"May I have your name?"
"And you, what's your name?" Dandan asked in return.
"I am Song Zhigao, and his name is Tang Huaiyu."
"Song what Gao? Cut cake?"
Song Zhigao, dragging his tattered cloth shoes with the heels flattened, grinned foolishly.
"Yes, I may be tall, but my ambitions are not. My only ambition is to eat cut cake. Cut cake, hmm, not bad."
My mouth watered instantly. The vendors selling glutinous rice cakes all push a cart with a counter lined with polished copper plates, so shiny you could see your reflection. In the center of the counter is a large piece of glutinous rice cake made from millet flour, with a layer of yellow peas underneath, topped with dates, candied green onions, osmanthus flowers, and all sorts of small desserts. Then it's steamed in a large pot, inverted onto the counter, and sliced off piece by piece with a knife. You dip it in white sugar, pick it up with a bamboo skewer, and eat it—it's so tender, soft, and sweet…
"Oh, we don't have cut cake, but we do have these." He quickly showed her two skewers of candied hawthorn.
"A bunch of red berries, a bunch of crabapple blossoms. What...what do you want?"
As they were talking, Hu Nian suddenly realized that the gift was originally meant for Huaiyu, but upon seeing the young girl, he had forgotten about his brother. His hand froze between the two of them.
Zhigao could only hand the red fruit to Dandan and the crabapple to Huaiyu, while he himself seemed indifferent and disappointed.
Huaiyu asked, "How much?"
Zhi Gao Pi Ke Yi Shi: "I don't want money, I found it."
"Pick up? Steal! Don't get caught again and they'll beat you to a pulp."
I don't want to.
How could he possibly save face in front of a young girl? Zhigao chuckled:
"How come you even revealed something about pooping green poop? Huh? Do you want it back? If not, give it back to me."
Huaiyu took the first bite; the sticky sugar was fragrant and crunchy, and the candied hawthorns were too big to finish in one bite. The flesh was soft and sour. The rock sugar shattered, leaving horizontal, vertical, straight, and diagonal lines on the candied hawthorns. Huaiyu then held the string of candied hawthorns to Zhigao's lips: "Eat, eat, eat!"
"Hey, eat up." Zhigao remembered he didn't know who Dandan was, so he quickly asked, "What's your name?"
"peony."
"What peony?"
"What 'what' peony!"
"Is it a red peony, a green peony? Or a white peony, or a black peony?"
"I won't tell you." She ate a candied hawthorn while fiddling with her long braid. She waited for him to ask again.
"Speak?"
"I won't tell you." Dandan was deliberately teasing the little monkey. Although she was eating someone else's food, she ignored it, her eyes darting around as if to say: I won't tell you even if you ask again.
"Speak?" Huaiyu hadn't said a word until now; it turned out he hadn't exchanged more than a few words with her. Now that he asked, Dandan stopped being coy and immediately answered.
"I don't know. I have no father or mother. But my uncle's surname is Huang, my brother's surname is Huang, and I don't have a surname. They call me Dandan."
Huaiyu nodded: "My surname is Tang."
“He already said that.” She pointed at Zhigao with the end of her braid.
"Hey, why is your braid so long?" Zhigao asked.
I won't tell you.
"Let's close the door, Huaiyu. Ah, it must be her mischievousness, her uncle..."
Pulling a braid and spanking it only makes it grow longer. I'm sure I'll win.
Dandan got angry, her face flushed red, and she glared fiercely at Zhigao, saying...
If you don't speak, what do you mean by spanking?
Zhigao noticed a small ailment between the eyelashes on Dandan's lower left eyelid.
"Warm?" Zhigao looked closely and said, "You still have a little black spot. Let me blow it off for you!"
Before she could even pucker her lips and blow, Huaiyu, with her clear-sighted observation, immediately declared, "Yes!"
A disease.
"A disease on your eyelid? That's really strange! Dandan, are your tears..."
Black?
"snort!"
“I also have a stall, it’s in the armpit, nobody’s ever seen it, but it’s bigger than yours. You’re so tiny, you’ll fall to the ground in the blink of an eye.” Zhigao said, then made a face and pretended to be sick, then picked it up with his delicate hand and shoved it back into Dandan’s eye socket. Dandan laughed and dodged it.
"No, I'm small in stature but big in ambition."
"I am Zhigao, and you are Zhida. I pay my respects to you, sir!" Before he finished speaking, he started pulling her braid.
Zhigao was always lively and loved to talk, so Huaiyu let him do the monologue. The moment he saw him about to make a move, he would protect the little girl. Huaiyu didn't talk much, but when she did, Zhigao would listen intently. One of his sentences was worth a hundred and seventy of his.
"Qiegao!" Huaiyu called out to him, mimicking Dandan, "Qiegao, don't bully people like that."
"Don't touch my hair!" Dan Dan immediately coiled her long braid around her neck, one or two loops. Goodness, it's really long! Huai Yu was also quite surprised.
Dandan went around behind the tree and cursed Zhigao: "You stinky cut cake! You're all prickly and thorny, I'm not going to be friends with you."