◎ The English Corner ◎

“I’ll come with you.”

“No need — it’s freezing, Cousin, you’re not dressed warmly enough, don’t go standing out in the cold. Besides, you don’t know how to sell gloves. When I’m selling, I’ll just be worrying about whether you’re cold…” At that, Gu Qiao stopped herself. This meal had been too comfortable; she’d let her guard down and forgotten her boundaries.

“Don’t worry, I’m not cold.”

Gu Qiao wanted to say more, but this time the reason for refusing wouldn’t come out. She had grown used to setting up her stall alone on cold nights. She didn’t want him breaking that habit — and breaking it would only be a nuisance to fix later.

The bell on Gu Qiao’s bicycle rang at a steady pace, making the silence between them feel even deeper. She drew in a breath of cold air. “Cousin, I’ve thought about it — I’d better not take on your relative’s business after all. I don’t want my aunt to find out I’ve been selling clothes.” One blast of cold wind had cleared her head completely. The relative was almost certainly Luo Peiyin himself.

“I just won’t tell her. It’s not as if the gloves have your name on them.”

“It’s fine, really — my gloves sell well enough on their own. There’s no need to trouble you into telling a lie for me. I’d feel terrible.”

Luo Peiyin was about to say more but stopped himself in time. Gu Qiao had probably guessed the truth. She was telling him, in her own way, that her gloves sold perfectly well on their own and she didn’t need him to lie on her behalf.

By now Gu Qiao was well practiced at selling. She called out her gloves in her clear, bright voice. Perhaps concerned that Luo Peiyin might feel superfluous, she borrowed a cardboard sign and asked him to write out an advertisement in both Chinese and English.

But the written sign was no match for Gu Qiao’s voice. She knew exactly where her gloves’ strengths lay, and for every person who wandered over — whether they intended to buy or not — she gave a thorough pitch covering price, warmth, and everything in between.

The evening wind did nothing to thin Gu Qiao’s voice, yet somehow it gathered a layer of mist in Luo Peiyin’s chest — the faint cooking smoke that drifted thin on winter evenings, paired with the yellow glow seeping through the lamppost’s glass globe, stirring the kind of homesickness that makes a person think of going home. But what was home? Perhaps it only appealed once it was set down on paper.

Gu Qiao sold half her gloves that night. Had Luo Peiyin not been there, she would have stayed until she’d sold a few more pairs before leaving. She felt that standing here must be a kind of torment for him — if he’d studied economics or something else, he might at least use the street-stall scene to observe society. But he studied physics. Halfway through selling, Gu Qiao looked up at Luo Peiyin. “Cousin, let’s head home.” And in that glance, she noticed his neck.

Not far from her stall was a vendor selling scarves. Gu Qiao pushed her bicycle over, picked out a light grey one, and bargained the price down to two-thirds.

“At that price, am I even making anything?” the vendor said.

“I factored in your margin.” Gu Qiao named a wholesale market. “That’s where you got this batch, isn’t it.”

“How could that be — these are different stock! Fine, if you want it, take it.”

Gu Qiao selected her crumpled notes one by one, slowly and carefully, like a parent in poverty handing a child over to strangers, studying the infant’s birthmarks in hope of recognizing it again one day. Luo Peiyin, who had witnessed how swiftly Gu Qiao received money, now felt the full weight of her reluctance to part with it.

Before she’d finished counting out her coins, Luo Peiyin had already extended his own banknote. Gu Qiao’s hand moved quickly — she got her coins into the vendor’s hand before he could take Luo Peiyin’s bill.

She took the scarf, turned, rose onto her toes, and draped it around Luo Peiyin’s neck. “Cousin, it’s cold — wear this for now. It’s not as nice as yours, but it’ll do for tonight.”

Gu Qiao’s fingers retreated quickly from the scarf and returned to her handlebars. The bell on her bicycle began to ring again. She didn’t know why, but the sound made her feel a little embarrassed.

On the way home, there was a vendor selling roasted sweet potatoes. Catching the scent, Gu Qiao asked Luo Peiyin, “Cousin, do you want a roasted sweet potato?” She very much wanted one, but she’d just eaten and couldn’t manage a whole one by herself.

Luo Peiyin, upon hearing this, didn’t answer — he walked straight over to the sweet potato cart.

—

Gu Qiao estimated the weight of a potato with her eyes. “I’ll just take half — I can’t eat too much.”

Luo Peiyin’s hands were precise. He broke off half and gave it to her.

Gu Qiao took off her gloves, and her fingers immediately met a chill — but the scalding sweet potato drove that chill away at once. She let out a couple of little hisses from the heat.

