Chapter 16 Rayon

In the autumn of that year, I went to the countryside to recuperate from illness. In the "Little Steamboat on the Neihe River", someone suddenly held hands with me through a Jiangbei peddler's basket of spiced beans; the middle finger of this hand was wrapped with a large gold ring. Engraved with two Western letters: HB. "Ha, ha, don't you know?" When my eyes moved from the ring to the man's face, the man smiled and said. As he spoke, he pushed away the Jiangbei peddler's five-spice bean basket, creaked, and sat in another old rattan chair next to me.This little fat man weighs at least two hundred pounds!

"Do you remember? The shriveled Fengling in ×× Elementary School?..." He said loudly again, and laughed again after speaking, and the fat on his face was also jumping and jumping with laughter. Oh, oh, I remember, but why do you blame me for not knowing him?What used to be "dry wind water chestnut" has now become "soaked fat fried juniper!" - this is the nickname of another classmate in our elementary school.At that time they were a couple, and when one was mentioned, they would always be brought to the other. But I still can't remember the name of this old friend.It doesn't matter.In short, we are old classmates from twenty years ago, and we are used to fighting.We haven't seen each other for over twenty years!We can't finish talking for three days and three nights.But this old friend seemed to know my situation very well, and before he could say a few words, he assumed the air of Holmes and asked me suddenly:

"Go back to the country to recuperate, don't you? How long do you plan to stay?" I startled.Is my illness even visible?The friends I see every day say that I don't look sick!The old friend looked at my dazed look, but he was very proud. He clapped his hands, smiled and laughed, raised his thumb, pointed his nose and said: "Look! During the years when I was abroad, I finally learned something! I can be a detective!" "Yeah—but you said just now that you want to set up an apiary, why don't you put up a sign and be an Oriental Sherlock Holmes?" I also laughed.

Unexpectedly, the old friend frowned, looked at me, and replied in a nasal voice: "No! Sherlock Holmes' ability is not good now! Now a check is worth ten Holmes!" "But I still admire you!" "Hehe, that's good. But I still keep bees and chickens. When it comes to my detective skills, it's a joke. I bought a cup of coffee. I ran into your cousin yesterday. Let's talk casually, you know You are also going back to the countryside today to recover from your illness. Otherwise, how could I know you as soon as I got on the boat? Haha, this little secret is worth a cup of coffee."

I thought about it and laughed too. Later, we gradually talked about bees and chickens. The old friend stretched out his hand to wipe his face, and with a serious look, he pointed his fingers and said: "Hey, hey, let me tell you the number. I studied medicine for the first year. This is according to my old man's opinion. After studying for half a year, I knew that my short temper was not right for a doctor. I saw in the newspaper that a Shanghai doctor There are more than a thousand Western medicine doctors in the local area, and I feel even worse when I think about it; by the time I finish my studies, there may be more than two thousand. If I compete with more than two thousand people for food, I will definitely fail. I changed to silk reeling. This is also a very natural thing. You know that my old man is a bit involved in the silk factory. But it’s terrible! I haven’t learned it well yet. Give me the book of Medtron, and let me go back to China and find a job. Hey, friend, isn’t this driving me to death? So I wrote and negotiated with the old man, and changed industries quickly. At that time, it doesn’t matter what After learning a little bit, I didn’t take a trip to Europe in vain. This time, I switched to beekeeping and chicken farming. I came back three months ago, and after looking at it, I realized that I shouldn’t stop studying medicine!”

When the old friend said this, he puffed up his cheeks and looked at me with all his strength, as if he was waiting for me to prove his "shouldn't study medicine".After waiting for a while, I kept silent and always looked at him like him, and he let out a breath and explained himself: "Why? China is a country of sick men! Some of my half-year classmates have already signed up and their business is doing well. But during the half-year class with them, it's rare to see their faces in class!" "Hey, hey, things are unpredictable. But you plan to start a bee farm or something, won't it fail?" I had no choice but to comfort him.

"It's hard to say, it's hard to say!...I've talked to several generations about my plan, and they didn't agree. Afterwards, I heard them say to others: Do you want to go abroad to learn how to keep bees? Oh, my friend!" The old friend sighed for the first time, tilted his head, and fell silent, turning the big gold ring on his middle finger with his thumb, turning it once and then again. At this moment, two fashionable women dressed in red and green walked past us, came back after a while, turned their backs to us, and stood there muttering. My old friend, still fiddling with his ring, looked attentively at the "beauties" on the back of the two copies.He suddenly murmured to himself in a low voice:

"What I regret most is that I have learned silk reeling for nearly three years." He turned his face and looked at me, as if asking me if I understood what he meant.I thought I understood, so I nodded; however, my old friend quickly shook his head as if he had read my thoughts and added: "It's not that I regret that I wasted three years of hard work. It's not this! It's that I regret that I have a little more knowledge, and it will give me ten times and a hundred times the pain!" "Oh?—" I'm so confused. "Here," the old friend smiled wryly, "I can tell the difference between silk and rayon. Even if it's some kind of silk with rayon sandwiched between silk and rayon, I just take a look at it, and at most I can pinch it with my hands to know where it is. How much rayon is mixed. Huh, I have been back for three months, and I see women wearing colorful and fashionable clothes every day. Every time I see it, I think of—"

"It just occurred to me that your old man's silk factory is closed?" I couldn't help but add a few words, but my old friend didn't think so, and shook his hand and said hurriedly: "No, no--I thought of how rayon was made, and I thought those fragrant women were just gunpowder!" "What? You said it was gunpowder!" I also said loudly in surprise. Our words must have been heard clearly by the two women in front. They turned half of their faces at the same time, gave us a blank look, and walked away from us hand in hand.This seemed a great insult to my old friend; he gritted his teeth, pronounced a foreign word, and then yelled into my ear:

"Yes, it's gunpowder! The first step in making rayon is the same as making smokeless gunpowder! The raw materials are also the same!" This little fat man's voice was already thick, but now he was pointing at my ears again, I just felt a rumble in my ear, "Rayon,...smokeless gunpowder...same!" The rumble is not over yet , I heard this old friend seem to add another sentence: "During the war, the rayon factory was changed into a gunpowder bureau!" By this time, I also understood why this old friend said it was "painful".The knowledge he acquired only allowed him to know that Chinese people have rayon, and rayon also has gunpowder. No wonder he said repeatedly: "What I regret most is that I have learned silk reeling for nearly three years!"

It's been a long time since I saw this old friend again, and I don't know where he went again; but whenever I see rayon weaving, I always think of him, and I smell what he called "gunpowder"! Moreover, the most important thing is that these rayons are all imported goods—Oriental goods!