Ge Liang

葛亮

Born in 1978, Ge Liang comes from a distinguished literary family that includes Chen Duxiu, who founded the influential New Youth magazine in 1915. The settings of Ge Liang’s fiction range from his hometown of Nanjing to more distant locations such as Vietnam; he transformed his urban landscape of Hong Kong (where he lectures at Hong Kong Baptist University) into the backdrop for the stories of The Raven, his first collection. Since then he has published Rosefinch, a novel, in addition to several more short story collections.

Questioning the Dead

问米

Illustration by Wang Yan

As evening fell, the king edged closer to his advisor; not to discuss his people, sadly, but to talk of ghosts and spirits. 

And that was the last time I saw Ah Rang. 

Sorry, I should explain how it was I came to know him. 

It was because of work. How should I put this? I’m a photographer. At the time just an amateur, of course, but I see no point in identifying with my primary occupation, because it was so unremarkable. You could say I was a civil servant. In reality, I was an attendant at a funeral parlor, in charge of welcoming and sending off guests both living and dead. So I invested myself in my hobby. It made me feel more dignified and useful. Of course, other people may not have seen it that way; I do have a tendency to take myself too seriously.  

The problem is that photography is not entirely an ideal profession. Its scope of engagement is extremely broad. I took wedding videos, photographed pets, and even chased a couple of movie stars for gossip magazines when money was tight. But what I want to make clear is that I’m the kind of person who draws a clear distinction between my work and my interests. Do not think that I don’t have principles. It’s because of my principles that I ended up meeting Kai – or, I should say, that I was willing to listen to him.

Kai’s mother-in-law died, and was cremated in our funeral home. 

They rented out our largest room for the funeral, and decorated it extravagantly. They ordered every possible accessory, including start-to-finish video recording. I found this requirement a little hard to understand – after all, it wasn’t like the departed was some great public figure. While a recording could allow friends and family to relive the pain of the moment, it was hard to say it had any historical value. The lady in the photograph looked extremely old, and the expression on her face was not a peaceful one. I heard she died of a stomach perforation. The whole memorial service seemed forced. The mourners gathered outside the hall were already impatient with waiting. A man with a beer belly was talking on his cell phone to a stock broker, his face displaying a panoply of emotions. The woman at his arm took out a cotton ball and began spot-removing her dark purple lipstick. She got half of it off, then pursed her lips in annoyance. The others simply stood around idly. 

From a professional standpoint, I had to agree that the whole thing was taking too long to get ready. The flower arrangement the client had ordered, a heart shape made with concentric layers of daisies, carnations, geraniums, irises, and lavender, was inevitably time-consuming, and it was made worse by the fact that they only ordered it two hours before the service. The pair of tissue-paper cranes had somehow gotten wet the night before; they kept sagging, and couldn’t be folded into any kind of dignified posture. Just as everyone else was running around in a frenzy, one guy was trudging back and forth around the room with a cigarette between his lips and a tripod on his shoulder. I said, “Bro, aren’t you pretty much okay where you are? You’re making me dizzy going back and forth like that.” 

He gave me a condescending side-eye and replied, “‘Pretty much okay’? If I get a bad angle and the shot doesn’t come out, are you gonna take the heat for it?” So I shut up. He was the official photographer, hired from a TV station where he’d made his name as key grip for a major matchmaking show. He had lots of experience recording living people.  Out of nowhere, he slapped my shoulder and said, “Son, real life has no outtakes.” I gaped. He was really dropping the knowledge on me now. I laughed awkwardly and moved away. 

Work continued. I was scolding one of our new hires for hanging the “She Is Still With Us” banner upside down, when Li, a co-worker, ran to me and gasped, “Is that guy gonna be okay?” 

“Who?” 

“The photographer.” Li pointed at him. He now had a hand over his stomach, his face had gone a deathly pale, and fat beads of sweat shone on his forehead. I walked over and asked what was wrong. 

He turned to me and said with trembling lips, “Had a bowl of mung bean curdle this morning. Been to the bathroom three times already.” Wonderful. Stick a fork in him. Gazing at his haggard appearance, I thought, well, I guess the bigger they are, the harder they really do fall. “Get yourself home and get some rest,” I said. “Move it.”

“What will I do about this?” he asked.

“Just don’t record.” I replied.

“No way,” he said. “I already took their security deposit.” His color worsened.

Li, who was standing with us, said to me, “Ma Da, you’re a good photographer. Help this guy out.” 

“Come on,” I replied. “I’m not going to embarrass myself in front of a master.” 

The photographer’s eyes lit up. “Hey, you,” he said to me. “You can do pans and close-ups and all that, right?” 

I chuckled. Still acting like you’re hot shit at a time like this? I thought. I said, “Nope,” and turned to leave. “Hey…” He waived an aggrieved hand. “All right, all right. It’s all you.” 

People who know they’re on camera really can act. When they’re supposed to be serious, they go completely serious, wailing like hell. All pure-hearted children and grandchildren crying and beating their breasts, mortally afraid of being the one in the video whose performance would become the subject of scorn. “The stench of unfiliality lasts for ten thousand years,” as they say. Late that evening, I was just going over the tape and thinking, Christ, they’re all Clark Gable and Rita fucking Heywood when their time comes, aren’t they? when the camera panned to a middle-aged man. He looked up, cocked his head to the side, and smiled. I jumped in fright. After composing myself, I rewound the tape and looked again. He really did goddamn smile, as warm and friendly as anything. My heart was beating fast as midnight closed around me. I felt like he was smiling at me in particular. 

A week later, I got a call. The guy on the other end spoke in a low, steady baritone. “Son, your bosses tell me that the recording of the old lady’s funeral last week was your handiwork.” 

I said, “Yup. Who are you?” 

“I’m the old lady’s son-in-law,” he replied. 

“Oh. I’m very sorry, I’m just a novice. I hope you’ll forgive the problems in the recording.” 

“Not at all, you did very well. Your composition was excellent. And you did a great job capturing the feeling.” 

Uh huh, I thought. Composition? I barely moved the camera. “What can I do for you?” I asked. 

“I want to collaborate with you on a project,” he replied. “Are you interested?” 

I thought for a moment. “Can you give me some details?” 

Thus it was I met Kai. When we met face-to-face, I saw immediately that he was the smiling man in the recording. He smiled in exactly the same friendly, outgoing fashion, and reached out for a handshake. His palm was warm and moist. 

“I’m a geomancer,” he said. “And I want you to help me film a documentary about séance mediums.” 

I waved him off. “Supernatural stuff doesn’t interest me. I’m a civil servant and a committed materialist. From a professional standpoint, the dead need to be respected; once they’ve gone, why yank them back for another go-round?” 

He didn’t seem disturbed, but smiled more intimately. “I can tell you don’t understand the spirit world well enough. What is a spirit? Scientifically speaking, a spirit is really just a magnetic field. You believe in magnetic fields, right?” I expressed no opinion, and he kept going. “This magnetic field has a memory, which holds to the body while the person lives. But as our organs fail or weaken with old age, we can no longer produce enough energy, and the field slowly leaves the body. After the body dies, the soul leaves it and becomes an independent entity made of energy. Due to the First Law of Thermodynamics, this energy field persists for a while, and the spirit begins to travel. That’s what we traditionally refer to as a roving ghost.” 

I interrupted him. “You make it sound scientific enough, but it still sounds unnatural. What exactly do you want me to do?” 

“Let me finish,” he replied. “While these spirits travel, they encounter bodies of similar types with similar fields, and can be incorporated into them. This is what we usually call possession. The medium is a person who can adjust his own magnetic field in such a way as to enable that process. The memory system within the magnetic field can be transmitted, just like the information on a strip of celluloid can be registered by a viewer’s brain through electromagnetic waves. The soul’s emotions, its ambitions, its established patterns of thought will all operate within the medium’s brain. This is how the so-called conversation between living and dead is effected. I’ve heard people say that séance rituals are becoming popular in the southeast Asian funeral industry. A lot of mediums are working there, helping bereaved friends and family understand their dead relative’s wishes. I want to go record it. We can’t know what’s really going on until we see it for ourselves.” 

I swallowed, and felt a slight excitement. But I held on to my self-control and asked, “Would there be any risk involved?” 

Kai laughed out loud. “At most, you might get possessed. A strong young man like you will have a natural resistance to foreign magnetic fields, so I doubt anyone would try. And if anyone does try to fool with you, we’ll get his goddamn bank account number.” 

I laughed myself, and added, “Kai, if you’re that good, why didn’t you get your mother-in-law’s account number?” 

He sneered. “She didn’t have much anyway, and my brother-in-law sucked up most of it. Hell, I bankrolled a big piece of that service!” 

We both guffawed loudly, and our laughter basically settled the deal.  

The trip to Vietnam did not get off to a smooth start. Right after we arrived in the Hanoi airport, the power went out. In all my years, it was the only time I’d seen something as ridiculous as a power outage in an airport – an eye-opening experience. A repeated announcement by a male voice in mincing English echoed through the blackness: all customs procedures would be halted until power was restored. 

Sitting in darkness, I furrowed my brow and muttered, “Bloody hell.” 

“Not Hell, but it may have been the work of spirits,” Kai said behind me in a dry voice. 

“You’re your own broken record, aren’t you?” 

Kai replied, “Places where spirits collect often experience strong electromagnetic activity. There once was a dairy farm out in Idaho that kept having unexplained power outages. Later, they discovered that it had been the site of a big explosion years before, and a lot of people died. They brought in a high-voltage line and ran a current through the place for two full hours. It did the trick. I’ve heard that many people have died in Hanoi airport in the past.” 

“All right, that’s enough.” I said. 

The power came back on. All was light.  

A light but constant rain fell in Hanoi for several days straight, and Hoàn Kiêm Lake was blanketed in fog. I asked Kai when we would be starting work. “There’s no rush,” he replied. 

“Well, if you’re in no rush, then I’m not either. You’re paying my room and board, so I might as well go on vacation.”

I went to explore the city on my own. When evening came, I sat down at a food vendor’s to have a bowl of pho, then ordered a baguette. The baguette was a real bargain, tasty and cheap. After I ate I kept walking, and went all the way from Dông Xuân Market to 36 Pho Phuong Street. 36 Pho Phuong was really interesting, with its vendors grouped together by trade. Cookware, umbrellas, and textiles were all in one area. One entire street was dedicated to selling colored flags. I turned into an alley where the vendors sold traditional ethnic clothing. Traditional Vietnamese clothing creates long, beautiful lines when worn by women, but I found the colors a shade too bland. I passed one stall with a few brightly-colored pieces hanging out front, and went inside. I was confronted with a seated old woman, who made no sign of welcome, but simply chewed a betel nut and watched me. I looked through a few items and hit upon a sapphire-blue silk shirt I liked. I asked the old woman how much it was. She looked at me, bent halfway over, and started speaking in a tongue I didn’t understand. Her wagging jaw disclosed a mouthful of teeth stained black from chewing betel. It turned my stomach, but I smiled and repeated my question to her in English. She looked at me in confusion, then suddenly reached out an arm to block me and said, “No!” I put the shirt down and turned to leave. Was my money not good enough for her? 

Just as I was going out, a young girl in a vest and hot pants came in. The old woman grabbed her and started jabbering, while pointing to me. The girl looked at me strangely, then asked in stuttering Chinese, “Who are you buying for?” Without thinking, I replied, “For my old lady.” 

“For your… old lady?” she asked, confused. 

I figured the slang might not have made sense to her; and since we weren’t actually married yet, I smiled and admitted in English, “For my girlfriend. Girlfriend, OK?” 

The young lady looked at me in shock. “Did your girlfriend die? How can you smile about it?” 

I was instantly furious. What did I ever do to you, I thought, that you should be cursing me like this? But then I saw the seriousness in her face, and realized that something was wrong. “What do you mean by that?” I asked. 

She replied, “My grandmother said you’ve been in here a long time. What is it you want? Do you really want to be hanging out in a funeral clothing store?” 

I turned on my heel and ran my ass out of there. Looking back, I yelled at the girl, “Screw you! You Vietnamese are sick, making nicer clothing for the dead than the living!” 

I hustled my way out of the alley, my heart still pounding in my ears. Suddenly the sky above me darkened, and the drizzle turned into a downpour. I hadn’t brought an umbrella, so I ran into a weird-looking sort of gazebo. My international cell phone rang: it was Kai, sounding noticeably impatient. “Where’d you go? We’ve looked everywhere. Come get your stuff, it’s time to work.” 

By the time we got to the Yun Shou Funeral Parlor, I was shivering with cold. We pulled up to the front door, but they wouldn’t let us park, and we had to wait until a stretch Cadillac rolled slowly in. I heard Kai’s assistant say, “Fuck. What do you need a hearse that big for? Gonna put the whole family in there?” 

“You young people just can’t stand other people’s good fortune, can you?” Kai replied. “Wherever you go, there will always be those who got rich first.” 

Observing through the car window, I thought the ostentation of the service seemed totally incongruous with the broken-down state of the funeral parlor. They said it was a government institution, but I could tell just by looking that it hadn’t been renovated in a while. The big sign over the narrow front door had seen better days, and was losing letters. And there was a portrait painted on the wall, now chipped and effaced, of an old man with slicked-back hair and a beard. “Who’s this,” I asked, “looking so happy?” 

“Hell,” said Kai, looking at me askance. “That’s Ho Chi Minh. You eighties kids don’t know a damn thing.” 

We walked along a narrow corridor, the sun lamps overhead flickering and humming loudly. A group of crying mourners approached, led by a young girl holding a black cremation box. As she passed by me, she muttered something. I asked the translator what she’d said. “Don’t pay any attention to her,” was his response. 

The director of the funeral parlor was a bald, middle-aged Cantonese man who came to greet us as soon as he saw us. Kai gave his assistant a look, and the assistant went forward and pushed an envelope into the director’s hand, saying, “A token of our thanks.” The director’s face broke into effulgent smiles, and he said to us, “You’re in luck. The medium today is Chinese. Of course, during the séance, he’ll still be speaking in Vietnamese. To make it easier, easier to communicate.” 

Kai smiled back. “That’s no problem. We’ve brought a translator.” 

Arriving at the memorial hall, we found that some members of the family had already taken their seats. In the front row was the girl, dressed in white mourning costume, and beside her a boy of a few years old. His mourning headscarf was so big it fell down over his eyes, and he was starting to whine. The girl fixed his headscarf, scolding him softly. Looking up, she noticed me setting up the tripod. She watched us for a moment with eyes narrowed, then turned to whisper to a young man seated behind her. The man stood up, immediately assuming a combative attitude, and marched up to the camera to yell something at me. “He says we’re not allowed to record,” reported the translator. Kai hurried over and stuffed an envelope in the young man’s hand, who weighed it for a second, then turned and left without a word. Kai breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God I came prepared. Money’s the only thing that gets you anywhere now.”

At this point, the pallbearers came in, pushing the casket. The girl whimpered a few times, then began to howl. Relatives comforted her for quite some time before she calmed down. The dead man, I thought, must have been her husband. 

Glittering offerings of all kinds covered the table. Crowded among them was a picture of a young man, a grave expression on his face. I thought it unlikely he died in his sleep.  The translator beside me said, “It was a car accident. They’d been married only two years.” 

A man in a long changshan entered the room. The translator told me this was the medium. Though I had prepared myself, seeing him was still a little surprising. He seemed much too young: barely over thirty, with clear eyes and a young complexion. The traditional square hat he wore ought to have been comic; yet on his head, it made him look like a figure from Peking opera. He held up a sword, then placed it firmly on the table. “Hey, hey,” said the translator, “we’re getting into some kung fu stuff here.” The medium sat down, took in a mouthful of water and spat it out onto yellow paper laid in front of him. Then he began intoning in a mellifluous voice that was actually quite pleasant to hear. I asked the translator what the medium was saying. The translator listened quietly for a while, then replied, “I don’t understand it either. I guess he’s calling on the spirits to help him.” 

I zoomed in on the medium. All of a sudden, his face contorted violently, and he collapsed on the table. Moments later he raised his head again, eyes still closed, and sat up in his chair. The girl in the front row, who had not taken her eyes off him the whole time, began to cry out. “She’s calling for her husband,” the translator told me. “His name is You-long.” 

The medium began to sway back and forth, muttering the whole time, as if he were looking for something. “It’s in him,” said the translator. “He’s asking where he is.” 

The girl began to cry.

The medium suddenly started shivering, and his tone of voice became intense. The translator said, “He’s going back and forth, saying he’s cold and hungry and doesn’t know where he is.” 

“Husband,” called the girl, “you’re back. How could you have abandoned me here, and our son too. He’s only just learned to say ‘Daddy’.”

The girl started crying again, and asked her husband how he was in the other world. The medium, eyes still closed, faced her direction and erupted in tears himself. I had to admit that, as a man, the sound of his sorrow was incredibly moving. It was rich in implication; one could hear regret, love, and attachment in it. 

“Give our son a name,” pleaded the girl in a broken voice. 

The medium stopped crying. He picked up a newspaper, and ran his palms over it. Then he drew two quivering circles with a calligraphy brush dipped in red ink. He threw the paper at the girl. Her relatives rushed to pick it up. I craned my neck, but couldn’t see what he’d circled. 

The audience started whispering, and the girl began to cry again. The translator listened, then said, “What kind of name is ‘Multi-Basket’? He drew those circles on an advertisement.” 

The girl stood up and started shouting. The translator interpreted for her: “What do you think you’re doing, giving your son such a BS name? Still as careless as ever, even after you’re dead?” 

I raised an eyebrow at him. “BS? Don’t start abbreve-ing on me here.” 

“Don’t interrupt me,” he replied. “I’m trying to make sure you understand.” 

The girl kept crying. “Now you’ve left me alone to go have fun again. When you were alive, you never spent time at home, just stayed out gambling. You weren’t even with me when I had our son. You spent all my family’s money – how am I going to live now? The government loan we took out to open the shop still has a month’s payment left, and we can’t even pay our employees. How am I going to live?” 

The medium, his face utterly passive, received the girl’s scolding without a word. On my viewfinder, however, I could see his cheeks slowly redden. Then he spoke. 

Whatever he said made the whole room go quiet. I saw that the translator was also frozen in amazement, and I asked what the medium had said. 

The translator came back to reality, leaned in and whispered, “It’s gotten interesting. He just said, I was out gambling, and you were at home with other men, weren’t you?” 

I was dumbstruck. Was this a Hollywood movie, or a Korean soap opera?  

The girl gaped at the medium and started to wail. It looked like the gloves were off now. The medium didn’t speak much; the girl was cursing and crying simultaneously. 

“What are they saying?” I asked the translator. “Interpret!” 

The translator’s eyes were wide as dinner plates. “I can’t keep up,” he said. “There’s too much information.” 

Suddenly, the medium’s face went bright red, and his expression became twisted and brutal. He stood up quickly, jumped over the table and snatched the girl. One hand closed tightly over her throat. 

Everyone was so shocked at first that nobody moved to help her. In the struggle, the medium yanked out a clump of the girl’s hair, then jumped over to the corpse, pried open the jaw, and began to stuff the hair into its mouth. 

“That’s bad,” said Kai. “He’s trying to take her with him.” He and a local geomancer rushed forward, grabbed the medium and dug the hair out of the corpse’s mouth. Kai pulled out a strip of rune paper, intoned a spell, and slapped it on the medium’s forehead while shouting, “Dust to dust, earth to earth. Go!” 

The medium shivered, then collapsed on the floor. After a while, he slowly opened his eyes, his calm demeanor now fully restored. He stood up, and moved to give his condolences to the girl and her family. The girl, who hadn’t calmed down, pushed him away roughly. Her young son wailed. The others all avoided him. He looked innocently at the audience. Only one middle-aged man next to him shook his hand and spoke to him, probably expressing his gratitude. 

Kai wiped sweat from his forehead and sighed. “Never thought I’d be handling an emergency down here. Guess I’ve still got the knack, though.” 

I opened my mouth but didn’t dare speak the question: How could a Vietnamese ghost possibly understand your Beijing accent?

As I was packing up, the medium came over and looked closely at my camera. He smiled at me, with a noticeable trace of exhaustion. 

That evening, we had dinner at a cantina called Little Hanoi. Kai invited Jin, the funeral parlor manager, and the medium. The medium, now dressed in jeans and a T-shirt like any other young man, was called Ah Rang. Kai and Jin talked and toasted each other enthusiastically, like they’d been best friends from infancy. I made polite conversation with the two of them while keeping an eye on Ah Rang, who drank silently on his own. “Hey, boss. Cheers.” He lifted his glass to mine, then drained it all. “The man can drink,” I said. He smiled. 

I asked him, “How long have you been in this business?” 

“Three years,” he replied, then fell silent again. 

“By your accent, I’d say you’re from south China,” I noted.

“I’m from Zhenhai, in Zhejiang.” 

“That’s a nice place,” I said. “Why’d you decide to come down here?”

“To make a living.” 

I thought: you’d never guess he was the silent type, judging from this afternoon. 

The waiter brought us over several steaming bowls of beef pho. “Eat it while it’s hot,” said Jin. “It’ll drive out the cold and damp. Nothing but rain these past few days.” 

Ah Rang raised his head and looked at me through the steam. “I feel like you don’t believe me.” I was just squeezing a lime into my pho; my thumb slipped, and a stream of juice shot into my eye. It burned hard. 

Kai paused too, then gave a forced laugh and said, “Why wouldn’t he believe you? He works for me, and all that matters is that I believe you. We still want to do some personal recording of you, you know.” 

Ah Rang shook his head. “Belief and disbelief, it’s all in the eyes.” 

“Look at him,” Kai replied. “He can’t even open his.” 

Rubbing my afflicted eye, I asked, “Do you mediums have taboos? Like ‘never ask about past events’?” 

Without waiting for me to finish, Ah Rang continued. “You interact with the dead frequently in your work, don’t you?” His voice was soft but clear. All three of us put down our chopsticks and looked at him. He dropped his gaze and started eating his pho, studiously picking out pieces of beef. 

The next day, we visited a Daoist temple near Dông Xuân Market in the old city. It was small and in poor repair, not as impressive as Quan Thanh Temple, but famous in its own right: they said that prayers to the Three Pure Ones were often answered. Ah Rang held séances here one day a week. Here, fees for speaking with the dead would be higher than at funeral parlors because the ghosts being contacted weren’t new. Some had been dead for a long time, and were on the verge of dispersing. To use Kai’s words, their magnetic fields were weak, so the medium would have to expend a lot of spiritual energy to bring them in. 

Today, the clients were a husband and wife of Chinese origin. Their son had jumped off a building a year before because of bad test grades in middle school. He was their only son, and the wife couldn’t have any more children. To lose one’s only son and heir at this age was a bitter thing for them, and the two parents were looking for some comfort. Family members introduced them to a newly-deceased girl of appropriate age, and the parents thought they might put on a wedding for their deceased son, so he might have someone to be with him in the other world. The children’s eight-character fortunes and the rest of it had already been examined satisfactorily, but the parents still wanted to hear their son’s opinion. 

Ah Rang sat behind his séance table, his expression showing deep sincerity. The robe he wore today was brighter than the one he wore the day before. He had rouged his cheeks and attached a false Daoist hairpiece, which made him look a little strange. 

The husband and wife appeared to be educated, civilized people. The husband’s hair was flecked with gray. His wife’s gaze, which was trained securely on Ah Rang, seemed a little empty. Ah Rang lighted a joss stick, chanted a spell, and bent his head down slowly. After a long pause, his whole body began to shiver. He gave one hard shake, then raised his head. His eyes were tightly closed, as if he were enduring a terrible pain. 

The wife watched him with a dazed expression. Very softly, she asked, “Son, is that you?” 

Ah Rang’s lips fluttered. “Mommy.” His voice was quiet and a little weak; you could hear a child’s immaturity. 

The mother covered her mouth with a handkerchief to help mute her sobs. The father rubbed her shoulder with one hand, and said, “Ah Xiang, Mommy and Daddy miss you.

“Silly child, how could you have been so stupid? Daddy was stern with you that day because he wanted you to do well. Do you want Daddy to regret it for the rest of his life…” After saying this, he could no longer hold back tears. 

The mother pushed him away, wiped her nose, and said, “Son, after you passed, I kept your room for you exactly the way it was. Whenever you want to come back, we’ll have it ready for you.”  

Ah Rang began to sob with them. He replied: “Mommy, I miss home too. But I don’t know how to get back. Could you please burn some things for me?” 

“Whatever you want, we’ll burn it for you,” the mother hastily replied. 

Ah Rang paused for a moment, then said, “Burn that Elva Hsiao CD for me.” 

The mother sounded confused. “Elva Hsiao?” 

“On the third shelf of my bookcase,” replied Ah Rang. “The shelf my mug is on, there’s a case full of CDs. Burn the model on my dresser drawer for me, too.” 

The mother thought for a moment, then asked, “You mean the one with the masts?” 

“No, the Soviet aircraft carrier. The one I got a prize for in the city competition.” 

Ah Rang’s voice sounded excited, just like a live teenager remembering the past. 

The mother began to cry again. The father said, “Ah Xiang, are you lonely down there? Mommy and Daddy want to set you up with a wife, so you can have a family. How does that sound? She’s very pretty, and a good person, only two years older than you.”

Ah Rang fell silent for a long while. Then he responded, “No. I only want Xiao Yi.” 

I noticed the parents both stopped crying. The father’s face showed displeasure. “Xiao Yi?” he said. “As if that girl hasn’t harmed you enough already? It was because of her that your grandfather cut us out of his will. Mom and Dad scrimped and saved so we could send you off to Harvard or Yale and be successful. You left us behind when you died, and you’re still thinking about this girl?” 

The father’s voice was getting more and more intense. The mother put an arm around him, saying, “Enough, don’t scare the child.” 

Ah Rang again fell silent. 

The mother said, “Little Xiang, Mom and Dad will give you anything you ask for. But Xiao Yi is a living person. Your world and hers are separate, and you can’t wait for her entire lifetime. Mom and Dad worry that there’s no one to care for you down there. If you had a family, we’d feel so much better. Okay?” 

Ah Rang nodded three times. The excited mother grasped the father’s hand and said, “Good boy, good boy. Once the two of us have had our years, we can come together, and we’ll finally be a family.” As she finished speaking she began to cry again. I pulled in for a close-up. I could see her make-up run, as she laughed and cried all at once. 

Ah Rang’s body shivered again, and he said softly, “Mom, don’t cry. You’re not well enough. Crying’s bad for you. Dad, I’m sorry, I can’t be a good son to you. Help me take good care of Mom. Listen to Doctor Wang. If you need medicine for your blood pressure, don’t skimp on it, the English kind is better. Mom, I have to go.” 

At this, the anguished mother screamed “Son!” and fainted dead away in her chair. 

Ah Rang slowly collapsed onto the table. By the time he’d picked himself up, the father was standing in front of him, his cheeks wet with tears. “Thank you, young man. Our little Ah Xiang hasn’t changed at all. If he hadn’t been led astray by others, he’d still be our good boy.” He pulled out a roll of banknotes and counted out most of them out for Ah Rang. Then he paused for a second, and gave him the whole roll. 

The mother gradually came to. She embraced Ah Rang, her hands moving over his face and body. The love visible in her expression pained every person in the room. Kai’s assistant was already crying his eyes out.

We drank heavily that evening. I raised a glass to Ah Rang, saying, “Brother, today I believe. For a grown man to see what happened today and not believe would be inhuman.” 

Ah Rang looked at me and smiled, without saying a word. 

We left Vietnam, and took a tour of Southeast Asia. I learned from everything I saw on that trip, from the rules of raising young spirits in Thailand to the path to procuring a Buddhist amulet; from Bukit China, the tomb of a Chinese princess in Malacca, to highrise factories in Jakarta and haunted mansions in Singapore. We saw all sorts of weird, inexplicable things, and met all sorts of unique people. Some things were fake, some were genuine, and some were a mixture of both. We got hung up for several days in Pattaya. We were supposed to record an old woman of widely-reputed mystical powers, but our interpreter got separated from the herd, and almost taken for a ride by a pretty face. It was two months before we returned to Hanoi. 

During the day, the director and I went to Quan Thanh and One Pillar Pagoda in Hanoi to get a few extra shots. In the evening, I went out with a map to explore. Summer had already come, and the outdoor atmosphere remained lively after the sun went down. Electric trams were still ubiquitous in the city, and the ding-ding-ding of their bells rang everywhere. Young people walked around in bright clothes, humming songs by Westlife. Girls sat in back seats, one arm around their boyfriend’s waist, soft, dark shoulders exposed by their halter tops. Long, black hair fluttered in the breeze like a flag. Just like every other major city across the world, this place was modern. 

I hired a rickshaw. The atmosphere and evening cityscape was extremely comfortable. I’m not a romantic; perhaps it was because my work was finally finished that I felt relaxed and at peace. The rickshaw driver and I kept up a halting conversation in pidgin English. He kept trying to persuade me to go to the red light district. At that time, I had no interest in chasing women. “I’m hungry,” I told him, “take me somewhere I can get something to eat.” 

That’s how we ended up in the Dong Xuan Night Market. “I’ll head off by myself,” I told him, “have a good night.” I paid for the rickshaw and added a tip to it. Even as I was leaving, he still wouldn’t quit: “You really don’t want lady? Cheap and good, you know.” I shook my head, and gave him a thumbs-up.  

I took a moment to orient myself, realizing I was on the northern end of 36 Pho Phuong. It was a busy, crowded spot. As in every other large open market, the calls of vendors rolled in from all sides. The odors of innumerable and unnamable spices floated on the air. I bought a sticky rice dumpling wrapped in lotus leaves and ate as I walked. The flavors of kumquat and spiced salt were strong, but when eaten together with the local okra, it was extremely tasty. Street vendors were working fast to arrange all kinds of different products along the curbside, including some pretty hilarious knock-offs. A baseball cap by A&F caught my eye; turning it over, I found “Autumn & Feather” embroidered on the back in tiny lettering. I smiled and bought the hat, out of respect for the invention. It seemed as if the deeper you went into the market, the weirder the merchandise. Avatar masks, waterproof temporary tattoos, Japanese-made punching bags, sex toys and related accouterments, more than the eyes could take in. A brightly-attired woman emerged from an alley to catch hold of me. She opened up a folder and pointed to several pictures of girls in various states of undress, all the while talking to me in Vietnamese and English. I replied in my best Beijing accent, “Sorry, I don’t understand you.” She paused momentarily, then grabbed my sleeve and said in pidgin Chinese: “China, big boy, give you receipt.” I buzzed off, guffawing.  

It was then that my ear caught among the chaos the sound of a huqin fiddle, playing not far off. I saw an opera tent, arrayed in gaudy colors, set up on the front steps of an ancestral temple. Its garish display attracted me. The stage was fully lit, but empty; perhaps the previous scene had just concluded. A faded red banner pinned to the front curtain said “Shaoxing Opera Appreciation Society of Hanoi.” Suddenly, a rattling of cymbals announced a new scene. A female performer took the stage, clad in a black robe bedecked with golden tassels. She spoke a few introductory lines, then began to sing. Her role was that of a young girl, but her figure no longer fit the part, and you could see her age in her face. While she sang, the projector screen beside the stage lit up with two words: Chasing The Carp. The machine must not have been working well, because the bottom stroke of the character “chasing” was half gone. From what I could remember, this opera was about a love affair between a man and a spirit. After she’d sung for a while, a male actor entered, dressed in a robe of light blue, clearly a young scholar. His singing voice was a little breathy, but very pleasant to listen to. I couldn’t understand a word he was singing, but his voice seemed familiar. The actor’s age may have been comparable to the character’s, and his performance didn’t seem quite as forced. His performance chops were also good: he was clear, upright, at ease. His face seemed rigid under the heavy make-up, but the eyes were alive and emotive. It couldn’t have been easy for him to be so deeply in character when faced with such an oversized carp spirit. The two finished their duet, and stepped forward to take a bow. The man said a few words of thanks to the audience – Mandarin, with a southern accent. The voice turned a light on in my brain: it was Ah Rang. 

I pushed through the crowd to get backstage, and found the young scholar removing his make-up. “Ah Rang,” I shouted, “how’d you end up here?” Ah Rang smiled and said, “Wait just a minute. I’ll take you out for some food.” 

We walked through the alley to a barbecue stall where it was slightly quieter. Ah Rang ordered a plate of beef, then a plate of eggplant, one of tomato, and one of broccoli. “Let’s get another beef,” I suggested. “No need,” he replied. “I ordered that one for you. I don’t eat red meat in the evening, it’s bad for the throat.” 

Laughing, I said, “So you can sing opera, too? I never would have thought it.” 

His brow furrowed slightly, and he replied. “Before coming to Vietnam, I was part of Zhejiang’s provincial opera company.” 

A professional? I realized my apparent disrespect, and attempted to make up for it, adding, “Well, if you sing so well, why did you decide to become a medium? Did the spirit really come to you?” 

Ah Rang replied: “Here, you can’t live on opera.” 

He picked up a piece of broccoli, put it in his mouth and chewed slowly. “Still,” he added, “I may go back to Hue soon. Once I’ve saved enough money, I’ll start an opera company of my own.” 

“Ah,” I said. “Last time you said you’d come to Vietnam to make a living, when the fact is that you’re doing what you want to do.” 

He shook his head. “The fact is that I came here for a woman.” 

His words surprised me, and I made an interested face. Yet he didn’t go on from there. He merely raised his glass to me, and said, “Drink.” 

“Still, becoming a medium is a talent of its own, certainly not something anyone can do. It would be a shame not to do it.”

A speck of oil from the barbecue leapt onto Ah Rang’s white shirt. He pulled out a tissue and wiped at it carefully, remarking, “Where emptiness is made into presence, presence returns to emptiness.” 

“What is that, mysticism?” 

Ah Rang laughed. 

This off-and-on conversation continued into the small hours. As we were leaving, I said, “I took some pictures of you while you were on stage. Give me an address and I’ll send them to you.” 

“Great,” he replied. “I’ll text you my address.” 

My life after I got back to China changed completely, and all because of Kai. Following his goddamn crusade had meant resigning a perfectly good public service job. Only then did I discover how hard life could be. The money I got from Kai disappeared in no time at all. It went to good use, though, as I bought a nice photography set with it. I took freelance jobs as I could, shooting weddings, family photos and the like, and took some time to get married myself. My wife’s mother was pretty strongly opposed to the match at first, she said that a teacher of the nation’s children ought to be able to do a lot better than an entrepreneur, especially someone who’d done some movie about ghosts and superstition. But my wife is a modern woman, and hooked the ball and chain to her ankle without a second thought. To be honest, I did feel pretty bad about it; seeing how naturally she accepted being poor was particularly painful. Sometimes, when I was drowning my worries with beer, she would look at me with that steady gaze and say, “Who knows? Maybe I got lucky.” And I would sigh. 

At the beginning of my second year back, I was helping my wife chop garlic when I got an urgent call from Kai. “Brother, your time has come!” I chuckled drily. “Stop pulling my leg, Kai. As the person who singlehandedly changed my life, don’t try to get me to run around for you again.” 

This annoyed Kai. “Ma Da, don’t be a goddamn ingrate. You know the Locarno International Film Festival?”

“Everyone on Earth knows it,” I replied. “The Oscar of the documentary world. Don’t tell me your P.O.S. movie we made won a prize, the censors over here didn’t even care enough to censor it.”

“But it did!” Kai said. “You won the film photography prize, the first Chinese ever! They’re just getting ready to announce it.” I stood dumbstruck for a moment. My heart twisted, and I made a face. I grabbed my wife and hugged her. “Oh, my great, perceptive, prophetic wife, you have won me over. You’re even better than the friggin’ World Cup octopus.”

In fact, Life With the Spirits winning a Golden Leopard didn’t drastically change my fate. It did make me feel like pursuing my ideals wasn’t entirely a hopeless chase, and gave me the courage to keep taking low-paying jobs. I shot pictures of people, of pets, and followed around newlyweds with a camera as they made their pretentious wedding poses. 

In my free time, I would take the trophy off the bureau and dust it carefully. 

Age and experience told me that I had to be patient. Finally, I got a letter from National Geographic, inviting me to sign on as a staff photographer for the Asia Pacific region, a ten-year appointment. 

In the three years that followed, I began to live the life I dreamed of. I traveled everywhere, took the pictures I wanted to take, went to the places I wanted to go to. In May of this year, the magazine asked me to go to Ha Long Bay to help the Vietnamese National Tourism Bureau do a promotional video. I wasn’t particularly interested at first, but then I thought about it for a while, and agreed. 

I put a CD copy of Life With the Spirits in my travel bag. 

After the job was done, I called Ah Rang’s cell phone. The call went through. 

He seemed surprised, but remembered who I was. After he chatted with me cautiously for a few minutes, I asked, “So, are you back in Hue?” 

He hesitated for a second, then said, “No, I’m still in Hanoi.” 

The next time I saw him was on a cloudy afternoon. The heat and humidity were so high your sweat just stuck to your body without evaporating. The address he gave me was near the old city, but it was hard to find. I had to poke around the alleys for a long time before I finally found the number. It was a broken-down apartment building. 

In front of the apartment was a marshy sump. Several small children were squatting on the edge of it, staring raptly at something below. I went over to look. Something tiny was wriggling in the water below. When I saw that it was a baby mouse, my stomach turned a little. The children were splashing it with handfuls of the filthy water. The mouse was trying desperately to climb out, and the children were putting a finger on its head and pushing it back in again. A thick tuft of cape jasmine bloomed on the bank, its heavy, white flowers making an ostentatious display. 

Before I could knock on the door, it opened, and a heavy-set man with no shirt emerged. He was carrying a washbasin full of water, which he pitched into the sump, scattering the children. 

I asked him, “Is Ah Rang here?” 

He couldn’t understand me at first. When he finally did, he pointed to the second floor, and said, “You know, he owes me two months’ rent.” 

The upstairs door was open. No lights were on in the upstairs room, and it was quite dark. In the narrow space, I could see Ah Rang sitting on a bamboo mat. He was murmuring something. The evening sunlight fell straight onto his face. His hair was shaved close to his head, and he was much thinner than he used to be. He’d grown a full beard, which also made him look older. His eyes were tightly closed, and one hand lay over an oily-looking hairpiece. In front of him sat a middle-aged man, whose features were unclear to me except for a dragon tattoo on his neck. 

I could tell that Ah Rang was performing a séance; perhaps the hairpiece was left behind by the deceased. I didn’t interrupt them, but leaned on the doorframe to watch. I was just considering whether to light up a cigarette when the guest suddenly stood up and punched Ah Rang hard in the nose. 

Ah Rang opened his eyes, looked at the man in terror, and saw me as well. The man grabbed Ah Rang by the collar, and was about to punch him again when I leapt forward and grabbed his fist. “What’s this, man, you wanna go?” I said. 

He started to engage, then, when he saw I was six feet tall, he dropped his fist. “If he can’t do it, he shouldn’t fucking pretend,” he said angrily. 

I grabbed him by the neck. “Who’s fucking pretending, shithead? Say it again and I will wreck you.” 

His Cantonese-accented Chinese broke up in sobs. “Big – big man would never get my name wrong…” 

When my grip relaxed, he pulled away and fled down the stairs. 

I yelled: “You little shit, have you even paid yet?” 

“Let him go,” I heard Ah Rang whisper. 

He stood up, wiping the blood from the corners of his mouth with the back of a hand. Picking up the hairpiece, he tossed it out the window, saying as he did, “He made an investment that failed, and came to ask his dead brother for advice. Man lives on earth, and fortune is planned in Heaven; what could a ghost’s advice do for him?” 

I was silent for a moment, then said, “You sure can put up with a lot. He thought you were a swindler.” 

Ah Rang chuckled drily. He poured me a glass of water, then extinguished the incense he had been burning. The air inside the room became clearer. The scent of jasmine filtered in through the window, yet it didn’t cover the other smell, which was hidden, but sharp and slightly acrid. 

“So you never went back to Hue?” I asked. 

“Why would I go back?” he replied. “‘Life, life, life. We live, and for what purpose?’ I’ve been singing those lyrics for years, and only just figured out what they mean.” 

I looked around the room. There was almost no furniture, just a bed, a table, and a couple of bamboo mats. Even his séance table was gone. A winding crack ran all the way from the ceiling to the floor. 

“So, you’ve been living here all along?” I asked.

He smiled. “It’s a dump, right? Business isn’t as good as it used to be. There’s a dry spell like this every year; once I get through it, I’ll be all right.” 

“Oh, that’s right, I have something for you,” I said. I opened up my laptop and put the CD in. “Start at the beginning. You come on at 0:11.” 

“Oh, yeah?” He looked at the screen with an expression I hadn’t seen before, like a small animal waiting for its prey. When he saw himself on camera, he smiled and said, “Look at how ridiculously I used to dress back then.” I could see excitement in his eyes. 

As he watched the episode with the middle-aged couple, the light in his eyes faded again. “No idea what happened to those two,” he sighed. “They only had the one child.” 

“Everyone’s fate is different,” I replied. “You helped them out. At the very least, you helped them fulfill an important wish.” 

He fell silent. After a while, he asked, “Do you really believe me?” 

I nodded with assurance. 

He bent his head, then looked up again, as if he were making a difficult decision. Then he opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. 

“Have you thought about going back to China?” I asked, my gaze turned outside. Night was falling, and the room was getting very dark. Ah Rang shifted, and turned on a light. It looked like a kerosene lamp, but with an electric bulb inside. A weak glow shone through the clouded glass cover and cast itself in an arc upon the wall. 

“How could I go back, now that I’m here?” Ah Rang’s voice was very soft, as if he were talking to himself. He reached into a drawer and took out a small notebook. Its pages held a photograph, which he passed to me. 

It was a black-and-white photo, already beginning to yellow with age. It showed a woman, with bright eyes and a wide forehead, wearing a traditional costume from the imperial age. “I came for her,” he said. 

“I knew of her before I entered the company.” Ah Rang looked off into an unknown distance, obviously not expecting me to ask him about anything. 

“I had just graduated that year from conservatory. She was already the number-one leading lady in the company. People told me she was from Yuyao, a transfer from their county performance troupe. A lot of the other performers had come from conservatories and didn’t accept her, said she was an amateur. But after a couple of months, she shut them all up. All the shows she had a lead in got standing ovations. All the same lyrics and gestures, but when she sang Funeral for the Flowers, she could make you cry. All the same costumes, but on her, she looked like Zhuo Wenjun brought back to life.” 

Here, Ah Rang took the picture back, touching it lightly with a finger. “She’d be up on stage singing, and I’d sit in the audience and listen. She sang The Jade Hairpin and The Trapped Husband, and I just couldn’t get enough. I loved it so much I forgot my own rehearsals, and got chewed out by the company leader. I remember fantasizing about being on stage with her. I knew it was only a dream; she would never take an interest in a kid like me. And then one year we were rehearsing a scene from Chasing the Carp for the opera company’s anniversary show. The actor playing Zhang Zhen got injured not long before the performance date, and I was the understudy. She looked at me at said, “This kid won’t work, he plays old scholar roles.” I said to her, “Let me give it a try,” though I’m not sure where I got the guts to say it.

“She nodded, and we ran the whole scene through. She said, ‘That was good,’ and those beautiful eyes just had me spellbound. Then she touched my head.

“That was my only performance with her.” Ah Rang looked at me, and said, “Later, she gave me this photograph, and looked after me from then on. The Cantonese meatballs she made were to die for. She even knitted me a scarf. The other members of the company said she’d taken a godson. It made me uncomfortable to hear it. That year, I was eighteen, and she was twenty-three.

“I was the first one to know about her and the company leader. I don’t know why she chose to trust me. She had me deliver love letters. The company leader was a gymnast, and played the martial roles. He was handsome, and sang well, but he was already married. I watched them exchanging glances on and off-stage, and I even had to deliver their letters for them. Once, I opened up one of hers and read it. Then I called his wife. They caught the two of them right in his house. I thought his wife would throw a fit, but she didn’t. She killed herself instead. The company leader was fired, and she certainly couldn’t stay. Later, I heard she’d been transferred to a Cantonese opera company in Guangxi. She never came back.