The two of them stopped their bicycles and stood at the roadside to eat their sweet potatoes. As the warm, steaming flesh entered her mouth, Gu Qiao felt warmth spread through her whole body. She said to Luo Peiyin, “I used to be really good at roasting sweet potatoes back home. You know the big clay stoves in the countryside? After cooking, the ash builds up thick inside. You don’t let the coals die out — you bury the sweet potato in the ash, and after a while…” Gu Qiao sniffed and glanced at Luo Peiyin beside her. He ate in complete silence, without a single word. So she fell quiet too and ate in silence.

She didn’t know why cold made a person miss home so easily. But she was warm now, and that helped. Gu Qiao watched the people and vehicles passing by, then tilted her head back to look at the stars — they seemed veiled behind a thin haze, and only the person beside her felt real and near. She let her eyes rest on all those indistinct, half-seen things while one hand brought sweet potato to her mouth.

She heard Luo Peiyin ask, “Working two jobs in a day — don’t you find it exhausting?”

“Not at all. I’m very good at looking after myself. I’d never let myself get worn out.” In her heart she added: as long as the money keeps coming in, it isn’t tiring.

“You really are something…”

Luo Peiyin stopped the sentence before it was finished. Gu Qiao imagined he still had reservations about her line of work.

Then she looked toward Luo Peiyin and laid out her future plans. “I won’t be working a street stall for too long. Once I’ve saved enough for a proper stall fee, I’ll rent a legitimate space in the market near the embassy district — and then you won’t have to help me hide it from the family anymore. I’ve heard that many of the vendors there have bought cars. I think that one day I’ll have all of that too.” Not the bicycle under her feet right now — a real car.

After saying it, she deliberately glanced at Luo Peiyin. Talking about your future to someone who doesn’t believe in you felt like boasting. She hoped he didn’t think she was boasting.

“You will have all of it.”

Gu Qiao immediately returned the same wish: “And you’ll have all of it too.” Then she laughed, as though he didn’t already have everything.

At the gate of the house, Gu Qiao smiled and said, “Cousin, you go in first. I’d like to walk around outside a little longer.” She didn’t want her aunt to see the two of them coming home at the same time and launch into another round of reminders she had no desire to hear. Even if her heart were made of iron, it couldn’t take being prodded that constantly.

Luo Peiyin understood. “It’s cold at night. Go in quickly — take your walk tomorrow. I have something to attend to; I’ll be back later.”

“Goodnight, Cousin.” Before she stepped through the gate, Gu Qiao turned and saw Luo Peiyin still standing where he’d been. But before she could say anything, he had already mounted his bicycle and ridden away.

Gu Qiao’s pigskin gloves sold far more quickly than she’d expected. Two days of selling in the north wind, and the stockpile was gone. After Old Yuan spread the word, even people outside his office had heard that his colleague had a relative selling gloves — cheap and warm — and came to find her. The winter was still long and there was no shortage of demand for warm gloves. On Wednesday, as soon as she finished work, she headed to the station to buy a ticket. Of course it was a standing ticket; a standing ticket was more than good enough.

Having learned her lesson from last time, she told Luo Peiyin about her Sunday supply run the moment she’d bought the ticket. After selling out the gloves, she didn’t go straight to source new ones — instead, she spent every free moment making rounds of the counters selling leather goods.

Saturday evening, Gu Qiao went to an English corner for the first time. This session had no set theme; everyone mingled freely. She spotted Chen Hui first, since he was her only acquaintance there, and went over to him. Gu Qiao treated the English corner like a wholesale market. She had seen vendors in the market who couldn’t even count from one to ten in English yet did business directly with foreigners, so she was very forgiving of her own accent and vocabulary.

But the English corner was another matter. Chen Hui hadn’t expected Gu Qiao to show up at the English corner with her level of English. She stumbled through sentences, resorting to hand gestures, and displayed not the faintest trace of embarrassment. She had learned grammar in school, but when she actually spoke, she threw all of it aside. Even so, Chen Hui had to admit that when Gu Qiao stumbled through her English, her expressions and her smile were remarkably vivid. At her level, anyone willing to keep talking to her was unlikely to have entirely pure intentions. He hadn’t forgotten that Gu Qiao was an eighteen-year-old girl who had only come to the city not long ago — however sharp she was, the odds of being tricked by others were still far greater than the odds of her tricking anyone else. Out of concern, he felt compelled to warn her: alongside students, the English corner also attracted working adults from outside the campus, and among them were those who used their worldly experience to deceive young women.

Gu Qiao thanked Chen Hui for the warning, though she felt that in such a public setting, even if such people were present, they couldn’t really touch her. When Zhou Zhining came over, Gu Qiao remembered what Chen Qing had told her about Chen Hui’s feelings for Zhou Zhining. Not wanting to intrude, she quickly said goodbye and moved on to someone else.

“What were the two of you just talking about? Why did she walk away when she saw me?” Zhou Zhining asked. “Since you know Gu Qiao, you should bring her to our activities in the future.”

“We’re not that close.”

