By noon, everyone had mostly recovered. Wang Peng had expected them to feel miserable all day, having spent his own first experience with *douzhi* feeling wretched from morning till night. The group had originally planned to try fried liver (*chaogan*), but they had lost their appetite, deciding that even if it was delicious, they wouldn't bother.
They asked the guesthouse owner to prepare some light fare for lunch. Afterward, they headed to the Wangfujing pedestrian street, planning to work their way up from the southern end. Seeing the first Xinhua Bookstore, they collectively decided to ignore it—they had spent twenty years of their lives reading books, after all. They wandered into the Crafts Mansion, circled it once, and walked out empty-handed.
"Things are just too expensive; we can't afford any of it," Li Jiaxin said with a helpless look.
Chapter 20