"??? little girl, go away! Don't stand by my window!"
Shuxin was crying bitterly when she heard someone shouting abuse from above. She heard the shopkeeper telling her to scram and not stand in front of his window. She didn't understand what little girl meant. As she thought about it, Shuxin cried even harder and let out a sob.
Given: Senior year of high school is the peak of a university student's knowledge, and it has been six or seven years since leaving school. Find: Shuxin's current English vocabulary reserve.
How heartbreaking. A poor student couldn't even understand when someone was cursing at her.
"Here you ???, Don't be here, When you're done eating, get out of here." A piece of bread appeared before Shuxin's eyes. It was the shopkeeper from just a moment ago. He probably thought Shuxin looked too pitiful, so he gave her a piece of bread and told her to eat it and leave.
As expected, there were still many kind people in the world. She was covered in dirt and really was getting in the way of the shopkeeper's business; it was only right that he told her to leave. Shuxin had never been an unreasonable person, she had just been feeling too terrible a moment ago.
Shuxin stood up. The shopkeeper in front of her was a middle-aged man with a small upturned mustache, wearing a Chinese tunic suit and a stern expression. It was plain to see that he didn't like Shuxin at all.
Wiping her hands symbolically on her clothes, Shuxin took the bread and bowed to the shopkeeper. "Thank you very much, God bless you."
Thank goodness she could still understand a couple of words of English. Thank goodness for her junior high school teacher and her strict guidance.
"Don't be here," the shopkeeper reiterated that she should not stay here, then turned and went back inside the shop. Although the grocery store was small, its goods were quite well-stocked, and there were quite a few people buying things.
Feeling somewhat embarrassed, Shuxin bowed to the window once more, took a bite of the bread, and headed back toward the alley she had come from. She needed to calm down and also needed to find a place to carefully ponder her next steps.
The bread was cold, a bit dry, and not very tasty, but Shuxin nibbled on it slowly. After all, she didn't know where her next meal would be coming from, and she was in no rush to look for a police station or find her original body's parents anymore.
After walking for a few minutes, Shuxin sat down against the wall, out of the shopkeeper's sight. Sitting anywhere was the same, so she began to dwell on her problems.
First of all, language was a major issue. Shuxin looked at the promotional sign across the street. Very good, she only recognized a few words, and strung together, she had no idea what they meant. In the past, there were many people around her who hadn't studied much, but they could speak and understand others. Yet she couldn't understand; the shopkeeper had just called her some kind of kid, but she didn't know and didn't understand. Why didn't she have the memories of this very body? Irritating.
Secondly, she had no ID card. In modern society, the internet era, it was impossible to take a step without an ID card. So, did she still have to go to the police station? She wondered if the police officers in this country were anything like those in Hua Guo. Once at the police station, should she just tell the police directly that she had amnesia?
Finishing the last bite of the bread, Shuxin felt full. The bread didn't look large, but it was surprisingly filling, or perhaps this body had a small appetite. "Eat less, eat often—healthy," Shuxin consoled herself. "Eating less and often keeps you from getting fat. Maybe I'll have a figure as good as that beauty from earlier?"
Eating often was also a problem. Penniless, Shuxin thought as she fished out the game tokens from her pocket. Perhaps these were the coins of this country?
The coins were round in shape and brass-colored. The obverse sides were all the same, featuring a girl wearing a crown and some English letters, along with "1985." The reverses were different.
The 1-kuai coin—let's tentatively consider this a 1-kuai—had the word "ONE," the Arabic numeral "1" at the bottom, and a strange pattern in the middle. The 2-kuai coin had the word "TWO," the number "2," a middle design that looked somewhat like a feather crown, plus some kind of ribbon, tsk tsk. The 5-kuai coin had the word "FIVE" and "5," with something resembling a certain grass in the middle. There was even a 10-kuai coin! The obverse of the 10-kuai actually had "1989," and the reverse featured a crowned lion.
Shuxin counted them up: seventy-two yuan in total—five 10-kuai coins, three 5-kuai coins, three 2-kuai coins, and one 1-kuai coin. A steamed bun cost 1 yuan, and three steamed buns a day would last her more than twenty days. Oh boo-hoo, Mom, Abao is so miserable, I want to go home.
However, the public security in this place seemed pretty good; a child sleeping by the wall still had this much money on her.
Shuxin sat up straight and began to recall foreign queens. As a homebody who didn't care about international affairs, she only seemed to remember that England's former monarch was a queen. Touching the year beside the queen's portrait—back in Hua Guo, renminbi had to be updated, and so did coins. "1985," "1989"—she might really not be in the year 2023; perhaps the new millennium hadn't even arrived yet.
The era of mobile payments had left Shuxin with a very dim impression of coins. She vaguely remembered that the coins from when she was around ten years old were from 1997? Working backward, it should be the nineties now? Right?
Or perhaps these seventy-two yuan were collectibles? Forget it, a runaway child carrying collectibles made no sense however you thought about it. That being said, it didn't necessarily mean she was a runaway; maybe she really was an orphan? Did orphans in the nineties have to stay in orphanages? As for Hua Guo, that era was too far back, and she wasn't very clear on it.
Shuxin scratched her head, giving herself a headache. Even if she returned to her country and found her mom and the others, they wouldn't necessarily recognize her. Were time-travel novels popular in the nineties? Back then, martial arts novels seemed to be all the rage; would her father dear believe her if she told him she was Zhang Sanfeng's descendant?
She was thinking too much. She didn't seem to have the ability to go back anyway, so she might as well think about the present. If it was currently the nineties, an ID card wouldn't be an issue. Even if this was England, no matter how advanced technology was, they probably didn't have those yet. At least when she was in Hua Guo, regulation hadn't been strict.
Shuxin stood up again. Taking advantage of being full, she decided to walk around and take a look at this world.