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Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh

Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh

Titel: Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Yan,Mo , Goldblatt,Howard
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deep green jade bracelets on both arms. And he couldn't miss the woman's heavy fragrance: sweeter smelling than the jasmine tea he'd been given in the factory reception room, sweeter smelling than the perfume the factory secretary wore, so sweet smelling it made him giddy. Knowing instinctively where his sale was coming from, the peddler zeroed in on the little girl, regaling her with all the advantages of raising pigs and holding his little piglets right up in front of her, despite their noisy struggles to keep a distance between them and her. Scratching one pig's belly, then the other's, he said to the little girl in the sweetest tone of voice he could manage, “Go ahead, little sister, touch the two little cuties.”
    Now that they'd been scratched, the piglets calmed down and grunted contentedly, gazing off into the distance as they rocked back and forth a bit before settling softly onto the ground. The little girl summoned up the courage to tug one of their ears and gently poke its belly. More contented grunts as both the little pigs started to fall asleep.
    Having made up her mind to leave, the woman picked up the little girl, only to spark yet another tantrum. She put her down again, and as soon as the little feet hit the ground, they headed unsteadily right for the piglets; no more tears. A crafty smile spread across the peddler's face as he launched into yet another sales pitch.
    “How much for one of those?” the woman asked him.
    After a thoughtful “hmm,” he replied decisively:
    “For anybody else, three hundred apiece, but you can have the pair for five hundred.”
    “Can't you make it a little less?” she asked.
    “Young lady, take a good look at those pigs. You don't see animals like that every day. They're purebred, living, breathing Yorkshires! Go to the toy section of any department store, and you'll find that a toy pig will cost you a couple of hundred! If my son weren't getting married and didn't need money to set up a household, I wouldn't part with these two for five thousand yuan, let alone five hundred!”
    The woman smiled sweetly. “Slow down,” she said. “The next thing you'll be telling me is that they're a pair of unicorns!”
    “That's not far from the truth!”
    “I didn't bring any money with me.”
    “No problem. I'll deliver them to your door.”
    But when the peddler tugged on the tethers to leave, the piglets started scurrying back and forth, and he was forced to pick them up and tuck one under each arm. They squealed their displeasure.
    “Stop squealing, little ones. Luck is with us today. You're about to become the happiest little pigs in the world. Joyful days are here for you two. Instead of squealing like that, you should be laughing.”
    The peddler followed the woman into a lane, a pig under each arm. The little girl, who was perched on the woman's shoulders, turned around and laughed loudly at the sight of the pigs.
    Old Ding watched the procession of pigs and people as long as he could with a growing sense of melancholy. Then he started walking again, all the way up to the middle of the overpass, where he stopped and thought dreamily about the captivating elegance of the young woman. The bridge too was crowded with little stalls, each one manned by a peddler who had the look of a laid-off worker. The overpass swayed slightly; gusts of hot wind hit him in the face. Cars whizzed back and forth on the sparkling asphalt below. He spotted his apprentice, Lü Xiaohu, wearing a yellow vest, speeding down the sidewalk across the way on his three-wheeled pedicab. A white canopy over the back shielded a stately young couple. They were traveling so fast he couldn't see the spokes in the wheels, which were just a silvery blur. The two heads behind the man up front touched from time to time. Sweat poured down Lü Xiaohu's face. He was no one to mess with, old Ding was thinking, but was a terrific fitter, and any fitter worthy of the name was good at just about anything he put his hand to.
    After walking down off the overpass, he entered a farmer's market, filled with hope. The canopy over the market was made of green nylon, which gave the faces of all the vegetable sellers a green tint. The smell of vegetables, meat, fish, and fried snacks merged and engulfed him; so did the shouts of hawking peddlers. In front of one of the stalls he spotted Wang Dalan, the one-handed woman who had worked with him at the factory. She was watching over a pile of sticky

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