Lu Yanheng is a car repair shop owner and a full-time dad. As soon as his daughter Lu Xiaojiao could run, he tied the stroller next to her workstation. Neighbors said he was at a loss - he graduated from a prestigious foreign language department and was living in the old alleys of Jinguan City changing tires. Until that day, a blond foreigner rushed in in a Porsche and made gestures for a long time, but no one understood. Lu Yanheng held a cigarette in his mouth and asked in fluent German: "Water tank or air conditioner?" As the news spread, luxury cars lined up. But he only accepts second-hand junk cars with stories. He used Sichuan dialect to talk about Zhou Xianniang's old battery car and found out that the neighbor was occupying the parking space; about Tang Jie's scrapped bread, he asked in Cantonese for clues about smuggled parts. Networks are like melon seed shells on a bamboo chair, the more you knock on them, the more you get. Lao Huang is the director of the demolition office, and Lin Hui is a TV reporter, and both of them have become regular customers of the shop. On this day, a police officer from the police station rolled over a police motorcycle and said, "Brother Lu, do me a favor and ask some questions." Lu Yanheng wiped his hands and glanced at Xiaojiao, who was playing with a wrench. Dialect is a moat, and favor is hard currency. In this old street, a chatty car repairman can fix everyone's secrets.
The bamboo chair had cracks. Lin Yuan polished the edges with sandpaper, and sawdust drifted into the afternoon light.
The shop is not big, about thirty square meters, and the shelves are piled with old radios, enamel basins, and yellowed miniature books. The camphor wood box in the corner was open, revealing half a box of food stamps from the 1970s and 1980s.
There was a musty smell mixed with the smell of tung oil in the air, and the sound of cooking in the alley could be heard outside the window.
Lin Yuan's fingers touched a mark on the armrest of the bamboo chair - 'Li Jianguo, summer of 1998'. He dug into the button with his fingernail, and the mark was very deep, as if he had used a knife
