After taking the money and weighing out the goods, Yusufu saw off the two customers who had come to buy raisins with a smile. He put the money in his box and said to Li Long with feeling:
"It's been years, but you still look so young. You haven't changed much. I really envy you!"
Indeed, Yusufu's face looked noticeably more weathered than the last time they had met. Li Long wondered whether this was the price of running around to make a living.
"How much do you make selling two kilos of raisins?" Li Long asked, changing the subject.
"Twenty or thirty fen a kilo." Yusufu pointed at the surrounding stalls. "The competition is fierce. Everyone sells more or less the same things. Plenty of people come, but once the business gets divided up, I only sell a dozen or so kilos a day, a few dozen on a good day. It's a steady living."
Li Long thought Yusufu had a good head for business. "Not traveling anymore?"
"No, no more." Yusufu shook his head. "I've traveled north and south. The farthest south I went was Yangcheng. People there liked raisins. The farthest north was Yanjing, and people there liked them too. But I could take so little with me that I couldn't make much. I didn't know the places or the people, and some people bullied me... If I didn't protect my earnings with a knife, they'd get stolen or robbed... Better to come back. I don't make much here, but it's safe."
Li Long almost wanted to laugh. In a few more years, when people elsewhere saw people like Yusufu, their first thought would be that they weren't safe, especially around those young lads-though that was because older thieves tricked the young lads into going elsewhere to