the day after tomorrow.
Ning Ning walked out of the house for the first time and saw the scenery outside the square inch. She took a breath and felt a little nervous. Next, should she step on the left or the right? Boss Qu, who was walking in front of her, turned around, stretched out a hand towards her, and said with a smile, "Come on."
Ning Ning ran over with a smile and put her small hand in his big one.
"There are a lot of people, follow closely." Boss Qu clenched her hand and said as he walked, "Don't get lost."
The Chinese New Year is approaching. There is a strong New Year flavor on the street. The shops selling New Year goods open from south to north, from west to east. Chicken, duck, fish, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar, and dried fruit snacks are like fish hooks, attracting crowds. . Ning Ning was standing at the door of a roast duck restaurant and couldn't walk. Boss Qu said to her, "I'll buy it for you when I come back. Now you can't eat it after you buy it, and it will be cold all of a sudden."
Boss Qu allowed her to come out to play, but forbade her to take off her mask in front of anyone.
"Well, I'm not very hungry now anyway." Ning Ning regretfully took his eyes away from the shiny roast duck and said to him, "Let's go to the show first, and then come back to buy it after watching it."
The two continued to walk, and a passerby turned his head and laughed at the mask on Ning Ning's face. Ning Ning didn't respond, but Boss Qu tripped him as he passed by, and then stepped on it blankly. The other party's hand, the other party just wanted to scold him, but he lowered his head and said coldly: "I just wanted to step on the neck."
The man choked, swept the gun at his waist again, and fled in a dreadful manner.
After he left, Boss Qu brought Ning Ning to a mask booth, bought a snow-white mask and put it on his face, smiled at her through the mask, "Okay, now we are the same."
Ning Ning also giggled, stretched out his hand to lift his mask, and covered him again. After playing for a while, the noise behind her caught her attention. She turned her head to look, and saw the approaching not far away. A team, with a pair of lion dancers at the front, and a clown throwing and catching colored balls in the middle, accompanied by the beating of gongs and drums, a young boy appeared on stilts, walking on stilts, shouting: "The circus tour, the last one. The last one! Don't miss it if you pass by!"
"Ah! It's Long Er!" Ning Ning recognized the boy on stilts, and she waved at him with a smile in the crowd.
Long Er looked over, as if he saw her, but also as if he didn't see her, he waved at the crowd and made a strange gesture.
After waiting for the team to pass, Ning Ning turned around with a smile, froze for a while, and asked, "Dad, what's wrong?"
Boss Qu retracted his gaze, smiled and said to her, "It's nothing, let's go."
Ning Ning knew him well, and he must have found something wrong with the expression on his face. She turned her head to look in the direction where Long Er left, thinking, "Chen Junyan, are you doing something?"
She smiled. When passing by the gate of the circus, she stopped and refused to go. She pointed to the gate that kept going in and out of the crowd and said, "I want to see it too."
"... You watch it every day, aren't you tired of it?" Boss Qu said.
"It's different." Ning Ning said, "It's different from a group of people looking at it alone."
Boss Qu thought she was alone for a long time, and wanted to experience the feeling of being crowded with people, he shook his head helplessly and said, "Dad told you what's different, that is, if you stand still, you can instantly pan ten meters and see. ."
They looked over together, and a man who was just passing by was accidentally surrounded by the crowd and disappeared into the gate. In the end, he only had time to shout: "I just went out to make some soy sauce!!"
Spring Festival…
This terrible word flashed through Ning Ning's mind.
Why do humans torture each other! Ning Ning closed his eyes tightly, then suddenly shook off Boss Qu's hand, and ran over by himself, the figure was swept away by the crowd at once, leaving only one voice: "I don't care, I just want to see!"
"Ning'er!" Boss Qu shouted from behind, and then hurried after him.
People crowded people, people pushed people, Ning Ning felt that she moved ten meters in an instant and came to the gate. A gatekeeper raised his hand to stop her: "Two coppers for admission."
Ning Ning went in in a hurry and took out a silver dollar for him: "No need to look for it."
The guard put it away, hey hey smiled and walked away. After she went in, she found two tents in front of her. The tent on the left was gray and patched, and the tent on the right was embroidered with many patterns. , the two-headed man and so on...
Ning Ning wanted to go to the right to have a look, but there were two janitors standing at the entrance of the tent on the right. One of them was a janitor she knew and knew her, because she shaved his beard and eyebrows, so she just walked over, Will he be stopped by him
When he was hesitating, a circus boy covered his stomach and ran over, not knowing what he said to the hairless janitor, the hairless janitor left with him, leaving only another person with unfamiliar eyebrows. Watchmen.
Several guests passed by Ning Ning, she raised her heels behind them, then saw the gatekeeper raise his hand to stop them, and said, "Ten coins for admission."
"It's so expensive!" The group of people exclaimed, and some were reluctant to spend so much money. One of them asked, "What's in it? It's worth so much money to swallow a knife and spit fire?"
"Of course it's worth it!" said the gatekeeper. "The Rat Skin Man, the Singing Dog, and the Bone Spirit are all rare things you can't see anywhere else! And today is the last day. If you don't watch it, you won't see it tomorrow!"
