When Ye Yaodong pushed his handcart to Uncle Lin's house, sure enough, Uncle Lin had not returned yet. Aunt Lin was cooking, and all kinds of dried fish covered the space outside their door, packed densely together whether hanging from strings or spread on bamboo woven trays.
He glanced over them and headed inside. "Cooking, Auntie? Smells wonderful. You're a great cook. Is Uncle still not back?"
Aunt Lin turned and smiled at him. "Not yet. He doesn't get back until dark every day. Have a seat. Have you eaten? Stay and have a bite. The dishes are almost ready."
"I've already eaten. Oh, you're frying dried Bombay duck. No wonder it smells so good. Perfect with a drink."
"Sit down and have a couple of drinks later. We've dried too many kinds of fish lately. All we can do is find different ways to eat them every day. Otherwise, I don't know what to do with them. There's so much we can't sell it all."
"Uncle's been taking some out to sell?"
"Yes. The wind and waves were strong a few days ago, so he stayed home drying the fishing nets. Afterward, seeing we had several burlap sacks of dried fish at home, he carried a sack to town to sell. It was so hard to sell. He barely sold any all day."
"The whole area around our town is fishing villages and piers. Whose family would be short of dried fish? We dried so much, and now we regret it terribly. These past two days, we haven't dared keep any more. What's drying outside is all little miscellaneous fish nobody wants. We had no choice but to dry them."
"When he has some free time in a few days, maybe he can carry some to the county seat