何木：A Shadow in Surfers Paradise(1-29)天堂之影

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-3-31 18:55
Chapter 10   1/2

Chapter 10    2/2



On arriving at their room, they went to report their little trouble to Mr. Xiao, their kind and smiling teacher, who later brought a set of clothes for Xing. The shirt and pants were clean, not new, but remarkably, having no patches at all. In them, Xing became a new person with a fresh appearance. His stolen pants had at least four big patches. Few students in the school possessed a whole, patch-less shirt or pants or socks in his class. Better clothes could only be expected by most at Spring Festival.  

However, compared to food, clothes were the least they had to worry about. Satisfying their growing stomach was much more a practical and profound matter of living in the years when food was still a scarcity. Every week, they brought a small sack of rice from home, as well as a bamboo container full of pickled vegetables. Rice was the staple, but there was a limited supply. Many families didn’t have enough rice to feed their family members, and other vegetables such as sweet potato and taro had to make up for the shortage. Therefore, the students at school had to measure carefully the amount of rice when filling their bowl so as not to run out of their weekly allowance early. Whatever they had in their bag was as much as their families could afford.

Three times a day, each student filled their china bowl with rice, together with a cup of pickles, to be placed into one of the many stacked steam-cooking frames. No need to put in water; the kitchen hands would do the job for them. Sometimes, the water was poured unevenly, or tipped out when the frame was being carried onto the huge boiler-powered wok. In either case the rice would end up dry-fried, and extra water was needed to soak it before it could be chewed and swallowed.  

At meal time, the hungry students rushed towards the kitchen to collect their rice bowls marked with their names or other identifiable symbols. It was not unusual for one to lose the trace of his bowl, because it might be taken mistakenly or stolen by others. In this dismal situation, unless there was nothing left in the frame, the person who bore the loss had to become a thief himself. In Bing’s case, he had been three times such a thief in the school if his memory was correct.

The rice itself was already delicious and mouth-watering; only a small amount of pickles was actually needed during the course. Therefore, after each meal, the cup, without being emptied and cleaned like the rice bowl, was topped up from their weekly reserve of pickles stored in a large bamboo container. And quite often, the pickles were spilt to litter uglily the cooking frame, for the cup, higher than the rice bowl, was easier to tip over.

Nonetheless, the pickles could be regarded as a kind of evidence indicating the economic status of a family. More well-off families could add some morsels of pork into it, generating a distinguishing aroma at meal time. And without the pork, or in its essence the pig-oil, the pickles were just like a bundle of dried, twisted grasses, extremely difficult to swallow. Therefore, it was fair to say a student’s quality of life was largely dictated by the amount of pork or pig-oil contained in their supply.

Bing came from a family slightly better off than most, because of the fact that his father worked in the town’s radio station, and was able to gain supplies through certain privileges pertaining to his position. For that reason, Bing’s pickles had a better quality, and often desired and shared by Kai and Xing. They simply picked some of Bing’s and mixed it with their own, producing a better blend.

One Sunday afternoon, instead of the pickles, Kai brought a pumpkin, as big as a basketball, which excited not a little the eyes of his two friends.

‘How could you carry it?’ Bing asked, knowing Kai had to walk three hours from home. ‘It’s so heavy,’ he added, after weighing it with his hands.

‘No, I didn’t walk today. A tractor happened to be on its way into the town. My father knew about it beforehand, and my mother got the pumpkin idea when she was preparing the pickles.’

‘It’s too late today, otherwise we can cook some for supper,’ Xing chimed in.

‘Let’s do it tomorrow,’ Bing said. There was a stove in the kitchen, free to use, though few of them used it. Bing had seen some other students cooking things there, but he had never done it himself.

The next afternoon, straight after class, the three of them went to their room and brought the pumpkin to the kitchen. They estimated that the pumpkin would suffice four meals. So it had to be cut into four quarters.

Its rugged skin was thick and tough, as if it had suffered from the harshest weather on the earth. Among them, Kai was the strongest, so voluntarily he took the task of cutting. With a chopper that looked heavier than his whole arm, he had operated vigorously on it for a long time, before a near quarter was finally separated from its body, leaving a lot of chips here and there. Then, using the same chopper, he used almost double the amount of the time to peel off the thick layer of skin. In the meantime, Xing began to prepare the fire in the stove, and Bing went to the ancient-well to collect water.

Gripping the bucket rope by its knotted end, Bing threw the bucket into the well. It landed on the water flat, striking off shimmering rings that wrinkled and shattered the cloud and sky on its surface. He flung the rope sideways to tilt the bucket over, and as soon as it was filled more than half, he began to pull and tug, snatching up the rope section by section until the handle of the bucket was within reach.   

When he came back with a basin of water, Kai had already started to cut the quarter into smaller pieces. But Xing, who was self-employed to look after the fire, was still poking the grass and twigs with the shovel, blowing long breaths into the stove, with his mouth hard stretching into an ‘O’. Wisps of black smoke came out, but not a sustainable fire. He seemed to have difficulty in making it burn. Most likely the grass was not dry enough.

Kai was still slicing the pumpkin. With the enormous chopper in his hands, he was now performing the task in a fashion like a butcher attacking a thick piece of pig-meat.  

‘Go wash the wok,’ Kai told Bing, as if he was in command.

Finding a dipper made from a gourd, Bing began to scoop water from the basin, and poured it into the wok. He used a brush made of bamboo strips to rub the iron surface. Soon the water looked very murky and rusty. He scraped and emptied as much of the residue inside the wok as he could. As he was doing so, he noticed the bottom was steaming, and he knew Xing must have somehow succeeded in lighting the fire.

After finishing his cutting task, Kai collected all of the pieces into the basin to wash them. The fire was now fully on, a light of gold was shining on Xing’s face.  

It was time to start cooking.

Kai grabbed the chunks of pumpkin, but just before he was to throw them in the wok, he said, ‘No oil.’

Bing ridiculed him, ‘Of course not, but do we need it?’ Then a second thought struck him, ‘There are quite a few crumbs of pig-meat and pig-fat in my pickles. Maybe we can add that?’

Xing thrust out his face, which had grown scarlet by the fire, to make a comment, ‘Well... better than nothing.’  

Kai stood thinking, as if it took a lot of his time to make the decision.

But his decision was irrelevant, for Bing had already gone away for the pickles. In a couple of minutes he returned with a bamboo-tube full of good pickles prepared by his mother only the day before, as well as a pair of chopsticks with which he used to pick the pig-fat crumbs.  

The smell was excellent, and every crumb he threw into the wok seemed to go through the same fate: first it sizzled relatively stilly but noisily, then it danced wildly and furiously, then it died resignedly and desperately, as if it had a heart that was breaking with no blood but oil.

However, the wok was too hot and there was too little fat to even moisten the tiny bottom of wok. Bing tried as fast as he could, but soon he was losing patience, and suggested using the pickles directly for the purpose.

‘I think it is okay,’ Xing gave a quick reply. Kai was hesitating, like a chef speculating on a new way of doing things.

Again, his decision was irrelevant, because Bing had already dug a spoonful of pickles, tossing them in. Seeing this, Kai had no other option but to stir the contents.

‘It is time putting in the pumpkin,’ Xing said, straightening up to overview the wok.

Then, one hand after another, Bing and Kai quickly threw in all the pieces. From then on, it was Kai who, mustering his young muscles, lavished his stirring strokes and gestures over the wok.

Bing stood there beside him watching. Then he caught sight of the remaining three quarters of pumpkin, and said, ‘Should we cook all the inside seeds and things as well? They may turn bad in a few days?’

Without hesitation, Kai ordered Bing to act upon the new idea at once. So Bing started pawing all stuff out of the stomach of the pumpkin, either soft or hard, and threw them in. Kai continued to stir, only now with higher energy. His right elbow swiftly rose and fell, his left hand clutching tight the edge of the stove. Then he said, ‘No salt.’

‘Don’t bother,’ Bing and Xing said in unison.

Minutes had passed before Xing asked Kai to put some water in, and let it cook. But it was Bing, idle for the moment, who got some water from the basin with the gourd-dipper. He sprinkled it over the pumpkin, only a little, then paused to seek Kai’s approval for more. Kai said two more, decisively and precisely as if his answer was a result of scientific calculation.   

At last, it was ready to be served. They brought their rice bowls, and the heated pickles to the kitchen, and enjoyed their first pumpkin supper together. Without salt, the pumpkin tasted even sweeter, though the result looked more like a mass of pulp or half soup.

For next few days they borrowed some salt from the chef, and with their cooking skills improving day after day, the pumpkin became more or less like something Bing’s mother cooked at home.

If only they had enough pig-oil.


--- End of Chapter 10 ---

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-3-31 18:57
Chapter 10    2/2

Chapter 11    1/2



Xing was a boy who enjoyed his fun, and also a good teller of stories and gossip. Almost every night, after they had successfully killed the buzzing mosquitoes inside the net, the three boys would have a time for entertainment, with Xing indulging in story-telling to feed the curiosity of two roommates. Most of the stories he told came from the book of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, a popular story sourced from the ancient Arab world. It was said the king of an Arabian kingdom married a girl every day and then had her killed before marrying the next, to avenge himself upon the infidelity of his former queen. The daughter of the premier of the country, in her efforts to save many innocent girls, made herself available to marry him, and on the very night of her peril, she told the king a story, which had so enchanted him that he decided to spare her life until the second night in order to hear another story. However, her stories rolled on and on, so did the king’s fascination. It was not until the one-thousand-and-first night that her story had finally ended, at which time the King had already been moved and made conscious of his earlier injustice and cruelty. And with all such stories, they lived happily ever after.

Xing seemed to know a lot of them, but even if he was telling the same story over and over again, it was still sounding very merry and sweet to the ears of his friends. In the school, text books were all they had, and there were hardly any story books they could borrow. There was no library, or in their mind, there was never a notion of library.  

The electricity supply was as unreliable as the food. Whenever the electricity was off, which happened nearly half of every week, students had to rely on their oil lamps they had brought form home to do their homework. Even if the electricity was actually on, its lamp light was often dim and feeble, struggling like the flickering of fireflies. Therefore, the oil lamps were indispensable if they wished to keep up with their study, and when the so called ‘coal-oil’ in the lamp container burned out, they had to either borrow from each other, or go to the market place to top it up. It was not uncommon to hear of students burning half their mosquito net by the oil lamp fire in the packed dormitory, but amazingly there had never been a worse tragedy than that.

One night, Xing, instead of telling a story from the Arabian Nights, had an item of school gossip to share.

‘Have you heard that today a girl in Class Three was fighting with a boy?’ Xing began, as soon as they settled in bed after their mosquito business.

‘No, what happened?’ Bing asked, and Kai added, ‘who is it?’

‘A girl from your village, Bing, Guzhai, she fought with the boy in the desk next to hers.’

‘What, from my village? Was it serious?’ Bing asked, and Kai added, ‘why?’

‘I don’t know how serious, but they said the boy was pulling the girl’s hair, the girl clawing his face. The reason was hard to believe. The girl complained the boy kept leering at her, and that after warning him many times without change of his behaviour, she could stand it no more.’

‘Haha, so the teacher knew of this?’

‘Of course, they were both called into the office,’ Xing continued. ‘And you know what the boy said to the teacher?’
The listeners held their breath and without hearing their answer, Xing kept on, ‘He said that the girl often burned pine bark in the middle of lesson.’

‘What? Burning pine bark in class?’ The news was astonishing. Pine bark, with its rich burnable grease, was often used by the local villagers to kindle a fire. It could be set aflame easily by a match, its smoke thick and dark, its sound crackling.

‘She said she burned it only to warm her feet.’

‘How could she do this without drawing the attention of the teacher and the whole class?’ Bing wondered.

‘Well, she might be in the last row in the class,’ Xing answered uncertainly, ‘well, I don’t know.’

Kai gave his analysis, ‘Maybe it was just a tiny bit, a little strip.’

‘Does she live in the school?’ Bing asked as if he had an interest beyond the gossip.

‘I don’t think so,’ Xing replied. ‘Students from your village don’t usually board at school. They go to and from home every day.’

‘Yes,’ Bing knew it was true. Taking three hours or so for the round trip, the majority of students from his village lived at home to save the cost of boarding. However, he was one of the exceptions, as his parents were ready to pay for a better study environment for him. The journey could be very treacherous, especially in the rain when the road was flooded and melted into no more than a series of muddy puddles, or in winter when the wind prevailed and chilled the body through their little clothes, chafing their face liking cutting knives. Bing knew all about the hardship even if he only made two trips a week.

‘Well, what was the next?’ Kai’s curiosity was still alive. ‘Did the boy explain why he leered at her?’

‘I don’t know, he could just deny it, couldn’t he? The girl must be very pretty, but with a bad temper. ’

Fighting among students was rare in the school, let alone between a girl and a boy. It needed a lot of energy, which implied the consumption of plenty of food, a circumstance deemed impossible on those years. There were eleven girls in his class, yet none of them was much of an acquaintance to him. Boys and girls usually avoided each other by lowering their heads or taking alternative routes should such a chance passing occur. It was as if an unspoken rule existed in the school stipulating that conversation between genders was not allowed.

However, for next few days, Bing had a growing interest in knowing more about the fighting girl. During the radio-guided exercise, he craned his neck to where the students of Class Three stood, hoping to identify the pretty girl with the bad temper. And, needless to say, his endeavour was in vain, and nobody told him any more about her, nor did he pursue it any further, until only twenty years later that it was revealed that the girl was actually Chun, his tricky but adorable same-desk classmate in the primary school.

One year later, the class had moved out of the paper factory and into the main campus, where, like everyone else, three of them became again the occupants of bunk beds in a classroom-sized dormitory. The strict discipline and crowded conditions made their school life less enjoyable. However, the supply of food, as well as of the electricity, had been steadily improving. The school began to provide the pork dishes to the wealthier students for a fee, which Bing could afford once or twice in a week. Besides, his mother would also bring some chicken eggs, now more plenty at home, to the school, leaving them with his master teacher, Ms. Tian, who would cook for him in the morning. Occasionally, he cooked it himself; his method was to crack the egg into a cup, whisk it with a spoon, pour in hot water, stir the mix well, let it cool, and then drink it all.

Unlike in his primary years, Bing was no longer among the top performers in the class. He was in the second tier, ranked probably between 9th and 15th. He scored better in Chinese than maths and English.

Once the Chinese teacher assigned the class an expositional writing task, based on a picture in which a Chinese man was offering his seat to an elderly foreigner in a bus, and one of the passengers was saying, ‘Look at him, fawning on foreigners.’

He achieved the top mark, and his article was read in class by the teacher. The main point Bing made was that if this was regarded as fawning on foreigners, then how could we explain Premier Zhou En Lai’s friendly and respectful smiles towards foreigners? Could we harshly label the behaviour of the Premier as fawning?

Bing had also good handwriting because of his keen interest in calligraphy and his constant practice. He was often asked by Ms. Tian to write the answers and solutions to the homework onto the rear blackboard in the classroom. He usually did this during the lunch break, and thus, getting tired, he might fall asleep in the afternoon class. However, the kind and affectionate Ms. Tian, understanding his contribution, didn’t disturb or scold him as she usually did to other sleepy students.  
He was growing fast, more in the physical aspect, as far as he was aware, or concerned, or puzzled. At the age of fourteen, he spotted his first pubic hair. He was then in the toilet at home during the school holidays.

In the village, urination was usually done in a bucket placed at a corner inside or outside the house, with or without a cover. Moreover, in order to make it convenient for the kids or elders at night, or in the cold of winter, the bucket was often placed in the same room wherein they slept. It was always a loud practice, for the bucket was made of wood and also stood on a floor of wood, which inevitably amplified the noise, remarkably resonating, especially in the dead of night. However, the urination, or Little Convenience in the language of Chinese, compared to the Big Convenience, was still much easier and cleaner.

Each family, for the Big task, had to dig and build a separate pit house, some distance away from their residence. From outside, it looked just like a smaller version of mud-house. It had a door either made of wood or straw. Its inside was but a pit, covered by a number of timber planks with an opening in the middle.

To children, the pit house could be extremely hazardous. Over the years, Bing had heard a number of times of kids falling into the trench. For this reason, often at nights, he had to be accompanied by his mum, with the help of an oil-lamp or a torch, to get to the place. And due to the lack of fertilizer, human waste, as well as all that of cattle and pigs, were treated equally as the important sources of bettering the production of the crops and vegetables.

In summer, when the air and the soil were well heated by the blazing sun, the pit house was an appalling phenomenon. Flies, as big as bees, green-headed, wings iridescent, were rampant, and seemed to be very excited, very proud. They swarmed and buzzed inside the door, on the door, and outside the door; they landed on your hair, your face, your hand, and any places they considered cooler than themselves; they jumped, and swooped, and fought each other; they seemed to eat and lick and suck everything; they were mating vigorously and arguing constantly. And more amazing, they would twist their hind legs and wash madly to beautify their wings.

But they never died, for he saw none of their corpses.

It was there, on a summer day, he detected his first line of puberty - an item that seemed even uglier than the flies. It was strange, not like the ones covering his head. Curvy, and black and twistingly long, it was like it had budded and burst out overnight, declaring to him a separate identity in its own merit. Oh, what a queer and foreign intruder into his teenage comprehension!

He pulled it, and felt the pain.

In the toilet, no sanitary paper was provided. There lay a bundle of sticks in the corner for the purpose. The sticks with flat sides were regarded as the ones of better quality, because a toilet user might need only three of them, instead of at least six of the poorer ones or, in plainer words, the raw, unprocessed twigs. Using the paper, the common rolls of yellowish paper available in the village, was only occasional, for its supply was never plenty. With its rugged looking and feeling, and with the tree fibres clearly visible on the surface, the paper was only used in other more important applications, such as wrapping the gifts, or candies, or fireworks, or medicines, or anything that deserved the consideration of being wrapped. Its best usage, as Bing often observed, was to wipe the blood stains of wounds, or even the tears of sorrow. But unfortunately it couldn’t be used as study paper, because if written with the commonly used fountain pen, it would instantly diffuse the ink into a large cloudy blur.

--to next post--

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-2 21:38
Chapter 11    1/2

Chapter 11    2/2



On a Saturday afternoon, Dan lured Bing to go loach-needling. It was in March, the fields were just ready for rice-planting, and at night, the loaches would come out of the soil and take their leisure in the shallow water. It was something Bing had missed for some years, and he really wanted to take advantage of the absence of his father, who hadn’t come back home on the weekend.  

He asked his mother for the permission, and to his surprise, she gave her approval without hesitation. And even better, she said she would go together with them, to carry the firewood and his shoes for them. But Bing knew she was more concerned with his safety, lest he might fall over into the dangerous pit in the dark.  

There was only one set of ‘needling gear’ used by Dan, so his mother went to borrow another set from a neighbour. The gear comprised of three items – a long-handled striking head made of needles, a long–handled torch fired by resinous wood, and a bamboo-basket to store the caught loaches. The striking head was very impressive and elaborately designed; fan-shaped, it was made of two rows of knitted needles, attached to a long bamboo stick. Once a loach or an eel was struck by the spread of twenty or so needles, its body would be stuck, and there was no chance for its escape. The torch, or a burner, was just an iron-framed firewood container, providing the light in the dark.

‘Can we go now?’ Bing asked his mother, who was stirring a pool of pig food in the huge wok.

‘No, the loaches only come out when it is dark.’

‘So when can we go?’

‘In at least one hour,’ she answered, now beginning to scoop the content from the wok to fill a bucket. ‘You go double check and make sure the needles are not loose, and ask Dan to help.’

Bing did as he was told, and went to his cousin, who had just finished his supper. They spent some time on fixing the devices. By the time his mum was ready to go, it was late in the dusk.

On their way, they didn’t burn the pine wood to light up their journey, saving it for loach catching in the field. The moon, though with only a sickle’s shape, was delivering enough light for their safe tread among the narrow field ridges. Not far away, Bing saw a number of moving fires in the fields; apparently other villagers had already started fishing.

The frogs were croaking with their wildest passion. For a moment Bing imagined the vigorous pumping under their chins. Then, to his happy surprise, there came a number of fireflies, blinking faintly among the shrubs.

‘See, fireflies,’ Bing exclaimed, ‘I thought there were no more fireflies in the village.’

‘No, there are still a lot of them,’ Dan rejoined, ‘though not as many as before, remember we put them into a bottle?’

‘Yes, we put them into a bottle, and used it as a sort of torch.’

His mother chimed in, ‘Bing, you once fell into a bush trying to catch them. But you couldn’t possibly remember that, you were just four.’

‘Really? You have never told me that before.’ Bing said.

‘Well, there are many stories of you, if I have the time to tell,’ said his mum, and for a reason, sounded rather amused by adding, ‘you want to know how you were born?’

‘What? How?’ Bing’s curiosity fired up.

‘When you were born, I was only by myself. Your grandma was planting the taros in the ridges some miles away. She thought the first child would usually take many hours to come, so she didn’t expect a quick delivery. But my pain began when I was grinding the grain in the mill. So I stopped to go home seeking rest. I went upstairs, but before I even reached the bedroom, I felt I couldn’t drag my feet any longer, so I sat down on the floor, against the wall.

‘There, sitting on the dirty wooden floor, I gave birth to you. You were crawling on the floor, little fingers grabbing about, wailing aloud, the cord still uncut. I was very tired, and helpless. Then Jian, our neighbour, who must have heard your cry, came rushing to help. But she didn’t know what to do, so I asked her to call your grandma. After what seemed like forever, your grandma was finally home. She lit a candle, heated the scissors with the flame, and cut the cord. She did the job a midwife was supposed to do. When she picked you up, your body was dark dirt all over. She washed you, and put you to bed.‘

‘How did grandma know about such thing?’ Bing was amazed.

‘She had used to be a midwife, when she was still in Mianyang. You probably don’t know that she had married before she came to our village to marry your grandpa, and all her four sons from her first marriage had been delivered by herself.’

‘What, you mean she had borne four sons already?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are they now?’

‘A long story, tell you next time.’

This was such a big surprise, Bing had never heard of it. But he was for now more interested in another thread of the subject, ‘Did she deliver Ming and Dan as well?’

‘She did Dan, but not Ming.’

‘Oh, I was also delivered by grandma?’ Dan said, in much awe.

‘Your birth was also earlier than expected, your mum didn’t have time to ask the village midwife,’ she said to Dan. ‘But you were quite OK, not as dirty as Bing.’

‘Haha,’ they all laughed.

Then she continued, ‘When Bing was about two months old, there was a serious rash on your skin. I figured it might be due to the dirt you had been stained with at birth. But before I took you to a doctor, the rash disappeared. Lucky it was not getting any worse.’

‘No wonder, my skin is so dark,’ Bing said playfully.

‘But I am dark too,’ Dan said. ‘It mustn’t be because of that.’

‘You are dark, because you burned too much in the sun, and never washed your face.’

‘Hehe, maybe.’

They talked, but without slacking their pace. They turned a corner and saw a man in the field needling the loaches, the water splashing high by his strike.  

‘Mum, have we arrived yet?’ Bing asked.

