purse after the ink was dry.

"What did you write on it?" Meng Haoxiang asked casually.

Ye Zijin held her purse like a baby, and said casually: "I can't say this, it won't work if I say it."

She walked under the tree, looked up and saw a branch with dense leaves, she threw her slender hand vigorously, and saw that the purse was about to hang on the branch, but finally missed the branch and slipped down.Ye Zijin picked up the purse and continued to throw it. After trying twice in a row, she still couldn't hang it. She felt a little annoyed.

When the purse landed for the third time, Meng Haoxiang walked under the tree and bent down to pick up the red purse.He raised his eyes to look around, and tossed it up easily, as if throwing a red flower.The purse landed steadily on the treetop, the branches and leaves swayed twice, and then hung up.Ye Zijin blushed, feeling that she had lost face, and didn't thank Meng Haoxiang for her help, so she turned and walked towards the Banyue Arch not far away.

(End of this chapter)