Setting Up a Stall

Early April.

It was another morning.

After the family had eaten, Chen Qi put on a gray jacket and trousers over a cotton shirt. On his feet were the same black cloth shoes with red soles. He was in high spirits about going to sell tea, but his parents wore such pained expressions that they looked ready to stage a son's execution at the camp gate.

"Look at you, giving up a perfectly good job. You just had to make things hard for yourself."

"Don't I know what you're like? Have you got the nerve to call out to customers? You won't even be able to count the money people give you."

Yu Xiuli was in floods of tears and snot. Chen Qi was speechless. "Mom, don't make me sound like an idiot. I'm sharper than a monkey!"

"Just be careful, anyway. If you can't keep at it, tell us."

Chen Jianjun added a word of caution.

Finally, Yu Xiuli fetched a cotton cap and tried to put it on him, but Chen Qi refused point-blank. That thing would make his looks unpredictable: Edison Chen at best, Zhao Benshan at worst.

Huang Zhanying had been waiting beside them all along. By comparison, her parents didn't care at all.

Chen Qi waved goodbye, and Huang Zhanying followed silently behind him. The contrast was striking. Those in the know knew the two were going to sell tea; anyone else might have thought a simp had paid an 800,000-yuan bride price and was finally going to marry his wife.

The meeting place was at Qianmen Archery Tower.

It was only a few hundred meters away, so the two walked there and arrived in a little over ten minutes.

Along the capital's central axis were the Forbidden City, Tiananmen, the Monument to the People's Heroes and the memorial hall. South of the memorial hall was Qianmen, and farther south was the archery tower. From the flagpole in Tiananmen Square, it was only five kilometers.

It was part of the city's core.

The archery tower had been built during the Ming dynasty. At 38 meters tall, it was quite a sight. There was a large gateway beneath it, and the People's Liberation Army had entered the city through that gateway in 1949.

"Huang Zhanying!"

"Chen Qi!"

By now, the other eleven unemployed youths had arrived on the east side of the tower and were running around in circles under Auntie Wang's direction. When she spotted the two of them, she called out, "Come help! Put the bowls out and get the stove going!"

"Coming!"

Without another word, Chen Qi rolled up his sleeves and got to work.

There wasn't much preparation involved in selling tea. Everyone had pooled forty yuan to buy two large teapots, tea leaves, and fifty large coarse porcelain bowls. The table was borrowed, and they built the stove themselves. That was right: they built a stove at Qianmen!

Even that was nothing. There were people selling radishes in Tiananmen Square...

The tea was the cheapest kind, broken tea dust, at two fen a bowl. That was no mistake: two fen. A bottle of Arctic Ocean soda cost fifteen fen and counted as affordable luxury. How much could a big bowl of tea, so far beneath it in taste and style, sell for? Naturally, it had to go for Pinduoduo prices.

Chen Qi looked busy, but he wasn't actually doing anything.

Schrödinger's busy.

"Oh, I'm exhausted!"

He made a show of wiping his brow and said, "Auntie Wang, can I have a bowl first and see how it tastes?"

"Come have a taste. Our tea may be cheap, but it quenches thirst. Passersby looking for water don't care about the flavor; they just want to quench their thirst. Come on, you're all tired too. Take a rest first..."

Auntie Wang was quite capable. She poured a few bowls for everyone to share.

Chen Qi picked up a large bowl. It felt very rough in his hands. He took a sip, and the taste suddenly struck a nerve of memory: it tasted like the half jin of Biluochun he had bought on Taobao for ten yuan back when he was still working a job in his previous life.

The flavor could best be described as "Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey!"

"It's all damn tea dust and stems!"

His companions didn't think anything of it. They had grown up drinking the stuff.

What was broken tea dust?

In old Beijing, poor people couldn't afford good tea but still liked drinking it, so tea shops gave the stuff a name: "premium broken tea." Sold that way, the poor got their tea and saved face too.

Hey! Now that was the real thing!

The venerable Zhang Yiyuan in Dashilar still insisted on selling this kind of broken tea in later years.

