Page 154 - updated on July

Yu Jihui: “A Stinking Old Ninth – A Tale of the Coal Capital” (updated on July 2020)

of him, but didn’t know how to speak about it openly.

She would smile when he did his utmost to please

her. He mistook her smile as a kind of secret hint.

She lived alone in a small wooden house. He thought

that there was an opportunity to take advantage of

her. One night he secretly stole to her home and

knocked on the door. When she made sure it was

Squint, she flew into a rage and reprimanded him

loudly and seriously. The voice startled her

neighbours. They came out to see. Squint ran away,

covering his face in his hands.

Squint had been thinking I was a notorious Old

Stinking Ninth and also an abandoned big bachelor

and had been looked down upon. No woman could

take a fancy to me. He thought I would live as a

bachelor all my life. He never thought Black Peony

could be so good to me, so intimate with me. So he

was very angry. In addition, I had given him a punch

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