“It was eight years later that I got her letter. The letter – it was sent from Vietnam. She said she was in Hue, and she wanted to see me. Why would she want to see me specifically? Why do you think she’d want to see me?”

The light in Ah Rang’s eyes went out again. My lips felt dry. I lifted my cup; the water was completely cold. Ah Rang continued: “So I really went to see her. She was alone in a tiny hospital. She lay there, looking much thinner and much older. But her skin was as white as porcelain, just as it always was. She had stage four lung cancer. She said, ‘I’ll be dead very soon, and I didn’t know who to see. I just thought of you.’

“I told her she wasn’t going to die. I went back to the company and resigned, then went back to Vietnam with everything I had. I didn’t have a single living relative by then, and I realized when I left that she was my only attachment. I brought her to Hanoi for treatment. She stayed in the best hospitals and took the best medicine. We both knew she was going to die. She didn’t want to have surgery; she said she wanted her body to remain whole.

“In the end, she died anyway. The day before, she had me do her performance make-up. She wanted me to paint her as the Prime Minister’s daughter. She said she’d been singing the role of the carp spirit all her life, and now that she was about to die, she wanted to be a human again. 

“The next day, I sent her to a funeral parlor for cremation. I only had enough money to keep her in cold storage for three days. I had one of the orderlies open the casket door for me. A fine frost had formed on her face and lips. She looked like she was sleeping.

“So they were going to burn her. I walked out crying. I remembered her telling me she wanted her body to remain whole.

“It was then that I looked into the funeral hall and saw a medium holding a séance. I saw an incredibly ugly man right next to the séance table suddenly shiver all over. I’m not sure why, but I couldn’t help shivering too. Then someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Do you feel a spirit too, young man?’ I turned around and saw a middle-aged man smiling at me. That was Jin.

“Jin said he was the manager of the funeral parlor. He gave me a once-over like I was a piece of livestock, then asked, ‘You’re good-looking enough, want to learn a trade? My funeral parlor needs a good medium. It’s a good line of work these days – plenty of work, and very lucrative.’ I paused for a minute, then said, ‘Sure, but I have a condition.’

“I told him my condition, and he agreed immediately. He said, ‘You see case number seventeen over there in the eastern corner? That one’s been frozen in there since 1964. He was one of Ngo Dinh Diem’s generals, shot during the coup. His son snuck him over here, and he’s been chilling here ever since. It’s just money, after all, and they have plenty of it.’ He lowered his voice and said: ‘Once you’ve signed a contract with me, number nineteen is all yours. You can hold it as long as you like. Once our business gets better, I’ll give it all the best embalming treatment.’

“Later he asked me, ‘Who is this that you’re so attached to?’

“I thought for a moment, and said, ‘Family’.

“I worked for Jin for ten years. Helped him make a lot of money. Slowly, it became the only thing I was good at. Yeah, there was a time when I was really in demand. I have no special gift; I can act, I can read people’s expressions, and check their Facebook pages. And I can get the dead person’s dirty secrets from their enemies.”

He laughed – a slightly irreverent laugh. “It’s true,” he said. “In the end, I never left my old profession. I’m still just an actor.

“When I had a free moment, I’d visit her, to see if she’d changed at all. Each time I feared I’d open up the casket to discover she wasn’t there. But she always was, secure as ever, just the same as when I saw her last.

“All the way until last year. The funeral parlor was scheduled for demolition, and Jin was about to retire. ‘Take what’s yours with you,’ he said. I asked him where he expected me to take it. ‘Don’t expect to live on luck,’ he replied.”

Ah Rang’s voice drifted off completely. A gust of night wind blew in, ruffling the door curtain. I felt a sudden chill. Finally, I asked, “Well, where did you take it?” 

Ah Rang didn’t reply, but tenderness crept into his gaze as he turned to look behind me. 

Behind me was that broken-down bed of his. By the paltry light of Ah Rang’s lamp, I could see that underneath the bed frame lay a coffin, painted black. 

We didn’t continue to speak; only the sound of our breathing remained. The smell of wood oil, mixed with a sharp smell of chemicals, spread throughout the room. After another long while, I conquered my weakness and stood up. “It’s time for me to go,” I told him. 

On my way out, I turned to him and said with the same conviction, “You are a first-rate medium.” 

By the time I left the building, the pigeons had come back. 

They turned their heads toward me and cooed, their curiosity in me not entirely abated. Yet when I approached closer, they leapt into the air once more, and flew away without a moment’s hesitation.

Translated by Canaan Morse

When the Gods Retire

诸神退隐

Last year I saw a play based on Jose Saramago’s novel Blindness and was shaken by the terror that arises when we are unable to communicate normally. Without supervision, everything exploded out, most of it bad: the paranoia, cowardice, theft, rape, murder and slavery. It seems unnecessary to go into detail. The disorder goes beyond that of the hand of god; it takes us completely unawares. 

The so-called impossibility of dialogue, placed in a modern context, seem like a fable from a different world. There is nothing easier in today’s world than communication, even with those we have never met. The revolution in communications technology grants us the ability to reach any number of people. Marshall McLuhan predicted the “global village” in the 1960s and described electronic communications as “shrinking the planet.” That metaphor has been expanded, surreally,  into the incredible empire that is the Internet. The so-called “international system” and the information superhighways created by transnational capital since the end of the Cold War have changed the landscape again, permitting the global transmission of culture – the world is no longer shrinking, it is being compressed. Virtual communities – blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wechat – allow us to put on different personalities. As the 1993 New Yorker cartoon put it, “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” It’s a clever little caption, but one with greater meaning. We might go as far as to say that the Internet is now a platform for the mob, as described in Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd. Communication and anonymity – amid the darkness, they form a tragic paradox. 

And so I wanted to write a story on the theme of communication. Perhaps this was an idea that had been brewing for some time, though it was not one I was optimistic about. The so-called unknowable nature of modernity, the search for the origins of our humanity – perhaps these questions can be answered from the perspective of antiquity. In Rosefinch I wrote of a modern Westerner’s entry into an ancient Chinese city, a city which accepts but also assimilates him. Ultimately he abandons the land of his childhood and is absorbed into the culture of the East. In the Seven Tones stories I wrote about growing up: a youth becomes bound up in local events, moves far away, and much later recalls days past. “The Raven” portrays the coexistence of humans and animals, as city dwellers are changed physically and even psychologically by the influence of mere birds. The collapse of early alliances, a setting apart, misunderstandings, reconciliation and further misunderstandings – this is the cycle of fate. We place our hopes in antiquity – but a return to slash-and-burn agriculture is unrealistic. It’s about communication, specifically the technology. “A letter from home is worth 10,000 pieces of gold,” a Chinese saying goes, but in the 21st century a letter from home is a thing of myth. At least we still have the telephone. Would Alexander Graham Bell have thought someone might say that? That there would one day be nostalgia for his new invention? I derived the title of one of my stories from the English word “telephone”, which itself comes from the Greek τῆλεφωνή or “distant sound”. That sounds a better name, closer to the original intent of communication. In the story two strangers’ fates are connected via a single telephone line. They are both initially unaware of what is happening; one seeking diversion, one making a living. Yet gradually a dependence is formed, unobtrusive yet at times powerful. They both in their own way resist the times they live in; they both have their own views on the pointlessness of life, on love and on sex, and as such they each complement the other. In the end they both reveal their human frailty. And as they do so, the communication halts. 

Several years later I happened to have an encounter which showed me the good inherent in that act, communication. It was with a medium.

I was traveling alone in Vietnam that summer. I’d returned to Hanoi from Ha Long and was wandering the streets of the Old Quarter. In Hong Kong you see the East and West merge into one, but Hanoi is different – French colonialism only brushed lightly over the city. French baguettes or bahn mi are a common snack; the opera house is grandiose, though little used, and jars with its surroundings. But everywhere else you see the city as it always was, somewhat run-down now but with a charming self-confidence. Streets crawl with motorbikes, riders dark of skin and with small deep-set eyes. Road rules are as good as non-existent; pedestrians are at best indifferent. It is a city that knows its own mind and panders to none. All I could do was continue to wander away the time until my return home.

I came across a temple in some sort of large market. South-east Asia has numerous temples, but rarely do they match China’s for solemnity and size. They are squeezed in to the streets and alleys, part of the everyday landscape and surrounded on all sides by hubbub. A bit like they say: the true hermit is concealed within the city. I saw something similar in the north of Thailand – next to temples to Phra Phom, the four-faced Buddha, were temples to Mazu, the Chinese goddess of the sea. There is no odour of incense or sense of worship, as it all merges into the bustle. Compared to the rest of South-east Asia, Vietnam has fewer of these temples – presumably because of the country’s Communist history. But Ho Chi Minh is gone now, and I happened across this one and found it interesting.

This temple, unlike those I’d seen previously, was packed in among local dwellings. In amongst all the busyness it would have been easy for the temple to lose its sense of separation, yet it still remained somehow apart. A couplet in Chinese characters at the entrance was old and fading; the entrance pillars themselves were flaking. But it was the base of the pillars that caught my eye. I’m no architect, but plinths like those, carved into lotus leaves, originated in the Tang and Song. If these weren’t more recent reproductions, the temple had quite some history behind it. So I decided to have a look inside. As I walked towards the entrance a young man came out, clad in robes and with his hair in a bun. He stood at the doorway and carefully tipped a basin of water onto the stone slabs, where it evaporated in the summer heat. His task complete, he wiped his hands, pulled a mobile phone from within his robe and made a call. This, I realized, was a Daoist temple. He nodded to me as I walked over.

The interior of the temple was in no way as neglected as its exterior, and I felt I’d been transported to some more tranquil place, both well-kept and peaceful. In the main hall sat statues of Daoism’s highest gods, the Three Pure Ones. To the right was a hall dedicated to Sun Simiao, King of Remedies. It was a small space, offering all that was necessary. Little incense was being burned, but bar coils hung from the eaves, the smoke wafting down surprisingly crisp and fresh. At this point I heard a noise, perhaps a sob, and in curiosity sought it out. In the side hall I found a small group sat in a semi-circle around the young man I had seen outside. He was made-up now, two clownish circles of rouge on his cheeks clashing with the gravity of his expression. His eyes were closed and he was mumbling something under his breath – chanting, rather than reciting, some verse or other and sobbing as he did so. After some moments of this he lowered his head and slowly raised it back up, starting to jabber. I couldn’t understand the Vietnamese, but the intensity of his words was clear. A young woman in his audience conversed with him, initially speaking softly and with great reverence but then arguing. The youth started to whisper then fell slowly silent. The woman also calmed, sobbing gently into her cupped hands. 

And then the young man shook, his head falling forwards. A moment later he looked back up, now clear-eyed and seemingly a changed man. He looked at the woman with an expression of both great concern and unfamiliarity. I had no idea what the purpose of the ceremony was, but it all seemed quite the performance. Outside dusk was falling and I had no inclination to linger, so I left and wandered the streets outside before stopping at a stall to ask the old lady selling bahn mi if she knew where a certain restaurant was. 

She was unable to understand my English and just told me the price of banh mi over and over – the duck answering the hen, as they say in Guangdong. Then someone started to speak and I looked up to see the young man from the temple – his hair no longer in a bun, dressed now in sweatshirt and jeans, a friendly face. His English, it turned out, was no better than the old lady’s and the address he gave me didn’t make much sense, leaving me still lost. Then he asked me if I spoke Chinese, I nodded, and he switched languages and gestured to the back of his motorbike. I’m going that way, I’ll give you a lift. 

I climbed on and we started to chat, just a local telling a visitor about the local sites. His Chinese had a southern accent to it, so I asked him where he was from. Zhejiang, he said, and in surprise I told him I was from Jiangsu, the province just to the north of his. He smiled to hear that, saying we were as good as neighbours. We got to the restaurant and I said that neighbours meeting like that should at least take a meal together, so he parked his motorbike. Inside I ordered some of the restaurant’s specialities; explaining that he was vegetarian and that I should get what I pleased, he just ordered spring rolls and noodles. We continued chatting as we talked and I told him I’d thought he was a monk. Laughing, he pulled a wig from his bag, untangling it with his fingers. No, he said, these are just props. So what was that ceremony? An asking, he told me. 

The word brought with it a sudden start of recognition. I’d heard of this before, a summoning of ghosts carried out in southern China. But to my understanding it was usually carried out by old ladies, in my mind identical to those who gather under the Ngo Keng flyover in Hong Kong and for a fee curse those who trouble you. The main difference perhaps was the sense of moral retribution inherent in the old ladies’ curses. And anyway, nobody really places much store in folk magic, something both China and the West have in common. In China our generation were all materialists. Never mind the historical cleansings of the May 4th Movement and the Cultural Revolution, our education too was strictly rational. It all goes back to Wang Chong, a Han dynasty philosopher: “There are people, but no spirits; act ethically, but make no sacrifices.”

But it seems plausible: if animists believe everything has a spirit, then why not the dead? There must always be some who are unwilling to accept their death in service of someone else’s cause; those who do not want to go back to ashes and dust; those prevented from resting by the desires of the living. And so we have ghosts – a process romanticised in Ghost with Whoopi Goldberg, in which a ghost becomes protector of his widow, all to ensure a happy ending. Are there really ghosts? I don’t know. We all have our opinions on ghosts and magic, and whether  they are to be welcomed. Once I saw Taiwanese aboriginal author Badai talk of a ceremony his Pumuya people carry out: on the death of a villager a shaman is invited, not to maintain the link with the dead, but to cut it, to demarcate life and death. Those who have gone on to their next life should not be bothering with the affairs of the last. Go when you go, no need to cling on. It sounds cruel, but why not get it over with?

We Han are not so decisive – we hold on to our dead past the time of grieving. And so I asked the young man how to carry out one of these “askings” and contact the dead. I don’t know, he told me. Seeing my surprise, he explained: it was for him a way of comforting the bereaved. For his audience the ceremony was momentous, for him… a one man show. He started to tell me about it, how he had to be part psychologist, part actor, part detective. Before a ceremony he would quiz sources and research the deceased, all to ensure the asking itself went smoothly. He also talked of the challenges: the constant risk of exposure and how to turn those occasions around. In today’s ceremony, I had seen the widow of a gangster seek to talk with her husband. But someone had told him what to say to her – move on, there’s no hope. This seemed deceitful: Aren’t you lying to her? He looked at me and laughed, the crow’s feet at his eyes clear under the light. He’d seemed younger than me, but now I saw he was older than I’d thought. Who’s to say if it’s true or not, he asked. Nobody gets to make everyone happy. I just try and leave them at peace. 

I asked him why he’d left China. He was the youngest in his family, he told me, and his mother had died birthing him. His father remarried and neglected him. His earliest memories were of the later years of the Cultural Revolution, when amidst the turmoil he’d found himself at a school of opera, and later distinguished himself in a drama troupe. So you really are an actor, I said. Yes, he told me, but I couldn’t sing. I just couldn’t, and I hated the infighting in the troupe. So when the reforms started and people started setting up their own businesses, I left. I had a business for two years, lost all my capital, ended up in debt. I headed to Guangxi with an old village friend, then on to Vietnam. Someone else from my village got me started as a medium. I knew how to act, so it was a bit easier for me. He rounded off his tale by singing a line or two of Shaoxing opera. I don’t know if it was sung well or not, but I found it charming. He rushed off when we finished eating: another ceremony to give, at a funeral parlour. 

I walked the streets alone once he’d left, the evening breeze still carrying the day’s warmth. It came to me that perhaps this was the outlet for the theme of communication I’d been wanting to write about. The medium, real or not, was a link between the living and the dead. Who can comprehend the complexity of our humanity, of how our need to believe conquers our rationality? The medium and the connections he makes represent an accommodation with the reality of bereavement. And in the end that is a kindness. How much real pain, through his words and song, had been replaced with fatalistic acceptance? It is better to leave the bereaved with some regrets, a small dissatisfaction once satisfaction has been reached. 

And the man himself had seen so many changes before becoming who he was. His very birth had been tragedy. There was so much to work with here: China’s changing times, exile from home, the abandoning of a trade; all the emotions these would have brought. And it was all a process, from something that could not be accepted, to something that could. All the difficulties of communication had been passed through on the way to a place of peace and rest. 

And so I wrote “Questioning the Dead”, to remember. 

Translated by Roddy Flagg

Jin Li

金理

Born in Shanghai in 1981, Jin Li is an assistant professor of Contemporary Chinese Literature at Fudan University. His works of literary criticism have appeared in journals including People’s Literature Magazine and Southern Cultural Forum.

A Wind Rises from the South: On Ge Liang

有风自南

Part tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, part homage to Edgar Allen Poe, the short story “The Raven” is one of the works that put Ge Liang on the literary map. Other writers working with fantastic material might have resorted to supernatural exposition. Ge Liang takes the high road by writing a medical rationale into the story – the oracular behavior of the titular raven being attributed to toxoplasmosis – but this does not fully erase the sense of fatalistic horror the story engenders.

Zhu Tianxin once jokingly referred to Ge Liang as an “old soul.” This is probably best understood in the context of David Der-wei Wang’s observation that “The Raven” and similar works “strongly evoke the stories of the 1930’s Shanghai Neo-Sensationalism school, such as ‘An Evening of Spring Rain’ and ‘Demon Path’ by Shi Zhecun.” Young writers must simultaneously navigate two challenges: distinguishing themselves from tradition, while nonetheless maintaining continuity with it. A writer must pierce the ossified mass of literary conventions, setting off shockwaves that will rock those ordered structures from within. Yet, the original elements of the work must ultimately hearken back to the pulse of traditional literature. With regards to the latter, it is appropriate to recall Kundera’s notion of “continuity” as essential to the spirit of the novel: “each work is an answer to preceding ones, each work contains all the previous experience of the novel.” In his early works Ge Liang had already accomplished this second task, all the more so when compared to other writers of his generation. As the son of a distinguished family, the marks of a proper literary education are evident in his works. Yet this makes the reader yearn all the more for some spark of innovation. Since reading “The Raven” I have been hoping for a masterwork from Ge Liang, something animated by a spirit of its own.

When I first began writing I tended to emphasize “dramatic” elements. I hoped to incorporate certain experimental techniques, mostly at the formal level. I even wrote a short story entitled “π”, which you could say sums up the thrust of my writing at that time. Freedom, the unknown, contradictory juxtapositions, breaking the rules, that is what I understood about literature, and life, at the time. By the time of Seven Tones, my textual aesthetics had shifted, and this pushed my narrative approach in the direction of flesh and bones realism, and simple, direct writing.

How did Ge Liang, author of “The Raven” and lover of the fantastic and the unorthodox, make the transition to earnest realist? Readers of Seven Tones will inevitably feel that it is autobiographical, or at least semi-autobiographical, and I doubt Ge Liang would correct them. The scenes of family and hometown, and the comings and goings of friends and acquaintances, serve as a testament to the growth and development of main character Mao Guo, while also documenting the changes in the world around him as witnessed through “this pair of youthful eyes.” Ge Liang’s exploration of “flesh and bones realism, and simple, direct writing” is not a mere act of affectionate devotion to the narration of external events, it is also an inward quest for the restoration of the self. Literature is not the reporting of events, nor is it an objective record of experience. Seven Tones responds to spiritual demands that are more fundamental, more inward, and more honest. It is a review and summation of the lessons encountered on an individual’s developmental journey.

It is common now to find a lack of depth in the literary self. Of course this lack is historical in nature. Following the dissolution of collective society, not only has our inner life has been split away from the vitality and meaning that provide value, our physical conditions reinforce this split by isolating us from public life and cultural associations. Within the present historical moment, in a world of markets where the core value is profit, the loneliness and isolation of the individual is completely exposed. Setting aside external factors, the lack of depth of the literary self – the narrowness of the space in which it operates – is largely a function of an author’s view of writing. Ge Liang displays self-awareness on this point. Seven tones make up an octave. Similarly, the seven lives of the novel seem taken from a larger whole. “One by one they passed through my life, a testament to the changes of time. I gave myself to my role, observing with this youthful pair of eyes these people and events that I would likely never encounter again.” Ge Liang’s method of expanding his literary self is to continually engage in dialogues with “meaningful others,” share in their sadness and joy, put himself in others’ shoes, and contemplate the positions they occupy in the world. From there he can solidify and record the “vitality of relationships of complete interpenetration.”

An accounting of these “meaningful others” reveals a cast drawn from the common classes: the urban poor, wage earners, petitioners, illegal immigrants, prostitutes, smugglers, each with their private torments, struggling through life’s ups and downs, yet still given to sudden flashes of humanity. Despite their flaws, they dutifully shoulder their responsibilities. At these moments even the most ordinary lives are endowed with extraordinary grace. Ge Liang has lent an attentive ear to these cries of joy and sorrow barely audible above the rushing tide of society. These “tones” are the soft strains of a lone string plucked, not the jubilation and pomp of horns and drums. “They may be faint, but these voices are the authentic witnesses to these extravagant times… These people are ordinary heroes who walk the streets around us. Their happiness and suffering are the foundation of this era. Taken together, they are the great current of our time.”

Mao Guo is naturally understood as the documentarian, the recorder of the Seven Tones, the “I” whose visual field bounds the flow of persons and events. Ge Liang’s recent short story “Questioning the Dead” is a continuation of this use of the first person. The central character Ah Rang, a spirit medium, is always framed within the observational lens of the first-person narrator, which allows for multiple interpretations of the recurring theme of crossing borders. The primary border is that between the material and immaterial worlds. The narrator is a documentary filmmaker and photographer. According to Roland Barthes, the duplication of the photograph creates an irrefutable reality: “I had identified truth and reality in a unique emotion, in which I henceforth placed the nature – the genius – of photography, since no painted portrait, supposing that it seemed “true” to me, could compel me to believe its referent had really existed.” Precisely because of its ability to directly reproduce reality, the photograph easily muddles the singular uniqueness of reality. That which is “performed” behind the lens can restructure how we view reality. In this sense, parallels can be drawn between photography, a symbol of the modern and technological, and the ancient mysteries of the séance – both exist at the boundary between the real and the unreal. Though spirit medium Ah Rang’s artifice is ultimately exposed, his performances evoke unforgettably authentic reactions. When the Chinese couple in “Questioning the Dead” communicates with their departed son, the father’s cheeks are “wet with tears.” The mother steadies herself as she rises to embrace Ah Rang. The scene and its emotions are based in the unreal (fakery), yet this unreality sounds the depths of the real.

The second level of boundaries explored in “Questioning the Dead” is that between life and death. Unable to let go of his deceased lover, Ah Rang turns to deceit more by happenstance than by design. Though his séances touch the lives of many, Ah Rang nonetheless pays the price for his trickery as his life descends into poverty. This might seem a simple case of the punishment fitting the crime, but Ah Rang feels he has willed his fate upon himself. Ah Rang is a spirit medium by trade, yet in his own assessment, “I have no special gift; I can act, I can read people’s expressions, and check their Facebook pages. And I can get the dead person’s dirty secrets from their enemies.” The spirit medium has no supernatural abilities. He cannot communicate with the dead. Yet the boundary between life and death can be crossed by other means. In Peony Pavilion love at its most intense can “bring death to the living, and life to the dead.” At the climax of “Questioning the Dead,” “tenderness crept into his gaze” as Ah Rang’s eyes fall on the lacquered black coffin beneath his bed, which still contains the corpse of his beloved. Just past the boundary of death, the rekindling of intense emotion creates the subtle pathway to rebirth.

The third level of boundaries explored in “Questioning the Dead” is that between humans and fantastic creatures. “Questioning the Dead” makes use of a narrative within the narrative, a local opera performance called Chasing the Carp. The traditional Chinese opera repertoire has no shortage of stories involving love affairs been men and succubi, mortals and spirits, scholars and were-foxes. These transgressive romances have survived through so many generations of Chinese literature because they represent a genuine and irrepressible longing for love that comes into basic conflict with the repressive and controlling tendencies of society. These fundamental tendencies of society appear in “Questioning the Dead” as the group dynamics, hierarchies of seniority, and ageist taboos that kept Ah Rang from his beloved in life. Love stories that cross the boundaries between humans and other sentient beings, like Chasing the Carp, are moving because they represent a kind of spiritual transcendence, in which all is sacrificed for love, and the restrictions and taboos of society are no longer applicable. Every lover in “Questioning the Dead,” from Ah Rang to Kai’s mother-in-law, whose funeral opens the story, manifests this spirit of unfettered love.

From another perspective, we can view “Questioning the Dead,” the story of a folk opera performer turned spirit medium, through the lens of folk arts. Craftspeople appear frequently in Seven Tones: sculptors of portraits in clay, carpenters, those who “keep themselves by their craft.” This is not the world of fine art which claims a greater purpose while serving no practical one. In one episode, a father praises the work of clay sculptor Yin by calling it “art.” The craftsman “went quiet, and stopped his work. ‘You exaggerate,’ he replied, ‘I just do what I can to get by in this world. “Art” has nothing to do with it. I’m just putting food on the table.’” Craft is intimately connected with the body, the daily use of the hands. Its essence is found in everyday life. It is one of the basic means of making one’s way in the world, a means of situating oneself in life by supporting a family and connecting to an inherited tradition with the power to mitigate one’s fate. Craft is based in daily utility. It speaks to the desire for a settled life, to establish a home. Thus, there is a bridge between art and craft. Each is invested with the emotional impulses of the creator. Shen Congwen said: 

I watched a silversmith fashion necklaces, and silver fish. He cried over some personal matter as he worked, hammering designs into the silver with a steel stylus. I watched carpenters and housewives at work on their crafts. I discovered that beyond their physical accomplishment, I felt their emotions, their worries, or their isolation. It became clear that crafting a piece was not merely labor, but entailed numerous relationships of mutual dependence between the craftsperson and their craft.

Ge Liang, almost without fail, dedicates his books to his paternal grandfather, the renowned art historian Ge Kangshu. Growing up under the influence of such a scholar, I believe Ge Liang assimilated Shen Congwen’s understanding of craft from an early age. Nor should I neglect to mention that Luo Jiangjun, a principal character from Ge Liang’s Rosefinch, a novel about Nanjing, is also a craftsperson.

Deep within my consciousness Nanjing shines as one of the beacons for my writing. When I began writing one of my goals was to write a novel about Nanjing. I felt I had an emotional responsibility, an immutable wish, to do so. When I completed Rosefinch, I felt as if I had fulfilled an important obligation.

Rosefinch was an imperative, as far as Ge Liang was concerned.

Stephen Owen has written: “through descriptions of its various sights and sounds, the poet can ‘occupy’ a place.” This constitutes an age-old expressive tradition within the literary history of China, the faint markings of which are still visible today. It is said that Tang dynasty poet Liu Yuxi’s best known lines on Nanjing were written before he had ever visited the city. The tradition of taking “imaginative, poetic possession of a space” may be romantic, but it is also ambitious. In Rosefinch, Ge Liang erected a city of paper and ink. 

The scholar Wang Zhenghua has used late-Ming images of Nanjing to reconstruct “impressions of Nanjing in the eyes of contemporary people.” The city was imagined as both unique, and having a long-established character. “At a time when Suzhou was synonymous with the pristine waters of Taihu Lake, and Hangzhou was inseparable from the exquisite natural scenery of West Lake, Nanjing was seen as worldly. It sat firmly planted in the real world of commerce, prosperity, and common entertainment.” The tight “web of associations” cast over Nanjing stretched far into history: the scenery of the Qinhuai River, drinking songs heard on the night air, mansions and palaces reaching up to the clouds, prostitutes and courtesans. It includes Li Bai’s “Island of White Egrets Dividing the River”, and Liu Yuxi’s “Slant of the Setting Sun at the Entrance to Black Robe Alley.” 

The image of the fallen nation is also deeply associated with Nanjing. Behind the façade of escapist revelry, Nanjing’s history of being a base for numerous governments in exile has repeatedly affirmed the saying that “since ancient times, the Southern Dynasties have been a land of heartache.” Covering the period from the Republican era up to the current millennium, Rosefinch unfolds a tale of repeated calamities and disappointments. That Ge Liang wrote Rosefinch while residing in Hong Kong reminds us of the difficulty of maintaining objectivity when one is too close to a subject so painful. This distance is reflected in the main character, a young overseas Chinese from Scotland, allowing Ge Liang to carefully explore the innards of Nanjing through the eyes of a stranger.

In the first part of Rosefinch, the young man from abroad is seduced by the unfamiliar city (abetted by a love interest in the form of a mysterious young woman). In the midst of his explorations he experiences elation and disillusionment.

A city is not merely a physical structure. It is a psychological state, a moral order, a grouping of attitudes, a collection of ritualized behaviors, a network of humanity, a set of customs and traditions, manifesting themselves in the people’s ways of doing and speaking.

Although the young man is an outsider, as he begins to absorb the speech of the locals he enters the web of associations woven from Nanjing’s psychological state, its moral order, and its customs and rituals. When he and his guide give free reign to their passions on a stele at the ancient royal tombs, it is as if a ritual has taken place, and the outsider’s old associations are shattered. He is finally able to distill a new understanding of the city from his impressions. Ge Liang constructs this image of the city through a kind of visual discrimination that reflects feelings, concepts, experiences and introspective insights. More importantly, these tools allow him to document the resilience of people who have lived through innumerable crises and upheavals. He records their “choices in the face of the ordinary and extraordinary pressures of each new era.”

The characters of Yuzhi, Chu Chu, and Cheng Nan represent three generations of Nanjing women whose lives tell a story of fate and retribution. In the words of David Der-wei Wang, “they are the daughters of the Rosefinch City, fated to burn… with flames that never die.” They are submerged by tumultuous emotions, under trial by their own desires. In their fortitude, they are unwilling to give up, but even as they refuse the path of escape, they nonetheless find their mobility and happiness are confined by the limitations and deprivations of their times. The three can be considered together with Zhao Haina, who serves as a symbolic representation of their psychological state. By comparison, the character of Cheng Yunhe leaves a more vigorous impression by maintaining her poise throughout all manner of political movements and upheavals. She sees events clearly and shrewdly navigates them while maintaining her basic human kindness and compassion. In the process she unavoidably falls into disgrace and dirty dealing, but is able to protect the innocence of those under her care. Her actions lend her a kind of radiance: in the midst of hardship and deprivation she nonetheless finds a way to make a nine-layer cake for Chu Chu, and brings tears to Zhao Haina by serving her favorite dish. Within the character of Cheng Yunhe we discover the common elements of humanity – shame and dignity, virtue and desire – all integrated within a broad moral terrain. This is where the true power and spirit of the common people resides. Chen Sihe has written that: 

This kind of power is akin to the silence with which the earth itself harbors so much filth and decay. Muddy pools and turbid streams flow across its surface. The bodies of animals rot and sink into the ground. Fallen branches and leaves decay, as do the flowers of spring and the grasses of fall, accumulating layer by layer in the earth. New life is born, and new life decays, mute and unknowing. Life is everywhere, unbounded… The earth does not speak, yet life propagates and flourishes unabated. Humanity treads upon it, and it accepts all. Its capacity for tolerance knows no limit.

When Cheng Yunhe is discovered in the church by the Japanese and held captive for three days, it is easy to guess the tortures and humiliations she suffers. Less easily understood is how she picks herself up from the bloodied floor, “poised as always… alighting from the car with the air of a duchess surveying her holdings.” This clearly evokes the fortitude and vitality of the common people. Even when driven to the brink of death, they protect that which is essential to life.

Yuzhi, Chu Chu and Cheng Nan stand in contrast to Cheng Yunhe. The former are the common flowers that bloom, then wilt and decay. Zhao Yunhe forgoes vanity, and in doing so becomes the soil that nurtures the coming spring. The former are the water that flows down the river, taking on myriad forms. Zhao Yunhe is the rock in the river, forever lashed by the waves, at times submerged under the torrent, yet always standing firm, shaping the river to its form. Heedless of the constant rush about her she lays the foundation for stability and the continuation of life.

Nanjing is ancient, historical, but it is not a static artifact. Nor have its outlines and borders faded and blurred under the lens of post-modernity. In fact, they have been tempered by events, honed to an edge by the repeated blows of outside forces. David Der-wei Wang summed up the situation: “The answer to the riddle of Nanjing is too deep to fathom.” To plumb the depths of this mystery requires far-reaching historical vision, in addition to astute preparation of historical materials. In chapter 6 of Rosefinch, Cheng Yunhe

pulled her pipa from her luggage and tuned it. Hard living had worn her nails down to nothing, so she dug some fake celluloid nails from her bag, attached them to her fingers, and began to play Zhaojun’s Lament. After the first passage she decided it was too anguished, and switched to another piece. She remembered it far too well: it had once been all the rage on both banks of the Qinhui. The elite of the city had literally thrown their money at Cheng Yunhe’s feet to hear her rendition of Flutes and Drums at Sunset. Even the pipa itself was a masterpiece, the soundboard of paulownia from Kaifeng, the back of ivory and padauk. A patron, an elderly and refined gentleman, had bequeathed it to her with a couplet: “The pipa speaks in sorrow. Strings left cold but hint at better times.” The instrument had been handed down in his family, but was no longer played. Far better to pass it to a beautiful musician. At the same time he gifted her a book of music compiled by Shen Zhaozhou, Ancient Melodies of the Immortals.

In this passage, physical objects and textual references work in tandem, complementing the history and psychology of the character, all naturally orchestrated within the fluent diction of the text. This passage demonstrates the skill and knowledge of the author without becoming a gratuitous display of erudition.

Having grown up in the new China, Ge Liang had no choice but to rely on historical documents to facilitate his entry into the historical space of his subject. I believe the significance of his attempt does not lie in the fact that Rosefinch spans 60 years of historical time, while his contemporaries seem utterly submerged within the experience of the present (subject matter has never been a useful determinant of literary success or failure). Neither is it that most young writers too often rely on the elements of wine, coffee, and luxury cars to evoke a sense of place, while Ge Liang displays a deep familiarity with the rich geography of physical culture, and the political fluctuations of a bygone era (employing these to create a sense of place does not by necessity improve a novel). The process of assiduous historical research has allowed Ge Liang to achieve something more. Qian Zhongshu has described this same process: “Writers conjure their feelings and imagine themselves within the circumstances about which they write, focusing intensely upon their inner sense of things. They allow themselves to consider, evaluate, take measure of, and even touch their subjects, in hopes of appealing to both feeling and reason.” In this way, an author can erect a foundation of historical imagination.

To me, understanding historical materials is about building a structure of the elements of the period. You don’t necessarily need to insert those elements directly into the text. Once you understand something deeply enough, and the structure is established, you begin to think like a person of that era. Thus, writing a character becomes extremely free and natural. I don’t specifically think about the details of the character – their life habits, their way of dressing, how they behave – and question whether they fit the period, because all of these things fall into place naturally.

Ge Liang’s words reflect a deep understanding. There is no detail or record obtained from historical documents that can strengthen the authenticity of a novel simply by direct insertion into the text. It is only a deep intimacy with and contemplation of the source material that allows an author to develop the necessary historical imagination, and thereby digest the external historical material into an internal historical structure – what David Der-wei Wang termed, “summoning a psychological state, a state of being, called ‘Nanjing’.” Isaiah Berlin described this kind of imagination as “the capacity to understand empathetically the ‘inner feel’ of historical situations, values, and forms of life that are not one’s own: a sense of the unique flavor and potential of a situation.”

“The spirit of the city harbors a sense of deterioration and decline, but also persistence and continuation.” It exists at the core of the city, within the lanes and courtyards of Liu Yuxi’s poetry, within the customs, habits, and daily life of the common people. It is something that waxes and ebbs through the changing centuries and dynasties, but which never dies. When cut short it grows anew. At the end of the novel the copper-leaf eyes of an ancient rosefinch statue finally peel away, but the new sun still shines down on the empty sockets. The rosefinch has stood witness to generations of gatherings and dispersals, only to die, and then be reborn like “an infant,” “radiating a brilliant light.” Unaltered by time, it stands as a testament to history and endurance.

Recall Tang dynasty writer Liu Zongyuan, who, in The Hillock West of Gumu Pond, fantasized about transporting the famous hillock to the capitol of Xi’an, so he might share with others the site he had “occupied” by literary means. “Such are the virtues of this hill that if it were moved to Feng, Hao, Hu, or Du, sightseers would surely flock to it. Even if you offered one thousand gold ingots per day, you would find the owner reluctant to part with it.” Literature naturally requires assiduous planning and thoughtful construction; the writer enjoys full zoning rights within the “poetically occupied” city. Yet I am sure most writers also understand there is a multi-layered dialectic that exists between artifice and nature. The two can alternately work in concert or in opposition to one another. When in concert, the two clarify and benefit the work. When in opposition, the author must make a choice between the two. When Liu Zongyuan wrote of “erecting attractive trees,” “revealing beautiful bamboo,” and “displaying unusual stones,” he was describing a process by which human thought and labor improved upon natural beauty. Up to a point, skillful artifice can surpass the aesthetic effects that natural processes achieve on their own. Beyond that point, the effect becomes too deliberate to pass as natural any longer.

The first time Liu Zongyuan set eyes on his hillock, his response was to imagine it full of animal life: “streams that horses and buffalo might drink in,” “a slope that a bear might climb.” He reconstructs the scene from individual elements recalled from memory, transforming the natural world into “an act of performance art for the sake of displaying the literary skill of the writer.” There would seem to be some level of compromise associated with this act: to what extent is the writer’s “unending joy” due to his silent admiration of nature, and to what extent is it due to his “imaginative occupation” of it? Or is it “putting that which is occupied on display” for the reader that brings joy?

Fortunately Ge Liang seems aware of this dilemma. In the last line of his afterword to Rosefinch, Ge Liang writes, “throughout I have felt a sense of gratitude for the gifts this city gave me as I reached the decisive age of 30.” In the moments before he put away his pen, he thought of what the city had given to him, not what he had given to it through the process of “imaginative occupation.” This returns us to what Liu Zongyuan might have felt at that first moment he encountered the hillock, delighted by its “unusual forms, numerous beyond counting, all vying for my attention.” This is what Ge Liang might have felt on his first naïve strolls through Nanjing, slowly passing each narrow lane and alley with regret that he could not explore it further.

After Rosefinch, Ge Liang spent seven years completing the second novel in his China trilogy, the highly anticipated Northern Kite. In recent years, Ge Liang has only increased in reputation, scooping up literary awards on both sides of the straits. In the midst of this kind of universal adoration, a serious writer like Ge Liang can’t help but take a moment to ponder the literary nerve he has struck, and wonder if such universal appeal is indeed a testament to his individual expressive capacities. Or is it simply that in a vast field of competing voices, he has uncovered the literary equivalent of the lowest common denominator? Ge Liang is a perceptive writer; his works demonstrate he is well equipped to navigate these interrelated issues.

I am quite fond of this couplet from Tao Yuanming: “A wind rises from the south, its wings caressing the new seedlings.” It often comes to mind when I consider the outstanding young writers of this new generation, like Ge Liang. I’ve probably let my hopes get the better of me, but I wish to always have a view of this scene: a fresh wind blowing from the south; young seedlings swaying in the breeze; an undulating expanse of green, vast, harmonious, teeming with new life…

Translated by Joshua Dyer

Shen Haobo

沈浩波

Poet, publisher and venture capitalist, Shen Haobo was born in Jiangsu Province in 1976. He graduated from Beijing Normal University and became first known as a proponent of the “Bottom-Half Body” movement that sought to do-away with many of the taboos regarding explicit content in poetry, instead embracing an animalistic approach to forbidden subject areas. His most recent collection of poetry Command Me To Be Silent and many of his recent work has received critical acclaim. He lives in Beijing and runs the Motie Group, one of the most influential publishing and media companies in China.

童年时的白雾

White Fog from Childhood

White fog from childhood

Vapors sink into my face

Grey fog weighty as lead

People look like camels in it

Black fog dripping with coal

A dog in it searches for a bone

Run back and I can still see white fog 

We played hide and seek in it

Run forward along grey fog

I land in the dark room of a sunken ship 

Missing children sneak into black fog

Like stones thrown to fill the sea

I know them all

The ones for cancer got cancer

The ones for prison went to prison

together as if going to market 

请代我向他问好

Please Greet Him on My Behalf

Yet another pretty girl I know has taken in a dog

She sends me the dog’s pictures has given it a name and bathes

the thing walks the thing sleeps with the thing in the same bed loves 

it more and more her dog her sweetheart her baby her son even

foggily it could be her lover

Yet another old buddy of mine has committed to God faithfully

He sends me pictures of his family of three sitting in a circle

reading the Bible my dear friend solemnly swears 

he has finally found belonging the meaning of living found

a compassionate but strict father

Life is just so in the past I ate dog meat but I don’t now and won’t again

I can’t eat the flesh of your sons your daughters or your lover

In the past I often ridiculed God but now I keep quiet and further

express an appropriate reverence for him because he is your father

Please greet him on my behalf

新年

The New Year

At dusk, we tread upon the wheat staff

that still refuse to wither in winter 

to visit grandma and grandpa who have

lived in their graves for many years now

By their mound is a gravestone, on it the names of the whole family

Over that, in large font, the honorable titles of the dead

Ah, grandma has no name

She is represented as “Shen Yuan Family Wife” 

Below are miniscule ant-like characters, a carved listing of grandchildren 

This heap of names are tightly unified

like the firmly clasped rows of kernels 

on a single cob of corn

representing the most decided blood kinship

that can’t be beat, can’t be dismantled

The names carved on the gravestone

can still stand together for many more years

The wind is too strong for the paper money to light up

My daughter bows before the mound, says, great-grandpa great-grandma

Please bless and keep me happy, I want candy every day

白鸟与银壶

White Bird and Silver Pot

1.

A flock of white birds

fly over the lake’s surface

In the blue neck of sky

appears a white necklace

2.

White birds fly across the lake

If I do not write it down

there would not be a trace left

In my lake of memory

Just like when we drink tea

you take out a neat little silver pot

White birds fly across the lake

A silver pot sits still upon the table

3.

We sit on the balcony of the lodge

facing a lake they call a sea

Water willows grow from the lake 

circling the waters before us

as if it were a solitary pond

A few ducks paddle by

A loon eats fish under a willow

A flock of white birds fly over the lake

4. 

The white birds use their 

robust, golf-ball grade white

to knock a hole into the sky 

5.

Did the white birds spark the silver pot

or did the silver pot summon the white birds?

Between the white birds and the silver pot

You are pouring tea

I am drinking tea

Time is a line of short trees 

姐妹

Sisters

Her little queen got pregnant

No idea whose seed

Possibly the black tom that jumps into the yard at midnight

Possibly not

She doesn’t know how to deliver kittens

Becomes rather anxious 

The she-cat gave birth to four kittens

She feels she has become a grandmother

A moment later, she discovers she too, got pregnant

Of course she knew whose seed it was

On the phone, she asks him, “Keep it or no?”

She looks at the cat who was once her daughter

Now they seem more like sisters

The next day, she goes to Renmin Hospital for an abortion

She is drained when she returns home

and still needed to feed her cat, the new mom

They are no longer sisters 

清明：想象中的雨

Qingming: the Imagined Rain

The imagined rain

washes out the old courtyard 

Green grass shines like wheat sprouts

The barefooted man went north

The loud-mouthed woman went south

The sparrow learning how to fly 

disturbs a tree full of pear blossoms

It was just a small rain shower

that hit time and left it overturned on the floor

The elder sitting beneath the awning 

has knit the same sweater for three years

穿过

Passing Through

Passing through is a violent thing, thorough

like highway passing through an ancient forest, modernity

passing through the primal, loaded with superiority and lust,

bullet through a bull’s eye, Mongolians through Eurasia,

tongue ring through a tongue – an adulterous, sensual pleasure.

Even water can hollow a rock, children can tear through lies,

ants can burrow through a wall, monks can see through existence.

You cry out beneath me: come, pass through me.

I exert myself in great sadness, but I am not the monk,

nor the ant, not the child, nor water.

Not the tongue ring, not Mongolian, not the bullet. 

时代的咒语

Curse of the Times

A bald ass

with shifty eyes

dons a monk’s robes

rides in first class

在冬日的群山中

Wintering in the Mountains 

Wintering in the mountains

I feel content

as if my body 

is an lack-luster temple abandoned

The rounded mountaintop across from me

sheds its golden Buddhist robe 

the fattened monk beneath is bored beyond help

sunning a grey-white belly 

What’s left of the snow

shines weakly

The human city lies distant

like a lost kite, fallen across the earth

Who has the right to judge

the starved souls among men?

