On Sunday, Li Ye had originally planned to keep mooching meals off his old mother, Fu Guiru. After all, while Fu Guiru complained that waiting on her son was a nuisance, she also cherished the peaceful time she spent with Li Ye.
But unfortunately, early that morning, Li Ye received a call from Fu Guiru. She said that on Friday, the financial team over in America had concluded that the American stock market was likely to accelerate its decline, so she had flown to America to join Pei Wencong and the others.
That left Li Ye, who was staying at the hotel, unable to act on his own. He did not understand Japanese and could not visit any famous sights by himself, so he had no choice but to follow the group out onto Tokyo's streets to "see something new."
Before the internet became widespread in 2000, travelers from the mainland had no way of learning so much about attractions in other places. After arriving in a new city, many people treated strolling through the streets as "sightseeing."
Everyone would walk a few laps along the main roads, see how the city differed from the one they lived in, and if they happened upon some interesting custom or oddity, they could brag about it to neighbors and friends for ages after returning home.
"Let me tell you, the women in Heilongjiang have tempers as fiery as chili peppers. I stepped on one woman's foot on the bus and was just thinking of flirting with her when she immediately sent greetings to several generations of my ancestors."
"I just got back from Shanghai. Outside the Bund Hotel, I saw so many girls in high heels, wearing leather miniskirts so short—tsk, tsk. The only thing was, each one had a foreigner on