最近这段时间对于散文类型的文字比较喜欢。
总觉得观点类的essay 看不到文章背后的人。虽然观点已经很个性了彰显了这个人，但总感觉人是躲在了观点的后面。
到是这种叙事性的文字，每一处生活场景的描述，每一个不经意的内心小心思的表达，感觉近，就像也去过场景里描述的那个地方，经历过同样的事情。
文字的好手大抵都是擅长写叙事性散文的吧。
以前不懂散文。
现在愈发觉得就是这种文体，在看似轻松的字里行间，给人建立了很强的内心共鸣。
原标题：The People Behind the Counter Are People
原作者：Min Jin Lee
原刊于：New York Times, May 14, 2020
转载未获授权，如有授权请联系删除。
I wanted some noodles.
You can get jajangmyeon, the Korean version of the Chinese black bean sauce noodles, in plenty of places. Queens has a strong jajangmyeon game, but I live in Harlem now, so it’s easier for me to go to 32nd Street in Manhattan.
When I got to the restaurant, I kept on my mask, disposable gloves and baseball hat. I stood between the front door and the entryway, which was sealed off with heavy plastic. No one could get inside. In that plastic sheeting in place of an interior door, there was a cutout portal, the size of a pet door flap, at waist level for payments and orders. The dining room was dark, the only light coming from the kitchen.
In no time, a petite Korean woman approached the desk, which served as the counter on her side of the plastic. Even behind the mask, I could make out her pretty oval face, the small chin. Gray T-shirt, black pants, apron and gloves. Hardly a drop of makeup. She was younger than me. I’m 51. Her eyes looked tired and worried.
I felt bad about my techno-style cycling mask that I’d bought on the internet. All the attractive models had sold out. If I were to rob someone, I’d wear this.
“Hello,” I said in Korean, trying to sound cheerful.
She brightened, her eyes smiling.
“How can I help you?”
I ordered two jajangmyeon.
“Ten minutes,” she said, pointing outside.
Arms folded, I waited in front of the restaurant and glanced east. Less than a block away, Mimi Fong’s family had a wonderful restaurant, which is now long gone. My childhood friend Mimi and I lived in Elmhurst, Queens, and went to the same elementary and middle schools, and our fathers had small businesses not five blocks away from each other in Midtown Manhattan.
Ours was a tiny wholesale store that sold costume jewelry, about 200 square feet. From 1977 to 1999, Monday through Friday, my parents opened at 7 and closed at 7, and on Saturday they closed at 3. To give our mom a break, my two sisters and I took turns working on Saturdays and school holidays. Sometimes, when I was working and knew Mimi was helping out her father, too, I’d visit her.
Mimi would be perched on her stool by the cash register. If he wasn’t busy, Mr. Fong would step out of his kitchen, the size of a New York City closet, and ask Mimi in Cantonese if I’d like something to eat. Sometimes her sisters would be bustling around, and I knew from watching them that if the napkins were folded, the fortune cookies and sauce packets were stocked away neatly, the tea was hot, and the tables were wiped clean, someone in the family had done all that work.
Two blocks west and two blocks south from where I was waiting for my jajangmyeon order was my parents’ store. It was there, from behind the counter, I learned that a supply chain isn’t an abstract concept; a real person forged each link.
Sometimes Harry, my dad’s supplier who had a brass jewelry business in Thailand, would stop by. A kind man with a sunny smile, he’d lay out his sample merchandise across the display case. The landlord, Mr. Justin, would pick up his rent check each month. He and Dad got along fine. The U.P.S. man would come daily to drop off and pick up packages.
If I sold a street peddler six pairs of gold-filled earrings at $1.50 a pair, I’d ring up $9 on the register. The manufacturer of the earrings charged my dad maybe $1.15 for the pair, which would mean that $2.10 was profit, and even as a kid in middle school, I understood what that money meant.
From that profit and whatever else we’d earned that day and in the rest of the month, my folks had to clear enough money to pay rent for the store and our apartment; the salary of their employee Mr. Shim, who was also given breakfast and lunch; utilities; business insurance; taxes; food; clothing; and health insurance. My sisters and I were always needing things — coats, sneakers, money for lunch.
We didn’t go on vacations. If my parents closed the store, then their customers — gift shop owners and peddlers who sold their wares on card tables in subway stations — would go elsewhere. We couldn’t afford to lose their sales.
I went to college at Yale, and for pocket money, I sold clothing at Ann Taylor on Chapel Street in New Haven. One Saturday, a beautiful woman and her daughter came in for cocktail dresses. They threw heaps of clothes at me, and I arranged them in the dressing room. That month, the sales manager was holding a contest — the best-selling associate would get a cash prize on top of commissions. I wanted to earn that money. Maybe it was a hundred bucks.
The mother and daughter ignored me, so I made myself invisible, trying only to anticipate what needed to be done. The daughter chose two velvet dresses that looked elegant on her.
My residential college, Trumbull, was about to host its “Trumball,” so I figured she was going to her residential college’s party.
“Are you going to the winter formal?” I asked.
The mother and daughter looked surprised.
“Do you go to Yale?” the mother asked.
I nodded, then turned to clean out the dressing room.
When I rang up the sale, they smiled nervously, embarrassed at their coldness. I felt sorry for them. I could have let on earlier.
The jajangmyeon restaurant door swung open.
The Korean woman in the apron handed me the paper bag and stepped back.
We bowed to each other, the way we might have at a Korean church.
“Su go ha se yo,” I said, which translates to “Keep up your hard work,” but that isn’t it exactly. The phrase is a kindness, meaning, I recognize you’re making an effort, and I encourage you to bear up, and it also means, I admire your labor.
My city is five boroughs, and each borough has many neighborhoods, and each neighborhood is made up of numerous blocks, and on each block, there are businesses, and in each one, there is a counter, and that’s where you and I meet.
I hope when we can take off our masks, I get to tell you how much I need you.
作者介绍：
Min Jin Lee
Alma mater
Yale College,
Georgetown University Law Center
Fiction
Her debut novel Free Food for Millionaires was published in 2007. It was named one of the Top 10 Novels of the Year by The Times of London, NPR’s Fresh Air, and USA Today; a notable novel by the San Francisco Chronicle; and a New York Times Editor’s Choice.
In 2017 Lee released a novel entitled Pachinko, which is an epic historical novel following characters from Korea who eventually migrate to Japan. The book received strong reviews including those from The Guardian, NPR, The New York Times. The book was named by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2017.
Pachinko was a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award for fiction.
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