‘Just a few blocks, then we can kindle the fire.’

At the destination, the real fun began. Bing used a match to burn a stick of pine bark, which fired up rapidly with its rich, highly flammable resin. Then, placing it into the torch container, he, and the other two, added on its top a full stack of firewood. Within seconds, the wood sizzled and crackled, the flame and thick fumes billowing in the wind. In the brilliance of light, his mum’s face was illuminated pink and rosy, with a cheerfulness and vitality that must have been a true reflection of her youth. Her short hair, worn and torn by the numerous harsh seasons, had a hue and glow that had not been so familiar in his memory.

The fire soon grew in full flame.  

When the fires were ready, Bing’s mother helped two boys to wrap the loach-storing baskets around their waist. Then, grabbing their needling stick, they took off their slippers, and went to the separate ends of field. ‘Take care, check your steps, not to rush,’ her words followed him. ‘I stay here, call me when the wood’s burned down.’

Bing stepped into the field, feeling his feet sinking in the muddy soil. He strained his eyes, searching for the shape of loach in the water. He made every step carefully in case the loach was disturbed and escaped.

There it was.

Holding his breath, he moved gingerly to adjust his standing position so that the needle-head could reach the loach at the best angle across its length. Then he struck down, the surface broken, the water parting. And, stuck in the needle head of the rod that he had immediately pulled up, was a loach twisting actively. ‘Caught one,’ he said, delightedly, and his mother replied, ‘Have you? There are plenty of them, I know.’

Bing banged the head a few times on the rim of the basket, forcing the loach off the needle into the storage.

From then on, more excitement came along. Once, he spotted something long and thin in the water, and suspected it was snake, or an eel. He called his mum, who told him just to strike. ‘It must be an eel, but even if it is a snake, it won’t bite you. It is just a soil snake, not poisonous.’   

With her encourage, he struck it, with a force as much as he could afford. But when he pulled the rod up, there was none of the expected struggling in sight. He drew it closer, and saw only a dead stalk dangling from it.

‘Haha, it is just a straw,’ he declared, laughing.

He heard many strikes from Dan’s end. But Dan kept quiet, shouting only once that he had caught a snake.

In about fifteen minutes, Bing had caught three eels, and at least twenty loaches. By now the fire was dwindling, it was time to refill the wood. But before the refilling, he knew he should manage to clear the ashes and cinders from the torch. The task was called torch-shuffling.  

Just then, he saw Dan doing the very task. The torch was rotating over his head, hissing and swishing, faster and faster, producing in the dark a remarkable ring of fire, the small coals and clumps shooting out like falling stars.

‘Bing, you want to do the shuffling? Or maybe ask Dan to do it for you,’ came the voice of his mum.

‘Well, I can do myself,’ he answered. It was not that he had not done it before, though not as often as his cousin. In fact, the shuffling was the most amazing part of the whole fun.

Bing laid down the striking rod, shifted the torch to his right hand, and began to rotate it overhead slowly but with increasing force. The torch was revolving higher and faster until, at one point, he felt the handle was about to slip from his grip. At the moment of fright, he stretched out his left hand to catch his right fist. The torch didn’t spin away, but the force of inertia and his frantic gesture had unsteadied his body, disrupting his balance.

He sat straight into the field, and the torch fire, with a hissing sound, died out as it landed in the water. The smoke was thick, lasting for nearly half a minute. His mum came over, followed by his cousin. He rose to his feet, feeling his dripping pants, and laughing, to smooth away his embarrassment, and their concern. ‘Well, I just slipped over.’  

His mum went to collect the burner and trudged back to where she had been. The contents of the torch were then emptied out, to be replaced with a fresh stack of firewood. And soon, the flame was on again, and he went back to resume the sport. When it came to the shuffling again, he didn’t disappoint himself, and he believed he was performing even better than his cousin.  

They spent several hours more in the field, before his mum called, ‘Let’s go, it is late.’

Dan claimed he had caught more than one hundred loaches and five eels, while Bing had about half of that number, although his joy was at least equal or even double to his cousin’s.  

They arrived home late in the night. The big clock with the round brass pendulum on the cabinet struck once for the half past 11 o’clock.  

The next day, when the loaches were cooked for the lunch, the two families joined for the feast. His father also came back, and having taken for granted that the loaches had been caught only by Dan, raised no question but enjoyed the delicious loaches, with the rice-wine.


---End of Chapter 11---

Booker

哇，英文哒

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-2 21:42
Chapter 11    2/2

Chapter 12    1/3



Tree-cutting was another village fun Bing had enjoyed in his boyhood. He was always fond of going to the hills where, depending on the season, an assortment of wild fruit was available to pick. The trees they cut were most of the time the young pines that could be carried on their shoulders. Fir trees could also be an alternative if they came their way. However, fir is not as good as pine for firewood, due to its lack of flammable resin.

One day during school holiday, he and Dan decided to go to the hill cutting the tree. At about 8am, Bing’s mum and Dan’s, were already in the fields planting the crops. His grandma, on hearing what they were going to do, raised her eyes from her occupation of mending a pair of socks, expressing her half-disapproval by ‘Aiya-hah, go to hills? Cut trees? Careful, careful, come back early ...’ to which Bing didn’t have to make a reply. From the corner, he picked a chopper used typically by younger people in the village, which, compared to the common axe used by adults, was lighter and with its shorter handle and longer blade, better suited to boys for cutting the medium size trees they were able to carry home.

In several minutes, they were on their way.

In the morning sun of this spring, the surface of the earth was steaming, like a sea of hot porridge ready to serve. Swallows were flitting and soaring in the sky, twittering merrily, flapping close on the mirror-like fields, catching the insects flying in their way. The farmers with their backs and heads and shoulders rising and falling frequently were in their busiest planting season. Their intermit shouting and yelling came to his ears remote and faint due to the distance and the airy space. And the smell that was actually a blend of manure and urine and sweat and plants and flowers was assailing their nostrils. Dogs were wandering about in twos and threes; one might sniff another, whose tail would suddenly jerk and dodge and shudder as if under attack.

Led by Dan, the two boys took their careful steps, skipping over the slippery path. They had soon reached the bottom of a hill that they were set to climb.   

‘Look what they are doing,’ Dan said suddenly, pointing.

Following his finger to the other side of the hill, Bing saw, on a grassy land, a cow and a bull were grappling.

‘They were mating,’ Bing stated the obvious, and lifted his foot to move on.

But Dan, after throwing a quick glance around, said, ‘Let’s go closer and have a look.’

‘What? You mean…?’ Bing began to laugh, very much amused.  

‘Don’t laugh,’ Dan hushed him, ‘you may be heard.’

They moved towards the couple, their pace considerably slower than before. And with the choppers in their hands, it was like they were stalking after some beasts.

About five meters away, they stopped to watch them. But unfortunately, the bull, seeing their approach, began to slip off from the back of the cow, heavily and clumsily. Its giant organ, like the trunk of an elephant in some books he had read about, swaying vividly, and awfully. Bing had seen cattle in the act before, but not as close as this.

Then, as if the bull didn’t feel that the threat from two small kids was realistic, it managed to mount its massive body onto the cow’s back again, with unspeakable awkwardness. But after a run of efforts it seemed to have found a sort of difficult but delicate balance. Only the cow looked rather disgruntled and half-hearted, not at all demonstrating the like passion of the bull.

Holding his breath, Bing, wild-eyed, was looking at them in mighty awe.

Then Dan, tentatively withdrawing his gaze, turned to him and said, ‘Let me find a stick.’

‘…’ Bing broke out in suppressed laughter. He knew the trick, and was ready to enjoy the idea, so long as it was handled by Dan, not himself. He couldn’t explain why it seemed to be out of the question for him to do this. But he liked to watch it, honestly.

Dan went back a few metres from where they stood, picked up a dry stick in the thicket, trimmed and polished a little, and came back.

‘This will do,’ he said.

He laid the chopper on the ground, hid the stick in his behind, arched his back and moved towards the busy couple, taking a small step at a time. At first, the bull didn’t bother, didn’t budge from its capture. Then, as Dan was near the range of the stick’s space, its bulky head turned, slowly but firmly, glaring at him; its solid and steady horns were casting out like a pair of great sickles.

The moment was tense and dangerous. Dan, as if detecting something imminent, quickly brought out the stick from his back, aimlessly throwing it at the bull, and at the same instant, plucked his feet, turning and darting away from the zone of danger.

Bing, affected just as much from Dan’s sudden flight, was also dashing in retreat.

But the bull didn’t chase them as they had feared. When they sensed they were safe, they stopped to laugh convulsively, and checking the scene, they noticed that the bull was already off from the back of its partner, steady on its own fours, looking at them quietly with its dark bulging eyes.

Then Dan realized he had forgotten to take his chopper with him in his flight. So, gingerly like a person with guilt, he went back to fetch it, and returned as swiftly as his feet permitted him.

In a little while, they were back to where they had been diverted, and began to climb the hill.

‘Cattle are more dangerous,’ Dan chuckled. ‘The dogs are no problem.’

‘Haha’ Bing laughed. ‘Of course, different size.’

‘Even if I hit the dog’s thing, they won’t break away,’ Dan said. ‘They only whine, but they stick together, so strange.’

‘I saw the dogs once,’ Bing remarked, recalling the scene when the boys had fun annoying the dogs.

‘But, you know, I don’t understand, you know, the chickens?’ Dan seemed to have become quite absorbed.

‘Well…’ Bing laughed aloud.

Dan went on, ‘It is so quick, like nothing happened.’

Bing let out from his belly a wave of laughter, ‘Haha… how would you know?’

‘Of course I don’t know, I am not a chicken…’

Their mirth, initiated from cattle’s love-making, continued in their brisk steps until they reached the high waist of the hill, where they were able to pick some fruits.

On the top of a thicket beside the road, he was attracted to a cloud of blue morning-glories - Flower of Qian Niu (Leading Cow) so called in Chinese. The flowers were just so beautiful, each of them was like a butterfly perching upon a filament, and its petals, having the shape of a trumpet and moving in the wind, were so fresh and soft and tender. He was tempted to pick one of them, but Dan who was now some distance in his front, was hurrying him.

So he hurried, and on the way, spotted a type of fruit tree, as did his cousin. They both approached it. The fruit, so called Danglian, looked like a miniature gourd, and was most common in the village. Its head was adorned with a ring of sepals, its dark skin velvety. Bing noticed some dry ones on the treetop, which he shoved aside, and at once found a number of round and fleshy fruits under the cover. He picked one and checked with his fingers the quality of its skin, to make sure it was smooth and round and fatty, without any scars or wrinkles, before throwing it into his mouth. Bing had had some bad experience of biting into worms. So he had learnt to be careful.

It tasted very sweet. Its flesh had a colour between black and purple, with tiny seeds the size of a quarter of grain. It didn’t take long before their mouth and teeth were stained ghastly black.

On the hill, there were also many clutches of blooming azalea flowers, which was known as the Flower of Goat Horn in the countryside. Bing never knew why it was called such a name, because the flower, neither in its shape nor its colour, had any resemblance to the horn of goat. Bing picked one of them, removing its green sepals and stigma and pistil, and started chewing the soft petals. The villagers didn’t normally eat the azalea flower, though they knew of its edibility. With a mild sweetness, it didn’t taste much, but it could help clear up their blackened teeth.

After some delay, they hurried back to pursue their core business. They needed to go around to the other side of hill and into the thicker woods for the pines they were after.  

Speedily they advanced uphill, and a sheen of sweat began to appear on their foreheads. At the peak of the hill, they sat on the grass panting. Then an elder villager, called Qiang, was coming from the road towards them.  He was carrying a bag of bamboo shoots, heading home. Bing asked to inspect his harvest.

‘Hao, hao, hao,’ he said, and putting down the sack from his shoulder, he opened it to reveal the bamboo shoots. Bing took one out, feeling the cool and full cone in his palm.

‘So big,’ Bing admired.

‘Take some,’ Qiang invited him.

‘No, I have to cut the tree first.’

‘Then come to my house, take it on your way home,’ Qiang said, as if impatient to share his success.

‘Hao, hao, thank you, Grandpa Qiang,’ Bing nodded, put it back into the sack. Though the bamboo shoot was delicious, one couldn’t eat too many of them, especially when pig-oil was not enough to cook together with it. Otherwise, it would cause severe constipation.      

Saying bye to Qiang, they went deeper into the forest, where they located a number of suitable pine trees downhill.

‘Let’s get down there, there are trees we can cut,’ Dan said.

‘It is very steep,’ Bing was concerned, ‘it will be difficult to carry them up to the road.’

‘No problem, we can carry them together, let’s get down,’ Dan said, but he didn’t move. He seemed to wait for Bing to take the first step.

Never mind, Bing thought to himself, he was older than Dan.

So Bing tested and slid his feet into the slope, descending. The thicket was thick and messy; the ferns and some prickly plants were up to their shoulders. Carefully, he was managing each step, lest he tumble down the hill or be scratched by the thorns. One of his hands must grab anything solid enough for support, such as tree trunks or shrub stems, while the other brandished the chopper to clear his way.

Then Bing saw a pine tree of a good size and asked Dan to take it, as he himself went further down to another, slightly bigger.

The cutting began. The echo was remarkable. For every thumping caused by the chopper, there was a delayed and lingering response coming back, as if there were other people at the far side of forest, mimicking their actions.   

The bigger the tree, the bigger the initial opening was needed, because the cut would be narrowing in the progress, leaving no space for further penetration if it didn’t begin wide enough. As soon as the tough barks were chipped away, the sap was seeping out and trickling down, exposing the kernel fresh and livid like the bones of a wounded animal.

Soon, he became sweaty and thirsty.

‘Dan, there must be a spring at the foot of the hill?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Let’s go to have a look.’

On the way down, they picked another type of fruits. Round, hard-cored, thrice as big as a grain, they were supposed to be taken in a mouthful. It was still sweet enough, but they had to spit out their kernels after sucking the juice.

Then a wasp was droning over and landed on a leaf just a metre away, scaring him so much that he halted with a great effort in resisting the downhill inertia to stare at the dreadful creature. Its yellow and black striped rump was squirming, it stinger rapidly pushing as if to sting the leaf. Bing, stunned as much like petrified, felt his hair roots stirring and tingling. It was well known that the wasp was very venomous, far worse than the bees. One single sting in one’s hand or head would soon balloon them to a dangerous size.

Lucky, the wasp didn’t attack him, nor did it stay there long. In a little while, they had reached the very bottom of the hill. The area was wet like marsh, but they didn’t see any obvious stream. So they went upwards, and encouragingly, the trace of water seemed to be more apparent, guiding them finally to a small pool laying like a shallow basin. From the jutting cliff above, the water was dripping to it, producing on its surface the rippling rings, as well as a sound so clear and pleasing. The water was clear too, but inside it something was moving, constantly darting about. Bing knew it was a type of insect often found in spring water.

Dan stepped forward, squatted down, and hasted to scoop the water to his lips. At once, the water turned murky. They had to wait for it to come clear again.

‘We’d better use the leaves,’ Bing said, ‘hands are too big for the pool.’

They went and returned, each with a sizable leave that was later folded as a spoon for drinking. And strange, the water level was barely changed even if they thought they had drunk a lot.

----to next post ---

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-4 12:16
Chapter 12    1/3

Chapter 12    2/3

After the drink, they went back to resume their work. Dan’s tree was soon brought down, while Bing needed a little more effort. Only a little remaining in the cut, Bing was pushing and shaking it with his hands. He heard the breaking of the last linkage, but it refused to fall. So, with the chopper, he flung a few more forceful strokes into the gash until the tree finally surrendered. Its bone was broken, its glorious stance was collapsing.

Watching it fall, hearing the dying sound uttered by its swishing leaves, he sensed a strange power surging in his chest. Indeed, he had conquered a tree, had made a living thing yield to him. He had killed a form of life, which, just a little while earlier, seemed so high, so strong, so indomitable.

Then straightway he set to cut and trim the branches along the trunk, estimating the length he had to carry, and chopping off the smaller end of it, he declared the job complete. Dan’s tree, though smaller, had more branches, which had taken him a little longer to finish.  

Next, facing them was even a bigger task: move the two trunks uphill to the track so that they could be carried home.

It was a steep slope; they couldn’t possibly use their shoulders to carry the trunks as they could in flat area. They had to hurl it by both ends, bit by bit, which was exactly what they did. Dan, above, was pulling the trunk, while Bing, below, was pushing it up.

They tried to coordinate their efforts, which proved to be hard to achieve. Most of time their energy was wasted. And worse, the trunk would often slip back, invalidating the series of little successes they had made before. They were like two ants, trying to move an insect much bigger than themselves, and also like ants, they persisted in their efforts, hitching up their legs and backs and necks.

Sweating and tired, with his hands badly scratched, and also very hungry, Bing exhaled a long breath to feel a big victory when they had successfully brought Dan’s log up to the road.

They then returned to handle his log, which was slightly bigger and heavier. Bing thought they had gained a bit of experience by doing the first. But he was wrong, their little experience had proved to have little effect, especially when their energy was fast flagging.   

They had been kicking hard, struggling with all their strength for what seemed to be hours against the trunk, but they only dragged it half a distance to the destination.

They sat there, depressed, and exhausted.

Then suddenly, in a kind of impotent desperation, Bing found himself shouting at Dan, ‘Get up, we can’t just sit here.’

Startled by Bing’s abrupt outburst, Dan stood up, but didn’t say a word as if he had lost the force to utter it.  

Bit by bit, they continued to push the log upwards. Then, to Bing’s exacerbation,  Dan lost his grip, the log slid off, driving Bing a few steps downhill. Bing scrambled to steady himself, and as soon as he was able to sit still, he started cursing, ‘You, idiot, stupid! How could you drop it like that?!’

‘Too heavy,’ Dan murmured sheepishly at Bing’s fury.

‘It was you who chose this terrible place,’ he bellowed. ‘Now, get up! Move your ass!’

Fairly disgruntled, Dan raised himself up and began to pull again, but the progress was as little as their remaining energy. All the time, the log might edge up a bit, then slip down even more. Utterly frustrated, they stopped and slumped to the earth, panting. Then Bing took his breath, renewing the round of cursing and blaming, and exercised no constraint of his bitter vehemence. Finally, Dan, as if had had enough, blurted out, ‘I’m going, I’m going home.’ He began to move upwards by himself.

Now Bing’s rage was leaping boundless. All the dirty words he had learnt thus far in his life were rushing out of his teeth. ‘Dead pig’, ‘lazy dog’, ‘son of a dog’, ‘go to hell’, ‘go and die’, ‘stupid pig’, and anything else that sounded malicious enough to unleash his wrath. Teeth gritted, eyes reddened, his passionate frustration was mounting to a level of a monster about to destroy the world. He plucked the grass, banged on the earth, kicked the log, then as if still not enough, picked the chopper, threw it far down the hill, and howled like a wolf.

Dan, at this time, was already sitting on the edge of the road, watching Bing’s total loss of control and his fervent emotions exhibited in such a frantic manner, probably for the first time in their years of companionship. His usual indifferent and gloating disposition under similar circumstances was replaced markedly with a sincere compassion. Bing, through his tearful eyes, saw the traces of genuine concern and worry and sympathy in his cousin’s face, which strangely, affected him, and helped him quieten down.

Then without a word, Dan came down to sit on the other end of the trunk in silence, by which time Bing had stopped his tears and entered into a lethargic state of mind after the outburst.

They stayed like this for several minutes before Bing directed a furtive glance to his cousin, catching his secretive, amused smile stifling at the corner of his mouth.

Then in spite of himself, Bing put on his own version of shallow smile, which immediately triggered a wave of laughter from Dan, as if he had saved much of his fun for its release only at this moment.

Bing couldn’t help but laugh, bitterly.

At length, Bing sighed the deepest sigh of his life, as their capricious merriment succumbed to the mess of reality. ‘Hai...how could we handle this?’

Dan scrubbed his head, ‘We give this one up, and cut a new one somewhere else?’

It might be a sensible idea, but Bing, who could be very obstinate in will and mind, said, ‘No, that would be even more trouble.’ And, feeling his rattling stomach, he added, ‘we are so hungry, can’t start the job all over again. We have to push this up, I guess the trouble we had had before was that we rarely acted together.’

He stood up, more determined that he could have imagined. ‘Let us try again.’

When they were both in the position, Bing said, ‘I’ll count, 1, 2, 3, we exert our force accordingly.’

The result was inspiring. Each movement was more resolute towards their target, and after each shifting progress, Bing set to stop it from sliding back with both his hands and knees, before advancing for the next push.  

When the trunk was at last lifted up to the road, Bing wondered how it could have been done so easily this time, considering just a while ago the task seemed to have so diabolically intimidated him.

Then Bing went down to search his chopper he had thrown away. With Dan’s help, it didn’t take long.

Back on the road, Bing lifted the log somewhere in the middle to find its balance, then used the chopper to chafe and smooth out the rough surface as the carrying point. That done, he flung a forceful stroke with the chopper so as to attach it to the end of the log.

Carrying the log downhill was never easy, though one might not feel its hardship at the beginning. His knees, bearing the combined weight of his body and the wood, would after some distance grow weak and trembling. He felt it very difficult to halt his steps once he had started moving, because the inertia of the descending mass would push him forward in a somewhat automatic manner, causing a tormenting moment if he desired to stop to change the shoulder for the pressure, which happened almost every minute. To resist the inertia, he had to strain hard his feet, slowing himself down to achieve a full stop, then slowly rotated the log across the nape of his neck, until the weight was safely shifted over. The rotation was scraping the skin, invariably causing bad bruise. Of course, you could use a towel as insulation to help buffer the friction, but it was very inconvenient, and the towel would drop off easily during the journey. Alternatively, to prevent the painful rotation, you could also lay the log on the ground first to perform the swapping, but the back bending and unbending would become its inevitable toll, unless you wanted to take a longer rest, which would not only prolong the journey but also sharpen the shoulder pain after taking the break. At any rate, getting yourself accustomed to the excruciating process was the only way out. In the village, many people had the flesh and bone around their shoulder considerably thickened, unnaturally developed and heavily muscled, especially at the lower part of nape, which might thrust out a lump as big as a goose egg. Compared to them, and even to Dan, Bing’s pain was small, only occasional, and not even unenjoyable.  

Nevertheless, Bing was not an inexperienced boy in dealing with shoulder-carrying. Even in his earlier years, he had begun to carry the water home from the stream in the village. The bucket was very special, not made of wood but three separate bamboo trunks bundled together. His mum told him that this carrying device was left behind by an urbane youth from Mianyang, who had come to be ‘educated’ in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, by the ‘Up to the Mountain and Down to the Village’ policy of Chairman Mao. Bing had, while carrying the water with the bamboo pole, once tripped and fallen to the ground, as his mother recalled later, and that his lips had finished up red and purple. Nowadays, the bamboo bucket was too small for him and he would shoulder the normal wooden buckets used by adults, carrying half to three quarters of its capacity, depending on his level of strength.

They arrived home in mid-afternoon, much later than they had estimated, due to the drama on the hill. His grandma came swiftly to check his shoulder, ‘Aiya-hah, red and blue,’ she said.

