Chapter 4: Daydreaming Between Two Streets

  It's already the third watch tonight, ah! Writing a new book is tough! Please don't worry, everyone, this book won't be abusive to the main character... it won't be angsty. It's just a story about one person and a group of people who put everything aside and pursue a dream!

  Chinatown, on the surface, seems to be a place where Chinese people gather, but in reality, it is their "refuge". However, even here, Chinese people continue to suffer. Here, they will still be attacked with stones, vegetable carts will be overturned, and queues will sometimes still be pulled.

  For many Chinese immigrants, they lived and resided in the crowded and narrow streets of Chinatown all their lives, never taking a step into the white world beyond. It was in Chinatown that Chinese immigrants brewed a unique immigrant culture under special circumstances with a special mental state. One could say that Chinatown was another hometown built by them in America. Only there could they lift their heads to speak loudly and laugh, only there did they feel slightly at ease, free and confident.

  This is Chinatown!

  Walking among Chinatown, Li Zichen looked at his fellow Chinese who were cutting off their queues or putting up the five-colored national flag outside their shops. He saw those wearing long gowns and magua but with a Western suit on top, they were his own compatriots!

  Occasionally seeing the photos of Sun Yat-sen and others hanging in street shops, Li Zichen couldn't help but sigh that he had come at the wrong time. If he had arrived a day earlier, he might have even met Sun Yat-sen and others who came to New York from Denver after the Wuchang Uprising. Who knows, maybe he could have even had a chance encounter with this founding father...

  Li Zichen couldn't help but feel a little regretful, thinking that he and he were only half a day apart. If it wasn't for his own identity issues, which had delayed him at Jackson Wilson Port, perhaps he could have really met the Founding Father. After all, when Li arrived at New York Central Station, he had just boarded a liner bound for London from the dock.

  "They're in London right now!"

  "Master, would you like to find a horse carriage?"

  Just as he was thinking deeply, a voice came from beside him. A 16 or 17-year-old boy who had been following Li Zichen spoke respectfully.

  "Ah Si, go find a horse carriage!"

  From Chinatown to Wall Street is still a long way to go, let alone that I don't even know how to get there.

  "Yes, young master!"

  As soon as he finished speaking, Ah Si ran towards the street like a bird, and Li Zichen couldn't help but smile when he saw Ah Si wearing a gray suit and a duck tongue hat, weaving through the crowd.

  A week ago, with the help of Captain Thomas Lee, I finally got rid of my "bail" and left Florida by train to New York. At the Chinese Association in New York's Chinatown, I met Ah Si, a young man who had smuggled himself from China to the United States, hoping to reunite with his father, only to find that his father had passed away two years ago. With no relatives to turn to, he had been working as an apprentice in Chinatown. Similarly, having no relatives of my own and needing someone familiar with New York to follow me around, everything seemed to fall into place naturally.

  In a short while, Ah Si brought over a Western-style hard-top carriage driven by another Chinese man and stopped it at the side of the road.

  "Master! The carriage has arrived."

  Nodding his head as he boarded the train car, Li Zichen gave a brief order to Ah Si.

  "Occupy Wall Street!"

  A horse-drawn carriage slowly made its way through the streets of Manhattan, watching the narrow streets outside where carriages and cars intersected, gazing at pedestrians wearing overcoats and top hats.

  "This is Manhattan in 1911!"

  Looking at the Manhattan in front of him, Li Zichen couldn't find the "concrete forest" and "standing city" he had seen before. The Manhattan Island, which would be called a symbol of America in later generations, also couldn't see the densely packed skyscrapers.

  However, New York at this time was already the most prosperous city in the world. Manhattan Island was bustling with people, and due to the construction of tens of thousands of buildings every year, the streets of New York were filled with building materials, and traffic congestion was far worse than 21st-century New York. The only thing that could make Li Zichen feel a little familiar was probably the reddish-brown sandstone buildings that dominated the urban landscape of New York.

  New York in this era is in a booming period, an era of luxury goods galloping horizontally, a golden age that makes the blood of idealistic new nobles boil.

  "Unfortunately, this place belongs only to white people!"

  Thinking of being sprayed with medicine at the Atlanta Customs, if it wasn't for Captain Thomas Lee's guarantee and payment of a $500 bail, Li Zichen thought to himself that this era's America was not some kind of paradise, at least not for an Asian person with yellow skin, here is not "beautiful".

  Li Zichen smiled and asked a question, casting his gaze at Ah Si sitting opposite him.

  "Ah Si, have you ever thought of returning to your country?"

  The young master's question made Ah Si stunned, and the two words "returning home" flashed in his eyes with an unusual light.

