星期天晚上的“下午餐厅”.docVIP

星期天晚上的“下午餐厅” 　　Jack星期天晚上一个人去一家名叫“下午餐厅”的饭店吃晚饭。在那里，发生了怎样有趣的故事？他碰到些什么人，吃的又如何？我们一起瞧瞧去吧。 　　 　　It’s Sunday evening and I have spent the day, eyes glued to my computer screen. It’s been windy here all day and cold,as well,as it can be at the end of February. The Spring Festival has come and has now been gone now for about a fortnight. Winter also came a long time ago but spring is still far behind. There is no sign of spring here. In any case,I was warned Huainan(淮南――编者注) has long winters and long summers, with little else in between. 　　Dinner is a slow affair at the Xiawu Fandian (Afternoon Restaurant). It has started late by Chinese standards where people, generally, eat early. I had to pull myself away from my hunt for moneymaking opportunities online. I probably made a couple of dollars filling in surveys and the like. Most of my chase ended in dead-ends as even surveys are limited to the developed world. People from the underdeveloped world need not eat nor provide for their old age,I think as I am stonewalled by one dead’end after another. A terse,‘for US residents only’ is all they say! Writers, in any case,are not expected to make much from their writing. It’s enough that people read their work! 　　Anyway,Xiawu Fandian(Afternoon Restaurant)! There’s a group of rustics,a family,dressed in dirty clothes,presided over by a young man in a fine suit―fine,by comparison. Farmers are too earthy to bother about appearances and the educated are too flighty not to. It’s a group of some half a dozen adults and an equal number of kids. Everyone’s cheeks are pink. A boy of about seven years’ old between his table and mine,where I sit alone. He wants to make conversation but I pretend I understand nothing, answering his ‘na ge guo jia’(where are you from) with a not-knowing smile. He bats his eyelids conspiratorially. I respond with the same, happy to use body language in place of words. I am soaking in their rusticity. 　　The chatter is loud as the kids have finished their m