But she, and later his mum, listened with a great deal of amusement, blended with no less amount of pity, when Dan told them of Bing’s incidental outburst. Bing had actually thought of asking Dan to hold his tongue, but knowing his character as he was, he didn’t bother. It was impossible to shut up Dan’s mouth for this type of gossip.

--- to next post ---

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-4 12:19
Chapter 12    2/3

Chapter 12    3/3



One week later, in the morning, he experienced his first ejaculation.

Alone in the kitchen, he was then sitting on the bench, to keep up the flame in the stove, as his mum had asked him to do. The wok was cooking a large amount of pig-food, comprised of vegetables or some special grasses or even weeds for the pigs, and the rice soup, which was a leftover after the solid rice had been exacted and stored away for family’s consumption.

Bing sat there, now and again turning to grasp strands of fire-grass, poking them into the stove. The fire was crackling, the place cosy and warm. Within time, he felt the heat reaching to penetrate his chest and stir about his bowel. Through his body, a vague flow, a subtle stream was circulating.

Then he felt his thing start moving, and before he was conscious of what was happening, it grew hard and stiff. It had happened before, but most of the time it was during sleep when he was unaware of its activity.

This morning it was different, so live and acute. Something fresh and primitive, outside his sense and reason, but definitely within his flesh and blood, was inciting and teasing a desire.

With one hand he covered it and pressed its rigidity. It sprang. Then, possessed and controlled by a power foreign to him, he put his hand inside his pants.

He lowered his pants, and fought it with his limbs. The image of cattle mating was emerging to his mind.

It surged and burst, far far away. The force and the tremor stunned him, blinding him for a long eternity.

One week later, his grandpa died.

When he was carried down from his bed to the living room, he was still breathing. His uncle and aunt, who had first noticed his groaning when passing his bedroom, held his arms and legs respectively. Bing followed them down the staircase.

His grandma quickly constructed a convenient bed, by two wooden stools, a wooden board, a square straw pillow and a straw mat. The bed was actually in the same corner as the dog-hole.

His grandpa was a solitary figure in Bing’s mind. He couldn’t remember a time when his grandpa was sitting together around a table with the rest of the bigger family. He lived alone with his first wife. He spent more than half of each month away from home, buying things to fill his stall. On the market days, he went there to sell his little commodities, and occasionally he might ask Bing to carry things for him, or to help prevent the potential thieves from pinching his goods.

At home, his grandpa was forever grumbling, about anything that came his way; he had never been agreeable with his two sons and his two wives. In Bing’s eyes he had never smiled, therefore, Bing had no way of imagining what his face would be like if only he did so. To Bing, he was more like an old dog, straying and wandering in a shadowy society, calculating his little earnings of commerce and, to him, the home was just a temporary burrow.

But unlike a domestic dog, he presented no tendency of affection towards any soul in the household.

Was he like a homeless lone wolf? Maybe!

Or a tiger, at least once, as Bing had ever seen.

The fight was between his grandpa and the next-door neighbour. The dispute had started over the boundary of the two houses. He was building something against the line, which was regarded by the neighbour as a type of intrusion, a stretch beyond the measurement. The argument was rapidly heating up. Then, all of the sudden, without any prelude of warning or threatening words, his grandpa went into the house, grabbed a hoe and went straight to attack the wall corner of the neighbour’s house. His violent strokes dug deep into the soil-stacked construction. At least four strikes of damage had already been done before the neighbour, a much younger, middle-aged man, took his own hoe, evoking the similar damage for retaliation. The horrible escalation was eventually stopped by a crowd of villagers who had rushed over after hearing the fight.

Bing, witnessing, was dumbfounded. His grandpa’s extreme fury and the fearless nerve, as exhibited in the incident, were imprinted deeply into Bing’s brain, earning in him an enormous respect for the old man. However, whenever his grandpa,  as one of his eccentricities, walked by self-muttering, with his thick under lip thrusting out so damp as if dribbling and his index finger pointing to the ground as if money-counting, Bing found it difficult to reconcile his reclusive figure to that impression of a fully ruffled tiger.

How could such a man turn all at once so violent, not fearing danger or even potential death?   

His grandpa was born without seeing his father, Bing’s great-grandfather, who was rumoured to have been killed by someone and somewhere not even his wife had ever known about. The cause of his father’s death was said to relate to opium addiction, which was all Bing’s grandma had once told him. Years of hardship, lack of paternal and fraternal affection might have shaped his cold and harsh personality, when self-reliance and self-defence had become a necessity for survival in the crude society.

Regardless of how eccentric and affectionless his wives and offspring had perceived him to be, he had built the house to shelter the big family, by his own bare hands and means. He bought and sold fireworks, fishing hooks and lines, cotton threads for socks and sweaters, and scissors, and many things that the village was not able to produce.

And, as least sweet as he could be, he had always a lot of coins and notes, and he always gave his grandchildren handsome gifts of money at Spring Festivals, even if on these occasions his criticizing and scolding were also more severe than ever. It was as if his reprimand was the price his beneficiary had to pay for his generosity.

When he was in a better mood, or in other words in one not as bad as usual, he might share some of his food with his grandchildren. He would call them over, handing a bowl of soup to their humble hands, muttering and reproaching. The soup was very often something special, like birds, squirrels, or even pangolin, the scary ant eater. Snake was also on the list, though not as frequent as others.

When basic necessities became scarce, people were becoming practical. So long as Bing turned a deaf ear to what his grandpa said, a blind sight to how his grandpa composed his face, many benefits would come to his way. Fishing lines and hooks were just a few such examples that Bing and Dan could manage to store up for their own use or give to some good friends as the gifts.

And, ah, the fireworks, how exciting! They stole them and fired them up without the old man’s knowledge. And when Bing had a chance to help his grandpa’s business in the market, he could always save some coins and notes for himself from the customers’ payments. His grandpa might have known, or suspected, or might not, but he had never ever searched the pockets of his grandchildren.

He was seventy-five, and had been unwell for a couple of weeks. He was a very independent person, having looked after himself remarkably well in all his life. Only a few days prior to his death, he was seen in the market still doing his business. His wives and offspring were not, at least from their demeanours, demonstrating any filial intimacy or affection due for him. Therefore, when in the morning he was heard by his daughter-in-law moaning miserably in his bedroom, he must have already battled to the last minute of his life.  

After laying him on the bed, Bing’s uncle went quickly to call the doctor, and also to inform his father. His uncle had to walk to the town, because he didn’t have a bicycle. Only his father had a bicycle.

Bing and his aunt and his grandma stood beside the bed, looking at him. He was still breathing, more like at repose. Once or twice his closed eyelids were observed to flicker. His parted lips, as pale and bloodless as the other features on his face, were puffing weakly. He didn’t seem to make any perceptible effort to maintain whatever life was left in him. He was unconscious, oblivious to the worried calls of his grandma who had been thinking to give him a cup of water to wake him up.

He lay peacefully, ashen-faced like that for some time. Then a change began to happen about his face. There seemed a flush going over it, very fresh and healthily looking, not in the least like the dark-purple expression often seen in sick patients. He was even moving his body a little to one side, like to snuggle into a comfortable position.

‘He looks better,’ said his aunt. ‘Let him rest until the doctor comes.’

Three of them were about to leave him, when a sigh, not big but distinctly audible, was released from his gaping mouth. The beautiful colour, seen only a minute earlier, was slowly but resolutely fading from his face, until it sank to a pallor.

Something bad must have taken place, but Bing was not sure what it was. He was too puzzled to notice the loss of airflow between the still gaping lips.

His grandma and his aunt began to cry, while he was numb and confused, incredulous.   

Half an hour later, the doctor came, together with his uncle and his father. The doctor opened his grandpa’s eyes and checked for a second or two, then shook his head. He went out, said something to his father, and left.

Bing didn’t feel much a grievance or tangible loss from his grandpa’s decease. But he cried a lot, and aloud, together with other mourners, during the mourning days when he wore the special garment made of straw. To him, the coffin looked too big for his grandpa’s body. And the dark, purple colour of its surface was spelling all the terrible and frightful things in his world.

But he was not alone, all the important people, his sister, mother, grandma, father, and cousin and others, coming in and going out, were around with him. The coffin was but a temporary thing that by his crying might soon vanish, together with all the ugly grieving symbols and items strewing the whole house.

By contrast, Dan was not seen crying at all. He was only musing, moderated somewhat from his usual easy manner. When Bing saw him, he could even detect a trace of curiosity in Dan’s eyes as if he was asking him why he had to cry so ostentatiously. But Bing cried his necessary tears just the same.

It was not until his mother came to console him and asked him to calm down did he realize crying a little should be enough.




--- End of Chapter 12 ---

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-4 12:21
Chapter 12    3/3

Chapter 13        1/2




Sangton First High School was believed to be the best in Sangton County, Mianyang District. Only eight of Bing’s classmates, Kai and himself included, had scored above the enrolment mark. Among the rest, some would stay in the same school to finish their high school education, where the chance of entering a university was rather slim if not zero, and others would simply quit school due to the lack of support from their parents who needed extra labour in the field.

In the high school, Kai and Bing were not in the same class. Kai was better at math, physics and other science subjects, so he was in the Science class, whereas Bing, whose Chinese and English were better, was allocated to the Art class. Therefore apart from sharing the same trip home during holidays, they seldom met each other on the campus. Compared to their middle school, the campus was indeed a significant upgrade in terms of facility. The dining hall was three times bigger, and a lot more buildings were built for classroom and dormitory. Located about four kilometres from the county town centre, the school had a wide and solid road suitable to cars and tractors, which was established through an area of crop fields and also over a river in its way to the urban district.

More bicycles were running about, as more teachers and students could afford the most modern means of personal transportation of the time. Bing was mostly impressed with some female bicycle-riding students who, in their clean, patch-less clothes or even in the more fashionable skirts, looked so stately and elegant. And the school bag, nice and colourful, clutched on the bicycle’s rear rack, was suggesting anything but soil.  

However, his first impression was soon dimmed by the load of study, by the monotonous routine of a student’s life. There were fifty plus students in his class, but Bing was the only one from his town. The non-study activities were limited, and new friendship could hardly be nurtured. The students were no more intimate than merely sitting in the same room, listening to the same teacher, rushing to the same kitchen for their ceramic rice bowl. The sort of fun Bing had experienced with Kai and Xing in the middle school was nowhere to be found. And unlike his middle school, where all the students had shared a similar poor background, here a better social class, whose parents were non-farmers such as workers in the factory or position holders in the government, seemed to be formed and illustrated by better clothes and shoes, by the special County accent, by the dainty bicycles. Although the difference had rarely resulted in a kind of superficial discrimination among the students, the society was divided and Bing had a vague feeling of being placed at the lower rank of the social order. But the perception was again banished by the overwhelming amount of study before it could cast any shade on his adolescent life. Because, no matter where they came from and however different their parents were in terms of social status and wealth, going to the university was the ultimate purpose of all the students.  

Bing, like in middle school, was not among the top performers. In most subjects, he was just slightly better than average, except English, for which he could confidently say he was within the top five. His math was never good enough, but he was once praised by the math teacher regarding an assignment. The teacher mentioned in the class that his logic was strong, that in his solution, the cause and the result were clearly stated by the strict pair of using ‘because’ and ‘so’ up to the very end of the problem-solving process. He was even asked by the teacher to re-write his way of expression on the blackboard in front of the class.

In the period he often did masturbation, with shame and flame, to release his youthful pressure. This was especially desired after he had awakened from a belief that had wet his pants during sleep, which, for an unspeakable reason, would tempt him to do it once more. However, after hearing and also reading a little from some books that doing this too often would harm his body and impair his growth, he was scared enough to reduce its frequency. So, later in his years, he had chiefly let the body run its own course without the deliberate intervention from the lustful part of his mind.

Sometimes in the class, while listening to the teacher, he would lapse into a reverie. His dreams were invariably about a Kong-Fu type of hero, which was himself. He would fly through the air of the campus, go back to his village, search over the hills and race the swallows, and then, instantly come back to the classroom, showing off by flexing his muscles as if to conquer something very big and powerful, to receive the admiration and applause from his classmates. And other times when his mind was not on the lesson, he would doodle, on the piece of paper, always two slogans, ‘Long live Mao Tse-tung’s thoughts’ and ‘Long live the victory of great cultural revolution’. He guessed he must have made this habit during his primary school, when he had to write them hundreds if not thousands of times.

He had a mild admiration for a girl in his class. Coming from the town of the County instead of a village like him, she was supposed to belong to a higher ‘social class’. He never talked to her or sat together with her at the same desk, but just the same he was fairly conscious of her existence all the time in the classroom, and just the same, it was a kind of secret a youth had to embrace in his own chest throughout all those years. Because like in his middle school, the communication between two genders was still rare, almost nonexistent.

When there was a need for the bits of his sentimental or emotional discharge, he would take a walk on the hill behind the school. It was a nice little resort, a refuge for the students whose body and soul had been fettered by the homework. Sauntering late in the evening on the hill was an experience of peace and ease, when most of the students were in the classroom engaged in their fierce battle for university entry.

Sometimes when he was alone on the top of the hill and felt safe enough from being heard, he would sing a song. The song was always ‘Ah! Great sea, my hometown.’ He had never seen the sea, but he didn’t think it was the sea itself that had affected him with such a feeling. More likely, he just missed his home, his grandma and sister and parents. But even that he was not sure, for why he should sing about the sea to miss a village with only hills and fields?

But still, his ‘Great sea’ singing was such a vehement moment to him that his eyes seemed to gather some moisture and his body seemed to undergo a sort of liberation, like a bird poised with its wings spreading at their widest. And, overlooking the well-lit classroom from the top of the hill, he had the same expansive vision as when he had been on the top of the hill in his village, looking down at all the tiny people working hard in the fields.

But a girl in his class, one day approached him. Smilingly she told him that she had heard his singing on the hill. Surprised as he was, he didn’t feel as much embarrassed as he could have imagined. Only smiling an uncertain smile, he walked away from her. Since then he sang no more. Yet once or twice, he seemed to have caught her eyes for him, curious and comprehensive, as if missing or wondering about his singing.   

The first term was soon flying past. Bing and Kai took the bus home together for the summer holiday. The road home was winding the waists of many hills. Without cement as the foundation, it was very bumpy with numerous dips and pits and gravels. It seemed to him the precarious bus would run off the track or stumble over at any moment.   

‘The holidays are finally here, we will have some fun,’ Kai said joyously.

‘What do you have in mind?’ Bing asked, in a capital spirit.

‘Well, work in the field mainly, but a lot of fruit in the hills you can pick. And there are plenty of “bull-testicles”.’

The fruit that Kai referred to had the shape and also the size of a bull’s testicle. It had some small black seeds like watermelon, but the yellow slimy flesh tasted immensely sweet.  

‘Really? I could find only a few in my village,’ Bing recalled, wistfully.

‘I will bring some for you when we go back to school.’

‘How about waxberry?’ Bing asked timely as the sour-sweet fruit crossed his mind, and instantly his saliva began to swell.

‘No, that is only for winter,’ Kai corrected.

‘Oh, you are right. We have to wait for another term.’

‘Maybe you could come with me to my house, stay for the night?’ Bing suggested, ‘You can go home tomorrow morning, so you don’t have to rush.’

Kai’s village was almost double the distance of Bing’s from the market place. It would be very late in the evening when he got home. ‘Not this time, I want to go home first. I will join you when we return to school.’

‘Okay, then.’

Two hours later, they got off the bus with their empty bags and things, heading to their respective villages.

As always, the holiday would be a busy period for Bing to help as much he could with the field labour. His mother told him last time that his father had already left the Town to work as a fulltime farmer at home. It was indeed a bad news for the family to lose a steady income, as well as the privilege they had enjoyed for so many years. But his father was not a formal employee in the Council that could secure him with an iron-rice-bowl, even if he had worked in the radio station for more than ten years. Should he have tried hard enough to build a good guanxi with the leaders, he could have long before upgraded his employment to be non-farmer status. But he seemed to have held too much pride with himself to flatter the cadre or ingratiate himself in the workplace. So as a result of a heated quarrel between him and the newly-appointed mayor, he was laid out to go home, becoming a victim in a system predominately driven by favouritism.

When Bing arrived home, it was late afternoon.

‘Dad,’ Bing called, with a delight, as soon as he saw him coming out of the room.

‘Ehm, you come back,’ his dad said shortly, smiling mildly.  

His dad, though still in his usual white shirt and blue trousers, impressed him very differently from what had been in his mind, but he couldn’t figure out for the moment what it was.      

Bing went straight into the living room and put his little things onto the floor. His dad followed him in, took a seat himself and began to pour a glass of water from the kettle. ‘You came back together with Kai?’

‘Yes.’

‘You should have asked him over to stay for the night,’ said his father, placing the glass onto the dinner table. ‘Drink some water, you must be thirsty.’

Bing took the glass, feeling its warmth, emptying it with one gulp. ‘I did invite him, but he couldn’t wait to go home,’ and sitting down, he added, ‘he said he would come here when we go back to school.’

His father said no more, refilling the empty glass for him. His hands and face were darker than before, and his demeanour was unusually patient and gentle. Bing didn’t remember his father ever preparing a drink for him like this. And watching him now more closely, the expression on his father’s face touched him afresh. Yes, he was more attentive, affectionate, and even humble, as if having shrunk a bit from his former stature. In Bing’s memory, his father had been supercilious and patronising; the small amount of soil and toil in the field he had infrequently done had scarcely impacted his stance and personality. In the household, an invisible wall seemed to always exist between him and the rest of family. To some extent, he was not unlike his own father, who had assumed a life almost isolated from other family members.

‘Drink more water,’ his father said, interrupting his thought. At the age of fifteen, Bing found himself suddenly capable of observing certain things in the family context.  

‘Where is mum, grandma, and Ming?’ Bing asked, in a subtle effort to avert his father’s quiet attention. For some reason, he was somewhat uncomfortable with the intimacy his father had displayed.

‘Your mum is watering the vegetables. Grandma and Ming are around the corner, looking after the ducks. They have been waiting for you since early morning, only left minutes ago.’

‘Oh,’ Bing said, standing up. ‘I go out to them.’

But no sooner had his feet left the doorstep than, Ming, now thirteen, was rustling to him excitedly, like a swallow locating a source of food.

‘Ge, you came back so late,’ she said, her eyes flaring wide.

Bing was about to say something to her, but ‘Aiya-hah, only come back now’ came to him as an intervention.  

‘Grandma,’ Bing turned, his steps swift towards her, ‘Grandma.’

He held her two old and roughened hands for a while, before she withdrew one to pat his arm. ‘Aiya-hah, you are so tall, and thin.’

‘Grandma, see, I am much taller than you,’ Bing said, holding her to his side so that her head could reach his shoulder. ‘It is you growing shorter, hehe.’

‘I am old, old bone, of course, growing shorter,’ she said, now with both of her hands patting his arms as if there was much dirt on him she had to dust off. In his memory, dusting off something in his pants or shirts were her invariable gesture whenever he came back to her from any of his worldly adventures. Perhaps, in her wrinkled, often bleared eyes Bing was forever a dirty and troublesome boy. But, similarly, in Bing’s mind, in his childish and boyish and now adolescent eyes, she always affected him with the same impression. She was the same when she bent to fetch the water to water the plants with a long bamboo dipper, while carrying on her back his baby sister Ming. She was the same when she was peeling the taros with her remarkable skills and deft movements. She was the same when she was stitching the socks and pants and shirts and every piece of garment of which usage could be stretched some days longer. She was the same when she was murmuring to herself for the headache or the toothache she had often suffered from. She was the same when she was sobbing quietly over the death of her odd, eccentric husband. She was the same when she watched him eating the precious bun, or the meat-balls, or the oranges, or anything she believed to have a good taste but that she herself didn’t partake.

The growing number of silver hairs on her head or the wrinkles in her sunken face indeed made no difference in his eyes.  

As told by his mother on a number of occasions, he knew his grandma had had a husband before she married his grandpa. In her first marriage, she had bred four children, who, one after another, had all been stolen and sold to somewhere nobody seemed to know. Her first husband was believed to be an outlawed bandit, a condemned robber, who only sneaked home at nights or on special occasions such as Chinese festivals, giving her little money to support the family. But she, alone, couldn’t feed and protect her children, no matter how hard she had laboured in the fields. She was a beautiful woman, constantly harassed by some bad men who meant to take advantage of her husband’s absence.

His grandpa made her acquaintance when he was peddling at her village, somewhere in the outskirts of Mianyang, at which time her husband was rumoured to have already been killed and had not come back home for years ever since the rumour began. So perhaps attracted by her beauty, his grandpa married her as his concubine and brought her to the Ancient Village.

‘Aiya-hah, you go play with Ming, I go help cooking,’ his grandma released him and went into the kitchen. He has just come home from the best high school in the County; Something good must be for the dinner.



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洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-5 20:45
Chapter 13        1/2

Chapter 13      2/2



His sister, her dark hair drawn back into a ponytail, was as if grown into a big girlish figure overnight. With great admiration in her eyes, she kept on asking this and that about his school.

‘How many students in your class?’  

‘About fifty?’ he answered, uncertainly.  

‘What, you don’t even know yourself?’

‘Well, not exactly, but the count was similar in all classes.’ Bing explained in a light tone, a little amazed by her keen eyes, thick eyebrows, and glowing cheeks. She was a beautiful girl, admitted Bing, for the first time with a realization. Should she wear a set of nicer clothes or even skirts, like how those County-girls had dressed themselves, she would be even better looking.

‘Ge, I want to take the test, try to go to the same school as yours,’ she said.

‘Study harder, you must.’

‘But you must help me with my work.’

‘Of course, I will help you,’ Bing challenged. ‘So long as you are not as slow as Dan.’

‘How can you compare me to him? I do much better than him. He is about the bottom in the class; I am at least in the first ten,’ she protested, puckering her lips.

‘Well, let’s see what we can do,’ Bing promised, the first time in a sort of commitment to do something he could be proud of for his sister.

There seemed endless things to talk about between the pair. In a while, his mother came home, her shoulder carrying two big buckets by a bamboo pole. Bing turned to her and called, ‘Mum,’ and she replied, ‘Ai, come back. So late.’ And then smiling, she put away the buckets in the corner and went into the kitchen. Unlike others who had not seem him for almost half year and had to welcome him very much like a fresh person, his mother saw him every month as she went to the County delivering him the rice and money.

Ming and Bing continued to laugh and brag, until Dan, who had just come back from tree-cutting, joined them. From then on, their topics were naturally changed from the study to things like loach catching, fishing, fruits picking, among many things Bing had to miss because of study.

The two families had dinner together, as well as another grandma – his grandpa’s first wife, who usually ate alone. His dad and his uncle were drinking the rice-wine. The main dish was a duck, the best cooking of his dad, with ginger and spring onions. Its entrails, after cleaned, were cooked separately with tofu as a soup. Plus a dish of cabbage, another of taro, a plate of fried peanuts, the dinner table was laid with the best assortment Bing had not seen for many months.   