The sun sets like a lonely religion

opening wide a vapid embrace

Even if life is just 

a grimace of God

My heart will not 

be given to silence

关于永恒

On Eternity

The train bolts ahead 

At present, time runs too 

Does it run perpendicular to us

or is it parallel?

How will the two intersect?

Will there be police who yell for a halt? 

Is it faster than us or slower

If it hits us

would there be a crash site?

Who will measure the velocity of time?

Who in the higher realms

is holding a timer?

At present, rivers are also running

Birds dash through air

No one arrives

When we try to stop

Time yells, impassioned  

for us to keep up 

At present, Christ has already run back to the manger

the earthworm has run back to the earth

the butterfly has returned to Zhuang Zi

Even the cow that Lao Zi rode

has run back to Henan

Translated by Karmia Olutade

Yan Ge

颜歌

Yan Ge, born in Sichuan in 1984, is currently resident in Ireland and has appeared at various literary festivals across Europe. Her novella “White Horse” – translated for Hope Road Publishing by Nicky Harman – exemplifies her sharply incisive portrayals of family life (with occasional flashes of magical realism). Nicky Harman also translated an excerpt of Yan Ge’s novel The Chilli Bean Paste Clan in the December 2011 issue of Chutzpah! Magazine under the title “Dad’s Not Dead”.

We Meet at Twilight

三一茶会

Illustration by Xiao Bao

Zhang Chongde looks for his hat along Baosheng Alley, from one store to the next, and has nearly made his way to the very end before he sees two kids by the side of the road, kicking the felt hat like a ball. 

“Kids! Kids! Stop playing! That’s my hat!” Zhang says, the sound of his voice reaching them before his eyes have even focused properly. The two kids jump back and stop, their four eyes bulging as they stare at Zhang Chongde. The hat falls to the ground.

Zhang Chongde hurries over, picks it up, and glances it over as he dusts it off: this is indeed his hat. 

Having cleaned off all the dirt, he puts the hat back on. Warmth suddenly spreads down from his head to his soles. 

It is like he has practiced a type of magical qigong: Zhang’s no longer feels any ache in his back or palpitations in his heart. With the hat on his head, he turns around and placidly walks up the alley again, turning right at North Street by the old city gate, and walking straight to the entrance of the Riverside Tea Garden. 

The rains have just passed, and the three almond trees in front of the tea garden’s gate are luscious in bloom. Those who pass them on the streets cannot help but stop and come closer to marvel and take pictures. Zhang comes to a stop too, looking at the powder-white, young faces beneath the tree. There isn’t a single face he would know.
Indeed: 

Almond flowers intend to send the spring wind,
but the light cannot keep those who have already gone.

Another Spring Festival has just been and gone, and another old-timer in the tea party has died: this past winter has been frigid. Even before the worst days arrived, it was already so cold that not a dog was to be seen on the streets. The tea party was cancelled three times – during this period, the retired Minyang Elementary teacher Zhou Daxiu had an aneurism in her house and went quickly, at the age of seventy-nine. 

Since the cold has finally acquiesced to spring and the flowers have returned, the tea party has been restored. Everyone sits at the table, each holding a tea thermos. When they speak of Zhou, everyone clucks and sighs. Yu Qinghui says: “Old friends, let me remind you that in the wintertime, no matter how cold it is, do not leave your space heaters on. No one can withstand a blazing space heater with the windows closed!”

Zhang Chongde can’t help pressing on his hat to keep in the warmth. He walks past the almond tree groves, deeper into the tea garden. 

Having wasted time with the hat business, he is now the last to arrive: the couple Chen Ai and Xie Shuqin, Xiao Chuanshu, and Yu Qinghui are already deep in discussion. Xie Shuqin is the first to see him; she stands up and says: “Mr. Zhang! Mr. Zhang is here! We were just speculating whether or not you were coming today.” 

Everyone at the table stands up, fighting to give up a seat for him. Zhang Chongde puts his hands together in a zuoyi gesture to thank them, saying: “Ah! You’re all too gracious! Too gracious! I was slightly delayed on the way here. Wouldn’t miss this for anything! The first, eleventh and twenty-first of each month, I would never miss our Three-One’s tea party. Ah! Come on now, everyone, sit down! Sit down!” 

He sits down by Xiao Chuanshu, across from Yu Qinghui on one side and from Chen Ai and his wife Xie Shuqin on the other.

Chen Ai turns to look for the server: “Young lady, could I trouble you for more hot water?”

Xie Shuqin quickly pulls a bag of tea leaves from her bag: “Here, Mr. Zhang, where is your thermos? I’ll give you a spot of tea.”

“I still have tea from this morning, thank you. I just need to add some water.” Zhang Chongde puts his thermos on the table, and twists off the cap.

“Old Zhang, you look well. Have you slept well recently? What new works have you composed?” Xiao Chuanshu asks him. 

Yu Qinghui nods at him.

After greetings and small talk, more hot water and paying for the tea, Xiao Chuanshu can’t help announcing some good news.

“Here, everyone.” He takes out a brown paper envelope. “The prose piece I published in Jincheng Poetry will be anthologized and republished. I just received the notice.”

They pass the two-page notification letter around; Zhang Chongde is the first to open it. The bold red letterhead says: China 21st Century Prose Appreciation Society. 

“Congratulations! Mr. Xiao has seen much success recently,” he says to Xiao. “No!” Xiao Chuanshu quickly waves off the notion. “Old Zhang, you are mocking me again. I’m just an old retiree writing to kill time, that’s all.”

The others take their turn reading the letter and offering their congratulations. Afterwards, Xiao Chuanshu folds it carefully like a state decree and puts it back into his pouch.

Chen Ai also has important news to announce: “Friends, my chapbook is finally printed. I brought a few copies for you to peruse at your leisure.” 

Xie Shuqin opens a rucksack and takes out Chen Ai’s books. They are, of course, much more substantial than the letter that came before. Zhang Chongde weighs one in his hands – it has to be a pound or two. The book he named Spring Awakens in the City of Azaleas has a green cover with red flowers, just the type of peony Chen Ai photographed blooming in Ping Le Township.

This is Chen Ai’s second book. The first was a prose collection. This chapbook is purely poetry. Zhang Chongde flips it open to the first poem, one that Chen Ai had written not so long ago, titled “Touring Clear Creek Park in the Springtime.”

Firecrackers startle spring in Ping Le, 

Clear Creek Park blooms a hundred flowers.

Tender branches first show mallard green, 

pear sprouts tease their lamb lard white.
Grandson waddling learning to walk,

son stands waiting arms opened wide.

Father and mother back home hope and wish, 

always for New Year to come in stride.

As Zhang finishes reading, he says: “Green like a mallard duck’s head, white like the fat of a lamb – these colors are lively. These lines are very original!”

“Has your oldest kid come home for Spring Festival? Or is it the youngest this year?” Yu Qinghui asks. 

“As if!” Xie Shuqin sighs, “Hanfei is officially rooted in America now, and Junde’s project in New Zealand with his company won’t be finished anytime soon. Just us left to make do this holiday, the sad old couple!” 

“Not bad, not bad!” Xiao Chuanshu waves the book in his hand. “Old Chen’s poems are very well structured. Not bad at all!”

Zhang Chongde raises his head to look at Yu Qinghui, only to find her staring right at him. The two of them are the ones who have to actually make do this holiday.

*

Yu Qinghui paces three circles around the room, but isn’t able to find her reading glasses. “Weird!” she mutters. “I had them when I was reading just now. Where could they have gone?”

She walks into the bedroom, feels around her pillows and then opens her nightstand drawers. Returning to the living room, she picks up and puts down all of the magazines and newspapers on the tables. She even opens the fridge, and pokes her head in to look around. Finally, she goes into the late Qiu Shihong’s bedroom, stooping low to look under the bed. Dust bunnies fly out toward her. She yelps and lifts her head, leaving quickly and closing the door with a thud. 

Yu feels heat rising to her forehead, and takes out a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe off the sweat. Just as she wipes across her face, she feels an object blocking her hand – she rips it from her face: aren’t these the glasses she’s been looking for?

It isn’t like she can find anyone around to share the joke with, so she just stands and laughs by herself. She laughs and walks to the bedroom again, and sits at her table to continue editing one of her newer poems. 

The new poem Yu wrote last month is splayed across her white writing paper with the green grid for characters – she has already edited it twice through, but it still feels like it needs more polishing:

Meeting at Twilight – dedicated to my elderly friends

We meet at twilight 

Facing the splendid evening light

Earnest grins flowering across our faces

We hold out our surviving innocent hearts

We submit all of our wonderful hopes to the rising sun of tomorrow

With her glasses perched in place, she holds up the paper and reads through the poem twice, reexamining the whole piece. She picks up the pen, and changes “facing” to “cloaked in”, and “grins” to “smiles”. 

“Mmm.” She nods and puts the page back onto the table. “We will see what Mr. Zhang thinks of this poem,” she thinks.

Across from her window, on the third floor of the opposite building, a young housewife stands on her balcony in a pink, cotton nightdress, reaching for her wind-dried joint of smoked meat with a clothes hanger. Yu Qinghui stares at this pretty housewife, but she is thinking about the friends at her tea party. 

My eastern friend just brought a warm wind, 

the hearts of plum flowers snap open upon touch.

They'd been cabbages and radishes to start with: green and white, in their own separate worlds – it was the tea party after the national holidays that started it all. Yu Qinghui and Xie Shuqin went to relieve themselves. Xie Shuqin had bad knees and every trip to the bathroom was a challenge. She needed assistance whenever she crouched down and stood up. Yu Qinghui finished up first, washed her hands, and then held her breath as she went over to help Xie Shuqin up. But Xie still wanted to gossip: “Hey, Qinghui, when I was looking at Mr. Zhang today, I realized he looks a lot like someone.” 

“Who?” Yu Qinghui asked.

“Ah!” Xie Shuqin walked away from her stall, adjusting her clothes. “Don’t you think he looks like Ba Jin?” 

When they returned to the tea table, Yu Qinghui took a closer look at Zhang Chongde: he had a wide forehead, a square chin. Yes, his whole face looked quite like Ba Jin. While she was still pondering this, Xie Shuqin smilingly announced her discovery to the whole table: “I have found that Mr. Zhang looks a lot like Ba Jin!”

This astounded the whole table. Everyone took turns surveying Zhang Chongde. Zhang Chongde, rather embarrassed, kept pressing down his hat: “Aye! Aye! Don’t make such claims! How can I possibly look like the great Ba Jin?”

Some time afterwards, as Yu Qinghui was cleaning her place, she happened to see Ba Jin’s Family on the shelf. She drew out the book and sat on the couch, put her glasses on and then started flipping through.

She landed on those last few pages, the part where Juehui, leaving home for Shanghai, was saying goodbye to Juexin and Juemin. She was reading this almost fifty years after she first read the passage in her twenties and cried:

The boat began to move. It retreated away from the shore and turned around. The figures of people on the shore gradually got smaller, then disappeared altogether. Juehui stood at the helm, their shadows still lingering in his eyes as if they were still waving at him. He sensed this sight getting blurry, and reached up to dab at his eyes. But when he put down his arm again, their shadows were nowhere to be seen. 

They disappeared, his brothers and his two friends, disappeared without a trace. All that came before seemed to have been a dream. He would never see them again. All he could see was endless water, and a few shadows of mountains and trees. Three men in a small boat were rowing and singing their mountainous song.

A new kind of emotion gradually gripped him. He was uncertain whether it was one of happiness or sadness, but he vividly understood that he had left home. Before his eyes, the endless green water rolled on. They would carry him to an unknown city. There, everything was growing anew…

Everything was growing anew – she still remembers contemplating for three or four days whether to catch a train for Shanghai when she first read this, but her sense of maternal responsibility got the best of her. She couldn’t leave behind Qiu Shihong and their eldest child. 

Fifty years had passed. Those she couldn’t bear to leave behind had already gone. Yu Qinghui sat on the sofa alone, holding the book, mulling these things over. Then she stood and walked back to her table to write poetry. 

From that point on, she has paid more attention to Zhang Chongde. Sometimes, when he arrives early, she sidles up to him and asks, “Mr. Zhang, what have you been writing these days? Can you show us?” 

*

Autumn turns the days cooler, and just before the start of winter, Zhang Chongde finishes a piece of prose. It is short enough to fit three pages of manuscript paper. He brings it to the tea party. 

“For want of the summer lotus,” Yu Qinghui listens to Zhang Chongde’s deliberate pronunciation of each word as he reads aloud in Mandarin rather than in Sichuanese, “I walked to Clear Creek Park and discovered that all the lotus flowers in the pond had withered before me. I could not help but remember how glorious they were in the summer…”

After a while, she and Xie Shuqin go to relieve themselves. Xie Shuqin suddenly breaks into laughter mid-stride. When Yu Qinghui turns to look at her, she finds that she is being stared at. “Qinghui,” Xie Shuqin starts, “You heard Mr. Zhang’s prose. What do you think?” 

“It is very well-written, of course. Lively, emotive and the language is very intricate,” Yu Qinghui says.

“The parasol trees’ leaves have fallen already; why on earth would he bother writing about the lotus?”

When Yu Qinghui doesn’t respond, Xie continues prying, “Does Mr. Zhang know? That your name used to be Qinghe – Green Lotus?”

Yu Qinghui’s name had changed decades ago, but her older neighbours on East Street would remember. There were two sisters in her family, the older was named after the Plum Flower, “Hongmei”, and the younger was named for the Lotus Flower, “Qinghe”. The hope was that there would be blossoming all year round in the household. During the war, Hongmei followed her husband to Shandong, from then on they saw nothing of her but her letters. Qinghe was embarrassed by her old-fashioned name and insisted on changing it. After nagging her husband Qiu Shihong many times, she finally went to the police station to register the change herself: the shamefully trite “He”, for “Lotus”, had to go. She changed it to “Hui” for “Wisdom”. “Green” was too pedestrian as well, so she added the water radical and made it “Qing”, for “Clarity”. And so, on her hukou and her personal identification card, Yu Qinghe became Yu Qinghui. At first, everyone around thought the change odd and jarring, still calling her “Qinghe”. Yu Qinghui would correct them over and again, until slowly, people grew accustomed to it. “Qinghui! Qinghui,” they started calling after her, until the last of the lotus fragrance dissipated on East Street. 

It’s been too long, but Zhang Chongde’s prose and Xie Shuqing’s question have suddenly made her heart leap. She draws out a fresh piece of writing paper, changes a few things, and copies “Meeting at Twilight” onto it, already sensing a floral fragrance wafting into the air about her.

*

Bright and early, Zhang Chongde walks along Outer East Street towards the intersection, noting that there are more people on the street that day. He calculates and realizes that it is nearly Dragon Boat Festival. “It’s almost summer; this hat really should come off now,” he thinks, stroking his scalp.

The temperatures had risen surreptitiously and the wetness stored in the ground is evaporating. Along the streets, people are beginning to sell yellow magnolias, salted eggs, wormwood and bulrush. Across the street, two rows of vibrantly decked out traditional singers are drumming and clashing their gongs, dancing into view. There are many retired seniors in their midst and the performance is drawing an audience. One of those leading the gang lifts a big red sign that reads: “Newly Opened: Flying Dragons Telecommunications Mall, Opening Sale at Rare, Unbeatable Prices! Spend a Thousand, Get a Thousand Back!” Zhang Chongde briefly greets the man holding the sign, who recognizes him as a familiar face from the neighbourhood and nods back. 

Zhang’s uncovered head feels cold, even with all the commotion and crowding. He puts the hat back on his head and makes for the sidewalk, but since he can barely squeeze through the throng there he steps back into the street. He exerts himself, trying to move forward, but just then, a reckless motorcyclist charges straight at him. He jumps back onto the sidewalk and shakes off a nervous sweat – after all this, he finally makes it to the Handsome Buck Restaurant.

Xiao Chuanshu is already waiting, downing some goji berry wine paired with a plate of fried peanuts. Seeing that his companion has arrived, he quickly stands up and waves. “Here! Here! Old Zhang, right here!”

Zhang Chongde walks over, taking off his hat again, his white hair matted together like parchment. “Aye, Old Xiao, just getting here was such a struggle. A struggle!” 

“Aye,” Xiao Chuanshu pulls up a chair for him, “Mr. Zhang, you’re the stubborn one who always has to walk everywhere. Just get a cab! Five kuai would have gotten you here easy.”

“It’s all right. Just a couple of steps, really, hardly worth five kuai.” Zhang Chongde sits down, placing his hat on the chair next to him, then fiddles with his hair.

It is too early for lunch, and far too early for liquor, so Zhang Chongde calls for the server to bring hot water for his thermos. He scatters a floral tea in it and takes a sip.

“Did you bring the thing, Xiao?” he asks.

“I sure did! Take a look.” Xiao Chuanshu turns to his bag – a queer one that his wife Wang Jiaqiong probably discarded – and from it, he takes out a thick envelope and produces a stack of paper.

“See here.” He puts the contract on the table for Zhang Chongde to read. “This editor is my friend, completely reliable, and the publishing house is a real business, with accreditation to give real book numbers. The published books are distributed nationwide through Xinhua Bookstore retailers, and the first print run has to be at least three thousand copies. Including the purchase of the book number, design, layout, printing, it costs fifteen thousand yuan altogether. The author gets to keep five hundred copies as samples and they’ll help you with marketing.” 

“Fifteen thousand! That’s very expensive. I heard Chen Ai say that his chapbook only cost eight thousand.” Zhang Chongde says, flipping through the contract.

“You call that a publishing house?” Xiao Chuanshu spits. “His publisher isn’t remotely good, okay? Our publishing house is a legitimate organization.” 

The contract’s header reads: “The Three Gorges Artistic Publishing Company.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of this publishing house before,” Zhang Chongde says.

“Ha!” Xiao Chuanshu scoffs. “Mr. Zhang, when was the last time you’ve been to a book store? The likes of The Commercial Press and Sanlian Publishing have long been outpaced. The trends are changing with the younger generation these days.” 

“I suppose that’s true.” Zhang Chongde continues leafing through the contract. “The writer must submit a manuscript no fewer than eighty thousand characters?” 

“You’ve written for so many years. Shuffle things around! Surely you’ll have at least eighty thousand,” Xiao Chuanshu says.

“Possibly... Probably.” Zhang Chongde says, mentally calculating on an invisible abacus. 

“Anyway, I have been trying to persuade you for too long.” Xiao Chuanshu takes a drink of liquor. “Of all of our friends, you are the one whose work deserves to published in a collection. You have written the most and your content is good quality, so why shouldn’t you publish? Chen Ai did it. That Gao Jiaxiu from high school – even him! He has published a book. Old Zhang, you have always been too modest. Too modest, I say! You can’t go on like this. In this day and age, modesty isn’t going to get you places. Then again, this book won’t be published for the purpose of bragging or achieving stardom. All of us are old and rickety now; who wants to bother with fame? It’s just for the sake of cultural exchange and mutual learning between a few literary friends that’s all. A kind of memorabilia.”

“I suppose so… I suppose so.” Zhang Chongde puts a peanut in his mouth. “A kind of memorabilia… after so many years.” 

“Don’t you worry, I will handle this whole affair for you, and will be responsible for it to the end. Sign the contract, hand in the manuscript and your book will be printed before next March,” Xiao Chuanshu says. 

He makes it sound like it was already settled. Inspired and encouraged, Zhang Chongde also yells for two glasses of liquor. He clinks classes with his friend and asks, “Old Xiao, let’s just eat lunch here. My treat.”

“Not your treat, not at all! It’s on me!” Xiao Chuanshu says. “I asked the owner already, the pork elbow is supposed to be divine today!”

These two have been regulars at the Handsome Buck for a long time. The restaurant has been running for over ten years, boasting great prices and exceptional pork elbow. Because Xiao Chuanshu has been sick with gout and his diet is tightly monitored at home –   he barely gets a mouthful of meat every week – whenever he is weary of the routine at home, he asks Zhang Chongde here to indulge in this guilty delight. 

Zhang Chongde has to remind him too: “Now, now, Old Xiao, you still have to watch out with that gout of yours. You can’t have too much fatty meat. If you can’t do it for yourself, at least do it for your wife. Old couples need to stick it out together for the long haul – you ought to take better care of yourself.”

“Not a chance!” Xiao Chuanshu shakes his head. “Give me fatty meat or give me death! As for Wang Jiaqiong, she’ll be fine. If I die, she’ll still have her mahjong.”

Zhang Chongde gives up – both of them have seen enough of the world and are too old for this now. What can be more satisfying than two old friends drinking, munching on peanuts? One can dream of books and the other, of pork elbow, but both can be happy, from the stomach to the heart.

*

The grape vines of Riverside Tea Gardens have climbed and coiled all over the arching trellis, creating a green canopy for a sky. The elderly sit in its shade and drink tea, forming groups of half a dozen each. Yu Qinghui walks in, her myopic eyes adjusting to the garden teeming with people relaxing and fanning themselves. She focuses again and looks for Xie Shuqin, her most familiar face, but finds that there are two or three old ladies just like her: white-haired seniors each in long sleeved blouses and crocheted vests.

She panics slightly when she still can’t find Xie Shuqin after squinting for so long. “This is bad,” she thinks, “how have I lost the ability to recognize people?”

“Ms. Yu!”

She looks in the direction of the call. There is one last table deeper into the garden. It looks empty. Zhang Chongde stands by it, waving at her. 

“Oh! Mr. Zhang!” She responds, making her way to him.

Zhang Chongde draws up a chair for her: “We are the first ones here today, none of the others have arrived yet.”

Yu Qinghui breathes out in relief, sits down and pulls a handkerchief to dab at her forehead. “Very good, very good,” she says.

“Green tea or chrysanthemum?” he asks. “I’ll order for you.”

“It’s a hot day. I’ll have chrysanthemum.”

Zhang Chongde turns to order tea. Yu Qinghui notices that he is somehow still behatted – luckily, not the felt hat he had been wearing in the winter. This time, it is a light baseball cap.

“Mr. Zhang, the weather is quite hot, how are you still wearing a hat?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“Aye! I’m sorry,” Zhang Chongde reaches up to press his hat down. “It’s an old habit of mine. I get chills when I don’t have a hat on my head, and my scalp catches colds easily.”

Yu Huiqing nods: “So it is with all seniors. The body can be riddled with disease. You must take good care of yourself.” 

After a while, the other friends of the tea party arrive and the table is filled completely. It is early summer: the heat is not yet all-consuming and the cold has yet to fully abate. The weather consists of a few sunny days, followed by a stormy night. The bipolar swings between hot and cold have both Chen Ai and Xie Shuqin sick with the flu.

Xiao Chuanshu says: “Old Chen, I’ll share a folk remedy with you. It’s what my wife Wang Jiaqiong has me on – onions marinated in red wine! It’s the best. A traditional Chinese medicine doctor told her it helps with sleep, boosts your immunity, and with small problems like the cold or flu, you just need to drink a glass before bed and you’ll be well in the morning!”

Chen Ai waves it off: “A cold is nothing. Consider it automatic sterilization, a detox! They can be good for you. And as for whatever folk therapies, Mr. Xiao, I recommend you don’t believe everything you hear. The way traditional Chinese medicine works is perplexing – look at the United States, for instance. Nobody over there would allow the ’doctors‘ here to get a practicing license! Not to mention those supposed alternative healing prescriptions. There is no scientific evidence for it. You can take a little on the side for fun when you’re well, but if you’re actually sick, you better go to a hospital to check it out.” 

“Chen! Oh my!” Xiao Chuanshu is unwilling to lose. “Your only tie to America is a son who goes to school there. How the hell are you so chummy with America? Their blink of a history is only a couple hundred years long. How could a country like that be wise enough to understand traditional Chinese medicine?”

“He has a point!” Xie Shuqin quickly jumps in. “Chinese medicine is good for some things. I used to have shoulder periarthritis and it only got better because of acupuncture.”

“Speaking of acupuncture, my wife bought me an infrared acupuncture device and I have never felt better!” Xiao Chuanshu continues his salesman’s patter.

Yu Qinghui and Xie Shuqin go to the bathroom. Xie Shuqin laughs and sighs: “These men! They just can’t talk about health without bickering. Just got to fight and argue nonstop! It’s really hard to tell if they’re old men or babies. It’s silly. Hey, Qinghui, you’re doing well though, even at the ripe age of seventy-two. Your body is still so sturdy and you eat well, sleep well. Problem free!” 

“Me?” Yu Qinghui shakes her head and laughs. “It’s all just training I guess. You remember how my husband Qiu Shihong was sick for years. He was on bed rest for over three years. Every day, I cooked, cleaned, did the laundry, flipped him over and bathed him. I couldn’t afford to get sick, doing all that!”
“Aye,” Xie Shuqin steps up to the open stall, undoes her pants and steadies herself against Yu’s hand as she crouches down slowly. “That’s true. For your Mr. Qiu, you did serve for many, many years.”

Yu Qinghui stops talking. She crouches down at her own stall and urinates without another word. When she returns to help Xie Shuqin up again, Xie Shuqin says, “Have you made up your mind about Mr. Zhang? The more I think about it, the more I think it’s a good idea. At this old age, it is good to find a partner to lean on. The two of you have plenty to talk about…”

“Aiya!” Yu Qinghui is bit peeved, pulling her up abruptly. “Shuqin, you need to stop talking about it. Mr. Zhang and I are just good for conversation, there’s none of this other folly.” 

“Oh you!” Xie Shuqin laughs, “He praised that last poem of yours to high heavens, didn’t he? He even offered to submit it to Jincheng Poetry. Does he have any such concern or passion for the rest of us?” 

Yu Qinghui recalls Zhang Chongde’s critique of her work. “Ms. Yu’s contemporary poetry is truly something. Not at all artificial or whiney; she writes straight from the openness of her heart. To put it in three words: Genuine. Romantic. Lovely!” Holding the poem in his hands, he had spoken more words than his typical allowance.

The two women walk back slowly. The sky is a haunting blue and the trees are at their greenest. The sounds from the busy street beyond the tea garden wall pass over them. From afar, she sees the three men still sitting by the table chatting. One of them hugs a thermos, one lights a cigarette and one wears a hat.  

“Oh right,” Yu Qinghui suddenly remembers what she wanted to ask Xie Shuqin. “Shuqin, does Mr. Zhang have any major problems with his health?”

*

Zhang Chongde wakes with a jolt. Gunshots ring out from outside his window, but not just guns, bombs too. The booming sound constricts his chest, as if a bullet had lodged there. He sits up too quickly and his spine gives out with a crack, as if he had been struck by another gunshot.

He looks at his furniture in the room illuminated by the street lamps outside. Slowly, he returns to reality – it wasn’t gunfire outside, just a cement truck from the construction site across the street.

He takes a look at the clock on his nightstand: 2:50 AM.

He gets out of bed, stepping into his slippers to go to the toilet and, after shaking out a few drops, he walks out into the living room and sits down upon his wicker chair. After a while, he realizes he has been convulsing this whole time. He holds his breath as he reaches for the cigarettes and lighter on his tea table. He lights one, takes a puff, takes another puff, and gradually feels less shaky. 

“Can’t die yet. Just can’t die yet,” he mutters to himself.

Zhang has survived for eighty-one years. There is no reason why he should die now. When he was in the revolution, he watched a fellow from his town get shot to pieces. Luckily, Zhang was a faster runner. On his boat ride down the Three Gorges, the boat ahead crashed into a cliff and was obliterated. Luckily, Zhang was not able to squeeze himself on that earlier ride. Upon returning to his native Sichuan after the Liberation, he found that the Zhang family had been decimated by a deadly virus: one person caught it and the next thing you know, a whole pile of bodies had formed. Luckily, Zhang had been a long way away. When the armies were sent on land reclamation projects, a pot cooking crispy rice caused a giant fire in the dining hall that claimed five lives. Luckily, he stayed behind in the communal kitchen to cook that day. During the years of famine, everyone was so famished they were chomping on their own digits, but he managed to hold on to a steady job thanks to his in-laws’ connections. During the Cultural Revolution, the in-laws were dragged across the stage, ridiculed and tortured to death, but Zhang’s own poor, farming background granted him safe passage. No matter how hard the times were, he had always lived through them. Got appendicitis; he cut out his appendix. Got a gallbladder full of stones; he cut out his gallbladder. Grew a tumor in his stomach; the biopsy came back benign. His heart nearly failed; he installed a pacemaker. Even a wife ten years his junior had died of old age. He still lived on, surviving each and every hurdle. His daughter and son, who work in the city, took him to a birthday dinner when they came back to sweep the tombs over Qingming. As they ate, one of them said, “Dad, you really have seen it all in this lifetime. You’ve survived innumerable disasters. Now that the living is better, you should just enjoy yourself.”

Technically speaking, life is indeed good right now. Every month, he receives three thousand and seven hundred yuan in retirement funds. He has never been able to spend it all. But it is now that Zhang Chongde has begun to have trouble sleeping, waking up every night. He sits at his dining table to write prose, but every sentence becomes a line for his will. Thrice a month, he’ll work up the strength to go to the tea party, but when he walks down the road he is paranoid and anxious, feeling like a car will strike him the very next second. He is tired as soon as he wakes up. No matter what he eats, there is a bitter taste in his mouth. If he smokes, he feels his lungs hurting. Essentially, nothing feels right. He decided to find himself something to do, and that’s how he got Xiao Chuanshu to contact the publishers about his book. Every day, he works on his manuscript. Yes, it is something to keep him preoccupied, but it doesn’t keep the revolving voice in his head from reciting a Du Fu poem about the late sage Zhuge Liang:

The counselor died before the victory was had, 

henceforth the heroes will have tear soaked sleeves.

*

Finally, the manuscript is ready, the preface is written, and the summer has nearly been killed off. Early in the afternoon, Xiao Chuanshu comes over to his house to pick up the manuscript. “Mr. Zhang, are you feeling a little ill recently? Why do you look so limp? It’s nearly autumn, you should pay heed to your health!”

“I’ve stayed up working on the manuscript the past few nights, that’s all.” Zhang Chongde couldn’t really say much else.

“Aye, look at you,” Xiao Chuanshu taps his fingers on the large pile of papers on the tea table, “you’re all alone here. You ought to take better care of yourself. I told you last time – Wang Jiaqiong asked me again – don’t you want to consider her offer? She’ll find a suitable live-in nanny for you. Someone checking on you is better than nothing, right?”

“I’m such an old man, how could I have a nanny? That’s just an invitation for others to ridicule me,” Zhang Chongde replies.

“You have such an outdated attitude! These days, there are plenty of seventy or eighty year old people with nannies. It’s nothing outrageous, just someone to take care of you – and for the nanny, it gives her the benefit of a place to live and food to eat. The two of you would live together, without complications.”

“Aye! No! No.” Zhang Chongde gets up to retrieve his ashtray. The two of them each smoke a cigarette. Xiao Chuanshu looks over Zhang’s prelude and nods in approval every few lines. 

“Good. Good! Look at this sentence.” He slaps his leg and reads, “‘Eighty-one years pass before me, like one dream on a stormy night.’ This sounds a bit Zhuangzi dreaming of his butterfly.”

“Old Xiao,” Zhang Chongde extinguishes his cigarette. “Stop flattering me. I honestly can’t bear it.”

“You still have the same problem, see? Too modest!” Xiao Chuanshu continues, “I have great confidence in this book now. Your pieces are well-written, the editing and organization is fine-tuned, and further, the title is original: Collection of Bygone Flavours. Just compare this to the titles the others have come out with: Spring Awakens in the City of Azaleas or Delicate Whispers from a Stony Pagoda – those are way too corny compared to yours! When your collection comes out, it will surely receive critical acclaim!”

Zhang Chongde has led a common life, so such praise from others always lifts his spirits. He follows Xiao in taking another cigarette and drinks some more tea as they look at two more pieces from the manuscript. He is still feeling giddy as he sees Xiao Chuanshu to the door. That evening he eats fifteen dumplings by himself, watches CCTV News, listens to the weather report, and reads from The Miscellaneous Notes from House Rong before washing his feet and getting in bed. But again, he is startled awake before 3 AM. 

Sweating profusely, he sits down in the living room, listening to the trucks drive in and out of the construction site across the street. Every time they thunder into earshot, his heart pounds in pain. He supposes this is the meaning of: 

Love bears the bitter fruit of pain, 

Greed reveals the impoverished home.

Zhang Chongde has now handed off a lifetime’s worth of sweat and blood, but from it has risen a new, troubling worry. “I need to make it till the book is published, at least. I ought to see the book before I go,” he urges himself again. 

*

Yu Qinghui sees the couple standing by the street: one on the curb and the other off it, looking towards the East Gate. She waves at Chen Ai and Xie Shuqin, subconsciously quickening her pace. Another ten or so meters at this speed and she is completely out of breath. Xie Shuqin quickly dissuades her with a wave, as if saying: slow down, you… there’s no rush. 

She slows down. Left foot, right foot, a step at a time until she finally reaches the couple.

“Mr. Chen, Shuqin, sorry for the wait,” she greets them.

“It hasn’t been long,” Chen Ai says. “We just arrived – we had some sour and spicy vermicelli for lunch by the river and strolled over.”

“Mr. Chen, you’re in to take a picture too?” Yu Qinghui asks.

“No, no, not me. I’m just accompanying Shuqin. On the way back, I’ll go play some chess over on West Street,” Chen Ai says, stepping off the curb. 

The three of them walk along East Street. National Day has just passed and flags are still hanging over the entrance of the movie theater. People on the streets are dressed in suits and leather shoes, their faces expressionless.

“Ms. Yu, you look sharp today,” Chen Ai says.

“You call this sharp!” Yu Qinghui immediately felt embarrassed, “You are the ones who always look sophisticated.”

“Ha! Us!” Chen Ai pats Xie Shuqin on the shoulder. “An old grandpa and an old grandma – familiarity breeds contempt.” 

They walk to Phoenix Photography House on the corner of the intersection, and there they part ways, leaving Yu Qinghui supporting Xie Shuqin as they enter the building.

“Granny, you in for pictures?” A young woman with round cheeks opens the door quickly for them. 

“Yes, for pictures. We both want photos taken.” Xie Shuqin nods at her.

“All right, grannies, you take it easy, walk slow. Are these photos for official documents?” The girl leads them in. 

“Just a normal colour photo is fine,” Xie Shuqin says, as she takes out a newspaper from her bag, “with this.”

Yu Qinghui looks at the copy of Ping Le Daily and the header with the clearly printed date October 11th, 2010 – isn’t this the date today?

Whose ludicrous idea was this? At first, Yu Qinghui was furious. “The neighbourhood organizers of East Street are too much! A picture with the papers? Who can even think of this idea, it’s not like I’m a criminal!” she exclaimed.

“Aye,” Xie Shuqin comforted her, “those people aren’t really educated and this was all they could think of. Let’s just take the picture, Chen Ai can turn it in for us, and all three of us can get our money. It’s the most convenient way.” 

It was meant to be a good thing. Over tea in late September, Xiao Chuanshu said, “Have you heard? The government is going to pay some subsidies to the elderly. If you’re over seventy, you can get fifty yuan a month. And if you’re over eighty, you can get seventy a month. It started from January this year. The only condition is that we have to go to the neighbourhood organization center to get the cash and those organizers are scumbags – if you don’t go, they’ll just take your money for themselves. I’ve been in to collect mine: from January to September, I’ve gotten four hundred and fifty yuan.”

When the tea mates heard, they were astonished. Chen Ai said, “Xie Shuqin, this means that the two of us can get one hundred and twenty a month! If you keep going, in two years, we will have one hundred and forty!”

Zhang Chongde laughed too: “Old Chen, living long is a blessed thing isn’t it?”

Yu Qinghui never thought she would come across such an unexpected fortune in her life, but making money was never going to be as easy as that. The neighbourhood organization center moved to a municipal center outside of the East Gate. Just a cab ride over required seven or eight yuan, and then you have to climb five flights of stairs. 

Chen Ai said he’d go and pick up the money for everyone, so no one else would have to go, but ended up coming back without a cent. Apparently, the neighbourhood organizers said, “We can’t distribute money to any of you old grandpas or grandmas without the actual person present. Who’s to say whether the senior’s dead or alive? If you want to come on their behalf, it’s okay, but you would have to bring a picture of each of them with that day’s newspaper for our records. Then we’ll pay you.” 

Yu Qinghui honestly didn’t want this money anymore, but Xie Shuqin continued to convince her: “Rules are rules, laws are laws, this is the government’s subsidy for the elderly; no reason for those worthless idiots at the neighbourhood center to blow our share.”

Chen Ai said: “You two just need to go take a picture. It’s convenient; they can develop the film instantly. I am going anyway, so I’m happy to serve the people.”

And so, they came to Phoenix Photography House to get their pictures taken. 

They tell the photographer this story, and he shakes his head in disgust and wonders how people can come up with such tactics. “I’ve never heard of anything like this: asking people to come and pose with the papers.” 

It doesn’t matter how indignant she feels; Yu Qinghui ends up sitting on the stool. Two bright lights from either side flash, she holds the newspapers up before her chest, facing the lens unable to smile as the camera clicks. Xie Shuqin has hers taken too.

The photographer prints the photos and gives them two each. “These pictures turned out great,” he says, examining them again. “Dare I ask how old you grannies are?”

“What’s your guess?” Xie Shuqin says.

The clever photographer smiles, “If you ask me, I’d say sixty – maximum.”

Yu Qinghui and Xie Shuqin both giggle. “Young man, you sure know how to talk,” Yu Huiqin says.

“Honest!” the photographer insists. “I’ve seen so many old grannies and you two look extra young, extra pretty. You really know how to take care of yourselves!”

And so the two of them come out of the building again, restored to high spirits. Xie Shuqin takes a glance at Yu Huiqing and says, “That young man does have a point, you know, you look about seventy or so – maximum!”

“Aiya,” a bashful Yu Qinghui says. “I cleaned up a bit for the photos today, but on most days, I’m just a dumpy old bag.” 

“If you think you’re dumpy, then the old women in my compound might as well just go top themselves.” Xie Shuqin seems determined to drive this compliment home.

Of course I’m not comparing myself to those old women, Yu Qinghui thought.

“Qinghui, we’ve talked about it for too long. Since we have collected the money, Old Chen and I might as well take you and Mr. Zhang out for dinner,” Xie Shuqin says.

“What? If anything, I should be the one treating you two. Chen has to go through the trouble of picking up the money for me,” Yu Qinghui says.

“Don’t be silly! The two of us have to take you two singletons!” Xie Shuqin laughs.

Even though the words sound odd, Yu Qinghui understands what she is suggesting and falls silent. She remembers seeing Chen Ai and Xie Shuqin standing together on the street, waiting for her. 

Two people together can provide some mutual care, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

*

Zhang Chongde steps out early earlier than he needed to. After all, it is rather awkward to be around home these days. He walks down three flights, leaves the courtyard and feels a freeing sensation expand in his chest when he sees the streets full of commotion and the noodle shop across the street. He exhales deeply.

There is still a fair bit of time before the tea party, so Zhang saunters along East Street, towards Riverside Tea Gardens, looking around as he walks. East Street has changed a lot over the recent years. Buildings upon buildings have been built, and shops after shops have opened in them.  Everyone eats and dresses well. People walk quickly, blown by like gusts of wind. Just sixty years ago, Zhang distinctly remembers, this was all forest and wild land. The people in town were poor and skinny, leaning by their doorframes from dawn to dusk, afraid of getting hungry again if they so much as raised their rear ends.

And ironically, he has no appetite in life anymore – at lunch, he sat down at the table to find two meat dishes, one veggie dish and a soup before him, a total of four courses. He was a bit resentful: an honest man shouldn’t be greedy, what good is this much food? Wasteful! But he didn’t say anything, just kept his head down and filled his belly, put down the chopsticks and put on his leather shoes to step out. 

There is still time, after all, so he doesn’t take the short cut at Baosheng Alley but instead makes his way to the intersection, turns up to North Street – and even with all this strolling, he is the first to arrive at Riverside Tea Gardens; none of his tea mates are there.

He finds a table and sits down. The waitress at the tea gardens knows him well enough. She walks over with a large container of boiling water and places it by him. “Grandpa Zhang, here is your hot water!” Just then, Zhang Chongde discovers that he left in such a hurry today he forgot to bring his tea thermos. Given no other choice, he takes out five yuan and says to the girl, “Give me a Maofeng green tea.” 

Before the Maofeng is ready, Yu Qinghui arrives. She greets him: “Mr. Zhang, you’re so early today. I thought I would be the first.” 

“Haha,” Zhang Chongde starts, “I had lunch and didn’t want to nap so I set out early. How is it going? Have you written any new poems recently?”

“Just one. It’s not quite ripe yet. I still have lots of changes to make.” Yu Qinghui has always been humble about her work.

“Did you bring it? Would you let me see?” Zhang Chongde asks. He hadn’t actually thought that Yu Qinghui would be willing to share the poem, but she quickly retrieves it from her purse and gives it to him. As always, her characters are written neatly in the green grid of the white page:

Conversing with Old Man Time

I beg Old Man Time for memories memories that had long floated away 

with the wind like wisps of smoke.

I ask Old Man Time for a glimpse of the future
He says – 

You don’t have much time You ought to cherish each day

So that the future does not become laden with regret

Zhang Chongde reads this poem over again and again, momentarily unable to speak. Yu Qinghui’s poem have always been sparse and light in taste, comforting and familiar – but it just so happens that these simple, familiar lines have hit him straight in the heart.

“Ah, Ms. Yu, your poetry is getting better and better. This is so earnest. So moving,” he finally musters.

“I think the ending is still a little too rough. I will need to rethink it some more. I will rethink it.” Yu Qinghui takes out her reading glasses and puts them on, joining him in reading the poem again.

“It’s already quite good!” Zhang Chongde nods his head, begins reading, “I beg Old Man Time for memories, memories that had long floated away with the wind like wisps of smoke… good! It’s truly good!” He suddenly remembers something and pauses, then he decidedly turns to her and asks, “Ms. Yu, have you had any news of your older sister in the last few years?”

Yu Qinghui jumps, and looks at Zhang Chongde again. “Mr. Zhang, you knew my sister?”

“Of course I knew her. We all lived on the same street, right?” Zhang Chongde counts the years. “But back then, you were young, barely six or seven? You were about this tall.” Zhang Chongde lifts his hand and holds it level to the table’s height. 

“I had no idea you were one of our neighbours living by the East Gate. How is it that I have no recollection of this?” Yu Qinghui is still shocked.

“Ah, well, I did leave home very early on. When I was seventeen, I left with the third Zhou brother for Shanghai to learn to do trade. You naturally wouldn’t have known me.” 

“Shanghai!” Yu Qinghui exclaims again, “I have never heard you mention this in our years of having tea together.”

“What’s there to say? They’re just bygone days in an expired dynasty’s almanac!” Zhang Chongde laughs. A server finally brings over his Maofeng green. “Ms. Yu, what would you like to drink?”

Unsurprisingly, Yu Qinghui’s new composition receives admiration from the entire group. Everyone says that the poem encapsulates the emotional experience of the elderly.

“Don’t be offended,” Xiao Chuanshu says, “but Mr. Zhang and Mr. Chen, your pieces have great craft, and much accumulated experience that supports them, and as for me, I’m not worth mentioning, since I just dabble, that’s all… but I really must say that among us, Ms. Yu’s writing is most worthy of readership. Natural and without affectation, the purest bird has a heart of gold!” 

Chen Ai nods too, “Xiao old pal, you are correct. How would I be angry? Ms. Yu’s contemporary verse is a marvel!”

Zhang Chongde, in contrast, is more reticent: he had already praised her enough, and besides, talking to Yu Qinghui has taken his thoughts back in time. 

He remembers his seventeen-year-old self, following Zhou beneath a merciless sun as they walked sixty li from Ping Le township to Yongan City to take the boat headed for Chongqing, Wuchang, then eventually, Shanghai. That day, he sweat so much his back was glistening with salt. His mind was fastened upon one thought: “Red Plum, forget it! If you think I’m too poor for you, I’ll just leave. I won’t come back!”

