Rickshaw Puller

"Xiao Zhou."

"Xiao Yan."

"Brother Zhou."

Zhou Yan returned to the rickshaw stand drenched in sweat. As he got close, quite a few people called out to him. They were all rickshaw pullers from the stand.

He smiled and returned each greeting, exchanging a few words with them as he went.

"Brother Ma, how was business today?"

"Uncle Wang, I saw you land a big fare."

"Xiao Qi, holding up all right?"

"..."

He had started pulling rickshaws at thirteen, and by now he had been at it for three years. He was practically an old hand at the stand.

He knew most of his fellow pullers, and quite a few of them were even his neighbors.

Zhou Yan was generous and often lent a hand whenever someone needed help, so he had made plenty of friends.

Besides, his eldest sister's husband was a patrolman in the neighborhood, so everyone treated him with a bit of extra respect.

Zhou Yan went to the stand's back courtyard and returned the rickshaw without a hitch.

He was an old hand there, so Old Li, who took the rickshaws in, trusted him. He gave it a quick glance and accepted it with a broad smile.

But Old Li was quite puzzled by the three bamboo tubes Zhou Yan took off the rickshaw.

"Xiao Zhou, you've had those three bamboo tubes hanging on your rickshaw ever since your first day at the stand. Why is that?"

Zhou Yan chuckled and held up the three tubes. "It's nothing. They're just a symbol to keep me safe. Back home, we have a custom of hanging up three bamboo tubes for good luck and protection."

Old Li finally understood and nodded with a hearty chuckle.

The times were chaotic. The government was newly established and unstable, warlords carved up the land, and ordinary people struggled to survive.

Shen City was no different. Foreigners lorded it over everyone, officials were corrupt, gangs ran rampant, and bandits were everywhere. Danger could strike at any moment.

Worst of all were the ghosts and spirits spoken of in the legends.

Even those living in the city could never know when they might run into danger.

Some rickshaw pullers had been caught in gang fights, others had been killed by thugs, and some had inexplicably turned up dead at the Chaos Burial Mound. Every year, quite a few pullers met with accidents for one reason or another.

So it was hardly surprising that people took precautions.

Old Li himself wore a safety charm from the Temple of the Great Immortal Huang around his neck, even though he spent every day holed up at the stand.

After saying goodbye to Old Li, Zhou Yan hurried to the market. He bought several pounds of leftover cabbage, radishes, and scallions, then picked up a pound of white flour and three pounds of mixed grain flour before heading home.

On his way, he lingered for a long while outside the butcher's shop. In the end, he steeled himself and bought three taels of pork belly. He wrapped it in oiled paper, tucked it against his chest, and hurried away.

That purchase put his earnings for the day in jeopardy, leaving him with barely half of what he had made.

Perhaps the memory of going hungry as a child had left too deep an impression. When Zhou Yan first started pulling rickshaws, he spent every penny he earned each day on food.

Even if he couldn't eat it all, he could always store it away.

Later, as he grew and earned more from pulling rickshaws, he began spending half his daily earnings on food and saving the rest.

He had kept it up almost every day for nearly three years.

By now, even the owners and workers at the grain shops knew him well.

Zhou Yan had even spent a whole month of evenings digging a cellar at home. Little by little, he had stored nearly eight hundred pounds of different kinds of grain inside.

That way, when disaster struck, he wouldn't be caught completely unprepared.

In troubled times, every decision came with a lesson behind it, sometimes profound, sometimes painful...

Zhou Yan's home was in Stone Pool Alley, tucked into the corner of the southern part of the city. The alley had been named after a nearby pool.

Around a hundred households lived there, making it a fairly large alley, with a dense population.

As a result, the sanitation was terrible. Wastewater ran everywhere, and the air stank.

In summer especially, clouds of flies and mosquitoes swarmed so thickly that anyone with a fear of clustered things might faint at the sight.

Three years had passed since Zhou Yan had awakened memories of his past life, but he still hadn't quite gotten used to this world.

As he entered the alley, quite a few people greeted him, and he smiled and greeted them in return.

The more chaotic the times, the more people needed to band together and help one another.

Especially for poor families like theirs, the only people they could rely on, besides themselves, were other poor people around them.

They might have been poor, but no one should underestimate them. They understood the wisdom of survival.

They might not put the saying "when the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold" into words, but they knew to live by it.

At the very least, before their lives were on the line, they truly understood that a nearby neighbor was worth more than a distant relative.

"Mom, I'm home."

Zhou Yan walked down the narrow path to a house near the middle of the alley. He hung the three bamboo tubes from his waistband on the door, then pushed it open and went inside.

The space inside was cramped. Besides the kitchen, there were two small rooms, one at the back and one at the front.

His father had died young. Besides Mother Zhou, there were an older sister, a younger brother, and a younger sister.

But his sister Zhou Li had married three years ago, so only four of them remained at home.

At night, Zhou Yan and his younger brother Zhou Chuan slept in the front room, while his mother and younger sister Zhou Jing slept in the back.

Mother Zhou was cooking. The moment she saw her eldest son come home, her face lit up with joy.

"You're back. You must be tired. Go rest for a bit; dinner will be ready soon."

Zhou Yan chuckled. "I'm not tired."

As he spoke, he handed the food and groceries to Mother Zhou.

As usual, she set the vegetables on the ground and put the flour into a jar nearby.

Every so often, Mother Zhou replaced the stored grain, taking the older grain out and putting the fresh grain into the cellar.

It was a hassle, but neither she nor Zhou Yan minded. On the contrary, seeing the steadily growing pile of grain in the cellar gave them peace of mind.

Finally, Zhou Yan took the pork belly wrapped in oiled paper from his shirt.

When Mother Zhou saw it, her face showed a trace of pain. "You rascal, why did you buy meat again? Do you think we have money to burn?"

Zhou Yan knew his mother wasn't truly stingy. She knew that whenever he bought meat, at least half of it ended up in his younger siblings' stomachs.

In Mother Zhou's eyes, Zhou Yan was the family's mainstay. He pulled rickshaws for a living, so it was only right that he ate well and got enough to eat.

But the other two children stayed at home. As long as they had something to eat, that was good enough.

In some families, children couldn't even dream of eating meat. Their parents were lucky if they managed to keep them from starving to death.

"I've been earning a fair bit pulling rickshaws lately. Let's give my younger brother and sister a little extra so they'll get sick less often," Zhou Yan said with a smile.

At the same time, he handed over every last bit of the money he had left to Mother Zhou.

In circumstances like these, family members needed to be honest with each other if they wanted to survive.

Three years had washed away all the restlessness Zhou Yan had carried over from his other world, leaving him grounded, steady, and cautious.

If there was still one thing that set him apart from the ordinary people of this world, it was the fire in his heart. It had dimmed considerably, but it had never gone out completely...