Volume 1 Chapter 0046: Late Night Snack
At the end of June, the weather in Beijing had already turned hot.
Liu Zhen's trip to the Kingdom of Xian has been decided, and Nan Yi accompanied Liu Zhen to Xidan to buy some things to take with him.
On the second floor of Xidan Food Mall, the best cold drink shop in Xidan is here.
Popsicles are 3.5 cents, cream ice cream is 1.2 cents, Arctic Ocean is 1.5 cents, and there are also sour plum soup, mung bean soup and the like.
The most expensive dish was fruit stew with cream, which cost 1.2 yuan per goblet. However, Nan Yi scoffed at this, thinking it was simply a trick.
What do you say?
The so-called cream stewed fruit is to dice the fruit pieces from several canned fruits and mix them with yogurt. No matter the price or quality, it is more deceptive than the fruit salad of later generations.
But this kind of thing that fools people and takes advantage of consumers is actually very popular.
Nan Yi chewed the cheapest popsicle and looked up. There were quite a few people ordering fruit and cream in this cold drink shop. No matter if they were delicate or big, they all ate very slowly.
OK, Nan Yi understood. What people valued was not the taste but the “expensiveness”.
Anyone passing by, please take a look. I'm drinking fruit stew with cream for 1.2 yuan. Tell me, am I awesome?
Nan Yi looked up at the first floor and saw a few teenagers who looked like middle school students standing at the entrance of the food mall, holding two ice creams in their hands.
"Brother, what are you looking at?"
"Look at the people taking pictures of the old woman. Did you see those kids down there, holding two ice creams in their hands?"
"I see, are you waiting for someone?"
"Yes, we are waiting for someone, but we are waiting for the honey they want to shoot." Nan Yi smiled knowingly, turned around and asked Liu Zhen, "Is there anything else you need?"
"I don't think I'm missing anything. I've bought everything I needed. Brother, I've made you spend money again."
Liu Zhen smiled shyly.
"What are you talking about? You are my biological sister, isn't it my duty to buy things for you? Besides, the big yellow croaker I pulled out of the well also belongs to you half."
"Haha, how can there be a share for me, brother? That was paid by you, so of course it belongs to you alone. Besides, I have also spent a lot of money on you in the past two years."
"Okay, little girl, you still have to be so clear with me. What's mine is yours, and it's only natural for you to spend my money. You'll be gone for two years, and I won't be around, so take good care of yourself.
If you graduate from college and want to take the postgraduate entrance exam there, tell me as soon as possible and I will lobby for you at the school."
"I don't know either. The school says that you have to come back right after graduation and obey the government's assignment. You can't just take the postgraduate entrance exam if you want to."
"That's why I said I would help you move around."
"Let's talk about it later. I'm not used to being outside alone and not being able to see my brother. I still want to come back early to accompany my brother."
"Young birds always have to fly to the sky, and you can't always revolve around me. You have to have your own circle and make friends who belong to you alone; not every one of your friends is common to us."
"I have my own friends, the girls in my class. Brother, you don't talk to them much, but I have a very good relationship with them."
"Yeah, that's fine. Anyway, take good care of yourself when you get out."
"Don't worry, I'm not a child anymore."
"That's right, you are no longer a child, you have grown into an adult. Tonight, I will take you to do some things that adults should do."
"What's up?"
"Eat supper and drink beer."
"Pfft, I thought something else."
At this time, after eight o'clock in the evening, there are basically no shops or restaurants open on the street.
However, nothing is absolute in the world and there are exceptions.
Next to the Capital Cinema, there is a Xinfeng Restaurant and Snack Bar, which opens until around 11:00 p.m. every day.
Here, they only sell beer, cold dishes, and wontons that can fill your stomach.
It's a rare place to have a drink at night, so young people naturally flock here, and the business here must be good.
When Nan Yi and Liu Zhen arrived, there was only one worst seat left. They had no choice but to sit down, or else they would imitate the guys at the door and stand or squat, holding beer bottles and chatting outside.
Nan Yi looked at the menu on the wall, and when the waiter came over, he ordered a few cold dishes, including bean curd and celery, pork head, and spiced peanuts, and also ordered a liter of draft beer, which came in bottles.