His father kept calling him to take more duck: ‘There is not much you can eat at school, eat more.’ But he didn’t pick it out for him, it was his mother and his grandma who continuously picked the duck pieces and put them into his bowl. They also picked some for his sister, but she always put it back to the plate, as if the food was prepared solely for his honour.

Feeling somewhat embarrassed, Bing managed to pick one or two pieces from his bowl for Ming and his grandmas. But again they were returned to the dish. All of them must have thought Bing had been starving in the school. But Bing was not. He had had enough rice to fill his bowl, to be cooked in the massive steam-frames like those of the middle school. And through the windows like those of a store, the school sold a range of vegetables and other farm produce such as beans, taros, melons etc. But they were correct in believing that Bing had never eaten any duck at the school. There was some pork for a price double to that of the vegetables. He would buy a share of that once a week. Sometimes, he would go outside the school to buy from the private shop a bowl of tofu soup, which, apart from one piece of fried tofu and one or two visible stalks of spring onion, had no other edible substance. But it still tasted good enough with some salt, as well as some streaks of pig-oil floating on its surface. After all, it was soup, not pure water as it might look like, and more important, it was affordable, one cup for only one Jiao.

His uncle said: ‘Bing, get a glass of the rice-wine. You are grown up.’

Bing couldn’t remember when he last time drank the special liquor made from fermented rice, but he knew it was sweet, and at the moment really wished to have a taste. Yet before he said anything, his mum had already got up and held the flagon that had been standing on the table very much like a proud rooster, and began to pour it for him. With a colour of light yellow and steaming hot, the flow had never failed to heighten the spirits around the table in his memory.

‘Dan, you drink some as well,’ Bing said, noticing Dan quietly focusing on his rice bowl.

‘Well, everyone drink a bit,’ his dad said, merrily.

So, it ended up a total eight glasses on the table, turning the dinner into a family banquet. The food, except the duck and its soup, seemed to go quickly with a liberated appetite.

‘Bing, study hard, and get to university,’ his uncle toasted, ‘you are the first prospect for many years in our village. Dan is out of the question.’ He threw a quick glance to his son, who, on this type of study conversation, always buried his head into his chest.

The glasses clanged, but before the two took their drinking, his dad joined in, ‘Yes, Bing, study hard, I know you will.’

Bing drank it all, heartily. ‘Hehe, I will try my best.’

It was indeed a memorable dinner. His father and his uncle stayed at the table long after others had gone to bed. They discussed about what kind of business could make money. Bing didn’t capture the specifics of their conversation, for he was very tired, falling asleep within minutes after going to bed.

The summer holiday was in the time for crop harvesting. The ripened rice couldn’t be left in the field too long, otherwise it would turn bad or start sprouting. Therefore, during the season, all hands, including children’s, were needed to help in one way or another. When he was younger, Bing used to pass the crop bunch to the adults who operated the threshing machine, to save them from bending their backs all the time.

This time Bing decided to do the threshing like an adult. The two families worked together in the fields. He and Dan worked as a pair, pedalling and threshing while their fathers passed the bundles to them. To drive the teethed cylinder fast enough, a great muscle power in their legs was required. Their hands were also very busy, turning the bunch over and over again until the stalks shed all the grains.

In about five minutes, Bing was sweating all over his body, and his leg started feeling sore, which was the time to swap the position with Dan so as to employ the other foot for pedalling. And working for five more minutes, they had to change roles with their parents who could keep on threshing for at least half an hour.

His mother and his aunt and Ming were in the field reaping the crops. They bent their back to cut the crops with the sickle, and unbent to place the crops into the baskets. When the baskets were full, one of them would stop reaping to carry them over for threshing.  

Approaching the lunch break, his grandma came to the field with the baskets containing rice, taros and other vegetables. In his experience, this was the best time during a day’s hard work. They all stopped and went to the place shaded by the most ancient pine tree in the village. It was said that the tree had been there for hundreds of years, since the Wang ancestor had first set their foot on the place. Its roots, like dragon paws crawling and arching on the surface, were tough and aged enough to speak the truth of the legend. The sun, cruel and cooking all the morning, had now encountered the defence of a wide umbrella of the pine needles. The shade was delicious, the draught brushing his cheeks. Perspiration stole into his eye sockets, tickling his eyes and causing his constant rubbing until tears came out to help dilute the salty elements. The rice was plenty, the taro soft and tender. He felt never so hungry, as if every cell in his system was crying like baby swallows for the food from their mother’s beak.

After lunch and a brief rest and chattering, they set to work again. They couldn’t afford to have a lengthy rest or nap, which would inevitably dull the body into a state of languidness, bringing forward the utmost tiredness and soreness they ought to only feel at the end of day.   

As the evening came, so did the most tiring task of harvesting.  They had to carry the grain home, at a time when they were already exhausted.

Bing insisted on doing his bit as a young adult, in spite of repeated dissuasion by his mum and dad. In the end, they yielded and agreed to let Bing carry a little more than half of the fill, in two large baskets that weighed about 65kg in full.

One by one, they set off along the small ridge between the fields. His father leading the way, Bing followed, and then his mother. The bamboo pole on their shoulders was bounding up and down, creaking in time with their steps. It was not long before Bing had a sore shoulder to do the swapping. He paused and managed to rotate the pole, and felt relieved as soon as the pressure point had moved from one to the other.

Then suddenly, his father tripped over a lump of soil, stumbling forward until both baskets banged onto the field and overturned.  

Bing laid his baskets down, hurriedly going to his father.

‘Dad, are you all right?’ Bing asked, helping him stand up.

His father didn’t answer him, and strangely, he walked away to a field ridge, without even looking back, where he found a place to sit down.

Confused, Bing stood looking at him. Then seeing his mother beginning to fetch the spilled grain back to the basket, he went and did the same.

His mother didn’t say anything, which discouraged him to raise any questions. After the rice was restored, his dad still sat there smoking.

‘We go first,’ his mum said at last, with a sigh.

They resumed their trip, and arriving home, poured the grain onto the concrete surface. His grandma came out from the kitchen and asked him to just stay at home, but Bing followed his mum for the second round.

The sky had already faded into dusk. The afterglow was casting a colour of orange on the edge of the mountains. Crickets and frogs started their evening chorus. But in the air, he saw no swallows. He knew they had already retired from their day of labour to their nest inside the house, where they must be at the time trilling incessantly, discussing the matters of a day’s life.

His father was back on the path, carrying the baskets forward, followed by his uncle and aunt. Bing and his mum gave way to them. His mother said: ‘Take care, the road is slippery.’

In the field, Ming was packing up things, sweeping the scattered grains onto a sheet made of bamboo strips.

They filled up their pairs of baskets again; there was still some remaining.

‘It will need two more pairs,’ his mother estimated. ‘Leave it to your uncle and aunt.’

Later, while two families having the supper, his father was again talkative and reasonably happy. The incident seemed to have passed, only that his father, as he noticed, had drunk several more glasses of wine than the day before.  

Next morning, on their way to the field, Bing and his mother walked together, with some distance behind others. Bing asked her: ‘Mum, has dad been drinking a lot, since he came back home? He was not so much fond of alcohol before.’

‘Well, yes,’ she replied, hesitating.

‘Why did dad come back home?’

‘I already mentioned to you last time, did you forget?’

‘Well…’

‘As I said before, he was never a formal employee of the council. Half a year ago, a new mayor came to the town. Your dad had a dispute with him, and was asked to go home because of that,’ she paused and continued, ‘if your dad had had a better temper, and managed to apologise to him or even treated him a meal to better the relationship, he could have kept his job. Well, it is no use now.’

‘I heard of his talking about making money with uncle. What is he trying to do?’

‘I don’t know. He had not been happy staying at home, labouring like the others. He never got used to working in the fields. He has some idea of opening a shop, repairing transistor radios or watches, or something.’

‘Really? Where does he want to open the shop? How can we get the money to open it?’

‘Not sure, we have to see what we can do. The fact is that he has been very low in spirit, and easily gets angry. But you don’t need to worry, focus on your study.’

‘How about uncle? Does he still hunt a lot?’

‘Not as often as before. There are not as many boars, squirrels and animals left on the hills.’  

‘What will he do?’

‘He is also thinking of doing a business, pedalling like your grandpa, maybe. Anyway, they are just talking, have not done anything yet.’

Later in the evening, at the dinner table, he heard his father and his uncle discussing the business again. They drank the wine, chewing the peanuts for a long time, relaxing. The concerns and worries were not shown in their faces.

However, on some evenings, when Bing was helping Ming with her study upstairs, he heard his parents quarrelling, accompanied by the faint sobs of his mother. And when they later came down to supper, the air around the dinner table was always saturated with a sombreness that couldn’t be diluted by the assumed merriment of their mother, nor by his father’s frequent asking them to eat more. The gloominess of the family would linger late in the night, until the dawn of next day played its magic to lighten them up again.  

But Bing was old enough to understand that his parents were under enormous pressure in supporting the study of two children. Now that his dad had lost his salary, it would prove to be much harder for them to keep up with the expenditure. Few families in the village could afford to let their children pursue further study, when they were strong enough to give hands in the fields.

On the last day of the two months holiday, Kai, as promised, came to Bing’s house, carrying with him a month’s rice quota that filled a quarter of a sack. Bing spent the rest of the afternoon with him wandering about the fields, telling him about the places he went swimming, fishing, tree-cutting, fruit picking, and of course, loach-needling.

‘You seemed to have much more fun than me,’ Kai said, his eyes expressing a level of admiration. ‘All I have done, mainly, was swimming, for my own fun. Most of the time, I had to help my father cut and collect resin from the pine tree.’

‘Well, you could always find some spare time for some fun, couldn’t you?’

‘Apart from working in the field, I had virtually no spare time, because I had to help deal with the resin business. My father had a hill of pine trees to look after.’

‘But, cutting for resin, can be fun?’

‘Haha, only if you say so. It might be fun at the beginning, but it’s a hard work. You have to set up a structure around the tree to keep up the height of work, because the resin is depleted with lower cuts, and we need the higher fresh ones to induce the desired level of resin flow,’ Kai spoke in a tone of an expert, ‘And then, we need to carry the buckets of resin downhill, and whisk them into a good mixture, before carrying them to be sold at the resin station.’

‘Did you hurt your shoulders much?’ Bing was curious. ‘It was so painful.’

‘It is okay now. It only needs some time to get used to the chafing.’

Kai had a much larger family for his parents to support. He had two younger brothers and one sister, all of whom were attending school. Like Bing’s parents, they didn’t let any of the children quit study to use them as extra labour. The good study performance of their first child gave the family hope that one day, their children would have a life promise outside the line of countryside poverty.

It was this hope, installed as the core foundation of the family, that had sustained them in their perseverance and tenacity as they toiled through the fields and hills day and night.
 

 


--- End of Chapter 13 ----

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-5 20:51
Chapter 13      2/2

Chapter 14        1/2

Back at school, his daily routine was unchanged, except that Bing, approaching adulthood, couldn’t help but experience the usual drama of both physical and psychological evolution during the fast growing period of his life.

One irritation was the acnes on his face, which seemed never to stop thriving, disturbing his tender self-consciousness in all of his waking hours. It budded red, tight and painful to the touch, until its tip was fully developed, at which point, a pricking, so tempting and irresistible, seemed to be the only solution. Nevertheless, its removal by whatever tools he could find at hand, either a scrap of paper or simply his bare fingers, was not entirely unentertaining, for every time the thing, nasty and matured, was rid of from his face, he could almost have a degree of relief as one might have enjoyed after going to the toilet. He even stared, for some time, at the white substance in his fingers as if wondering why on earth this thing, alien and grotesque and so much like waste, could have come to intrude on his youth, and why should it seek to reside in his face, instead of other places where he could more easily hide it from people, particularly from the girls who seemed to always fix their eyes on his face whenever they passed him by.

However, the fact that he, like other male classmates, was not in much liberal engagement with the girls, made the nuisance of acne not as unbearable as it might have been. He even noticed some girls in his class bearing the similar chronic sufferings. Indeed, to grow into adulthood was not as smooth and joyful as it seemed to be. Came with it was trouble and ugliness.

During his last year in the school, he had two lots of good news from home, one was that his sister Ming had passed the exam and succeeded in her enrolment into the same high school as his; the other was that his dad had opened an electronics shop in the county town of Sangton, repairing radios and watches and the sorts of household appliance. Bing knew his parents must have borrowed considerable amount of money to start the business.

The last year in the school was thus becoming a much more delightful experience to him. He and his sister spent together most of their spare time at the school. They went together to the dining hall, sharing the same cup of tofu soup. And nearly every weekend they would take a trip to their father’s shop, to have lunch together with him; then once a month, their mother would travel to the County, delivering the rice and taros and other necessities to them, when the gathering of four was never so merry and joyful. Busy as he was in his final year’s preparation for the university entry exam, he found his happiness never so substantial.

One Friday afternoon Bing, after the last lesson, was soon in the students’ throng heading for supper. Arriving in the dining hall, he glanced first at the desk where he and his sister usually sat, and noticed on it two aluminium boxes. So Ming had come before him and had already fetched their rice bowls and gone to buy the food from the window. He checked the queues, six of them, all very long and crowded. The hungry diners were bustling about the place, some of them clanging their cups or bowls with their spoons, making a noise like his grandpa used to make when peddling his goods.  

Since Ming joined him, he had become once again a person as much pampered as when he was at home. The rice sack and lunch-boxes were stored in Ming’s place. She would fill both of them three times a day, though they had only their lunch and supper together. In the morning they had to rush for class, and didn’t have time to wait for each other for breakfast. At lunch and supper, whoever arrived first at the dining hall was to collect both bowls and leave them on the desk and then join the queue for the food provisions on sale.  

Without finding her figure, Bing stayed at the desk, idly waiting. He covered the aluminium surface with two hands, feeling its soft warmth, contemplating for a moment upon the name ‘BING’ he had inscribed with a pencil knife. In his middle school, the rice container had been a ceramic bowl; without the cover the water was easily spilled over, and the rice would turn hard and dry. This aluminium box, with a cap to prevent water loss, was indeed an evidence of a life that had been really improved.  

‘Ge,’ Ming called him, placing a plate with beans and some lumps of pig-meat onto the desk, in a triumphant gesture like she had won a running race. But it was the sight of pork that had delighted his eyes more, although the pieces looked fatty and chunky. ‘Oh, you bought pig-meat. Second time this week! You got some spare money?’

‘Remember dad gave us two extra Yuan two weeks ago?’ she confided. ‘I haven’t used it.’

‘Oh, ’ Bing nodded, and opening the rice box cover that released immediately the sweet fragrance of the steaming rice, he made a haste for the taste.

His sister managed the money and any other economic issues for both of them, assuming a role like his mother. She washed his clothes for him, which always inspired envy from his roommates. Every time she came to his dormitory to fetch his clothes, and also to return the cleanly folded ones, he would hear the half-teasing announcement from them, ‘Someone’s lovely sister is coming, to collect his dirty clothes.’ And invariably, Bing would be exalted with a swelling pride, for after all, it was a rare chance for a boy having a sister in the same school who could help with the chore. Ming would stand outside, waiting for Bing to exchange his clothes. Her face would turn away from the door, so to avoid the peering eyes from inside the room. When Bing came out and handed the clothes to her, he could detect the flush on her face. She was shy, in front of the boys’ building, but she never suggested Bing go to the girls’ to call upon her. It would be a kind of unthinkable experience for him if he had to stand waiting while attracting the girl’s eyes to the aches on his face.
Ming had a lovely round face, younger looking than her true age of fifteen. Her dark eyebrows and big eyes were assuming a stronger character than her other softer features might have displayed. Nowadays, her face seemed to be affected easily with colour, especially at the presence of other boys.

‘Hi Bing, and Ming,’ a voice, undoubtedly of Kai, chimed over the desk, causing two bent heads to be raised simultaneously. ‘Hi, Kai.’  

Kai sat beside Bing, putting down on the table his rice box and a plate of cabbage.

‘Oh, pig-meat,’ he said, carefully digging into his rice with the silver spoon.

‘Have some,’ Bing encouraged.

‘No, no, you eat,’ Kai appeared modest and reserved, in contrast to his usual quick and harsh manner when only with Bing.  
Bing selected a good piece of meat and put it into Kai’s box. ‘Just one, no more, hehe.’
Kai only smiled, a little meekly. Bing would think it must have something to do with his sister who had now grown from the innocent girl into a sort of young woman’s posture.

In the middle of their silent eating, Bing’s curious eyes caught the vague uneasiness of both Ming and Kai. He was secretly amused.

‘How about your brothers and sister in the middle school? Are they doing well with their study?’ Bing asked, in his intent to ease the atmosphere a little.

‘My second brother did poorly in his exam last year, otherwise he could come to us, like Ming.’

Ming lifted her face, coloured beautifully, and said, ‘I heard he only missed by five marks, is that true?’

‘Yes,’ Kai answered, looked up at her and quickly down to his food.

Supper was soon finished, no food crumbs left. After all, considering the growing size of their appetite, they could have devoured double the amount.

The following Saturday, Ming and Bing were on their way to visit their father, which was their most cheerful time during the week.  

‘I guess Kai likes you a bit,’ Bing said, suddenly.

‘What?’ Ming was astounded, and recovering, she struck on his arm. ‘How could you say that?’

‘Haha…’ Bing was rubbing his arm. ‘Don’t you see how nervous he is when you are present?’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ Ming retorted seriously, yet richly coloured. ‘Dare you say any more of this!’

Bing chuckled, and didn’t let his mirth easily pass. ‘But why do you flush all the time?’

Halting her steps, and in her exacerbated bashfulness, she stared at him, puncturing out her words, ‘I do not go with you!’
Seriously she turned and began to walk back.

‘Okay, okay, I say no more,’ Bing surrendered. ‘Let’s go.’

She slowed down, and after Bing’s repeated entreaty, finally settled her indignation and resumed her forward trip.
A number of bicycles were passing by. The riders, with their legs elegantly folding and unfolding to the pedal’s rise and fall, with their straight backs propping up so majestically their heads, and with their hands thrusting so leisurely upon the handles, looked so lofty and proud, so assured of their supremacy over the common walkers, that Bing couldn’t help but feel himself like a humble chick besides an arrogant rooster. And should the rider be a girl, he would be so much impressed with her motion, that his eyes seemed unable to move away from her back, from her fluctuating buttocks, and instantaneously a sort of hard, impotent desire would arise from his heart.   

‘If only we have a bicycle, then we wouldn’t have to walk, and you could sit on the back,’ he said. ‘Dad used to have one, I wonder why he didn’t bring it back when he came back home.’

‘No, that was not his. It belonged to the council,’ she said. ‘It was returned when he left there.’

The road they were strolling on was between the acres of fields full of green crops, like spreads of blanket. One peasant was working in the field. She bent her body, her back horizontal. Then she straightened up, then bent again. She must be plucking the weeds, like his mother had been doing.

And, yes, the swallows, the nimble and swift figures, imprinted in his mind ever since he was a baby or a child and forever inspiring his imagination, were hovering, flitting, soaring, and shrilling in the air. Then a ponderous cow, stern and unhappy, was coming slowly over, led by an old man with a deeply furrowed forehead. He was smoking, a cigarette plugged between his lips. And, yes, there was another self-manufactured cigarette clutching at his ear, which reminded Bing of his uncle who had remarkable skills of rolling cigarettes. Then in another instant his mind was replaying the bird shooting experience with his uncle. Ah! what a thrilling blast….

He looked at his sister. She had grown up to such a girlish charm; far different from the little girl, who at age of four, had her finger crushed in a threshing machine.

‘Ming, show me your hand,’ he said to her.

‘Why?’ she asked in doubt, but getting closer to him, extending her hand.

‘No, the other one.’

She opened the other hand, her eyes wondering.

Bing paused to check her middle finger. The new nail had grown, but much smaller than its peers. ‘You can’t remember when you crushed your finger, can you?’

‘Of course not, mum told me I was only four.’

‘Yes, when I was six. I shouldn’t have brought you with me so close to the machine.’

‘How could you know, mum told me you were almost killed by a wood-grenade.’

‘Well, not dead, not that serious, nearly blind, I would say.’

‘Horrible.’

‘Yes,’ he winked.

It was a long walk, taking them nearly an hour to get to the Wang’s Repair Shop.

‘Dad,’ they called as soon as they entered the shop.

Their father, in a pair of glasses, raised his head from behind a glass-walled workbench and replied, ‘Oh, you’re here.’ Then he continued to do his delicate operation on a watch.

The shop size was about four meters wide, five meters deep. Against the walls there were two long benches strewn with radios, electric stoves, and other items of customers. A narrow staircase led upwards to the first floor where a bed was installed. Under the stairs stored the usual items in a kitchen: a basin with two colourful ducks painted inside, a rusty thermos, a small electric stove on which sat a small wok. And jutting out from the wall, a rusty water tap was still dripping, gently to the ground with a sinkhole around the corner.

Bing sat on the stool, toying with the items on the bench. There were a number of radio receivers, some small, some big. One or two were dismantled, baring little tubes and wires in its chamber. A solder stick was perched on a holder, a roll of tin in a tray. Bing took a small radio on the bench, and turning it on, he heard immediately a sizzling noise. He then adjusted its little wheel carefully until a human voice came out. It was a lady’s, sweet and soft, and sexy, yet resolute, saying that ‘Reform and opening the door to the outside world is Deng Xiao Ping’s established guidance and policy.’

Then, his father suspended his work.

‘You two go to the market and buy some food,’ he said, fishing out from his pocket a note of two Yuan, ‘same as last time, half kilo of pork, mixture of lean and fat, and two bunches of cabbages, and a stick of celery.’


----To Next Post ---

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-7 13:30
Chapter 14        1/2

Chapter 14      2/2


They went out to the Jiefang Street. As wide as the only market street in their home town, its two sides were lined with flat-roofed bungalows of various heights. The ground floor was invariably refurbished as a business outlet, most commonly, of barber, hardware, grocery, and restaurant.

There was a bicycle repair shop, where a man, squatting at an upside-down bicycle, was turning slowly the wheel with a wrench to align the chain to the gear. Bing stopped to watch him with keen interest. The man had a swarthy face, very serious looking. He had a layer of moustache, but very short, like a brush of ink. His hands were dirty with black grease, and with a filthy rag that resembled very much his own pants in both colour and texture, he was wiping swiftly the chain and the wheels.

Then a young man of about Bing’s age came out to the yard, a flat tyre hanging on his wrist. And using a pedal inflator, he pumped to enlarge the tyre, before placing it into the water of a basin. Slowly he shifted and turned the tyre until a stream of bubbles swirled up. He then took it out, dried the spot with a rag, and left it on the ground.

‘Dad, where is the rubber? Have we run out of them?’ he called.

‘It is on the top of the shelf,’ his father replied.

Bing still stood there, wishing to see him to complete the job. But Ming nudged and dragged him, ‘Ge, let’s go, we are late.’
He took his steps but lagged behind his sister, his head turning back frequently to the shop, his eyes full of admiration for their skills of repairing things. His father was also repairing, but his job was too complicated, the radios and watches were not as understandable as the bicycles.