  "Who would have thought of being bullied by foreigners in their dreams..."

  If I had the money to return home, I would have gone back long ago. Why am I still staying in America and being bullied?

  "A third-class ticket costs one hundred twenty-six dollars!"

  After a sentence, Ah Si fell silent, his eyes fixed on the young master. The young master gave himself $30 a month; if he could hire him for several months, maybe...

  "Young master, it would have been better if you had come a day earlier!"

  "Huh?"

  Li Zichen was stunned by Ah Si's words, why it would be better if he came a day earlier.

  "Mr. Sun spoke at the meeting hall, I went there, Mr. Sun said..."

  When Ah Si spoke, Li Zichen noticed a hint of expectation in his eyes.

  "What did you say?"

  "Mr. Sun said that the Wuchang Uprising was successful, and the whole country responded to the uprising. The Manchu Qing dynasty would be overthrown soon, and the revolution would succeed quickly. The country would become a republic, China would become powerful, and foreigners would not dare to bully us anymore! Everyone said that the revolution had succeeded, the Han people would take charge of their own affairs, the country would naturally become strong, and our lives in foreign countries would be better!"

  A single sentence from Ah Si left Li Zichen speechless. Is this really the case? Perhaps for these people living in a foreign land, this is their simplest expectation, but what about reality? A successful revolution does not necessarily mean becoming strong.

  What else will await China in the next few decades?

  Li Zichen couldn't help but let out a long sigh as he pondered the events that would unfold over the next few decades.

  "Sometimes..."

  The words were on the tip of Li Zicheng's tongue, but he swallowed them back. For China, perhaps modern China was originally a country plagued by disasters and difficulties. The Second Revolution buried China's path to constitutionalism, and from then on, China took the familiar road of revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries, local warlords and central authorities, and inter-regional warlord conflicts, ultimately causing severe damage to the nation's vitality.

  "If I could have come back a few months earlier..."

  At that moment when Li Zichen was secretly thinking about this idea, he coldly sneered and said, "Returning a few months earlier, can you change history?"

  From a very young age, under the almost imperceptible influence of others, I didn't particularly like the term "revolution". In China's modern revolution, democracy, freedom, -ism, republicanism, and great unity... were all once used to invoke reason, modernity, individuality, humanity, and a new era. At the same time, these words were also used to incite violence in most people, consolidate power, trample rights, distort human nature, and create homogenization.

  In China's modern era, for decades on end, generation after generation of Chinese people fantasized about "justice" with the terms "revolutionary and counter-revolutionary", only to later use the name of revolution to slaughter and shed blood on Chinese soil, with tens of millions of ordinary people becoming sacrifices for "justice". But did they get their answer?

  "Perhaps, there has never been a great organization in China; perhaps, we have always drawn the worst lot in choosing the direction of Chinese society; perhaps, every opportunity we have leads to failure; perhaps. We are always repeating the mistakes and tragedies of history; perhaps, we still do not know where we come from or where we are going."

  No answer, for an answer, generations of Chinese people have been searching for over a hundred years, but until more than a hundred years later in China, people are still confused, facing the so-called strength, people are still searching for answers.

  As a young "calm faction" person, I have also sought answers, but what is the final answer?

  "There has never been an ultimate goal; there have only been social advancements."

  Thinking back to three years ago, when I was a sophomore, the debate on the forum with others, Li Zichen's face floated out a smile, perhaps this is the final answer, only sometimes some things replaced progress itself, although there is nothing in the world that can replace progress itself...

  At that moment when Li Zichen fell into contemplation, a dispute between him and his father emerged in the bottom of his heart, and finally his father summed it up with one sentence.

  "What's the point of thinking about these things? Just mind your own business!"

  "Can't even handle your own affairs, how can you have the ability to think about other things?"

  At the time when Li Zichen was deep in thought, the horse carriage rattled forward. At this moment, Li Zichen sitting inside the carriage did not see the coachman driving the horse carriage constantly giving way to other carriages or cars. For Chinese people of this era, even if they were driving on foreign streets, they almost instinctively gave way to foreigners, as if this servile mentality had already permeated their bones.

  The Chinese coachman on the box held his reins with a steady hand, and looked as calm as if he were driving through the streets of Pekin; but as he turned into Wall Street his manner changed, and he eyed the people whom he passed with a look of caution. He knew that here were men who could crush him like an ant, and he did not know what brought this gentleman to this place.

  The Chinese coachman stopped the carriage, looked at the police officer who was watching him from a distance with a sideways glance, and felt a bit nervous, swallowing his saliva, almost sweating in his palms, opened the door of the carriage, and said something softly to the people inside.

  "We made it to Wall Street, sir!"