Amao lived in a village within a city, or rather a village, because there was farmland nearby! Many of the people living in this area are rickshaws, and most of them are from the same hometown. Take a small path from the road and you'll soon be in this village within the city.
The courtyard where they lived was nothing but a mud-walled thatched cottage on three sides, enclosing a mud-flat that looked like a threshing ground. Almost all the men in the yard had gone out by car, and the yard was full of women and children. The repairman was called AD, not Amao's real brother, but a friend, that is, a "buddy". He was repairing a broken rickshaw on the mudflat. Everyone was puzzled to see Amao come back so early.
Amao talked about what happened at the Bund in the morning and excitedly pulled out a big handful of silver. And he introduced "Mr. Xu, an engineer at Meiya Chemical Plant" to everyone, who already knew what King Kong did on the way back. At that time, "engineers" seemed to have a very high social status. Not decades later, engineers and senior engineers would be less sought-after than managers and bosses who are everywhere on the streets. To know an engineer made Amao feel proud in front of a yard of people.
Amao's wife is a small-footed Anhui woman in her twenties. Not only had King Kong never seen anyone with bound feet before, but he had also heard of "old ladies with small feet". I didn't expect many young women to have small feet at this time.
Amao's wife was on the verge of tears when she heard that Amao was being bullied by foreigners; When Amao finished speaking and handed the money to his wife, she was so excited that she wanted to kneel down before King Kong. The King was so frightened that he hurriedly stopped him. Finally, with Amour's three children, two daughters and one son, he paid homage to King Kong.
AD, the car repairman, looked much stronger than Amao. He said, "Hey, you foreign rascore! If you touch me, I'll chop the evil man with an axe!"
Seeing that King Kong had no AIRS, AD took apart the bike and chatted with King Kong. "A few years ago when the Ninth Lord was still in Shanghai, a man from Anhui was not afraid of anyone. If anyone was going to bully an Anhui man, the Ninth Lord would take a group of his brothers with axes and fight with him..."
King Kong looked at AD, just like a coachman, but from what he said, it seemed like he was once a member of the underworld. It's just that the "Ninth Lord" has gone back to Anhui in the past two years, and their gang is not doing well: their "gang" has no name and no tight organization. Because the brothers are mostly from Anhui, they are called the Anhui Gang; They were also called the Axe Gang because they had bought a hundred firewood axes as weapons for the first operation.
The Ninth Lord's name was Wang Yaqiao. "Mr. Xu, have you heard about it?
As an ordinary engineering student, King Kong had only heard of the underworld leaders in Shanghai, such as Huang Jinrong and Du Yuesheng, and knew of someone named Zhang or something, but had never heard of Wang Yaqiao.
As he spoke, AD was rambling. The rounding of the wheel rims is a technically demanding job in car repair, and AD has a hard time doing it. King Kong felt the urge and went up to take the tools and started working himself. At first, AD didn't quite believe that this "big intellectual" could do this job, but after all, he was an expert. After a while, he knew that King Kong was more skilled than him. And it was obvious that King had worked as a car repairman. In a short while, King had assembled the car and adjusted the front and rear wheels and the brakes. AD did a bit more rickshaws, but he rarely did bicycles, and he secretly learned a few things from King Kong's repairs.
During this time, King also learned a little about the lives of the rickshaw pullers. The rental houses in this area were all in poor condition. Each house was just a little over ten square meters, the ground was muddy or SLATE, and most of the roofs were leaking and exposed. Each coachman rented only one room, and both adults and children were crammed together. On sunny days, they could light a fire outside the room to cook, and on rainy days, they could cook inside.
The rent for the house is cheap: the lowest is just eight cents a month. Some houses have a SLATE floor or are large in size and cost one or two yuan a month.
Women and children have only two meals a day: around nine in the morning and four or five in the evening. The rickshaw pullers get up very early in the morning, have breakfast and set off. Some bring cold rice, some don't bring water, and they have to wait until they get home in the evening to have another meal. The good food in the house was given to the men first, and the women and children had two meals a day and a little less.
