Old Mrs. Liang rowed her boat to Heji. Although her boat was not always on and off, it was amazing that she still had several old customers and friends in the same industry.
The boat sailed into an alley with houses on both sides. The river was only just wide enough for two boats. A foot-row boat of similar size came towards us on the side of the river. An old man was sitting at the stern, rowing the boat with his feet.
"Mrs. Liang, are you selling fish today?"
The old man greeted Liang Shengdi loudly, and Liang Shengdi saw that it was him.
"It's Master Song! Yes, it's time to harvest the rice, and all the fish in the fields have been pulled out. Let's take them to the market to exchange for a few copper coins!" Liang Shengdi stopped rowing, stretched her neck, and looked at his boat.
"Master Song, did your wife make cakes today?"
After running up the mountain and rowing for so long, she was already hungry. Chunhua had just told her not to starve herself and to buy food if there was any.
Master Song bared his teeth and stopped his boat and Liang Shengdi's boat at the same level. The two boats just touched each other and then hit the retaining wall on the side. They stopped steadily without tying ropes.
He bent down and walked through the black tent to the middle, lifted the cloth on the two baskets on the left and right, and showed them to Liang Shengdi.
"Osmanthus cake, sesame cake, and this basket is fragrant cake, which ones do you want?"
Liang Shengdi threw down the oar with shining eyes, crouched down and passed through her own awning, ran to the middle of the boat to face Master Song, and pointed at the basket on the left.
"Give me 50 cents worth of osmanthus cake and 50 cents worth of sesame cake."
"Don't you want the fragrant cake?"
"No, it's too hard. It makes my teeth hurt and makes me choke."
"Oh, then you really don't know how to eat it. The cake tastes better when you chew it!" Master Song said with disgust, but he still smiled politely on his face, and quickly found some oil paper to wrap up what Liang Shengdi had specifically requested.
"Here, these are all ten cents a piece, and I'll give you one piece each. Six pieces of osmanthus cake and six pieces of sesame cake. Take them!"
"Okay! Please count the money." Liang Shengdi quickly took out a one-dollar bill from her pocket and handed over the money with one hand and the goods with the other.
The wrinkles around her smiling eyes were as bright as chrysanthemums. She loved eating this kind of sticky, sweet and solid pastry the most. One piece was enough, two pieces were enough to fill her up. She would take the extra ones back home to feed the little greedy kids at home.
Master Song also saw the fish and bamboo shoots on Liang Shengdi's boat and said in surprise, "Wow, you still have so many bamboo shoots!"
Liang Shengdi had already picked up a piece of osmanthus cake and put it in her mouth. When she heard his question, she pointed at the pile of bamboo shoots with her face and said vaguely,
"Yes, why don't you buy some? The market price is 15 cents per pound. We're all so familiar with each other, I'll give you two extra."
"Someone in my family went up the mountain to dig bamboo shoots yesterday, too. They didn't get as many as you, but it was enough to eat." Master Song waved his hand. "Yesterday, there were some business owners at Tianhe Market collecting bamboo shoots. You could go and see. I think they run a restaurant and they'll take whatever they can."
Liang Shengdi originally wanted to go to Heji today. She had just swallowed the osmanthus cake in her mouth and had not yet had time to speak when she heard someone shouting loudly behind her.
"Hey, two masters in front, are you going to move on? The river is so narrow, stop chatting there. The road behind is blocked."
"Ouch!" Master Song quickly put the cake basket away and waved his hand over there. "Sorry! I'll be leaving now!"
As he spoke, he crouched down again and passed under the tent, saying goodbye to Liang Shengdi, "Madam Liang, goodbye! I'm leaving now."
"Ah, goodbye, I have to go too." Liang Shengdi held half a piece of osmanthus cake in her mouth, quickly wrapped up the rest of the cake, then returned to the bow of her boat, picked up a bamboo pole and pushed it down. She passed by several boats behind Master Song and nodded to them.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
This wasn't a big deal; no one seemed to be getting angry, and they all nodded politely to each other. Traffic jams weren't common these days, but boat jams were a common occurrence in the water town.
There are no traffic lights or traffic police on the water, and the rivers in the city are small. If you want to stop to do something, you will have to wait for a while because of traffic jams behind you.
Liang Shengdi's boat was just around the corner from reaching Heji, but the traffic ahead was blocked again. It wasn't like she and Master Song had just done, where they could just shout and leave. After waiting for a long time, nothing happened. Another boat approached behind her, and she couldn't even turn back; the traffic was completely blocked.
Many boats were loaded with goods, and it was obvious that they were going to the market just like Liang Shengdi. People who were impatient waited for a long time but still saw no movement, so they stepped on other people's boats to move forward to see what was happening.
"It seems like there's a fight ahead." The owner of the boat next to Liang Shengdi was a young man. He stood on the bow with his hands on his hips and on tiptoe, looking ahead, and came to a conclusion.
At first he couldn't make out what was going on, but as more people moved forward, he felt that the group of people had become a ball, and from time to time there were huge splashes of water, which was the sound of someone falling into the water.
But no one was in a hurry. How could someone who was wandering around on the river be a landlubber?
"What?!" Liang Shengdi was immediately upset. She had rowed for more than half an hour just to go to Heji to sell goods and make money. A fight couldn't be resolved in a short time. How long would it take? Wait until the sun went down? When all the shoppers had left?
Liang Shengdi once again threw down her oar and said to the young man standing at the bow, "Master, can you help me keep an eye on the things on the boat? I'll go up and take a look."
The young man nodded enthusiastically, "Okay, go ahead!"
Liang Shengdi stepped on the edge of the boat and climbed up by pulling the shore. After she got up, she felt something was wrong, so she lay down again, picked up the bamboo pole, took it with her, and ran forward.
You'd be surprised if she ran past several boats and even turned a corner before reaching the scene. Isn't that right inside the river? The river inside is twice as wide as the outside, and those two boats are quite large, lying across the river. It would be strange if it wasn't blocked.
Everyone on the boat was working together in pairs, and many people on the shore were watching the fun with baskets of vegetables.
A fight really broke out, and it even developed into a group fight. From time to time, someone was kicked into the river, and then they climbed up and pulled another one into the water, and then they beat each other from the boat into the water. No one was willing to give in.
There was a loud thunder and a crash.
Liang Shengdi asked the women nearby about the situation and was told that it was caused by a fight for a spot.
"On this boat, those two people in the middle, do you see them? The one in white and the one in blue. One was coming from the east, the other from the west. They were both going to stop here. Then they collided."
An auntie who was about the same age as Liang Shengdi watched the whole process and described what had just happened with relish.
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