Sunbird Chronicle: A serialization of the novel "Phoenix Prisoner" based on Phoenix City (6)

Sunbird Chronicle: A serialization of the novel "Phoenix Prisoner" based on Phoenix City (6) (Editor's note) At a certain time, in a certain space, we are here, in Arizona, USA...

(Editor's note) At a certain time, in a certain space, we are here, Arizona, USA. Some people have stayed, and some have returned from overseas. In time At the intersection of space and space, there are many stories composed of minutes and seconds. In the Sunbird Asia Chinese Network, we see Zhang Zhaohong, Qi Ruhong, Wen Ruo, Huiming, Fengming, Xinshui and many other old overseas Chinese recording their lives in words. First of all, we would like to thank them for their records, which allow us to see the growth footprint of a generation of immigrants. "Sunbird" columnist Wang Jingyu wrote the novel "Phoenix Prisoner" based on the true story of a woman living in Phoenix City.

Feng Qiu Huang

Wang Jingyu

6

A month later, I returned to the hospital. After pulling out the sanding belt and steel bars, I immediately ran to the public phone booth and called Huazi. I begged her on the phone to take me out of this place. My hand was still injured at that time, and Yan Li never came to see me again. I just wanted to take this opportunity to leave quickly. Huazi said on the other end of the phone, I told you to leave a long time ago, but you didn't listen to him when I told you to leave. She was gushing over the phone, while I was crying over the phone. I thought to myself, it was once difficult to make a difference in the sea, so please stop blaming me now.

Just like that, my sister Huazi came back and took me to Guangzhou.

Huazi opened a beauty salon in Guangzhou. I helped her in the beauty salon at first, but I was never interested in the beauty industry. Huazi couldn't help it, so she helped me find an insurance company and let me work as a salesperson there. Insurance companies get commissions based on performance. In order to improve performance, I often go out to run insurance policies, knock on strangers' doors, and make friends with them. I am busy all day long. I have been busy like this for more than a year, but my performance is still not ideal.

Later Huazi introduced a friend to me to do business. A friend of hers in Zhengzhou was a wholesaler of Chinese herbal medicines. The boss asked me to go all over the country to collect medicinal materials and buy them back to the factory for inspection. I summed it up and found that this is much better than taking a dead salary, but where can I raise the principal? Those days, I lay in bed thinking about this problem over and over. Later, my roommate Wu Han saw that I couldn't sleep and asked me what was going on. I told her the situation. She became excited as soon as she heard it. She said she had hundreds of thousands of spare money and didn't know how to invest it. Just like that, we hit it off. We travel to Sichuan, Anhui, Yunnan, Guangxi and so on. These days should be my happiest days for me. I am very relaxed, running around, and being warmly received like an emperor wherever I go. They think, wow, they are big businessmen from Guangzhou, and they have sent us money. More importantly, I can also make money. I make two trips a month, collecting a little here and a little there. We collect 20 tons each time, which was an astronomical figure for them at the time. They treat us as big customers, treat us with the best things every time, take us to karaoke and wash our feet. Despite this, we still need their medicinal materials to meet our standards, such as how dry they are, whether there are any burrs, whether the price is the lowest, etc. We run like this twice a month, which is both comfortable and profitable. At that time, many places we traveled went smoothly, nothing happened, and it was a pleasure to work together.

If it weren’t for a series of things that happened later, it would still be possible for us to continue to cooperate. These things are still incredible when I think about them.

Once, we took money to collect medicinal materials in Bozhou, Anhui. Before leaving, Wu Han bought a new pair of shoes in Guangzhou. She took the new shoes on the train, but when she woke up the next morning, her new shoes were missing. A pair of old shoes were neatly placed in front of her, and her shoes were replaced under her nose. This time she was shocked, and then she felt uneasy, thinking, this is not a good sign, is it unlucky to go out this time? I didn't think much about it at the time, thinking that losing a pair of shoes was a very accidental thing. But I really didn't expect that the unlucky beginning started at this time.

