stonecrandall Chapter 73 The Tour Group
Chapter 73 The Tour Group
Chapter 73 The Tour Group
Several more groups of tourists gradually gathered from the restaurant. Some seemed to be families, while others seemed to be friends who had come together. They stood around Sister Sun in groups of three or five, chatting and laughing. Only one middle-aged man with a thin face wandered around the crowd alone, looking serious and unsmiling.
Hu Yi checked his watch; there were still a few minutes before departure. He walked out of the hotel to call the bus driver, then returned to ask Sister Sun, "The bus will be here soon. Are we all here?"
"One more person needed." Sister Sun counted the number again, stood on tiptoe, looked around, and pointed, saying, "Hey, here she comes!"
Hu Yi turned his head and saw the elevator doors open, and a plump, middle-aged woman with a frizzy perm rushed out, shouting gruffly, "Oh dear! I'm so sorry, I got up really early, but then I dozed off in bed! Have you all eaten yet? Is it too late for me to get to the restaurant now?"
The other tourists all looked at her with smiles. Sister Sun said with a smile, "Hurry up and go get something to eat. The bus will be here soon."
"Alright! I'll eat quickly!" The eldest sister said, then dashed into the dining room.
Hu Yi chuckled dryly twice and whispered to Sister Sun, "This older sister is quite interesting."
"Northeasterners can be a bit absent-minded sometimes, but they're really nice people, very cheerful, unlike those big brothers over there." Sister Sun slightly raised her chin, looking at the thin middle-aged man wandering alone outside the crowd: "He seems to be a professor at some university, he loves educating people, it's an occupational hazard."
Hu Yi turned around following her gaze and happened to see the middle-aged man walking towards them with his hands behind his back. As he approached, Sister Sun muttered unhappily, "No organization, no discipline! They agreed on a meeting time, and there are always a few who don't follow it. It's outrageous!"
The thin, middle-aged man had a rather refined face, with gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. His greasy hair lay limply on top of his head, with a few strands drooping over his forehead. His old blue suit was slightly wrinkled, and he wore a pair of snow-white sneakers. He exuded the air of an old-fashioned intellectual. Hu Yi chuckled inwardly: In terms of outward appearance alone, this professor was far inferior to Sergei.
"Hey, it's okay." Sister Sun smiled and reassured her, "You're probably still jet-lagged and didn't sleep well."
"We're all out having fun, so let's all be considerate of each other."
The professor seemed somewhat dissatisfied with the woman from Northeast China, a slight displeasure on his face, but his tone remained calm, without revealing any obvious emotion: "Xiao Sun, it's not that I don't understand her. But we all face time zone differences. Why is everyone else able to gather on time, while she keeps oversleeping? I think for someone so irresponsible, we need to arrange a roommate for her to supervise her getting up on time. Otherwise—"
"Oh, look at what you're saying." Sister Sun smiled and casually interrupted him, "There are only two of you in our group staying in single rooms, we can't very well let you and her—you don't think so, right?"
"Hey! Don't talk nonsense, this kind of joke is no laughing matter!" The professor stopped the conversation, turning to look at Hu Yi: "Young comrade, I'll have to trouble you today."
Hu Yi smiled and said, "It's no trouble at all, you're too kind."
"Xiaoyu is a good tour guide, it's a pity she can't come today." The professor sadly brushed his hair back and cast an expectant look at Hu Yi: "Even though you're just filling in temporarily, you should treat this day as your own job and do your job well. That's how you show responsibility for your work."
Sure enough, they started lecturing me. Hu Yi felt a pang of bitterness in his heart, forced a smile, and remained silent.
"I know this is a tour group, and everyone is here to have fun. But as your tour guide, you not only have to make sure we have a good time, but you also have an obligation to provide detailed explanations of each attraction, especially those places with revolutionary significance. This is a golden opportunity to conduct ideological education for young people!"
Hu Yi hadn't heard anyone speak in such a tone in a long time, so he casually replied, "Um—okay."
The professor sighed softly and continued earnestly, "Of course, the people in this group aren't young anymore, but education isn't limited by age. A few days ago in Leningrad—now called St. Petersburg—the local tour guide knew very little about the October Revolution, and less about the significance of the cruiser Aurora than I did. It was heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking! Now we're in Moscow, and it's even more so—"
Hu Yi's smile almost froze, and he seemed to be hallucinating, as if the professor was the ultimate form of the long-winded Tang Monk from "A Chinese Odyssey" and the old man Fu Ming from "I Love My Family" who was always lecturing the younger generation.
In that brief moment of distraction, Hu Yi missed what the professor said next. He quickly snapped back to reality, only to see the woman from Northeast China wiping her mouth as she strode over and slapped the professor hard on the back: "You cultured man, what are you babbling about now?"
Save your breath. You gave Xiaoyu a good lecture the other day. Who wants to listen to your nonsense?!
The professor, startled by the camera, leaned forward, his glasses nearly slipping off his nose. He turned back angrily and glared at the older woman, wearing the helpless expression of a scholar encountering a soldier. Hu Yi quickly checked his watch: "Oh, you've just finished eating! The bus will be here soon, let's go to the door and get ready to board!"
The hotel where the tour group was staying was in a rather remote location, and it took a long time to get to the city center by car. The guests in the group were probably quite tired from the past few days of sightseeing. They were chatting energetically in the lobby just now, but once they got on the bus, they leaned back in their seats listlessly, closed their eyes, and fell silent.
Hu Yi remembered Yu Feifei saying that they should liven up the atmosphere on the bus and try to get closer to everyone. Now, seeing that the tour guide, Sister Sun, was slumped in her seat as listlessly as the tourists, Hu Yi took the initiative to pick up the microphone and gently blow a couple of times: "Feed? Feed?"
Several guests opened their eyes slightly. Hu Yi, holding the railing with one hand and the microphone in the other, said in a cheerful voice, "Good morning, everyone. Sister Sun has already introduced me at the hotel. Now, let me formally introduce myself again: My surname is Hu. You can call me Director Hu or Xiao Hu."
"Hello, Director Hu!" The woman from Northeast China sitting not far from him shouted at the top of her lungs.
"Hey—hey, thank you, big sister." Hu Yi was startled by the big sister's loud voice. Looking at the others, they were just staring at him expressionlessly.
Hu Yi's mind raced as he pondered what to say, when the woman from Northeast China spoke up again: "Director Hu, it's so boring sitting in the car, tell us a joke!"
"Okay!" Hu Yi readily agreed, then scratched his head in embarrassment, "But I—I don't know how to tell jokes."