Hold Fast · Chapter 7: Uncle Kang's Counter

September 16 · Light Rain

“A bulk drum of syrup would save you eighty a barrel, Boss Kang. Are you taking it or not?”

On the other end of the line, the supplier quoted the price a third time.

“No,” Kang Youfu said. “Same as always. Factory original.”

He hung up, and the shop was empty but for him. Rain tapped on the awning; water streaking down the glass door stretched the neon from the apartment complex across the street into long red lines. Half past ten at night. The last customer had left nearly an hour ago, leaving behind a crumpled wad of used napkins on a table.

Kang Youfu walked over, swept the napkins into the trash, and wiped the table down while he was at it. He had personally supervised the installation of that counter eight years ago, on opening day—artificial stone surface, its edges worn to a shine. He was forty-four that year, freshly laid off from the factory, standing at the entrance of the labor market clutching a job posting, staring at it for a long while. Then he folded the paper, tucked it in his pocket, turned around, and went to look at storefronts instead. He’d tell people: I can’t claim much else, but feeding people—that, I can do.

In the best years, at school dismissal time, the kids on this street would pack the little shop so full you couldn’t squeeze through the door. This spring, lookalike shops on the delivery platforms had multiplied overnight. Rent went up, meat prices went up—only his prices dared not go up. Last week, Lin Wanqing’s clarification video had filled the shop for three days. Among the customers was a mother with a child, saying they’d seen him in the video, and Kang Youfu gave the kid an extra handful of fries. On the fourth day, the shop was empty again—so empty you could hear the hum of the freezer.

He sat down behind the counter and opened his ledger. Water and electricity, 460. Beef up another two yuan a jin. Syrup… His pen hesitated, and he filled in the number in the expenses column, writing slower and slower.

Before closing, he wiped down the soda machine as always, the rag circling the dispensing nozzle. The machine was two years older than the shop itself—like him, it had reached the age where faults hid inside, making no sound, offering no complaint.

September 17 · Overcast

The rain stopped at noon, and the sun peeked out for half an hour in the afternoon.

Chen Dashan worked the office-district route at this hour. Past three, the orders thinned out, and he swung into this street on the way, hung his helmet on the handlebar, and planted himself at the counter: “Medium Coke. For here.”

Kang Youfu looked up, recognized him, said nothing, pressed a cup, slid it over—and watched him drink.

Chen Dashan took a sip. His brow twitched. He took another sip and set the cup down.

“Uncle Kang, try it yourself.”

Kang Youfu took a sip. “What about it?”

“It’s bitter,” Chen Dashan said. “Same bitterness as last month. That night I swapped it out for a big bottle because I didn’t want this bitter stuff poured into someone’s stomach that had been empty half the day. I came today to say something else, Uncle Kang. This bitterness—it’s not the ingredients’ fault.”

“Whose fault is it, then?”

“The machine’s.” Chen Dashan tipped his chin toward the soda machine. “Lend me your wrench. Let me take a look.”

Kang Youfu didn’t move. He’d run a shop on this street for eight years, and he’d only ever chosen the best ingredients. Letting someone take apart his machine on the spot was the same as letting someone lift the lid off his family’s cooking pot.

Chen Dashan didn’t push. He just talked about his own noodle shop. About the year business was bad, and to save a little money, he’d swapped the pork-bone broth he simmered for a dozen hours with a paste concentrate. Old customers’ tongues were sharp. One by one, slowly, they stopped coming. “The day I closed the shop, I didn’t cry. It was only later I understood: money lost can be earned again, but once a signature flavor is ruined, you’ve smashed it with your own two hands. Uncle Kang, you’re better than me—you never changed your ingredients. You just didn’t know the machine was lying to you.”

Kang Youfu stared at the machine for a long time. Words rumbled up from his throat: ”…Back then, when I went to the station to make a scene about you—I was the fool.”

“Write that off,” Chen Dashan said. “The Coke is what matters.”

At eleven that night, Kang Youfu made a phone call: “Come over.” He paused, then added, “I’ll fry you a burger. This one you have to let me pay for.”

“I’ll eat the burger,” Chen Dashan said. “But we’re not talking money.”

At eleven thirty, the roll-down shutter half lowered, Chen Dashan pulled a canvas bag from his delivery box—screwdrivers, brushes, food-grade cleaner, and a pitifully small kitchen scale. Half the markings on it were worn away. A leftover from the noodle shop; he’d never had the heart to throw it out.

The dispensing nozzle unscrewed to reveal a hardened, sticky rubber ring and a coat of dark-brown scale on the inner walls. When the parts soaked in hot water for a while, the basin slowly turned amber.

Kang Youfu crouched alongside, staring into that basin of water, saying nothing for a long time. There was one thing he didn’t say aloud: so all these days, this was what the customers had been drinking.

“Once the scale’s cleaned off, we’ll calibrate the ratio while we’re at it.” Chen Dashan set the scale on the stove—syrup, water, cup after cup. One to five: too sweet. One to six: flat. One to five-point-five: the fizz rose slowly, all the way up behind the nose.

“That’s the one,” Chen Dashan said. “Ice matters too. Your ice machine makes it too small—melts fast and waters the flavor down. From now on, crack big blocks, and chill the cups first.”

Kang Youfu fetched his ledger and wrote it down, stroke by stroke: September 17. Soda machine dismantled and cleaned. Syrup at five and a half. Ice in big blocks. Cups chilled first.

Eight years of bookkeeping, and he’d always pressed hard, the letters embossing through the paper. For the first time, beyond a column of figures, he wrote down something else.

