Sunlight barely squeezed into the bathroom on the second floor of the small shop in Chinatown.
Lin Wansheng was sitting on the toilet, enjoying the only time of the day that completely belonged to him.
But the tranquility was immediately shattered by urgent knocking from outside the door.
“Jimmy, hurry up, come out quick!! I can’t understand what this white guy wants!!”
Before the words even finished, the lock clicked, and his mom had already stuck half her body through.
“Hurry, hurry!!”
“Ahhh! Mom, I’m using the bathroom, birth mom!!”
Lin Wansheng frantically hid the magazine, pulled up his pants, and rushed out.
“What’re you so shy about? I’ve seen every part of you.”
——
Hurriedly pulling on his T-shirt, he followed his mother down the narrow wooden stairs, thump-thump-thump.
Downstairs in their family’s small supermarket, a helpless young white man with a backpack was watching their arrival with a bewildered expression.
“Hello, how may I help you?”
Lin Wansheng figured out what the man needed in a few words.
He took a bottle of beer from the top shelf, deftly slipped a brown paper bag over it, and handed it over.
He sent off this tourist who had accidentally wandered deep into Chinatown.
After seeing off the customer, he turned around to see his mom wearing an expression that said, “My eldest son is still the capable one.”
He sighed helplessly.
“Birth mom, you’ve been slacking off on your studies lately,” he advised helplessly.
“What’s the point of learning that?” his mother retorted without looking up, nimbly tidying the counter. “In Chinatown, speaking Cantonese is enough. I don’t need that foreign devil language.”
“Anyway, I’m not learning it anymore!!!”
Dad pulled him aside, swiftly glanced at his wife, and only when he saw she wasn’t paying attention did he lower his voice and speak rapidly.
“Don’t put too much pressure on your mom.”
“She’s been learning this whole time, it’s just… her brain can’t make the turn. At middle age, learning a new language is harder than climbing to heaven. Be more understanding of her.”
——
The life of the family of three had been anchored within these four square kilometers of Chinatown since he was six years old.
His parents ran a small supermarket with a breakfast counter attached. There were familiar languages and food here, schools and banks—enough to live comfortably.
Therefore, unless absolutely necessary, they never stepped out of this area.
Lin Wansheng completely understood his parents’ stubbornness, and he knew it wasn’t laziness or fear.
When he was just one year old, his parents had come here to struggle and strive; language was the greatest nightmare they had experienced.
He hadn’t witnessed those hardships firsthand, but he could catch glimpses of them from his mother’s drunken laments.
So, when that “necessary” moment arrived and they needed to step out of this familiar safe harbor, he naturally became the only bridge between his parents and the outside world.
He could only console himself like this. “Forget it, forget it, give Ms. Lin a little more time. Good food isn’t afraid of being late—she’ll learn it eventually.”
After thinking for a moment, he opened the [Miner Success System] in his mind.
[Foundation of Livelihood]
[Without shared speech, one cannot move an inch. How can you not know the language of Westerners? You must overcome this barrier and speak heart-to-heart with a hundred people to build a bridge of communication.]
[Progress: 87/100]
He sighed again. He had been startled by his mom just now and completely forgotten about needing to talk with someone for three minutes.
A complete waste of an opportunity.
It seemed that to fill the last few slots, he would still have to rely on his “street business.”
He expertly pulled out his work equipment from beneath the counter.
A clipboard with printed forms, a self-made City Youth Assistance Program ID badge he had laminated and hung around his neck, and a donation tin covered in stickers.
This getup was enough to make him look like a proper non-profit intern at the subway entrance.
As long as he stopped passersby and opened with lines like, “Would you be willing to contribute one minute for the future of at-risk urban youth?”
It was very easy to drag the conversation past three minutes.
This method had allowed him to nearly complete the mission in just two days.
He still didn’t know what the reward was.
Hopefully, it would be a million dollars.
Then he could move out of Chinatown.
…
Speaking of which, this system was an unexpected gain from last week’s summer vacation trip.
At the time, he had driven with the five members of the Li family next door to Yellowstone National Park.
