AOI 2

The green-skinned train chugged along, spewing thick smoke and rattling for a full day and night, finally delivering Zhou Yingying and Qiu Shi from the snow-blanketed Mishan in Heilongjiang to Beijing on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, as the Year of the Tiger gave way to the Year of the Rabbit in 1987.

Zhou Yingying called it “coming back,” but to Qiu Shi, it felt like “going”—going to a place he knew nothing about, utterly foreign. Reading the deep unease in her son’s eyes, his mother reassured him again and again, telling him Beijing was wonderful, so modern.

To give this “wonderful” a more concrete shape, she deliberately painted lively pictures with her words: towering skyscrapers, crisp, tooth-achingly cold candied hawthorn skewers, fried bean-paste cakes with a crackling sugar crust, and a thing called the “subway” that could zip through the earth at will. These symbolic details were tangled together like a carrot dangled before a little donkey’s head, gradually coaxing Qiu Shi into a lovely vision of the future.

Just as dusk fell, mother and son emerged from Beijing Railway Station with the jostling crowd and immediately boarded a blue-and-white trolleybus with two pronged horns on top. Qiu Shi had no chance to scrutinize this “wonderful and modern” Beijing before he curled up beside his mother and fell asleep. The next thing he heard was Zhou Yingying’s voice saying they were almost home.

Qiu Shi woke, rubbed his eyes, and turned to look out the window. The deep blue sky slashed into a mess by power lines, a surging tidal wave of bicycles, and in the distance a towering, pure white pagoda—these were his first impressions of Beijing.

They got off at the mouth of an east-west hutong alley. Zhou Yingying clutched Qiu Shi’s small, bony hand, and the two of them walked along the dirt path stepping on what remained of the snow. It was the hour when every household was making dinner; the air was thick with the distinctive fragrance of freshly steamed mantou buns, white cooking smoke from the rooftops curled around the bare branches of trees. Everything seemed calm and peaceful.

Finally, Zhou Yingying stopped before a courtyard with gray walls and gray roof tiles. The gate before them looked impressive at first glance, but its color was a grimy, sooty black, its form loose and sagging, carrying an air of a hero in his twilight years.

The wooden gate creaked open, revealing a narrow passageway beyond. Further in was the courtyard itself, not particularly spacious. Every doorstep was stacked with neatly arranged Napa cabbages, and under tar-paper sheds were piles of honeycomb briquettes. A few not-quite-new, not-quite-old bicycles were scattered about, and the center of the yard was taken up by an old, thick, towering tree, making it feel even more cramped. Beneath this tree was a cement basin with a water pipe rising from it, wrapped in thick layers of cloth.

Just then, a buzzing, humming sound suddenly came from afar, drawing closer, exceptionally pleasing to the ear. Qiu Shi instinctively looked up to find its source, catching sight of a flock of pigeons arcing across the sky.

Seeing her son absorbed in watching the pigeons, Zhou Yingying released his hand. When she arrived first at a room in the southwest corner, she discovered that it actually appeared to be lived in.

Long braids of garlic hung on the wall, paper window-cuts adorned the glass, and smoke wafted from the chimney. This instantly rendered the key in Zhou Yingying’s hand useless. She reached out to knock but ended up summoning the neighbor instead.

“Auntie, who are you looking for?” The speaker was a boy who looked rather sharp.

“Little friend, do you know who lives here?”

“Yeah, Xu Minghai lives here.”

“Where is he?”

“Right here!” He raised his chin and puffed out his chest, a dimple appearing on his face. “I’ve got my own room!”

Before he could finish showing off, the thick cotton-padded door curtain was lifted to reveal a head of permed hair. She locked eyes with Zhou Yingying and was instantly startled. “What are you doing here?!” Then, her face immediately turned cold. “What did you come back for?”

After so many years apart, seeing an old friend again filled Zhou Yingying with a flood of emotion, and she didn’t register the barbs in the other woman’s tone at all.

“Sister Yandong, my paperwork to return to the city finally came through…”

What the adults were talking about bored Xu Minghai to death. His entire attention had been drawn to the uninvited guest standing beneath the tree, gazing up at the sky. So Xu Minghai bounded over to Qiu Shi in a couple of steps, then used his height advantage to look down at the child, who was so bundled up in scarves and hats that only a clean, porcelain-white little face was visible.

Xu Minghai couldn’t tell the kid’s gender from those delicate, pretty eyes, so he raised an eyebrow arrogantly and asked, “Hey, who are you? A boy or a girl?”

Qiu Shi wanted nothing to do with strangers and bolted for his mother. But Xu Minghai, like an eagle snatching a chick, grabbed the kid by the arm.

There was no one Xu Minghai’s age in this courtyard. Old Zhang’s youngest in the east room was already in vocational school and boarded there; when he did come back, he basically treated Xu Minghai as subhuman. And the other kids in this little hutong were too young—Xu Minghai basically didn’t consider them as people either. Now it was winter break, and Li Yandong wouldn’t let him go out to play with his school friends, so Xu Minghai was stuck at home day after day, getting moldy from boredom. Finally, a “person” had arrived, and there was no way he was letting them go.

In the course of their tussling, Xu Minghai determined the other’s gender. A girl couldn’t possibly be this strong. He felt a surge of excitement, thinking he finally had something to do. Just then, a fragmented, plaintive, and mournful aria floated to his ears.

“The Prince enters the Cold Palace, I dare not go forth, fearing I’d betray ten years of study by the cold window, nine years of roaming, the eighth-month examination hall, a seven-page essay, earning the post of Vice Minister of War, only to fear it comes to nothing in the end…”

A figure emerged from the house on the east side of the yard. Qiu Shi followed the sound and saw a gaunt old man. He picked a fiery red persimmon from the windowsill, then suddenly turned his head and grinned at them.

“Don’t look at his eyes!” Xu Minghai quickly clapped a warm paw over Qiu Shi’s cool eyes and pressed his mouth to the kid’s ear. “Uncle Guan Jiu is half-mad. My mom says whoever looks a madman in the eye goes mad too!”

Qiu Shi was badly startled by these words, and in that moment of distraction, he was pulled along to the base of a nearby window.

“How old are you?” Xu Minghai persisted, indomitable.

Qiu Shi still wouldn’t speak, his mouth clamped shut like a little anti-Japanese war hero ready to die for the cause.