“Sixty-four years have passed.” He sips his Maofeng tea, sitting beneath the barren grapevine, counting again. “Sixty… sixty-four long years.”

He sits dazed until the tea party is nearly over, when he hears Chen Ai calling him: “Mr. Zhang. Mr. Zhang!”

“Yes, Old Chen, what is it?” he asks.

“So, it’s like this,” Xie Shuqin says, “You see, today we have had such a passionate discussion, none of us want to go home. I was talking with the husband: why don’t we just get dinner together? Chen, myself, you, Qinghui, Mr. Xiao…” She looks at Xiao Chuanshu, smiling furtively, “Oh right, Mr. Xiao, you have someone waiting for you to go home for dinner, so I won’t ask you.”

Zhang Chongde doesn’t get it at first – Xie Shuqin has always been the most gracious and considerate person, so it is strange that she would leave out Xiao Chuanshu. Xiao Chuanshu is visibly upset. He laughs cooly, drains the last of his tea, and says, “Aye! Ms. Xie, you are wrong! It’s no longer just me with someone waiting for me at home, Mr. Zhang has someone too! You should ask him. See if he can actually come with you.” 

All the friends of the tea party look shocked. Everyone turns to Zhang Chongde.

Zhang Chongde doesn’t know how to respond. It was such an ordinary thing, but the way Xiao Chuanshu said it made it seem highly inappropriate. He feels horrible, feeling for his hat: “Now… now, Xiao old pal, the way you said it! It’s – it’s just my daughter and my son, really, who were both worried about me, saying that I can’t take care of myself alone at home. They found me a nanny. Oh, Xiao, old pal, it was your idea! You should explain it better!”

No one else knows what to say, as awkwardness fills the air. Suddenly, with a thud, Yu Qinghui stands up, tipping over her chair behind her. She doesn’t seem to notice, and instead, quickly gathers her reading glasses and papers to stuff back into her bag. “Hey, Qinghui…” Xie Shuqin calls. 

“I have to go,” Yu Qinghui blurts, “I still have matters to attend to at home.”

She walks out, leaving Zhang Chongde gaping at Chen Ai and Xie Shuqin, and a completely puzzled Xiao Chuanshu. 

“What’s with Ms. Yu?” Xiao Chuanshu asks.

“She…” Xie Shuqin, rarely angry, now furiously glares at Xiao Chuanshu, “Aye! Never mind. Never mind! This is all just so…” 

She leans on Chen Ai as they walk out together, no mention of dinner again, leaving just Zhang Chongde to face Xiao Chuanshu. 

“Old Zhang. Old Zhang, what are you still sitting there for?” he hears Xiao Chuanshu’s voice. “They’re all gone!”

*

Yu Qinghui walks along the street for a while before noticing the blooming begonias in the city park. Their vermillion echoes a few adjacent plum trees that are swaying in the moonlight. It is just past the tenth day of the Chinese New Year and a few kids are in the park, still trying to light some firecrackers. In the past, she was terrified of fireworks, running and dodging as soon as she saw people setting them off. But today, she doesn’t walk away. She stands by the road and watches the flashy new pedestrian area and the new park in it. Today’s flowers are redder than last year’s bloom – she remembers seeing this line somewhere, but has forgotten what comes next.

Since she stopped attending the tea party last November, she has not been out on the streets at all. Walking down East Street now just feels even colder. Of course, there is still a lot of activity around Guoxue Alley and the compounds of the Cultural Ministry and Education Bureau that Yu Qinghui just passed. The wreaths in front of one of the apartments are piled high and line the driveway, all the way out to the street, obstructing even the cars that tried to enter the premises. The recently deceased director Chen Ai had been an irreplaceable figure in the field of education here in Yongfeng County. The students mentored by him have all become successful – so there is an incessant trickle of people who came to pay tribute.

Yu Qinghui wants to go in, but feels that attending is meaningless. When she first heard the news, she called Xie Shuqin, who sounded calm on the phone: “Qinghui, thank you. Thanks very much. No, don’t come over. We’re all old folks, dear, and these things hurt the body and hurt the soul. I have people taking care of me, rest assured. Rest assured.” Her niece from Yongan city had come to care for her, and her own two sons were rushing to get back home from abroad – as if there is any point in rushing, the elderly in the courtyard all said. And what’s the point of being so successful after all? A tragedy! Two elders surviving from year to year with no children to take care of them, isolated and sad. And to die from choking on a raisin, no less! Even strangers would cry at this story! Tragic!

She stands by the road, suddenly unable to move at all, as if a breath is jammed in her chest. Her head begins to spin and an ill steam rushes up to her face. “I am going to fall! I am falling!” She panics, as the next breath of air becomes more and more elusive.

“Ms. Yu!” She hears someone call for her, and quickly reaches out her shaking hand, saying, “Come! Please come and steady me!”

The person hurries over and helps her shuffle to the nearest park bench and sit down. “Aye! Aye!” Yu Qinghui gasps, the ground beneath finally slowing down its spin. She looks up at the person beside her – it is none other than her tea mate from the Three-One’s tea party, Zhang Chongde.

“Here, drink something.” Zhang Chongde twists open his thermos and hands it to her. 

Yu Qinghui can’t be bothered with etiquette and grabs the thermos. She gulps down a mouthful of hot tea. The soothing liquid warms her insides immediately.

“Aye! My goodness. My heavens!” She gasps for more air.

“Take another drink! Another drink!” she hears Zhang Chongde say, and she takes another sip.

“Ah, Mr. Zhang, thank you… I’m sorry to trouble you like this.” She finally returns to her senses, and says the proper thing. 

“Don’t be so polite. You don’t need to thank me.” Zhang Chongde takes back the container and caps it. “You just came out from Chen Ai’s place too? Why didn’t I see you?”

So he went too, Yu Qinghui thinks. “I didn’t go in. I just stood outside the door for a bit.” 

“That’s good… It’s a good thing you didn’t,” Zhang Chongde says with a nod. “There were too many people. I barely got a word in with Ms. Xie before I left.”

“How is she?” Yu Qinghui asks.

“She looked a little frail, but was in good spirits,” Zhang Chongde says.

They sit together on the bench and gaze out at the old city gate of South Street. A few cabs are lined up there, waiting for business. A peddler rides his tricycle cart loaded with mandarin oranges. 

“Us and our old friends,” Zhang Chongde suddenly sighs. “We lose one a year.” 

Yu Qinghui doesn’t respond. Zhang Chongde says, “But you, Ms. Yu, you haven’t come by the tea party in a long time and we were all left wondering whether we had offended you.” 

“No, no! No such thing!” Yu Qinghui quickly asserts, “It’s just been too cold recently, and I haven’t felt my best. I just didn’t want to step out.”

“That just won’t do,” Zhang Chongde gently chides her. “You must move more whenever you feel like you don’t want to, or else your health will decay. You should come out frequently, see the old friends, read some poetry, and catch up on some chatter. That’s the way to pass time.”

“You’re right,” Yu Huiqing says.

“Just now Xie was telling me that after the coming Lantern Festival, the twenty-first this month, our tea party should start up again. She said she would come. Why don’t you come too?” Zhang Chongde asks her.

Yu Qinghui suddenly wonders how Xie Shuqin has been getting to the bathroom in her absence during the past few months. 

“I will come,” she says, “the first, the eleventh and the twenty-first of the month. We should not stop our Three-One’s tea party for anything.” 

“Yes, yes.” Zhang Chongde sits by her, nodding his head, as if he has found consonance. 

Indeed:

The begonias on the branches add new buds,

Old friends meet again to remember the dead.

Another year ushers in springtime beauty,

Her glories flee but the composing heart remains.

Translated by Karmia Olutade

Lü Yao

绿妖

Born in Shaoxing in the north of Zhejiang, Lü Yao (a penname taken meaning “green monster”, taken from the title of one of Wang Xiaobo’s short stories) has worked at various newspapers, magazines and TV stations since moving to Beijing in 2001. Her short stories and personal essays explore the challenges faced by women attempting to forge lives in China’s urban centres. Lü Yao’s debut novel Beijing Beastie was published in 2012, and her most recent collection of stories, Nezha, was released in 2015.

The Night the Steamers Came Alive

轮船复活之夜

Illustration by Wang Yan

When I was little, on evenings when there was a moon, I would often lean against the back window, and gaze out at the neighbour’s roof and the concrete below. They dazzled in the moonlight, and I was sure that when I was asleep, young men and women came out to dance there.

The back window was the only south-facing window in the bedroom, and it was quite big. At weekends I would pull a little stool to the bedside table, and sit by the window doing my homework. The autumn sunlight disappeared so fast, it took you by surprise. From downstairs came the sound of mahjong, all day long. The sound of the tiles knocking against the hard wooden table was so loud. In the bedroom there was not a single book that was not a textbook. Such books were ripped up as soon as they were found. If I wanted to read, I had to go to the booklending shop where it cost five mao per book. If I didn’t want to go out, or hadn’t any money to borrow books, then I had to stay in that unheated, airless room, with its four white walls that were painted blue on the bottom half, staring at my hands. Sometimes, the adults would be so engrossed in their mahjong that they would forget about dinner, and I would be sitting upstairs as the moon slowly emerged. I would stare out at the neighbour’s roof; now and then I would face the other way, then suddenly look round, hoping to see the dancers. If not this time, then maybe next time. It was one of my favourite games. 

When I was even younger, before I was allowed to wear a key around my neck, there was a time when I would come from school to an empty house. The main gate and the kitchen door weren’t locked, and if it was cold, I would sit in the kitchen that was the size of a chessboard, hugging my shoulders, and trying not to get any dust from the lid of the rice pot on my clothes. If it wasn’t cold, I would squat outside, watching the ants or the sky. It went dark slowly. Sometimes the moon came out. Sometimes it didn’t.

At times like those, I wished there was another world, completely different to the one I was in, completely different to this life, to this existence. Where my world was black and white, it would be colour. Where my world was silent, there would be music. Where my world was boring, it would be light and inspiring.

The booklending shop wasn’t there when I started primary school. There was just the booklending stall by the entrance to the cinema, a few doors laid side-by-side, with rows of picture-story books held in place with rubber bands and stacked end to end, five fen per book. There was a row of little stools by our feet, rubbed shiny by all our bottoms. We would sit on those shiny stools and gradually slide along to the left, moving on to the books on the next door, like a ship moving slowly across water. On the far left were the martial arts novels that the older kids read. When I started middle school, and had enough money to pay the deposit, I started to take books home. In the middle of the night, when the adults were asleep, my sister and I would quietly sit up in bed and pull out our books as though we were at a secret underground meeting. We started off sitting side by side, but although I was younger, I read faster, and so over the course of the night I would gradually end up reading ahead, turning around until we were sitting face-to-face, holding the upright book between us. Those books had a tragic fate: almost half of them were ripped up by my father. Sometimes he would pick up a book in both hands and rip the covers off, just like that. The damage wasn’t so bad, and it was easy to stick them back together again. Sometimes he would grab a load of pages at the front and the back and yank them apart, tearing the books down the middle. Those weren’t difficult to repair either. The worst time was when I borrowed a full set of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils. It was a lovely warm weekend, and the two of us, again in the middle of the night (when else could it be?) had covered the window with our bedding (hoping that downstairs wouldn’t see the lights were on upstairs), listened carefully to check that all was quiet, and with our hearts in our mouths, started to read. That night, when we were exposed, my father exploded in rage, and tore the entire set to pieces. The pages swirled in the air like snowflakes. Once he’d gone back down downstairs, I started worrying about my ten yuan deposit. My sister pieced the books together again, page by page, making seamless repairs with transparent tape. It took us almost all night to stick them back together, and we used up a whole roll of tape. But we did it, and still managed to read more than half of them before the sun rose.

I’ve often thought about the old man at the booklending stall. In summer he wore a white shirt, and in autumn and winter a dark blue Mao suit, all neat and clean. I don’t know how old he was; at that time all middle-aged people seemed old to me. Many of the books were just old and dog-eared when I borrowed them, but were actually missing parts when I returned them. Yet my credit remained intact, and I carried on borrowing against my deposit of ten yuan. In the second year of middle school, I reached the furthest left position at the stall. There were no more books after that. At the far end of the last door was a stack of Lu Xun’s works. I started to borrow and read Lu Xun. Then I wanted to buy them. But he said, “These books belong to my children, they’re not for sale.” 

Many years later, I took a friend back to my hometown. The cinema and book stall of the past had turned into a shopping mall, and there was a stall selling balloons at the entrance. I told my friend that the old man must have been sent from another planet to save me. Otherwise why did he carry on lending me books after I’d torn so many of them? When I was little, that old man in the white shirt was another world for me. 

While I was at middle school, I got a library card for the three big libraries in town. But even this could not satisfy me; I was burning for more. Without books to read, I was like a young widow deprived of a lover. 

Then I went to Beijing, and was cast into a sea of books and literary youth. When my reading was at its most intense, I would go all night without sleep. Beijing in winter was so quiet and still that I could feel my brain whirring, and hear the blood gurgling through the tiny blood vessels in my head. The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, The Master and Margarita, Dr Zhivago… these books seemed as vast as the wilds of Siberia. 

I bought a place, largely in the hope that my books would stop going astray. I bought white bookshelves with glass doors. But the number of books grew and grew, bubbling over like rice porridge, flowing out of the glass doors and all over the place. I had never known such riches. I could read whatever I liked.

Then I lived away from Beijing for a few years. At one point, my home was in three different places: in Beijing, in a friend’s garage in Shaoxing, and in Dali. Whenever I arrived in one of these places, for the first few days I’d be busy receiving deliveries. One after another, like happy homing pigeons, they turned up from cities across China: bringing winter clothes from Beijing, gifts from friends I’d met on the way, and books I’d bought en route. There was always a package of books. It didn’t matter which city I’d been to, or which town I’d left, among the flurry of deliveries there were always some books.

The second place I lived in Shaoxing was near Jishan, the Royal Hill. It was an elderly couple’s home, and I had their daughter’s bedroom upstairs, which had dark brown floorboards, a single bed, a desk and a small wooden bookshelf. It was plain and simple, a perfect study. In no time at all, the bookshelf was full. In late autumn I bought an oil-filled radiator, and it became the warmest place in the building. In that room I wrote the only two short stories I’ve written in the last few years – “Hard Pupa” and “Nezha” – and in terms of peace and quiet, it was good.

At the end of 2011, I made another big move, from Shaoxing to Dali. The evening before I moved, I packed all my books into boxes, as though carefully putting my treasures into the safe before tidying up everything else. In the first box I put Li Juan’s My Altai, Han Songluo’s The Angry River’s Spring Awakening, and Xu Haofeng’s Mahavairocana Tantra. It was a clean, strong cardboard box, and I wrote in marker pen on the outside “Favourite books”, although the writing was a bit wonky. I had read a third of Mahavairocana Tantra to my friend. The two last days, I’d wanted to read her the rest. I didn’t manage it. There’s an element of fate with books. Sometimes, if you can’t finish it in the time fate has allocated, you never will. And you never know how long that will be. 

In Dali, there was a bookshelf on the first floor, and I settled into the desk beside it. Wherever I go, I like to sit next to a bookshelf, like people who’ve known hunger like to sleep on grain. Gradually, the books I’d bought in various places turned up, one after another, their arrival announced by the beep-beep of the courier’s horn downstairs. Most treasured of all were Chung Li-ho’s Diary, Yasunari Kawabata’s Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, Luo Yijun’s Faces, Nigel Barley’s The Innocent Anthropologist, and Chen Xianfa’s Engraved Upon My Heart. 

In fact, like most people, I spent most of my reading time that year engrossed in Haruki Murakami’s IQ84 and Liu Cixin’s Three Body trilogy. They were the stones marking out my reading path of 2011. But now a year has passed and that reading experience – which at the time felt as grand to me as it did to everyone else – has been watered down in the sea of memory. It was the unassuming islands, shining their own lights, which stood out in my mind. Like Raymond Carver’s Distance, where the main picture is a beautiful scene of a happy couple in sweetness and warmth, like a room in winter with the lights on and the windows steaming up as the evening meal is cooking. But on the other side of those four walls there is the biting cold, the vast open land, the rough, hard life. He speaks in warm tones, but his words are cold, and there is a chill in his distant glance. Before, when I read Carver, I felt nothing, but this time I understood. 

And there was E. Annie Proulx’s Close Range, a book that was cold as ice. I was in Dali during the winter, and as soon as the sun set in the mountains, I would leap into bed and turn on my own little warm sun, which made little difference. But the chill of that book created a tension against the cold of the real world, and the one offset the other. Annie Proulx’s cold was so extreme, compressing life into such a tight little ball that I was grateful to have any feeling left at all. In my room without heating, I was dependent on her for most of the winter.

I continued to buy books. Tarkovsky’s Time Within Time, Hrabal’s Too Loud A Solitude… though my reading was different from the random, carefree reading of my childhood. Now it was more like trying to find a solution, or tracing a little path up a mountain. But why must I write? Could I not manage without writing? Why must life have meaning? Is it not just as valid to take a random, carefree stroll in a garden? Ionescu said, “I have run after life so much that it has always escaped me, I have run, I have never been late and never too early, and yet I have never caught up with it: it is as though I have run alongside of it.” I’m in a quandary about this too. This thing called the meaning of life – where is it? What is it, this thing that torments us? Is there another world, that exists alongside this one, exactly the same, yet completely different? Completely different from the one in which every day I make tea with milk, buy vegetables, cook and watch the blue shadow creep over the white mountains as the sun sets? 

In fact, by then I was no longer taking in anything when I read. When I had time, I scrolled through Weibo. I couldn’t write either. In the last two years what I did I write? Two short stories, three or four reviews. That’s it, the sum total.

If it’s simply about connecting, then what’s the difference between scrolling through Weibo and reading books? The difference is quality. To read is to share the experience of life, of life compressed to its essence, like a drop of water squeezed from a stone. So small, yet so precious. Reading – isn’t it about breaking down the grey walls that stand between us? About there being an alternative to this long, dreary world, a possibility as light and inspiring as moonlight? Haven’t we all, at some moment in our lives, forgotten ourselves, stepped out of our own worlds when engaging with someone else, if only during a silent meeting of eyes? 

It’s for this reason that people crave interaction, and even if that interaction is fraught with misunderstanding, the craving and misunderstanding will only stop at death. “I truly hope I can go on reading forever, to smash up this sea of silence,” said Wang Xiaobo. But, whether reading or writing or talking, everything that touches the soul has already smashed this sea of silence, and when the light shone, I had the privilege of entering your world, and that is enough. 

In Dali, when discussing the cover of Beijing Beastie with the editor from Shanghai, and the designer from Nanjing, I saw Huang Lu’s photograph of the Summer Palace in winter: those black branches, bone-thin and ghostly, slashing the white sky. “That’s it!” I cried, “that’s Beijing! Life hidden behind death.” In the end, we didn’t use that cover. It didn’t matter. We say “in the end”, but time never ends, and what we call “the end” is just an event, a state of being in the endlessness of time. For each of us, time ends at our death. Perhaps this is the source of human suffering: that everything comes to its end, and we keep going, bumping along with the ups and downs of the tape measure of fate. Is there another world on the other side of the tape measure? Where young men and women come out and dance on the roof at night? I don’t know.

In the end, I came back to Beijing. It’s now November 2012, and very soon I will see black branches, bone-thin and ghostly. I know from personal experience how the whistling wind gnaws at your bones, and how easily it can drive you to depression. It took a couple of months for my belongings to arrive from Shaoxing in the east, and from Dali in the west – for my baggage, scattered throughout China, to catch up with me, landing one after another like weary homing pigeons that had lost their way. And, of course, there were books. Books like The Angry River Awakening in Spring, Mahavairocana Tantra, The Loser’s Song, Northern Strategies at the End of the Ming Dynasty, and Engraved Upon the Heart… Books I’d bought in different places, books sent to me by friends, and books my father had carried all the way from Beijing to wish me good luck in my new home when I thought I was going to settle down in Shaoxing. And it was home. Wherever we go, the places we call home are the places where we keep saying goodbye, where we keep receiving deliveries.

When I came back to Beijing, the first thing I did was arrange the books on my bookshelves. For a few years I’d been going round in circles like a zoetrope, and some books had gone missing, like Close Range. Some books that I’d thought were lost had arrived home before me, like the copy of Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio bought in Xiamen – a hardback with a white cover and all but the last two characters of the raised gold title worn away. It took me back to the Lantern Festival in 2010, when, late at night, sitting reading in bed, in a sea-view guesthouse in Xiamen’s Zengcuo’an, I heard the ships’ horns sounding in the mist. They were close, and one blare was enough to show a lung capacity superior to car horns: their long, sonorous moans were redolent of prehistoric creatures. The steamers had feelings too, and on a night like that, they were lonely, moving awkwardly through the water, concerned only with finding another steamer. They seemed to call out over distance, over years, to reach each other. I took out my digital voice recorder, went out on the balcony and recorded it. This was before the guesthouse owner, Tong Yan, fell ill. Did she hear the horns that night? Or was she asleep? My sleeping friend woke, turned her head and listened for a long time, then said with feeling, “They sound so lonely.”

When I see this book, the damp sea mist rolls towards me, and the ships’ horns sound in my ears. Loud and clear, lonely, unencumbered, forgetting themselves.

Translated by Helen Wang

Yu Youyou

余幼幼

Born in 1990, Sichuanese poet Yu Youyou had already begun to earn critical attention before she turned sixteen, publishing dozens of poems in Poetry, Poetry Monthly and other prestigious publications in China. She studied business management and accounting in university, but never gave up on her long-standing passion for poetry and finally embraced her life’s calling upon graduation. She is now seen as a representative voice among the post-90’s generation, especially known for her mature voice and subtle treatment of modern femininity. Her collection Seven Years was published in 2012, and she currently lives in Chengdu.

败血书

Blood Poisoning: A letter

I see your father

still hasn’t

shuttled back

to reality

Tired tears crisscross

Cigarette butts, cigarette ash

are his only response

I also want to ask

your white blood cells

why the sudden increase

why the enlarged lymph nodes 

the fluid in your organs why

this swelling in your face and feet 

is this you still you

This me

doesn’t dare breathe deep

dreading this deadlocked image

before me

will suddenly snap

and no one

can pull you back

Can you

come back a little faster

no one will be mad that you

took a short trip to distant parts

I can keep you company

play games we never played as kids

So come back

Take off your mask

We’ll act as if nothing ever happened

抄袭

Plagiarism

Mother called to ask me to write a poem

Her office wants to submit a

praise-life-extol-the-party original piece

Parental orders cannot be disobeyed

Grab a pen

flip open a political history textbook

However the book says it

I write it

返回

Return

When she sent the news

I was putting D city behind me 

As fast as I could

She said her period came

seven days late

The single line that appeared on her pregnancy test

hadn’t made her feel any better 

Now pads are placed again

between two legs

renewing her youth

As always the monthly scare

and then the chiding lesson of the blood

空地

Open Earth

In the New Year

Older Cousin’s marriage ended

He committed suicide by poison

When the year was scarcely half over

Junior High Head Teacher

had a cerebral hemorrhage

and passed away

Back home in July

Nephew has leukemia 

so was admitted to the hospital

I mourn

From the balcony, look down

The lot is full of every kind of quality car

There isn’t a single plot 

of open earth

that could allow

a person

from a high place to fall

母亲的罐头

Mother’s Tin Can

He lies on the sea

and with a tin can for a pillow

sweetly sleeps 

Mother’s nutrients

seem packed in the can

He traverses 

the Indian and Pacific oceans

covering his entire body

with the sheen of sea water 

whenever he pries open the can

he thinks of

mother laid off at home

living in a small city in Sichuan

who has never seen the sea

食品加工厂

Food Processing Plant

O, love

after breakfast let’s have a passionate moment

those sick cows and sheep

are on the slaughtering line

preparing for us to dine

After dusk

we stretch out on the sofa

drink some toxic milk

cherish this life of creature comforts

Don’t forget

to take a few antibiotics

Don’t forget

to hold my hand whenever we eat 

头痛法则

Headache Rule 

Now the sound of rain

carries a tone of dense sobs 

I lean back on the bench

and look at the

woman with her womb scraped thin

who also can’t sit straight

Nothing is said

I can feel

her anguish from the pointed tool’s touch

but nails remain in her eyes 

aimed from time to time

at women and men in the heat of love

I just took

something for headaches

mefenamic acid tabs

The weather changes

Side effects take hold 

choking my throat

The reassembled skull

reveals from time to time

a different kind

of cavern

I and she both 

had the scalpel scrape away a piece of flesh

What I scraped out was poison

while she was scraping away love 

Translated by Emily Goedde

Jiang Shumei

姜淑梅

Jiang Shumei was born in Shandong in 1937. Having only started learning to read at the age of sixty, she began writing in 2012. In 2013 her first book Times of Chaos, Times of Want – a memoir spanning half a century of Chinese history – received widespread critical acclaim from younger writers such as Wang Xiaoni for its powerful storytelling.

Times of Chaos, Times of Want

乱时候，穷时候

Illustration by Wang Yan

How an old bird learned to read and write

People tell me there are five things to get right in life, and that the second most important is finding the right teacher. In my seventies, I got myself a good teacher who is thirty years my junior. 

My teacher’s home is filled with books. She said I could help myself. The first book I picked was Arabian Nights. It came in two thick volumes, which I read one after the other. There were many words I didn’t know, but I kept reading anyway. I could work out some on my own and, if not, I asked my teacher. By the time I reached the end of Volume Two, I had taught myself quite a few Chinese characters. 

Some time later, my teacher bought herself a collection of essays written by recipients of the Lu Xun Literary Prize. She thought it was good, and told me to read it too. The book had more words I didn’t know, but I got through it and thought it was good too. 

“Tell me, what was good about the book?” my teacher asked.

“There are fine details, like the events are real. They feel real.”

Of those different writers, my favorite was Qiao Ye. Her stories are set in Henan, where the local customs are close to those of my own Shandong hometown. They reminded me of home.   

After two years of learning to read, my teacher suggested that I also learn to write. “You should learn to write too. You’ve got a bellyful of stories. It would be a pity not to tell them,” she said.

“I’m over the hill. I’m grateful I learned to handle reading. A lot of really educated people aren’t capable of creative writing, how could I qualify to learn?” I said.  

“Try it. If you don’t try, you’ll never know.”

This conversation took place at the end of April 2012, when I was seventy-five years old. After my teacher prodded me a few more times, I had a shift of heart.   

In my younger days, I was a state production worker in Anda City, which means I still have to travel back to Anda every May and November to sign for my worker’s pension. The government needs to see I’m still alive, or else they’ll stop my payments.  

When I visited Anda that May, I told my second eldest daughter that as soon as I got back home to Suihua again, her big sister was going to teach me creative writing.

“Go for it, Ma,” she said. “As it happens we’re out of toilet paper!” 

I went to my eldest son’s house and told him, “I’m going to learn how to write with your eldest sister.” 

He replied, “Great idea, Ma. You’ll be published the day you get a visit from President Hu himself!” 

Then I went on to Daqing to see my third eldest brother. “When I get home, my daughter Ailing says she’ll teach me to write,” I told him.  

My brother is an educated man. He didn’t say anything, just roared with laughter. He rarely laughed like this. After he’d calmed down, he said: “Yes! Yes! You go ahead and learn to write!”

If my family had reacted differently, maybe I wouldn’t have tried so hard. But their response made me all the more determined. 

When I finally returned to Suihua in June, I said to my teacher: “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Tell me how to write and I’ll write it. If it’s no good, at least you’ll have some ideas for your own work.” 

Grinning, my teacher gave me two pencils, an eraser, and a wad of used paper. As the paper was already covered with various scrawls, she turned it over and told me to use the back. When I took up my pencil, my hand was trembling too hard for me to manage even a straight stroke – vertical or horizontal. It took me the whole day to write two sentences.  

“How am I ever going to learn at this rate?” 

“Take your time, we’re all the same at the start. Don’t rush. You are in first grade, learning from the very beginning.”

Toward the end of the second week my hand no longer shook. With both my vertical and horizontal strokes getting straighter, I was writing three to five lines on the page a day. Then, after constantly telling me I was making great progress, my teacher announced at the end of June that I had successfully learnt to write. “Now go write whatever you want!” she told me. 

I’ll write those old stories, I thought to myself, the more extraordinary the better. 

My first story was one my mother told me about bandits attacking Baishitun Village. Then I wrote one from my father, about the time a medium came to perform in his home, only to wet his pants halfway through his dance when an earthquake struck. 

Writing those two first stories was tough. I’d been working on them for several days, but still my papers were speckled with blank spaces where all the characters I didn’t know should have been. I waited for my teacher to come home from work and asked her to write out the missing characters for me, so that I could fill in the blanks. When I finally finished, I was pleased with what I had written, and dutifully handed in my homework. 

My teacher said my writing was good, for practice. She told me save them. But from now on, I should write about myself, about my own experiences.   

“I have experienced so much, where do I start?” I asked.

“Write about when you first moved up here to the northeast. Write the stories one by one. Pretend you’re sitting opposite someone who knows nothing about you, so you need to explain everything from start to finish.”    

“Okay, I’ll do that,” I replied.

My teacher was very strict. I began by writing about life in the dormitory where I came out in a rash, then about living in a much larger dormitory where everyone shared one huge bed, and then about my family buying a house together with two other families. But my teacher told me off. “These need to be three separate stories. Go write them out again – and make sure the one about the big dormitory is something special.” 

“But that’s all it was, a big dormitory. There’s nothing more to write about.”

“You’ve got tens upon tens of families all living together in one huge dormitory. There must be loads of stories! Think harder and tell them truthfully…”

“When people got up in the middle of the night, sometimes they’d forget where their family was sleeping, and wake up in a completely different spot.” 

“What else?”

“I couldn’t sleep for all the snoring. But once I’d started working, I was so exhausted I’d fall dead asleep each night.” 

“That’s more like it. Anything else?”

“You always went to bed lying on your back. But if you turned over onto one side during the night, it was impossible to lie back down again, because the space next to you would have already been occupied.”

My teacher chuckled. “Good, that’s brilliant. Go write about it!”

A while later, I wrote about my time making and selling caustic soda. When she told me that just making the soda was already a story in itself, and that I needed to write it as two separate stories, I disagreed. “There’s nothing interesting about making caustic soda,” I told her. 

My teacher told me I was mistaken. “It needs to be its own story,” she said. “Just because you know what making caustic soda involves doesn’t mean people nowadays do. People need it described to them.” 

I told my teacher I understood. She was brilliant at teasing stories out of me – in fact that’s how many of my stories came about. But after a while I got the hang of unearthing them for myself. Once I’d put my mind to writing, all my past experiences came flooding back to me.

When I had finished up my story about moving to northeast China, my teacher helped edit my stories before posting them on her blog. “Your writing is really good. You’re easily good enough to publish,” she told me.

I told her she needn’t exaggerate, and that I’d keep on writing with or without her encouragement. I told her I didn’t need to be published to be happy. After a lifetime of being illiterate, I could finally write. I’d become learned. 

But my teacher insisted she wasn’t indulging me, and that my writing really was very good.    

It turns out she’d been telling the truth all along. A number of readers left comments on her blog, saying how much they’d enjoyed my plainspoken storytelling. As I still can’t use Chinese pinyin or a dictionary or a computer, my teacher helped read out all the kind things people were saying. A reader named Ma Guoxing even recommended my stories to the literary magazine Duku, who in April 2013 paid me three thousand yuan to publish some of my work – something I couldn’t have foreseen in a million years! 

I called my eldest son with the good news. “So are you going to set me up with President Hu then?” I asked.

My son burst out laughing. “Ma, you’re too late! President Hu has already retired, just like me.” 

“Just you wait,” my teacher said. “You’re going to have a whole book published before long.” 

I tried telling my fortune more than once with a deck of cards, but things didn’t look good. There was no way I was going to get a book published.  

But my teacher was right again and, just a few days later, Xiron Publishing called her to negotiate a book contract. 

As you can see, I have quite a formidable teacher. She also happens to be my eldest daughter, Zhang Ailing, who is an author herself and lectures in literary composition at Heilongjiang’s Suihua University. Nothing I have achieved could have happened without her. 

And to think I almost aborted her.

When I was expecting Ailing, my morning sickness came on later than usual. “It’s definitely a girl this time,” I said to my husband. We had three boys already, so I thought he’d be pleased, like me. But instead, he demanded I arrange a termination. 

I refused. “I want four kids, whatever the gender,” I told him. 

“It’s a girl, so let’s get rid of it.”

“It’s my body and I won’t!” 

I was hardly eating due to the constant nausea, and soon got fed up watching my husband sulk as well. So one afternoon, I decided to go to the hospital.

“At four months you’re already too late for a termination. It would be unsafe,” the obstetrician told me.  

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’m fit and well.” 

The doctor continued. “We had an eighteen-year-old girl in this morning who was also four months pregnant, out of wedlock. Her mother didn’t want the girl marrying the baby’s father, so was demanding the girl get a termination. Doctor Zhang, who carried out the operation, warned them about the risks, but her mother wouldn’t take no for an answer and the girl died. Her boyfriend had been waiting outside the theater, but when he heard something was wrong he ran straight in. There he was – in tears, with the girl in his arms – when the girl’s mother starts taking swipes at him. He kicks her back and starts to yell, accusing her of destroying his family, of murdering his wife and child… He was still running after his girlfriend’s body when we moved her to the morgue.”

I told the doctor I wasn’t afraid of dying. “Don’t worry, there’s no one here to make a scene over me,” I said. “I want to go ahead with it.” 

“You might not be afraid of you dying, but our hospital is. If you’re certain, come back tomorrow when all the other doctors are here and see what they say.”

The next morning I told my husband to take the day off work.

“Why?”

“You’re coming with me to the hospital to get the baby aborted.”

“Does an abortion really require so many people in attendance?” 

“The doctor said the procedure is dangerous, because I’m already four months pregnant. She told me to go back again today if I still wanted to do it. So I need someone to help deal with my corpse.” 

“Let’s not do it,” my husband replied.

“You won’t go? Then I’ll go myself.” I turned to walk away, but my husband grabbed my arm and stopped me. He never mentioned the termination again.

When my daughter was born, my in-laws were unhappy, hanging long faces all day. “You can go to work at the brick factory now, to help push the carts,” my mother-in-law said when my daughter had just turned one month old. I told her I still had no strength in my body, and that I’d wait a few more days. 

“What’s the fuss, the carts are so small they could be toys,” she retorted. 

Fortunately, my father-in-law stepped in. “Why don’t you go push it your bloody self? That cart weighs at least a thousand jin! Why don’t you go fucking play with it?”

When I did go to the factory, I had more work waiting for me as soon as I returned home. My in-laws rarely picked her up, so my teacher spent the first eight months of her life lying down. It was only when my third younger brother brought his wife to live with us that someone could help play with her. “What kind of family is this?” my new sister-in-law said to me. “Your daughter’s already eight months old. Why doesn’t anyone ever pick her up? How’s she ever going to learn to walk?” 

Sure enough, my little teacher took eighteen months to find her feet. 

In 1991, when my teacher travelled to Nanjing to collect first prize in an international writing contest, I couldn’t have been prouder. 

Then, in 1999, she published her first book, Taking Me Home. She asked everyone who had helped to sign a copy of her book. Her friends and colleagues left messages all over the cover, which she read out to me one by one. Everyone had such marvelous things to say. That’s when she asked me to write a message as well, for being her biggest supporter.  

“I can’t even write my own name. What am I supposed to write?” I said. 

“Just write your name then. You can practice first.” 

“Let me do it tomorrow, it’s late,” I told her. 

That night, I woke in the early hours and came up with a couple of lines: 

Who knew a thistle could sprout sugarcane 

Or an old crow could bear a golden phoenix?

The next day, I asked my teacher to write the words down for me. From eight a.m. to three p.m., I practiced copying out those two lines. By the time I could keep my hand still enough to leave my message, it was already getting dark. 

Who’d have thought an old crow like me could turn into such a clever little bird?

As well as teaching me how to write, my teacher also arranged for me to take up two other pursuits: singing and playing the piano.

I’ve always loved singing, but could never put any words to my favorite melodies, so my teacher found the lyrics I wanted online and asked her husband to print them out for me. I sing by myself whenever I have the time, or sometimes go to practice with my music-loving neighbors. To start with, I was always out of breath, but now the more I sing the more I have in me. 

When it came to learning the piano, I hardly knew which end of the electronic keyboard was which, let alone how to read numbered musical notation. My teacher copied some of the tunes out for me – using very large numbers – then used a black marker to mark the corresponding numbers on the piano keys. Several of my neighbors came over to learn as well, but they mostly gave up after the first lesson. “It’s not easy to learn when you have zero grounding in musical theory,” commented my teacher, who herself was completely new to the piano. Even so, my teacher picked it up much faster than me and was running out tunes in no time. I sat before the keyboard, slowly matching the different numbers to the keys, until I too could plod out the odd tune. 

I’ve taken up these three new toys for fun, and writing is still my firm favorite. As I played with writing, the days got shorter. As I played, I finally felt like I had a destination. As I played, my heart got brighter.   And now I can even get paid for it, publish books for it. I’m utterly addicted. I will not stop now.

Bandits attack Baishitun Village 

Back in 1919, the Pang family kept a smithy on the front street of Baishitun Village. A local bandit known as Beastly Second Liu came regularly to get his pistol repaired. He delivered a threat each time: “Mend this pistol o’ mine so I can do your village in!” 

This made the villagers squirm, and they concurred it best to get rid of the bandit before it was too late. 

On Beastly Second Liu’s next visit to the blacksmith, his message was unchanged: “Fix this thing up so I can finish you lot off!” 

Third Mr. Pang, the blacksmith, wanted to clear things up. “Mr. Liu,” he said, “if I’ve done anything to offend you, you can take it up with me. This shop belongs to my family. Your dealings here are between you and I. There’s no need to involve the whole village. If you start terrorizing Baishitun, everyone’s going to point the finger at me!” 

Third Mr. Pang bought some decent liquor, several tasty dishes, and some cigarettes, and invited Beastly Second Liu to dinner. He roped in six smooth-talking villagers, who tried their best to talk some sense into the bandit. But Beastly Second Liu was a hard nut to crack. “There’s a fair few wealthy souls in Baishitun Village, and I’ll be darned if I won’t help myself to your coffers!” he barked.

The men conversed, ate, and slowly drank themselves into a fog. As Third Mr. Pang brooded over the situation and watched Beastly Second Liu sprawl back onto a bed, he was overcome with rage. He took up a large iron hammer from his workshop and brought it down on the bandit’s skull, killing him on the spot.

With it being market day, the village was much busier than usual. Unperturbed, the men rolled Beastly Second Liu’s body in a mat made from sorghum stalks, carried it outside, and buried him in broad daylight. 

The people of Baishitun were thrilled. “Third Mr. Pang has done us a great service in making our village safe!” some of the wealthier locals exclaimed.   

Alas, just one month later, somewhere between four and five hundred bandits coordinated an attack on Baishitun Village. 

The bandits bellowed over the fortified wall that circled the village: “Open the gates, Baishitun, so we can avenge Big Brother Liu’s death! We’re ready to castrate your boys and crush your young girls in stone rollers with their hands and feet bound! We’ll have fun with your elder daughters and your daughters-in-law before butchering them! Then we’ll deliver the heads of every man in the village to Big Brother Liu’s graveside! We’ll burn and kill and loot ‘til you’re all dead!” 

The village wall had a base three meters thick and two-and-a-half meters tall, while its upper section measured half a meter thick and another one-and-a-half meters tall. From outside, the wall shot up straight for four meters and was surrounded by a ditch. The wall was adorned with four watchtowers, and a road more than two meters wide ran through the village gates. 

Just as the bandits came armed with crudely made weapons, the locals too carried their own makeshift pistols and cannons to the top of the wall. Luckily for the villagers, their adversaries could be seen clearly from the top the wall, while the bandits had to aim quite blindly from the bottom. 

A standoff ensued for seven full days and nights, during which time it rained relentlessly. In those days, it was a common sight to see white mice scurrying along the wall and owls peering out of the trees, and they took as little notice of the gunfire as they did the people. 

They say an old man travelling to the village by donkey had come face to face with one of the bandits. “Where do you come from?” the bandit demanded. 

“From Jialou Village,” the old man replied. 

“Where are you headed?” 

“I’m carrying rifles and ammunition to Baishitun.” 

The bandit took a shot at the old man, but ended up killing himself when his gun backfired. 

As several sections of the wall began to collapse, the villagers knew they would be unable to stave off the bandits much longer. My great-uncle risked his life by running past the bandits to request assistance from government troops encamped at Longguji. The government soldiers, who had real weapons and ammunition, quickly overwhelmed the bandits, killing any they could before they fled. 

When the soldiers entered the village, several locals mistook them for bandits, causing a number of young women to hang themselves or commit suicide by jumping down wells. 

When my mother heard someone outside, she called to my aunty. “Second Sister-in-law, the bandits are here! If we really must die, let us go wait in the courtyard!” 

My aunty, who was too petrified to move, pleaded with my mother to help her. 

My mother pulled my aunty to her feet but, before she had taken a single step, my aunty plopped straight down again. My mother tried a second time, but again my aunty collapsed into a heap. “I can’t stand up! Go without me!” she shouted.

My mother, who had given birth to her first child just sixteen days earlier, tiptoed into the courtyard and sat down on a stone roller to await her fate. When she saw a soldier approach, she prepared herself for the worst.

However, when the soldier asked my mother to heat him a pan of water, she realized he had no interest in killing her. “Sister, calm yourself, this bandit isn’t here to murder us!” my mother called to my aunty, who was still cowering inside the house. 

The water boiled and a farmhand came to carry the pan to the soldiers. “That’s no bandit,” the farmhand told my mother. “It’s a soldier from the government camp!” 

The skies cleared, the white mice and owls went into hiding, and life in the village returned to normal. “Finally, after a month of torment, we can at last enjoy a good meal!” my mother said happily. 

When dinner was about to be served, my uncle came bustling in. There was something in his hand, dripping with blood. “Look, I found one of the bandits alive!” my uncle exclaimed. “I knifed him and booted him until his heart dropped out. Now that’s what I call a living man’s heart! Let’s tuck in!” 

Yellow dog

In 1939, when Second Brother’s wife fell pregnant, my parents were over the moon. My mother bought a yellow dog from a neighbor, which she said could lick the poop up from the floor once the new baby arrived. 

In March 1940, Second Brother’s wife gave birth to a baby boy, who they named Tie’an. Sadly, when Tie’an was still in his second year, he was struck down with a disease that turned the insides of his mouth completely white – “white tiger’s mouth” is what they used to call it. Tie’an’s illness came on without warning, and the more they tried to treat him, the more he deteriorated. Even the best doctor in our district was at a loss what to do, and in under a week the boy was dead. 

No sooner had the yellow dog got used to lapping up baby Tiean’s excrement than the boy was suddenly gone. When my mother came home one day with sixteen baby chicks, the dog saw they were roughly the same color as the baby’s poop, and wolfed six of them down in one go. My mother spotted him when he already had the seventh chick firmly clenched in his mouth, but he spat the dead bird out again when he heard my mother scream. 

When Second Brother came home, he threw the dead chick down before the yellow dog’s nose. When the dog went to eat it, Second Brother set upon him. Second Brother repeated the same trick five times. By the sixth time – and after five beatings – the dog was too afraid to touch the lifeless chick, and from that day on he never stole food again. 

We used the room on the west side of our courtyard as a storeroom. When we bought pork and lamb at the Lunar New Year or on other holidays, they were always placed in that room on the Eight Immortals table. We kept the cooked meat in there too. 

On those occasions, my mother would call out “bai, bai, bai,” and the yellow dog would race straight to her feet.

“Guard that meat. It’s not for you. Eat it and you’ll get a beating!” my mother would say, pointing to the meat on the table. 

The yellow dog would glance at my mother before trotting into the room. 

 “You stay here and guard the room. I’ll call you when it’s time to eat.” 

My mother would unfurl a grass mat on the floor, and the dog would lie in watch, without ever wandering off. Even though the door to the room was always open, no other dogs – or chicken or cats or mice for that matter – dared venture in. At mealtimes, the dog ate whatever my family was having. He never had a proper name, we just needed to call out “bai, bai, bai!” for him to come scuttling over. 