Several people began to discuss hesitantly, Ning Ning was afraid that the hairless gatekeeper would come back early, pushed them away, and paid for it himself.
Open the thick curtain, and it is like another world inside.
There was an arc-shaped stage head-on, and there were several rows of seats under the stage. Perhaps because of the high ticket price, there were not many people on the seats, and many people refused to sit obediently and gathered in front of the stage.
There was a puppy on the stage, it wasn't a precious breed, and it wasn't cute. Ning Ning was wondering what was so good about it, but she saw it raised its head, looked at her with human eyes, and sang: "Love. I don't know where I started, and I go deep, the living can die, and the dead can live."
Ning Ning was so frightened that she stepped back a few steps and bumped into someone's chest.
"Miss." Chen Junyan's voice sounded behind her, "Follow me."
He pulled her to sit down in the most inconspicuous position, and there were scattered guests scattered around, and he hid them in the middle.
"Look." Chen Junyan sat next to Ning Ning, looked at the stage and said, "This is the real circus."
The curtain opens and the actors take the stage. The first person to come up was a rat-skin man. Although it was a human figure, he had a rat-skin tail and stretched out his arms for the audience to touch. Everyone who touched it was amazed. Behind him came a big-headed doll with a big head. He was as thin as a jar, but his limbs were as thin as firewood and soft as cotton. He could not walk on his own. He was carried by a two-headed girl. The group of demons danced wildly, strangely. [Note 1]
"Miss." Chen Junyan asked beside Ning Ning, "Do you believe there are really puppies who can sing in this world?"
On the stage, the puppy sang in the voice of a young man: "The dog is barking, the wind is cruel, the graves are piled up, the female ghost worships the moonlight..."
Accompanied by his singing, the curtain was lifted, and a familiar figure came up from the background.
It's Li Xiulan.
She dressed like an actress today, with a flowered waistcoat and a red jacket. She looked down the stage and landed on Ning Ning and Chen Junyan, her eyes sharpened, her face smiling, and then she flung her sleeves, her long sleeves waving like waves. Throwing it out, the two arms below the sleeves, below the elbows, were bloodless and fleshless, leaving only the bones.
Ning Ning's face turned pale and felt a little nauseous...
"No." Chen Junyan said softly beside her, "He was originally a person. After being kidnapped, he first used medicine to rot off the skin on his body, then burned the dog's skin with ashes and pasted the medicine, and then raised him with the dog. When he drinks dog milk and grows dog hair, he is no longer a human being, but a singing dog of the circus.”[2]
He suddenly turned his head, looked at Ning Ning, and said to her, "Didn't you ask me why I was afraid? This is the reason, I am afraid that one day, I will end up like him and Li Xiulan, miss. , your father he is..."
"Close the door!" Boss Qu suddenly walked in from outside the tent, followed by a group of guards, Long Er, who was walking on stilts to let out the wind, the dog egg who pretended to have diarrhea to draw the doorman away, and several other teenagers who were tied up and still on the ground. As soon as one knelt down, he couldn't help shouting in fear: "It's not me! It's not me! It's all what Chen Junyan asked me to do!"
Boss Qu didn't even look at him, his eyes swept across the crowd anxiously, and settled on Ning Ning.
"The circus handles internal affairs today." As he walked towards Ningning quickly, he commanded loudly, "Old Zhang, refund the money to the guests!"
When the money was refunded, they were invited out.
After the clearing, only Boss Qu, Ning Ning, Chen Junyan, a group of pale-faced teenagers and many actors on stage were left in the tent.
Boss Qu came to Ning Ning and stretched out his hand to pull her over, but as soon as his hand touched her shoulder, Ning Ning reflexively reached out and pushed, she didn't exert much force, but he took two or three steps back, shocked look at her.
"I..." Ning Ning looked at him, no matter if she was Qu Ning'er or she was Ning Ning, the moment was the same, her spirit was greatly impacted, and now she looked at Boss Qu. His eyes... full of the same fear as everyone else's.
Boss Qu stared at her blankly, with great pain, great loss, and a hint of tears in his eyes, but his subordinates were behind him, the circus people were behind him, he couldn't cry in front of them, so he He closed his eyes, and when he opened it again, the great pain and loss turned into great anger, he looked at Chen Junyan, gritted his teeth, and said word by word: "Chen Junyan, you have done a good deed! You have to accept the punishment, all of you. be punished!"
[Note 1] [Note 2] Source: Xu Ke, a reporter at the end of the Qing Dynasty, recorded the "Qing Barnyard Banknotes", collected by Baidu, Zibuyu, etc.
small theater:
Boss Qu pointed his gun at the author, and said coldly, "Why doesn't my circus have a name?"
The author cried: "I can't come up with a name!! I originally wanted to call it the Qujia Circus, but at first glance I thought it was Rujia..."
"boom!"
Post another paragraph of yesterday's best message~~=v=praise the sparrow sauce and rain sauce.
Sparrow: "Chen Junyan: What is our slogan? Make trouble! Make trouble! Make trouble!"
rain: damn, you turned my handsome male lead into a handsome hamster