AOI 19

“You two! Run again! Slide again! Climb again! Charge again!”

From a corner of the park came a continuous barrage of angry reprimands, forming a stark contrast with the idyllic atmosphere of birdsong and floral fragrance all around.

Passersby, drawn by the high-decibel tirade, cast curious glances their way. They saw a teacher standing with hands on her hips like a teapot, scolding two kids. Though both children wore expressions of utter fearlessness, with every scolding they gave an involuntary little shudder—quite amusing to watch.

Just then, two men walked by. One of them observed the scene from a distance and offered his opinion: “Kids these days are impossible. All they do is make adults worry and get angry.”

The man beside him immediately laughed and debunked him: “Oh come on, who wasn’t a little terror when they were kids? You remember that time you shot a sparrow with your slingshot but your aim was off and you hit some guy in the eye? He chased you for miles with a bicycle chain—forgot about that, did you?”

“Would’ve completely forgotten if you hadn’t brought it up!” The man laughed heartily, then looked at the taller of the two boys and remarked with a sigh, “Waves upon waves on Hong Lake—each generation crazier than the last!”

With that, the two men walked off laughing, growing more distant.

“‘For victory—fire at me’?!” Cao Yunfeng continued her machine-gun interrogation. “You have the nerve to compare yourself to a battle hero? Then what are we teachers—American imperialists? Japanese devils? The Kuomintang? Class enemies?! Huh? Answer me!”

Xu Minghai kept his head down, using the tip of his shoe to grind hard into the ground, thinking to himself that he was just having a bit of fun with words. Cao Yunfeng, being a Chinese teacher, really knew how to pick apart every single word with deadly precision.

Seeing Xu Minghai’s passive non-cooperation—clamping his jaw shut and refusing to utter a single word—Cao Yunfeng shifted her artillery fire and began trying to break up the enemy alliance.

She switched to a softer tone, putting on an air of benevolence and earnestness: “Qiushi, Teacher can see you’re a good, honest child. It’s only because you live in the same courtyard as Xu Minghai that you’ve been influenced in some very bad ways. There’s a saying: ‘Near vermilion, you turn red; near ink, you turn black.’ You may not fully understand it now, so let Teacher explain in plain language. It means: next to the Golden Throne, you grow lingzhi mushrooms; next to the outhouse, you grow dog-pee toadstools. Do you understand? Do you want to be lingzhi or a toadstool?”

Qiushi thought for a moment, then slowly raised his head and said quietly: “Xu Minghai isn’t an outhouse.”

Pfft—Xu Minghai cracked up on the spot.

“Teacher was speaking metaphorically!!!” All of Cao Yunfeng’s strength was completely drained in that instant. She pressed a hand to her forehead, straightened her now wildly dishevelled hair, and panted: “Fine. I still have to watch the other students—I don’t have time to waste on you two right now. You’re not allowed to join your classmates for the rest of the spring outing. You’ll go wait in the bus with the driver and head back to school with everyone this afternoon. Since you live in the same courtyard, I’ll come find you tonight and speak with your parents directly. We’ll have a good talk about what happened today, and then decide whether to have you both expelled and sent to reform school!”

With that, Cao Yunfeng called over the driver, who’d been standing at a distance smoking. After giving him the instructions, she had him lead the two kids to the parking lot at the park’s east gate.

On the way, Qiushi whispered to Xu Minghai: “Are they really going to send us to reform school?”

“She’s just scaring you. I’ve been hearing that line for years. At first it was ‘the police will come and throw you in jail,’ and when that stopped working, she switched to reform school.” Xu Minghai was completely unfazed.

Qiushi felt reassured. Then he grinned and couldn’t help savouring the memory: “The Big Snow Mountain was so much fun. Too bad we only got to go once.”

“Next time we’ll get Godfather to bring us!”

Once they were out the park’s east gate, the two were escorted onto the bus. It was the first time Xu Minghai had ever been on a big public bus without having to fight for a seat, and he was quite pleased, dragging Qiushi to claim the very back row.

The driver sat in the front for a while, then another bus driver came over to call him. He walked back and instructed them: “You two sit tight in the bus—I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Go ahead, Uncle—sorry for the trouble,” Xu Minghai said politely.