In 1943, when my family moved to the county town, our dog seemed to understand exactly what was happening. Rather than go outside to play, as he usually did after he’d been fed, that day he refused to budge even when my family tried shoving him out the door. By the time we were all on top of the cart, ready to leave, several of our neighbors had gathered to see us off. Amid all the commotion, my family forgot about the dog completely.  

When my mother eventually realized their mistake, she said she wanted to turn back. “Don’t worry, the mutt’s not going to starve,” Second Brother told her. “Let’s get you settled in the new house first. Then I’ll head back for another cart of foodstuff and bring him back with me.” 

Yet when our horse and cart left Baishitun Village through the North Gate, the yellow dog was already waiting in the road, staring right at us. No one could understand how he knew that the road from the North Gate led to the county town!

“He’s one of us!” my mother cried. “We must never, ever get rid of him, even when he’s old.” 

After we had moved to the county town, the yellow dog still liked to run back to Baishitun Village. Our former neighbors told us how he’d wait forlornly outside our old front door, and how everyone would help feed him. 

Once, when one of my mother’s brothers visited us in the county town, he told us how the yellow dog had turned up at his house back in Baishitun and had scrapped with his dog. Assuming that my mother must have brought him, my uncle walked a long way out of the village to meet her cart, before it dawned on him that the yellow dog must have come alone. 

“He ran off for three days this last time!” my mother told my uncle. “He’s got so fat now, I thought somebody must have cooked him. Who’d have thought he’s been off visiting relatives!”

Then, after the Japanese were toppled, we moved back to Baishitun. One day, during Chairman Mao’s Land Reform, there was a public announcement on the village loudspeakers: “Attention! Attention! All dogs in the village must be killed. If you do not follow these orders, the village Dog Extermination Team will exact a fine of ten jin of foodstuff for every dog they kill. If you fail to pay up, your dog’s body will be confiscated.”

Our neighbors all did as instructed and hung their dogs, but no one in my family could bear to touch our canine friend. 

One day, the village Dog Extermination Team chased our dog all the way back to our house. Panting, he shot straight behind my mother’s legs. My whole family was assembled around the kitchen table for lunch, when they were suddenly faced with the Dog Extermination Team outside the kitchen door. Tears formed in the yellow dog’s eyes as he stared pleadingly at First Brother, then his wife, then Second Brother’s wife, and finally my mother. He would normally have tried to bite the strangers, but this time he just stood there, his whole body quaking. 

“There’s no use looking at us!” my mother scolded him. “No one can save you now. If they say you have to die, you have to die. The same goes for me too.” 

The Dog Extermination Team tied a noose, looped it around the poor animal’s neck, and led him away. “You want his skin back?” they asked my mother. She told them she wanted nothing. 

My mother and my two eldest brothers’ wives began to sob, and their bowls that day went untouched. 

Widowhood

My mother invited two widows to come live with us when I was young. One was the wife of a local district head, the other a battalion commander. 

The district head’s wife lost two little girls at birth, before becoming a widow at thirty-three. She stayed on in Baishitun Village living with her mother-in-law – also a widow – and her late husband’s two bachelor brothers, the youngest of whom was an opium addict. The district head’s wife was related to my mother on my grandmother’s side and both were from Fengzhuang Village, so she often came around to visit. 

“It’s hard being a widow,” she complained to my mother.

“Find yourself a new husband then!” 

“I can’t! A virtuous woman never remarries.” 

“Well you can always come and live with us?” 

With that, the district head’s wife gladly moved in. 

I am not clear which district her husband was supposed to be in charge of, but it was common knowledge that his death came after a trip to a whorehouse. The owner had procured a new girl, who was still only fifteen, and out of all the girls she was the only one the district head desired. 

The owner refused. “She’s too young. She’s still a virgin.” 

But when the district head said he’d pay double, the owner agreed.

The district head beset on the girl with such force, taking her from front and behind, that she died that very day. 

When the owner threatened to report her death to the authorities, the district head offered to pay to keep him quiet and have the girl buried in secret. The district head returned to the brothel with all of his money and valuables, and showed them to the brothel owner. “This is all I’ve got. Does it suffice?” he asked.

The owner screwed up his face. “No, we’re talking about a person’s life here!” 

But when the district head told the owner to go ahead and report him to the authorities, the owner decided to take the money after all.

The district head was traumatized by the whole affair. He lamented giving away his wealth and became so ill he could no longer pull himself out of bed. “I’m not a man, I’m a monster!” he moaned to his wife. “The girl was howling in agony, why didn’t I stop? This illness will get the better of me, I tell you. I’ve lost my entire moral being!” 

His wife tried to calm him, saying, “There’s no point beating yourself up about it any longer, what’s done is done. You should be concentrating on getting better.”

But the district head, who couldn’t close his eyes for fear of seeing the girl in front of him, succumbed to his illness two months later. 

Although I was too small to remember the district head’s wife move in with us, my mother told me that both she and the battalion commander’s wife helped bring me up. The district head’s wife was skilled with her hands, making shoes and hats decorated with daintily embroidered flowers. She used to scoop me up in her arms, and I remember what she looked like to this very day: she was tall, with tiny feet, a shapely figure, a round face, big eyes with eyelid folds, a tall nose, small mouth, cherry-red lips, and dimples whenever she smiled.  

The district head’s wife was still very fond of her mother-in-law, so one day she went to pay her a visit. Her mother-in-law told her to stay the night, and the two women shared a bed. In the early hours, her mother-in-law’s two young bachelor sons came creeping in and carried the district head’s wife off with them. Their mother followed in pursuit, screaming and cursing at them to open the door to their room, but it was to no avail. The two brothers took turns violating the district head’s wife through the night. 

The district head’s wife returned to us early next morning, hair all over the place and face unwashed. She burst into tears as soon as she saw my mother. “Those two brothers are pigs!” she cried. 

The district head’s wife prayed for her next period to arrive, but was so shaken up that she fell ill and stopped bleeding completely. Back then they called her illness “the dryness”, which people said would kill a woman in seven to eight months. In the district head wife’s case, she lasted only six. 

My mother cared for the district head’s wife prior to her death, before taking her back to her mother-in-law’s to die. When she was gone, her relatives who came to pay their respects were horrified to see her lying in her old clothes and stuffed into a tiny casket. They demanded that her two brothers-in-law buy her some decent attire and a coffin. The two men did as they were told and, on their return, her family helped change her clothes and placed her inside her new coffin. 

As night fell, her relatives headed home. But as soon as they were gone, the two brothers promptly stripped the district head’s wife’s body, before burying her – stark-naked – in her husband’s grave. They sold the casket, coffin, and all her new and old clothes, apparently then running off to Shanxi with the money.   

The next day, shortly after breakfast, her relatives came back to escort the funeral procession to the graveyard. But when all they found was an empty room, with no one at home but the elderly mother-in-law, they stood in the courtyard, sobbing and cursing. They knew the girl’s mother-in-law had treated her well, so it was no good taking their anger out on her. There was nothing for them to do but go home. 

The battalion commander’s wife was from Xuchang and, despite being married to the commander for eight years, had failed to bear him any children. The commander himself had a problem with his eyes that caused him pain and blurred vision. In those days, with medical provisions in short supply, even something as minor as an eye complaint could prove fatal. 

The commander died at thirty, rendering his wife a widow at twenty-eight. The commander’s elder brother was also dead, so the two widowed sisters-in-law ended up living together in the family home. There was also a nephew, but he worked away, which left the two women with the family’s six-mu plot of land. They had someone work the fields for them and kept half the harvest for themselves, which was just about enough for one person but lacking for two. Adding to this the fact that the two sisters-in-law didn’t exactly see eye to eye, the battalion commander’s wife asked my mother if she could move in with us. The commander’s wife was a peace-loving soul. When her husband had been alive, she used to rise early and spend the whole day at her mother’s home, returning to her in-laws only after dinner. She stayed with us until the Land Reform, when she moved back to her husband’s old family home. 

The commander’s wife told us that her maternal grandmother had lived in Liulin Township, where one of her aunties had been a child bride. The groom had been from a wealthy family with plentiful land, which meant that he had been able to go to school, despite his mother being a widow. When the boy fell ill in his sixteenth year, the family’s servants carried mother and son by sedan chair to seek out doctors near and far. But no one could find a cure. Desperate to save her only child, and ignoring his protests, the boy’s mother found him a bride in the hope that an auspicious wedding ceremony might help him recover. 

Back then, a child bride belonged to the groom’s family, so it was for them to decide when the wedding took place. The boy’s mother chose a propitious day and the pair were married. On their wedding day, the boy was carried on his chair to the family altar, but he was too weak to bow before the gods. The girl was left to perform the rituals alone, before retreating to the bridal chamber. In light of the groom’s fragile state, his mother forbade her son from entering the bridal chamber. Even so, that night, when the girl was sitting before her marital bed, the boy crept in and took her hand. 

“My crazy mother has fooled you! Look how ill I am, and still she made you marry me. She just wouldn’t listen!” 

Though the boy died just two days later, his bride stayed living with her new mother-in-law and never remarried. Whenever the girl felt like visiting her family, her mother-in-law would have servants arrange a horse and cart, and she could choose to return whenever she pleased. Her mother-in-law would also accompany her wherever else she wanted to go. When her mother-in-law died several decades later, the woman continued to remain loyal to her late husband’s memory and was greatly respected for doing so. During the Land Reform, her village left her thirty mu of land, when landowners were normally only allowed three. Her neighbors helped her work the land, letting her live off half of the harvest. 

There was another woman – an only child – back in our village of Baishitun, who was widowed before her thirtieth birthday. At the start, she also lived chastely, but it was not long before she was off with a number of handsome men. Whenever a man’s wife found out, she would drop him immediately for the next. Her mother-in-law knew all about it, but wanted to avoid a scene. The woman was said to have gotten herself pregnant at some point – I’m not sure when exactly – but killed the child and left its body among the unmarked graves at the local cemetery. When she was forty, the woman gave birth again to a baby boy, and both her and her mother-in-law wanted to keep him, lest it was the last male in the family line. As such, the day after the baby was born, the mother-in-law left the baby in a basket out in a field, so she could pretend to find him there. “I found him out here this morning!” she told her neighbors as she carried the basket home. Sadly, the nursling caught a chill and died just a few days later. 

After the Liberation, even though the law was revised to allow people to marry freely, nothing had changed in my hometown. There was a local woman who had been widowed for several years and lived alone with her daughter. When she was in her thirties, she adopted a son, who was in his twenties but still a bachelor, and at some point they started sharing a bed as man and wife. One autumn evening, when I was spinning cotton under the moonlight with four or five others, we saw the widow, head bowed, walking back toward her home from the front street. We wondered what on earth she was doing out so late. 

She was found hanged the next morning. It turned out the local army had arrested the two lovers for engaging in illicit relations. When I saw her that night, the soldiers had just let her go, so that she could go back to her daughter. She was told to return the next day for a “struggle session” on the pair’s immoral behavior. When the woman was found dead, the army let her adopted son go, while the woman’s mother took in her seventeen-year-old daughter. 

Back in those days, when someone knocked on our door they’d ask: “Is anyone at home?” 

If there were no men at home, we women would answer: “No one at home!”

It wasn’t only the men who saw women as second-class citizens. We thought it of ourselves too. 

Remarriage

As tough as it was being a widow in my hometown, remarrying was hardly any better. If a widow did wed a new husband, it had to be done under the cover of night. There was no bridal procession, because the widow was believed to bring misfortune to whoever’s household she left from. That’s why most widows waited in the dark to be picked up from a field or local temple. 

The groom’s family would send a cart, and a couple of members of the widow’s family would be there to see her off. That was the wedding over and done with.

There was a custom in my hometown that also allowed a man to kidnap any widow he wanted to marry – as long as the kidnapping took place outside her home. My mother-in-law was from Nanxu Village in Longguji Township, where a local man by the name of Xu Gongbao had lived alone since both his parents died. He was penniless, wifeless, and already in his thirties. Though he wasn’t really old, he was technically part of my grandfather’s generation, so it was proper for me to call him “Grandfather Gongbao”. 

One night, someone turned up outside his house, yelling at him to open his door. 

Grandfather Gongbao swung the door open to be greeted by his three sworn friends. All were dripping with sweat, and one had something slung over his shoulder. “What’s that you carry?” Grandfather Gongbao asked. 

“We caught you a bride!” the three men exclaimed in unison. 

Grandfather Gongbao lit a lamp to take a better look. The girl was shapely and taller than average, with an attractive face. He was lost for words!  

His three friends told him how they’d chanced upon the girl, who was a widow, as she was being taken to her new home. There had been two men with her – her husband-to-be and the cart driver. Two of Grandfather Gongbao’s friends had grabbed the men, while the third made away with the girl. The girl was screaming, but nobody heard because there wasn’t a house in sight. Even so, she was making such a racket that they put her down and slapped her a few times so that she’d stop. 

“You better be good to her!” his friends called out before leaving. 

The girl, who I called Grandmother Gongbao, was twenty years old. Grandfather Gongbao loved his wife from the start and, as they grew old together, Grandmother Gongbao warmed to her husband too. They had three daughters, but no sons. 

When I left Fengxu Village in 1960, Grandfather Gongbao was still alive. He was in his sixties, which would have put his wife in her fifties. She was a very capable woman, who kept her home spotless and did a grand job of anything she put her mind to. I remember their three daughters visited often. 

When I was young, if a widow remarried, she almost always left her kids behind to avoid torment for them all. They used to call children who followed their mothers “calves”, implying that they were more akin to dumb animals than human beings. In Caohai Village where my mother grew up, there was a widow who was desperately looking for a new husband. The problem was that she already had five children, so no one would go near her. After a long and futile wait, one evening, she piled a heap of sorghum stalks against her children’s door and started a fire, meaning to burn her children alive. 

As the blaze grew, her children woke up choking. The eldest boy, who was thirteen at the time, broke open a window and jumped to safety with his eleven-year-old brother; but their two little sisters, nine and seven, and their four-year-old brother lost their lives. 

Although the widow managed to find herself a new man, in less than six months he had upped and gone. Apparently, he was worried what his cruel-hearted wife might have in store for him. 

The two surviving brothers were taken in for training by a local opera troupe. Whenever the troupe performed a tragic opera, and the other performers pretended to cry, it was said that the two boys shed real tears.  

There was another woman, from Baishitun Village, who had been a widow for five or six years when a matchmaker came to her with a proposal from a bachelor from Gaozhuang Village. The man owned a plot of land in Tianjin on which he grew vegetables to sell, and was doing very well for himself. The widow agreed – back in 1953 a widow had to take what she was given – and, shortly after, the groom picked her up from her parents’ home during the day. The woman’s ten-year-old daughter refused to let go of her mother’s legs. “Daddy’s dead and you don’t want me either! Mama, don’t go!” the girl cried, bringing tears to the eyes of the locals who had gathered to gawk. But the woman pushed her daughter’s hands aside, climbed up into the waiting cart, and left.  

As luck would have it, the woman’s new husband died just eighteen days later, and the woman returned to Gaozhuang a widow once more. However, the woman soon realized that she was already pregnant. She hastily went to bed with another man and tried to fob the baby off as his, but the man’s wife refused to let her move in with them and the woman ended up giving birth on their doorstep. I haven’t got a clue what happened to her after that. 

Back in those days, a widow who remained faithful to her late husband brought honor to both her family and herself. A widow who remarried, on the other hand, brought shame upon her parents and risked being disowned by her brothers. Indeed, a widow remarrying was worse than a wife who strayed. 

Why my great-aunt never stopped blinking

When I was a little girl, my mother took me to visit my maternal grandmother’s home. My grandmother lived in the back courtyard of the house, while her sister-in-law – my great-aunt – lived in the front. On the way home, I remember asking my mother why my great-aunt never stopped blinking. 

“She wasn’t always like that. It was brought on by too much crying,” my mother told me. 

My great-aunt’s first husband had died, leaving her to bring up a son alone. She managed as a widow for nine years before marrying my great-uncle, who had also lost his wife, but had to leave her only son behind in his grandmother’s care. When he was old enough, my great-aunt’s son went off to join the army with another local boy, only to die in battle a year later. 

The second boy dug my great-aunt’s son a grave and wrote to her family to pass on the bad news. As the burial site happened to be only seventy li or so from Fengzhuang Village, two of the boy’s uncles on my great-aunt’s side went to erect a small stone tablet in his memory. They planned to wait three years before digging up his remains and taking him home. 

Three months later, a youth who was cutting the grass heard knocking coming from the very same grave. He went home to tell everyone, and immediately the other villagers came to investigate. They too could hear the same noise – the boy was alive in his tomb! 

As the stone tablet had an address inscribed on it, a well-meaning villager galloped to deliver a letter to the boy’s relatives, informing them of the miraculous goings-on. 

The boy’s family was over the moon! His uncles hurried to the grave by horse and cart, with the messenger riding ahead of them and waiting beside the boy’s grave with a shovel. Many curious onlookers had gathered to witness this rare and exciting event. 

When the two men arrived, they also heard thumping noises, so frantically began to dig the earth away. 

Much to their surprise, what they found was a corpse – completely intact – but covered from head to toe with red fur.

Some of the onlookers claimed the fur was “drought fur”. They said something had to be done to stop the boy from spiriting himself out from his grave and wreaking havoc. “That red fur is what has caused our terrible drought this year. We haven’t been able to harvest a thing!”

On hearing this, the boy’s uncles cried out in despair. “My boy! What have you done? We came here expecting to find you alive and to take you home!” 

“Burn his corpse!” the onlookers told them. “That’s the only way to save us from this drought!” 

Back in those days, it was very bad luck to burn a dead body, but in the end the men had no choice. I was told the body crackled as it started to burn, and then fell silent. 

The two uncles had a thick blanket with them. It had been meant to keep the boy warm on his way home, but instead they used it to gather up his charred remains. They loaded the bundle onto their cart and went to bury the bones in a small casket by his late father’s tomb.  

After my great-aunt learned what had happened, she cried her heart out day and night until her eyes were ruined. This left her unable to cry normally, but she still managed to produce tears as she kept blinking. 

 “How could I have been so foolish and cruel?” she sobbed to my mother. “I should never have married your uncle, leaving my son an orphan. If only I never remarried, then at least my boy would’ve still had his mother, and needn’t have gone off to join the army…” 

“It’s no use crying any more, Aunty!” my mother pleaded. “We must all accept our fate, and this is yours.”  

As for what army my great-aunt’s son served in, what battle he fought, and where he died, I have no idea. My mother just told me that he was the same age as her; they were both born in the year of the rooster. 

If my great-aunt’s son were still alive today, he would be 115 years old. 

Fourth Uncle Jiang keeps his promise 

There was a man in Baishitun Village from the Jiang family, who I was told to address as Fourth Uncle Jiang. As the only son in a household with two elder sisters, Fourth Uncle Jiang enjoyed a very pampered upbringing. When his sisters were married off, Fourth Uncle Jiang was left living in the family home with his parents. They had an enviable plot of land – more than thirty mu – with a house and some livestock, making them one of the more well-to-do families in the village. Unfortunately, Fourth Uncle Jiang, who was provided with a wife at around thirteen or fourteen, had a soft spot for gambling. When he starting pawning the family heirlooms to fund his habit, his parents – who felt powerless to stop him – became sick with worry. Medical care was poor in those days, and in just a few years Fourth Uncle Jiang’s parents were both gone. 

Fourth Uncle Jiang’s wife was also at the end of her tether and she too became ill. By the time Fourth Uncle Jiang sold off the last of his possessions, he had lost both his wife and the roof over his head. He had little choice but take his three sons to camp out in the local temple, where he turned to begging to keep them all alive. 

As his boys grew into men, Fourth Uncle Jiang fretted about not being able to afford to pay bride tokens for his sons.

One day, Fourth Uncle Jiang knelt before the statues in the temple and made a pledge: “Dear gods, if only my three sons can wed, I will stage an opera right here for you all!”

As it turned out, Fourth Uncle Jiang’s sons were more than capable of looking after themselves. His eldest son sold pastries for a living, the second went away to work, and the third farmed a plot of land on behalf of a local landowner. 

Within a few years, Fourth Uncle Jiang’s youngest and eldest sons had both married. When the second eldest son returned home, he too built himself a house. However, when it came to a wife, having earned much less than his brothers, he had to settle for a widow who came with a child in tow.  

In my hometown, widows never took their offspring into a new marriage by choice, but would instead leave them to live with one of their grandmothers. If the woman was compelled to take her children with her, the children would be mocked for being inferior – little better than dumb animals. That’s why people referred to them as “calves” or, if the woman had still been pregnant when she remarried, “bastard colts”. 

For instance, when those children got into scraps with other children, the other children would chide: “You think you can bully me, when you’re just a calf?” 

But Fourth Uncle Jiang and his family treated their “calf” very kindly, even helping find him a bride when he came of age. 

With all three sons espoused, Fourth Uncle Jiang, who was by now an old man, had yet to deliver on his promise of an opera for the temple gods. He had no means of paying for an opera troupe, so his unfulfilled vow was for him a constant source of worry. 

Eventually, Fourth Uncle Jiang came up with a solution. He got himself two blocks of pear wood, which he polished up to make two shining clappers, or bangzi.  

He then asked his sons to build a small room for him on the west side of the temple, which was in turn furnished with a shabby bed, a table, and a stool. When the weather was fine, he went to one of his son’s homes to eat; on stormy days, his meals were brought to him. 

Some of my earliest memories are of Fourth Uncle Jiang when he was about seventy-five or -six. He had a white beard and would sit in that tiny room every day, striking his bangzi together, warbling. I used to sit on his bed, listening to songs I didn’t recognize but that sounded fun to my young ears. I gradually realized that Fourth Uncle Jiang in fact knew very few tunes, but was simply repeating a jumble of lines from different operas over and over again. 

Whenever he was about to start, Fourth Uncle Jiang would make an announcement. “Dear gods, when I was a lowly beggar, I vowed to stage you an opera if only my sons could marry. Well, I now have three daughter-in-laws. I promised to put on an opera, but I didn’t say how many people would be performing… So I’ll be here singing for you every day. Sit back and enjoy!” 

Fourth Uncle Jiang kept on singing and clapping his bangzi together until the day he died. He lived to be more than eighty years old.  

There was also a girl from Baishitun Village – from the Shi household – who wed a husband from Rendian. On the second day of the Lunar New Year, as is the annual custom, she and her husband travelled back to our village to visit her parents. The girl brought with her a basketful of gifts, from which her father plucked a single slab of pork, leaving everything else untouched. 

There was a saying back then: “If your daughter’s meat must stay; the lass is sure to waste away.” Hence, when the girl returned to her mother-in-law with the meat gone, all hell broke lose. The girl’s husband joined his mother in hurling insults at the poor girl: “Your old man’s so hard up he’s never tried meat before, eh?” 

“Please, don’t be angry!” the girl implored. “It’s late now. Let me return to Baishitun tomorrow morning and bring the meat back.” 

“I’ll break your legs if you dare!” was her husband’s reply.  

That cut of meat only weighed two or three jin, but the girl’s mother-in-law and husband just wouldn’t give up. With the pork still standing uncooked in the Shi household, the girl decided to hang herself. 

The girl’s family knew about the circumstances surrounding their daughter’s death, so, when the girl’s husband called in on them to express his regrets, they ignored all he had to say. Rather, the girl’s mother berated her dead daughter’s husband, and her father walloped him in the face with the said slab of pork. Once they had grown tired from fighting, the girl’s parents threw the meat to one side and wept.

Later, they took the slab of meat, still raw, and hung it from the elm tree beside the temple stage.

Three or four days later still, two cripples living in the temple grounds went to borrow a pole from their neighbors. They plucked the meat from the tree, cooked it, and gobbled it all down. 

Translated by Petula Parris-Huang

Diao Dou

刁斗

Diao Dou was born in Shenyang in 1960. Since graduating in 1983 he has worked as a literary editor and published ten volumes of fiction, in addition to poetry and essay collections. Points of Origin, a collection of Diao Dou’s short stories, was published by Comma Press in 2015. Translated by Brendan O’Kane, it has been widely praised by critics for its metafictional satires on Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

Books and Me

我与书

Illustration by Wang Yan

A connoisseur of fine wines once said: “A cup contains a cosmos; the sun and moon are glimpsed in wine.” Nicely put. I’m a connoisseur not of wines but of words, and I may as well produce my own slavish rendition: A book contains a cosmos; the sun and moon are glimpsed in reading. Not quite so nicely put, but you get the point.

When the protagonist of my novel Testimony leaves home, his understanding wife writes him the following advice: “No matter what you do now, I hope you’ll never give up on books. The good thing about a book is that it’s another person, a community, a world, and at the same time it’s nothing at all.” I was also addressing myself.

I normally spend more of my time on reading than on any other activity. For most of the year my days are fairly routine – monotonous, even. Half my day is wasted away in bed or at the dinner table, and the remainder is devoted to reading and writing. I have quite severe spondylosis in my neck, which prevents me from spending too long hunched over a computer – so it’s reading that gets the lion’s share of my time. When my friends call and ask me what I’m doing, my answer is always the same: reading. It makes them suspicious – they think I’m faking it. No one can accuse Diao Dou of failing to produce much work, but where does he find the time for writing if he’s spending all day reading? It’s as though I’m concealing my hard work beneath a pretence of idle reading. But I’m really not showing off. My life mainly comprises reading and writing, and while I do indeed sweat blood over the latter, it never ceases to bring me pleasure. Let’s do the maths: seven or eight hundred words a day equates to a pretty good annual yield – and seven or eight hundred words, even allowing for thinking and revising, doesn’t really require that much time. I know that my friends are just making small talk when they ask me what I’m doing, and that I could easily just reply in the same spirit – but I always making a point of replying seriously: I am reading. I can see how it could be interpreted as pretension, as feigned sophistication (assuming that there’s anything sophisticated about reading) or wilful whimsicality. But it isn’t. There are two reasons why I tell people the truth: Firstly, my subconscious inclination towards accurate description (of an entirely unshameful fact); and secondly, because I’m a bit like a missionary who takes every opportunity to pipe up about the gospel. My reasoning goes like this: if there’s even the faintest chance that the person at the end of the line might go and pick up a book after they’ve hung up, then I’ll have had a positive influence. Exerting this influence, as far as I’m concerned, is my good deed for the day.

My predilection for books was not cultivated in the classroom, nor was it a hobby developed solely in the service of my writing. The enjoyment I take from books can be attributed to my childhood self, who – having already discovered the profound and inexhaustible wonders of his own body – went off to seek new sources of pleasure. My childhood home was a barren place, so the few crates of books we had were like chests of treasure. Following the example of my parents and sister, I flipped through the books from time to time, and I was soon hooked.

It would have been little wonder if – with my father off getting forcibly re-educated in the countryside, my mother working around the clock at the factory, and then my big sister getting sent down to be a rusticated youth, and me left behind with just my illiterate gran for company – I had grown up to be some subversive putschist or pilfering pickpocket. There was no real education happening at the time, so I wouldn’t have stood out no matter how hard I might have studied. But I was one of those precocious kids who thrive in the limelight. With no chance to shine at school, my only means of drawing attention to myself were smoking, drinking, fighting in gangs, and transmogrifying my appearance in my pursuit of girls. Fortunately my addiction had already inculcated in me a specious sense of decency and shame, and so I didn’t do anything overly bad – which is to say, my experience in putsch and pilferage remain slender. At the same time, books provided me with a new sense of awareness. Certain situations made me aware of the power that radiates from books. Like when our gang was fighting, for example: thanks to my reading I could deploy military stratagems I’d learned from the Song of the Long March, earning me such respect in the eyes of the bigger kids that they dubbed me General Diao. Like how, thanks to my reading, I could call this girl a nightingale, that girl a rose, and could make their eyes brim with the tenderest of tears with my tales of revolutionary heroes, much to my delight. Eventually I was able to get into university despite having virtually nothing in the way of secondary education, and it was thanks to the books I had read. It was because I enjoyed reading that I came to enjoy writing, and it’s because I enjoy writing that I no longer want for warm clothes or a full belly. All credit for this bounty must go to books. This is my reason for feeding the fire of reading within me, and it contains not the slightest trace of pretension or wilful whimsy.

When I read, I mostly read novels, some other works on literature and history, and a few random volumes that defy easy categorisation. In all these years the spring of books has never dried up. At this very moment I have more books at hand that I could possibly read. I still sometimes get so caught up in a book that I forget to eat or sleep, even though I’m supposed to be a grown-up by now. My reading is not normally goal-driven – it’s not for the purpose of writing anything in particular, nor is it intended to yield any material gain. And it is definitely not at anyone else’s bidding. I could, for example, become a specialist in foreign literature, which might end up providing me with a fancy job title and an increased income. That’s the sort of thing I mean by goal-driven reading. But I think reading Louis Cha or Agatha Christie can make me happy, and since happiness is surely more important than a job title, I choose Louis Cha and Agatha Christie; I choose happiness. I’m not trying to paint myself as some kind of ascetic book monk, which I know wouldn’t be a particularly appealing image. Nor am I trying to trick anyone into crowning me “King of the Spiritual”, because I don’t really know what a king is. For me, reading is a physiological or psychological necessity, in order to stimulate my heart. What I mean is this: since my youth, I have always enjoyed the feeling of being unsettled. It cheers me and relaxes me; I crave a limitless supply of this mysterious sense of agitation. Reading is exactly that: one of the things that sustains this agitation within me, and one of the ways I can enrich this precious life of mine.

At this point, I would like to add: I find reading enjoyable. I hope it doesn’t sound too much like I’m blowing my own trumpet here.

There exist many forms of stimulation, like those I mentioned earlier: smoking, drinking, fighting, chasing girls. I really am the kind of person who’s happiest when stimulated. But, as I also mentioned previously, reading endowed me with some sense of decency and shame, and reading also gradually provided me with a relatively robust set of principles, transforming me into someone who could find contentment in the confines of an ordinary life. Reading thus played a key role in allowing me to find ways to enjoy my life without overstepping my principles. It is worth emphasising, however, that not all books can bring me this enjoyment. There are countless books around the world that are simply making up the numbers, books that only sap desire and enfeeble. But who would choose not to breathe because there are germs in the air? Those supernumerary books cannot affect my passion for reading, no matter how many of them I encounter. Even the craziest of shoppers is incapable of buying every single item in the shop. What’s more, a person who can attain a silent affinity with books must at the very least be regarded as someone smart, and smart people are not so easily swayed by the smooth blandishments of publishers or the fawning reviews they print on the cover. He can intuitively sense which books will be no use to him.

The stimulation I gain from books has several different aspects. Apart from the fascinating ideas (and the fascinating ways of explaining those ideas) and the gripping stories (and gripping storytelling techniques), often just a single title, or the name of the author, or a sentence, or a detail or a blank space or even a string of asterisks can utterly seduce me. Take, for example, a book entitled Foucault: A Portrait of Ideas. The name of the book excites me. My smattering of knowledge about Foucault aside, the words “portrait of ideas” also make me think. Philosophy used to be my father’s bread and butter, back in the day, and I was influenced by him: I look favourably upon those who devote themselves to philosophy. Philosophy is brewed from ideas; there was once a time when I even thought to unleash my own ideas upon the universe. Those old dreams have faded now, and my ideas have grown hazy. But if Foucault’s ideas had attained enough solidity that they could be the subject of a portrait, then I feel I am entirely justified in spending some time with him. Another example: the English writer Ford Madox Ford. How can I fail to be enraptured by the flowing rhythm of his name, which – transposed into Chinese – evokes the sinuous shape of a children’s wordplay game? I had always believed playing games with words to be a highly intellectual activity; as someone who respects knowledge, one of the reasons I write fiction is that I feel an intellectual thrill when I’m assembling words into sentences. And if the very name of the author of The Good Soldier can captivate me so, then how can The Good Soldier itself not be worth savouring?

Yoel picked the object up from the shelf and inspected it closely. His eyes ached. The agent, thinking he had not heard the question, repeated it: “Shall we go and take a look around the back?” Even though he had already made up his mind, Yoel was in no hurry to reply. He was in the habit of pausing before answering, even simple questions such as, How are you? Or, What did it say in the news? As though words were personal possessions that should not be parted with lightly.

This is the opening To Know a Woman, a novel by Israeli Oz. The feeling of constriction takes my breath away.

She enters, deliberately, gravely, without affectation, circumspect in her motions (as she’s been taught), not stamping too loud, nor dragging her legs after her, but advancing sedately, discreetly, glancing briefly at the empty rumpled bed, the cast-off nightclothes. She hesitates. No. Again. She enters. Deliberately and gravely, without affectation, not stamping too loud, nor dragging her legs after her, not marching as if leading a dance, nor keeping time with her head and hands…

This passage opens the American author Robert Coover’s novella Spanking the Maid, and its sense of the absurd befuddles my wits. I apologise. Our space is limited, and I wasn’t intending to rely on excerpts to explain which books or what texts stimulate my heart. I only mention these two as they happen to be the books I have recently been reading, following me from pillow, to desk, to sofa, to toilet.

A book is indeed a wondrous piece of crystallised consciousness. “It’s another person, a community, a world, and at the same time it’s nothing at all.” But frankly, the act of reading is nothing more than an ordinary, simple, personal hobby, no different from gardening or keeping fish. The reason I am not talking about gardens or fish is because I neither garden nor keep fish; I read. But having reached this point, a small paradox presents itself: no matter how non-utilitarian I claim my reading to be, the claims may be unconvincing: I am – after all – a novelist. Fortunately, I anticipated this eventuality, and I would like to offer a rhetorical question in response: is writing fiction really a utilitarian practice? As far as I’m concerned, writing is just another ordinary hobby, like gardening or keeping fish, as pure as reading is – because reading and writing are both activities that satisfy our essential need for external stimulation. If reading and writing were incapable of unsettling us, physiologically and psychologically, if they were unable to draw up pleasure from the shivering of our hearts, then the relationship between the two would be akin to a dry, sexless marriage. And so, for me, reading and writing – together with all the joys and sorrows that pertain to my principles – have become the fundamental sources of stimulation in my life, and if there’s been cross-pollination between my reading and my writing here or there, I ought to be the first to admit it.

Translated by Dave Haysom

Zhao Lihua

赵丽华

Poet and painter Zhao Lihua was born in Hebei. Known as a colloquial poet, she has long rejected the formal and tonal expectations of contemporary free verse in China. Her poetic focuses on sparse language, muscular imagery and a resistance to a sentimentality and linguistic posturing. When some of her early unpublished poetry was released online in 2006, Zhao unexpectedly became an internet meme, with netizens dubbing their parodies “pear blossom” (a homophone of her given name) verse. She lives in the suburbs of Beijing at an artistic commune she founded.

钞票落入你手中

Cash Falls Into Your Hands 

Cash falls into your hands 

This is what you wanted

Let’s go spend it     one note at a time

I’ll keep 

giving you all that I have 

as the ocean rages, tosses and churns on crests and troughs

I’ll allow it to be motionless a moment     to rest 

before it burgeons into a greater passion

Time takes the most mechanical of strides

escorting the listless sun down the mountain valley 

You sit in the darkest shadows 

but don’t despair     I’ll give you a dawn

In the most senseless moment

I’ll help you burn this evidence     the contracts

I’ll help you fly

help you cut off your extra fingers

紧

Tight

The tightness I like

I like tightly

the intimacy grows tighter and tighter 

Tight as

the whipping of gongs and dense drumming 

that leaves no room for maneuver  

in the anxious sound

Pack tightly

Leave no slack.

Tighten up

It’s a little tight

It’s too tight now

I’ll tighten you to death

The final line uttered 

by murderer M 

gnashing his teeth in rage 

while strangling his wife

with a belt

辽阔无际的马拉平原

The Sweeping Mara Plains 

A broken heart

arrives at the Mara Plains

drinks water from the river 

eats grass seeds

recollects his memories

Wild buffalo

a ton each

and large antelope 

lie by his side 

keeping him company  

Sometimes they roam together 

other times they bolt suddenly 

because a pride of lions 

are in hot pursuit 

雨还在下

It’s Still Raining 

As it rains, I compose these lines 

just because I like them

I write them just so:

A dark cloud cover gathers over Europe 

Professionals say it is the doing of low air pressure 

But across North America  

from Quebec to Florida 

rain also does not cease

Floods, landslides and other catastrophes continue 

The downpour of rain, however, is most concentrated

over a nondescript island in Oceania 

88,888 millimeters (it has rained for two months or more) 

I imagine the island will soon sink into the ocean…

But where I am,

the drought continues

快进4

Fast Forward #4

I’m afraid to miss

the moment

I met you

I’m also afraid to miss it if I play it slow

慢慢呼，慢慢吸

Exhale Slowly, Inhale Slowly

Looking out from an even more distant dream, 

it was a massive, ferocious black cloud 

occupying one third of the sky. 

Tumbling down 

it was an all-consuming tsuna

mi

chasing me 

all night. 

I scream,

tire, just about to fall into a heap.

Later, I am rescued, pulled onto a horse cart

my bamboo bat is missing 

There are two men 

我都不敢变成风

I Dare Not Become the Wind 

I dare not even

prod you with a finger 

for fear you’ll fall 

dash to pieces

Instead I prepared many curves

Fruit

I will blow circles all around you

杏花开了梨花开

After Apricot Flowers, Pear Blossoms Bloom

Dearest, along the west side of Langba Road there is a grove

of apricot flowers in bloom.

When I say this, I do not say it with any tone, nor am I emoting.

If you think this is a mere fiddling with words,

I am sorry. I have stopped. 

Translated by Peter Micic

馒头

Mantou

A freshly steamed bun 

piping hot

pristine white

supple soft

meets, precisely then, a person who will eat her

For a bun 

to be eaten at the perfect timing

is the greatest fate

If she is left out 

she will cool

harden

her innards will grow mold

From a pure maiden

comes an acerbic witch 

cursing all who try to eat her that she’d

cut their teeth 

rot their guts

turn them to dogs, to swine

磨刀霍霍

The Knife Sharpening

First, use the grinding wheel to form the blade

Then, use sand stones to file it 

Then, use oil stones to hone it

Finally, use a block to set it

This knife sharpener from Anhui 

shows no hesitation

his craft as if hewn to him 

I weigh this wintry knife in my hand as I walk upstairs

No one in the hallway

I sneak in a few poses 

First, slicing meat 

Then, cutting ribs 

Finally, hacking a man

当你老了

When You Are Old

When you are old, my dear

I will surely be old too

Come then, what else can I give you 

if I haven’t given it to you by now

Translated by Karmia Olutade

Shen Wei

沈苇

Shen Wei was born in Zhejiang in 1965. In 1988 he moved to Xinjiang, where he has worked as a professor and as managing editor of the West literary journal. A recipient of the first Lu Xun Literary Prize for poetry in 1998, Shen Wei has also received many accolades for his essay collections.  Several of his poems were translated for Pathlight in 2012 by Eleanor Goodman, whose translation of Shen Wei’s “A Dictionary of Xinjiang” was also recently included in the Chutzpah! New Voices from China anthology.

The Cult of Wine

酒之秘仪

Illustration by Xiao Bao

The blessing he procured 

And gave to men is counterpart to that of bread:

The clear juice of the grape. When mortals drink their fill

Of wine, the sufferings of our unhappy race

Are banished, each day’s troubles forgotten in sleep.

There is no other cure for sorrow.¹

In this extract from Euripides’ tragedy The Bacchae, the prophet Teiresias expresses the good side of Dionysus’ nature: his ability to ease people’s suffering. Greek gods take human form and traits; as well as kind, they are also often terrible, malevolent and violent. Dionysus is no exception. The illegitimate child of Zeus, the god of wine grew up in the mountains of India. An angry Hera struck him with madness and caused him to roam wild, passing through Egypt and various parts of Asia. On his travels, he became the god of plants and fruit and the discoverer of grapes. He taught people how to cultivate the vine and make fine wine, and he instructed them to worship him. He bestowed great affection on his followers but brought disaster to any who disrespected his divinity. 

The Bacchae starts when the wandering Dionysus eventually returns to his dead mother’s home city of Thebes. The arrival of the god of wine was no typical return of a lost son, rather an act of retribution intended to cause widespread chaos and to arouse the desire of women. In Zeus’ name, Dionysus drove the whole of Thebes to mad revelry, and incited the city’s womenfolk to “Go creeping off / This way and that to lonely places and give themselves / To lecherous men.”²

One after the other, virginal and obedient girls, married and elderly women alike, joined the ranks of a mad, frenzied group known as the Maenads. 

The air is thick with a scent of Syrian myrrh.

The celebrant runs entranced, whirling the torch

That blazes red from the fennel-wand in his grasp…³

First they let their hair fall free

Over their shoulders; some tied up the fastenings

Of fawnskins they had loosened; round the dappled fur

Curled snakes that licked their cheeks. Some would have in their arms

A young gazelle, or wild wolf-cubs, to which they gave

Their own white milk – those of them who had left at home

Young children newly born…⁴

When the set time came,

The women began brandishing their wands, preparing 

To dance, calling in unison on the son of Zeus,

‘Iacchus! Bromius!’ And with them the whole mountain, 

And all the creatures there, joined in the mystic rite

Of Dionysus, and with their motion all things moved.⁵

When Pentheus, the king of Thebes, heard of this debauched frenzy, he resolved to put a stop to it. In a further act of deception, Dionysus turned the king’s mother Agauë into one of the women’s leaders. In a semi-conscious delirium, Agauë and her Maenads tore her son’s body limb from limb, believing he was the spoils of a hunt. When Agauë regained consciousness and saw her son’s dismembered corpse, she wailed, “Dionysus has destroyed us.”⁶ She was banished from Thebes, along with the Maenads. And Dionysus, the director of this evil deceit, left the city to continue his wanderings. As the philosophically-minded Euripides wrote in the final lines of his play: 

Gods manifest themselves in many forms,

Bring many matters to surprising ends;

The things we thought would happen do not happen;

The unexpected God makes possible:

And that is what happened here today.⁷ 

The Bacchae reproduces the origins and early forms of Dionysia (or Bacchanalia), a wild and violent festival and celebration of female sexual liberation. The earliest of these festivals dates back to the end of the seventh century BC. It was not unusual for a Great Dionysia to be held in Athens every spring. Improvised poetry and chorus song forms emerged from the Great Dionysia and led eventually to Greek tragedy and the three great tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Greek tragedy did not focus solely on Dionysus but also tackled themes including fate, religion, war, democracy, society and ethics. As such, it was a strong force in the advancement of Ancient Greek culture and in the rebuilding of the Greek soul. It elevated Dionysian revelries to a higher level – just as extreme sorrow begets joy and extreme joy begets sorrow, the tragedies took the lament of eternal hate and turned it into an ode to survival.

It is said that some remote parts of the Greek countryside still hold nocturnal Dionysia every other year, attended by single and married women. This is probably a vestige of the original Dionysia as described by Euripides – the modern continuation of the mythological era’s wine cult, or Mysteries. By the second or third century AD, another cult – Orphism – was born. Its prayer songs, which involved incense and chanting, are known as one of the three main sources and texts of Greek mythology (in addition to Homer’s Epics and Hesiod’s Theogony). A third century thinker describes a scene from Orphic Mysteries:

Dancing lascivious dances to the flute, and in the midst of poetry and the hymns of Orpheus play-acting now as Horai, now as Nymphs and now as Bacchants.⁸

In total, 87 Orphic hymns survive today, of which seven are dedicated to Dionysus, also the god of Orphism. Through these religious poems, we can fix the form of the god himself:

The thirtieth Orphic Hymn

I call upon loud-roaring and reveling Dionysos,

primeval, two-natured, thrice-born, Bacchic lord, 

savage, ineffable, secretive, two-horned and two-shaped.

Ivy-covered, bull-faced, warlike, howling, pure,

you take raw flesh, you have triennial feasts,

wrapt in foliage, decked with grape clusters.

Resourceful Eubouleus, immortal god sired by Zeus

when he mated with Persephone in unspeakable unison.