When we got off the train in Hefei, Anhui, we were going to take a bus to a rural area in Bozhou to go shopping. Before Wu Han got in the car, he stuffed the cross-body bag he carried into the suitcase. It contained three thousand yuan as pocket money. Below the three thousand yuan, that is, the bottom of the box contained the two hundred thousand yuan in cash we purchased. You can only bring cash. There are no ATM machines in the countryside. The principle of doing business with them is to pay with one hand and deliver the goods with the other hand. We later thought about the whole incident over and over again, and we felt more and more that it was at this time that we were being targeted. Yes, a discerning person can tell at a glance that we are from other places, and that we are businessmen. We have different clothes, different accents, and we look around with curious eyes. The thieves followed us onto the bus. They were supposed to sit in the back seat of us. I sat in the front seat and had a small cross-body bag with tens of thousands of dollars in it. Wu Han was sitting outside, and she put the suitcase between our feet. It looked safer. Then she squinted her tired eyes and said to me, I didn't sleep all night last night. I was really sleepy and wanted to take a nap. Please watch it. I thought to myself that the box was clinging to our feet and could fly on its own. I nodded and said, you can sleep peacefully, I'm watching. She tilted her head and quickly became confused.

I was sitting there, bored, wanting to sleep but afraid to sleep, what should I do? I took out a novel from my bag. This was great. I was fascinated by it as soon as I read it. I didn't even know where I was. After Wu Han woke up with a start, she suddenly trembled and immediately opened her eyes wide. Her horrified voice pierced my eardrums. Where is the luggage? Where did the luggage go? Only then did I realize that everyone in the car had almost left, and an ominous premonition came over me. We were so frightened that our faces turned pale, and we hurried down to look for it. Fortunately, the luggage was under the seat. We pulled the luggage out with all our strength, and our sixth sense told us: something serious is going on. We opened our luggage in panic. Our wallet was still there, but the three thousand yuan inside was missing. The two of us looked at each other like lightning, and reached into the bottom of the box together. Oh my god, the "big money" was still there. We let out a long breath at the same time, secretly thankful that we had put our wallets on top when we got in the car, otherwise the two hundred thousand cash underneath would have been gone. The thief never thought that if he probed deeper, he would get two hundred thousand yuan.

Wu Han stared at me fiercely and said, I asked you to look at me, what are you looking at? I also felt quite aggrieved, and whispered, the box was right at my feet, how did I know it was gone? Her face turned dark and scary. I quickly said, forget it, the big number is still there, we will share the lost 3,000 yuan equally. But from then on, she always stared at me with a pair of eyes alertly, without saying a word, as if I had really become a bad thing for her.

The next day, it started raining heavily, so we decided to go to the countryside to collect the medicine as originally planned. For safety reasons, we hired a taxi, which gave us an unprecedented sense of security. The car was driving quickly on the endless field road. The entire land was flat and boundless. There were no pedestrians or vehicles on the road. The only tree in the distance was leaning on the roadside. We bumped along with the car. Although the green grass and some wild chrysanthemums on the roadside were soaked to pieces by the rain, the moist rain carried its fragrance and hit our nostrils. We were all a little intoxicated, and even the driver whistled. No one expected that on such a sparsely populated and flat country road, our taxi driver whistled so proudly that the car crashed into the only tree there with a clang.

When I felt that something was not good, I quickly squatted down holding my head, but my head still hit the car door, and a big bump immediately appeared on my head, which hurt. I turned my head subconsciously, and a terrifying face suddenly appeared in front of me. Wu Han's eyes were staring straight at me, blood was flowing from his forehead, and his face was expressionless, like a ghastly female ghost who suddenly appeared in front of me in the dark night. It scared me. She was probably knocked unconscious, and the two of us stared at each other. After a long time, a smile slowly emerged from the corner of her mouth, and then she said to me slowly and weakly, please don't look at me with that expression, okay? I thought to myself, can you please stop looking at me like this? Scared someone to death.

I helped her wrap her head. After she slowly regained consciousness, she really began to realize that she was so unlucky this time out. Her shoes were changed, stolen, and now she crashed into a car for no reason. The car was damaged and the engine wouldn't start. The taxi driver tried several times but failed in the end. He said, "What should I do? The car is broken and I can't go. You can find a way. You can leave as long as you leave the fare." As soon as we heard this, we suddenly became angry. Wu Hanzhen was a little angry. She said, you hit the car and we were still bleeding. Not only did you not send us to the hospital, you also left us in this remote place with no store or shop. You also asked us to pay. Who are you? Wu Han cursed loudly, leaving the driver unable to fight back. We are helpless in this uninhabited wilderness. Finally, the driver called another taxi, which drove us to our destination for a long time.