And the bicycle, if only he could have one! Then he could carry his sister on its back.

Bing was a tall person in the street, most of the pedestrians had an average height like Ming, shorter than 165cm. And, as he just noticed, a woman, sitting on a door step, was feeding a baby; her shirt was rolled up to reveal half of her white breast. A quick and strange guilt called off his glimpse at once, though he had an honest desire to see more.  

In the school, it was black and white, only books and solemn faces of teachers. But here so much was different.

Inside the market was a noisy crowd. The odour was pungent; it was a blended mix of chickens, ducks, pig-meats, fishes, various types of blood, different kinds of vegetables, and live dogs. To exaggerate a little, it was almost incorporated with everything that Bing had so far smelled in his life. Fortunately it had not taken long, after stepping inside from the airy street, for him to get used to the odour.

Bing gave the money to Ming, who was the acknowledged leader in this type of situation. They waded through the crowd, first to the pig-meat benches. The male butchers, standing frightfully behind the bench, called out to them even before they reached their stalls. But Ming only paused a second, upsetting those butchers by passing them over, until she got to a stall run by a woman, who was smiling at her very friendly. Ming told her what she wanted. The woman grabbed the chopper, with a force and gesture even more impressive than her neighbouring male butchers, banged on a large piece of meat, and tossed the cut to the plate of a weighing scales. Then lifting by the ear-string tied onto the head section of the scaling stick, she moved the weight along the length until a balance was reached. The measuring device, in her hands, looked exceedingly slender and delicate, elaborated by the thin strings that held together all three parts – a marked stick, a plate and an iron-weight. However, gripped in her big, rough and greased hands, its delicacy was as if being squashed and tortured.      

‘Six Liang,’ she said, and then without showing in her face any trace of math calculation, she had the total cost on her lips, ‘one Yuan two Jiao.’

Ming gave her the note. She fished some change out of the oily pouch hung in the middle of her apron, and gave it to Ming. Then swiftly and skilfully, she pinched a thin lock of rice straws, circled the meat to make a knot, and then make another knot for handling.

Ming took it over by the knot with her index finger, before transferring it to Bing. ‘You carry it.’

They proceeded to the vegetable section for the cabbages and celery.

Minutes later, they were out of the market and back on the street. In a while, Bing noticed a dog was following him. It was scrawny; its body barely covered by its little and loose hair, its skin heavily creased and, worse, spotted ghastly by numerous red rashes. Its sick, pathetic and bulging eyes, apparently attracted by the pig-meat in Bing’s hand, were half begging, half threatening. Oh, how disgusting!

Immediately, Bing held the pig-meat in his front so as to hide it from the dog. He nudged his sister to walk faster, without the stomach to look back at it. Oh, what a horrible sight!

He didn’t mind dirt. The dog at his home was never clean, and he, when born as a baby, as his mother had told him, was dirty and dusty on the floor. But they were at least healthy and natural, but that diseased dog was just…

When they arrived at the shop, their father had already started cooking the rice in an aluminium pot.

In less an hour, lunch was ready. The pork was fried together with the celery; the cabbages were also rich in oil. In the corner there was a bowl of congealed pork-fat saved by his father. Like what most households usually did, his father separated the fat from the pig-meat, and fried it into the liquid form, before storing up in the bowl for future use. In recent years, benefiting from Deng Xiao Ping’s Reform and Open policy, pigs were not as scarce as before. Peasants were encouraged to raise more poultry and crops to alleviate the scarcity caused by the People’s Commune way of operation.   
Life was getting better, at least in terms of pig-meat.

His dad frequently distributed the pork pieces equally to the rice bowls of Bing and Ming, at the same time repeating his lifetime doctrine of ‘You can rarely eat this at school, eat more, eat more…’

‘Dad, you eat yourself,’ Ming said, then told him the truth. ‘We had some pig-meat yesterday.’

‘Really?’ he said, taking in a mouthful of rice with the chopsticks, but only picking some cabbages.

In regard to the food, his dad, like his mum, were always children-first. It was as if they could fill their own stomach by just watching the children eat. However, Bing often wondered why he didn’t seem to have the similar intimate feeling towards his father as he did with his mother and grandma. He was a good father, no doubt, caring for his children, concerning with their study more than anything else. But he didn’t have the necessary level of communication with both Bing and Ming. For the major part of Bing’s childhood, his father was not often seen at home and had always exerted a distant authority to the family, like a superior figure hovering the edges of his mind. Only since he began his repair business in the county, he had become a parent Bing saw more frequently than his mother.

Glancing at his father at close range, he noticed his big eye-bags, also, the deep chicken-claws at his eye corner. At an age of thirty-eight, his father was by no means old, but white hairs began to speck among his bristly hair. The lines on his forehead were folded like waves, and deeper when he raised his eyebrows or frowned over a technical problem of the mysterious radios and watches. The weariness and probably unhappiness, as Bing thought, seemed to be with him all the time, even now that he had successfully opened the shop as he must have wished for quite a long time.

An idea suddenly came to Bing. Yes, like his grandfather, his father rarely laughed. When was the last time he saw his father laughing freely? To his dismay, he couldn’t remember any.

‘Eat more, better finish it, not worth taking the rest to the school,’ his dad said.

On the way back to school, Bing asked Ming, ‘Sister, I just realized dad never laughs.’

‘What?’ Ming paused, and gazed at him incredulously. ‘Of course he laughs, everybody does!’

‘Tell me, when did he laugh last time, can you remember?’

‘Ehem..’ she stammered, while searching her memory. ‘Strange…maybe you are right.’

‘Yes, now, listen, do you still remember anything about grandpa?’

‘Of course, I was already twelve when he died.’

‘Could you remember him laughing, or even smiling?’

A short silence elapsed, before she admitted, ‘No.’

Bing continued, ‘Now, go through your memories for mum, grandma, uncle, aunt.’

‘They all smiled quite often, they laugh though not in the big way as we do,’ she recalled. ‘Wait a minute, I think, dad did smile today when he saw us, didn’t he? I am a bit confused.’

‘No, he didn’t, he only said, “Oh, you’re here”, probably a smile was there inside him, but not on his face.’

‘Why did you suddenly have this idea?’ Ming looked at him, her eyebrow stressed into a question mark.

‘Well, I’m just wondering why dad doesn’t seem to be happy enough.’

‘It is obvious, he had worked as an electrician in the town for so many years, and all of the sudden he was driven home to be a farmer! I am pretty sure he smiled and laughed a lot during that period of time. It was only that we hadn’t been able to see him as often as others.’

‘Hehe…you could be correct.’

In mid afternoon, they reached the school and departed to their respective dormitory. And Bing knew that the first thing Ming was to do was prepare the rice boxes for their supper.

Nearing the university admission exam, Bing, like all the students of the year, had never been busier with their books and numerous mock tests. Even holidays were cancelled. The exam was an once-in-a-lifetime battle that, believed by millions of Chinese, would determine a life, fix a fate, glorify a family or even, in Bing’s case, an entire village.



--- End of Chapter 14 ----

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-7 13:32
Chapter 14      2/2

Chapter 15   1/3





After taking the exam, Bing stayed at home, passing his days and nights in anxious suspense.

His future was to be determined within two months.

It was the second of July. Three weeks had passed since the fateful three-day exam taken in early June.  Entering July, the days were numbered towards the release of the exam results, which was usually set from the thirteenth to the end of the month.

‘Mum, I don’t think I can get into university,’ he said to her, while walking towards the field. ‘I won’t mind just working on the fields and help you.’

‘Ehm, of course I need your help. But if you don’t get in this time, you can try again.’

‘No, I don’t want to do it again,’ he said wistfully, as if the result was already known. ‘I know some students who had tried quite a few times but still no more luck.’

‘At least you try once more, as your dad and I both agree.’   

The type of conversation between them had actually taken place for many times, his tone always negative and pessimistic, whilst his mother had tried to be neutral, to soothe his distress by her contingency plan. At any rate, it served reasonably well to alleviate their pending anxiety, and to prepare their hearts for his very possible failure. The waiting was a torturous experience to almost all the Chinese students who had taken part in the life-changing examination. In the entire town, there were about eleven students on the waiting list, and Bing was the only one in his village. Any news for eleven candidates would reach the ears of others within two days at most, although they were far apart from each other.

There had been no news or rumours until 12th of July, when two successful cases were reported. Then the day of the next, another reached the ears of his uncle, who immediately told Bing with some concern in his voice. Three of them were then described enthusiastically by the villagers, as to whom they were, and what their parents did, and how hard and relentless their parents had been working to support their study. It was the kind of gossip in the countryside that the villagers would repeatedly chatter about, as if the subject students were their own children, or at least directly related to them.

Then Bing was told by one villager who had just come back from the market, that Kai had got into Renmin University of China in Beijing. To this, Bing’s emotion was twofold of the same intensity, one, the gladness for Kai, whose exhilarating moments could be easily imagined, and two, the misgiving and apprehension for his own future. How had he responded to the news and what sort of expression he, and the reporter, had worn at the time, he couldn’t tell. But the subterranean perturbation must have been thorough and significant in those moments.

‘I won’t make it,’ he muttered to himself, when he was alone, looking at something he didn’t see.

His mother, sister, uncle, aunt, and even the babbling Dan, had been very quiet for the period, evading any topics about the dreadful exam. But their concern was never so vivid and visible in their faces, in their words and their gestures. Only his grandma seemed to be honest and easier with him, consoling him by ‘Aiya-hah, don’t worry, you can get in, don’t worry…’

He was restless, and worrying like a rat that has dropped into water fighting its way out.

Then on the nineteenth of July, the heaven kissed his cheek.

His father, brandishing a piece of paper, shouting to the house as soon as his head had emerged from the road. ‘Bing got in…’ were his words, which he repeated again and again as if by doing so he could keep up his ecstasy.

Unlike his sister who rushed to his father, Bing didn’t run. His mother immediately dropped the clothes she was then chafing on the washing board. In the face of the fateful news, Bing appeared ridiculously calm, as though the information was not new, only confirmed at this moment.  

His dad smiled an undiscounted smile, and his sister had the letter in her hands as if it were for her. When Bing had his chance to read it, into his eyes was the green characters of Shanghai International Studies University, and its round official stamp, and the hand-written name Wang Bing, and the major English he was enrolled in. Getting into a university, indeed any university was already too much a wish for him. So the fact that he was up to the first choice on his wish list for both university and major, was breaking a wave of elation his young heart could hardly sustain.

His impatient sister took again the letter from him. When he looked up at his parents, he noticed they were already in tears. But his grandma was just smiling, as if to her this was not a surprise.

Then Bing suddenly felt dizzy. He said: ‘I am feeling unwell.’

His mother asked him to take a rest upstairs, where he stayed not more than five minutes before coming down to join the blissful circle, now becoming larger as his uncle, aunt, Dan, and other villagers also took part in.

In his usual humour, Dan didn’t forget to mock at his happiness, ‘Haha, you look like a university student already, no more tree cutting any more.’ Apparently he was alluding to the incident on the hill.

His dad told the story how he got the notice. He got it directly from the school, he said, he had called to check twice a day for any news for him. The letter was first securely mailed to the school, which was considered safer than being delivered directly to the village. It would have been some days delay if his dad hadn’t gone to the school himself.

The dinner of the night was ginger-fried duck, savoury pig-meat, rice-wine in the glasses and more in the elegant-looking flagon, and happy faces and fluid smiles and animated chopsticks.

‘Now let’s toast the first university student in the village for the last thirty years.’ His uncle raised his cup, his thin and narrow face flushed by unusual excitement. ‘Bing, you earned the honour for the family.’

All cups lifted, and tipped to the lips.

His father, half intoxicated, seemed ready in the mood to talk about all the things of all the time. ‘Me and your uncle had not been able to do much study in our youth, when all the people struggled to find food. Nothing to eat, people starving. Then the Cultural Revolution, everyone fought each other, everyone was today a friend, tomorrow an enemy.’

His uncle made a comment, ‘Well, people here were not fighting as much as in the big cities...’

‘Probably not in the village, but in the town it was just the same. People joined and switched groups all the time, no peace of mind at all.’ He paused, taking a long second sipping his wine, as if recalling something. The faces around the table, in the meantime, were stern and curious and expectant. It was very rare for his father to be in such a state of mind to recount the past. ‘Looking back, it had been ridiculously unbelievable. Do you remember the days when we had to pluck out the well-growing crops in many fields and replant them into just one field?’

His uncle chuckled, ‘Of course, that was before you went to work in the town, we were instructed to do this so that a better harvest rate could be reported.’

His mother rejoined, ‘But they all died later in the fields.’

‘How could the people do such a silly thing?’ Bing asked first time.

‘Well, most of us knew it wouldn’t work, it was just common sense. We have been growing rice for generations. But nobody dared to say no to the command from above.’

‘Why?’ Bing wondered. ‘Didn’t the leader know it wouldn’t work?’

‘Maybe they meant to test a new way of doing things. People in those days were very different,’ his father replied.

Then his uncle turned to Bing, ‘Bing, let me tell you one thing, you will definitely laugh your teeth off,’ but he suspended at least two seconds by sipping the wine, ‘I remember there used to be a type of bird in the village, very big, and always coming to the fields to eat the ripening grains. We tried to stop it, but didn’t know how. One day someone got an idea, he said we could bring basins, stand on the edges of the fields, and use stones to strike the basin, making noise to scare the birds away.’

‘What? But you couldn’t stand there all day?’ Bing said.

‘No, we didn’t stand there all day, but once in every two hours. A line of people stood there banging the basins or mugs, with sticks or anything that could make a sound.’

A chorus of laughter filled the room.

‘It was like a dog trying to chase a bird in the sky,’ his dad made an extra comment.

But his uncle quieted down. ‘You may laugh at them today, but people of those days were very serious about this. It was a task of Revolution, such named and labelled, like many other things we did.’

His mother chimed in, ‘I remembered one thing. Your dad missed it in his story. You know we dug out the rice stalks and re-planted them into one field? After that, we were still clever enough to know that the crops were not able to breathe, with so many squeezed together in one place. Someone then had an idea of using the windmill, the handled one we used for rice sifting, to help them breathe. People were just a little suspicious, but went for it just the same. Therefore, we carried the big windmills to the fields and pumped the air into the crops.’

‘Haha, using a windmill to help them breathe,’ Ming said, in the midst of the laughter.

Nevertheless, Bing thought, although it seemed ridiculous, it was not entirely illogical. Because the birds ate the crops, so we needed to scare them away; wasn’t banging out a sound effective? And, because the crops couldn’t breathe, so we needed to help them, wasn’t the air out of windmill helpful? It was of course naïve, but quite innocent and even as creative as a child.

However, gathering all crops into one field, and without receiving any extra benefit, without making better use of the spare fields, it was utterly stupid, it was absolutely imbecilic. But, wait a minute, maybe they thought they could save labour on a smaller space when they were weeding and harvesting?

He turned to his dad, and then his mother, ‘So the crops were almost ripened when they were dug out?’

‘Yes, the rice head was bulging with baby grains already,’ his mother confirmed.

‘But why? They didn’t mean to better use the spare fields, or to save the labour by working on lesser acres, did they?’

His father explained, ‘No, the intent was to report the bigger harvest per acre to the leader, because, for the same amount of grain, the rate would be much higher if denominated by smaller acres.’

‘But it all died,’ Bing said.

‘Yes, that was a tragedy,’ his dad said, ‘that was why we had such a famine in the sixties.’

At his last words the air turned a little gloomy, especially when most diners, including Bing, knew one son of his Grandpa’s first wife, who was also present and sat quietly in the diner table, had died from the mentioned famine.

His dad decided to cheer all up, ‘Well, things are getting better, and you go to university!’

The following days and weeks, prior to the semester start which was in early September, Bing was drinking the praises and congratulations like a hero. Some villagers had a certain hint of jealousy in their words, but that didn’t matter at all, for jealousy was indeed one of the many ingredients in the wine of triumph.

To celebrate the event, Bing’s family arranged a grand banquet, to which Kai, and a number of his good childhood mates were also invited. It had been so long a time since the villagers had seen anyone reaching such a higher education. This was partly due to the ten years of Cultural Revolution, during which the academic system in China had almost been paralysed, and partly due to the fact that hunger, instead of education, had always been a more prominent and desperate issue in all those years.

And, the financial issues as how to support Bing’s study in Shanghai had not proved to be a real headache to his parents, for anybody in the village, who had some spare cash under their beds, would be happy to lend the money if they were so honoured as to be asked for it.

So after all that Bing had lavishly enjoyed, he was ready to advance his earthly existence beyond the boundary of the Ancient Village, of Mianyang, of Sichuan province, of all the wider territories leading eastward to Shanghai, which was a symbol of glory and mystery and great expectation in the eyes of all the people around him. A debate arose on whether his father should accompany him all the way to his university. As a fledgling and ambitious youth, Bing was against the idea, but his mother and especially his grandma, had expressed concern about his taking the unprecedented trip alone. In the end, it was agreed that his father would go together with him to Mianyang, from where he could take about three days of train directly to the city by himself.

On the eve of his departure, his grandma secretly inserted into his hand a number of crumpled notes. He could not but accept her gift from her mottled hands. He wondered how she could have saved the money over the years, for, in his mind, she had never had anything to do the household economics.

In the morning, all members got up early, checking, reminding, repeating a lot of trivial things, more for the sake of relieving emotions that had gathered thick and affluent over the months. They escorted him to the little bridge, which was often used as a platform for departure. Ming, and Dan who presently carried his luggage with a bamboo stick, would go further to the town’s bus station. His mother, ever since he saw her first time in the morning, had been in tears, and now more in silence, and his grandma had been exceptionally quiet, neither dusting off his clothes nor saying any of her habitual ‘Aiya-hah’ tagged words or admonitions. Like a slim tree, she was just standing there, among others who minutely circled around him, her tears some, most already dried.   

When he turned his eyes over his shoulder the third time to check his two beloved women, he saw his mother already on her way back home. But his grandma, thin and weak and herself alone on the bridge, was still waving her hand.

A flood of something broke from his heart, and forced its way upwards. No more could he look back again...  



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洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-9 15:44
Chapter 15   1/3

Chapter 15     2/3



Half an hour later, he and his father were seated on the bus. Dan smiled an unusual smile, the smile of meekness and wistfulness, of poignant loss. His sister appeared weaker; she had a smile of full tears, her hands ceaselessly wiping her eyes.

The bus started, lurched a bit and moved on. He heard from behind him, ‘Ge, take care…write me letters...’

The fields, the shortly cut rice-straws, and chickens, cows, and swallows, among many familiar things, passed along. The bus was creaking to the bumping of the road, to the screeching and trilling of swallows.

A considerable time had elapsed, before Bing was able to settle down. Then he heard a song from the little radio on the panel in front of the driver’s seat. He knew the song from school; its name was ‘Back to mother’s home’, about a married daughter on her way to visit her mother.

‘The wind blows, rustling the willow; the water crashes, laughing in the river…la la la…whose daughter-in-law hurries on, isn’t she going back to her mother’s home. A chicken in her left hand, a duck in her right, plus on her back a baby strapped….la la la…a dark cloud is coming and rushing is a gust of wind, and soon the raindrops are striking like beans…la la la…the chicken is flying, the duck running away, and the baby is frightened fully awake…la la la…nowhere to hide from the rain, her rouged face is full of red-soil stain... Aiya, how can I face my mother!’

The song must have lightened all the souls on the bus. When Bing heard the Aiya, which reminded of her grandma’s characteristic speech, he couldn’t help but break into a half-smile.

At the County station, they made a transfer, and it was not until mid-afternoon did they arrive in the city of Mianyang. As soon as they got off the bus, the pedicab drivers were swarming over. His dad asked about the fare to railway station. ‘Two Yuan,’ a driver said, his forefinger pointed to the sky to justify the price. Hesitating, his father was seeing around. Another driver managed to get closer, but the first didn’t give him any chance, for he instantly reduced the price to one and half Yuan, which made his father even more nonplussed. After further bargaining, a price of one Yuan struck the deal.  

The streets of Mianyang were wider than in Sangton County, with more bicycles and tricycles, more people loitering about. The buses, with two joint sections, looked very long, hauling and tooting through the traffic, mixed in the flow with sedans. After about forty jolting minutes in the pedicab, they arrived at the railway station.

Bing had never seen or taken a train before, nor had his father. The concept and image of a train was in the books, with its long caterpillar-like body, dark fumes billowing out of its head.  

Suddenly he heard a sharp, furious cry from behind the building. He hadn’t spotted the train yet, but he could feel its ponderous body moving, its head hissing and fuming. At once an excitement was washing over him. It was as if the call was from his own body and he was going to a battlefield to challenge an object more powerful than his own might.

Inside the ticket hall, there were two queues leading to two small windows, labelled as Lei Feng 1 and Lei Feng 2. Lei Feng was a model youth of the country, who had an unselfish heart in helping others in need. ‘Learn from Lei Feng’, like ‘Long Live Chairman Mao’ and ‘Long live the Proletariat’, was one of the most popular slogans printed on walls and in books. In 1987, slogans related to the Cultural Revolution were only seen on some very old walls or buildings. But Lei Feng, as a long worshipped character, had continued to be used as a good example of serving the people.

His dad put down the luggage on the floor.

‘Can you take out the notice letter of the university, we need it to get the discounted student ticket,’ he said.

But Bing said, ‘Dad, let me go buy the ticket. You stay here.’

‘OK, you should learn how to buy a ticket.’

Bing went and picked Lei Feng 1 queue, which had one or two fewer people, attaching himself to its tail.

It was a long wait. More and more people came to stand behind him.

In his front was a middle-aged man, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. With a bamboo pole he was carrying a large tin pot crammed with many little things, and a nice-looking canvas bag with a zipper. It was amusing to notice that the things he carried seemed to have far better quality than his clothes. His Zhong Shan dress, named after Dr. Sun Zhong Shan, the founder of the Chinese National Party, with four capped, floppy pockets in the front, was faded, crumpled, looking very old and odd on him. Curiously, Bing checked his own dress: white shirt, blue pants, and a pair of pale-green Revolution Shoes as the nickname of the civilian version of shoes worn by the soldiers in the Revolution Army. For the moment he was feeling himself more on fashion.

Turning around, Bing found behind him a little girl, very skinny, as well as a woman immediately behind her. The woman had a large straw basket on her back, strapped by two straw ropes to her shoulders. The child clung very close to Bing, her feet, in slippers, frequently touching his heels. When Bing looked down at her, the girl tipped up her head, looking at him innocently. Her hair was plaited to two little pigtails, in the same style as his sister’s.

Bing smiled at her. But she didn’t smile back, nor did her mother manage any friendly expression. He was somewhat confused. Then he guessed they might have thought he looked at them because he was unhappy with the little girl getting so close to him.

The queue moved, rather slowly, and the girl’s toes kept brushing him. Then the man in his front, suddenly turned and swung his carriage. The tip of his bamboo pole nearly struck Bing’s face. Instinctively, he stepped back to avoid the imminent mishap, but unfortunately he was unable to prevent another collision with the girl behind.

