How did hiring someone to press a pig image during Chinese New Year become a top trend?

Xu An unscrewed the lid of the thermos.

A gust of cool air wafted out of the bottle. He turned the enamel cup upside down and poured in about half a cup. The water was clear and free of impurities. He took a sip and his mouth went completely cold. It was the kind of coolness that comes from ice or water drawn from a deep well. On a 35-degree street, the effect of this sip of water was almost like pouring a bucket of cold water over his head.

After he finished drinking, he washed the cup, turned it upside down, and tightened the cap.

Then keep walking.

Three hundred meters later was the second thermos, with "Cold Water, Drink" written on it, and next to it was an upside-down enamel cup.

Three hundred meters more, the third one.

Xu An counted as he walked, and when he reached the ninth thermos, he saw a person.

A tricycle was parked under an old banyan tree by the roadside. The tricycle's cargo bed contained four or five empty large plastic buckets, and next to the buckets were about a dozen thermos flasks, two of which were being filled with water. A roll of red markers hung next to the cargo bed.

An old man was squatting next to a well, drawing water.

The wellhead was lined with stone slabs, and the well rope was made of new nylon, tied with a tin bucket. The old man lowered the tin bucket down, waited a few seconds, and then pulled it up with both hands alternately. The veins on his arms bulged. When the tin bucket came out of the well, the water surface was as smooth as a mirror, and not a drop spilled.

The old man looked to be in his early sixties, not very tall, about 1.6 meters. He was thin, so thin that you could see the shape of his bones in his arms. He was wearing a faded gray short-sleeved shirt with the collar pulled down wide, revealing a section of his tanned collarbone. He was wearing a straw hat with several frayed edges.

When Xu An walked over, the old man was pouring well water into a large plastic bucket.

"Uncle, did you put this water in?"

The old man looked up at him, his gaze sweeping over his canvas bag and cloth shoes.

"Hmm, have you had yours?"

"I had a drink, thank you."

"No need to thank me, it's hot outside, people can't stand it without a sip of cool water."

After the old man finished speaking, he squatted down again to draw water from the second bucket. Xu An stood beside him for two seconds, then squatted down and reached out to put his hand on the well rope.

"I'll pull it for you."

The old man looked at his hand and did not refuse.

With the two of them pulling together, the metal bucket was brought up much faster, and the water made a gurgling sound as it was poured into the plastic bucket.

The number of viewers in the live stream reached over two hundred.

"An Shen is doing chores for someone else again."

"This old man puts out thermos bottles on the roadside to give away free water to passersby. What a kind person he is."

"Did you count? From just now until now, An Shen has walked past nine thermos bottles, with an interval of about 300 meters, which means he has covered at least two or three kilometers."

After Xu An filled three buckets of water for the old man, the old man took out a pair of flat-nose pliers and a rag from the toolbox under the tricycle and began to check the remaining thermos bottles one by one.

He unscrewed the bottle cap, smelled the water, poured out a little to check for impurities, wiped the dust off the bottle with a cloth, and checked the rubber ring for aging and leaks before tightening the cap.

He inspected about ten bottles for twenty minutes, his technique even more meticulous than that of a quality inspector.

"Uncle, did you buy all these bottles yourself?"

The old man tightened the last bottle cap and put it in the truck bed.

"Not entirely. Some I bought and some were gifts. For the first two years, I paid for them all myself. A thermos cost about twenty yuan. I bought twelve the first year. Later, a passing driver saw them and thought it was a good thing, so he gave me a few. Then, the owner of the hardware store in town gave me two new ones every summer for free. Now I have a total of twenty-three. Three are broken, but the remaining twenty are still usable."

"Twenty thermos flasks, needing to be filled every day?"

"From June to September, I would get up at 4:30 every morning to fetch water and fill bottles. At 5:30, I would set off on my tricycle to place the bottles along the road. At noon, I would make another trip to collect the empty bottles, refill them, and put them back. At 4:00 in the afternoon, I would do a final inspection. After dark, I would collect them all, wash them clean, and use them the next day."

Xu An did the math.

I make three trips a day, each trip is six kilometers long, so the round trip is thirty-six kilometers.

"You ride your tricycle over 30 kilometers a day just to relieve yourself?"

The old man peeked out from under his straw hat, his eyes squinting in the sun, and glanced at him.

"It's been thirteen years, I'm used to it."

The density of comments in the live stream has increased.

Thirteen years.

"Four months a year, three trips a day, that's more than 15,000 trips over thirteen years."

"I'm impressed by this old man. He runs back and forth on the street in 35-degree weather so that others can have a drink of cool water. Doesn't he get hot himself?"

Xu An placed the canvas bag on the side of the tricycle, took out his water bottle from the bag, filled it with cold water, and then helped the old man unload the empty plastic bucket from the tricycle to prepare for the next round of well water.

"Uncle, why did you initially think of relieving yourself by the roadside?"

The old man put the tin bucket back into the well, the well rope hissing as it slid down his hand.

He did not answer immediately.

The well rope was lowered to the bottom, and the dull thud of the tin bucket hitting the water surface echoed up.

