The potato chips smelled delicious, like cucumber flavor. When you opened the bag you could smell the cucumber fragrance.
But before Xiao Qi got on the train, her parents had warned her not to talk to strangers or eat anything given by strangers.
Su Youfu and Sheng Juanhua were farmers who had never traveled far. They were still very fearful of the outside world, and the survival rules they taught their child were focused on being safe and avoiding risks.
The little girl sitting next to her and the middle-aged man looked like a civil servant. The little girl was very lively and outgoing, not afraid of strangers at all.
"Thank you, but I've also brought my own food," Xiao Qi declined even though she didn't think they would poison the food or anything crazy like that. After all, she didn't know them.
A few hours didn't seem very long to Xiao Qi. She figured she could just read a book and the time would pass quickly.
Actually, she was a little tired now. She had gotten up early and walked around shopping with her parents, which had been very exciting. Now that she had said goodbye to her parents and was sitting alone on the high-speed train, she suddenly felt relaxed and sluggish.
But her parents had also told her not to sleep on the train. Just look at the scenery and the time will go by fast.
Xiao Qi rummaged through her backpack for food. Hmm, her parents had prepared mainly staple foods - 4 boiled eggs, 2 slices of cured pork pancakes with cured pork inside, sausages that could be eaten directly, also made from home-raised pork using their family's method with lots of flour and glutinous rice added. The only fruits were cucumbers and tomatoes that her parents had grown at home. In her parents' eyes, their homegrown produce tasted better than store bought. Over the years, whenever they ate store-bought cucumbers and tomatoes, they always found them tasteless and watery, with no sweetness, sourness or flavor.
This was probably due to the chemical fertilizers used. Villagers who grew vegetables to sell all used a lot of chemical fertilizers. Their produce looked good and grew big, but didn't taste good. What they grew for their own consumption used farm manure compost, which made the flavor sweeter, but the appearance wasn't as nice and couldn't be sold for a good price. At most they would give some to relatives and friends.
Xiao Qi was actually quite hungry now. She had a big appetite.
She took out two eggs, a cured pork pancake, a cucumber, and hmm, a thermal flask.
It was a very simple combination of food.
It startled the little girl and her father sitting next to her.
The little girl had a bunch of potato chips, chicken feet, grapes, dates, cherries and strawberries on her tray, looking quite fancy.
What Xiao Qi took out was hard to describe in one word.
In the past, Xiao Qi would also have felt embarrassed, but now she was very calm, almost indifferent to what others thought, especially strangers.
The little girl and her father had noticed Xiao Qi as soon as they got on the train. At first glance they felt this girl was very pretty and her family was probably quite well-off. She looked very capable and confident.
The middle-aged man used to be the director of the Family Planning Commission in Lvshan City, a deputy section chief position. After the merger of the Family Planning Commission, his job became more leisurely but he kept his rank. At home he raised birds and flowers, practiced Tai Chi, wrote calligraphy, and painted. Because he was so free he practiced his calligraphy skills and gained some reputation, even holding the title of deputy chairman of the calligraphy association. He lived a very comfortable life.
His only daughter was going to university, so he came along to see her off in person.
When Xiao Qi took out her food, she calmly and unhurriedly peeled the egg shells and started eating the eggs. Then she drank a mouthful of warm tea, ate the cured pork pancake, and then a cucumber. Her mother's food didn't look very nice, but it smelled so good, especially the cured pork, smoked in their kitchen at home. It was farm-raised pork, rich in fat, with just the right amount of saltiness. Sandwiched in the pancake and taking a bite, it left a lingering fragrance in the mouth, satisfying but not greasy.
After finishing the pork pancake, Xiao Qi peeled and ate another egg along with the cucumber.
The cucumber was washed clean and very crunchy, with the true fragrance of cucumber, also sweet.
It was a little similar to the cucumber flavored potato chips, but more direct and fresher.
After eating the cucumber, Xiao Qi felt somewhat full and didn't crave more food.
But the little girl and her father sitting next to Xiao Qi were dumbfounded by her hearty appetite. She could really eat! Very substantial!
