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It's not bright yet, and the bluestone slabs in the alleys of the French Concession are still covered with a thin layer of white frost.

Zhao Xiaomao got up quietly, for fear of making any noise.

She walked to the stove, wiped her face with cold water, carefully wrapped the half piece of cold pancake left last night in oil paper, and put it close to her chest in her arms.

That little bit of body temperature is just enough to make the pancakes softer.

In the past few days, she broke her leg while running, but she encountered obstacles everywhere.

Yesterday I went to a cotton factory. People thought she was old and unwieldy, so they didn't even let her in.

The day before yesterday, when I went to the restaurant to wash dishes, the proprietress looked her up and down, curled her lips and said, "You look so sick, don't fall down in our store."

She gritted her teeth and said nothing, but her heart felt like being pricked by needles.

When I walked out of the door, the cold wind blew straight into my collar.

She shrunk her neck and walked east along Xiafei Road.

The forty minutes of walking made the soles of her feet numb.

When we arrived at the entrance of the foreign bank, the bronze plate with the anchor painted on it shone coldly under the gray sky.

There were already seven or eight women standing at the door. The older ones had gray hair, while the younger ones were also wrapped in ragged cotton-padded jackets. All of them were hunching their necks and stamping their feet from the cold.

Zhao Xiaomao stood silently at the end of the line and put her hands deeply into her sleeves.

The two women in front were muttering under their breath.

One of them sighed and said, "We only recruit one person to attend the lecture. Seven or eight people are competing for it. How can we get our turn?"

The other one rubbed his frozen hands and smiled bitterly: "You have to give it a try even if it's not your turn. The rice jars in the house are all bottomed out. If we don't find some income, will the whole family go to drink the northwest wind?"

Madam Zhao Xiaomao listened and said nothing.

She touched the pancake close to her heart and thought: If she could really stay, even if it was just a mouthful of hot rice.

She could also save her share and take it all back to Xiaomao.

With a "squeak" sound, the heavy wooden door opened.

A tall and thin man in a suit came out, his tie was tied crookedly, and there was an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

He squinted his eyes, and his eyes were like knives scratching around the group of women at the door.

"Just hire one. Try it for a day and clean the backyard warehouse. Whoever does the job cleanly will be retained."

Suddenly there was a suppressed sigh in the crowd, and someone whispered: "One? How can you win over this..."

The tall and thin man ignored it, turned around and walked inside.

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