"This is the road in the summer of 2013."

The old man started pulling the rope, and Xu An helped out. The two of them pulled the bucket up.

"That July was even hotter than this year, the ground was so hot you could fry an egg on it. My wife was washing clothes for people in town to earn some pocket money. She finished work around 3 p.m. and walked home. It was a 6-kilometer journey, but she didn't ride her bike because the tire was flat and she couldn't push it, so she walked home."

The old man poured water into a plastic bucket; the sound of the water was loud, but his voice was even louder.

"She suffered heatstroke halfway through the journey and collapsed on the roadside. No one saw her. There were hardly any people walking on that section of road at three or four in the afternoon. The sun was so strong that even livestock didn't come out. She didn't have any water with her when she collapsed; there was only an empty cup in her bag."

Xu An's hand remained on the well rope, not moving.

"By the time someone found her, it was too late. She was taken to the town hospital and then transferred to the city hospital. The journey took more than an hour. By the time she arrived at the city hospital, she was already beyond saving. The doctor said that if she had drunk water to cool down half an hour earlier, she might have been saved."

The old man didn't stop his hands after he finished speaking. He continued to fetch water and pour it into the plastic bucket, his movements exactly the same as before, neither fast nor slow, as if he were doing something he did ten thousand times every day.

The number of viewers in the live stream exceeded 500.

The comments scrolled by slowly, one by one, at a very low speed.

"Just because there wasn't a drop of water on the road."

"Six kilometers of road, temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius, an empty cup, and no one passing by."

"So he put twenty thermos bottles on this road."

"He made sure everyone got to drink the water that his wife didn't get to drink."

Xu An poured the last bucket of water into the plastic bucket, and the old man began to fill the thermos with water. While filling, he used a stainless steel funnel to hold the bottle opening to prevent spillage. He stopped filling each bottle when it was about 90% full, not filling it too full so that passersby would not be burned when the water splashed out when they unscrewed the cap.

Even though it's cold water, it's a matter of habit and etiquette.

Xu An helped him stack the filled thermos bottles one by one in the truck bed and secured them with ropes to prevent them from tipping over when the tricycle bumped along.

"Uncle, did you dig this well yourself?"

"Yeah, in 2014 I spent 3,000 yuan to hire someone to take a taxi. It was 32 meters deep, and the water was cold enough. Before, we used tap water at home, but it wasn't cold enough and the effect was poor. Later, I thought about it and realized that we still had to use well water. The water from more than 30 meters underground was cold enough to quench our thirst."

Three thousand yuan is not a small amount for an old man in the countryside.

Xu An did not ask him where the money came from.

After the two of them filled all twenty thermos bottles, the old man climbed into the driver's seat of the tricycle, put his feet on the footrest, and glanced back at Xu An.

"Young man, are you heading to Mangshi?"

"Um."

"Then you can sit in the truck bed and I'll give you a ride for part of the way. I'm going to drop off bottles along the way for the next six kilometers."

Xu An hesitated for a moment.

He rarely hitched a ride with others along the way. There are two reasons for walking and one for hitchhiking: the two speeds allow you to see different things.

But he glanced at the old man's two arms, which were as thin as bamboo poles, and then at the weight of the twenty thermos flasks filled with water and the four buckets of spare water in the truck bed.

"Uncle, let me help you pedal."

The old man was stunned for a moment.

"You kicked it?"

"My legs are strong, you can sit in the back and give directions."

The old man chuckled and got out of the driver's seat, went around to the back of the truck bed, climbed in, and sat down in the middle of the thermos.

"Okay, keep pedaling. I'll tell you to stop when we get to the position."

Xu An straddled the driver's seat of the tricycle. The pedals were a bit low, so his legs were a little bent, but it didn't affect his power. He tried pedaling a couple of times and the wheels started turning. The thermos in the cargo bed made a couple of clinking sounds before being secured by a rope and then fell silent.

The tricycle slowly accelerated on the provincial highway. Xu An pedaled slowly but steadily, and the wheels made a rustling sound on the asphalt road.

There are over 800 viewers watching the live stream.

"An Shen is now riding a tricycle."

"This scene is so interesting. A 23-year-old young man from Henan is delivering water on a provincial highway by riding a tricycle driven by a 60-year-old man from Yunnan."

"Xu An, how come you can find work anywhere? You're the one carrying ginger, fetching water, and pedaling the cart."

"Stop laughing. Look at the old man's arms. If you really made him pedal this cart of water six kilometers back and forth three times, I'm afraid he'd get heatstroke first."

The first water release point has been reached, and the old man patted Xu An on the shoulder from inside the truck bed.

"Stop, under this banyan tree."

Xu An braked the car, and the old man took a thermos from the back of the truck, walked to the stone under the tree, put the thermos down, took out an upside-down enamel cup from his pocket and placed it next to him, and then wiped the surface of the stone with the rag in his hand.

"Uncle, you even clean stones?"

"What if someone wants to sit on the rock? How can they sit on it if it's dirty?"

Xu An smiled but didn't say anything. He helped the old man adjust the position of the enamel cup so that the rim was completely facing down to prevent dust from getting in.