After we paid the money and were about to get off the bus, the driver suddenly stopped us and shouted, "Don't go, don't go. Sit tight. I'm telling you, this is fake money." Wu Han was surprised and said, we are regular people, where did the fake money come from? We have never had fake money. The driver gave her the fifty yuan she had just given him and said, if you look at it in the sun, it will look like fake money. When Wu Han took the photo, she was shocked. It turned out to be fake money. She quickly said, I'll exchange it with you. I don't know when some bastard exchanged the fake money into my hands. As he said this, he went to take out money from his bag. The driver refused. He looked us both up and down, pointed his finger at our foreheads, and said, I have known for a long time that you two are liars, using women as a cover to find places to spend fake money. I was still thinking about it as soon as I got in the car. It is indeed not a good thing. We drive a taxi and run hard all day long. Is it easy for us? You still want me to receive fake money. The more the driver spoke, the angrier he became, and the more he spoke, the more determined he became in his opinion. After saying that, he locked the car door and picked up the phone. He really called the police.

The police came immediately and took us to the police station without saying a word. The driver followed closely behind, still chattering along the way. Don't let these two women go. They are definitely not good people. I brought them here from such a far away place and it was raining. They actually cheated me with fake money. They should compensate me two hundred yuan. The policeman ignored him and walked ahead. He took us to a small room with a security door. The light inside was very dark, but it still felt cold and damp. I instinctively took a breath of cold air and thought: He really thinks of us as bad guys. What should I do? The policeman turned on the fluorescent light, took out a notepad from the drawer, twirled the ballpoint pen in his hand, and began to record a confession expressionlessly. He stared at us doubtfully and said with dignity that we must tell the truth honestly, otherwise we will bear the consequences. We nodded obediently, but as soon as we started talking, he immediately became alert when he heard that we spoke with foreign accents. They asked us to show our ID cards. After seeing the ID cards, we were asked to tell what happened. What are we doing here? We explained everything to him honestly. When it came time for us to go to the countryside to buy medicinal materials, he asked us to hand over the name and phone number of the seller. This time we were dumbfounded again, and then we realized that for more than a year, we had been doing local business and did not follow the business rules at all. We just came to collect, they entertained us warmly, and then they paid the money and delivered the goods, and then left. It's that simple. I can't even remember the names of the farmers in remote villages, let alone their phone numbers. We stared at each other dumbly. From behind the policeman's cold eyes, we clearly felt his firm opinion towards us: these were clearly a pair of female thieves.

At this moment, a group of people came noisily in the corridor, led by a young man who rushed in covered in blood, followed by a group of aggressive farmers with various weapons in their hands. The young man was obviously frightened, with only two horrified eyes showing on his bloody face. He stared at the policeman with a pleading look, as if the policeman was his life-saving straw. His life was hanging by a thread, and one end of the line was holding the hand of the policeman in front of him. The police immediately turned their attention away from us.

Wu Han let out a long breath. She needed a buffering opportunity, and the opportunity just came to her door. But I was frightened by the eyes in front of me. It awakened something deep in my heart that I had been resisting and trying to forget, and now it was bloodyly presented in front of me. I don’t know how I jumped up from my seat and shot into that corner. My movements were so fast that it frightened everyone present. They looked at me in shock, like a monster. And I huddled in that corner, shivering, tears streaming down my face.

>I don’t know if this incident played a role, but things immediately took a 180-degree turn. The police asked Wu Han to give one hundred yuan to the driver and asked us to leave immediately. He still had important things to deal with. The driver's eyes turned red and he was about to say something. The policeman waved his hand impatiently and said angrily, "Can't I tell if he is a bad guy?" The driver reluctantly took the money and left cursing.

We were relieved and left the police station with our luggage as if we were fleeing. We found a safe place and stood there panting. As I was wiping my tears, I suddenly noticed that Wu Han was looking at me sideways like this: This is really a disaster star. Anyone who cooperates with the disaster star again will be a fool. I couldn't stand the look in her eyes and said, this is how business is done, there are profits and losses, can you blame me if something like this happens? I thought to myself that you lost the shoes, that the thief stole your money, that your head was bruised and bleeding in the car accident, that you paid for the fake money, or that I helped you out in the end. Thinking of this, I felt confident. I raised my head and looked back at her with the same look: You are the real disaster star.

Since this time, our cooperation has been suspended.