‘Ouch...’ the girl cried.

Bing turned and squatted down. ‘Sorry! Sorry!’ he said, ‘I must have hurt you.’

The girl didn’t actually fall, but Bing’s gesture was as if trying to pull her up.

Her mother cradled her to her, half bent to look at the foot of her daughter.
‘Don’t worry, just a little scratch,’ she said, smiling. Then she said to her daughter, consoling her by caressing her head, ‘Don’t stand too close to uncle.’

Bing rose, and patting her little arm, apologizing, ‘Sorry.’

‘Say to uncle, never mind,’ her mother encouraged. The girl muttered faintly, ‘Thank you, uncle, never mind.’

‘Thank you,’ he smiled, a little amused with her timid voice. But he was again confused. How could he have judged them wrong when they had not returned a smile previously? They were just good people.

From then on, Bing tried to keep a safe distance from the heavy man, but he felt the little girl treading on his heels all the same.

Finally, reaching the window, Bing asked for the earliest ticket to Shanghai.

‘No.48, tomorrow 11:20 am.’ The ticket woman said in a flat and dry voice.

Bing hesitated only for a moment, wondering if he should discuss this with his father. But then he decided, ‘Get one for me.’

The ticket was a yellow rectangle, thicker and better quality than the bus ticket. It printed: From Mianyang to Shanghai, hard-seated, average speed, No Seat. Whole price 22.80 Yuan.

So it cost 11.40 Yuan for students, and No Seat, which was expected because Mianyang was not a starting station.  

Returning to his dad, he showed the ticket. Like himself, his dad studied the ticket for almost half a minute, turning over it a few times as if he were trying to eat it but didn’t know how to begin.

Now, they had to find a place to pass the night.

As soon as they walked out of the building, a bulky woman approached them, asking if they needed hostel. Two other men also chanced to come over, asking the same question. Then as soon as his dad began to chat with her, the other two withdrew.

After settling the price, they were led by the woman along the side of a high building. Bing found it hard to match her speed. She looked back frequently to usher them on, as if she was afraid they could escape from her at any moment.

Five minutes had dragged by, a vague fear began to worry the son, and the father.  His dad called after her, ‘Comrade, where is it? You said it was just around the corner.’

‘Just over there,’ she pointed, maintaining her brisk paces.

So, they had to move on. The buildings on both sides now looked dirtier, the road narrower. Bing had a growing fear they were being led into a trap; some devilish cheating stories of the city started to plague his mind. He was about to express his concern to his dad, when the woman, standing at the corner waiting for them, declared, ‘We have arrived.’

It was a relief when they saw on the wall, You Hao (Friendship) Hostel, although it looked dilapidated, poorer than many buildings he had seen in the County.


They entered into the little lobby. A girl behind a window was looking at them, in a quiet and resigned expression as if she was expecting someone else.  

‘You go and check in,’ the woman threw her words and walked out.

For a moment, they stood there, didn’t know what to do the next. Then the girl said, ‘Give me your identity certificates.’

So stepping closer to the window, they went through the forms and signatures and payments, before they were led into a room. Two beds, wooden, straw-sheeted, were laid against the wall. The pillows looked cleanly washed. On each wall fastened two identical posters by four round pins. The picture was a woman, a film star or somebody Bing was not sure, but she looked very beautiful. A desk was between the beds, with a thermos bottle on it. Overall the room appeared good enough to be the first hostel Bing was to stay in his life.  

They both sat on the bed.

‘Sleep here one night, no need to unpack,’ his dad said. Then checked his watch, he added, ‘It’s five o’clock. We need to get something to eat.’ He stood up. ‘Maybe we can go the Tieniu street, the busiest and the only street I can remember.’

‘Is it far from here?’ Bing asked.

‘I don’t know how far,’ his father replied. ‘I didn’t go there from the railway station last time. We can ask the girl in the lobby.’

They went out, closing the door behind them. The girl was bent reading a book, his father asked timidly, ‘Comrade, is Tieniu Street far away from here?’

She raised her eyes, answered shortly, ‘Very far.’ Then she relapsed into her reading again.

But his dad pursed, ‘Is there any bus going there.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is the bus station?’

The girl lifted her eyebrows and looked at them for a second or two, and then as if she had found a quick way to put an end of the conversation, she advised, ‘Outside, there is one.’

‘Thanks,’ his father nodded gratefully.

They went out to the main road and, seeing nothing like a bus station around the place, they realized the answer they had obtained from the girl was worthless. They simply couldn’t grasp where her ‘outside’ was.

‘Why wasn’t the girl more helpful?’ Bing asked. ‘She didn’t seem to like to talk to us.’

‘She knows we’re from a poor village.’

‘How? Do we look very different?’ There was a heavy touch of anger in his voice.

‘Well, of course, in her eyes. Every day she sees different people from different places, must be very smart in doing that.’

‘The dog’s eyes are looking down on humans,’ Bing was using a Chinese proverb to describe the type of people who have snobbish attitude towards the poor. And the dog was regarded by Chinese as a bad, despicable creature.

‘Don’t get upset, you need to learn to be patient. Otherwise you may easily get into trouble,’ his father said, in a more serious tone. ‘We farmers have to get used to this type of discrimination when we go into the cities. I don’t know about Shanghai, but definitely it is a place where a lot of wealthy and snobbish people reside.’

‘But...’ Bing was about to protest, when he spotted some distance away a pedicab standing motionless. ‘Can we take the pedicab?’

His dad agreed, and they walked there.

Getting closer to the cab, Bing saw a man, the driver, wearing nothing but a pair short pants, sprawling inside the two-seated carriage. He was snoring aloud, his head bending over his bare chest.

‘Master,’ his father called. and without getting any response, he repeated again the ‘Master’ title referring to the workman with a certain privilege, someone supposed to be in a better social class than the lowest farmers in China. ‘Master, master…’

The driver woke up, stirring his bulk fretfully as if he had had a horrible dream.

‘Need a lift?’ he asked the obvious. ‘Where to go?’

‘Tieniu Street.’

‘Two Yuan,’ he said. And before his dad had the chance to bargain, he rushed his words out, ‘Not less, otherwise no go,’ he relaxed his body again on the seats as if to resume his sleep.

They looked around the street, no more pedicabs in their sight. Then his dad decided, out of a farmer’s humble courage and rare impulsiveness in the circumstances, ‘OK, OK, two Yuan, two Yuan. Let’s go…’   

The cab was very tatty; all the parts were wrapped by scraps of sack or dusty plastic. The roof was tied with many layers of who knows what material; the small, triangle-shaped driver’s seat was covered by old garments from an Army uniform. The driver’s hips were very wide and thick, overwhelming the small and narrow seat underneath. But he did have great muscles, expanding and contracting with his pedalling motion. The lumps of his calves and thighs were flexing vigorously like a frog kicking its legs.

It was the second time Bing had taken a cab. He had not enjoyed well his first time, when he had strained himself to clutch the luggage in the narrow carriage. Now, sitting there, under the safe though patchy roof, pulled by a cattle-like person, he had a gratifying sensation. He looked at his father on his left, who, with his head turning outside, was apparently engrossed with what was passing his eyes. After all, it cost two Yuan for the service, the amount of money able to buy more than a dozen of chicken eggs.

Then he saw a young man squatting on the edge of the walk path in front of a shop, brushing his teeth with the tool ramming swiftly in and out of his mouth; the white foam smearing his lips, dribbling down to the blackened road, creating a sharp contrast of black and white. Why did he brush his teeth at this time of afternoon? Wasn’t the activity only done in the morning? Bing wondered. But his attention soon shifted to a nearby woman, contented-looking, in a beautiful red sweater. She was sitting on a wooden stool, held a baby on her tummy and split the baby’s feet as far apart as her own. Obviously she was in her joy inducing the baby to pee, directly to the road.  

Then, an aged man, pulling, now really like cattle, a wooden cart stacked full of black coal bricks, came into his view, reminding him of the poor people in the old society before the Revolution, who had been oppressed under the three big mountains of Imperialism, Feudalism and Capitalism.   

In a while, it was drizzling. The street, the building, the moving things were thus thrown into a mist, making a scene he had never perceived in his life. In his village, there were the greens, water, plants and manures. In his school, there were some trees, wide roads and landscapes, as well as the red-scarfed students. But, here was so different, all gloomy, narrow, discoloured, without the green and space, without swallows and crickets and frogs. In its bleakness, things and people were moving, groping about like ghosts in the dusk.

Then, there was a passing bicycle, with a grey umbrella hitched up above the head of the rider, whose back was arched severely as if in pain.

Only the cab driver was as active as ever. The sweat and rain and grease on his skin had been mixed into a sheen of substance, glistening in the dim light.



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小安琪

太弓虽了。马克下来，回头慢慢拜读

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-9 15:48
Chapter 15     2/3

Chapter 15    3/3




They left the cab in a street announced confidently by the driver as Tieniu Street. And lucky, the rain gradually died out, when they strolled along.

Bing was hungry. They came to a stall, where he was immensely attracted by a huge basket full of pig-meat: pig-head, pig-ear, pig-leg, pig-knuckle, pig-intestine, all of which looked fully cooked, ready to eat, with a delicious colour of brown. Oh, such a range of pig meat!  

Chained by the goodness of pig, his desire was so much aroused that Bing felt his feet were unable to move. His father, of course no less hungry, was also lingering about the shop, tempting a bold decision.

Then without any discussion, they went in and ordered a plate of pig-ears and other thick-skinned parts of who knows what of a pig. His dad must have been in the same thread of thinking. Price was nothing, they could easily borrow the money, now that he was a, ah! University Student! And he was told he was already a person with the Urbane Identity, belonging to one of the superior unsoiled class in New China. The thought of his good fate, refreshed at this particular moment, was sending a thrill up and down his young spine, driving his saliva out from under his tongue like spring.

A shirtless man, with a size and stance of a butcher, and whose tummy was only covered by a red apron, brought the bowls and chopsticks to them, and asked, ‘Do you want beer?’  

‘Beer?’ his dad questioned, more as if to himself, and then looked at Bing. ‘Do you want to try?’

Bing had heard of it, but had never drunk it. The only alcohol he had previously tried was the rice-wine brewed by his smother. ‘Yes.’

The first mouthful of beer tasted bad enough to make him frown into a grimace. It wasn’t sweet, nor having any sense of alcohol to his understanding. Slightly bitter and even stale-smelling like the pig food, the liquid may only serve to relieve a desperate thirst. But the colour looked fine and acceptable, though it reminded him of the urine in the bucket in his bedroom at home. Nevertheless, after two glasses, Bing felt he was affected; his eyes shone a little wild.

‘Dad, thank you for…’ he raised the cup, in the closest manner of toasting in his memory, and stammered, ‘for everything, you, had asked me to study hard, so…’

His father, whose complexion had been customarily firm and reserved, was clearly moved. His eyes grew twinkling, his features, softening, at the gratitude expressed explicitly for the first time by his child.

‘Hehe..’ he didn’t seem to know what exactly to say, his short white-streaked hair making him look as if an old man. ‘As I said, you have earned the precious honour for the family, for the whole village.’

Bing picked a piece of pig-ear, chewing its soft bones. His dad continued, ‘You go to Shanghai, again, study hard, we shall thank Deng Xiao Ping for his new policy, and you ought to make your contribution to our country.’

It sounded like the droning preaching of the teacher in the school, of the text books. Yet Bing sensed afresh of its real touch and truth, now so intimately said by his own father.

‘Yes, I will,’ he promised.

The eating continued, with good noises from both mouths.  The half-naked shop owner was there chopping heavily a thick piece of pig-meat on a great stump.

‘Dad, had grandma once lived here in Mianyang?’ Bing asked, as his musing thread turned to his grandma.

‘I think somewhere in the suburbs, not in the town.’

‘Hasn’t she ever come back to her hometown?’

‘No, not that I am aware of. She’s rarely mentioned it.’

‘Mum told me that grandma had a husband in Mianyang, and her four sons, all had been stolen and sold.’

His father was surprised. ‘No, no, I think her children were sold by her husband, for money, not stolen.’

‘Ah? What? Her husband sold them?’ Bing stared at his father, in disbelief. ‘How?’

‘Well, I was only told by other village elders, your grandma never told us of her past,’ he answered, sipping the beer. ‘But her ex-husband was not a good person, for sure. He sold the children for money.’

‘Was he a gangster?’

‘Maybe, some kind…’

The air had now turned grave and sombre. The buoyancy in Bing’s heart, stirred up by the beer, was replaced by thoughts of his grandma.

‘She was always troubled with toothache and headache, can’t she go to see a doctor?’

‘She had seen some local Chinese Traditional doctors, taken some herbs,’ he answered. ‘Difficult to cure…’

‘Maybe she needs to go somewhere better, in the County hospital, or here in Mianyang?’ Bing probed, ‘borrow the money if we need, we can pay back in the future.’

‘Let me see what we can do after I go back.’

His dad had now relapsed into his usual state of solemnity and obscurity, even with the colour affected by the beer. For a moment, he found the resemblance between his father and his grandpa amazing.


Emptying the glass, Bing asked, on a whim, ‘Mum told me also grandpa had never seen his father.’

His father raised his eyes, regarding his son for a second or two, as if in surprise at the sudden swing of topic. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘And his father was addicted to opium, and disappeared.’

‘I don’t know if he was an opium addict or what, but he simply vanished, and never returned home, while his wife, that was your great grandma, was pregnant.’ Taking another big sip, he was more ready to tell the story. ‘And did you know it was only by a little chance that he and his mother had survived?’

‘No.’

‘She hanged herself, while pregnant.’

‘Ah?’ Bing was astounded.

‘A villager, a woman was then looking for a lost pig. She came to a straw cottage and, looking through the chink of its door, she saw a body dangling from the roof. Shocked and alarmed, she pushed it, but the door was latched tight inside. So she called for help, and the door was broken open. When they laid her down, she was still breathing. Well, that was how she had lived again. And only some months later, she gave birth to your grandpa.’

‘But, why?’

‘Not sure exactly why, but I would guess she had lost hope, after her husband disappeared, and also the hardship of living, and mostly likely after being insulted by some men. There were rumours in the village.’

‘How could she then lead a life after grandpa’s birth?’

‘Don’t know that part of story, but I won’t assume she committed suicide again. She had to rear up your grandpa, after all.’

‘Had grandpa told you about his past?’

‘No, never, we only heard from other village elders. And I don’t think your grandpa knew much about his parents during his childhood. I know he once managed to draw a picture of his father, conjured up by bits and pieces of description from other elder villagers. The picture used to hang on the wall in the living room, but it was completely damaged when, during a flood, a landslide from the hill rolled into the house.’

‘Did he also do a picture of his mother?’

‘Yes, I think he did it at the same time as that of his father, but it was damaged as well.’

‘So he didn’t say anything about his father, or at least his mother whom he should have remembered?’

‘No.’

‘So strange.’

‘It is, but when people were starving, dying of one thing or another, the past was easily spared from more compelling life matters. And, you know about your grandpa’s furious temper; there had never been a sensible dialogue between him and the rest of family. He was always demanding, reproaching, and enraged whenever his requests were not met.’

‘Hehe..’ Bing grinned, in spite of himself, as some recollection of his grandpa relived in his mind. He finished the rice, putting down the chopsticks. ‘So, if the woman had not chanced to look for her lost pig, grandpa would have died together with his mother.…’

‘Yes… then, without me, and you…’

‘Did she find her lost pig?’

‘How could we know? That was not important.’

‘But the pig was important, without the pig, hehe…’

‘Yes, we may have to thank the pig…’ his dad almost broke into rare laughter, then seeing Bing emptying his bowl, he asked, ‘Do you want more to eat?’

‘No, had enough,’ Bing replied, and noticing some beer left in his glass, he drank it up.

The cost of the meal was three Yuan and eighty cents.  

Outside, the air was clear, and with his stomach filled with delicious food, Bing felt less gloomy, more like a tourist. They paused at a shop selling picture-story books. A row of little students inside seemed enraptured in reading. Bing went in, and was amazed by the hundreds of little books spreading on the wall. The shop owner, sitting in a corner, was sipping his tea. There were four long, four-legged wooden stools, fully occupied by at least fifteen children. Bing managed to brush his way through their legs and arms, looking closer at the book titles. ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’, ‘Water Margin - Outlaws of the Marsh’, many more Chinese classic stories, and many, many others, but none of which Bing had ever read in his boyhood.

He asked the shop owner for the price; not for sale, five cents was the cost for reading a book on the spot.

This was fascinating. So the kids here read books in this manner. He remembered Xing, who had told him and Kai the stories of One Thousands and One Nights. How many books had he read then? Only one or two little Kongfu books in his whole memory, which had contributed much to his day-dreaming in the classroom.

At the end of Tieniu Street, they turned left to the Riverside Street, ambling on. The water of the river, the real one, unlike the little stream in his village, was swelling and shimmering in the twilight. And on the river was a long elegant bridge, the longest ever he had seen.

‘The river was Fujiang, and the bridge was Dong Fang Hong bridge,’ his dad explained. ‘The Jiuqu river in our country is just a little branch of Fujiang.’

Dong Fang Hong, the Eastern Redness at Sunrise was a reference to Chairman Mao, who had saved the country from its wretchedness and let Chinese people stand erect and be proud on their own feet.

More bicycles, one, two or sometimes three people together on the ride, were ringing, easier on the ears than the horns of the crawling bus, than the beeps of those impatient arrogant sedans. The little bell, fixed on the handle of the bicycle, had a little pad for the rider’s thumb. Whenever Bing had a chance to get close to a parked bicycle, Bing would always press the bell to make a series of sounds, as sweet and liquid as a bird’s singing.

There was a little crowd some way down the road. Bing broke into the wall of standing people. In the centre of the circle, he saw two monkeys presently mating, actively and passionately. A quick laughter rushed to his throat, but he had to stifle hard to suppress its freedom, because, looking around, all spectators, half smiling in concentration, were in absolute silence. The owner, who ran the circus, sat on a flat stone, looking benevolently at the monkeys and none the less at the faces of gazers.

Forgetting his dad, and even himself, Bing watched the show to the end. He didn’t know how long it had taken. The time in the circumstances were immeasurable and unmeaning. The scene, together with what he had perceived in the mating of dogs, cattle, and chickens, made up a picture-book as how sex on earth worked and acted, how it created a life, and at the same time entertained a life, or more.   

His father was just nearby when the crowd began to disperse. They moved on, and soon reached the footings of the bridge, where the people there attracted him. Some were sleeping on a piece of broken straw sheet, cushioned comfortably by a layer of rice straws. Some were sitting on filthy ground, eating food of one form or the other. But they all looked dirty, half-clothed, unkempt, unclean.

‘Who are they?’ Bing asked. He had seen such people in the County, but not so many gathering.

‘Beggars, tramps...’

Now, a naked boy was running out from the back of a bridge pillar; his ‘little chick chick’ was flicking up and down, like a live thing itself. But his belly was big, round and smooth, not as if he had been starving. There was a very old woman, her hair matted like a tangle of dry straw, her face like the surface of pine tree, was feeding a baby with a pair of exceptionally long and thick chopsticks. The bowl she was holding was huge, doubling the size of the typical soup bowl.  

Amazed, Bing made a comment: ‘They must have come from villages. They should go back to their home, growing the rice.’ The view was not as good as he could have wished, and he was tired. ‘Should we go back? It is getting dark.’

‘I remember there is a park somewhere along the river, we may walk over there.’

‘What to see in the park?’

‘Flowers, plants…’

‘Why? Flowers and plants? There are plenty in our village.’

‘But that is different,’ his dad replied emphatically.

Bing didn’t answer. They retraced back to Tieniu Street, and forgot the park as soon as they spotted an empty pedicab. When asked where to go, they were at first confused, but then, with the brains of two generations, they eventually worked it out.




---- End of Chapter 15 ----

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-9 15:52
Chapter 15    3/3

Chapter 16          1/2




Next morning they got up at 8 o’clock, and after doing a bit of brushing and washing, collected the luggage and went to the counter to check out. A different girl was on duty but she wore the same dull expression.  

The way to the station was noisier, for a lot more people seemed to come out in the morning. The air, in its late Autumn, was crisp and cool. The sun didn’t show from the sky, but the light was enough to claim it as a day, a day special and important to Bing who, for the first time in his life, would take a train, and he was going to no small cities but Shanghai!

Suddenly very excited at the thought of the great journey, he took, decisively, the bigger case from his dad who had shown dragging with its weight, and carried the luggage all by himself. Then, seeing a food stall, they stopped to take their breakfast, the white bread and porridge, both steaming, at a cost of fifty cents per person.

The waiting hall in the station was crowded with passengers. Never before had Bing seen so many people congregated in such a density, on such a disorderly display. Like bees in a hive, they, constantly humming, took every place on the bench, on the floor, and around the corner. For a moment, his eyes seemed to swarm with all types of objects, the heads, the legs, the bags, the rags, the sacks, the baskets and the bamboo poles. The dispositions and gestures were just phenomenal. A baby, snivelling with running tears and phlegm, was stored in the basket attached to the carers’ back. A pregnant woman was treading in the crowd with respectable effort. Only the uniformed personnel, one or two holding a megaphone, were able to maintain their distinguished graceful stance in the place.

‘Where to sit, we still have some time to wait,’ said his father, who, though as short as most passengers, was better adorned by his shirt known as Di Que Liang - Truly Cool, one of those light clothes made of artificial fibres, and his pen that clipped nicely in the breast pocket, and his watch, clinging elegantly to his wrist.

Bing looked around and said: ‘Let’s go to the other side.’

They pushed their way through the throng, and got to a bench with lesser occupation. There was indeed a narrow crack of vacancy, and Bing asked his father to take it. One neighbour was a man, middle-aged, a pure farmer’s face; another, a young man, with a cap and a pair of dark glasses hiding his eyes, had a face relatively free of ‘soil’. Seeing the intrusion to their territory, they both moved a little to give room. His father sat in, at first, only on the very edge, then slowly, he manoeuvred and penetrated into the depth of the seat.

Half an hour later the people stirred to commotion. It was time for boarding. However, crammed in the aisles, the mass stood confused for a long time before moving slowly like snails towards the ‘floodgates’. Looking around, all faces seethed with eagerness and anxiety. Bing clutched the bags and inched forward, followed seamlessly by his father. It was very warm and stuffy. The smell was strange but tolerable.

Finally he reached the gate. Two ticket-inspectors guarded both sides, in their hands the clippers swiftly clicking. The inspector didn’t look at him, only snatched the ticket from his hand, and without as if checking it, punched it with the sort of gesture like a man flicking a cigarette lighter.

On the platform were all running people. The train, now popping into his eyes, was like a tremendous serpent, its body very long without ending. Painted green, it crouched there quietly, exuding a silent power that awed him so much that he paused for a second or two to digest the view.

Then suddenly the train uttered a short and heart-piercing shriek, shocking the runners on the platform in the way like chickens by a thunder. Bing had a real fear the train was leaving without him. Then recovering his sense, he realised that it was just a false alarm. The sound was not unfamiliar to him since he arrived in Mianyang, but catching it at this vicinity had really stemmed several of his heartbeats.

