Passengers Under the Light: Night Flight

On the day the ship arrived in Jiaxing, the two of them had only twenty-seven copper coins left on them. The money bag was stolen at the dock. Su Wantang laid out the coins on the table and counted them twice, saying, "It's enough to feed porridge for several days." Jiaxing is two or three times larger than Tangxi, but not as big as Hangzhou. Yan Mochen set up a stall at the bridge to write letters on his behalf, three letters per letter. In the first letter written by an old woman to her son, she gave an extra three words and said, "Your handwriting is beautiful." Su Wantang worked as an accountant in the tea house, and the abacus was crackling. When life was getting better, the salt merchant's manager came to Jiaxing. The two of them hid in the old woman's old house and huddled in a small cubicle where old things were piled up. They were silent during the day and only spoke a few words at night. After hiding for three days, Yan Mochen returned to the bookstore. The boss sent me a letter of invitation—an official named Chen from the Jiaxing government office asked me to write a congratulatory letter, and he was paid ten taels. He remembered that this person had reported to the bookstore and pushed it back: "No answer." Later, he rejected another epitaph, twenty taels, because the person had contacts with an official named Chen. He was expelled from the Qingtan Club, his wages were overpaid by the bookstore, and his savings were all spent. The two of them shared a bowl of noodles and drank all the soup. But the name "Dengxiake" began to spread among Jiaxing literati circles. An old manuscript of "Lao Huai Ji" was accepted and the manuscript was paid one to two to five cents. He wrote a new manuscript under the lamp while Su Wantang sharpened his ink. He wrote: "I didn't know what coming back meant until I was seventeen, because no one had waited for me." Later he joined the official bookstore. Su Wantang pawned the hosta left by her mother as security for him. They moved into a draft-tight room, with an old copper lamp on the table and the pen she bought next to it. Outside the window are the lights of thousands of houses in Jiaxing.