Don’t ask why his parents didn’t go.
They definitely wouldn’t participate in this kind of non-essential travel.
And when they passed through Rock Springs,
the Li family happened to want to get out and rest.
And out of boredom, Lin Wansheng lit a stick of incense before the Chinese Massacre Memorial for those innocent compatriots who had died tragically.
Who would have known that this single stick of incense would awaken this antiquated system that was over a hundred years overdue.
No matter how he explained, the system stubbornly identified him as a ten-year-old Chinese miner in Rock Springs in 1885.
What gave him an even bigger headache was that the missions issued by the system were all in classical Chinese.
His parents’ teaching plus weekend tutoring had barely pieced together his Chinese foundation.
Daily communication was naturally no problem, but classical Chinese’s difficulty suddenly skyrocketed.
In Lin Wansheng’s eyes, this was simply heavenly scripture.
Fortunately, there were still translators in this world, so Lin Wansheng could figure out what the system missions meant.
So that he could understand them unhindered afterward.
These few days since returning from Yellowstone, Lin Wansheng had been cramming Chinese.
And through these days of exploring the missions, Lin Wansheng discovered that regardless of the topic,
as long as he talked with English speakers for more than three minutes, the mission progress would increase by one.
But the same person couldn’t trigger it repeatedly.
Lin Wansheng held his equipment in one hand and a meat bun he had just grabbed from the family breakfast counter in the other, walking toward the busiest Canal Street Station.
He took a fierce bite of the bun, calculating the mission reward in his heart.
Hopefully, it would be a million dollars.
That way, he could take his parents and move out of Chinatown.
Everything here was good; it was just too crowded.
So crowded it made one’s heart panic.
——
At the entrance of Canal Street Station, the tide of people breathed in and out like respiration. Tourists, local residents, and hurried office workers intermingled.
Lin Wansheng finished the bun in two or three bites and found a conspicuous spot.
Taking a deep breath, he put on his professional fake-human smile.
“Hi there, could you spare a minute for the at-risk youth support program?”
He stopped a Black lady carrying shopping bags; she politely shook her head and quickly walked away.
——
And so, rejections and occasional kindness played out nonstop over the next hour.
Lin Wansheng’s eloquence had been greatly honed these past two days.
He could always find suitable topics based on the other person’s attire and behavior.
Then, he would stretch the conversation past three minutes.
When an old lady stuffed five dollars into his tin and chatted with him for five minutes about domestic trivialities,
his mind finally transmitted:
[The tally of one hundred is now complete.]
[Mission: “Foundation of Livelihood” — Completed.]
[A reward descends from above. Please wait a moment…]
Lin Wansheng felt a burst of wild joy in his heart and was just preparing to pack up and go home when a frivolous voice came from behind him.
“Yo, isn’t this our ‘Lightning’ Lin? What, can’t hack it in football anymore, so you switched to charity?”
He turned around stiffly and saw several burly figures wearing team practice uniforms.
Leading them was the team’s star quarterback and captain, Mark, a tall white boy.
And the one speaking was Kevin beside him, the team’s starting wide receiver, looking at him and the donation tin in his hand with a mocking expression.
Lin Wansheng’s fist instantly clenched tight.
He had once been the team’s starting running back, renowned for his speed.
But starting from tenth grade, when his teammates began growing muscle like they were inflated, his physical development lagged behind completely.
His speed advantage was completely offset by his weight disadvantage; he went from starter to substitute.
In the end, he didn’t even make the summer training camp roster.
Kevin looked him up and down and laughed exaggeratedly. “Let me guess, are you fundraising for your own future? After all, you can’t even get a football scholarship anymore, can you?”
Second-generation immigrants, except for those who completely turned into ABCs,
the difficulty many faced was their parents’ language barrier.
Many first-generation immigrants actually couldn’t speak English (or other languages).
In this situation, the second generation would become a portable translation machine.
Whether going to the bank, school, hospital…
As soon as they left Chinatown, the second-generation immigrant would become their parents’ accompanying pet, unable to be separated for a moment.
Even during vacations, these kids were needed to help tend to the family business.