At this time, the only train from the neighboring city to H City departed in the afternoon, arriving at H City at nine o’clock at night.
The train station was packed with people everywhere. An unfamiliar station, an unfamiliar city, unfamiliar faces.
For a moment, standing at the station’s exit, Xu Huiqing felt a wave of bewilderment.
This hour was when the area around the station was brilliantly lit. Holding Xiaoxi in one arm and carrying a woven bag full of clothes in the other, Xu Huiqing didn’t linger at the station. She hailed a taxi and told the driver to take her to a hotel.
There were many hotels near the station, their neon signs already flashing in this era. Afraid the station-area hotels might be unsafe, Xu Huiqing wanted to find one farther away.
Seeing a woman alone with a child and no specific address, the taxi driver struck up idle chatter. “You came to H City alone?”
Xu Huiqing was no naive girl just entering society. After shaking off her initial disorientation, she kept her basic guard up. She said, “I’m here to find my brother and sister-in-law.”
The taxi driver asked, “Where do your brother and sister-in-law live? I’ll drive you there!”
Xu Huiqing laughed. “Master, are you kidding me? Where would I get that kind of money? My sister and brother-in-law told me to just find a hotel near the station, and they’ll come pick me up tomorrow morning. I just think the hotels near the station have too many people coming and going every day—really filthy. That’s why I wanted to take a taxi to find one further away!”
The driver kept trying to make conversation. Seeing a hotel’s neon sign flashing just ahead, Xu Huiqing promptly told him to stop. “Master, stop right at that hotel entrance!”
This spot was only two or three kilometers from the station, but already sparsely populated.
The taxi driver didn’t think much of it, drove right to the hotel entrance and stopped. Xu Huiqing went in and booked a room, also ordering a bowl of shredded pork noodles. After checking the hotel room door’s lock again and again, she finally took Xiaoxi into the bathroom to bathe, then lay down in bed and slept.
It was already late June, and H City was scorching hot. The hotel had no air conditioning, only an electric fan whirring noisily. Luckily, the night wasn’t as sweltering as the day.
The next morning, after getting up, she asked the hotel’s Boss Lady about rental information nearby.
Though it was still only the mid-90s, this area might have been the city’s most bustling downtown district. The rent nearby wasn’t cheap at all. The Boss Lady looked her up and down—a woman, alone with a child—and asked, “You looking to rent a place? Lots of houses nearby. What kind of place do you want?”
Workers renting near the station in this era almost all lived in self-built rural houses, the kind that were very shabby and cheap, convenient for scraping a living near the station. She assumed Xu Huiqing was the same type.
Near the station, there were many selling boxed lunches, hauling goods, doing manual labor. Factories suitable for women to enter were few. She assumed Xu Huiqing had come looking for factory work.
Xu Huiqing thought for a moment and said, “Elder Sister, as you can see, I’m a young woman alone with a child. I want to find a residential compound and an apartment with higher safety. It’d be best if there’s a kindergarten nearby and decent schools, so it’s convenient for my child to enroll.”
For safety, Xu Huiqing had dressed especially plainly when going out: a casually tied ponytail, a dusty gray blouse, black trousers, cheap sandals, and a woven bag specially fitted with shoulder straps for easy carrying.
But the Xiaoxi in her arms was immaculately clean.
The Boss Lady’s gaze mainly fell on the clean little Xiaoxi in her arms. Hearing this, she said, “I have a vacant apartment in Yinshan Residential Area. Want it? But I’ll say this upfront: my place is on the seventh floor! It’s our old self-occupied home. There’s a Yinshan Kindergarten right in the compound — a very good kindergarten!”
Xu Huiqing nodded and asked, “Could you take me to see it first?”
Having just arrived in a strange city, Xu Huiqing only wanted to find a place to settle first. Everything else could be dealt with later, step by step.
The Boss Lady, probably figuring there wouldn’t be much business at this hour, called her husband to watch the hotel. She then took Xu Huiqing to a bus stop not far from the hotel. They rode the bus for about ten stops, got off, and found it was the Bus Terminal. The compound’s entrance was right through the terminal’s main gate.
Even for this era, the compound looked old. From the outside, it seemed at least twenty or thirty years old. Yet the interior environment was unexpectedly pleasant.
There were only five or six apartment buildings, lined up front to back. There were no rock ponds or artificial hills in the compound, just a gray wisteria trellis in the central area.
The Boss Lady took out keys and opened the unit door, then led Xu Huiqing up to the top floor.
Yes, the compound’s total height was seven floors, and this apartment was on the top floor. After the Boss Lady opened the door, the interior was truly dilapidated. The floor wasn’t tiled but covered with some kind of red material. But perhaps from long years of habitation, it was pitted and scarred, the cement beneath exposed.
It had likely been vacant for a long time. It wasn’t just broken; it was filthy too.
The Boss Lady led her in, saying, “This apartment was assigned by my old workplace. We lived here over twenty years. Now we’ve all moved out, and it’s been sitting empty. I saw you, a person alone and so clean, that’s why I want to rent it to you!”
The apartment was one bedroom, one living room, one kitchen, one bathroom. The bedroom was quite large, over thirty square meters, with a row of four large windows offering good natural light. The living room was tiny, situated between the kitchen and the bedroom. With a wall blocking the bedroom, even in the broad daylight of late June, the living room’s light was very dim.
The kitchen was about the same size as the living room, with a single small gas stove. Newspapers were plastered on the walls, covered in a grimy layer of years-old black grease. The countertops were similarly oily.
