Chapter 897
The man’s house is a single room, an earthen house, which is darkened by smoke, probably because of the fire.
The lamp hanging on the roof is an incandescent lamp used in the countryside in the nineties, probably to save electricity, and it is only about 15 watts, which makes it a bit dim.
Pots and pans were placed in a pile next to a tent made of sacks, because of the dust and the rainwater that had seeped in.
Layers of grey, damp earth had accumulated on the tent, which looked dark and a bit wormy.
The middle-aged man took two bowls out of a black wooden cupboard and placed them in front of us.
Since there was no way to communicate in words, the middle-aged man gestured a few times, which probably meant that we should eat them.
Looking at the bowl of dishes infested with chillies, Ouyang Nuo froze and said, “What kind of dish is this?”
“This is sour papaya, it’s been pickled, because it’s hot over here, this is something to relieve the heat and appetite, you guys have a taste!” Yang Ting was a girl who grew up in the southwest and knew a bit about these things.
All in all we were hungry for a day, and after all thanks we ate it too, it tasted sour and refreshing, with a bit of sourness and spiciness from the chillies.
We hadn’t eaten any oil, salt or vinegar for a few days, so we were satisfied with our oral appetite at this point.
After eating, we saw father and daughter crouched aside watching us, curious and worried, but also a little scared.
Knowing that they spoke a different language to us, Ouyang Nuo gestured with his hands and tried to speak a few words of English.
We were originally thinking of borrowing a mobile phone to call our family.
But they were a bit confused and didn’t seem to know what a mobile phone was like.
We had to wait until tomorrow and ask the other villagers. The five of us squatted under the eaves of the dilapidated house and rested for the night, which was better than carrying it around in the mountains.
The next day.
The middle-aged man was already awake and standing in the yard climbing up a tree to pick mangoes.
The little girl was in the yard picking up the mangoes that he had accidentally dropped and smashed a bit thin and soft with her basket.
Every time she picked a mango she looked back at us happily and laughed, as if she was passing on her joy.
“Actually being rich and poor is not what defines happiness, is it?” Yang Ting spoke up from the side, thin and small, looking a little forlorn.
Ouyang Nuo clasped his hands against the door frame and raised his eyebrows, “What? Something unhappy come to mind?”
She shrugged her shoulders, “Not really, I’m just sighing. After such a tumultuous experience, I suddenly figured out that it’s up to me how I want to live my life, so why bother with others.”
“Buddha said that there is a fixed number!” Duan Tong spoke up, but finally did not continue to recite the sutra.
Ouyang Nuo held his forehead, muttered, “The mouth is Buddha, is not annoying?”
Duan Tong didn’t seem to hear this, and went straight to the courtyard to pick up the mangoes on the ground together with the little girl.
Although the two of them did not speak the same language, it was good that they could compare actions.
Because I thought of going back as soon as possible, Ouyang Nuo dragged me through the village to find a home with a mobile phone.
In the twenty-first century, there are very few people who do not have a mobile phone. When we found a family, Ouyang Nuo used sign language to communicate with them, asking them to lend us their mobile phones to call.
But the other side still couldn’t figure it out, so we had to leave in the end, unhappy.
Shi Rui and Yang Ting were just as frustrated, sitting together, and Shi Rui said, “If it doesn’t work out, we’ll just keep walking down the road, maybe we’ll get to the city? We might even meet our compatriots from the motherland then!”
“The odds of that are too small, and no one knows how far down the road we’ll go, we’re kind of smuggling, we’ll be taken away by the police if we’re found out.” Ouyang Nuo opened his mouth and sat cross-legged on the ground with a little sigh.
“What’s wrong with being taken away by the police?” Duan Tong opened his mouth, “If we are taken away by the police, one of them must have moved Chinese, when we speak to them about the situation, we can have a chance to go home.”
Chapter 898
“Yeah!” Shi Rui picked up, a little excited, “If we could just follow the police and then get them to send us back, we wouldn’t have to look around for someone so much.”
I guess everyone thought this was a good idea, and they were all happy for a while.
The next few people started discussing what they should do next, to get the police to come forward and find us.
This is a mountain village and I don’t know if there is a police station or something around here.
Duan Tong believes in Buddhism, so she doesn’t get involved in things that are harmful to heaven and earth, so she hides far away.
It was Yang Ting and Ouyang Nuo who said, “Let’s do this kind of thing!”
So, in the evening, Yang Ting and Ouyang Nuo ran to a yard and robbed the person’s yard on the pretext of borrowing something.
When the two returned, with their hands full of fruit, they thought the other side would have called the police.
But it turned out that they were completely overthinking it. The others looked at them as outsiders and did not understand the language thinking that they needed those things badly, and although they were angry, they understood.
So they didn’t call the police. Yang Ting and Ouyang Nuo were a bit speechless when they got this result, but they finally sent the things back to the people.
But not long after, the family sent it back again, so the next few days were the same, the two of them changed ways to offend the people in the village, trying to force them to call the police.
Not only did the others not call the police, but they also sent some food, all from the farmers’ own homes during the week.
Most of the people born in the mountains live by the sky, and they know from the time they are born that their whole life is farming and working, and that they know nothing about the world outside the mountains.
So, in their minds, the reason why Yang Ting and Ouyang Nuo would steal from other people’s homes was because they were hungry and poor, and the original idea was to make them sympathetic, without ever thinking of defending their own food.
Having figured this out, we also decided not to continue, and even so, word got out more or less that we girls were here in the mountains.
Over the next few days, villagers almost always came over to bring food out of pity.
Through simple words and guesses, we learned that the middle-aged man was called Long Tai Bao and the daughter was called Long Yue.
Yang Ting had previously studied some small languages, all around Southeast Asia, and although not really specific, the language was always similar.
So gradually down the line, she could barely communicate with both the Lang family, father and daughter.
Long Tai Bao, who finally understood why we were taking other people’s things, said somewhat helplessly, “Actually you don’t need to do that, I can go and find someone to borrow it for you.”
Yang Ting held her forehead, she knew it was silly to rob people, but when people are in a hurry, it’s only human to do something ridiculous.
Long Tai Bao said he would wait until tomorrow morning to help us borrow a mobile phone to make a call.
It’s not customary to go to someone’s house at night, it’s taboo.
Although we didn’t know the reason for this, we did as we were told, we had to respect it after all.
At the thought of going home soon, a few girls were a bit excited to play with Lang Yue for the rest of the night.
Yang Ting knew their language and acted as a translator the whole time, promising Lang Yue in broken language that when we got home we would definitely come back here to see her and bring her nice dolls’ goodies.