马上到
The delivery rider who’s always on her way
Name: ________________ Date: ________
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 像 | xiàng | like; as |
| 回答 | huídá | to answer; to reply; answer; reply |
| 一边 | yìbiān | at the same time; while (as in 一边吃一边说) (as in pairs) |
| 奇怪 | qíguài | strange; odd; weird |
| 西瓜 | xīguā | watermelon |
| 以为 | yǐwéi | to think (mistakenly); to assume |
| 张 | zhāng | surname Zhang |
| 外卖 | wàimài | takeout; food delivery |
| 纸 | zhǐ | paper |
| 半天 | bàntiān | a long time; quite a while |
| 黑板 | hēibǎn | blackboard |
| 作业 | zuòyè | work; operation |
English (for the teacher)
Xiaotian is a delivery rider: not very tall, she talks very fast, walks like she’s running, and runs like she’s flying. She comes in at half past one every night to charge her phone. She doesn’t even take her helmet off when she comes in; her phone is always ringing, and she always answers with the same three words: “On my way!”
Once I asked her if she wanted a bag, and without even thinking she said: “On my way!” We both froze for a second, then couldn’t stop laughing.
While her phone charges she stands and eats bread, three bites to a roll. She says the night orders are the strangest: at two in the morning, someone orders a watermelon, someone orders an umbrella, and someone ordered just one bag of salt, with the note: urgent!
“You work so hard. Does your family know?”
“My son thinks I work in an office building.” She winked. “And I’m not lying to him: I go into twenty office buildings a day.” At the parents’ meeting last month, the teacher asked where she worked, and she said: “On the road.”
That night I showed her all the notes, including the seventy. She’s delivered food for five years and read tens of thousands of door numbers and addresses; writing on doors, on paper, on orders, she’s seen every kind.
She studied the notes for a long time: “This isn’t a schoolchild’s writing. It’s the writing of someone who teaches. Look, every stroke careful, just like writing on a blackboard. And they give marks, too. Isn’t that a teacher marking homework?”
“Could it be a nurse?”
Xiaotian said: “A nurse? I deliver to that hospital every day, and I can’t read a single word they write.”
She pushed a pen into my hand: “They’ve been writing to you for a month. Write one back!”
I wrote several and tore them all up. “Hello” was too polite; “Oi” was too rude. In the end I wrote just three words: “Who are you?” Before I went out the back at three, I tucked it under the coin tray.
Halfway through unloading I couldn’t bear it any longer and ran to the front to look. My note had gone, and under the coin tray was a new one:
“Twelve years, and you’re the seventh to ask. Get back to unloading. The driver has a bad back.”
Twelve years? I’d only been there a month.