‘Number nine carriage,’ his father voiced aloud behind him.

Bing searched the number plate on the train, the first number he spotted was four, then he moved one way farther, finding the number to be three. So calculating quickly, he trotted back, checking every number that was one plus, Four, and then Five, and then Six…In the middle of each carriage there was an outstanding display: Chengdu – Shanghai- General Speed. And each entrance was clogged, almost standstill, with people and their accessories. Passengers trying to get down were fiercely resisted by those anxious to get on. And curiously, the lady in uniform who stood aside, was very cool in her grace and elegance, not appearing to be bothered by the people’s struggle. When Bing finally arrived at the car with the number Nine, the situation was slightly better, as the first flood of passengers seemed to have already subsided.

Inside the carriage, contrary to what Bing had imagined, was not crowded as much. Only ten or twenty stood in the way; a number of them busily arranging the luggage. First things first, Bing needed to put up the sizable case onto the overhead rack. And then, with a ticket of No Seat, he had to find a seat along the journey when others got off the train. However, checking the rack, there was no space that could be used. So they stayed closely in the aisle, bewildered as one who has just stepped into a wilderness. All the anxieties in the world seemed to mount their faces, one young with acnes, the other middle-aged, swarthy and humble though not sufficiently like a peasant’s.

Then a sudden train movement startled him. It was a quick shift before it stopped still, but it scared him nonetheless.

‘Dad, you get off the train, in case it leaves,’ Bing said anxiously to his father.

‘But how about your baggage?’ his father replied. ‘We need find a place to lodge it.’

‘Don’t worry, I will handle it myself. There must be some space at next station.’

At this moment, a seated man at their side, in his forties, got up and said to them, ‘Let me see if we can find enough room for your case.’

For a moment Bing stared at him, speechless. The good man quickly set his hands about the items on the rack, moving or stacking or laying them down to the aisle to avail his task. Other passengers who were very much concerned with their belongings being such jumbled about, murmuring their protests. But he disregarded them all, and after lifting Bing’s biggest case up to the bottom of the rack, he replaced those bags on its top, plus Bing’s other smaller items.  

When everything looked fit and tight, he sat back on his seat.

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you …’ a serious of thanks were given by both the father and the son. The gratitude stirred so much in Bing’s heart that he felt, if he had anything worthy to give, he would give it to this man.   

Now that the big issue was cleared, his dad was ready to leave. ‘I’d better go, you take care,’ he said.

‘En.’

But before he got off the train, he moved closer, bent and talked to the good man. ‘Thank you, comrade, my child is to Shanghai, first time leaving home, hope you take a bit care of him if you can.’

At his father’s confidence, Bing was made uneasy, for it would certainly draw many eyes towards him.

‘Shanghai? Oh, no wonder, I just thought your child must have got into a university,’ he smiled, and very proudly he added, ‘my daughter went to Tianjin last year, Tianjin University.’

‘Did she?’

‘Yes,’ admitted the man. ‘Don’t worry, I go to Lueyang this trip and will look after him as I can.’

His father left and on the threshold, turned and threw him a glance of lingering concern. Bing was fairly affected, but curiously, more by the feeling of being alone than by the affection expressed by his father. The sort of emotion he had had the day before when departing from other members of the family was not felt. Instead, a relief, a fresh liberty, a sweet flutter for being first time independent, seemed to exalt him in the way as a bird about to fly off with its own fledged wings.  



---To Next Post ---

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-11 14:23
Chapter 16          1/2

Chapter 16    2/2


Scanning the compartments, he saw no eyes showing any more interest at him, which helped him settle the bashfulness that had troubled him since he got on board. Leaning against the edge of the backrest of the three-hard-seated bench, he allowed himself to muse over the waiting quietness prior to the train’s departure. In a minute or two, he heard his name called, trice before he could react to it, and it was from his father.

Despite his reluctance to disturb the seated passengers, he moved into the space between the seats, and bent himself over the small desk, careful lest he disturb the jugs and bags and elbows strewing over it.

‘Bing, I forgot to give you my watch,’ said his father, his hand holding up the watch through the window.

‘Oh, but how about yourself?’

‘Take it, I can get another from the shop.’

Bing took it and retreated from the window, moved back to his standing spot; he fingered the watch a while and not intending to wear it immediately, he saved it in his pant pocket.

Still not moving, the train seemed to stay much longer than expected. The good man was now at rest, his eyes closed. Most of the passengers on board were gazing listlessly out of the window.

In another minute, a sudden shift, followed immediately by a shriek, so sharp and menacing, signalled the real pulling out, for the train didn’t stop its sliding like last time. The eyes of the good man opened with a keen alert; the little society in the train seemed to shake with a new wave of excitement.

The vehicle began to gather its pace, rattling with its gasping breath. Then upon an impulse, Bing went close to the window again, poking his head out, checking for his father’s figure. He saw him, standing there still, without waving his hand, only looking wonderingly in his direction. He must have lost the whereabouts of his carriage. Instantly Bing waved his hand, but his father, standing all the same, didn’t wave back, his size shrinking smaller and smaller

Bing was confused, but for only a little while, before he realized his father couldn’t possibly distinguish his hand from many other waving hands along the line of windows.

Back in his place, Bing was vaguely emotional. The train announcement, accompanied by the music, was very loud and cheerful, as if they were heading somewhere for a great, glorious and righteous cause called by Chairman Mao.

The train was now at its steady speed; the skipping, rhythmic sound of the wheels upon the rails was as if matching his heartbeat. And its roaring cry, given out intermittently, didn’t bore him in the least, even if he had by now heard it for many times. It was a fine day; the fields, as well as the people passing rapidly within the window panes, were as ancient as his memory could recall.

In half an hour, the passengers, mainly those with seats, began to stir. Some stood up to stretch their limbs, and sat down again in the lazy manner of a relaxing cat. Some got out of the seat and with their important tea jug went to fetch the hot water. Some arose, tilting their body, exposing part of their belly, fumbling inside the luggage on the rack, pulling out one or two bags of food and beginning to eat. To the contrast, the standing passengers, like Bing, would stay where they were, except for their little gestures to relieve the growing strain of their feet and shoulders. Literally in the train society, they had become the second class, whose pleasure and freedom were deprived altogether due to the lack of seats. Indeed, all of them had an unfinished business in their mind, that was to secure a seat as early as they could, so as to edge up to become one of those first class passengers, who could show off their superiority by putting on a sort of silly satisfaction on their faces and in their gestures. Oh, what a seat! What a discriminative factor on a train!   

And before long, as Bing noticed, the seat-securing manoeuvre was beginning. Some standing passengers bent their heads, asking timidly those with seats what station they would get off, so as to calculate their chance of taking the due vacancy. The humility in their voice, and the eagerness and desire in their eyes, were too much not to cause in Bing a mild repulsion. Quite a few seated ones simply threw a quick answer of ‘Shanghai’, with an obvious intention to discourage the inquisitors to stick to their sides.

Not believing he had a face-skin thick enough for the type of enquiry, Bing remained in place modestly. At far back of the carriage, there sat two young girls, both in beautiful skirts, chatting with cheery voices. In his regard, they were remote and superior, angelic and sacred, because, after all, he was still a near farmer, his feet still stained with the soil even if they were officially plucked off from the muddy fields.

The thread of his straying thoughts brought him a sudden shade of sadness.

Then the speaker announced, ‘Dear passengers, Jiangyou station is coming, those who need to get off at Jiangyou station, please collect your luggage, and prepare to get off the train.’

It was then repeated again and again, and again.  

Only two seated passengers stood up hastily, and even hastier were those standing ones besides them, who had already poised to thrust into the two seats now turned available.

The train was slowing down, and through the window, Bing saw many clusters of people occupying the platform, and, as the train shushed to stop, they, again, like chickens without heads, flocking here and there with who knows what a spirit driving their legs.

Now with more passengers rushing in than out, Bing felt the bodies and the bags jostling harshly against his back and flank. In two or three minutes, the whole aisle was crammed with dozens more sweatily excited faces, reducing the free space to zero if not negative.  

More enquiries, pathetic as if by the begging dogs, were made to pre-book the seats; more impatience and resentment were expressed out of the grunting mouths of the earlier settlers; and more concerns and piques were displayed in the vigilant eyes whenever the stacks on the rack were touched by the freshly boarded passengers.

There, a peddler, a woman actually, was squeezing through the aisle, selling drumsticks in a basket held high above human heads, repeating her low cry of ‘Drumsticks, one for one Yuan’, at each interval of two seconds, until she was pushed and elbowed out into the next carriage.  

Yet only a little time was needed for the train society to relapse into its relative quietness, except more people were installed into the space, penetrating deeper into the compartments.

The train moved on, passing a number of more stations in the same frantic manner, with the number of passengers increasing infinitely. Unlike the water in a container, that would overflow when full, the train seemed to have the capacity to integrate and condense its mass without altering its shape and structure. And even more amazing, a food cart, driven by a sweating train attendant, was still able to pass through the aisle. Its dogged penetration was excruciatingly unthinkable.

Feeling hungry, Bing fumbled in his pocket for the money and bought from the cart a box of rice with some fatty pig-meat. He managed to eat it, with the support of the backrest-edge he had taken so much pain to stick to during the first two or three hours of his train experience. The good man offered once to let him sit in his seat, but Bing declined politely and thanked him heartily for his offer. There were some other standing passengers who were also eating their boxes of food, so he didn’t feel very shy of eating in such a public. The hunger was a strange thing that could overcome many unnecessary sentiments.

After the food, Bing, who had now become less self-conscious in the crowd, squeezed his way to the junction to dispose of the box into the bin near the toilet. He noticed some people just throwing the box out of the window.

Before coming back, he thought of going to the toilet, but its red sign indicating its occupation. A number of men were squatting in front of its door. Bing checked their blank faces, but could not make out whether they were also waiting for the toilet or not.

When the door finally opened, a man sidled out, wearing a peculiar expression as if he had just done something sordid. And lucky, those men didn’t stand up to compete for the usage. Bing let himself in and closed the door. It was, of course, an appalling sight and smell, but for a moment, the little room seemed to be quite a refuge for him. Indeed, after hours of standing like a sardine, he finally got a space belonging exclusively to him, with certain free air that, unfortunately, came up directly from the dirty hole. The newspapers and other unknown stuff stuffed filthily the otherwise whitish porcelain surface. Water was available if only you pressed the tap hard enough, however it was never enough to wash it clean.

Having relieved himself just the same, the little room soon lost its initial comfort. Its ugliness and stench that had successfully disclosed the dirty side of human species manifested its power to urge his escape.

He came out; the look in the eyes of those men was strange, dull yet evasive, mixed also with the kind of curiosity of a cow in her gazing at an approaching man.

Bing made a great effort to get back to his earlier standing spot, but about halfway he failed to break through the wall of body. The surrounding faces who had expected him to go away as if it would free much of the room for them, looked at him with a constrained chagrin. But Bing didn’t care. He was taller than most of them; and somehow from within his chest came up a type of ill emotion such as anger or defiance, boosting his resolution to ignore those resentful expressions.

At each station where the train stopped to shed and fill the people, Bing longed to get off the train for a walk on the platform, but he had a dread that he wouldn’t be able to get back onto the train. He had the least concern about his luggage, thanking the good man who had placed it safely on the bottom of the rack. So he lived his life in such a packed manner for a timeless period, until it went into the depth of the night, when all the struggling souls in the carriage were tired out into various ways of rest and slumber.

He obtained his sleep while standing, his eyes opening and closing like those of a sick hen. When his feet got unbearably tired, he squatted down amidst the crowd of flesh and odour, hiding his face on his hands crossed over his knees.  

But he didn’t get any valid sleep, nor did he feel very sleepy. Now and then he opened his eyes, sensing the remarkable serenity in the massive human congestion. The rumbling of the train and the snoring of the men were the only sounds to his ears. And the body arrangements of the sleepers were very diverse: standing or squatting like himself, sitting directly on the floor with their faces in their hands, sitting on the seat with their large gaping and puffing mouths, lying coiled under the seat…There was even a man lying flat on the overhead luggage rack, which was supposed to be the most comfortable one could relish among all the sleeping variations. Bing wondered how he could manage it and how the bags could be vacated for him. Maybe he was one of a group who could permit the type of luxury.   

Half dazed, half awaken, he felt he was in a journey lulled by the train to eternity. It was not until the speaker announced the name of Lueyang station did his muffled mind begin to think of its real meaning. Out of aroused urgency he split his way back to where the good man was seated.

The man saw him. ‘Why, I have been wondering where you had gone.’

‘Hehe.’

‘OK, now, I am about to get off, you take my seat,’ he said, standing up, and beckoned him to come over. There was another man, standing beside him, looked very disappointed, while Bing stepped in to claim it. Indeed, after standing more than fifteen hours on the train, his bottom was finally welcome by a flat surface sacredly named as a seat.

With ‘good bye’ and ‘take care’ and ‘thank you’, the good man left. The quiet order of the train was presently broken. People looking for the seats were becoming increasingly fretful lest the desired vacancy be taken by other stronger, more aggressive passengers. The smart ones would have tried all the ingratiating means, such as initiating a talk, sharing cigarettes and food and drinks, in order to establish a rapport with the seated passengers in advanced, until a sort of union was bonded for the security. The final decision as to who was to take the seat usually laid in the hands of the previous occupants. Considering a ticket was to expire at certain destination, and therefore a ticket holder should not have more right of dictating who could take it for the rest of trip, this practice was rather unjustified. However, when there was no better way to settle the issue, the person could decide on the time of vacating his seat in favour of a chosen person, banishing the attempt of others. In fighting for a seat on the train, human politics was indeed in full play.

Bing was a novice in the train-boarding experience. For a reason, he held a strange pride that seemed to shame him in seeking the seat in the humble manner as many others did, otherwise he should have long before secured one. After all, many stations had already passed, and many batches of passengers had been depleted and replenished, providing a lot of opportunities for him to grasp.

But his face-skin was not thick enough; without the good man, Bing would certainly have stood his way through all three days to Shanghai, unless the train suddenly became less crowded, and the seats became available for everyone, which, in the most populous country on the earth, was sounding more like a distant dream than a near possibility.  



-- End of Chapter 16 ---

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-11 14:26
Chapter 16    2/2

Chapter 17      



Finally he had a seat, so blessed, so much craved for by the passionate travellers. Sitting upon the flat, barely cushioned surface, he was gratified, his legs and shoulders were able to stretch and relax, and he was one of the six supercilious ‘train-citizens’ in the compartment.

A seat was indeed an ancient invention of mankind in his learning the comfort of sitting, and going a step further to make such a structure. Animals such as cat, dog, monkey or cattle, know also the goodness of sitting, or sprawling, though they simply sat on their haunches and not smart enough to create a seat. Then how about birds? Well, they rarely sit, because they fly more in the air than stay on the land. However, when they are in their nest, they must still in a way bend their feet to take their rest. Then how about ants? Does an ant sit at all? A sudden idea was crossing his mind. Oh, no, an ant never sits; it stands and walks all its life. Ah! What a queer little creature!

On the greatest discovery, his eyelids were twitching.

So most animals, heavier and clumsier than the ant of course, have a need to sit, at some places, at certain intervals, by one method or another, to let the parts of a body rotate their labour in opposing gravity.

However, in this tightly packed train, the basic animal right of sitting for some passengers was denied. To imagine one stands fifteen hours and not able to sit, not able to move or stretch a bit, and worse, in a very likely scenario, not able to pee or shit anywhere but into your own pants! Wouldn’t even a cat, a cow, or a bird, if restricted and confined this insufferable way, be distressed to death, or commit suicide had it ever developed such a desperate notion?

So, very lucky, he had a seat, at last and at least; and lucky too, he was not mad, still free to think; and even luckier, he hadn’t felt so much a need to go to the toilet during all those appalling hours.

After running his seat-related fancies, his train of thoughts passed on to the watch in his pocket. Since his father gave it to him he had not had a chance to take a closer look at it. And if his memory was right, it must have been the first watch he had ever touched in his life. It was true that his dad had worn one for many years, but it was also true that it had been too precious, too enviable as a treasure in the eyes of villagers for him to play with it. Nowadays, more people had their wrists ringed with such a precious item, which had somehow become a kind of material to be proudly shown off. Indeed, there was such a watch wearer sitting opposite, who had his hand arranged wide on the desk, rolling his tatty sleeves high up in his arm, effecting a live and conspicuous watch-display.

But his father’s watch looked even better than his. It was silvery, thick and heavy, the scales on the  winding crown so delicate. He touched the crown to feel its tiny teeth, and raised it close to his ear to hear its ticking. The sound was not very strong, but steady and resolute like a living heart. Its hands indicated 5:14, well, of course, it was in the afternoon, judging from the light outside the window.

After putting the watch back in his pocket, he was idle again, and then felt hungry. He expected the food cart to come. He knew, even if it was beyond anyone’s imagination of passing a cart in such a condition, it would eventually arrive. The human body could be unbelievably supple and foldable under the extreme circumstances.

So the cart came, and he got a box of rice with a drumstick, and finished it with a few strokes of the chopsticks that came with it. He had been a farmer, and was still a farmer, who had to put food before other preferences. Once finished, he inserted the empty box into the mess on the crowded little desk. It was first time he had used the desk; he had a right to do so, because it was supposed to be shared by the six sitters in the compartment.

This done, he sat back, and closed his eyes, and let another white day drift away, with more stations passing with or without his consciousness.

Then, he heard an announcement, a sweet and sleepy womanish voice from the speaker, ‘Dear passengers, Xi’an station is coming, those who need to get off at Xi’an station, please pack your luggage, and be ready to get off the train.’

It was then repeated again, again, and again.   

To his little knowledge, Xi’an was roughly in the middle of his trip to Shanghai. But now that he had secured a seat, the rest of the journey would be much more endurable, that was, pray, only if he wouldn’t have to pee or shit.

Some time later, the train pulled to a stop at Xi’an station. He opened and then closed his eyes again, commanding the commotion to bypass his mind. In the meantime he must have a little nap, for when he opened his eyes again, the train had already left Xi’an station, rattling on. The light outside the window was soft and tired. It was evening. Some peasants, with hoes on their shoulders, were trudging along the narrow ridges of the fields. They were just farmers, so low and common, as ancient as the earth.  

Really he was very tired, he was longing for sleep. He felt his face was very dirty, and the soreness in his neck never went away. But by managing his slumber like a cat, opening and closing his eyes as if some danger would close upon him at any of his unwary moment, he achieved very little rest.

The outside world was growing darker, and the human noise on top of the monotonous jogging of the train was weaker. Then, after how long he didn’t know, the train stopped at a station where the tumult seemed to be exceptionally disturbing. Someone was screaming on the platform. And in the carriage, the standing passengers beside him began to move, shove, and fold over to the little desk in the sitter’s sacred territory. But strange enough, he heard no cursing or swearing from these people, despite the enormous resentment and distress etched in their face.

In another second, Bing saw a head, and two hands emerging from within the window frame. At first, he thought they perhaps belonged to a person with a platform-ticket, coming to see off his relatives or friends. But no, this guy, of which face was contorted, and turned purplish by his uttermost excitement, was jerking his head further into the train, his hands gripping the window sill, his body squirming in. The passengers at the window were hurrying to remove their teacups and other things from the desk, lest the intruder knock them over.

‘Get down, get down, go away, go away,’ they scowled, attempting to thwart his penetration.

But the man dogged his own way, pulling and dragging his one leg and then another into the space. Then immediately he turned to the window, grabbing one and then two bags from outside, and oblivious to the protesting stares and grunts, throwing them onto the floor full of feet. This done, he again turned to window and shouted, ‘Hurry up!’

Now another set of head and hands began to struggle through the window, and with the assistance of an ally already on the train, the second fellow was able to invade even faster but no less fiercely into the space. The two passengers sitting at he window, who had previously said some angry words, now looked helplessly submissive, yielding to the united force of the formidable intruders. From their victory chattering, they were recognised to be the senior university students of Tongji University in Shanghai. Oh, they must have had a lot of experience of climbing into a train in many of their seasonal travels.   

The little space, now with two more people landed from the window, and with those standing in the aisle everlastingly pushing in, was seamless. Many arms, seeking the support from the backrest, were well over Bing’s head, and the legs and bellies were pressing hard against his knees and chest. But, soon enough, the train was moving again, showing no difficulty in rolling its mighty wheels.

During the hours that followed, Bing scarcely paid attention to what was stirring around him. He had a seat; he was able to sit tight in his little solace. He kept his eyes shut, and persuaded his ears not to hear, and his nose not to smell, so that he could imagine himself to be in his own little world, fanciful and childish. It was like a dream, a precious indulgent reverie, where he was on the hills, picking the black fruits, eating the azalea flowers, or in the singing streams, catching the minnows, or in the pools swimming, naked, dog-paddling, choking, in the midst of many long-tailed tadpoles …

Then a cry, a loud wailing, reached and broke his wall of resistance. He thought he had heard it before, but not as close as this. He opened his eyes to see four men standing or perching in the compartment. The two university students were not present any more. He turned and noticed beside him a boy of six or seven, crying with running tears on his cheeks, and another boy of similar age clung behind, and then a woman, with one hand caressing the head of the crying boy, the other gripping a big floppy sack.  

‘Xiao Qin, it is okay, now, stop crying,’ she calmed the boy down.

‘Mum, my foot hurt, someone stepped on me,’ the boy said incoherently.

‘I know, it will be all right when we get off the train.’

The mother didn’t look like an ordinary peasant. Her complexion was tanned, but not as dark as most women he had seen who had to toil day and night in his village. She returned a glance at Bing, as if conveying a hint of apology for her child’s crying so close to him.

Gradually the boy’s voice was lowered, his sobs ebbing into the intermittent hiccups.

Bing decided to shut his senses again. However, needing a sort of distraction, he took his watch out of his pocket, fiddled with it and felt the smoothness of the metal, the glass, and the chain.  

But his mind couldn’t get away from the boy standing beside him, who continued his strong hiccups even if he was not loudly crying as before. For a moment, Bing was thinking whether or not he should let the boy take his seat. After all, he was a child of six and his foot was hurt by some big man. But how would other people on the train look at him if he expressed the kindness? He was, by nature, a shy and self-conscious person. If he did a good deed like Lei Feng - the model of Chinese who had unselfishly served the people, he would inevitably attract too much attention from the people around. And, on the train, who could possibly give up a hard-earned seat to others? Wasn’t it even more precious than many ounces of gold under the circumstances?

He was hesitating, denying and affirming, denying and affirming again the little deed of virtue. His uneasy moments were divided between his shyness and his conscience.

But the boy! Ah! How could he blot out the little, teary face?

At last, he stood up as if to shake a burden away from his heart, and making a smile that must be awkward, he spoke to the boy.

‘Come, sit here.’

The boy looked up at him, accompanied by a big hiccup that shook hard his body. He turned to his mother, obviously for her permission.

‘You can sit there a while, thank big brother,’ said his mother, and then smiled at Bing. ‘Thank you, he will be fine after a while.’