While the parts soaked, Chen Dashan’s phone chimed. He stepped out to answer—a voice message from Tiantian, bright and crisp: “Dad, I braided my own pigtails today! Come home and see if they’re even!” He stood under the awning and listened to the whole thing, tucked the phone away, and came back to his brush. In this shop, one man carried a surgery fee in his heart, and another carried the rent, and neither said a word. Kang Youfu asked nothing. He turned and put the burger he’d been holding back for him onto the griddle again, and warmed it once more.

September 18 · Clear

At four thirty in the afternoon, Lin Wanqing came in. Just off work, laptop in her bag, she had to be at the hospital by six to wait in line for her father’s tests. Not much time. She propped the laptop on the counter.

“Uncle Kang, lend me a look at the menu.”

Kang Youfu pulled the laminated menu from under the counter, its corners curled. Twelve items crammed onto one sheet, the print all different sizes, three prices scribbled over and rewritten in ballpoint three times.

Wanqing read it three times through, then said: “Let me redo this for you. No charge.”

“Last time’s business is done and over.” Kang Youfu tugged the menu back. “Kid like you can’t be carrying everything on your own shoulders.”

“It’s not an apology.” Wanqing said, “I just want to do some work I’m actually good at.” She paused. “Since Dad’s been in the hospital, I’ve understood one thing: once a person lies down in a hospital bed, all they can do is pay out money. Whoever can still repay a kindness some other way—that’s a blessing. Uncle Kang, give me that blessing.”

Kang Youfu didn’t answer. After a while, he pushed the menu back across, and leaned in to look at it with her. For the first time, he looked at his own menu the way you’d look at some other shop’s.

The griddle sizzled. Kang Youfu fried beef patties and answered her questions in a scattered way: beef fetched fresh from the market every morning, marinated and fried same-day, gone when it’s gone; fries cut and soaked in water, drained only before they hit the oil; Coke syrup was the brand-name stuff, never cut with anything.

The new menu draft took shape on the screen: twelve items cut to nine, the type enlarged, and at the top, not a promotion, but a single line—

“Beef patties fried fresh daily. Gone when they’re gone.”

The second line: “Coke poured fresh, ice in big blocks that melt slow.”

Kang Youfu leaned in and studied it a long while. “Is this a menu?”

“This is the truth,” Wanqing said. “Good things don’t need shouting. Just set them out.”

She also drew up a design for the lightbox sign outside—the character “Fu” (Fortune) in its upper corner had been half dark for half a year; this time it got fixed, labor and materials included. And at the end, she printed out one extra plaque, palm-sized acrylic, and asked Uncle Kang if it could sit on the counter. It read: Delivery riders, if you’re worn out, come in and sit. Hot water’s free.

Kang Youfu read it aloud. “Hot water isn’t worth anything.”

“It is,” Wanqing said. She closed her laptop, glanced at her watch, and rose to hurry to the hospital.

At the bedside, her father, Lin Jianguo, put on his reading glasses and studied the menu draft she’d photographed, gazing at it a long time. “The letters need to be big. Old folks have to see them clearly.”

“Already made them big,” Wanqing said.

The old man smiled. “Good. A person repays what they can with what’s at hand—that beats your old dad lying in a hospital bed fretting.”

Evening brought Xiaofei too, phone in hand, asking at the door first: “Uncle Kang, can I film? Asking you first this time.”

He shot thirty seconds: Coke pressed out of the freshly cleaned machine, bubbles climbing in strings, big ice cubes turning slowly in the glass. The title he chose was honest: The Little Shop Everyone Misjudged Took Its Soda Machine Apart and Cleaned It for Three Hours. The numbers weren’t explosive, but among the comments was one: “Going there one of these days just for a cup.”

September 20 · Clear

Saturday noon, the shop sat at sixty percent full.

Sister Zhao came by with two riders to rest their feet. Kang Youfu pressed a Coke with his own hands, ice cracked in big blocks. Sister Zhao took a sip, then another, and her eyebrows went up: “Well now, Old Kang—you switched Coke brands?”

“Didn’t switch a thing,” Kang Youfu said. “Cleaned out its mouth.”

The whole room laughed. Kang Youfu turned to fetch the beef patties, and with his back to everyone, pressed the corner of his apron to his eyes.

At closing, he opened his ledger and wrote, stroke by stroke: September 20. Clear. The Coke is fixed. Today’s take was up two-tenths over last week—not much, but the good kind of more—walked in on their own, every one of them.

He didn’t stop writing. He added a line:

I owe Master Chen a meal; he won’t take payment. I owe Miss Lin a menu; she won’t take payment. Recording it all here. Debts like these you repay slow—and may they never be fully repaid.

Before closing, Chen Dashan came by to pick up the kitchen scale he’d left. Kang Youfu handed it back, then brought out a plate of freshly fried beef patties wrapped in waxed paper and set it on top of the scale.

“For Tiantian,” he said. “Don’t refuse. This isn’t about money. Craft for craft—that’s what you taught me.”

Chen Dashan stood a moment, then tucked the waxed-paper package into his insulated box. As he was about to mount his bike, Kang Youfu suddenly asked: “Old Chen, you keep that word on your lips—hold fast. What does it actually mean, holding fast?”

Chen Dashan swung a leg over the bike and thought for a moment. “When the sky’s falling, don’t run first. You hold on, and someone will come along to help.”

“And if no one ever comes?”

“Then you keep holding on,” Chen Dashan clicked his helmet strap, “and one day you become the one who helps.”

The taillight swung around the corner. Kang Youfu stood at the door, unmoving. The lightbox flickered on; the half-dark “Fu” was repaired now, glowing whole and complete. In the corner of the glass door, the palm-sized plaque: Delivery riders, if you’re worn out, come in and sit. Hot water’s free.

On this street, nobody’s days were easy. But valley lies beside valley, and when one hand reaches down, another hand—there’s always one close enough to catch.

(This story is adapted from real events. All names are pseudonyms.)