It was so dirty that even the Boss Lady felt a bit embarrassed. She said, “If you want to live here, it’s twenty yuan a month. Don’t look at how old it is. The neighbors around here are all old acquaintances who know each other well. If it weren’t old, I wouldn’t rent it to you this cheap!” Pointing at the grimy stove, she added, “It’s a bit dirty up here — just scrub it clean. If you can’t scrub it off, just spread a few layers of newspaper over it. Stick newspaper on the walls too!”
She pushed open the door to the old, yellow-painted bathroom. It had a flush toilet, was equally dirty and cramped, maybe around one square meter. High up on the wall, over two meters above, was a small glass window the size of an iPad for ventilation. But the light was just as poor — the kind where you couldn’t see clearly even during the day.
A showerhead hung below.
Xu Huiqing asked the Boss Lady, “Does this showerhead work?”
With a click, the Boss Lady turned on the bathroom light and opened the showerhead.
Water gushed out loudly, but it was only cold water. “Only cold water, no hot water. If you want hot water, just boil some in the kitchen!”
She pointed to a wooden ladder in a narrow hallway, only about fifty to sixty centimeters wide, between the bathroom and the bedroom. “Look, there’s a loft and a terrace upstairs. You can hang your laundry to dry up there. Convenient for airing out bedding and such too!”
If she hadn’t turned on the stairway light, Xu Huiqing wouldn’t have even noticed this narrow passage.
She set down her woven bag, picked up Xiaoxi, and stepped onto the creaking wooden ladder to the loft. The loft even had a broken bed, about one and a half meters wide. The loft itself wasn’t small — over twenty square meters — with a layout that was high in front and low in back. But the ceiling seemed to leak. The old wooden bed bore all the marks of the Plum Rain Season leaks, already covered in a layer of black mold.
The Boss Lady saw her surveying the loft. “You’ll be living downstairs. Even if the roof leaks, it won’t reach downstairs. Just put a basin up here to catch it! There isn’t that much water!”
The terrace outside was over thirty square meters, its surface similarly covered in a layer of green moss. It connected to the neighboring terrace, separated only by a V-shaped slanting roof.
Xu Huiqing checked the lock on the terrace door and pointed at the neighboring unit. “The neighbor could step across, couldn’t they?”
The Boss Lady said dismissively, “It’s all moss up there, who knows how slippery it is. Who would come over? Do they have a death wish? Besides, they’ve all been neighbors for decades, know each other well. Who would think of coming over here for no reason? And you don’t need to worry about the neighbor next door—he’s a police officer. If you ever have something come up, just shout; they won’t refuse to help!”
It was blazing hot. She wiped the sweat from her forehead, ducked through the low terrace door from the roof above the balcony, descended the narrow, dark staircase, and stood at the airy doorway between the bedroom and living room, fanning herself with her hat. “You’ve seen the place. The bed and table are already here. If you buy a bamboo mat, some blankets, and have someone deliver a gas cylinder, you can move right in. The kindergarten is right next door. If you want to rent it, I’ll take you to the kindergarten right now. I know all the teachers at that kindergarten. It’ll be convenient for you to drop off and pick up your girl for school!”
If she hadn’t seen that Xu Huiqing was sincere about wanting to rent the place—the apartment had been sitting empty ever since her family moved out—she wouldn’t have wanted to make this long trip all the way here.
Back when she climbed seven flights of stairs every day, she never minded. One round trip today had worn her out completely.
What truly moved Xu Huiqing was the compound’s kindergarten she mentioned.
Xu Huiqing assessed the room’s condition. She asked the Boss Lady, “Boss Lady, could we hire a maintenance worker to repair the floors and walls?”
The Boss Lady’s voice rose in refusal. “If I had money to fix up this place, wouldn’t I have rented it out ages ago!” She was growing impatient now. “Rent it if you want to rent it. If not, I’m leaving! I’m busy at the shop!”
Xu Huiqing still wanted to see the kindergarten. “If the child can attend school there, I’ll rent it.”
The Boss Lady closed the door and headed downstairs, saying, “I’m only doing this because I see how hard it is—a woman alone with a kid. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have made this trip!”
She went straight to a spot next to the compound bus terminal. An old man whose window faced the bus stop cut two keys, and the Boss Lady handed them to Xu Huiqing. “This one for the unit door, one for the main gate.” Then she led Xu Huiqing toward the kindergarten.
The compound’s main entrance was the Bus Terminal. There was also a smaller back gate.
It was the season for silk tree blossoms. Along the road outside the compound’s back gate, rows of silk trees were in full, vibrant bloom. Pink blossoms drifted and fluttered down from the sky from time to time, carpeting the ground in a layer of pink.
Stepping through the small gate, Xu Huiqing realized just how large this compound truly was.
As they walked, the Boss Lady gave her the rundown. “This here is West 8th Courtyard. Don’t forget—my place is Apartment 701, Unit 2, West 8th Courtyard.” She then pointed to the equally old and tranquil compounds on either side. “West Compound 6, West Compound 7… all the way down that way to West Compound 1!”
They reached an intersection, crossed it, and she pointed left into the near distance. “Over there is Shengtao Primary School. Very good primary school!”
“Diagonally opposite the kindergarten is the Youth Palace. If your little girl ever wants to learn dancing or drawing or something, you can send her there for lessons.”
They walked another three hundred meters or so and finally arrived at the “Yinshan Kindergarten” the Boss Lady had mentioned.
Yinshan Kindergarten looked like a recently built facility. Its scale and footprint already approached those of kindergartens of later eras. It had two floors, looking quite sizable. Below were some wooden play structures and a sand pit. Even in late June, a class of children was still outside playing.