King Kong's bike, after being repaired, was almost as good as new except for a few scratches on the paint. Just as King was about to say goodbye and go home, he suddenly heard a child crying. Amao's wife, upon hearing this, sighed and said, "Sin, sin! The fifth girl in the dilapidated courtyard next door is probably doomed." He turned to Amao and said, "We earn a lot today. Give them twenty cents to the good family?"
Amao agreed and immediately took the money over. King Kong followed and took a look.
In a burning yard, the house has been destroyed in the fire, and now except for the four walls which are basically still there, the rest can be considered an open space. Along the base of the yard, there were several shacks about a meter high, like dog kennels, made of stones, rotten planks, bamboo, etc. In the middle of the yard, where the house used to be, there are now several vegetable plots of one or two square meters, planted with rape and the like.
Outside the shack there were five or six children, the eldest of whom was a fourteen or fifteen-year-old girl. It was normal for most people to have patches on their clothes, but these children's clothes were even more tattered. The big girl was holding a little girl of four or five years old in her arms, with tears in her eyes but no sound. It was the three girls around them who were crying, aged eight, ten and twelve respectively.
The reason for the crying was that the four or five-year-old had a high fever for more than three days and was dying of illness. The child is called "Five Girls". Today they went to great trouble to get some wonton soup and leftover rice for Wunnan and made it into wonton soup to make rice porridge, which was one of the best dishes they knew. But Wu Nan drank only a little of the soup and couldn't eat any more, so they cried.
King Kong looked at Wannan. She was a pretty little girl. Her face was as pale as paper at this moment, her lips were bright red, and she was thin. How many cosmetics and weight-loss pills would women in another time and space use to pursue this image!
Wunan herself didn't cry, just squinted her eyes and looked at everyone listlessly. When she saw the King Kong, she moved the corner of her mouth slightly and smiled. King Kong felt a pang in her heart. Such a little life, about to die?
King Kong touched her forehead. It was really burning hot to the touch. "Take her to the doctor right now!" said King Kong. Saying this, he carried her over and hurried towards Amao's rickshaw. The big girl was called Da Nan, the elder sister of Wu Nan, and she and Amao followed. It was then that King Kong noticed that the girl's right leg was bent and she walked a bit shorter than her left leg. It was probably a post-polio syndrome and she was lame.
Amao asked King Kong, "Which gentleman are you going to see?" King said he wanted to see the nearest Western doctor.
King Kong let his eldest daughter carry his fifth daughter in the car, and he rode his bike along. After running for a while, he reached a clinic. It was a clinic run by a young German doctor named Hans, and he was alone, not even a nurse.
King Kong spoke Mandarin with the doctor, but Hans seemed not to understand, so he had to switch to English. After a while, it was discovered that Hans could speak Chinese, but only Shanghainese!
Taking his temperature, "104 degrees!" Hans said. King Kong was startled, but immediately remembered that he was talking about Fahrenheit. When converted to Celsius, Wannan had a fever of 40 degrees.
King Kong told Hans that he knew a little about medicine, and that was no exaggeration. There are also some syringes, forceps and scalpels at home. Influenced by his mother and his second girlfriend, King Kong also read some medical books and learned a little about medicine.
He listened to it with Hans' stethoscope and found a gongs in Wunnan's lungs, saying she had acute pneumonia. Hans came to the same conclusion. King Kong asked him to prescribe the medicine, and Hans took out just one sheet of paper, wrapped with three aspirin tablets. How can aspirin cure pneumonia? Kim asked him to prescribe antibiotics, but Hans didn't understand. King Kong said: "Antibiotics, penicillin,... Go with nicillin! Pair with Nicillin!" Hans still shook his head. "So, a type of fenamine anti-inflammatory drug? ..." Hans said he had never heard of it.