Hearken to my voice, O blessed one, and with your fair-girdled nurses

breathe on me in a spirit of perfect kindness.⁹

Imagine if the ancient Greeks had continued to draw their inspiration only from Dionysus: they would have been wild, irrational, fragmentary and imperfect. They could not possibly have become the people praised by Goethe as “magnificent”, “proper”, “healthy”, “sublime”, “pure” and “powerful”. Now Apollo, the god of the sun, appears. Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy describes how the interplay between the opposing forces of Dionysus and Apollo led to the Greek spirit of reconciliation, balance and advancement:

It would seem that for some time, however, the Greeks were thoroughly secured and protected against the febrile excitements of these festivals, knowledge of which forced its way to the Greeks along every route of land and sea: the figure of Apollo rose up in all its pride and held out the Gorgon’s head to the grotesque, barbaric Dionysiac, the most dangerous force it had to contend with.¹⁰

…

This resistance became more questionable, even impossible, when similar impulses emerged from the deepest roots of Greek culture. Now all the Delphic god could do was to disarm his powerful opponent of his destructive weapon by effecting a timely reconciliation – the most important moment in the history of Greek religion.¹¹

By the time of the Romans, the god of wine Dionysus had another name – Bacchus. He continued to wander the Eurasian continent, passing through Persia. The Ancient Persians called wine the “living water” plant and “the holy tree of the moon”. In the imperial palace, the position of cup bearer was one of honour and importance, elevating the holder to the rank of a high counsellor. Herodotus wrote that the Persians would typically deliberate upon important matters when drunk, believing decisions made under the influence to be more reliable than those made sober. Wine plays a significant role in the advancement and flourishing of Persian poetry, music and dance. When Bacchus met the Arabians, he taught them how to grow a vine, one with fruit as large as a hen’s egg, a trunk so thick it took two people to put their arms round it, and bunches of grapes each two cubits long. The Arab people inherited the Persian tradition of fine wine, believing that the vine was a wine cup and that, if you were buried under one, you would enjoy limitless fine wine for all eternity. 

It is also clear that Bacchus visited the area that the Chinese call the Western Regions (Xinjiang), as the worship of Bacchus is still prevalent today among the ethnic minorities there, including the Uighurs, Kazakhs and Tajiks. In the third section (“Love Dastan”) of my 2010 Kazakh dance epic Homeland, an aged Bacchus makes an appearance. Woven into the nature worship and animal dances is an expression of the harmony between man, god and beast. 

Before the introduction of Islam to the Western Regions, its people’s love for wine had no limits, nor any prohibitions. A folk song included in the Compendium of the Language of the Turks confirms this excessive drinking: 

Let us cry out as we drink thirty cups

Let us jump for joy

Let us roar like lions

Scattering sorrow, let us laugh to our hearts’ content

These practiced drinkers were imbibing the Western Region’s most ancient grape wine – museles. This is the drink described in the Tang Dynasty poem as “fine grape wine in cups of glowing jade”. In the second century BC, Zhang Qian “opened up new channels” with the Western Regions and travelled to Dayuan (in modern day Ferghana) where he discovered the apparent centre of Central Asian viticulture. Sima Qian records in his Records of the Grand Historian:

The regions around Dayuan make wine out of grapes, the wealthier inhabitants keeping as much as 10,000 or more piculs stored away. It can be kept for as long as twenty or thirty years without spoiling. The people love their wine and the horses love their alfalfa. The Han envoys brought back grape and alfalfa seeds and the emperor for the first time tried growing these plants in areas of rich soil.¹² 

Zhang Qian brought grape and alfafa seeds back from Dayuan, but did not acquire the skill of making wine. In 384 AD, Lu Guang, a general of the Former Qin state, journeyed to Kucha (modern-day Kuqa) and reported, “There are many vineyards here and wine is always enjoyed by the vat-full. People lie, dead-drunk, in wine cellars for days on end and the soldiers who guard the city are no exception.” “These peoples are extravagant, and much concerned with ‘nourishing life’.” The mostly Tocharian people of Kucha were devout Buddhists despite their indulgence in pleasure. 

The Western Jin dynasty writer Zhang Hua wrote in the Bowu Zhi, “In the Western Regions there is a grape wine which can be stored for many years without going bad. There is a common saying which goes, ‘One can drink it after ten years / And stay drunk a full month before its effect wears off!’”¹³

The finest museles, the “living fossil” of the Western Region, can be found in Dolan, in the Yarkand river valley in Xinjiang. Museles is different from modern artisan grape wine, both darker in colour and cloudier. It has a certain primordial chaos about it, as if a sandstorm has been added. This primitive grape wine is, without doubt, simple, natural and earthy and, when drunk, gives one the sensation of returning to nature and to the countryside. 

Nowadays, the people of Dolan like to add pigeon’s blood to museles when they make it, and also wolfberries, Xinjiang saffron, cloves, cistanche and other medicinal herbs. According to one popular folk legend from Dolan, museles was invented not by Bacchus but by the demon Mailiwuni. He added fox, tiger, wild boar and cockerel blood to wine so that when people drank museles they became as sly as a fox, as fierce as a tiger, as dirty as a boar, and as libidinous as a cockerel. This legend probably dates from after the emergence of Christianity and Islam as it bears the imprint of both religions as well as a particular Western Region flavour. It might also be a version of a story from the western Gesta Romanorum: 

Noah discovered the wild vine, and because it was bitter, he took the blood of four animals, namely, of a lion, of a lamb, a pig and a monkey. This mixture he united with earth, and made a kind of manure, which he deposited at the roots of the trees. Thus the blood sweetened the fruit…¹⁴

Almost everyone in Dolan makes museles. It is as common as the people of Jiangnan making rice wine to celebrate the Lunar New Year. As part of the now lost tradition of “Museles Mysteries”, every householder would make an offering of one jar of the finest wine. This would be poured into a large vat, and mixed together to become a communal museles for everyone to share. This was a symbol of unity: like the wine in the vat, everyone was born from the same roots and the same blood ran in their veins. This “hundred family wine” was enjoyed from wooden and earthen bowls. Everyone, without exception, would join in the fun and have a taste – even toddlers. As accompaniment, they would serve steaming ox heads that had been boiled in large woks. They would sing and dance and drink for three days and three nights. On the third day, people would gather and listen earnestly as a respected elder said a few words. He would tell them that museles represented the act of forgetting and that when they drank it, they should forget all the misunderstandings, enmity and unhappiness between people and neighbours – cast it beyond the highest heavens. From then on, the sad would become happy, and the poor would pray to heaven that everything would start to get better. Museles could even cleanse the souls of the sinner, making him a new person.

After reaching the Western Regions it is likely that Bacchus turned back west, without continuing his journey into the eastern lands of the Han people. There is, therefore, no Dionysia in Chinese culture, nor any worship of the god of grape wine. The Chinese have their patron of rice wine Du Kang and the poet “immortals of the wine cup” Liu Ling and Li Bai. They have wine drinkers and drunks, but no Dionysian festival, nor any culture which could properly be described as having a “Dionysian spirit”. 

Despite theories that “mixed wine” emerged around the time of either the legendary figure Fu Xi or of Yu the Great, the founder of the Xia Dynasty (c. 21st century – 16th century BC), baijiu (distilled rice wine) was actually invented after the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD). The earliest stills that archaeologists have excavated only date back as far as the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD). After the fall of the Han Dynasty, baijiu grew in popularity, but no tradition of official or popular rice wine festivals emerged. Perhaps the Chinese cult of wine had already changed, and started to resemble what Cao Cao describes in his poem “Short Song Style”:

Facing the wine, we sing our song

How long does a life last?

…

How can we be free of sorrow?

Only with Du Kang’s wine.

Later, the “Seven Immortals of the Bamboo Grove” became symbolic of the hedonistic attitudes to alcohol prevalent during the Wei-Jin Period (220-420 AD), and later still, the poet and hardened drinker Li Bai (701-762 AD) “drinks one measure of wine and writes one hundred poems” to “dispel the cares of ten thousand ages together…”

Li Bai’s “Bring in the Wine” is one of the most famous examples of classical Chinese poems about baijiu. Poems about baijiu even accounted for a relatively large proportion of work of the reclusive, pastoral poet Tao Yuanming. However, Tao Yuanming was moderate in his consumption of alcohol, drinking only for pleasure. In his essay “On Attitudes and Writing During the Wei-Jin Period and its Relationship with Drugs and Wine”, Lu Xun writes:

At the time, the custom of drinking wine had been passed down the generations so people did not think it strange. Moreover, although there is no great distance of time between the Wei-Jin period and the earlier Han dynasty, there were numerous changes, which later on became commonplace and then caused no great stir. So it is natural that Tao Qian (another name for Tao Yuanming) was more peaceful than either Kong Rong or Ji Kang.

But the originators of baijiu were not past emperors, nor Yi Di nor Du Kang. The earliest alcohol, for which the ancients had names including li or qunie, must surely have come about from natural fermentation, and been a little like today’s glutinous rice wine laozao from the south, or the north-west’s choujiu. On the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau they still say that “monkeys invented wine”. China very soon became a nation of baijiu drinkers and, nowadays, seems to be the world’s first great baijiu nation. Statistics show that the Chinese drink 2-300 billion bottles annually – in other words, every individual consumes more than ten bottles. To put it another way, the Chinese drink the equivalent of Lake Qinghai every year!

The reserved Asian people love the potent baijiu, and dynamic Westerners are intoxicated by the romantic grape wine. This is an interesting cultural phenomenon and point of difference; perhaps from an ethno-psychological viewpoint, it is an attempt, a need to make up for some deficiency. And the pleasure, freedom and high that come from drinking alcohol are common to both East and West. Even in an age of widespread alcoholism, drinking cultures can be unfathomably diverse. Yet as the poor drink the inferior alcohol of the impoverished, and the wealthy their fine wines, the state reached by both is more or less the same. Worry, pain and misfortune as deep as a lake can be quickly drained. And when the lake is dry, new misery fills it up again… At the round Chinese dining table, in romantic settings, in brothels, in relationships, between friendships, over worried looks… Alcohol gives us the spiritual strength to conquer gravity, the ability to add wings to our monotonous existence. It is a staircase to delirium, an illusory steed, and is thus how Baudelaire came to write his verse:

Let’s gallop off, astride our wine

To climes enchanted, realms divine!¹⁵ 

It is my deep regret that we have never established a festival or ritual of baijiu. Rituals are not only our cultural inheritance, they also give us a world worth living, full of symbolism and comfort. The purpose of a wine ritual would not be to awaken a Chinese Bacchus but to remind us to not forget our long line of wine-making ancestors, so that we do not lose sight of where we have come from or where we are going. 

This regret of mine received its only consolation when I attended the Tenth Maotai Cultural Festival, held in a Maotai distillery during the Double Ninth Holiday in autumn 2013. The baijiu festival was, in fact, a sacrificial ceremony, at once solemn, simple and revivalist. On the banks of the Chishui River, in air filled with the intoxicating aroma of baijiu and the beating of music, one person after another respectfully offered up sacrifices of six goods: incense, rice wine, sorghum, wheat, purified water and fresh flowers. Clothed in yellow, they appeared devout, their every action deferential. The classical Chinese music, composed and performed by the young, became a seventh sacrificial item. 

This ceremony, respecting the memory of and making offerings to generations of baijiu-making ancestors, proclaimed the start of a new distilling season and, even more importantly, demonstrated a respectful appreciation for all things. Its message was profound, and the intensity of the ritual deeply affected everyone present that day. This was a completely different experience from drinking to get drunk, and had the extraordinary effect of bringing to mind our ancestors, immersing us in ancient practices and purifying the soul. I call this sacrificial ceremony the Maotai Mysteries, the Great Dionysia of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau.

The cult of wine has, in fact, been preserved perfectly by contemporary poets. Poets address each other as “poet friends”, keeping alive an ancient custom and showing that, in groups and in interactions with each other, they are still a people who value camaraderie. These friendships can often travel across both time and space, forming a sort of fraternal intimacy. On my last day at the Maotai festival, a local poet friend took me and my wife for a trip to a remote mountain valley near Renhuai – Lion Mountain. There were no Miao people to be seen in the former Miao village. Instead, a few farmer’s kitchens were opened to host visitors and featured local mountain fare. Baijiu was as indispensable as it is at any meeting of poet friends. To our astonishment, when we had drunk our fill of baijiu, three other poet friends happened to phone at the same time: Ye Zhou from Gansu, Liang Xiaoming from Zhejiang and He Laohan (or He Zhong) from Tibet. As soon as I heard their voices, I could tell they’d been drinking heavily and reminiscing about distant friends. The first two had visited Maotai town the previous year and the year before that respectively, and so had a connection with its drink. As a result, our three distant friends were able to join us vicariously in our happy drinking party on Lion Mountain. Several days later I returned to Xinjiang and composed a poem dedicated to my poet friends. It goes further than just commemorating our friendship, it also lays bare and recreates the poets’ cult of wine.

Lion Mountain

When the Maotai lion and the Ürümqi lion

Meet here, beneath Lion Mountain

Lions haven’t been seen for years

Two small dogs frolic in the sweet potato fields

Mistaken for two lion cubs playing

A haystack, orange tree, wild tomato dusk

Seen off into the night by the bird’s nest and pack-basket

From the vegetable plot, half a moon ascends

Its gleam fills the desolate, cold mountain valley

In the Miao people’s mountain homes, spicy roast pork, 

Wild onions and heartleaf-root, tossed with peanuts…

What a delight, to have friends come from afar

We open another bottle of Feitian Maotai, beckon

The Lanzhou lion Ye Zhou, the Hangzhou lion Liang Xiaoming

And the Lhasa lion He Laohan

Those present and absent

Drink a cup of the plateau’s liquid fire together

Tonight, Lion Mountain is a mountain of brothers

The red-waters river renamed the river of fine wine

But wait – with this last glass, we also call out to

Ghostly lions, forefather lions, invisible lions

To get drunk with us tonight, following a group of highland beasts

This everlasting sorrow, swimming across the Milky Way, the starlit sky

Translated by Emily Jones

1. The Bacchae, Euripides, tr. Philip Vellacott, Penguin Classics, 1954 (1973 ed), p200

2. Ibid p198 

3. Ibid p196

4. Ibid p216

5. Ibid pp216-17

6. Ibid p238

7. Ibid p244

8. Translation taken from Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement, W K C Guthrie, Princeton University Press, 1952 (1993 ed), p259.

9. The Orphic Hymns, Apostolos Athanassakis, Scholars Press (Missoula) for The Society of Biblical Literature, 1977 p43

10. The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche, tr. Shaun Whiteside, Penguin Classics, 1993, p19

11. Ibid, pp19-20

12. Records of the Grand Historian, Sima Qian, tr. Burton Watson, Vol 2, Columbia University Press, 1961 (1993 ed)  pp244-45

13. The Bowu Zhi, tr. Roger Greatrex, Föreningen för Orientaliska Studier, 1987, pp110-11

14. Gesta Romanorum, tr. Charles Swan and Wynnard Hooper, Constable and Company London, 1876 (rep 1959), CLIX “Of the Invention of Vineyards”

15. Selected Poems from Les Fleurs Du Mal: A Bilingual Edition, Baudelaire, tr. Norman J Shapiro, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p172-173 (“Le Vin des Amants” / “Lovers’ Wine”)

Xiao Su

晓苏

Born in Hubei in 1961, Xiao Su has published over a dozen volumes of award-winning fiction, praised for its authentic evocation of rural China life. Currently a professor at Central China Normal University, he entered the public consciousness in 2013 after speaking out against the crassness on display in the Chinese blockbuster Lost in Thailand.

The Cold

传染记

Illustration by Li Liang

1

The feed seller had been there for the length of a cigarette before Fu Caixia showed up, too. At the time, Wu Yun had been cleaning out the pig pens behind the house. She was a stickler for cleanliness – not just in the home, but also in the dozen tidy pigsties clustered behind the house. She used a hose to spray everything clean, and was punctual about spraying the pens with disinfectant.

When the feed seller showed up, Hao Feng (who had been helping Wu Yun with the pig pens) dropped his broom and hurried inside. Ever since the two of them had started the pig operation, Hao Feng had been in charge of buying the feed. And of course, it was Hao Feng who did the serious business of buying piglets and selling the meat, too. All Wu Yun did was to make sure the pigs were fed and kept clean, and that the odd jobs around the farm were done. Just like that, the wife stayed at home and the husband went out.

Wu Yun had almost finished washing out the pig pens when Hao Feng appeared in the back door of the house, shouting, “Wu Yun, Fu Caixia is looking for you!”

“Okay! Gimme two minutes!” she shouted back.

Fu Caixia was a friend who lived nearby, just over the hill. It wasn’t a very big hill – just a little mound with a few pine tree and a cypress or two. From her front door, Wu Yun could see the black roofline of Fu Caixia’s house. In the whole village of Canola Hill, Wu Yun and Fu Caixia lived the closest together and also got along the best, too. They had both grown up in a village called Crossroads. Just one year after marrying Hao Feng and moving to Canola Hill, Wu Yun had introduced Fu Caixia to her husband. The man Fu Caixia had married was good friends with Hao Feng, too. He’d spent the last two years working in Guangdong.

When Wu Yun walked into the house, Fu Caixia was waiting for her in the living room. She stood awkwardly in the doorway. Hao Feng and the feed seller, meanwhile, sat at the table, drinking tea and talking about pig feed. The feed seller was smoking a thin cigarette, which he held pinched between his two fingers. The way he blew smoke rings flicked the ash really was something else, and from his accent and the way he dropped his H’s you could tell he was from Yichang, in Hubei. He’d visited the farm a couple of times before, but he’d only really ever talked to Hao Feng. Wu Yun didn’t even know his name – she always called him ‘guest’.

When she saw that Fu Caixia was standing, Wu Yun gave Hao Feng a hard time for not offering their second guest a seat. Fu Caixia laughed.

“Oh, phooey, I wanted to stand. I live next door, and I’m here two days out of three. I’m no guest!” 

Her voice sounded rough and nasal, as if she had a sore throat. 

“Still not over your cold, huh?” Wu Yun said, looking anxious.

Fu Caixia coughed and nodded.

“It’s been the better part of a month now. I just can’t seem to shake it.”

Wu Yun studied her friend’s face, noticing the dark circles under her eyes, her swollen-looking red nose, and her cracked lips. 

“Well it seems to me like it’s getting worse!”

“You can say that again… I’m not sure how much longer I can take it!”

She coughed again.

Wu Yun was in no hurry to ask her business, and placed a chair in front of her friend.

“Here, sit down for a sec while I go and change.”

Wu Yun was very particular – every time she went out to the pig pens she’d wear a special set of clothes which she would change out of as soon as got back in the house. Her shoes were the same, one pair for inside and another for outside. 

As she walked by the feed seller she greeting him, saying, “Hello guest!” 

Although she didn’t ask his age, looking his face she guessed he was about the same age as her. The feed seller always called Hao Feng ‘boss’ and Wu Yun ‘boss’s wife’, which is exactly how he greeted her now. Actually, Wu Yun didn’t like it when people called her that – it always seemed like an uncultured sort of thing to call someone.

Without meaning to, Wu Yun found herself listening to the two men’s conversation while she changed.

“…so what’s the difference between this ‘Surefire Super Swine’ feed you’ve got today and the ‘Prize Plump Pig’ feed that you sold us last time?”

“Well, for starters, there’s an extra ingredient that helps the pigs grow quicker.”

“What ingredient?”

“Birth control!”

“What the heck d’ya put that in there for?”

“To get rid of their sex drive of course! That way all they have to think about is getting fatter.”

“Well, not much point to that, I’m afraid, since our pigs have all gotten the snip, if you know what I mean.”

 The feed seller laughed.

“If that was all it took, then how come the eunuchs back in olden days were always getting caught with palace maids, huh?”

Wu Yun couldn’t help smiling. That feed seller really has way with words, she thought.

It was March and the first hints of spring were already in the air. Wu Yun changed into a green striped quilted jacket. As she walked out of the room she was surprised to see the feed seller’s eyes light up.

Ignoring his gaze, Wu Yun hurriedly moved a chair over to where Fu Caixia was sitting.

“I really don’t know how you’ve managed it. You’ve dragged this cold out for over a month now! You should take better care of yourself, Caixia!”

“I’ve been drinking fresh ginger soup and eating lots of fermented pepper paste and even—” 

Before she could finish speaking a fit of coughing cut her short, turning her face beet red and bringing tears to her eyes.

Hao Feng and the feed seller stopped talking and looked over in her direction.

As soon as Fu Caixia finished, Wu Yun began to scold her again.

“Just look at you! Go see a doctor already!”

“Who says I didn’t, huh? I just got back from the hospital in Old Mountain Pass to get checked out. Pills, I ate ‘em by the handful, plus shots too. Didn’t do a dang thing!”

“Even though a cold usually isn’t anything serious,” Hao Feng blurted out suddenly, “It can be a bigger pain in the neck than some real serious illnesses, you know?” As he spoke, he walked over and poured her a cup of hot water.

“You’re right,” Fu Caixia said, taking the cup with both hands. “I’m really learning a thing or two about colds! Especially in the evening, coughing non-stop, your nose is all blocked up, and it feels like a chicken feather’s stuck in your throat! Who could sleep like that? It’s just too much, you know?”

“Does your husband know that you’re sick?”

Fu Caixia shook her head.

“Last time he called he heard me coughing, so he asked if I had a cold. But I just said I was fine.”

“What the heck you do that for?”

“What difference would it make if I told him? He’d just get all worried about me for no reason.”

“Maybe he’d come back to take care of you,” Hao Feng joked. “You’d probably get better right away!”

“Here I am, sick as a dog, and you’re still making jokes!”

“Caixia, what’d you come over for then?” Wu Yun asked, butting in. 

“Well, I heard about this folk remedy that says if you drink gall bile from a pig it can help you get over a bad cold. So I wanted to ask if you saved any gall bladders from the pigs you had killed last year.”

Wu Yun thought for a moment.

“I think we’ve got some, but gosh, that stuff is tough to swallow. It’s worse than goldthread root extract!”

Fu Caixia laughed.

“Well, great! It doesn’t matter how bitter it is, I gotta drink it down. You know what they say, ‘Bitter medicine is better medicine,’ right?”

Wu Yun sent Hao Feng to go fetch one of the gall bladders hanging in the kitchen. When he came back he was carrying what looked like a small lightbulb, filled with a dark liquid. 

“Hope you get better soon, Caixia!” Hao Feng said, handing her the gall bladder.

“Knock on wood!” Fu Caixia said, coughing.

This whole time, the feed seller had been sitting and smoking, not saying anything. He hadn’t seem interested in Fu Caixia in the slightest. Standing, he flicked his cigarette to the ground and turned to leave.

“There’s one kind of cold,” he said suddenly, “that there’s only one way to get better from.”

“What kind of cold is that?” Fu Caixia said, turning to stare at the feed seller.

“It’s like a virus. It’s really stubborn, so pills and shots aren’t any use.”

“Well, what’s the one way to treat it then?” Fu Caixia asked anxiously.

“You have make someone else catch your cold. As soon as you pass it on to the next person, you get better right away.”

Fu Caixia stared in disbelief at the feed seller.

“He might be on to something, you know,” Hao Feng said after a long pause. “At any rate, what’s the harm in finding someone to catch your cold so you can get better faster, eh?”

Wu Yun frowned.

“Oh, Caixia, he’s just pulling your leg,” she said. “If you’re still not better after you drink that gall bile, then you should go back to the hospital to try more pills and shots.”

Fu Caixia coughed and said that she’d better be going. Before stepping over the threshold, she glanced back at the feed seller with a serious expression on her face. What’s gotten into her all of a sudden? Wu Yun thought to herself.

2

A couple of days later, after Wu Yun had finished feeding the pigs, she packed a container full of her homemade potstickers and climbed the little hill to pay a visit to Fu Caixia. Wu Yun hadn’t seen Fu Caixia since she had come over looking for gall bile the other day, and she was worried that Caixia’s cold still hadn’t gotten any better. So she had made a point of making extra potstickers earlier that day so that Fu Caixia could have a taste, too.

Fu Caixia lived in an old-fashioned house, with yellow mud-daub walls and a black tile roof. The roofline came to two high points, like dragons flying into the wind. The front part of the house was the main building, with a living room and two small side rooms. Behind the main building a long, narrow room had been added, which served as the kitchen.

When Wu Yun arrived at the front door of the main part of the house she was surprised to discover that it was locked. Walking to the back, she found that door locked, too. Seems like Fu Caixia isn’t around, Wu Yun thought to herself glumly. Just as she was about to leave, she noticed a piece of pork skin, hanging flat and wrinkled above the door to the kitchen. Looking closer, she discovered that it was the gall bladder, now completely empty. Did her cold get better after drinking the gall bile? Wu Yun thought to herself. The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to see Fu Caixia. But where did she go? She thought and thought, but she just couldn’t figure it out.

Fu Caixia had a neighbor who lived a little ways over, an old granny who had just come out to sit on her stoop. 

“Do you know where Fu Caixia has gotten off to?” Wu Yun asked, walking over to talk to her. 

Her hearing seemed to be pretty good, and her reflexes weren’t half bad either, because she said straightaway:

“Heard her say she was going to the mahjong hall.”

Wu Yun was stumped. What was Fu Caixia going to the mahjong hall for? She doesn’t usually play mahjong – she probably doesn’t even know the names of all the pieces. After a long pause, she asked if the granny knew whether Fu Caixia’s cold had gotten better.

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “I heard her coughing all last night.”

The mahjong hall had been opened by a guy named Gong something or other. It wasn’t far from Fu Caixia’s house – if she hurried it’d only take her fifteen minutes or so. She still wanted to see Fu Caixia, and besides, she still had the potstickers to give her. 

It didn’t take long for Wu Yun to arrive at the mahjong hall. From outside she could hear the sound of mahjong tiles being shuffled, click clack. It sounds like someone frying up a big batch of popcorn in a skillet, she thought. Old Man Gong was standing in the doorway, picking his teeth with a sliver of bamboo. Looks he just ate lunch, Wu Yun thought to herself. 

“Is Fu Caixia around?” Wu Yun asked.

“Yep,” Old Man Gong said, spitting out a chunk of meat he’d pried from his teeth.

“But she doesn’t even know how to play mahjong! What’s she doing here, huh?”

“I thought it was strange too,” Old Man Gong said. “Showed up here this morning but she wasn’t playing. She just sits next to folks, watching ‘em. She’s even volunteered to help me out – lighting cigarettes, pouring tea, what not. She didn’t go home for lunch – and she wouldn’t eat our food, neither.”

Although there were three tables in the mahjong hall, only one was in play today. Wu Yun pushed the door open and saw Fu Caixia straightaway. She was in the middle of blowing her nose, coughing all the while. A trash can was set in front of her, full of used tissues. The four people playing mahjong were all familiar faces to Wu Yun, all well-known loafers and good-for-nothing layabouts. The air was so thick with smoke that it left Wu Yun reeling and a little sick to her stomach.

Wu Yun hadn’t entered the room yet, but Fu Caixia caught sight of her and waved. She walked to door and followed Wu Yun out of the mahjong hall to stand under a tree.

They stood, face to face, not saying anything. If anything, Fu Caixia’s cold seemed to have gotten worse. Her face looked swollen, her nose a deep red, like a carrot. She was still coughing non-stop.

“So the gall bile didn’t help at all?” Wu Yun said, finally.

“My tongue just about fell off, but it didn’t do a dang thing.”

“You didn’t go get more shots? Or pills?”

“Of course I did. I got all the shots and I ate all the pills. I even got an IV yesterday,” Fu Caixia said, holding her hand in front of Wu Yun’s face to show off her fresh needle marks.

“What are you doing hanging around here, then?” Wu asked after a long pause.

Fu Caixia open her mouth to speak but then snapped it shut again.

Wu Yun repeated the question.

“I wanted… I wanted to give my cold to someone else,” she said quietly.

All of a sudden Wu Yun understood. Caixia had believed the feed seller and his tall tale.

“No wonder she didn’t empty the trash can when it was full of tissues!” Wu Yun muttered.

Fu Caixia looked up and coughed.

“Yun, I’m really bad off. I’d do just about anything to get better at this point.”

“Well I sure hope the feed seller knew what he was talking about….”

After a pause, Fu Caixia asked Wu Yun what she had come for.

“I made potstickers,” Wu Yun said, handing her the container of dumplings. “I wanted to bring you some to try. Hurry up and eat ‘em before they get cold – Old Man Gong said you haven’t had anything to eat all day.”

“Aww. You’re always taking care of me, Yun,” Fu Caixia said, “How’ll I ever repay you?”

“Look at you, Ms. Polite!”

While Fu Caixia dug into the potstickers, Wu Yun asked her how she came up with the idea to give her cold to one of the gamblers in the mahjong hall.

“I thought that since they spend the whole day getting up to no good anyways, maybe I wouldn’t feel so bad about it.”

Wu Yun laughed and slapped Caixia on the shoulder.

“Just like you to think of that, Caixia!”

After finishing the potstickers, Fu Caixia handed the empty container back to Wu Yun.

“You going back to watch them play some more?”

Fu Caixia nodded.

“I’m waiting for one of them to cough. Then I’ll go.”

“Well, you’d better hurry up and get back in there then!”

Three days later, while Wu Yun and Hao Feng were giving the pigs another round of immunizations, Hao Feng’s phone started to ring. From the voice, she could tell it was the feed seller.

“What’d he want?” Wu Yun asked.

“He said that our feed is here, he’s parked just up the road. Wanted us to go over to the highway and pick it up.”

The highway was only about half a li from their farm, but the narrow path that connected the two was hard to drive on with a car – only motorcycles and tractors were able to manage it. So Hao Feng and Wu Yun put down their tools and jumped in the tractor, hurrying to get down to the highway. 

The feed seller drove a dusty pickup, which he had parked just off the highway. It was dual-purpose vehicle – people in the front, cargo in the back.  It had only taken the tractor twenty some minutes get down to the highway. When Wu Yun got out of the tractor, she saw the feed seller squatting in front of the truck, smoking. 

“Boss’ wife!” he shouted.

“Guest!” Wu Yun shouted back, before climbing into the back of the truck to help unload the feed.

Three words were printed on the white bags of feed in big, bright red characters: Surefire Super Swine. Working together, Hao Feng and Wu Yun began to move the feed from the back of the pickup onto the tractor. 

Suddenly, a woman carrying a basket appeared, walking up the side of the road. Every few steps she would stop and look around. It took Wu Yun a moment to realize that it was Fu Caixia. It looked like she was collecting pig fodder – her basket was already full of paper mulberry leaves. 

“Fu Caixia, is your cold better yet?” Wu Yun shouted.

Fu Caixia was about to answer (having just recognized Wu Yun) when she suddenly started coughing, doubling over like a plow. After a long fit, she stood upright again, her ears bright red from coughing, but her face deathly shade of gray.

The feed seller had also recognized Fu Caixia by this point. He leaned over to Hao Feng and said, “So her cold still hasn’t gotten any better!”

“Looks like she’s getting worse!” Hao Feng replied.

Wu Yun walked over to Fu Caixia, dusting her hands off as she walked. 

“Have you passed your cold on to anyone else yet?”

Fu Caixia shook her head.

“How can that be?”

“You’ve got me! I’ve been going to the mahjong hall for the past two days, but nobody’s caught it yet. I’ve even been drinking from their glasses when they aren’t looking!”

“That’s really odd… I wouldn’t have thought those old gamblers would have such good immune systems!”

Fu Caixia started to blow her nose again. The way she bunched the tissue around her nose, it was like she was trying to twist her own nose off.

“How come you’re out here collecting pig fodder when you’re still sick like this?”

“I gotta. Can’t let our pig starve, can I?” Fu Caixia said, wiping her hands with another tissue.

Hao Feng hurried over to tell Fu Caixia that she should go home and rest.

“I can bring over some extra fodder in a bit, Caixia,” Hao Feng said.

“Oh, there’s no need, really! I’ve only got the one pig, and he won’t be able to eat much more than I’ve already got right here.”

The feed seller had walked over too by this point.

“You really oughta think of a way to pass that cold on to someone else – otherwise you ain’t gonna get better, no way no how.”

“I really can’t think of anything,” Fu Caixia said, “Nothing seems be working – nobody else is catching this dang thing.”

“Well, I can think of one thing you could try,” the feed seller said in a hushed voice. “But I’m afraid you won’t like it.”

“What is it? Tell me!”

“Ah, forget it,” the feed seller said after a long pause. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

“If you haven’t said what it is yet, then how do you know for sure that she’s not interested?” Wu Yun asked, looking askance at the feed seller. 

“Well? Don’t leave us hanging! Come on, out with it, what’s the one thing she should try, huh?” Hao Feng said, poking the feed seller in the chest. 

“Don’t you feel sorry for me?” Fu Caixia pleaded. “Look at how sick I am!”

The feed seller looked serious.

“Okay then, I’ll tell you.”

“I’m listening…” Fu Caixia said. 

“You could try sleeping with a guy—”

“What?!” Fu Caixia shouted. “You’re crazy!” She turned her back to the feed seller, ignoring him. 

Wu Yun glared at the feed seller.

“Getting advice from you is like looking for elephant ivory in the mouth of a mangey mutt!”

“Hey, it’s not a bad idea,” Hao Feng said. “It’s too bad her husband is off working in Guangdong. It’s like they say, ‘Waters of a distant well, this fire it cannot quell.’”

“Don’t listen to these idiots,” Wu Yun said, patting Fu Caixia on the back. “Just go to back to the hospital, okay?”

Fu Caixia said nothing and walked away, coughing.

3

On the twenty-fifth of the third lunar month, Wu Yun went back to Ten Character Square to visit her relatives. It was her mother’s 62nd birthday. Before they had started the pig farm, Wu Yun and Hao Feng had gone back on the same day every year to celebrate. Ever since starting the pig farm, though, Hao Feng had to stay in Canola Hill to look after the pigs, so for the past couple of years Wu had had no choice but go on her own.

Wu Yun got back to Canola Hill the next day around noon. It was high spring, and the fields of brilliant yellow canola were in full bloom, flashing in the sun brighter than welding sparks, almost painful to look at. It seemed as if the canola blossoms had opened overnight while she was sound asleep in her childhood home. Wu Yun had always thought that flowers were a great mystery, bursting open secretly in the middle of the night.

When she got home, Hao Feng was sitting in the doorway to house, changing his shoes. He had placed two big plastic buckets on the ground, and it looked like he’d just come back from feeding the pigs. Under Wu Yun’s influence Hao Feng had really cleaned up his act – every time he went out to the pig pens now, he always changed into galoshes or running shoes, trading them for his cloth slippers or fancy leather shoes when he got back to the house.

“Are the pigs all fed?” Wu Yun asked.

Hao Feng cleared his throat.

“Just finished.”

Wu Yun noticed that Hao Feng’s speech sounded deep and gravely, as if he’d borrowed someone else’s voice for the day. It almost sounded as if he had a frog stuck in there, talking for him.

“What’s wrong with your throat?” Wu Yun asked.

“I’m not feeling well, that’s all,” he said, coughing.

Wu Yun looked at him quizzically. His face was pale, but his nose was bright red, as if it’d been dipped in paint. 

“Looks like you’ve got a cold!”

“Just a little one,” Hao Feng said, blowing his nose. His nose was already stuffed up, so it took a great deal of huffing and puffing to unblock it. 

Wu Yun took half a tissue out of her pocket and handed it to Hao Feng.

“You were fine yesterday,” she said, frowning. “What the heck happened?”

“I felt stuffy last night, so only covered myself half-way with the blanket. When I woke up I had a cold…”

The weather last night was a little unusual, Wu Yun thought to herself. She sighed.

“You old lug, already past thirty and here you are, still kicking off your blanket!”

After walking into the living room, Hao Feng fell into another violent coughing fit. 

“Did you buy any medicine?”

“I went down to the village pharmacy and bought some cold pills first thing this morning. I already took two.” 

Wu Yun glanced over at the side table where, seeing a package of cold pills, she felt a little better. Hao Feng had been sick in the past, but the cold pills had always taken care of it. At the time, Wu Yun didn’t even think to connect Hao Feng’s cold with Fu Caixia.

After eating lunch, Wu Yun went into the storeroom where she discovered right away that a basket was missing – where normally three baskets were hanging now there were only two on the wall above the cluttered mess of farm tools. 

“Where’s the other basket?” Wu Yun called into the other room.

In the living room Hao Feng was drinking tea after their midday meal. 

“Oh,” he said, swallowing, “I dropped off a basket of pig fodder for Fu Caixia yesterday. I was in such a rush to leave I forgot to take the basket back with me.”

Wu Yun felt a chord sound deep in her brain. Suddenly, she saw the connection between Hao Feng’s cold and Fu Caixia. Did Hao Feng catch Fu Caixia’s cold? she thought to herself. She became flustered and her chest felt tight, as if her heart were being wrapped in silk threads. Her vision went dark and her head began to spin, nearly sending her to the floor. Resting her hand on the wind scoop to steady herself, Wu Yun gradually came back to Earth.

Hao Feng coughed in the living room and Wu Yun could feel her head grow three sizes too large. Suddenly furious, she rushed into the living room. 

“How did you catch that cold?” Wu Yun shouted, shoving her finger in Hao Feng’s face. 

Hao Feng gave her a blank expression.

“Like I just told you – I kicked off my blanket in my sleep.”

Wu Yun laughed.

“Oh, you wish it was that simple!”

“What are talking about?” Hao Feng said, sticking his neck out at Wu Yun and raising his thick nasal voice. He sounds like a broken gong, she thought to herself.

Wu Yun had originally planned on bringing up Fu Caixia, but out of consideration for their close friendship she found herself suddenly closing her mouth. She just wouldn’t do that to me, she thought. Besides, I know what kind of person Fu Caixia is. She knows her place – she hardly dares talk to men besides her husband. Until I have real proof I can’t be going around muddying Fu Caixia’s name. 

Seeing that Wu Yun had something to say but was biting her tongue, Hao Feng asked, “What did you mean by that?”

Instead of replying, though, she rushed out of the room. Wu Yun had decided to go to Fu Caixia’s house straightaway to see if her cold had gotten better or not. The feed seller’s words echoed in her mind. If Fu Caixia’s cold hasn’t gotten better, then I’ve been unfair to Hao Feng, Wu Yun thought. But if her cold is better, then everything will be as clear as head lice on a baldie.

Wu Yun arrived at Fu Caixia’s house in record time. Flying over the hill like a whirlwind, she was at the front door of Fu Caixia’s house in the blink of an eye. 

The door was open, and Wu Yun saw Fu Caixia as soon as she walked in. She was sitting in the side room, cutting her bangs in front of the mirror. The side room was actually her bedroom, and the window was wide open, with wide shafts of sunlight filling the room with brilliant light. On the bed, shadows and reflections danced across the sheets.

“Oh! You’re still getting done up!” Wu Yun said, standing in the doorway to the bedroom.

It wasn’t until Wu Yun spoke that Fu Caixia noticed she was there. Her face flushed red.

“My hair was getting in my eyes,” Fu Caixia said, “So I decided to cut it myself.”

Fu Caixia was wearing a pink wool sweater, which showed off her curves in a flattering sort of way. Wu Yun studied her for a moment, discovering rather suddenly that her breasts stuck out more than she remembered, pushing out the sweater like a great big tent.

Fu Caixia went into the kitchen and came out carrying a hot cup of tea for Wu Yun, who took it only reluctantly.

“I’m not thirsty.”

Fu Caixia invited her to sit, but Wu Yun stayed standing. 

“I don’t have time to sit and chat, I just wanted to stop by.”

What’s gotten into her? Fu Caixia thought. She’s acting like a completely different person.

Wu Yun quietly watched Fu Caixia.

“Your cold’s better!” she cried out all of a sudden.

“That’s right! I guess it is!” Fu Caixia said happily. 

Since arriving, Wu Yun had been waiting for Fu Caixia to start coughing, or to catch her blowing her nose. But after all this time – nothing. Her cold really was better. Her heart sank, seeming to fall right out of her chest and onto the floor, breaking into a million pieces with a crash.

After a long pause, Wu Yun stared Fu Caixia right in the eyes and said, “Who did you give your cold to?”

“I didn’t give it to anyone!”

“If you didn’t give it to anyone then how’d you get better all of a sudden?”

“What do you mean?” Fu Caixia said, startled.

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“…You think the feed seller was telling truth, don’t you?” 

“So what, you think he was making it up or something?” 

“Don’t tell me you you believe in his nonsense, Wu Yun!” Fu Caixia said, laughing. “A lowlife like that, heaven knows what he’ll say!”

“I didn’t believe him before, either,” Wu Yun said indignantly. “But I sure do now!”

“What the heck has gotten into you today?” Fu Caixia said. 

Wu Yun snorted.

“Who knew you were such an actress!”

Having said her piece, Wu Yun turned and ran out of the house. After a moment, though, she ran back and said, “My husband brought you pig fodder yesterday and forgot one of our baskets here. I’ll take it back with me now, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Fu Caixia said, walking into the back of the house. “I was just going to bring it by.”

Taking the basket from her, Wu Yun muttered, “He must have been in a real hurry when he left… he didn’t even take his basket with him!”

“What do you mean by that, huh?” Fu Caixia asked. “Just say it!”

“Hao Feng has a cold!” Wu Yun yelled. “And I can only think of one person shameless enough to give it to him!”

Wu Yun walked back to her house, carrying the basket. When she arrived, Hao Feng was taking his cold pills. The more he coughed, the worse it seemed to get, and she watched as he just about coughed up the half-swallowed pills. When he saw the basket, Hao Feng said, “I was wondering where you went off to. Off getting the basket back from Fu Caixia, huh?”

“You wish! I went to go see how her cold was doing!” Wu Yun shouted all of a sudden.

Hao Feng jumped. 

“Her cold? Her cold is better?” he asked.

Wu Yun ground her teeth. 

“Yep. Since she passed it on to you, why wouldn’t she get better?”

Hao Feng suddenly realized what was going on. 

“Oh, you thought that we…” 

Without waiting for Hao Feng to finish, Wu Yun shouted, “Did you really think it’d be that hard for me to figure out?”

The two of them began to yell and shout in earnest now. Wu Yun wanted Hao Feng to come clean and admit his crime. But Hao Feng denied all wrongdoing, come hell or high water. They fought until nothing made sense anymore, and neither really knew what they were fighting about. They had almost come to blows, but eventually Hao Feng backed down a bit, and neither husband or wife did anything that they would regret later.

4

Three days later, Wu Yun caught the cold from Hao Feng. She hadn’t thought she’d get sick, especially not from Hao Feng, because ever since their big fight that day, Wu Yun and Hao Feng had slept in separate beds, Wu Yun sleeping in their son’s room. Their son was boarding at Old Mountain Pass Middle School, so he only came home on weekends, leaving his little bed was empty most of the time. The first night, Hao Feng had done his best to convince Wu Yun, but she had ignored him completely. The evening of the second night, Hao Feng stood in doorway of their son’s room, pleading with Wu Yun to come to bed. But she stayed put, putting a deaf ear to Hao Feng’s protests.

The third night was when she ran into a problem. The first two nights Wu Yun hadn’t been able to get much sleep, since she was so upset. There was just nothing for it. On the evening of third day, she fell into a deep sleep. When she woke up in the middle of the night she discovered Hao Feng sleeping beside her. Even worse, she discovered that she was completely naked – she wasn’t even wearing underwear.

When she woke up the next day, Wu Yun started coughing right away. Her nose was stuffed up and her voice was hoarse – the official start of the cold. It was really too strange. Even stranger was the fact that as soon as Wu Yun caught the cold, Hao Feng’s cold suddenly got better, just like that.

Wu Yun’s cold was really bad. The symptoms were identical to Hao Feng’s cold – and of course, Fu Caixia’s cold, too. Non-stop coughing, nose all stuffed up, and a throat that felt like it had been stuffed with chicken feathers. Hao Feng tried to get Wu Yun to see a doctor so that she could start taking pills and getting shots. But Wu Yun ignored him. She knew she had that special, viral kind of cold that pills and shots just couldn’t touch.

