Riding a Horse

After leaving, Wang Yan and Xu Hongdou were in no hurry to eat. They strolled leisurely along the stone-paved road, looking here and there, chatting and laughing as they took pictures. Sometimes they photographed their own things, sometimes they photographed each other. Their giggling, playful manner made them seem very close.

It was the same old principle: in an unfamiliar place, two people who were relatively more familiar with each other and in similar circumstances often naturally grew closer.

For instance, when several interns joined a new company, the interns in the same department would usually become closer first, followed by those who had only recently become full employees. Of course, that assumed the newly confirmed employee had a functioning brain and did not put on airs.

Wandering along like that, the two arrived at the restaurant they had spotted earlier. It was not actually far from the guesthouse courtyard, but because they had dawdled all the way, it still took them twenty minutes to get there.

The restaurant was called Gesang Flower, one of only four or five eateries Wang Yan and Xu Hongdou had seen along the way. That was perfectly normal. There were few tourists here, and the village was not particularly large. Restaurants could only do business with outsiders, since locals rarely came by. It was already quite something for someone to think of opening a restaurant as an extra source of income.

After all, opening a business meant preparing ingredients in advance, bearing the cost of spoilage, running around to obtain all kinds of permits, and dealing with all sorts of trouble. Many people either lacked the nerve or were simply too lazy to do it, especially since it did not earn much more money. People still preferred work that brought profit without losses, a