At this time, loose beer can be understood as draft beer, which is served in plastic draft beer cups and diluted with too much water, so people jokingly call it beer water.
But even so, the demand still cannot keep up with the supply.
At first, you could go to a state-owned restaurant and buy draft beer alone, but because it was so popular, the restaurant started selling it in combination with other products. You can buy draft beer, but you have to buy some cold dishes first. If you don't buy them, we won't sell you draft beer.
Therefore, there is at least one dish of cold dishes on every table in the store, among which spiced peanuts are the most common.
Loose beer costs 40 cents a liter; bottled beer costs 53 cents a bottle, including a 1.5 cent deposit for the bottle. Nan Yi ordered a lot of beer, and the total cost was more than four yuan, which is considered mid-to-high-end consumption in the store.
As for the top consumption, of course it was the seven or eight young people at the table next to Nan Yi and his friends.
There were one or two cold dishes and the table was filled with bottles of beer. At a glance, there were no less than twenty bottles, which cost more than ten yuan. Including the cold dishes, it was about twelve yuan.
If you eat out at this time, you will never see anyone running away without paying the bill. How can they run away? They always pay the bill first, and then the food comes.
Young people are very vain and care about their reputation. I guess they have reminded each other before going out to bring enough deposit.
Others usually order a few bottles first, then return them after finishing the drinks and order a few more bottles.
As for their table, stacking bottles on the table is just showing off. If they get really drunk, a few bottles will fall off, which will probably make them feel sad and nervous.
"Brother, the pork head tastes good."
"If it tastes good, eat more. When you arrive in China, if you want to eat Chinese food, you have to go to Brooklyn or Flushing in New York. The food there is mostly southern style, which you may not be used to. In Cambridge, you may not be able to find authentic Chinese food."
"Hmm? Brother, you've been to the Kingdom of Xuan. Do you know it so clearly?"
"Haha, actually I did my homework in advance, just to maintain my dignity as a brother in front of you."
Liu Zhen smiled and suddenly looked in one direction.
Nan Yi turned around and saw two girls dressed in green with lipstick on their lips, walking back and forth.
"Brother, what are those two doing?"
"Don't look at it, it's a stinking circle that is worse than prostitutes. If you give her a call and buy her a bottle of wine, she will come to you and chat with you about all sorts of things.
She usually doesn't tell the truth. If you ask her where she is from, she will tell you Zhengyangmen today and Gongzhufen tomorrow. You can't tell her the truth, otherwise, once you open your mouth, there will be everyone in this city that she doesn't know.
She would beat up all the troublemakers one by one, no matter whether you had heard of them or not.
They are also more casual. If they are really drunk, they don’t mind going out with men all night. It’s just that most of them don’t have a place to take them. Otherwise, who knows how bad they would be.”
At this time, if a man and a woman want to eat the forbidden fruit, unless they have no worries about housing like Nan Yi, they really can't find a place to commit the crime.
It’s definitely not okay to take it home.
What about the guesthouse? Not to mention the danger of hooliganism, do you have a letter of introduction?
You can’t get a room without a letter of introduction.
What does a letter of introduction look like?
Generally, it is a piece of paper smaller than A4 paper cut in half, with "Letter of Introduction from a certain unit" written on the heading, and then the number No. ×× written on the upper right corner or lower right corner; there is a blank space in the upper left corner for filling in the name of the receiving unit.
Content: I would like to introduce comrade "so-and-so from our unit" to you "to do something". I would be grateful if you could contact me.
Then fill in the date in the lower right corner and stamp the official seal. Some even indicate the validity period on the letter of introduction.
Not to mention that most young people cannot get a letter of introduction. Even if they do, what do they need to do to book a hotel in Beijing with a letter of introduction from a Beijing unit?
Well, you can choose for yourself, whether to call the police station or the labor dispute team.
If you say you can find a secluded spot on the curb to do your deed, it will still be the same. If you are caught by the labor dispute team, you will be interrogated. When you are caught, you will be charged with hooliganism.
"There is also a woman in the alley where I live. She hangs out with the gangsters every day and often stays out all night. Could she be like this too?" Liu Zhen said.