The driver thought the kids were pretty well-behaved, so he got off without worry and joined the other drivers at the park entrance for a smoke.

Just then, Xu Minghai remembered something. He turned to Qiushi: “Hey, Guozi, where’s your bag?”

“I asked Feng Xiaoqing to hold it for me. She should still have it.”

Xu Minghai clutched his stomach: “I’m hungry!”

“Where’s your bag?” Qiushi shot back.

“Left it on the bus. I ate everything in it on the way here!”

“All that food—you ate it all?”

“Just shared a bit with the lads—gone in no time.” Xu Minghai craned his neck to look at the drivers outside, chatting cheerfully, and weighed his options. Suddenly he spoke up: “Guozi, let’s just make a run for it!”

“Huh?” Qiushi was stunned. “Run where?”

“I’ve still got 3 yuan in my pocket. I’ll take you somewhere to have fun.” Xu Minghai puffed out his chest. “Then we’ll take the bus back ourselves—I know the way.”

Even though Qiushi trusted Xu Minghai unconditionally as a rule, even he could tell this was practically suicide.

“Should we?”

“What’s there to worry about? Look, you’ve got to understand how adults think.” Xu Minghai began his brainwashing campaign. “See, if we just sit here and behave today, then when Teachers Cao and Zhang show up at our courtyard tonight, I’ll get a beating, you’ll get a lecture, and we’ll both have to write self-criticisms. But if we run away because we’re afraid of persecution, then the whole situation changes. They’ll freak out and start tearing into each other. As long as we time it right and get back a bit late, I promise you—the parents and teachers will be so relieved they won’t have the heart to come down hard on us. This is called… called…” Xu Minghai thought for a second. “Right—’meet force with cunning, and tackle weakness with direct capture.'”

At these words, Qiushi could practically hear Cao Yunfeng’s roar in his head: Listen to Xu Minghai, will you? The two of you will end up in reform school together! But what came out of his mouth was: “I’ve got money too—my mum gave it to me this morning.”

With that, Qiushi pulled out a 1-yuan note and stuffed it all into Xu Minghai’s hand, then asked: “How are we getting out? The windows and doors are all shut.”

“Watch your big brother!”

Xu Minghai told Qiushi to keep an eye on the driver, then sprang to the rear door. He wedged both hands into the rubber gap of the folding door, twisted his body, and yanked hard—half of the door folded inward, opening a narrow escape route.

Xu Minghai quickly signalled to Qiushi, and the two slipped out unnoticed.

The moment their feet hit the ground, without even pausing to savour the freedom in the air, they bolted north as if being chased. They ran for about a bus stop’s distance before finally stopping.

Xu Minghai leaned against a tree, bent over and panting hard, then turned to look back the way they’d come. Seeing no one in pursuit, he finally relaxed. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked up to see an old woman selling cold drinks at the intersection ahead. He called Qiushi over and walked up to her.

“Ma’am, could we get two, uh, two Beibingyangs—to drink here,” Xu Minghai said between breaths, handing over three brownish banknotes.

The woman took the money, then pulled two bottles of chilled orange soda from her cart, covered with a white cotton quilt. She popped the caps with a bottle opener, the metal lids clinking as they fell, and two streams of cold white vapour burst from the bottle necks.

The two boys grabbed the icy-cold bottles, tipped their heads back, and chugged them down in one go, ignoring her kindly reminders to “drink slowly—don’t burst your lungs.”

In an instant, the glass bottles were empty. Two deeply satisfying, orange-scented belches erupted from deep in their throats. They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

Xu Minghai returned the bottles, then gestured to Qiushi: “Come on—the teachers won’t let us go with our classmates, so we’ll have our own outing. I’m not having it any other way!”

Qiushi was getting excited too: “Where to?”

“We should be close to the Temple of Heaven.” He turned to ask the woman: “Auntie, could you tell me—is the Temple of Heaven east from here?”

“That’s right. Cross the overpass and you’ll see the west gate of the park. It’s about a ten-minute walk.”

“Taking you to the Temple of Heaven,” Xu Minghai made a “let’s go” gesture to Qiushi, his tone full of pride. “That’s where the emperors used to make offerings to heaven!”