Hans shook his head and said that he had no idea about the "folk medicine and Chinese medicine" that King Kong was talking about, but by the "most advanced modern Western" level of medical care, now the illness of Wunnan could only be saved by God. All that can be done is to apply cold compresses to the patient's head, give some consolation medicine, and leave it to fate in the end! It seems that for some diseases, traditional Chinese medicine is more effective than surgery.
King Kong did not know that although penicillin was discovered by chance in the laboratory last year, the related paper was not published until a month later (June 1929). And the paper only said how such a bactericidal substance was discovered, but did not say it could be used in clinical practice. And with the slow spread of information at the time, of course no one in the Great China would know about it. Sulfonamide anti-inflammatory drugs won't be available until next year either.
People's lives are very vulnerable in the face of disease. Fortunately, King Kong has antibiotics! He said he would treat Wannan himself, ignoring Hans' suspicious looks. He hurriedly asked Amao to take Wannan to the hotel where he was staying.
When the four arrived at the hotel, King Kong took the fifth girl from the eldest girl's hand, and then the fifth girl called out to him gently but clearly, "Abba!" And he held his arm with his little hand.
King Kong had intended to give the big girl some money so that she could go back and buy some food for the children. But thinking of their doghouse and hearing Wannan's cry, he decided to let Wannan stay at the hotel. He called Amao back and sent all the children in the yard to the inn, and he treated them to a meal.
After putting Wu Nan on his bed, King Kong found the antibiotic "Amo Xianlin" he had brought. He knew it was a penicillin-like drug, but he didn't care whether Wannan was allergic to penicillin or not.
When King Kong was reading a medical book, he saw that when penicillin was first introduced, a very low dose was very effective. Later, when the bacteria became more resistant, a large dose from another time and space was needed. So he pulled out one capsule, poured it onto a piece of paper, and used another piece of paper to carefully divide the powder into six portions, having the five daughters take one portion each time.
The King said to the eldest, "This is the miracle medicine. Take it and you'll get better."
Looking at the tiny speck of white powder, Da Nan asked, "How expensive is this medicine?" Because this is a medicine that only he has in the world now, although it is cheap in another time and space, it is probably not available now even if you have money. King Kong thought for a moment and replied, "It will cost a hundred yuan." When Da Nan and Wu Nan heard this, their eyes widened a circle.
King Kong went out and bought some candies, asking Wunan to deliver the medicine. He asked his elder daughter to have a candy too, but she refused to eat it and insisted on leaving it to his younger sister. When a teenager is so sensible, King Kong is moved.
King Kong asked Da Nan about their situation. Both of them were orphans who had lost both parents and had the surname Wang. She had six siblings, two of whom have died. Now, in addition to her younger sister Wunan, she has two younger brothers. The elder brother is thirteen years old and is called A Ping, and the younger brother is nine years old and is called A Liang. There are also some children in the yard, all orphans.
He asked how much each of them needed for living expenses each month. Da Nan said it usually costs two yuan per person per month. One yuan or so can buy more than twenty jin of rice, and the rest can buy salt. But now they often have less than one yuan on average each month.
When King Kong heard this, he felt heartbroken and thought that even if it was three or five dollars a month, he should be able to support them now, so he decided to adopt them. He asked his eldest daughter if they would like him to adopt them. He would treat them all like his own children. The big girl, of course, was so excited that she couldn't speak. She just nodded and wanted to kneel down, but King Kong grabbed her.
At that moment, I heard someone Shouting at the entrance of the hotel, "Da Nan! Five girls!" . It turned out that a group of children had arrived at the hotel. The landlady wouldn't let them in, so they had to call them big girls.
King Kong found that there were not just five or six children, but thirteen of them, Big girls and five girls! Seven boys and six girls. It turned out that some of the older kids had gone out to work or look for food just now.
King Kong took them to a small restaurant, each of them had a bowl of noodles and a bowl of wontons, and brought a bowl of wontons to the five girls who stayed at the hotel. The children said they had never eaten anything so delicious before! I've never had such a good New Year in all these years!