“Is that so?” Yet Zhou Zhining soon noticed that Chen Hui was likely telling the truth. From across the room she watched Gu Qiao talking with someone — animated, gesturing broadly. She asked Chen Hui, “Was it your idea for her to come to the English corner?”

“She came on her own.” From this distance, if Chen Hui hadn’t already had a conversation with Gu Qiao in English, he might have assumed her English was quite good. He couldn’t help but wonder where her confidence came from — she didn’t seem embarrassed in the slightest.

Gu Qiao was most eager to chat with other women. But the girls who came to the English corner were mainly there to study and preferred to talk with people at the same level or higher. Gu Qiao went over smiling to a girl who looked like a serious student. This girl was slightly older than Gu Qiao. After a few exchanges, looking into Gu Qiao’s earnest, knowledge-hungry eyes, she couldn’t help offering Gu Qiao study advice — urging her to first memorize vocabulary and learn some grammar before coming back to the English corner, and helpfully recommending reference books.

Gu Qiao couldn’t deny the advice was entirely sincere, but none of it was any use to her right now. She just wanted to practice conversation and pick up phrases she could use in day-to-day life — useful for doing business later.

She thanked the girl warmly and was standing there trying to decide what to do next when a man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties came over to chat. He was dressed very formally — suit, tie, overcoat. His English flowed easily, but after a few sentences he could tell Gu Qiao’s English was fairly limited. This was no obstacle for him, however; he was quite happy to switch to Chinese.

But Gu Qiao insisted on speaking English. Having just spent the week borrowing two volumes of *Basic English for the Fashion Industry* to study, she now knew nearly every word related to clothing. In very simple vocabulary, she complimented the man’s overcoat, suit, tie, and even his leather shoes, then asked him where he usually bought his clothes. She turned her dark eyes and set a theme for the conversation: how much did price actually affect clothing-buying decisions?

The man smiled and watched Gu Qiao talk. She had a lovely, full mouth — kissing it would probably feel quite nice. He wondered if she’d ever kissed anyone. He told Gu Qiao that he usually bought clothes at department stores, and that price didn’t factor into his decisions — preference mattered more.

In truth, the clothes he bought for the women in his life mostly came from the market. In summer, a few skirts or shorts did the trick. Winter clothing was more of a hassle, but he knew exactly where to find convincing fake designer goods — a tracksuit that cost several hundred at retail could be had for a dozen yuan in a knockoff version. This year, though the television and newspapers were full of anti-counterfeiting campaigns, the channels hadn’t been fully shut down. He had too many casual encounters to afford carelessness about cost.

Hearing this, Gu Qiao felt a little disappointed. Someone unbothered by clothing prices wasn’t her target customer. The whole point of buying from her instead of a department store was that she was cheaper — wasn’t it? But she didn’t let the disappointment show, and did her best to put together a complete sentence: “Why not shop at the market?” As she said it, she realized the English word for “market” didn’t quite convey what she meant, and supplemented it with a gesture.

She also asked: “Do you not trust the quality?”

“Something like that, I suppose.”

After that topic ran its course, Gu Qiao asked the man: if he wanted to buy a pair of gloves, which leather would he choose? She listed the English words she’d just learned — lambskin, cowhide, or pigskin.

When he gave his answer, Gu Qiao followed up: and if he wanted to buy a leather jacket, which would he choose — lambskin, cowhide, or pigskin — and did price factor into that choice?

Gu Qiao’s conversation never strayed from clothes or money. If she didn’t look the way she did, the man would almost have thought she was hinting that she’d like him to buy her a leather jacket. That would have been even more convenient, actually, saving him a great deal of circling. But Gu Qiao spoke with such earnestness, as if genuinely investigating some academic question. Her English didn’t sound like that of a student at this university — though that wasn’t impossible, she could be someone who tested in strong in one subject, or perhaps a student from a nearby school. Smiling, the man asked what subject she studied.

Gu Qiao thought for a moment, and instead of mentioning her job in the logistics department, she said in English that she sold clothes, and was trying to understand what people bought to wear in winter.

The man expressed how unfortunate that was for her — with her talents, she should be doing work better suited to her. Perhaps he could be of some help.

Gu Qiao said she very much enjoyed her current work and there was no need to feel sorry for her. But out of curiosity, she asked what he did for a living.

Whenever she encountered a word she didn’t know, Gu Qiao took out a small notebook and jotted it down, then showed it to him and asked if she’d written it correctly.

The man, after hinting for some time, couldn’t hold back any longer and let his intentions show — in English, he invited Gu Qiao to a nearby dance hall. He mentioned that besides drinks, the place also served sandwiches, bread, and coffee. They could go there to talk further over dancing.

Gu Qiao smiled and declined his invitation, then said goodbye. These two phrases came to her quite fluently in English.

The man stood there, momentarily caught off guard. Then it occurred to him to ask for Gu Qiao’s contact information. Before he could open his mouth, he heard Gu Qiao call out “Cousin” — this time in Chinese.

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