While they were busy, a crowd had already gathered.

Qianmen had been a bustling place since the Qing dynasty. Shops clustered there, and transportation was convenient, with bus stops, a coach station, and a subway station that had opened in 1971. There was also a major hotel catering to foreign guests, the Qianmen Hotel, with passenger cars parked outside...

The capital now had a population of 8.97 million. Add in visitors from elsewhere on business, overseas guests, and compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao, and abroad, and the number of people passing through every day was beyond counting.

Men and women, young and old, dressed in gray, blue, and army green, stood three deep and then some. They looked like NPCs, their heads topped with question marks, waiting for someone to step forward and trigger the "drink a big bowl of tea" quest.

When Huang Zhanying and the others came to their senses, that was the scene they saw.

Then they all chickened out.

"Auntie Wang, wh-wh-what do we do?"

"Call out to them!"

"We have a sign."

"Even with a sign, you still have to call out. That's how you do business. If you don't call out, where will your customers come from?"

"Call out, call out, ca-call..."

The twelve of them, Huang Zhanying included, were like those innocent yet foolish college students of later years. None had ever done this before, and they couldn't put aside their pride. Never mind 1979-even in 2024, if you asked people to set up a stall and call out to customers, plenty wouldn't be able to get the words out.

Auntie Wang was firm. "Don't count on me. I can help you once, but can I help you every time? You have to rely on yourselves."

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"What are you selling?"

"How come you haven't made a peep?"

The onlookers saw how awkward they were. They meant no particular kindness or harm; they were just there for the spectacle, and they had already begun to heckle.

Huang Zhanying glanced at Chen Qi, but he had his head down, amusing himself by counting ants. She had no choice but to grit her teeth. Her face flushed crimson and her teeth chattered as she called, "B-big bowls of tea! Two fen a bowl!"

Boom!

Even though the sign said "Big bowls of tea, two fen a bowl," and even though the crowd had been prepared for it, that cry still set them off with a boom.

That call, like China's first bottle of cola, its first television commercial, its first poster of a swimsuit exposing a woman's thighs, its first disco, its first Teresa Teng song, and its first red skirt... was one of countless little waves that joined the masses and slowly gathered into a great tide of reform.

Someone called from a few paces away, "Comrades, what work unit are you from?"

"The Dashilan Production and Service Cooperative."

"Do we need coupons?"

"No coupons!"

A question and an answer, and their identity was verified.

The crowd grew more restless. The man who had asked the questions seemed hesitant too, but he finally took a step forward. He looked like a middle-aged cadre and carried a bag. In a strong Shandong accent, he said, "Give me three bowls!"

"Coming right up!"

Huang Zhanying hurriedly signaled to her companions. They froze for a moment before reacting, then scrambled to pour the tea. The yellow-broth-like liquid flowed into the large coarse porcelain bowls, white with blue patterns, and steam rose from them.

None of them had any experience. They should have poured the tea beforehand and put a lid over it, so it would be warm and ready to drink immediately.

The middle-aged man reached out and felt a bowl. It was hot as hell, so he simply chatted for a bit. "We've been running around for half the day and couldn't find a drop of water to drink. It's wonderful that you've set up this tea stall. We'd like to thank you."

"We're all serving the people. Are you here on business?"

"Yes, we're from Shandong."

"Welcome to the capital. If you have time, you should have a look around. The Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace are all worth seeing."

Huang Zhanying gradually steadied herself, and her extroverted nature began to show.

The middle-aged man had two companions. Each drank a bowl dry, and when that wasn't enough, they had three more. Then he pulled out two five-fen coins and two one-fen coins and lined them up neatly on the table. Hey, "lined up" was just the right phrase!

"Thank you for supporting our work!"

"Come again!"

Huang Zhanying's hands trembled as she took the money. She felt a little embarrassed, but also a great sense of accomplishment. They had sold six bowls of tea in one go, and when the four coins dropped into the cash box, their clinking sounded wonderful. The same expressions appeared on her companions' faces.

Chen Qi was still amusing himself by counting ants.

(End of chapter)