Zhao Meizhen stared at her son with suspicion. "Really not? Or were you with that Scribe Hui?"
"Really, when have I ever lied to you?" Song Tianyao said to Zhao Meizhen with certainty.
Zhao Meizhen breathed a sigh of relief at first, but seeing her son's lazy and perfunctory appearance, she couldn't help but deliberately glare at him. "Isn't that even worse! So many widows have tried to seduce you and you didn't touch them, but you went out drinking with a man late at night? Is there something wrong with your body?"
"Thanks to your good teaching, he doesn't get close to women." Song Tianyao laughed when he heard his mother's words and reached out to push open the bedroom door.
Outside the door, Song Chunliang, Song Wenwen, and Chen Tai were standing there, with Chen Tai tilting his head to the side, still eavesdropping through the door.
"I told you not to flirt around, and I told you not to like men! You bastard!" Zhao Meizhen said as she walked forward from behind Song Tianyao.
Upon seeing the three people in front of her, Zhao Meizhen frowned. Song Chunliang, chuckling sheepishly, said to her, "I told you A-Yao wouldn't bully a widow, but you didn't believe me."
"I believe you now, and if I believe you, things will get even worse. You're into men now, huh? Laugh, what are you laughing at? Go get your shoes repaired on the street! Your eyes light up at the mention of 'widow.' If you say another word, I'll turn myself into a widow!"
For the entire morning, Song Tianyao hired a rickshaw and traveled between various Chinese and Western pharmacies. The first thing he said upon entering was that he often drank unboiled water and had a stomachache. After visiting all the well-known pharmacies in the four major districts of Hong Kong Island, he took a ferry across the harbor to Kowloon and visited pharmacies in Kowloon City, Yau Ma Tei, Mong Kok, and other places. Finally, back on Hong Kong Island, he went into an English bookstore and picked out two books. It wasn't until the sun was past mid-morning that he returned to the Dulles Hotel, chewing on an egg waffle he had hastily bought from a roadside stall.
If Song Tianyao hadn't been frequently visiting the hotel lately, and the India security guard at the entrance hadn't already recognized him, the guard probably wouldn't have let him in, given the way Song Tianyao was eating egg waffles in the street, no matter how well-dressed he was.
"A cup of coffee, with sugar." Song Tianyao entered the hotel's coffee shop, said this to the waiter first, and then looked around the coffee shop.
Angie Perlis was sitting at a table by the window, with a book open in front of her, smiling at Song Tianyao. She had clearly seen him eating egg waffles as Song Tianyao got out of the car outside the hotel.
Song Tianyao sat down opposite Angie Perlis and glanced at the book on her desk. "If you had told me earlier Angie, I wouldn't have had to buy another one at the last minute."
As he spoke, he placed the two books he was holding on the table. One of them was identical to the one Angie Perlis had opened, a book titled "The Hydrological Cycle and Basin Erosion" by hydrological scientist R. E. Horton.
Angie Perlis read another book by Song Tianyao, a book titled "The Doctrine of the Church of England".
"I thought you would read some books about yachts or navigation for Mr. Shi's sake," Angie Perlis said.
Song Tianyao shrugged. "I'm just a secretary. If I were to talk at length about yachting skills or navigation techniques to a deputy director, it wouldn't reflect his refined interests. It would be too fake for a lowly Chinese secretary like me to know about yachts. It's better to casually flip through some Anglican Church doctrine, temporarily pretend to be a Christian enthusiast, and then expose some mistakes so he can give me a chance to correct or expose them, thus satisfying the vanity of the Britain upper class."
After this conversation, the two stopped communicating. They lowered their heads and looked through the books in their hands. Dealing with the British is no better than drinking tea with the Jianghu people or Chinese businessmen, talking about business as brothers, and the British don't like to talk about too intimate topics when they first meet, but if you talk about him, you won't He didn't know how to talk about topics of interest, so he had to prepare lessons in advance based on the British couple's hobbies. He didn't have to read these books thoroughly, check some interesting questions and memorize them clearly, so that when they met to chat, he wouldn't be speechless except for business.
Both of them read quickly, and after three cups of coffee, they had finished the books. Angie Perlis closed her book and said to Song Tianyao, who was holding the coffee, "Shall we go to Sincere Department Store to buy some gifts? It's too late, the department store will be closed."
"Even the Britain shop at Sincere? It seems the owner of Sincere Department Store has a really sharp business sense. No wonder it regained its reputation just a few years after the war. But we're not going to Sincere Department Store. We're going to Lascar Street. I'll show you, this Britain Foreign Girl, what a sight to behold." Song Tianyao finished his coffee and said to Angie Perlis.
Chapter 88 His name is Song Tianyao
Located in the western part of Central, Lascar Street was originally one street, but it was divided in the middle by Lok Ku Road, becoming Upper Lascar Row and Lower Lascar Row. Although it is marked as two streets on maps or government urban planning drawings, pedestrians will not feel any difference when walking on these two streets.
No one remembers the original name of this street anymore. Lascar Street is the name that everyone agrees on. "Las Vegas Street" is a local term for India or Palestine who wear heavy headscarves and practice Sikhism. Before India gained independence, many India came to Hong Kong to make a living. Apart from a small number of India merchants who sold South Asia spices or coffee, most India in Hong Kong worked as soldiers, police officers, security guards, seamen, or ran India food stalls to make a living. They were considered to be in the lower middle class in Hong Kong. These India who made a living in the lower middle class in Hong Kong used to live in Lascar Street. If Hong Kong walked through this street in the morning, they could see a street full of white-clad Sikhism with headscarves, hence the name Lascar Street.
After India split into India and Pakistan in 1947, many India in Hong Kong either returned to India homeland or married local women and moved out of Lascar Street. Today, only about thirty households remain as true India on Lascar Street. The remaining houses and shops were taken over by small business owners who came from the Mainland to escape the civil war. Initially, there were a few shops selling paint, paper, brushes, ink, and old paintings. Later, merchants selling calligraphy brushes, clocks, antiques, furniture, and secondhand goods moved in. Now, it has become an antique market in Hong Kong. The India shop owners who originally ran India snack shops saw that China person were selling antiques and secondhand goods, so they simply converted their food shops into secondhand shops, having relatives collect some rare old antiques and miscellaneous items from India to sell.