At first the little girl had felt the food Xiao Qi took out looked terrible - packaged in plastic bags, seeming unclean and weird. But watching her eat with such relish, it looked even tastier than her own potato chips.
When she saw Xiao Qi eat the cucumber, while she herself was eating cherries, she didn't know why, but she actually felt that her 100 RMB per jin imported cherries were not as delicious as the other girl's cucumber. That was the feeling.
After eating quickly and neatly, Xiao Qi used a napkin to wipe her hands, preparing to continue reading her book. She didn't have any interest in chatting with strangers.
But the little girl next to her really wanted to talk, and nudged Xiao Qi's arm, "Classmate, you haven't eaten lunch yet right? Which school are you going to? Maybe we're going to the same one. I'm going to Jimei University in Meng City."
"Enhua University," Xiao Qi said. She had checked before coming - there were quite a lot of universities in Meng City.
The best was Qingmeng University, followed by Jimei, and then a bunch of liberal arts colleges, teachers' colleges and the like. Enhua University also had a good reputation for being a private school with high tuition, though its ranking was probably quite low.
Hearing that Xiao Qi was going to Enhua University, the little girl's expression dimmed slightly.
After all, they were still students. It seemed the quality of the schools could show the difference in grades.
But when the little girl's father heard Xiao Qi say she was going to Enhua University, his expression didn't change much, but he was quite surprised inside. Enhua was a private university right? When he had helped his daughter apply, he had also checked - the tuition was extremely expensive. This little girl looked like she came from a good family, but the food she took out seemed odd. Also, when she got on the train, she had made a phone call in dialect, seeming like a country girl. Quite contradictory.
The little girl was excited the whole trip. Hearing that Xiao Qi was going to Enhua University, she also didn't continue the conversation, but turned to chat with the passenger across from her instead.
Xiao Qi put on her headphones to listen to music, and continued reading her book.
She hadn't finished reading the three books Teacher Zhou gave her. This book "One Day in the Life of an Edo Townsman" was quite interesting. She had read it bit by bit and now just had a small part left at the end, which introduced Edo dialects.
Xiao Qi was learning Japanese, but what Teacher Zhou taught was very scattered, talking about whatever came to mind. This way of learning also had an advantage - it was more interesting than always summarizing grammar, pronunciation and sentence patterns every day.
So when she saw the section on Edo dialects, Xiao Qi was also very interested and read it carefully for a long time. She discovered the Edo dialects in Japan were similar to some regional dialects in China, with some variations in pronunciation and meanings of words.
For example, in her hometown Gumula Village, when they wanted to say someone was good-looking and attractive, they didn't say the person was born that way, but that the person had "grown" good-looking and attractive. The Edo dialect had some subtle changes that were similar. However, Xiao Qi could only remember the examples given in the book. To explore and learn more, she still found it difficult for now. It would be more suitable to learn standard Japanese first.
Xiao Qi's memory technique was to first read, remember, then copy by writing.
The little girl had gone off to chat with someone else, leaving some space on the table. So Xiao Qi took out her notebook and pen and carefully copied down the two pages on dialects.
As she was copying, suddenly the mechanical voice in her mind sounded: "Congratulations host for completing 100 hours of calligraphy, advancing from beginner to expert level. Continue your hard work, complete 1000 hours of calligraphy to reach master level."
Xiao Qi was startled for a moment, then calculated the time. 1000 hours, 10 hours a day without rest would take 100 days. With heavy responsibilities ahead, even squeezing out as much time as possible to write every day, she could only manage 2-3 hours at most, and it had to be persistent daily effort. It would still take more than a year at least.
But having a clear time and goal as a task, Xiao Qi felt it was quite good, giving her motivation to learn.
She continued copying.
Meanwhile, the little girl's father had switched seats with his daughter. The lively daughter leaned over to chat with her neighbor. He happened to see this girl writing, and out of habit he casually glanced over, but was stunned instantly.
People called him Director Cheng, Cheng the Great Calligrapher, and he liked those titles. But this random little girl's writing, the feeling it gave, was actually better than his???
What's more, she had written a large part that he couldn't even recognize at all!
