“There’s a young lady named Xu who is getting married, but she doesn’t even have a new dress. She’s sewing her own clothes from other people’s old clothes. I bought her a dress, and I also plan to secretly give some to the other girls.”
Li Changzhou didn't say it was in vain; the past before them wasn't truly the past, and these young ladies were already dead.
Historically, the woman who got married was destined to wear "new clothes" sewn from tattered clothes.
“Be careful,” he only said, “don’t give too much, and don’t make it too obvious.”
"I know, I'm leaving. Sigh, why can't the Honey Pot World be used in dungeons!"
Li Qianxia sneaked back to Qianshu Alley on Xin Nan Road (where she lived) in the dark.
The Xu sisters have recently been getting up first in order to sew new clothes. They rush to the factory to finish their work, then come back to sew, continuing until they are the last to go to sleep.
Li Qianxia secretly dropped a hundred silver dollars into the well where she brushed her teeth. After thinking about it, she put most of it away, leaving only 30.
Such a large sum of money couldn't have been lost by anyone in the courtyard—the people living here would go hungry if they didn't work for three days, and they had no savings, let alone 30 silver dollars.
To ensure that the money was picked up by the Xu sisters, Li Qianxia was the first to wake up on April 27th, using her senses to pay attention to everything around her.
The Xu sisters were still the "first" to wake up, yawning, and their eyes were closed when they went out to wash up.
After a while, Li Qianxia heard a gasp, followed by heavy breathing.
After a while, the Xu sisters quietly returned. They gently lifted the mattress at the head of the bed and hid the silver dollars one by one at the bottom.
Li Qianxia and the Xu sisters both breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.
That day while working, the Xu sisters were sometimes worried, sometimes laughing, and they were constantly distracted. Their fingers were even pricked by the awls used to put on their shoes.
"What's wrong?" another sister asked.
“No…” The Xu sisters immediately panicked.
"You can't wait to sleep with a man, can you?" Li Qianxia teased her.
"Sleeping with men?"
"So it's just that she's in love!"
The group of women burst into laughter. Sister Xu breathed a sigh of relief, but her face quickly turned bright red with embarrassment. A group of young women from 1928, while making insoles to earn their two cents, whispered about what it felt like to sleep with a man, and asked her to come back after her marriage to "give them a lesson"!
At noon, Li Qianxia used the excuse of going to the toilet to go to the street and buy a newspaper from a newsboy.
She didn't rush to read it. She found a rickshaw and told the driver to take her to the pear orchard before unfolding the newspaper.
[Master Li is assassinated while meeting his fiancée!]
[The commander and his son lead the campaign to suppress bandits, while Master Li is appointed "City Lord"!]
The newspaper featured a photo of Li Changzhou, dressed in a suit, holding a walking stick, handsome and refined, with a jade-like appearance, showing no trace of his lewdness in secretly hiding pornographic books.
"Tsk!" Li Qianxia clicked her tongue in disgust, then looked at the photo again before looking away with satisfaction, as if she had just finished admiring her own beautiful picture.
The newspaper was in traditional Chinese characters. Although she couldn't write them, it didn't affect her reading. The only problem was the layout—it was vertical.
The difficulties caused by different reading habits are much greater than those caused by traditional Chinese characters.
Turning the page of the newspaper, there was another big headline.
[Spring Emperor Appears! Peking Opera Performers!]
The photo features a stunningly beautiful woman, dressed in a cheongsam on the left and an opera singer's costume on the right.
Spring Emperor?
The Spring Emperor played by Gu Su Mu Rong?!
I'm going to meet him in person?!
Li Qianxia got excited. Back then, because of Gu Su Murong's performance in "The Emperor of the Pear Garden", she had listened to the opera for a long time, and when she spoke to her brother, she would use her orchid finger and a high-pitched voice.
Judging from the photos, even in black and white, she is no less beautiful than Mu Rong from Gusu.
With excitement in her heart, she finally arrived at the opera house, only to find that she had come for nothing. There were no tickets left, not even the tickets for the aisle seats (added temporarily)!
"Damn it!" Li Qianxia cursed in the style of an anime character.
With eyes as agile as a deer, it searches for a target in its surroundings, looking for a chance to launch a personal revolution of "robbing the rich to help the poor" against a certain bureaucratic capitalist.
She wouldn't be polite to the rich, and it's just a ticket; missing one show won't make a difference!
As he was looking around, he suddenly spotted a car driving by. In 1928, owning a car was like owning a private plane 100 years later.
You're the one!
The car stopped, the door opened, and the person got out.
"Huh?"
The person before me was dressed simply and without makeup, yet she seemed ethereal, with skin as white as fresh snow and a face like that of a fairy from Mount Gushe—no, she was the very fairy from Mount Gushe herself.
"Qinglan!" Li Qianxia ran over in surprise.
Yang Qinglan placed her finger on her cherry blossom-like lips, signaling her not to speak in the street.
She pulled Li Qianxia into the pear orchard and found a secluded corner: "There are many people coming and going around here, and there are always many rickshaws parked here. There are very likely players among those rickshaw drivers, so be careful."
"I understand," Li Qianxia replied, then asked the question that had been nagging at her, "Qinglan, how are you able to come and go from the opera troupe? Are you going to perform on stage? I saw you in a car!"
"The car belongs to the opera troupe. I'm going out on errands, and my identity is that of an apprentice."
"apprentice?"
"That is, doing odd jobs."
"Do odd jobs..." Li Qianxia's two rosy and delicate lips pursed into a tight knot, as if she were sealing a sack to keep her laughter from escaping.
'Yang Qinglan, the fairy maiden of Gusha, doing odd jobs... I'll tell my brother tonight! Hahahaha!'
Li Qianxia remained expressionless.
Yang Qinglan glared at her slightly, completely guessing what she was thinking.
"Oh, right!" Li Qianxia quickly changed the subject, "Qinglan, do you know my brother? He's become Master Li! He's got tons of money! He reeks of money! And he's become a bureaucrat!"
Yang Qinglan took out a newspaper from her bag, and on the folded newspaper was a photo of Li Changzhou.
"I'm just going to buy newspapers for the Spring Emperor." After a brief pause, she said, "Have him come to the Pear Garden tomorrow; I need to talk to him."
"Qinglan, you don't need to worry so much. Apart from peeping at me while I was changing clothes, my brother hasn't done anything to betray you. I promise!"
"Come on in too, I'll get you a seat."
"Ah—" Li Qianxia's face fell. "I was just kidding. He only glanced at my shoulder. I usually wear off-the-shoulder tops and show my shoulders."
"Don't you want to see the Spring Emperor's performance?"
“Come on!” Li Qianxia answered immediately, as if she were a soldier facing an instructor.
Yang Qinglan couldn't help but smile slightly, glanced around, and said softly, "I have something to discuss with you, not to cause trouble for your brother."
She put the newspaper into her bag and casually said, "Please pass on this message to him today—do not do evil even if it is insignificant."
"You're not allowed to touch any woman, right? I promise I'll bring you!"
Although Li Qianxia grasped the key point, Yang Qinglan still had to say to her, "Don't generalize from a single instance; just say what you said."
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