A full fifteen minutes passed before Cecilia Adler finally rode away on her bike.
On the way home, her path was blocked by a young woman carrying a child on her back.
She looked to be in her early thirties, with a slender build, and seemed to be in good spirits.
"Miss, want to buy some fish? Silver carp, fifty cents a jin. At the market, it's seventy or eighty cents, and you need ration tickets to buy it. You might not even be able to get any unless you pay a high price—probably a dollar, maybe even a dollar twenty or thirty."
Cecilia asked, "Where's the fish?"
"Just a moment." The woman walked into the nearby woods and pulled out a silver carp the length of her arm. "How about it?"
Cecilia observed that its gills were still moving—it wasn't dead. The scales were uniform, and it didn't look sick. "Not bad. How much does it weigh?"
The woman weighed it in front of Cecilia. "Twelve jin and three liang. Let's just call it twelve jin."
