'SEE YOU MORNING' 076 A Return to a Familiar Place

The day to set off for check-in and reporting arrived quickly. Lin Yuhui chose a hard sleeper berth on an ordinary fast train from Jilin to Shanghai, because such trains usually schedule their running time at night, allowing passengers to reach their destination during the day, giving him more daylight hours to handle matters and continue his journey.

Life often has little amusing interludes. While queuing in front of the ticket gate, a female railway staff member kept telling passengers through a loudspeaker to insert their tickets inward—maybe the machine had some issue. But she used an abbreviated phrase: she only said “insert inward” without mentioning the word “ticket.” That left some male passengers in line room for imagination.

Two men standing side by side ahead, carrying luggage as if heading out for work, one said to the other in a thick Northeastern dialect, “Hey, ya hear what she said?”

The other didn’t hesitate and replied, “She tells ya to stick it in, so just stick it in.”

When Lin Yuhui reached the front, he saw that the female railway worker was really not good-looking. It showed just how sexually starved those two older brothers were. Lin Yuhui himself—his wife had divorced him years ago. What woman would want a man without a job and in poor health?

When he stepped up to the gate, the woman kept shouting, “Insert inward.” Lin Yuhui couldn’t help but find it funny. Who doesn’t know to insert inward? But the ticket was made of stiff paper—if it got bent or broken, that would be a problem.

At first Lin Yuhui tried and failed. The woman immediately urged him, “Insert inward, insert inward.”

Lin Yuhui thought to himself, “If you push me and I break it, don’t blame me.” With that he shoved it in hard, and unexpectedly the ticket whizzed right in. After passing through the gate, he saw the two older brothers still discussing the “insert inward” issue—pure male amusement.

When the train arrived in Shanghai again, Lin Yuhui had many emotions. Twenty years ago he had come here to work, but it was for a construction company, very low‑end and with no future. If he had stayed, his family and career would have been ruined for life. Back then his grandmother was still alive. Lin Yuhui bought DVD sets of the TV dramas Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber at Xinhua Bookstore for her to watch at home, to make up for his absence. In the blink of an eye, times had changed. During those years he had come many times on business trips or errands. Now, revisiting this familiar place, scenes from the past rose before his eyes.

Lin Yuhui’s new employer, Shanghai Wen’s Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd., was located at 176 Fengdong Road, Fengyue Town, Fengxian District, Shanghai—far from the train station where he arrived. He had to take the subway and then transfer to a bus. With a printed map he had prepared in advance, he found Metro Line 5. The journey was boring and lengthy. The subway ran from underground to above ground—a sign of how remote the workplace was. By the time he changed to a bus, it was already afternoon.

It was Lin Yuhui’s first time in the suburbs of Fengxian District, Shanghai. He discovered that rice was grown here. The paddies had turned yellow. Local farmers lived in three‑story detached houses. Dusk was falling; the beautiful landscape of yellow‑green rice paddies and fragrant farmhouses was stunning.

The waiting plus travel time took nearly two hours. When he got off the bus it was already 5:00 p.m. The sun had sunk below the horizon, leaving only the afterglow in the sky to light the world.

Having traveled for many years, Lin Yuhui was good at navigation. He knew he had to reach his destination quickly, otherwise it would be bad if it got completely dark. But today he made a mistake. Following the road on his map, he found that the surroundings didn’t match. Afraid of getting completely lost, he returned to the intersection and tried the next street ahead, but it was even more desolate.

He had to call the contact person. However, after he described the surrounding buildings to locate himself, the other person couldn’t figure it out either—he was just a dormitory manager. Lin Yuhui then asked him to describe the buildings around him, but he couldn’t give a clear answer. So Lin Yuhui began reporting the neon signs of factories or buildings he could see. Only then did they match up. It turned out that the intersection Lin Yuhui had first taken was correct; he just needed to go further in. The place where the other person was waiting was a side gate, not the main entrance. Life always presents problems big and small that need solving, and how many you can solve determines how much you achieve.

The accommodation area was on the fifth floor of the dormitory building. There were rooms for workers and rooms for technicians. The technician rooms were doubles, but because Lin Yuhui had mentioned he slept poorly, the company assigned him a room whose roommate was away on a business trip.

After getting the room key and the fifth‑floor access card, he began inspecting the surroundings. At the end of the corridor were a public toilet, a shower water heater, and a communal washing machine. It seemed the washing machine required a card swipe. Lin Yuhui had no intention of using the communal machine—he was a germaphobe. But the bedding was also communal, so he would have to sleep in his clothes.

With the accommodation settled, it was time to deal with dinner. It seemed no road was truly wrong. On both sides of the intersection where he had made the earlier mistake, night markets offered all kinds of food. Apparently night‑shift production workers needed such services, so Lin Yuhui took the chance to eat there as well.

It was deep in the suburbs, and the night had grown late. Apart from the factory lights and streetlamps, everything else was pitch black. From around 8:30 p.m. onward, more young factory workers came out to eat—groups of three to five, men and women, flirting and joking. Lin Yuhui thought to himself, “If I worked in a factory like this, could I find a life partner?” The thought flashed by in an instant. He knew very well that he was not the same kind of person as they were, and those young women would not take a liking to him.

After walking through the food night market, he found that most of the offerings were junk food—stewed fish balls or sausage in a messy hotpot, grilled things of unknown origin that were definitely not proper meat, maybe soy products or flour products. After a round of selection, two kinds of food seemed fairly normal: one stall sold boiled dumplings, and another sold a kind of pancake roll with shredded potato, soybean paste, and lettuce—at least that was real food.

Lin Yuhui bought a box of vegetarian dumplings to take away. He didn’t like eating outdoors, and he didn’t dare buy meat‑filled dumplings for fear of bad meat causing stomach trouble. He also bought a shredded‑potato pancake roll. That should be safe. The egg was cooked together with the pancake, and the shredded potatoes and lettuce probably weren’t a big problem. He could save it for breakfast the next morning.

Back on the fifth floor of the dormitory, Lin Yuhui placed the pancake roll on the windowsill. On November nights, even in Shanghai, the outside temperature was low. Cold air currents near the window indoors would help preserve the food.

Sitting by the window, Lin Yuhui ate his dumplings while looking at the building ahead. Some windows still had lights on—probably the office building. He wondered what kind of start the next day would bring.