‘Hehe…’ Bing smiled bashfully, treading his feet cautiously for a standing place. In the meantime, he said to another boy: ‘You can also sit there, there should be enough room for both of you.’

So with two other adult sitters also moving a bit inside, the two settled in nicely. Bing moved aside to allow their mother stand closer to her children. She laid down her bag on the floor, and managed to inspect the child’s foot. The boy’s two smaller toes were red and swollen. She touched them, the boy flinched.

‘It is okay, will be okay, don’t cry,’ she said. But the boy didn’t cry, merely releasing the series of hiccups he couldn’t control.

Rising, she was smiling again at Bing, with humbleness and sweetness in equal measure. Her eyes were full of gratitude, amounting to what Bing had expressed to the good man two days before.

The train was rumbling on. The deed was completed, and even better, he didn’t seem to have drawn too many eyes of other people. For a moment, he was really happy. Yes, Lei Feng was right, you will feel happy when you help people; but, well, only if other people don’t notice and stare at you!

From then on, the mother, now standing before him, closely, actually seamlessly to all passengers who stood around her in such a packed condition, would always give him a grateful smile whenever her eyes caught his, which was not infrequent in the following hours of journey. Her hair was rich, done up into a nice bun, which was so close to him that he couldn’t but smell its subtle scent. And the warmth and softness of her body, and her…

Well, something was not right, but the fact was, ever since he cracked out of his boyhood into adulthood, he had never snuggled so close to a woman. He was unable to keep a decent distance from her, for the men around him were forever pushing him to her with a force he found it impossible to fight back. Therefore an honourable gap between her back and his front couldn’t be maintained no matter how much he had been willing. And frankly, her body seemed to also have a power to attract him. The intimacy was indeed perversely but sweetly comfortable.

So, all he could do as a good boy was to move away his head, endeavouring to fix his eyes outside the window. But it was dark, nothing to see. Yet just the same, he looked and looked, stifling the strange feeling that was curiously creeping inside him. It didn’t take long before he realized that his body was seething with a shameless potency.

Then, suddenly the train skidded, staggering in great strides. Everyone was frantically seeking whatever support their hands could grasp. Bing grabbed her arm in the sudden forward lurching, and she must also have grabbed someone else. And in another instant, she was throwing her whole body into his…

After the train had returned to its smooth running, she turned her head, smiling at him, apologetically. But he thought it was him who should be sorry for his unintended rudeness.

Nonetheless, she was still so painfully close to him. Her back and her soft buttocks brushed him on or off with the train’s unsteady movement. Her hair was emitting that peculiar scent. His aroused body and conscientious mind were in a fitful struggle in darkness. Then at one ecstatic point, he lost himself, and the world was halting still…

Thank sky, the surface of the world didn’t seem to have changed. His face must have been contorted with ugly crimson.  But, as his sense recovered, he felt the loss was almost imitating one of those lustful but uncontrollable ones during his sleep. Only the dirt feeling in his pants was never so intense and disgusting.  

It should have been a crime, but he had not been punished. They stood together until the next day, in the early morning, at Kai’feng station, where she and her two boys got off the train. She cooed her two boys to mind their steps, and asked them repeatedly to say thanks to the ‘big brother’. He saw them, through the window, walking on the platform. Turning back to look at him, she raised her hand, and mouthed ‘bye, bye’. But her smile, for that instance, was more like mocking than anything else.

The rest of trip was mechanical, with the dulled weariness and dirtiness. The people around him were mere puppets, like the sick, half-dead chickens who, though dying, were still jerking their necks and legs.

Another white day had passed.

Then in the morning or noon, after the supposed three days if he could still remember, the mighty train gasped its last exhausted howling, stopping at the final station.

A young man, a University Student in New China, in a pair of pants that had turned so dirty and hideous, and with his skin plagued by acnes and his eyes thickly greased, and with his young moustache and beard as dark and sparse as a shade of ruffled grasses, pressed himself forward in the mass of passengers, stamping on the first piece of land of great Shanghai.   



---End of Chapter 17---

---End of Part II-----

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-12 22:53
Chapter 17      

Part III

Chapter 18     1/2



But the great Shanghai was not so great, at least judging by what the railway station had ever tried to represent. The station looked unbelievably small and disordered, as he paused to conjure up his first impression of the city after being pushed and kicked on heels out of the gate. The noise, produced by the buses and the humans, was constant, and the little stalls of peddlers were numerous, and the rubbish didn’t seem to be less than anywhere else.

To this minute, his final extrication from the train had hardly helped alleviate the weariness and dirty feeling he had soaked up from a lengthy travel of more than fifty hours.

It was a fine day; there was a sun, smothered in grey cloud, of which shape was indistinct. He was sweltering, his body clammy. The manly stuff, owing to his romantic minutes on the train, was in his pants congealed, stretching the hair. He could have done something about it in the train toilet, if he had forced himself to do so, but the idea doing that sort of thing, in that sort of place, was no less repulsive and disgusting than the dirt itself. Indeed, every part of his body was in its lowest possible decency; one bit was scarcely better than another.

Though he had noticed the banners of many universities that had come here to greet the fresh students of the season, he didn’t rush to them. For a minute or two he stood there looking around in a free but wretched state of mind, like a prey who has just escaped a chasing predator. His white shirt, washed clean by his mother on the day prior to his great departure, had turned almost black at the cuffs and collars. The stain was not like mud, nor like the shit or some creatures’ urine, but its foulness felt just the same.

It was all buzzing and beeping. On the other side of the road, there were many buildings that looked very different from any human shelters in his knowledge. Unlike the houses made of soil or bricks, they seemed to have been constructed solely by heavy stones. And the arched entrance, so harsh and grim and almost sad, only reminded him of a tombstone in a graveyard or a blockhouse in defence.

Dragging his feet and his luggage, he went towards where the red banners were clustered. His eyes searched the name of his university and in no time found the words of ‘Welcome to Shanghai International Studies University’, which reached him like a new home or like an oasis for an adventurer in a desert.

The girl behind the desk, seeing him approach, got up and smiled. Wearing a yellow blouse, round-collared and short-sleeved, as well as a skirt, she appeared cleaner and tidier than any girlish form in his mind.

‘Ni Hao, Shangwai?’ she asked amiably, quoting the simple name of his university.

‘Yes,’ he answered simply, taking out the letter and placed it on the desk for her inspection.

But she didn’t check the letter, only tipping her finger across a sheet of paper. ‘What is your name?’

‘Wang Bing.’

‘Wang Bing?’

‘Yes,’ he affirmed, ‘from Sichuan.’

The finger travelled only a little distance before it stopped. ‘Here it is!’ she exclaimed, with a joy as if she had found a treasure.

Oh, she was so lovely; for a moment, he was thinking if he, in his haggard and aghast form of existence, should deserve such a nice regard from her. A self-consciousness was suddenly becoming very active - how dirty he must be; how unsightly his face must be with those acnes that had not been checked and cleaned during all those days on the train!

But he had only suffered from it for a short time, for he was soon given an envelope which, as she told him, contained the information of registration and accommodation, and then led to the bus stop by another male student who had just turned up.

‘No. 115, it will take you to Cifeng Station, where you can walk to the dormitory,’ the boy instructed him. The railway station was also a bus terminal. A bus of No. 115 was already there waiting. Old and rusty it had a very long body, of which middle was joined by a buffer like the blades of an accordion. He got on; the driver was not yet present. Seeing some vacant seats at the back, he moved towards the end, gingerly carrying his bags to avoid scraping the legs thrust out from other passengers. Along the way, he saw quite a few young but worn and greasy faces that must mirror very much his own.

Inside the bus, the noise seemed to have diminished all at once. The passengers, seated with their dim eyes gazing out of the window, were waiting with patience, or with boredom. Whatever hope lurked at the back of their minds was for the moment unperceivable.   

As soon as the driver, followed by a conductor, stepped on the bus, the air and the inhabitants of the bus stirred to animation. The conductor, a young slim lady in a blue uniform, cast her eyes long enough to cover the whole bus interior. By this time, no seats were available to newcomers, who had to stand wherever they could plant their feet.

The conductor began to sell the tickets. In Mandarin the conversation was brief and transactional. The price was mostly one Jiao. A ticket was ripped off with a nice jerk of her hand, and, together with the change if any, were thrust into the hand that was uplifted more like begging.

Half way through in her duty, the bus started and rumbled to the road. Immediately the standing passengers raised their arms to hold the overhead bar for support. Only the conductor, with her hands both employed in her task, stood apart and fast, keeping her delicate balance on the wobbly bus. She had a pale and clean face, her lips was faintly glowing with a touch of rouge.

In a while, she reached him who had already had a note of one-Jiao ready.

‘To Shangwai,’ he said.

She took the money, quickly produced the ticket and gave it him. She didn’t even look at him, all the while her eyes were on her money bag and the stack of the tickets in her hand. Elegant, self-assured, a bit haughty, she acted as if detached from her surroundings, not belonging to the social rank of the customers on the bus. The manner she regarded her customers were supercilious and patronizing.

The bus reached the next stop and he heard her saying something like ‘Give way, give way...’ repeatedly in a language foreign to his ears. She reached out her hand and kept banging the bus to rhyme her voice. Apparently she was warning, in Shanghai dialect, a crowd of people outside, who were rushing dangerously close to the rapidly moving bus.  

The bus ride turned out to be very much like a train; every soul had a tangible fear of being left behind, and as always, at every stop, more people seemed to mount than alight. The passengers would pack more into the space, and the conductor would squeeze her way selling the tickets. But she didn’t appear to have any trouble in dong her job, and instead of Mandarin, she now uttered every note in Shanghai dialect, which sounded pretty like happy birds chirping.

Outside the bus was a lot of moving things, familiar and unfamiliar to him. Bicycles and tricycles and pedestrians and cars and the trees with yellowish patchy leaves and the stony buildings and the multi-storied shops, were flashing by. The vast quantity of them impressed him with a magnitude that was supposed to match the grandeur of Shanghai.  

Now he closed his eyes and really longed for a doze; the shapes and forms that had sustained his first-time curiosity had become the sort of irritants rather than stimulants.

But he couldn’t have his wished-for rest, for in a minute the bus grounded to a sudden stop with a screeching sound tearing his nerves. Darting open his eyes, he saw a bicycle-rider falling at the kerb along the bus. The bus driver cursed something very loud, sharp and crude.

The rider, obviously without being hurt, immediately pulled himself up and pedalled away fleeing, as if he would face a charge if he had stayed a second longer.  

It was another stop; the door swung squealing open; people got off and on again.

At this very moment, coming to his eyes from one of those stony arches was a woman in Chinese traditional Chi-pao; scarlet, sleeveless, with a swirling phoenix picture on her front. Her arms were both bared, pale and full; her breasts, seized and shaped by the garment, were high-hitched, protruding and aggressive; her belly and her haunches were in a perfect wavering harmony as she took her split steps. The figure seemed familiar in his mind, but it must have come from certain books he had read, for he couldn’t possibly have watched such a live Chi-pao display.  

The bus moved, and he turned to catch a last sight of the woman. The spectacle, out of the drab and coarse arch, was so remarkable that his long, dirty weariness was spontaneously shattered, as if he had just drunk a bowl of rice-wine.

In spite of everything he had thus far observed as unimpressive, the girlish or feminine phenomenon in the city seemed exceptionally more inspiring than elsewhere.

He licked his dry lips, and just as he wondered how much longer the bus would take him, the conductor announced, this time in friendly Mandarin, ‘Arriving at Cifeng station; arriving at Shangwai.’ Apparently this Shanghai lady was able to switch languages to suit the passengers’ origin she was able to detect.

Preparing to get off the bus, he had waited much longer than a time hinted by the conductor, who had said ‘arriving’. As soon as it stopped, he pawed his bags, brushing at people’s legs and buttocks towards the door. It was rather fortunate that he got off the bus safely, without stumbling over the steps.

On the ground, he was not alone; three girls and another boy were also present. They had similar disposition as his. All had one or two sizable trunks; and with considerable wonder in their face, they looked exactly newcomers to the city.

Standing there and wearing the expression of one who has lost his way, they didn’t speak to each other. There was no sign of the university. At last, one girl initiated a dialogue with the boy closest to her.

‘Classmate,’ she asked, blushing, ‘are you also going to Shangwai?’

‘Yes,’ the boy answered, also blushing, ‘which way to go?’

The boy looked around, as if an answer could come from the air. But they, five of them, were the only souls in the place. Then the boy went on, ‘Let’s ask someone.’

The rest of the listening youths, now realizing they were all in a same boat waiting to dock, silently agreed. They waited, until a middle-aged man came forward.

‘Comrade…’ the boy began politely, ‘which way to Shangwai?’

The man regarded him curiously, before he answered understandingly: ‘Oh, Shangwai, this way, go about five-hundred meters, and turn right to Eastern Tiyu Hui Road, then go straight and you will get there.’

In a minute, with the boy now as the leader, the group made their way to their destination, hauling various sizes of bags, like some soldiers reunited after losing a battle. They began to talk in an easier manner, making a little self-introduction. Three girls were from Hubei, Shandong and Beijing; their majors were German, Japanese, and German. The boy, as tall as Bing, with healthy, sun-tanned skin, was from Guangxi, and his major was Russian. When Bing told them of his major, their eyes had shown a trace of admiration. They said English was the hardest one to get in, because it was very popular. Bing told them it was actually his teacher who had put English as his first choice, Japanese and French as the second and the third.


--- To Next Post---

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-14 17:12
Part III

Chapter 18     1/2

Chapter 18     2/2


The day was 31st August, the first day to register. It was about the mid-afternoon, exactly what time he didn’t bother to check. They dragged on, but after ten or twenty minutes still finding no sign of Shangwai, they became disconcerted and had to confirm their route from another passer-by before going further. Bing was longing for a place to wash and to become himself again, but the trip seemed endless.

However, some time later, like all the toiling labour in a life that would sooner or later come to an end even if temporary, they reached the residential area of their university, number 411 Eastern Tiyu Hui Road.

A red banner, ‘Welcome New Students to the University,’ hung conspicuously between the two cement pillars at the entrance. A uniformed security guard came over to look at them; his eyes seemed to say they were no doubt fresh students, and questioning them was unnecessary.

They entered. There were four adults, or teachers, sitting behind a row of desks covered by a long red cloth. Some students stood bending over the desk, while others sat on the stools writing. And with five of them newly arrived, the place turned live in a little flurry.

In the queue for English, only Bing was waiting. The teacher was presently serving another student, who sat there filling a form. She was a girl.

Bing stood there, upright. He composed himself, assuming a shallow dignity to the best of his ability, shunning the very idea of his dismal appearance at this particular time.

The sitting student, with her back to him, had long and black hair. It tumbled down from her head, parted at her nape, its main part spreading well over her shoulders; the rest slipped hidden in her front. With a ball pen she was filling a form; her sleek hair was sliding and shaking, swiftly but gently in time with the movement of her head and her arm.

Her shirt was white, short-sleeved, and her skirt, partially exposed in her sitting, was striped with red and white, very sharp and eye catching.

‘Thank you, Ms. Tang’ she said to the teacher. ‘So I go to my room.’

‘Remember to take your desk and stool,’ the teacher, Ms. Tang, said, pointing to the place where a lot of square, one-seat desks and stools were stacked, and then pointed again to the two-storied building near the entrance, ‘and go to the canteen for supper over there.’

‘Yes, I know, thank you,’ she rose and turned, and, noticing his existence, she threw him a large but brief glance, which was still long enough to impress him with her beauty, and more, her pride.

With a nice bag on her arm, she flashed away.

‘What is your name?’ Ms. Tang asked kindly, as he went forward to sit on the stool.

‘Wang Bing.’

She checked her paperwork. ‘Oh, you come from Sichuan, far, far away, a long trip.’ She smiled a smile of considerable compassion, ‘You must be very tired.’

‘Hehe, not too bad,’ he said humbly, producing his first smile since he landed in Shanghai.

In about ten minutes, the registration was completed. He was given a stack of meal-vouchers for one month as well as a key to the room 504 of building 6. Ms. Tang said she was the director of his class.

The door was in the middle of the building, easily noticed by its outstretched awning, which looked like the visor of a hat. A middle-aged woman, who sat inside the room knitting, guarded the entry. After checking his identity, she said: ‘If you need to buy things, you can get most of them here.’

‘Okay, thank you,’ he replied, noticing the heap of things on the shelves at the back of her room. ‘I may buy some after I put away my luggage.’

The door of 504 was open; there were four bunk beds inside, two at each side against the wall. The room had a capacity for eight students, which was the same as his high school. The advantage here was that they had a desk and a stool of their own, though very small; while in Sangton, there was only one shared desk.

Six beds were already taken as indicated by the mosquito nets installed or being installed. But Bing saw only two fellows in the room setting up their nets. There was a chart at the back of the door indicating the bed allocation. Bing checked for his bed and went to the upper bunk near the door. It was good he could have the upper one. The upper ones and those closer to the windows were presumably better than the rest. The last one unoccupied, as he checked, was opposite his but at the lower level, and because it was also close to the door, supposed to be the worst in the room.

After exchanging brief greetings with the two roommates, Bing started to unpack his things, throwing all he had onto the bed. There would be many things awaiting his hands to get them ready, but the first thing he couldn’t wait to do was to wash his body. To do this, he needed soap.

So fetching some money, he ran down the stairs to the ground level, and bought from the guard a towel,  a tooth paste, a basin, a block of soap, and a mosquito net.

The bathroom was at the end of the narrow hallway. Two rows of sinks were attached to walls. The taps, six in one row, some of which were still dripping, availed graciously their nozzles to the service he had been desiring during last three days. First things first, he went to the toilet, then he brushed his teeth, with plenty of paste on the new brush. The water tasted strange and unnatural, but it hardly mattered. Some chemical was okay, for it should help kill the germs, bringing back the whiteness of his teeth.

Then he slipped off his clothes, going under the head of the shower, screwing the valve to its extreme capacity. The water shot very hard on his head, cooling all the way down to his toes. Then turning off the water, he rubbed himself fully with the soap branded as Bai Li - Beautiful White - until his skin was well covered with the slippery foam.

It was strange to think that the skin of human being, for some odd reasons, should be cleaned so as to feel comfortable. Other living creatures on the earth, like cows and pigs and rats, seem not to have such a desperate need to trouble themselves with the length of washing. To many of them, the dirtier it is, the more comfortable they are.   

He washed all over twice; the refreshment was immense and satisfying. Using his little towel, he sponged his front, flapping his back where it was hard to reach, managing a sawing gesture with two hands slanting against it, as he had used to do as a child after swimming in a stream.

He studied his skin with his fingers, and felt happy with its cleanness and smoothness; he brushed his face with his hand, feeling unhappy about the acnes that seemed rough against his finger pads. He needed a mirror; he searched around, but finding none in the room.

After gathering the dirty clothes to be soaked in the basin, he put on new set of clothes, and went back to the room. Nobody was presently in the room; they must have all gone for supper. He saw a mirror standing on one of the little desk. He took it and sitting on a bed, employed his time to check and test and nurse the acnes on his face, until he was reasonably satisfied with his recovered self-image.

He knew it was vanity. All he did was vain and useless, but he had no sense to stop it. In his young mind, there lurked so much hope and desire and pleasure, of which fulfilment seemed to have a great deal to do with his appearance.

How good would it be if he had a nice and straight nose, with a solid quality like stone? How good would it be if he had a pair of eyes, not necessarily big but thoughtful, full of wisdom and sentiment? How good would it be if he had a forehead that was fine and broad, expressing a sort of generosity and good possibility? How good would it be if he had a hair that was thick yet flexible enough to certain manly styles? How good would it be if he had a mouth, with clear edges and deciding lips? How good would it be if he had a clean skin without those troubling acnes? How good would it be if his height was not at 173cm but stretched a few more centimetres, up to 180cm…

He meditated upon himself in the mirror, long enough to forget his hunger, and long enough to remember his hunger.

The canteen, was just meters away from the entrance. It was near dusk; registration was already closed for the day, leaving only the bare desks and stools. There would be another day for registration, as indicated in the notice letter. So tomorrow he would be free. The formal class assembly was the day after.

The dining hall had only one window left open. The lights were on; the air looked vast and empty, with three of four diners individually sitting and eating at separate wooden tables. Bing reached the window and gave a voucher and the rice-box to the woman inside, who took it, and started immediately filling up his box, without asking what he wanted. Bing soon realized there was not much food left, only cabbages and green beans.

It was only now, when looking at the lukewarm content in the box, that he realised how hungry he was. The gnawing of his stomach was sensational, reminding him of the hungry piglets at the food-trough. It was as if the cool shower he had just taken and the regained feeling of cleanness had finally awakened his appetite to eat, which must have been subdued by the dragging vulgarity of the tedious journey.

But he didn’t wolf down the food as one could have imagined under the circumstances. He chewed slowly and forcefully, feeling the strength of his young teeth and jaws, teasing his hunger ever more bits by bits. He sat there musing. Oh, to think he had travelled across half of China, from the far west to the far east! To think about everything that he had seen and had happened during the time: his crazy dissipation in the train with the young woman; the Shanghai lady in a scarlet Chi-Pao, so glamorous and attractive, emerging from the stony arch; and the girl at the registration desk, so striking, so full of pride and arrogance in her face, but whose features he failed to catch and study carefully.

Well, she must be in his class…

The dinner took him much longer than ordinary. As soon as he got back to his room, he began to set up his mosquito net. There were bamboo sticks erected at the corner where there was no sidewall to hold the net. Four hooks were needed to put it up. Having to rely on bamboos and walls for the fastening task, instead of the wooden framework available in the lower bed, was a slight disadvantage living at the upper level.

But it was not a difficult task for him, who had dealt with bamboos nearly all his younger years in the village. However, he noticed a roommate who was supposed to have already finished the job, still busily working on the bits and pieces for his net, crawling in the bed, pulling, crouching, kneeling, resting, sighing, in very much the manner of a dog struggling in a cage.

After finishing his own job, he lay on the bed, and looking at the roof and the sides of net with a feeling of achievement. The mosquitoes, who like to hide in the folds and nooks of the net before launching their bloody attack, would now find themselves easy targets in his sovereign territory. He had gained a lot of experience in his constant battle with mosquitoes. He knew the drapes of the net must be laid seamlessly under the straw sheet or books or folded clothes, and at least three clips were required to close its door. The important thing was not to give any possible holes for the intrusion of the most annoying creature on the earth.

With a clean body, and a full stomach and a tired mind that had ceaselessly digested the scenes and swarming humans along his journey, he drifted, very soon after he closed his eyes, into a long sleep that had never been so sound and thorough in his living history.




-- End of Chapter 18 ---

syd12345

romanticlady

在慢慢看，没有楼主贴的进度快。请继续。

洋八路

洋八路 发表于 2014-4-29 20:09
Chapter 29    2/2

已建电梯。。。

michelle.lv

lz方便发个pdf给我吗？我好放到kindle上拜读，谢谢啦

miao123

18章以后的链接不working, 楼主能否更新一下呀