Chapter Three: Mistaken for a Beggar
730 Words
"What kind of world is this? Why is it so hard to find a job? The real reason is that Yuyi doesn't speak English, so she can't communicate with people. After trying all the jobs nearby for several days, she still couldn't get hired. Yuyi felt like a deflated ball, unable to muster any spirit. She had once been full of anticipation for her future life, dreaming of earning lots and lots of money here. She even dreamed of becoming a wealthy woman one day. But now, she couldn't even find a dishwashing job.
The gap between dreams and reality is just too vast. Dreams are too distant to be realized, while reality is too cruel, but one cannot refuse to accept it. Feeling the money in her pocket, she realized that if she couldn't find a job, she wouldn't have money for food, let alone rent. Then, she wouldn't just be homeless, she might even starve to death. Who knows, one day the newspaper headline might read, 'A Chinese girl starves to death on the streets of America.'
Oh my God, she hadn't done anything wrong in her whole life. They shouldn't treat her like this.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Yuyi said absentmindedly as she walked down the street and bumped into someone. In a panic, she apologized in Chinese, but the other person seemed not to understand, and just walked away without even looking at her.
Watching the person she bumped into walk away, Yuyi wondered if they were really blind. How could such a beautiful oriental girl not even be glanced at? Then she suddenly remembered her appearance and couldn't help but laugh, haha...
Laughing, she turned around and was suddenly tripped by something on the ground. Yuyi screamed as she fell to the ground, feeling a vague pain in her bare feet. Turning her head, she saw that the thing that tripped her was a bowl.
Who was so lacking in conscience to leave a bowl on the roadside, causing her to fall and hurt her foot? Why didn't they take the bowl with them when they left? For people in these two professions, the bowl is both a prop and a means of eating. Yuyi's mind was full of question marks.
"Young and still had to resort to begging," a voice said, and at the same time, a dollar bill fluttered into the bowl at Yuyi's feet.
A miracle happened: Mandarin. He was speaking Mandarin. On this American soil, it was the first time Yuyi had heard her own country's language. Although it wasn't very standard, it sounded very familiar.
Thinking about it, Yuyi couldn't care less about the pain in her feet. She wanted to take a good look at the person speaking Chinese. Wait, what did he just say? 'Young and still had to resort to begging'? And he even threw money into the bowl that tripped her. Was he talking about her? When did she become a beggar?
"Hey, foreigner, who are you calling a beggar?" Yuyi asked angrily. Although her current attire was very ordinary (cheap goods bought at the night market), and although she might become a beggar if she couldn't find a job, she hadn't stooped to that level yet. How could he just call her that, insulting her dignity as a Chinese person? One would rather die than be humiliated. Yuyi swore to uphold the dignity of the Chinese people, resolutely making him understand that she wasn't a beggar.
"Aren't you?" the foreigner asked back.
"Do I look like one?" Yuyi exclaimed. "I'm a flower, how can I look like a beggar? Are your eyes covered with something?"
"Yes, you do," the foreigner replied with a look that said, 'You obviously are, just admit it.'
"Can't you see that I fell and hurt myself and can't stand up?" With Yuyi's current position, she definitely didn't look like a beggar.
"Oh, not a beggar? Then are you filming a movie?" The foreigner lazily responded, still not believing that Yuyi wasn't a beggar. If she wasn't a beggar, then why was she lying on the ground like that?
"Take your stinky money back. Let me say it again, I'm not a beggar," Yuyi shouted, trying to get up. Her bare feet hurt so much, and this dog-eating-s**t posture had been maintained for too long, making it far from perfect."
- Writer