Seeing Wu Yun’s cold getting worse and worse, Hao Feng found himself in a never ending spiral of worry. After helping Wu Yun feed the pigs and wash out their pens one morning, he decided to head over to Old Mountain Pass. There was a liquor factory there, and Hao Feng wanted to buy some spent grain to feed the pigs with. While he was there, he planned to stop by the hospital to pick up some extra-strength cold pills for Wu Yun.

Just after ten, he drove the tractor out of the farm, heading in the direction of Old Mountain Pass.

About an hour after Hao Feng left, the feed seller from Yichang showed up, holding the nub of a cigarette between two ingers, blowing smoke rings and flicking ash here and there.

When she saw the feed seller, Wu Yun smiled. She felt a little thrill when she realized that she had finally found someone she could give her cold to.

Translated by Nick Stember

Shuang Xuetao

双雪涛

Shuang Xuetao was born in Shenyang in 1983. Having first made his name in film criticism, he took just 25 days to pen his prize-winning debut fantasy novel Winged Ghost in 2011. Since 2013 he has been concentrating on shorter fiction, and he has had recent work featured in publications such as Harvest magazine.

The Master

大师

Illustration by Wang Yan

I was young then, just fifteen, but I was tall, thin and tall, and although the school uniform fit well enough, so far as the length went anyway, it sagged loosely around me and billowed out like a balloon when the wind blew, even with the buttons buttoned and the zippers zipped. Everybody I met said I looked like my father. Hey, the kid really takes after his dad, have a look. They’ve even got the same mole. The old men on the street always pointed at me and said: He looks exactly like his dad did at his age. He even carries around the same wooden stool. Everything they said was true. My father and I shared even the mole between our eyebrows, from which a single black hair sprouted. Like my father, I was swarthy and thin. Except for the wrinkles, we were basically the same, and people called both of us “Sprout” because of the little black hair. The difference was that my father had earned the nickname in his youth, but for me it was like an echo that followed me through the city streets.

Because we were exactly the same size, my clothes fit my father, too.

My mother left when I was ten. It was sudden, and nobody knew where she went – one day, she was just gone. No doubt my father was hurt deeply, but he didn’t talk about it, and I didn’t cry and I didn’t ask. Once, my father got drunk, called me over, poured me a glass of liquor, and asked: Want some? I said: Yeah. Then my father fished half a cigarette out of his pocket, but I waved it away, took a swig of liquor, shoved some tofu in my mouth, and slowly chewed. The tofu was soft and broke apart easily, so I swallowed it, raised my chopsticks, and drank. There wasn’t much food left on the table, so I held back even though I wanted more. We drank silently until midnight, when my father said without warning: When your mother left, she didn’t even clean the house. I said: Oh? He said: The breakfast dishes were still on the table. The food was cold and hard. What kind of a person just up and leaves like that? I said: I don’t know. He nodded, laid his chopsticks down on the table, and said, looking at me: No matter what, when you take something out, you have to put it back. When you’re done taking a piss, you zip up your zipper. When you’re done playing chess, you put the pieces away. You don’t need an education to be a decent human being. You just need to follow a few simple rules. Got it? I said: Got it. By then, my head was starting to spin, and I couldn’t see the mole between my father’s eyes clearly anymore. I was afraid that if I belched, the tofu and liquor would spew out all over the table, so I kept my words short, and when I was done talking, I shut my mouth. My dad said: Son, it’s time for bed. I’ll clean up the table. So I made my way to the bedroom, supporting myself on the table’s edge. It was a long time before my father came in. All I could hear was the flick of the lighter, like the sound of knuckles cracking. Then I fell asleep.

My father worked as a warehouse attendant at a tractor factory, which technically made him a factory worker, even though he never labored on the assembly line. He spent each day in the warehouse with only a bunch of tractor parts for company. Although his title was warehouse manager, his salary was the lowest of anyone at the factory, and he worked alone. Whenever there was a job that no one else wanted to do, they sent my father, knowing he’d take on the task without complaining. The truth was that a warehouse manager did very little that a lock couldn’t do. The main difference was that my father walked around with a notebook in hand, taking stock of all the parts that went in and out of the warehouse. When the day was done, he would lock the warehouse with a big padlock, then pedal home on his bike. The factory was on the city’s south side, next to the river. I had heard that one year, the river flooded and the water rose all the way to the factory gates. The workers streamed out of the workshop, hooting and hollering, burlap sacks slung over their shoulders, but the water had already receded, leaving only patches of mud. I heard that some of the workers grabbed a stranded fish and boiled it that evening. Over a game of poker, they sipped bowls of fish soup. Although the factory was on the south side of the city, the warehouse was on the north, and my father drove that route in his truck time and time again. There was a prison next door to the warehouse, and because both buildings stood by the roadside and had big iron gates that were always locked, the visiting families of the convicts would often knock on my father’s door and ask: Is this the prison? My father would say: This is the warehouse. The prison is next door. So many people asked the same question that my father put a sign by the entrance of the warehouse. The sign read: Warehouse. But still some people came knocking: Excuse me, is this the prison’s warehouse? So my father made up another sign and planted it next to the warehouse sign. The new sign read: The prison is next door, 500 meters to the north.

To those who still lost their way, my father just pointed silently at the sign.

When the convicts’ terms were nearly complete, they would leave the prison to do hard labor. Early one morning, a line of them filed raucously out to work on the road in front of the prison, about forty of them, their heads shaven clean, wearing numbered uniforms, brandishing pickaxes. They broke the road to bits, filled it in with new asphalt, rolled it flat with a steamroller, and swept it clean with big brooms. They worked for a full day in the blazing summer heat, sweat dripping down their necks, pouring down their faces, rolling off their chins, the droplets scattering in the dirt. The pickaxes swung up and down, up and down, casting swaying shadows on the earth. By dusk, the job was finished, and the convicts sat down in front of my father’s warehouse to rest. The guards brought out two big metal buckets, filled them with water, and let the convicts take a drink. When one convict was finished drinking, he would wipe his mouth with a grimy hand, pass the ladle to the next, and find a place to sit. Once everybody had had a drink, the guards smoked their cigarettes, and the convicts sat quietly chatting among themselves as they watched the sun sink slowly beneath the horizon. My father told me later that several of the convicts just couldn’t tear their eyes away. Then one of the convicts pulled out a plastic Chinese chess board and asked a guard: Mind if we play some chess? The guard thought for a moment, then replied: Go ahead. But if anybody starts trouble, there’ll be hell to pay. The convict said: Of course. We’re just playing around. We don’t even know the rules. As he spoke, the convict spread the chess board out on the ground and arranged the pieces on it. The convict who had brought the board played as red, and the convict sitting next to him wiped his hands on his uniform and laid out the black pieces. “You first.” “You first.” At last, the two of them decided that red would go first, and the game began.

By midgame, the convicts had surrounded the chess board, but they kept their voices down, watching very quietly. From time to time, one of them asked: Don’t these jackasses even know how to play chess? The onlookers laughed and kept on watching. Red seemed to know what he was doing, and he found a weakness, luring a black chariot into the “bamboo grove” on his own side and moving his cannon horizontally along the river’s edge, trapping the general and attacking the other chariot. There was nothing black could do but deploy the elephant to protect his general. After black lost the chariot, red dominated the rest of the game. It was two chariots versus one, and seven or eight moves later, black admitted defeat. The loser rose to his feet and said: The only reason you won is because you’re a cheating son of a bitch. Red said: What do you expect? I’m a con artist. The crowd roared with laughter. Another convict sat down on the black side, and this time two or three guards gathered to watch the game with the convicts, who cleared out of the best spots and gave them to the guards. At the key moment in the match, one of the guards shouted out: That damn stupid horse is going straight to his death! As he said this, he reached out, snatched up the black horse, pointed to a spot on the board and said: Jump here, little horsey. Get ready to play High-Hanging Horse. Taking the hint, black put his horse on a new spot in which it posed a serious threat to red’s defenses, but the horse hung like the sword of Damocles, its lofty position proving a danger to itself. Red broke through black’s front lines, and following a bitter struggle, the black horse that had been poised to take the enemy general went to its death. The onlookers applauded, and somebody said: Who would’ve guessed the guard was a chess expert? Guard, why don’t you sit down and play with us? The onlookers all said it was a good idea, it wouldn’t hurt anything, the road was finished, it was still early, they were in no hurry to get back. The guard rolled up his sleeves, sat down on the red side, and said: Okay, but don’t tell anyone. And if you let me win, I’ll know, and we’ll settle the score in private. After he said this, nobody dared step up, and everybody tried to push everybody else forward. It all seemed playful enough, but actually everyone was nervous, and the convict who had called the guard forward hid away in the back of the crowd.

Just then, a convict with a bad leg came forward, stood directly in front of the guard, and said: Guard, I’d be honored to play with you. He wasn’t severely disabled, it was just that his two legs weren’t quite the same length, so that when he walked, one leg would take a big step and the other would pause in midair before catching up, as if he were using the little leg as a measuring stick. The guard said: Fine. Take a seat. How long until you get out? The convict said: Eighty days. The guard said: You’re nearly free. When you get out, stay out. The convict said: Yes, of course. You go first. The guard picked up the red cannon, placed it in the middle of the board, and said: Let’s play a little game of Cannon Leads the Horse. The convict brought his cannon forward too, placed it in the center, and said: Cannon Leads the Horse is a dangerous game. Then he shut his mouth and stared down at the board. He also opened with Cannon Leads the Horse. The guard said: What? The player who goes second never opens with Cannon Leads the Horse. The convict said nothing. He systematically countered every move the guard made, and twenty or so moves later, all the guard’s pieces had been pushed to the back of the board. Except for a single soldier, none of them had managed to cross the river, while a large contingent of the convict’s troops surrounded the red palace. But the convict was in no hurry to claim the enemy pieces. He just pinned them down so they couldn’t make a move. My father was standing to the side watching all this, and he knew that the end was near. The guard’s fate was sealed, and the convict was toying with him. There was nothing the guard could do. He grabbed a soldier and pushed it forward. The convict did the same, but without looking up, his brow furrowed, as if deep in thought about how to resolve a crisis. The other convicts surrounding the board were as quiet as cats. You didn’t need to know anything about chess. As long as you weren’t colorblind, you could see that red was going to lose. This was chess – not go, where the goal was to surround the enemy pieces – but the red pieces were encircled by the black. The guard did not give up. He glanced frequently at the convict’s expression, but the convict was in no hurry. He simply bowed his head, as if pondering his next move. Night had nearly fallen, and suddenly one of the other convicts spoke up: It’s a tie, let’s call a tie. Somebody else echoed immediately: These two are really an even match, let’s call a draw, count the pieces if you don’t believe it. That’s right, isn’t it, Cripple? The convict said nothing, waiting for the guard to get up. Then my father spoke up from the sidelines: Brother, cannon on line five, horizontal move to line eight. First, tease him a little. The guard raised his head and gave my father a look. He knew my father was the warehouse manager, a neighbor he’d hardly ever spoken with, and he was going to lose anyway, so he took my father’s advice. The convict immediately stretched out a hand, used his chariot to capture the cannon, and swiped up the decommissioned piece. My father said: Horse on line three, forward two spaces. Sacrifice the horse. The guard looked up and said: Brother, you’re telling me to give up my horse, too? My father said: Yeah. The guard put his horse right in front of the black elephant. The elephant made swift work of the horse, which the convict set down next to the cannon. My father said: Move in on the general with the cannon. The guard moved in on the general with the cannon, and the convict’s other elephant drew back. My father said: Chariot on line eight, horizontal move to line five. Go in for the kill. The convict made his countermove, and the tides turned again. Another move, another countermove. After about five moves, red was down by a few pieces, but black’s general was menaced by ranks of attackers. It was an inelegant draw, but it wasn’t against the rules. Laughing, the guard said: You thought you had me, didn’t you? But now it’s a draw. Let this be a lesson. Never assume anything in chess. The convict rose abruptly to his feet and said, glaring at my father: You and me, right now, let’s have a match. Before my father could respond, the guard said: Sit down, you son of a bitch, or I’ll beat you senseless. Head bowed, the man said: Don’t get worked up. It’s just a game. The guard said: So it’s just a game to you? Want me to break your other leg? Motherfucker. The convicts stepped forward and did their best to talk the guard down, saying: He’s just a pathetic cripple. Let it go. My father seized the opportunity to flee to the warehouse, where he sat in an inner room until late in the evening. Finally he opened up the gate and started home, the road a pitch-black sheet, not a soul to be seen.

After that, there were a few occasions when the guard came cycling past the warehouse on the fresh black asphalt. Seeing my father, he would wave and call out: Hey Chess Master, are you busy? My father would say: No, no, just killing time. The guard would nod his head and pass. My father was thirty-five then, and my mother had just left. My grandfather would be dead in half a year.

A month later, my father was laid off. The factory had found someone else to take care of the warehouse. Things changed, and warehouse manager had become a choice position, one you had to fight to keep. In the words of my dead grandfather, they were laying off lots of people, and surely his name was first on the list to get fired anyway, just go along with it, you of all people have no right to complain.

My father’s love affair with chess had begun in his teens. It grew so intense that it drove everybody crazy, and when my grandfather was alive, he told me: If I had known my only son would turn out like this, I’d have preferred he be born an idiot. I heard that before my father was sent to the countryside to work, he played all night beneath the streetlamp at the entrance to the hutong. When the lamp sparkled to life, all the neighborhood kids who knew how to play would gather to face off against him in endless tag-team matches, my father against everybody. He would return home the next morning, not having eaten or drunk anything for the entire day, belching again and again, his expression radiant. Without a word, he would stare at my grandfather and giggle like a moron, and my grandfather would say: What are you laughing about, you damn fool? So you’ve got the idea that you’re some kind of genius thanks to this stupid chess game? My father would say: It’s fun. Then he would collapse in bed and sleep. When my father went off to the countryside, he was out of sight and out of mind, so my grandfather didn’t worry as much. Although he was well aware that my father still played, he decided to let it go as long as he didn’t have to see it, and as long as my father didn’t die of starvation or exhaustion. Judging by the few words my father let slip on the topic, it was just as my grandfather suspected – my father spent the entire four years playing chess, and never wrote a single letter home. In the end, nobody was prepared to play with him, and since he couldn’t get his hands on a strategy book he laid out the chessboard instead and replayed his most brilliant games again and again, himself versus himself, endlessly pondering and polishing. When he returned to the city, he was assigned to a factory. Although society was not exactly at its most stable, a factory was a factory, and it meant a guaranteed job. Not long after he went to work there, the factory held a chess competition, and my father took first place, winning a quilt emblazoned with the words, “Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman,” the title of a revolutionary anthem. At the time, my mother worked as a spray painter in another workshop, and when she watched my father ascend the stage and accept the prize in stunned silence, flashing an open, honest smile, she sensed that my father was likeable and clever, so much so that the black hair between his eyebrows seemed a representation of all his outstanding qualities. She gathered her courage and asked someone to arrange a date between them, and that’s how their love affair began. The first time he laid eyes on his future daughter-in-law, my grandfather decided his savings would be well-spent on her, and he bought my mother a Yongjiu brand bicycle with fresh black lacquer, steel-plated handles, a slanted crossbar, and a flexible, solid spring under the seat. The bicycle immediately made her the talk of the town. My mother felt at home in the family and got along with them well, and every Sunday she would clean my father’s house, hanging the comforters out in the sun, washing the windows, sweeping the floor, and cooking dinner. After the meal, she would get out the melon seeds and tea leaves she’d had a friend buy at a department store, chatting with my grandfather and cracking the seeds between sips of tea. 

One time, my father stood up and said: You guys keep chatting. I’m going out for a walk. My grandfather said: No. Sit down. My mother said: Let him go on his walk. I’ll stay here and chat with you. My grandfather said: It isn’t safe out there. There have been guns on the streets and bullets flying. The students are armed with knives. It’s getting a little better now. But there are snipers. Last week, Xu Guang from the house next door got killed by a stray bullet. My mother nodded, and said to my father: Sit, then. After a while you can take me home on my bike. My father said: Dad, Xu Guang was watching me play chess when he got shot. There was a single stray bullet. His luck was bad. But I was fine. My grandfather’s face turned ghastly pale, and he said to my father: If you really want to die, at least get married and have kids first. My mother added hurriedly: Dad, don’t be angry. I should be going. Please, let him take me home. The streets were perfectly calm when I got here. It’s broad daylight. Everything will be fine. So the two of them headed home on my mother’s bike. From the back seat, my mother gave my father a pinch and said: What’s wrong with you? If you go out there, your folks will be worried sick, and you’re taking your life in your own hands. My father said: No, I just want to play a game of chess. My mother said: Take a look around. There isn’t a single person on the streets. Who do you think is going to play with you? Look, why don’t you teach me? Teach me, and we’ll play together. My father said: Teach you? To play chess, you need inspiration. It can’t be taught. Laughing, my mother said: You fool, I was just teasing you. But you shouldn’t look down on other people. Even if I had that kind of talent, I’d rather just talk to you. Just then, beneath a tree by the roadside, they saw two old men playing chess. My father ground his heel into the earth, stopping the bicycle. He said: Let me have a look. My mother reached out but didn’t catch him in time. She said: But what about me? Without looking back, my father said: Give me a minute. Just when my father squatted down in the shade of the tree, a bullet zoomed by, grazing my mother’s foot and snapping the bicycle chain.

In spite of that incident, one month later, my father and mother got married.

When the factory laid him off, my father found himself without a job, without a wife, and penniless. We still lived in the same old house, and our longtime neighbors helped out here and there, so we managed to skirt around disaster. My teacher, realizing I wasn’t stupid, pitched in and helped me buy schoolbooks, thanks to which I was able to finish middle school. “Sprout, take this schoolbook, it’s a present from the school.” So she often said to me, but I always knew she had bought the book herself. My father was drinking more heavily, not just at dinner anymore, and he drank whatever was cheapest. He smoked cigarette butts he found on the ground, or sometimes when he was playing chess his opponent would pass him a cigarette, and he would smoke that. His clothes were tattered, but he patched the holes and put them right back on. The neighbors gave him hand-me-downs, and he wore them too, not caring if they were loose or tight. When I went on vacation in the summer and the winter, I let my father wear my school uniform. I was very cautious when I wore the uniform, and there were no patches on it. My father would take the uniform, look it over carefully, and put it on. It fit just right, but there was a mismatch between the uniform and the person wearing it. He cut an eccentric figure. Let’s go, my father would say, and don’t forget the stool.

Before my mother left, I would go out with my father to play chess. He led and I followed, carrying the little wooden stool on my back. My mother would say: Son, what about your schoolwork? You’re going to be the death of me. I would say: Mom, I’m sitting around with nothing to do, my homework is already finished. I’m just going to watch the adults play chess, no big deal. And you don’t look like you’re going to die anytime soon. Then I would pick the stool back up and follow along behind my father. My father never invited me, but he never turned me away, either. If I wanted to go with him, he let me, but he didn’t wait for me. He would pick up the stool and put it on the back seat of the bike and ride off on his own. I had been watching long enough that I understood the basics. The first thing I grasped was how to move the chariot, horse, and cannon, and gradually I came to understand what it meant to “shackle” a piece. When I saw somebody make a wrong move, I’d say: Uncle, think again, you’re going to lose your horse. And then he’d lose the horse. But although I’d been watching for two years, I still couldn’t understand my father’s tactics. I watched him play beneath the tree, at the bicycle repair stand, at the watermelon stand, and in the park, and most of the time he won, but sometimes he lost. When he lost, it was always at the end of a string of wins, usually the very last match. Finally, one day, I thought I understood a bit more. On the way home, it started to snow, and I hugged the stool to my chest, shoulders resting against my father’s back. A chill wind whipped past his face, but his body protected me from the cold. I said: Dad, in the last game, you made a mistake defending the general with the advisor. My father said nothing. Looking straight ahead, he pressed on through the snowstorm, pedaling hard. I went on: You got your directions mixed up. You should have used the advisor on the right, not the one on the left. We got home, locked up the bike and went inside. My mother still wasn’t home, and it seemed to be even colder inside than outside. My father took off his jacket, pulled the chess set from the drawer, arranged it on top of the kang, and said: We’re going to play three games, quick ones. If you take too long to think, I won’t play. Excited, I immediately climbed up onto the kang and started laying out the red pieces. But my father waved me away and said: No, you’re going to play black. Everybody knows red goes first. So I turned the board around and laid out the black pieces, and the game began. I suffered three devastating losses in a row. None of the matches lasted longer than fifteen minutes, and deep inside, I understood that my father saw through me completely. Everything that looked like an opening was a trap. It was as if there were a knife-wielding assassin hiding beneath each piece, and if I let my guard down, he’d slit my throat. When the three games were finished, I felt like I’d been chewed up and spit out, and I understood that watching and playing were two different things. When I watched, I understood, but when I sat down to play, suddenly I was confused. There were thirty-two pieces, eighteen lines, and two palaces on the board, and I could never manage to keep all of them in mind at once. When we were done playing, my father went to light the stove, and soon the kang grew warm. My father returned, sat down cross-legged on the kang, and said: At this point, none of the guys on the street could beat you. But still, you’re a rank amateur. You’re the worst of the worst. Today, I’m going to teach you how to use the advisor. Most players focus on the horse, the chariot, and the cannon, not understanding that the advisor and the elephant are key. One on the left and one on the right, pick them up and put them down. It looks simple, but the strategies are constantly shifting. It’s like this. When you leave your house, there’s a big difference between going left and going right. Let’s say if you go left, you walk straight into the river. But if you go right, you run into an old friend who invites you out for a drink. Simply put, that’s how the game changes based on the decisions you make. Today I’m going to teach you how to use the advisor in a dozen or so common openings. As he spoke, he moved the pieces around, delivering an hour-long lecture on the advisor. At that point, my mother still wasn’t home, and he started telling me about the elephant. From there, the talk spun out into wild digressions, and my father started in on how the elephant could cross the river in Korean chess, then launched into an explanation of Chinese and Korean history and the roles of the different ministers in the imperial court. From there, he went on to Japanese chess, or shogi, and its similarities with international chess: apparently, when a soldier reached the other side in Japanese chess, it could be promoted to king, a development that had occurred in the historical context of the bakufu era. He talked and talked until it was dark, and my concentration began to waver. I knew that my mother knew nothing about any of this. I said: Dad, how do you know all this stuff? My father said: I picked it up little by little. I asked: Then why did you get the advisors mixed up today? My father thought for a moment, then said: There are times when winning is easy. There are all kinds of people out there, and you never really know who you’re up against. If you want to play for your entire life, you’ll always find someone to play with you. So there are times when your opponent is stronger than you expected. Just then, the key rattled in the lock, and my father said: Damn. I forgot to make dinner. Then my mother came in, even her eyebrows dusted with snow, and caught sight of the two of us sitting on the kang. She stared at us for a long time without even bothering to brush off the snow, or take off her gloves.

Thinking back on it now, it was a long, long night.

From then on, whenever we went out, we took two stools. When I was eleven, a man came from Xinmin to play chess with my father. He had made a two-hour journey on a long-distance bus just to play a game with my father beneath the tree. “Sprout, I heard in Xinmin that you’re a chess master, so I came to get some hints from you.” The man wore glasses and looked as if he couldn’t be a day over thirty. If he’d claimed to be a student, nobody would have doubted it. He wore a white t-shirt, the collar stained yellow with sweat, and he was continually wiping his sweat away with a handkerchief. Four-Eyes wasn’t the first, and as I remember it, people came from all around to play with my father. Some were tall, others short. Some had white hair, others black. One guy showed up in a Western suit and dress shoes, carrying a container of pesticide with these words written on it: It’s me or the cockroaches. You never knew who was going to show up. Some went looking for him at the chess table, and others came directly to our home. When a visitor showed up at our home, my father would crack the door open and say: Thanks for coming. Let’s talk outside. Then he’d change clothes and go out. My father generally played sets of three matches. He would invariably win two and lose the other, always the very last. Afterward, some would rise to their feet and say: I see. It’ll be thirty years before I can compete with you. Then they’d shake my father’s hand and leave. Some would say: If I hadn’t made a wrong move on that one match, I could’ve beaten you. Let’s have another go. My father would wave his hand and say: Three matches, no more. Thanks for coming. That’s all for today. No, his opponent would say, let’s make a bet. Among those who took themselves seriously as chess players, whether ranked or not, there were always some who were willing to bet on the game. The stakes they offered ranged from cigarettes to liquor to whatever cash they had brought along, to houses, gold, and money on deposit at the bank. For some, a handshake was enough, while others asked that a witness be brought along to attest to the terms. My father would say: Friend, you’ve come a long way today, and I appreciate that, but I don’t make bets. If we did that, we wouldn’t be able to play together next time. As far as I’m concerned, you won that set of three games just now. You can go and tell everyone you beat Sprout. Then my father would get up and leave. Some people would refuse to leave after the game, and would beg to become my father’s pupils. Some would bring him a fish the next day, but my father wouldn’t take it. I’m not too bad at chess, he would say, but I’m not a teacher. If you’ve taken a liking to me, we can be friends. But as far as me teaching you, forget it.

That day, Four-Eyes waited around for my father, wiping his sweat with the handkerchief, saying he wanted to play. A crowd began to gather, and somebody said: So there’s another one here looking for Sprout? Everybody said, yeah, he’s here from Xinmin, he wants to play chess. My father sat on the wooden stool, the leaves rustling noisily in the tree, pointed at his head, and said: I’m old, and my mind is shot from all the drinking. I don’t play anymore. My father was forty years old then, and he was wearing my school uniform. His beard was unruly, and he was thinner. Among the employees who were laid off from the factory at the same time, some had made successes of themselves in business, while my father passed the time drinking cheap liquor and picking up cigarette butts off the ground. He spoke much less than before, and spent each day sitting idly at the chess table. As he himself admitted, he had been sitting on the little wooden stool for half a year, silently watching, not playing a single game. Loosening a button, Four-Eyes said, you don’t play anymore? I heard you were still playing half a year ago. My father said: That’s right, I just quit. Four-Eyes said: I left my students, took a two-hour bus ride, and walked a long way to get here. I stopped to ask the way I don’t know how many times. And now you say you won’t play. My father said: That’s right. My mind is shot. There isn’t any point in playing with me. Still wiping his sweat with the handkerchief, Four-Eyes glanced around at the crowd of onlookers, chuckled, and said: I wouldn’t have come here if there was anyone to play with in Xinmin. My father thought for a moment, pointed at me, and said: Friend, if you think you’ve wasted your time coming here, why don’t you play with him? Four-Eyes gave me a look, gave the mole between my eyebrows a look, and said: This is your son? My father said: Yes. Four-Eyes blinked behind his glasses, and said: What are you trying to say? My father said: I taught him how to play. You can take a look at his strategy. That’s all I’m trying to say. Or you can just go home. I’m not playing. Pointing again at his head, he said: My mind is no good anymore. Anybody can beat me. Four-Eyes gave me another look, reached out and stroked my head. He said: How old are you? I said: Eleven. He said: Your father taught you to play chess? I said: He taught me once. He taught me how to use the advisor. The crowd erupted in laughter. Four-Eyes laughed too and said: Okay, I’ll give up one of my horses. I said: No, no handicaps, that’s the only way to know who really won. The crowd laughed again, thoroughly entertained. Four-Eyes squatted down, and I pulled over the stool and started arranging the black pieces. We argued back and forth for ages, but it was true that I was younger, so in the end I sat down on the black side and went first. In the endgame, my chariot led two soldiers. He was down a horse and an elephant, and in addition to one of each of those, only a horse, a cannon, and a lone soldier remained on the red side. I won when my chariot cornered the advisor. Four-Eyes stood up, pulled a pen from his pocket and put it in my hand, saying: Take this, and buy yourself some ink. That way you can write things down. My father said: Take back the pen, he’s already got one. We play for the sake of playing. Four-Eyes gave my father a look, put the pen back in his pocket, and left.

On the way home, sitting on the rear seat of the bicycle, I thought about the pen. I asked: Dad, you really don’t play anymore? My father said: No, what I said was true. He went on: Your game is too soft. Go for a fast victory. I mean, your way works too. But anyway, don’t play chess at school. Keep your studies separate. I said: No problem. It’s just a game. My father said nothing. He just kept pedaling the bike.

Now let me tell you what happened that day.

I was fifteen then. I had grown a nice patch of pubic hair, and there was a girl at school that I liked, a tomboy with short hair and a prominent rear end. When she smiled, it was like she had a sunbeam clenched between her teeth. I got into fights sometimes. I hit and got hit back, but I made sure I was always the one who threw the final punch. To me, it was a matter of principle. My father hadn’t been to a parent-teacher conference for three years, and when I was in my first year of high school, my middle school teacher went in his place. She was a bit older than before, but little else had changed. She was still the same person, and I knew I would never be able to repay her kindness, although I also knew that she wasn’t expecting anything from me. That winter, my father fell asleep twice in the street, and I scoured the entire city to find him. When at last I did, he couldn’t even bend his arms and legs, and his beard was covered in frost. From then on, I hung a sign around my father’s neck with our address written on it, because I couldn’t stop him from going to sit at the chess table. I just hoped that if he got lost, a Good Samaritan would show him the way home. He still wore my school uniform, which he kept clean and sparkling white, but the navy blue stripes had faded to sky-blue. He persisted in wearing it, and each time he put it on, he stood before the mirror and awkwardly adjusted the collar, just like he had the first time.

Nobody knew I played chess, not even my middle school teacher. I was fifteen, and people treated me like an adult. When the chess players in town talked about “Sprout,” they were talking about me. Hardly anyone mentioned my father, now that he had gone soft in the head.

One Saturday at noon, when all my classmates were at the teacher’s house for a study session, math in the morning and English in the afternoon, I grabbed the stool and prepared to go out. I asked my father if he was going or not, and my father said, no. He had started to mumble, and his words were difficult to make out. The reason he wasn’t going was that he was still in bed, lying beneath the covers, drunk. It was a typical northern July, with violent, rainy nights and clear mornings. The scorching heat had dried the rain, but the air was still damp, and the people on the streets looked as though they had been freshly laundered, braving the pounding sun in their short sleeves. A crowd of people surrounded the little shop downstairs. The owner of the shop was a chess enthusiast, and there was always a big rubber chess board in front of the shop, where anybody who wanted to could sit down and play. The owner would stand off to one side, polishing his bicycle, glancing over when he had a free moment and tossing in a few words of advice. Eventually the owner died. He jumped off a tall bridge into the deepest river in the city. Some said he’d been diagnosed with lung cancer, and others said it was something else, but anyway that was many years later. The owner and I were friendly, and when there was no else around, I would sit down and play with him for a while. I took a handicap, giving up a horse and a cannon. He was always excited to play with me, and would send me home with a bag of baijiu for my father. That day, I was planning to attend a chess game on the other side of the city. The players there were good. They’d give me a run for my money. When I saw the crowd surrounding the chess table downstairs, I poked my head in to take a look. The owner sat on one side, smoking a cigarette, his brow furrowed, a package of Baisha cigarettes and a bottle of Laolongkou liquor lying beside the board. Obviously, they were betting. On the other side sat a bald monk with no legs. He was wearing a crude yellow robe, a black cotton bag slung across his chest, and – because he had no legs – he wasn’t wearing the usual monk’s shoes. Two walking sticks and a copper alms bowl lay on the ground, the alms bowl filled with water. His legs weren’t completely missing, but from the knee down there was nothing, and his pants were tied shut at the knees with cords, as if he were afraid his legs might fall off.

The owner tossed his cigarette butt on the ground and spat. Then he said: Okay, they’re yours. The monk set the piece in his hand down on the board and packed the liquor and cigarettes in his bag. He said: Want to play again? The owner said: No more. I can’t leave the shop. Someone will steal something. Then he stood and turned, and seeing me standing there, grabbed me and said: Sprout, where are you going? I was startled, and my arm stung from his grip. Play a game with this gentleman here. Don’t worry about the wager, I’ll take care of that. So saying, he pushed me into the chair. I took a look at the state the game had been in when the two of them left off, and I began to get nervous. I said: Uncle, I’ll play chess if you want, but I don’t make bets. The monk looked over at me, picked up the copper bowl, and took a drink. He kept his eyes fixed on me the entire time, and I noticed he hadn’t blinked. The owner said: I didn’t bet anything of yours. All this stuff is mine. So that doesn’t break your rules. Help your uncle out, okay? He turned, went into the shop, and came back with another package of Baisha cigarettes and another bottle of Laolongkou liquor, which he placed to the side of the board. The monk put down the bowl and said: We can play another round then. No matter who sits down to play with me, I won’t run away. But I want to raise the stakes. The owner said: What do you mean? The monk said: I want Dahuitang cigarettes and Xifeng liquor. The owner said: Fine. He went back into the shop, exchanged the cigarettes and liquor, and laid the new bounty by the side of the board. The crowd was growing thicker, and even the old lady who watched the bicycles had locked up the lot and was watching from the middle of the crowd. I said: Uncle, if I lose this stuff for you, I won’t be able to pay you back. The owner said: What are you talking about? Today, everything in this store is yours. Just play your best. The monk said: Little boy, think hard before you sit down at this table. I’m not going to take it easy on you just because you’re a kid. Feeling my chest begin to grow warm, I said: Okay. Let’s play.

We played from noon to sunset, and I glimpsed a sliver of that sunset between the tall buildings. There was something unusual about the light it cast. I lost three games in a row, all because I made careless mistakes in the endgame, failing to defend the pieces I should have defended. I was in too much of a hurry to deal a fatal blow to my opponent, and in the end, I lost by a hair’s breadth. The monk could no longer fit the pile of cigarettes and liquor into his bag, so he moved it to where his legs would have been. After the closing move of the final game, I broke out into tears. I sobbed so mightily that the sound burst through the crowd and went floating through the streets. I heard every noise of the city. The more I cried, the lonelier I felt. I didn’t know a soul in the entire world, and the world didn’t know me. I had been dropped here all alone, surrounded by monsters.

When the monk saw me crying, he looked at me for a while, and then asked: Did your dad used to be the manager at a warehouse? I stopped crying, and said: Yes. The monk said: And he has a single black hair between his eyebrows. I said: Yes. The monk said: Bring your dad here. Ten years ago, he promised to play a game with me. And I thought, that’s right, bring my dad here, bring back my father, bring back the man who knew how to play chess. I immediately stood, pushed past the onlookers, and caught sight of my father standing near the back of the crowd. He was wearing my school uniform, and the sign with his address written on it hung around his neck. He stared at me, motionless, his eyes clouded over like mud. I burst out in tears again, and cried: Dad! My father walked over, steady on his legs, sat down, and said to the monk: I was wrong to shoot my mouth off all those years ago at the prison gates. And today you were wrong to pick on my son. Isn’t that right? The monk said: I didn’t come here to play him. He just showed up. I didn’t force him. My father said: One game would have been enough. Don’t you think three is going overboard? The monk said: No. And anyway, we were just playing. As he spoke, he pulled out the pile of loot beneath his body, and he pulled out everything inside the cotton bag, saying to the owner: Take all this back. That game just now didn’t count. The owner said: The whole neighborhood was watching. You won fair and square. If you don’t accept that, I’ll take it as an insult. I won’t let you go. The monk said: I’ve got no legs. Where do you think I’m going? All I can do is crawl. Then he rose to his feet, supporting himself with his walking sticks. Even in a walking position, he remained low to the ground, and the cords on his trouser legs dragged. One by one, he hauled each article of loot back inside the store. Then he said to my father: Just now, your son and I were playing a kid’s game. Now it’s time for the adults to play an adult game. My father pointed at himself: I won’t tell you everything that’s happened in these ten years, but I haven’t played chess for a long time. My mind is shot. Smiling, the monk said: The last ten years haven’t been so easy on me, either. But good things have happened, too. I don’t have to worry about that bum leg anymore. Sitting up straight in his chair, my father said: And you’ve gotten better at chess. The monk said: A little. Want to play? Like I said, I want to play an adult game. My father said: What kind of game? The monk said: Let’s make a bet. My father said: In all the years I’ve played chess, I’ve never made a single bet. The monk said: Maybe the stakes weren’t attractive enough. Then he pulled a small cloth bag from the folds of his robe, opened the bag, and pulled out a golden crucifix. There was a man carved into the crucifix, arms spread wide, pinned to the cross with nails, wearing a crown of thorns, waist encircled by a piece of cloth. The thing was small, but the man, his arms, the cloth, all seemed somehow alive. The monk said: I got this in Henan. And today I’m betting it on this game. Suddenly, the crowd was deathly quiet, every eye fixed on the object in the monk’s hand. The thing seemed to have a mysterious power. You looked once, and you had to look again. My dad looked at the thing in the monk’s hand, and said: You won that? The monk said: I stole it from a temple. My dad said: They have things like that in temples? The monk said: It’s an antique, brought here centuries ago from overseas. I looked it up. It came from a palace in a foreign country. If you beat me, it’s yours. You can tell everyone I stole it for you. My dad said: And if I lose? The monk raised his head, looked at me, and said: You’re the one who taught your son to play chess? My father said: Yes. The monk said: I’ve been playing chess and betting on chess for my entire life. I don’t have a family. If you lose, your son has to call me Dad. He has to say it every time he sees me. A stir went through the crowd, but nobody said anything. My father lifted his head and looked at me. I laid a hand on his shoulder. It had been a long time since I’d laid a hand on him that way, looking to him for support. I said: Dad, you should play. My dad said: If your mother was here, what do you think she would say? I said: She’d tell you to play. My father smiled, turned to the monk, and said: Okay then. I’ll play one more game.

They borrowed a coin from the shop owner and tossed it. My father played as black, the monk red. Since red went first, then black would win in case of a draw. The monk opened with Cannon Leads the Horse, once again, and my father played Balanced Horses. At last the sun set, and the streetlights flickered on. Nobody left, and many of the passersby stopped to watch. They stood on tiptoes, watching from the outer rings of the crowd, parked bicycles covering half the street. My father and the monk played a quick game, pausing to think only briefly before picking up and moving the pieces. It was as if they’d been playing together for decades. By midgame, I had seen enough to know that I was far from a great player. I knew so little about chess, so little about everything. By the endgame, I had completely lost track of what was going on. The two men seemed to have grown thinner, and their clothes were soaked with sweat. Beads of perspiration rolled down the monk’s shaven scalp. My father held the sign around his neck with one hand, gripping the chess piece with the other. The veins in his hands were the same blue as the game board. At last the climax was approaching. Both men had a single soldier stationed on the opposite side of the board. A soldier could only move one space, and wasn’t permitted to retreat. Turn by turn, the red and black soldier plodded into the heart of enemy territory. There were no more ministers or advisors, and only a single general sat forlornly in the center of each palace, watching helplessly as the enemy advanced. Then I realized that it was going to be a draw.

My father was going to win.

When my father’s black soldier moved to the space above the red general, the monk smiled, but did not admit defeat. He just moved his soldier another step forward. When my father unexpectedly moved his soldier one space to the right, the monk was taken aback, and he picked up his general and devoured the black soldier. My father’s general advanced, and the monk moved in with his soldier. Then my father’s general retreated, and the monk closed in again. My father was trapped. None of his pieces could make a move. He lost.

My father stood up, swayed a little on his feet, and said to me: I lost. I looked at my father. There was a light in his eyes that I had never seen there before. My father said: Say it. I looked at the monk, and the monk looked at me, and I said: Dad. The monk said: Son. Then he reached out and grabbed the crucifix, and said: Take this. It was nice meeting you today. Tears streamed down his face, leaving black trails in the grime. I said: No, I can’t, you keep it. The monk’s hand paused in midair. He turned and looked at my father, and my father said: I’m taking my son’s side. Keep the crucifix. It’s beautiful. When you’re alone, you can take it out and admire it. The man on it will keep you company. The monk returned the crucifix to the folds of his robe, propped himself up on the walking sticks, and said: Now I understand. You have so much more than me, in chess, and in everything else. If we’re both still around ten years from now, I’ll come find you, and we’ll play another game for old times’ sake. Then he gave me another look, used his hand to wipe the tears away, and hobbled off, his body suspended on the walking sticks.

That was ten years ago. Now I work as a history teacher, and outside the classroom I do play chess, but I’m busy at work, and I don’t play as much as I used to. The more I play, the more my game seems to go downhill. I’ve turned into an average player. My father passed away two years ago. I buried him on the south side of the city, not far from the river. I took the chess set that he taught me with on that snowy night all those years ago, laid it beside the funerary urn, and buried it with him.

That was the last time I ever saw the monk with no legs. But I believe we’ll meet again, one day.

Translated by Michael Day

Miao Wei

苗炜

Born in 1968, Miao Wei was an influential reporter and columnist at Sanlian Life Weekly, one of China’s more influential cultural magazines, before going on to start a magazine of his own, Wissen. After publishing Touring this Mortal Coil, a collection of his travel columns for Sanlian, he turned to writing fiction. His wryly humorous short stories are populated by cynical, disaffected members of China’s rising middle class. Miao Wei’s most recent book was We Will Have Bread, a pair of novellas with a shared thematic connection to food.

Cops and Aliens

警察与外星人

Illustration by Wang Yan

They met in the library’s journal reading room, where the lights stayed on all day so you didn’t know how dark or cloudy it might be outside. Zhao Xiaochen was looking through the Law and Order Journal anthology for 1997 in search of an article entitled “The Death of Lu Xianzhou”. Mr. Ding was ahead of him in line for the photocopier, clutching a bundle of back issues from The Journal of UFO Research with the pages marked with paper tabs. After ten minutes of fiddling about he turned to face Zhao Xiaochen. “Sorry, sorry about this.”

“You’re into UFOs?” asked Zhao.

Mr. Ding nodded. “Curious, just curious.” Mr. Ding was wearing a neat and tidy ensemble of a V-neck sweater with a blue jacket, khaki trousers and rubber-soled shoes; he looked to be about forty. Zhao Xiaochen was wearing jeans and a hoodie.

“I saw this film recently,” said Zhao. “District 9. It was about aliens and UFOs. Have you seen it?”

“No, no I haven’t.” Mr. Ding seemed to have a habit of repeating himself. He looked at Zhao, waiting for him to continue.

“The aliens in the film arrive on earth, in a UFO, but the UFO’s damaged so they can’t go home again. So they settle down in Johannesburg, and they get segregated from the locals.”

“Interesting, interesting.” Mr. Ding’s eyes gleamed.

“Well, I could bring you the DVD next Saturday. Will you be here next Saturday?”

“I will, I will,” said Mr. Ding.

Zhao Xiaochen was a programmer at a big company out in Haidian. He came to the library every Saturday to take out a couple of books, but didn’t always read them once he was home. He was more into movies. Every weekend he’d spend the whole of Saturday night watching four or five films in a row, then doze at home on Sunday. Normally he had to get up at six o’clock sharp to catch the bus to work. One morning, when he’d got off the bus at Renmin University, he saw Robert De Niro coming towards him through the throng. He looked just like he did in the movies, right down to the mole on his face. He stopped in front of Zhao and said: “We’re planning to rob the China Construction bank at Zhichunli. We’re one man short. Are you in?” Zhao gawped. “I’ll give you five minutes to think about it,” continued Robert De Niro, before he disappeared into the crowd.

Zhao thought about it for nearly three minutes, then raced after him. When he reached the KFC opposite Renmin University he saw Robert De Niro on the other side of the window, tucking into a chicken leg with a cup of iced tea in front of him. Zhao banged on the glass. “Robert,” he yelled, “I’m in!”

Zhao Xiaochen must have owned a thousand DVDs, arranged on the shelves of his home according to genre. His favourite part of the collection was the crime section, which comprised a hundred or so movies – the majority of which were heist movies. His all-time favourite movie was Heat, starring Robert De Niro, which he’d watched more times than he could remember. District 9 was in the science fiction section, next to a new, unopened copy of Star Trek. Zhao lived in a two-room flat that was extremely neat and tidy – not like the squalor of most bachelors. He was something of a compulsive clean freak: most of his belongings were stored in boxes from Ikea; his shirts, socks and underwear were carefully arranged in his wardrobe; and there was a backpack on the shoe rack by the door containing a change of clothes, toiletries and medication, ready to go whenever he might need to leave on a business trip. Zhao Xiaochen did not very often need to leave on a business trip, but the backpack was always ready and he reorganized it frequently. He’d seen a Japanese movie in which a general said that a man ought to keep his surroundings fresh and minimalistic, and his words had made a deep impression on Zhao. He didn’t own much kitchenware – just three or four plates, a couple of bowls, a few pairs of chopsticks and two sets of cutlery. Just one bowl and one set of chopsticks would have been enough for his daily culinary needs, but he couldn’t bring himself to take this final step of asceticism, just in case, some day, he might invite a girl home and require a set of tableware for her. Zhao’s diet was very simple: noodles or frozen dumplings, and scrambled egg – his favourite. Scrambled egg with tomato, scrambled egg with greens, scrambled egg with chilli. The contents of his fridge typically consisted of eggs, beef paste, and chilli sauce.

