There is always an indescribable smell in the antique street in the evening, like old wood mixed with patina, and a bit of market smoke. I squatted in front of a street stall on the street corner, holding a dirty porcelain bowl in my hand and looking at it over and over for a long time.
"Boss, how much does this bowl cost?"
The stall owner was a thin, monkey-like middle-aged man. He held a cigarette in his mouth and looked at me with squinted eyes: "Xiao Xing, you are an old face on this street. Take fifty yuan."
I almost dropped the bowl on the ground: "Fifty? Just this broken bowl? Look at the glaze, it's so rough that it can be used as sandpaper, and there are bumps on the bottom. You can buy three of them for ten yuan on the street stall."
"Hey, you don't understand." Thin Monkey blew out a smoke ring, "This is an old thing I collected from the countryside. It is at least 180 years old."
I rolled my eyes. One hundred and eighty years? The cans in the trash can downstairs at my house would be considered cultural relics if left for a hundred years. But this bowl is indeed interesting. The texture on the bottom of the bowl does not look like it was carved by a machine, but rather like it was carved by hand. Although it is obscured by the dirt, you can vaguely feel a strange atmosphere.
I have a problem, that is, I am very curious. Fifty yuan isn't a lot of money, so I took out my wallet, pulled out a crumpled bill and threw it over: "Okay, just treat it as tuition."
The thin monkey accepted the money with a smile, and there was a glint in his eyes that I couldn't read.
