America 1881: They Call Me Legend

This New Year should be the third Spring Festival since the establishment of New Roswell.

During the first Spring Festival, Chen Jianqiu asked Zhang Danian to make a brief introduction, and he spent the second Spring Festival with the Chinese in Iquique, Chile.

For the third Spring Festival, he had to make good plans.

So, on the last day in New York, Chen Jianqiu went to Lower Manhattan.

There, there is a small-scale Chinatown.

In the middle of the 19th century, a Cantonese businessman opened his first store here.

After that, more and more Chinese moved from the west coast.

They also settled here one after another, gradually forming a small settlement.

Compared with the upper city of Manhattan, this place can be called a slum, with all kinds of dilapidated apartments erected there, and there will be a fire from time to time, which makes the situation worse.

Things got even worse in Chinatown after the bill was announced.

Although the sensitivity of the East Coast to the bill is not the same as that of the West Coast, the unpopularity of the Chinese runs through the entire country.

In the Chinatown area, gangs are rampant.

Some of them began to fight each other based on the principle of "If you can't bully foreigners, you can't bully you?"

In addition, many Chinese were not allowed to write hobbies in certain novels at that time.

This has become a ghetto within a slum, a violent neighborhood within a violent neighborhood.

Not even the sleazy police in New York are willing to come and take care of them.

As long as the gang members don't leave this area, they can do whatever they like, anyway, the robbers are all Chinese themselves.

But Chen Jianqiu is not very clear about the situation here.

He wanted to see if there were any other authentic New Year's goods that he could buy.

Holiday was busy with Cleveland's security work, so people like Astor would naturally not appear in this kind of place.

So Chen Jianqiu walked into Chinatown alone.

There is still one month to go before the Spring Festival.

On the narrow streets, there is no sense of the year.

Chinese people wearing thick padded jackets and melon hats greeted each other on the street. Most of them still wore braids.

This made Chen Jianqiu look a little different inside.

With his hands in his sleeves, he looked around the shops on both sides, trying to see if there were any well-written couplets for sale.

But after walking a few houses, he was disappointed in the result.

not at all.

In addition to the grocery store, there is a Chinese restaurant here, or a laundry.

"If you want someone to write couplets for you, you can look at the corner in front, there is a man selling calligraphy there." A clerk in a grocery store said to Chen Jianqiu.

According to the guy's instructions, Chen Jianqiu found the stall.

He originally thought that most of the people who did this kind of business of selling letters and writing letters for others were old scholars.But what he saw was quite different from what he had imagined.

A man in his thirties was sitting in front of his booth.

In front of him were writing brushes, paper, and an inkstone, as well as pens and letter paper. He was wearing a Western-style high-collared shirt under a thick Chinese-style robe and mandarin jacket.

The back of the man's head was cut flat.With no braids, he, like Chen Jianqiu, has become an outlier in this neighborhood.

At this moment, he was writing something on paper with a pen.

Chen Jianqiu walked up.

"Sir, may I ask if there are Spring Festival couplets for sale?"

"Yes, you wait a moment."

Hearing the sound, the man bent down and went to get the red paper from under the table.

But when he inadvertently raised his head and saw Chen Jianqiu in front of him, he was stunned.

Because he found that Chen Jianqiu didn't wear braids like him.

But the man didn't say anything, but bent down again, picked some water from under the table into the inkstone, and started to grind ink:
"Sir, what do you want to write?"

"Let's just write something like, 'During the New Year in troubled times, what is the difference between high and low; ask the vast land, who is in charge of ups and downs'." Chen Jianqiu thought for a while and said.

The man was startled, took a breath, and the pen in his hand trembled slightly: "It's so bold. May I ask who you are?"

Chen Jianqiu smiled slightly: "I didn't write it."

But it seemed that the man's mind was in a mess, and he couldn't write any more.

He thought for a long time, but still put down his pen.

"I don't deserve to write such a vigorous couplet." He sighed.

This man seemed to have been hit by something, and there was a depression in his chest that he couldn't express.

Chen Jianqiu put his hands in his sleeves and looked at the man quietly.

"Wang Qingfu!"

A loud shout came from the street.

Chen Jianqiu raised his head and looked over.

Four or five rogue-like figures with braids were walking towards here.

The cloth robes on them were filthy, and their faces were sluggish, obviously they had just come out of "immortals".

The group walked to the man's stall.

The leading rogue flicked the braids on the back of his head,

He pressed half of his nose with one finger, and blew hard, and the snot flew out from the other nostril and fell into the man's inkstone.

"Who the hell let you set up a stall here?"

Poppy squinted at the man and asked angrily.

One of his feet was on the ground, and his body shook rhythmically.

The man kept silent, seemed to be patient, and didn't seem too bothered to answer.

Pompey's arrogance became even more arrogant, he looked up and down the man and his stall.

"I heard that you told those fools that it was us who corrupted the image of the Chinese and made foreigners look down on us. Is there such a thing?"

"Isn't it?" The man stared at the hooligans, gritted his teeth, with a look of resentment.

"Yo? I told you about your grandpa. I always look like this everywhere. I still have something to eat anyway." Poppi sneered with his mouth crooked.

"Don't you know how to make speeches? Don't you know English? Don't you know how to run a newspaper? Why did you come here to set up a stall? Didn't you see those foreigners give you half a penny?"

"Your meals are taken from your compatriots. You are worse than dogs!" The man couldn't bear it any longer, and angrily yelled.

"Yo, you fucking dare to talk back? Brothers, blow up his stall!"

Poppy winked at a few people around him.

And he himself had already flew out, wanting to kick over the man's stand.

But he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his knee.

Then he fell to the ground.

The man standing by the stall just now kicked his knee.

He felt as if his knee was shattered.

The other little hooligans rushed forward, and each of them got kicked.

Chen Jianqiu's kicks were extremely precise, and every kick hit their lower abdomen.

Those four or five people fell to the ground and rolled all over the floor, yelling "grandparents, parents, mothers".

The leader Poppi opened his eyes and saw Chen Jianqiu looking at him from above, without any emotional fluctuations in his eyes.

"Grandpa! Grandpa! Spare me!"

he wailed.

Chen Jianqiu lifted him up like a little chicken.

Poppi's face was pressed against the inkstone.

"Suck back what you sprayed out." Chen Jianqiu's voice was cold.

Poppy couldn't speak, half of his face was covered in ink.

In the end, it was his braids that took it all.

"Close the stall." Chen Jianqiu threw Poppi aside, and said to Wang Qingfu, "Are you the Wang Qingfu who founded "Meihua Xin Bao?"

"My name is Chen Jianqiu, let's talk in another place."

Wang Qingfu vaguely remembered where he heard or saw this name.

He suddenly remembered:
"Are you that big western boss, Chen Jianqiu?"

Chen Jianqiu nodded.

Hope was rekindled in Wang Qingfu's eyes.

His newspaper seems to be saved.