They met again at the library the following Saturday. Mr. Ding was taking out a copy of Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees; Zhao was borrowing Crime Lab: A Guide for Nonscientists. Mr. Ding explained the book he was holding to Zhao: “This was written by a professor at Cambridge University – a cosmologist, and a member of the British Royal Society. He believes that the universe may contain intelligent life – which is to say, he believes in the existence of aliens.”

Zhao grunted. He had something of an interest in the universe too. In the aftermath of previous break-ups, he had often read books on astronomy. He knew there was a Mount Olympus on Mars, and that it was over 25,000 metres high. He knew that the earth, in comparison with the sun, was insignificant, and that the sun, in comparison with the star Sirius, was tiny, and that Sirius, in comparison with Arcturus, was not all that big, and that the universe was riddled with stars, and so Earth was inconsequential, man was even less consequential, and the emotional entanglements of one man were hence of no consequence whatsoever. Thus had Zhao applied his understanding of astronomy to assuage his heartbreak. 

But right now he had no interest in discussing astronomy with Mr. Ding. He was interested only in Lu Xianzhou. Since meeting Robert De Niro at the Remin University bus stop, he had been searching online for various permutations of the words “Zhichunli”, “Zhichunlu” and “robbery”, and he had discovered that in 1996 there had been a robber in Beijing named Lu Xianzhou. Lu had robbed a security van, making off with over a million in cash. He spent his nights in the Heaven and Earth nightclub and was ultimately shot in the Liangmahe Tower underground carpark. Formerly a soldier, he had taken to bank robbery after escaping from prison, and had a girlfriend as an accomplice who was eventually sentenced to seven years in jail. She must have been released by now. If the Lu Xianzhou story were to be made into a film, Zhao thought, it could turn out to be as good a movie as Heat. This hypothetical movie was playing on a loop in his mind as he deliberated over whether Hu Jun or Jiang Wen would take the starring role.

Mr. Ding started singing the praises of District 9 as soon as he saw Zhao in the library the following Saturday. “There are in fact ancient Chinese texts containing references to extra-terrestrial life. The aliens in this movie are exactly like the legendary Chiyou from Tales of the Marvellous: a human body with a cow’s hooves, four eyes, six arms, hair sticking sharply out over his ears, and horns on his head.” Zhao wasn’t remotely interested in classical literature, but listened carefully as Mr. Ding rambled on. The existence of aliens was certain, according to Mr. Ding – and what was more, they had been to Earth on more than one occasion. Mr. Ding was usually quite circumspect in his speech, but there was no stopping him once he got onto aliens. He tore a sheet from his notebook and wrote a web address on it for Zhao Xiaochen. “This is our forum – dedicated to the discussion of extra-terrestrials. You should take a look.” Zhao was finding it hard to follow him; astronomy and aliens were not at all the same thing.

Zhao and Mr. Ding continued to bump into each other every Saturday in the library. Discovering that Zhao was not terribly interested in aliens, Mr. Ding eventually dropped the topic and began to offer him computer tips instead: how to install an operating system, how to use a router, how to use the eDonkey file-sharing network, what different kinds of Wi-Fi routers there were, and so on. The two of them exchanged MSN and QQ contact details, but they rarely spoke online. Mr. Ding had previously been a worker in a Beijing factory, but he had been hanging around at home ever since the company bought out his contract, keeping his eye on the stock market from Monday though Friday because that was supposedly how he was making his living. Zhao remained entirely unconvinced that the stock market was capable of keeping Mr. Ding clothed and fed – but he knew that everyone had their own means of keeping afloat, which they were not obliged to share with anyone else.

One Saturday in the journals room, Mr. Ding came over when Zhao finished reading his magazine and suggested they go get something to eat together. There was a noodle place on the corner outside the library; they sat down and ordered two bowls of noodles with some cold dishes of chopped cucumber and wood-ear fungus on the side.

“Shall we get some beer?” asked Mr. Ding.

“Okay,” Zhao replied.

The waiter brought over two bottles and two paper cups. Mr. Ding insisted on pouring Zhao’s drink out for him. Zhao could tell he had something to say. Before the noodles had even arrived, Zhao finished his first cup of beer and bluntly asked Mr. Ding what was on his mind.

“Oh, nothing, nothing.” Mr. Ding’s circumspect manner had returned. He put down his chopsticks and rubbed his hands on his trousers. Zhao picked up the bottle and topped up Mr. Ding’s beer, waiting for him to speak.

Mr. Ding spoke: “Zhao Xiaochen, do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Have you had a girlfriend before?”

Zhao’s face reddened faintly. “When I was at university, I did.”

Mr. Ding took another gulp of beer. “I’d like to set you up with one. My niece.”

Zhao said nothing. He was trying to decide how he could politely decline. He and Mr. Ding didn’t know each other especially well; they were friends, of a sort, but not really – but he certainly didn’t see Mr. Ding as some kind of venerable uncle. While he tried to think of an excuse that would allow Mr. Ding to preserve his dignity, Mr. Ding continued: “This niece of mine, she’s twenty-four, a junior college graduate – not especially well-qualified, academically, but she has a good job. She’s a bank clerk.”

Zhao nodded his head as soon as he heard the word “bank”.

“She works at the bank, but she’s not one of the ones who dirty their fingers with the actual money all day – she works with their big clients, mostly dealing with their accounts, paying out salaries, that sort of thing.”

Zhao Xiaochen had not the slightest interest in being set up with anyone, but his interest in banks was considerable. If he had the chance, he had always thought, he’d quite like to rob a bank – and the opportunity to learn about a bank’s internal facilities in advance would improve his chances of success when the big day came. And here was Mr. Ding offering him his niece, gift-wrapped – it was a wondrous opportunity.

The noodles had arrived. Zhao leaned close into his bowl as he ate so that Mr. Ding couldn’t see his expression. Mr. Ding was still chattering away: “She’s very sincere, this niece of mine, not very chatty – not too short, one metre sixty-eight – no harm in meeting her at least.”

Zhao was already on board, but he still hadn’t figured out how to reply. He continued to busy himself with his noodles. On seeing this, Mr. Ding took a slurp from his own bowl. “The soup is good.”

Before the meal was over, Zhao had agreed to meet Mr. Ding’s niece. The date would be the following Saturday: Mr. Ding would come to the library as usual, and would act as an intermediary for the exchange of contact details so that they could settle on a specific time and place between them. Zhao Xiaochen had not the slightest idea where they ought to go on this date. A meal would be boring; a teahouse or café would do, but he had no idea which teahouses or cafés were supposed to be good.

But these were not major problems. When the time came, he succeeded in meeting Mr. Ding’s niece. Her name was Wang Xuehong. She was indeed one metre sixty-eight, though perhaps a little overweight – not that she was fat, just slightly thickset, and a little sluggish in her movements. Zhao felt relieved as soon as he saw her. It could have been problematic if Mr. Ding’s niece had proven to be overly attractive: he would be confounded if he were to show up at the bank with an AK-47 only to be faced with some ravishing beauty. But he would have no reservations about machine-gunning down a girl like Wang Xuehong.

They met at a branch of U.B.C. Coffee. There was an occasional shout from the people gambling upstairs, but it was relatively quiet downstairs. Zhao Xiaochen and Wang Xuehong sat down opposite one another and ordered a pot of fruit tea.

“Where do you work? I mean, where’s the bank where you work?” asked Zhao.

“Over in Yayuncun.”

“Has there ever been a robbery? Aren’t you afraid of someone robbing the bank?”

“Who’d rob a bank these days? There’s only a few million stored in cash at any one time – what would be the point? You couldn’t even buy a house. Ten years ago a million might have set you up comfortably for life, but nowadays, by the time you’ve split that with your accomplices, you basically end up with nothing. No one would rob a bank even if you invited them to – anyone who really means business would go for a treasury. I heard the People’s Bank of China treasury at Fuxingmen is just by the subway – you could take a bomb and blow it right open. But even though nobody’s robbing banks any more, we still have to do all these drills – pretending there’s a hostage situation, pretending there’s a bomb – our boss says we must remain vigilant. It was quite good fun at first. Someone plays a customer who refuses to let go of their purse and won’t leave, someone else pretends to faint – but it’s drill after drill, month after month, and it stops being so fun.”

Wang suddenly became self-conscious of how much she had been talking, and came to an abrupt halt. Fascinated, Zhao urged her to continue: “So what kind of thing do you practise in these drills? If I were to come into the bank, without a gun, and hand you a piece of paper that said ‘Give me five hundred grand, I’ve got a gun’, what would you do?”

“Well of course we’ve done drills for that. First, I’d try to calm you down, and then I’d secretly alert one of my workmates – like, I might call out the name of some colleague who’s already retired. In any case, you wouldn’t realise. They’d immediately know what was happening and call the security guards from outside, the lobby managers would evacuate the other customers and then call the police. We all have alarms by our seats that alert the local station immediately, but we don’t usually touch them, because once you do that you’ll have the troops showing up, you’ll have roadblocks, all of that – too much kerfuffle. If you come to rob the bank and I don’t hand you the money, you would just be charged for an attempted robbery – but if I pass you a hundred thousand grand then you’re toast as soon as you touch the money. Doesn’t matter if you’re caught outside the bank or if you make it as far as the beaches of Hainan before they catch up with you, you’ll still be facing ten or so years inside. Most of the people who try to rob a bank nowadays are just sick in the head. Giving them the money would actually be hurting them – I’d have to try and stall them until the police are ready outside to contain them.”

“That’s very kind of you. But aren’t you afraid of the gun? What if there really is a gun?”

“I’m not afraid of guns. The glass is bulletproof – a pistol couldn’t break it. A sledgehammer would be different – come in with a sledgehammer and give it a good few whacks, and it would crack.”

Zhao Xiaochen nodded, making a mental note: gun, bad; sledgehammer, good.

That afternoon at U.B.C. Coffee the two of them went through all the ins and outs of a bank robbery. Zhao figured out the way each branch received its money, the delivery procedure, and the weaponry with which the security vans were equipped. He learned how to use the secure door at the bank counter, and that every branch had several security cameras keeping staff and customers under constant surveillance. The customers could leave once they’d taken their money, but the staff could only escape the cameras’ gazes in the toilet or the changing room. They always used a hand to block the view when they were typing a password – and once they’d picked up this habit they did the same thing even when they were logging into their email or MSN at home. When working in a bank it was common to distrust your colleagues, to suspect each of them of being the source of potential error or security risk. The greatest chance of success, Wang Xuehong eventually concluded, was to rob an ATM. When an ATM was being serviced, in particular, there was usually only a guard, and most of the guards were rural types with only minimal training. The bank had too many branches, and couldn’t afford to recruit retired military personnel or practised fighters. There were two types of ATM – some opened to the front, some to the back – and there could be as much as two hundred thousand in cash inside. Beijing had recently seen a case of an ATM technician who had been stealing the card details from inside the machines. “You’d have to be someone who understands computers to pull that off,” said Wang Xuehong as she drained her glass of tea. “Isn’t  your work in computers? Don’t you know how to hack into online accounts?”

“There’s no fun in stealing people’s account details,” replied Zhao. “Only in robbing an actual bank, with real weapons.”

Wang giggled. “This one time, a famous movie star came into the bank. He walked in carrying this big hold-all, dumped it on the counter and said, ‘I’m making a deposit.’ The way he did it was just like he was robbing us. Scared the hell out of me.”

“Which movie star?”

Wang told him the name, but it wasn’t a name Zhao knew. “We used to get lots of celebrities,” she continued, “but now we’ve opened this new private branch, with carpets thick enough to sprain your ankle, and famous paintings on the walls, and this glass bowl on the table that I thought was an ashtray – but when I picked it up to look at it, I realised it was this artwork, with a price tag and everything. I’m still hoping I can get transferred there – I may as well go and serve the rich, since I’m never going to be one of them.”

Zhao wasn’t sure how to respond, so he grunted and pulled out his phone to check the time. Wang started fiddling with her phone as well.

“Do you have plans?” he asked.

“Nope,” she replied. By the looks of it, she was intending to stick around until the time came for them to have dinner together.

“I have something else on this evening,” said Zhao decisively. “But let’s keep in touch.”

They settled the bill and made their way out. “Your uncle said you weren’t very chatty,” said Zhao, “but he was wrong.”

“My uncle said you weren’t very chatty,” replied Wang, “and he was right.”

A week passed, and Zhao Xiaochen had made no further contact with Wang Xuehong. He now always lingered slightly longer whenever he passed a bank or ATM on his way to or from work. He didn’t go to the library on Saturday, afraid that Mr. Ding would want to know how the date had gone, and he switched off his phone to avoid his calls. He spent the afternoon playing games on his computer. As expected, when he switched on his phone that evening he found a message from Mr. Ding. It was just one line of text: “I’ve been planning a trip to Guizhou, see you next Saturday?”

Their next encounter was back in the noodle restaurant, with the same two cold dishes and the same two bottles of beer. Mr. Ding explained why he wanted to go to Guizhou: “There’s this place outside Guiyang called Duxi forest park. In 1994, something strange happened: all the tree trunks within a sixty-five acre area were severed, leaving only stumps a metre high behind. This is what’s referred to as a case of unidentified aerial phenomena – many claim that it was caused by the landing of a flying saucer. I plan to go and take a look at this forest. There’s an engineer at the Guiyang Academy of Sciences who has been looking into this for more than a decade, and I want to go and meet him too.”

“So you’re telling me you’re going to Guizhou to look for a flying saucer.”

“Flying saucers aren’t exactly easy to find – but what we can do is find some evidence for the existence of flying saucers. Guizhou is a mountainous region, which is good terrain for flying saucers to land.”

“But isn’t it normally safer for aircraft to make their landings on flat terrain?”

“We can’t fathom the thinking of aliens, and besides, their aircraft might operate according to different principles from ours. They might not need a runway – they might be more like rockets. Mountains would be relatively secluded for them.”

Seeing Mr. Ding’s earnestness, Zhao was quite tempted to join him on his jaunt to Guizhou – but he didn’t lose his command of reason entirely. The day might come when he succeeded in robbing a bank, but it was unlikely that Mr. Ding would ever succeed in tracking down a flying saucer. “This unidentified aerial phenomenon you’re talking about – it all happened ten years ago. That whole forest was probably chopped down long ago. Why go now?”

Mr. Ding took a sip of beer, his face reddening slightly. “I’ve been wanting to go for a long time, but I wanted to make sure I had prepared adequate funding before making the trip, so that I can visit a few other places at the same time. Also, I’ve heard that forest park is going to be redeveloped – there’ll be lots of tourists in future, which means even less chance of finding any traces of aliens. They might even renovate the place completely, and then there’ll be nothing remotely interesting to see. There are quite a few of us from the forum who want to go, and I want to make it down there before it’s too late.” Mr. Ding took a camera out from his bag. “This is the Canon G10 I just bought. I’m going to use it to gather evidence. They’ve already made a G11 now, but I think this one’ll do.” He stroked the camera as though it were a precious thing. “If I do run into a flying saucer I’ll need to record it, and the recording will need to be clear. People still don’t believe in aliens because there hasn’t been enough documentation.”

Zhao finished his noodles. “When are you planning to leave?”

“The day after tomorrow. I’ve bought my train ticket. The day after tomorrow, early morning, I’ll be off.”

“So when will you be back?”

“Probably in about a month.”

Zhao was startled. “Wouldn’t a week be enough? Surely a fortnight would be plenty of time?”

“I’ll need two weeks at the very least. If I have a month then I’ll be able to do my research more thoroughly.” Seeing that Zhao showed no inclination to examine the camera, Mr. Ding returned the G10 to his bag. “How did things go with Wang Xuehong? You two should get to know each other – there’s no rush, just see how it goes.”

“Mr. Ding, I want to rob a bank.” Zhao was surprised to hear the words emerging from his mouth.

“What was that? Rob a bank?”

“Yes. Do you think there are people in Guizhou who would sell you a gun? I heard most of them are down at the border in Guangxi. Of course, you don’t necessarily need a gun to rob a bank – if you’re using explosives then you can get them from somewhere as close as Hebei.”

“Young Zhao, you really are quite the joker.”

“I’m not joking.”

“Are you planning to rob the bank where my niece works?”

“Not necessarily. The transport situation there isn’t ideal – too much traffic. I want to find a place where I can make a quick getaway.”

“Can you drive?”

“I’ve had my license for a long time. I’m going to hire a car tomorrow and get some practice in.”

“So what are you going to do when you’ve robbed the bank? Let’s say you manage to steal ten million – where will you go then?”

“I don’t have plans for the money. I may not succeed. I plan on getting sprayed by gunfire and ending up a corpse on the street.”

Mr. Ding stared at Zhao Xiaochen. “Are you insane?”

Zhao laughed. “Mr. Ding, I didn’t think you were insane when you told me you were off to search for aliens. Why do you call me crazy when I tell you I want to rob a bank?”

Mr. Ding looked serious. “Do you know how to use a gun?”

“I’ve had a go at the Beijing shooting range. I’m not a bad shot.”

“That doesn’t count for much. What was it – a Type 54 pistol? They have an effective range of fifty metres – you’ll be shot dead by a sniper as soon as you step outside the bank. Lots of police have Type 56 semi-automatic assault rifles nowadays – did you have a go with any of those at the shooting range? All the shooting range guns are attached to the table for safety – you just pull the trigger without even aiming, and you don’t even feel much of the recoil. Have you ever laid your hands on a Type 95 assault rifle? It doesn’t have too much recoil, and the length of the barrel means you can shoot fairly accurately even without too much practice. Thirty bullets, less than four kilograms in weight – easy to carry. You’re not left-handed are you? It’s no good for a left-hander. That’s one of the Chinese design flaws: the shell ejects directly outwards, which is no problem if you’re using your right hand, but means you’ll get a face full of cartridge casings if you try with your left.”

Zhao had played a few shoot ‘em ups, but his knowledge of firearms was limited. He certainly liked the idea of shuttling through the streets of Beijing with a rifle in his hands, popping shots off at the officers piled up behind their bullet-riddled police cars, getting a headshot on anyone who dared to move – but he hadn’t actually thought about what kind of rifle it ought to be. He usually used an AK-47 when he was playing Counterstrike; he wasn’t sure whether that would be better than a Type 95 assault rifle.

Mr. Ding, however, had already begun to answer this question for him: “Our Type 56 semi-automatics are actually modeled on the Soviet design carbine, but in the Sino-Vietnamese war they proved weaker than the Vietnamese AK-47s. A lot of military outfits around the world use AK-47s nowadays. I reckon you could buy an AK-47 from Vietnam if you went looking at the border in Guangxi. Many years ago there was a robber in Beijing named Bai Baoshan, and he used a Type 56 rifle – but why was he so keen to get his hands on a Type 81? Well, because it’s better: the Type 56 is semi-automatic, with ten bullets in a magazine, whereas a Type 81 has thirty.” This gun talk was getting Mr. Ding excited, and his face was flushed.

“If you know Bai Baoshan then you must know Lu Xianzhou,” said Zhao Xiaochen.

“The thing about Lu Xianzhou was that he used pistols. The Type 54 pistol, the Soviet 7.62mm Tokarev pistol, the Walther 7.65mm pistol – these are all fairly old, and they’re all used by the police. Which means that when he faced off against the police he had no advantage in terms of firepower.” Mr. Ding turned to call the waiter. “We’ll have two more bottles of beer.”

Mr. Ding drank no more than three bottles that night, but by the time they were finished he was completely wasted. He was continually telling Zhao that he’d need a good gun, he’d need plenty of bullets. Even though Zhao hadn’t had too much drink, he ended up completely befuddled by Mr. Ding’s encyclopaedic knowledge of firearms. He got Mr. Ding into a taxi, and asked him if he was able to get himself home. “Don’t use explosives,” Mr. Ding replied, “explosives are too hard to control.”

Considering the circumstances, Zhao decided he had better get in and make sure Mr. Ding made it home. Mr. Ding soon sank into a stupor, clutching his bag to his chest with both hands as though it contained a pistol rather than a camera.

Mr. Ding stuck to his plan, and the next Zhao heard from him was a text message he sent from the train: Let’s talk about the whole bank thing some more on my return. Better not to rush these things.

Zhao sent him a reply: Okay, I’ll wait for you to get the gun and explosives.

Mr. Ding sent another message when he’d arrived: I’m in Guiyang. The local Miao people have hunting rifles, but they don’t have enough firepower.

Zhao replied: If I try and rob a security van with a hunting rifle I’ll be a laughingstock.

When Saturday came, Zhao Xiaochen couldn’t help feeling a bit lonely when he thought back to his encounters with Mr. Ding at the library. For some inexplicable reason he found himself calling Wang Xuehong and arranging to go see a film. There was no need to talk during the movie, and it gave them something to discuss afterwards. It was already late by the time they left the cinema.

“My uncle gave me a call a couple of days ago,” Wang suddenly said as they were strolling along the street. “He wanted me to stay clear of you.”

Zhao was astonished. “What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything – just that you were a dangerous sort. I don’t think you’re dangerous.”

“Did he call you before he left for Guizhou?”

“He’s gone to Guizhou? What did he want to go to Guizhou for? He didn’t say anything about it to me.”

“He said it was a holiday.”

Zhao hailed a cab, opened the door, and sat Wang inside. “Get yourself home.” He knew he would never see this girl again. The girl seemed to sense it too; she rolled down the window and called out to him: “You take care of yourself, okay?”

After seeing off Wang, Zhao spent another half hour wandering through the streets. He sent a message to Mr. Ding: I discovered the bank at Dawanglu has just the right type of ATM, with a door that opens to the front. Mr. Ding didn’t reply at once – probably he was asleep in some small-town Guizhou hostel. Zhao sent a message to Wang Xuehong: Your uncle was right. I’m highly dangerous. I’m going to rob your bank.

The reply from Mr. Ding came the next day: I’m about to set off into the mountains. I might not be able to keep in touch from there, but I hope I’ll be able to find something good. Zhao sent him a message back: Good luck. This was how it was with the two of them: sometimes they’d exchange several texts in a single day, other times they would go several days without any contact at all. Their topics of discussion included: the relative merits of Guangxi over Guizhou as a potential extraterrestrial base; the relative merits of Guangxi as a potential market for purchasing a rifle; and the assorted weaponry of the Beijing police forces. Zhao: The power of a Type 95 assault rifle should be more than enough to overcome the police. Mr. Ding: I can find someone to deal with the money for you here in Guizhou if you’re going for three million in cash. Then everything should go swimmingly. Occasionally Zhao would get itchy fingers after sending his message and send the same text, with a few alterations, to Wang Xuehong – including the one about using explosives to break open their vault, and the one about having enough power to overcome the police. Wang only replied once: If you carry on with this nonsense then I’m calling the police.

Zhao felt light-headed on the morning he was arrested. He heard the sound of a knock on the front door, and it was not a polite knock. When he opened the door he saw three policemen standing outside. They showed him their identification, and asked: “Are you Zhao Xiaochen?” Zhao nodded, and showed them inside. The officer leading the way – who was fifty or so, and whose name was Li, Zhao learned later – stepped inside and gave Zhao’s living quarters a careful appraisal. His gaze was like a scanner, overlooking nothing, but they didn’t search the place. They just said they’d like him to come down to the station to “explain some things”. Zhao wondered whether it was the municipal police department or the local station, but he didn’t dare ask. He got himself dressed and went to pick up the backpack that was ready at all times for unexpected trips, but the cop stopped him: “You won’t be needing that.”

Zhao’s heart had been racing when he first saw them arrive, but he didn’t feel so afraid after talking with them for a while. He knew the so-called Miranda warning from television: you have the right to remain silent. And he knew he should summon his lawyer. It was a shame he didn’t have a lawyer and wasn’t very good at remaining silent. It was the three policemen who were the quiet ones – apart from the necessary instructions, they didn’t say another word. They went downstairs, and Zhao sat down in the back of the police car, squeezed between two cops. He was reminded of an Al Pacino film, another heist movie, called Dog Day Afternoon. Al Pacino was a loathsome cop in Heat, but when he was younger he had played this bank robber who gradually goes to pieces when he’s surrounded by the police. While Zhao was watching the film he thought: I certainly wouldn’t fall apart as easily as that. But it turned out he was already in pieces by the time he sat down in the back of the police car. He discovered he was unable to stop his legs from trembling. When they arrived at the local station they went into a small room. Officer Li was in charge of the questioning. With a cup of tea in his hand, he lit a cigarette and calmly began: “So, tell us.”

Zhao’s throat felt quite dry. “What do you want me to tell you?”

Officer Li smiled. “Tell us about the bank you’re planning on robbing. Which bank? When are you going to make your move?”

Zhao’s dizziness increased. He had not even finished his plan, let alone put it into effect – how could the police know about it already when it still existed only in his imagination? He had dreamed of standing in the street, facing off against a hundred cops with a rifle in his hands, but now here he was, facing some old policeman in his fifties across a table. He was still dreaming of putting up a fight, like maybe pointing out how his text messages were his own affair and the police had infringed on his privacy, or perhaps that this was a matter of freedom of speech, and mere words could not be a crime. He came very close to putting up a fight, but couldn’t make the words come out of his mouth. He strained to find some way he could make them understand that everything that had passed between him and Mr. Ding – all those texts about banks, explosives, guns – were just idle chatter, just a way of passing the time, like texting dirty jokes. But he wasn’t sure he could explain away the messages he’d sent to Wang Xuehong. In the end he decided to begin with films, and with Robert De Niro.

Officer Li listened patiently as Zhao told him about all his heist movies, occasionally interrupting: “Wait a minute – Take the Money and Run? Which country is that from? Who’s the director?”

“America,” Zhao Xiaochen. “It was directed by Woody Allen.” Talking about films made Zhao relax. According to the movies it was at this point that he should ask for a cigarette, but Zhao wasn’t a smoker. “There’s this Japanese movie called First Love, set in 1986. It’s about this lonely young girl, who has no parents and lives with her uncle, who treats her badly. When she has nothing better to do she hangs around bars, and eventually this gang gets together, in a bar, and a lot of them are left-wing youths from Tokyo University. They want to cause some trouble, but the main male character has such a deep hatred of authority that just smashing things up with stones or sticks isn’t going to be enough for him. So they come up with a plan to steal three hundred million in cash. Their plan is to attack a big company, like Mitsubishi, and rob their security van when it’s delivering the end-of-year bonuses. One of the students tells the girl she should join them. They have a very crude plan: the girl rides a motorbike and pretends to be a policewoman, and she tells the drivers of the truck that there’s a bomb onboard, and they need to get out. Then she drives the truck away by herself. But they never get to do anything with the money – in the end the students are all caught by the police, but nobody ever finds the girl. And in the end the girl goes to university.”

“As simple as that?”

“That one is quite simple. It wouldn’t work here. I heard all the security vans in Beijing belong to the Zhenyuan Protection Unit – which is part of the Public Security Bureau, right?”

Li smiled again. “Oh? You’re planning to rob one of our security vans too?”

Zhao decided he had been indiscreet. He quickly tried to decide what kind of movie storyline he should tell Li about next. He wasn’t afraid of being laughed at – on the contrary, he was hoping that Li would decide that he was no more than a joke. Just then he found himself thinking of Mr. Ding. He didn’t know whether he was back in Beijing, or whether he’d been brought in to the station too, but he couldn’t concern himself with Mr. Ding now. He thought of Wang Xuehong, too, and wondered whether all of this would affect her, and perhaps ruin her dream of getting transferred to the private bank. But right now he couldn’t worry about her either.

It was only the following day, in the afternoon, that they brought in Mr. Ding. He had arrived in Beijing on the morning train, and when the police came looking he had just been freshening up at home. Suspecting Mr. Ding might be carrying a firearm, they had dispatched two SWAT officers in bullet-proof vests. It was Officer Li who was again in charge of questioning when Mr. Ding arrived at the station, and his prologue was again the same: “So, tell us.”

Mr. Ding was at a total loss. “What do you want me to tell you?”

“Tell us what you were up to in Guizhou.”

“I wasn’t up to anything. It was just a trip.”

Officer Li stared at Mr. Ding, saying nothing. Mr. Ding stubbornly refused to say anything.

“Just tell us and get it over with,” Officer Li instructed him. “Your partner has already told us everything.”

“Partner? I don’t have a partner? I went by myself.”

“We know you went by yourself. We’re asking you what you were doing in Guizhou.”

Mr. Ding remained silent, continuing to stall until it was dinnertime. The police went out to eat, leaving him alone for two hours. “Well then?” asked Officer Li when they returned. “Still not saying anything?”

Mr. Ding couldn’t take it any more. “I wasn’t planning on reporting it – I wanted to carry out my own investigation to find out what happened. I really was in Guizhou to look for a flying saucer, but I didn’t run into any aliens.”

The junior stenographer was startled. Having spent the previous day listing Zhao Xiaochen’s heist movie titles and plots, it looked like he was going to hear a story about aliens from Mr. Ding. Officer Li maintained his composure, patiently listening as Mr. Ding continued: “The Guizhou unidentified aerial phenomenon has usually been explained as a tornado. But there have been no reports of tornadoes in Guizhou in seventy years. Of course, the fact that there have been no tornadoes in seventy years doesn’t necessarily mean that they will never occur. Most of the experts in the Chinese Academy of Sciences believe UFOs can be explained by meteorological phenomena. The leading proponent of this school of thought is Ouyang Ziyuan. You know about the Shenzhou spaceship? You know about China’s plans for lunar exploration? Ouyang Ziyuan is probably the chief scientist when it comes to lunar exploration – he’s extremely well-acquainted with the moon, but he has little authority when it comes to pronouncements on more distant stars. On my trip to Guizhou I met an old engineer at the Guizhou Academy of Sciences who insisted that the Duxi forest park was a flying saucer base. He had no actual evidence, of course. I travelled to the southwest of Guizhou – Bijie and Liupanshui prefectures – but I still haven’t been to the southeast, to Tongren or Wanshan. I was in a bit of rush. I wasn’t able to see any of the other suspected flying saucer base locations.” Mr. Ding looked quite dejected by this point, his head hanging low.

Officer Li spoke up: “Let’s not worry too much about the flying saucer bases for now. You just mentioned not reporting something – reporting what?”

Mr. Ding’s head remained low. Five minutes had passed by the time he looked painfully up. “I think I’ve been duped. I believed there were lots of people out there who were interested in researching extraterrestrial life – I wasn’t expecting to be taken advantage of by a fraudster.”

Officer Li’s face displayed no visible change, but he was somewhat perplexed. Their monitoring of Mr. Ding’s messages had led them to believe he had travelled to Guizhou to purchase a gun, or locate the kind of explosives that they had codenamed “flying saucers”. But apparently Mr. Ding really had gone to Guizhou in search of aliens. Li’s experience told him that Ding was not lying, but might be of unsound mind. Those of unsound mind were also a severe threat to society, and needed to be thoroughly examined. “Who told you there were aliens in Guizhou?”

Mr. Ding’s fingers were knitted together as he continued to explain: “Two months ago, I received an email. I often spend time on an online forum dedicated to extraterrestrial civilization, and the email came from a newly-created sockpuppet account on the forum. He said he had received an alien distress call from a flying saucer that had landed in China, but was unable to set off again because of a damaged component. He said the aliens were afraid of an attack, and implored me to keep this information to myself, and not share it on the forum. He also said he was in the process of purchasing the component for the aliens, which could be assembled from various car parts, allowing them to repair the flying saucer. So I sent him ten thousand yuan. But when I got in touch with him again to ask how the flying saucer was doing, he never replied. If the flying saucer had landed in China, I thought, it was very possible that they would have used their former base location – that’s why I went to look in Guizhou. Of course I had my suspicions that it might be a scam – that they had never encountered any aliens, and were only after my money.”

The stenographer was finding it hard to hold in his laughter; there was also a smile playing around Officer Li’s mouth. “So you’re telling us that someone sent you an email telling you the aliens needed ten thousand yuan, and you went right ahead and sent it?”

Mr. Ding nodded, his face crimson.

“So do the aliens use the same ATM cards we do?”

“I wired it to a bank account.”

“Do you have any evidence for all you’re telling us? Do you still have that email? How about the receipt for the money transfer?”

Mr. Ding nodded again. “I still have them.”

“Very well. Now, tell us exactly where you went in Guizhou. We need a day-by-day itinerary.”

Mr. Ding strained to remember how he had spent every day of his trip, explaining everything to them as clearly as possible. By the early hours of the morning he had moved on to Zhao Xiaochen, explaining how they had met, how he had learned of his plans for a bank robbery, and how they had ended up talking about 95 rifles. He remained in the station for twenty hours, only stepping out through the front door of the public security bureau the following morning. The first thing he did was buy and devour a half pound of steamed dumplings. He was going to call Zhao, or send him a message – but then he remembered that it was with Zhao that all his trouble had begun. He looked at the name in his address book, and then deleted the contact, erasing all traces of Zhao Xiaochen.

Zhao remained in the station for a good twenty hours, and was given another dressing down before he was allowed to leave. His company’s head of human resources had testified that Zhao Xiaochen was an extremely diligent worker who had hitherto never evidenced any signs of immoral or illegal behaviour, and had even rushed over to the station to pick him up – something Zhao found deeply touching. He thought about sending a message of apology to Mr. Ding, but after writing numerous drafts he still failed to find the right words. After pondering the matter for a while, he decided that if he went to the library on Saturday he might see him in the reading room. It would be better to say whatever needed to be said in person.

When Saturday arrived, he got up early and headed over to the library, where he sat waiting in the reading room. Mr. Ding had got up early too, to head over to the local station to see Officer Li. Li told him that the case had already been solved, and he had to come in to give his testimony. The suspect was a teenager who spent his days playing games in internet cafés. On the forum, when he discovered that Mr. Ding truly believed in aliens, he used the plot of the movie District 9 to scam him out of his money. The ten thousand yuan had long since been spent.

Mr. Ding felt even worse when he emerged from the station for a second time. The money he had lost was insignificant; much worse was the fact that he now doubted whether aliens really existed at all. He spent the afternoon in the park. Zhao Xiaochen remained in the library all day, but never saw Mr. Ding. When night came, the two of them made their separate ways home.

Translated by Dave Haysom

Still Waiting After the Curtain Falls

Zhou Daxin, People’s Literature Publishing House, April 2015 

Written in the style of a documentary, this book assembles interviews with the relatives, friends, colleagues and adversaries of a fictional provincial governor. These disparate perspectives reveal the trials and tribulations faced by this conscientious protagonist on his journey from lowly rural beginnings to a position of power, and the conflict between political reformers and interest groups which he must ultimately face.

Notes from Beyond the Lake 

Sun Huifen, Shanghai Art and Literature Publishing House, March 2015 

Notes from Beyond the Lake is a story in which dark secrets swirl to the surface as the police close in on a murderer. The book uses peasant entrepreneur Liu Jiefu’s return to his home village as a means to explore the trauma of China’s urbanization and the plight of its rural women. Sun Huifen’s narrative artfully combines three types of source: the perspectives of the characters involved; the letters they have sent; and the lament of a vengeful ghost.

When Disturbed By Noises

Xiao Hang, Beijing October Arts and Literature, October 2015 

Like a Japanese “picture of the floating world”, this novel depicts a city populated by a wide variety of disparate characters: the daughters of financial bigwigs; the middle-class; losers; capitalists; the lovesick; and the lovelorn. Their destinies are interwoven in various ways – like marriage, money, survival, work, love – and they are plunged into conflict. What they are want, when they step out of this glittering castle, is to feel something. 

Wange Huayuan

Ma Yuan, Zhejiang Junior & Children’s Publishing House, October 2015

Wange Huayuan is both the name of this novel’s seven-year-old protagonist and the magical destination of his time-travelling adventure. Wange Huyuan is a mysterious grove where children can communicate with the spirits of nature. Ma Yuan’s unique perspective and imagination have shaped a story of a trip around the ancient world that includes encounters with blood-sucking bats, a cave of precious crystal balls, vengeful hornets, and the omniscient tea tree god. 

Spare Time Gathering

Li Hongwei, The Writers Publishing House, October 2015 

This collection comprises five stories, in which a pair of university graduates turn part-time detectives; a group of classmates lose themselves entirely at a masked ball; two lovers find their bodies fusing together; two monks from different sects have a devastating impact on the life of a young drifter; and a thirty-five-year-old bachelor sets out to solve all of mankind’s problems.

In the Forest 

Zhou Jianing, Guangxi Normal University Press, October 2015 

Unable to fit into the world of contemporary Shanghai, 21-year-old Yangyang seeks like-minded people in the world underground literature, cafés, and obscure music concerts. Once deeply in love with a genius, she somehow stumbles into a relationship with a famous middle-aged writer. With her uniquely melancholy style, Zhou Jianing sketches out the journey of this young woman who is defiantly determined to be an independent artist in her own right.

Imperfect Portrait

Ma La, Shanghai Wenhui Publishing House, October 2015 

Wang Shu, a painter, travels to Beijing after becoming a widower and meets Fang Jing, who will become his second wife. Thanks to Fang Jing, he becomes a famous artist – while at the same time embarking on an illicit affair with his step-daughter Aili. In doing so he finds an inexplicable change starting to occur to his body: he becomes a woman.  Ma La has written a perspicacious and highly imaginative depiction of the life of an artist torn between two identities and two lovers.

Interruption

Jiang Yitan, New Star Publishers, November 2015

Interruption gathers the poems that Jiang Yitan has been writing for the last seven years, taking inspiration from both traditional Chinese verse and contemporary foreign poets, synthesising the principles of Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do philosophy: simple, direct, non-classical. With his striking imagery and compelling ideas, novelist Jiang Yitan has channelled his creativity into the brevity of the poetic form.

Michael Day

Michael Day is a freelance translator and writer who hails from the Midwestern United States but currently lives in Mexico City. He was co-winner of the 2015 Bai Meigui Translation Competition, Leeds University, UK in 2015.

Joshua Dyer

Joshua Dyer is a Beijing-based freelance translator and contributing editor at Pathlight. His previous translations have appeared in Taiwan Literature English Translation Series, St. Petersburg Review, LEAP: The International Art Magazine of Contemporary China, and Pathlight. He holds an MA in East Asian Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara.

Roddy Flagg

Roddy Flagg accidentally moved to China after graduating in something entirely irrelevant, and surprised himself by ending up earning a living translating Chinese and running websites. He left China after ten years and is now living in London, where he continues to surprise himself.

Emily Goedde

Emily Goedde has a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Michigan and an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa. She has been translating and editing since 2007. Her translations have appeared in The Iowa Review and the anthology Jade Mirror: Women Poets of China, among other publications. 

Dave Haysom

Dave Haysom (www.spittingdog.net) has been living and working in Beijing since graduating from Leeds University with a degree in Classical Literature and English in 2007. He has previously translated works by contemporary authors including Shi Tiesheng, Wu Ming-yi and Sun Yisheng.

Emily Jones

Emily Jones is a UK-based translator of Chinese literature. Her translation of the crime novel Black Holes by He Jiahong was published by Penguin China in 2014 – and translated on a narrowboat while travelling the UK canals. Emily studied Chinese at Cambridge University and was the recipient of a BCLT mentorship in translation in 2011.

Peter Micic

Peter Micic spent much of his early life exploring and collecting the living folk music traditions of China working with some of the finest ethnomusicologists in the country. He has published articles and book reviews on Chinese music in the CHIME Journal, the Association for Chinese Music Research, the Journal of China Oral and Performing Literature and the Asian Studies Review. He also translates poems by poets from Yunnan and is writing a series of poems in English inspired by the Tea Horse Road. 

Canaan Morse

Canaan Morse was one of the founding editors of Pathlight: New Chinese Writing. He is a literary translator and editor with an M.A. in Classical Chinese Literature from Peking University. His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Chinese Literature Today, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Words and the World, and elsewhere. His translation of Ge Fei’s novella The Invisibility Cloak, which won the Susan Sontag Prize for Translation, is due for publication in 2016 by New York Review of Books, as part of the NYRB Classics Series. He lives in Maine. 

Karmia Olutade

Karmia Olutade is a Chinese Canadian writer and translator who recently finished her degree in English literature and creative writing with an emphasis in poetry at Stanford University, where she began her dramatic writing career. Her original musicals and plays include Forgetting Tiburon, Nightmouth, Pawn (“Best Original Musical Award” at the 2011 Daegu Int’l Musical Festival; NY Int’l Fringe Festival), Tsangyang Gyatso and a young adult piece, Foundling Hill. Her bilingual poetry collection Ere (Foreign Languages Press) was published in 2007 and her English translation of Wang Wenqin’s poetry collection Good Now (Yunnan Publishing House), was published in 2013. She currently writes and teaches in Beijing.

Petula Parris-Huang

Petula Parris-Huang has an MA in Interpreting and Translating from the University of Bath and BA in Chinese Studies and Russian from the University of Durham. She has also studied Chinese in Beijing and Taipei. Petula has worked as an in-house translator to the Taiwanese government and also Teaching Fellow in Translation at the University of Bath. She is a full-time freelance translator and is currently based in Taiwan.

Nick Stember

Nick Stember is a translator of Chinese comics and popular culture who lives in Vancouver, BC. In 2015 he earned a Master of Arts in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia with his (very readable and not at all obscure) thesis on the formation of the Shanghai Manhua Society in the late 1920s.

His work has been featured on the websites of the Comics Journal, Danwei, Frog in a Well, Leap Beijing, Optical Sloth, Tor, Boing Boing, iO9, Rolling Stone, the BBC World Service, and the South China Morning Post. For the past two years, he has worked as a consultant for a variety of ventures, including Storycom and Clarkesworld Magazine’s Chinese Science Fiction Translation Project and the Grayhawk Agency and the Ministry of Culture (ROC)’s Books from Taiwan Vol. III: Comics. 

He is currently working on a translation of the “Chinese Game of Thrones”.

Helen Wang

Helen Wang was born in Yorkshire, UK. She has degrees in Chinese (BA, SOAS) and Archaeology (PhD, UCL), and is currently Curator of East Asian Money at the British Museum. She's a London-based contributor to Paper-Republic.org and co-tweets with translator Nicky Harman on @cfbcuk (China Fiction Book Club UK).

编辑／人民文学杂志社

Editorial Department: People’s Literature Magazine

主编／施战军

Editor-in-Chief: Shi Zhanjun

副主编／宁小龄  徐坤  李东华

Deputy Editors: Ning Xiaoling, Xu Kun, Li Donghua

顾问／张涛  胡开敏

Consultants: Zhang Tao, Hu Kaimin

英文审定／徐明强

English Reader: Xu Mingqiang

编辑总监／李东华  艾瑞克

Editorial Directors: Li Donghua, Eric Abrahamsen

英文执行编辑／大卫  曹禅

English Managing Editors: Dave Haysom, Karmia Olutade

中文执行编辑／刘汀

Chinese Managing Editor: Liu Ting

编辑／杨泥  徐则臣  朱零  马小淘  李兰玉  曹雪萍  胡晓芳 

Editors: Yang Ni, Xu Zechen, Zhu Ling, Ma Xiaotao, Li Lanyu, Cao Xueping, and Hu Xiaofang

协作／纸托邦

With Paper Republic Limited

平面设计／北京午夜阳光平面设计公司

Layout Design: Beijing WYYG Graphic Design

设计总监／王焱 85301701

Art Director: Wang Yan  85301701

《Pathlight》编辑部

Pathlight: New Chinese Writing Editorial Office

地址/北京农展馆南里10号楼7层人民文学杂志社（100125）

Address: 7th Floor, Building 10, Nongzhanguannanli 

 People’s Literature Magazine Beijing 100125 

Telephone: 65003876