Chinese Stories in English
Opposite Shore (Page 7)
Stories printed in The Other Shore《彼岸花》作家网*选编|冰峰*主编
Page citation and link to Chinese text noted after each story.
1. Azure Pond 3. Tuition 4. Time Thief
2. Wooden Speaker 5. Lotus's World
1. Azure Pond (沧浪池)
Yuan Liangcai (袁良才)
Heavy gunfire had been coming from the dense woods for seven days and seven nights before it finally cooled down. Arrow River was truly running "half green and half red" when Boss Arrow Wang received an unexpected message from the garrison division headquarters. It was a handwritten letter from Wisdom Liu, commander of the Fifty-Second Division of the Nationalist Army.
Arrow's hands trembled and his face darkened as he read the letter. He folded it and carefully put it in his pocket. Right away, he asked his housekeeper to tell the servants to clean up all around Azure Pond. “Don’t leave a speck of dust! Also, send Third Concubine back to her parents' home for a short stay. Starting today I’ll bathe, burn incense and fast for three days. And close the door to visitors!”
The old housekeeper didn’t know what to think of his boss’ suddenly mysterious behavior. He couldn’t very well say anything, though, so he just did as he was told.
You should know that Boss Arrow had a reputation as a gadabout in Red Beach Ancient Town, and Third Concubine, a stunning beauty named Young Peach, was someone he wanted to keep glued to his hip! No one had ever seen him act as sober as when he read that letter. Arrow's ancestors had operated a tea business in Yangzhou. They made money hand over fist selling the renowned "Tingxi Tejian" and "Yongxi Huoqing" teas from Jing River, their hometown. Arrow paid scant attention to the business when he inherited it, letting his staff handle everything. He spent his days obsessed with only two things: hanging out in teahouses in the mornings and hanging out in bathhouses in the evening.
Thus, Yangzhou soup dumplings and the Yangzhou bathhouses destroyed a time-honored enterprise that had met every difficulty and stood firm as a boulder through a hundred years of fierce business competition. That didn’t bother Arrow much. He led his original staff back to his hometown of Red Beach in Jing River, where he soon opened a high-end bathhouse. A horizontal plaque with gold characters on a black background hung above the door: Azure Pond.
When Azure Pond’s water runs clear, it can cleanse my soul; when it runs turbid, it can still wash away the dust from my feet.* Arrow looked up at the sky and laughed as he watched Arrow River flow eastward.
All kinds of people frequented Red Beach Ancient Town, the most prosperous and lively wharf on the two-hundred-mile Arrow River. Crowds visited Azure Pond day and night, so Arrow made a lot of money. He smoked opium, gambled, sang the praises of playactors and kept concubines. His reputation as a frivolous young man grew day by day.
Arrow had rebuilt Azure Pond on the model of his own Hui-style house facing the river. Its shape and furnishings completely copied a Yangzhou bathhouse. However, it did have a secret room with traditional armchairs fashioned entirely from rosewood, as well as smoking couches and end tables. Arrow could smoke, drink tea and entertain guests there. Ordinary people weren’t allowed to enter.
Arrow brought two experts with him from Yangzhou, one who specialized in making soup dumplings and one who took charge of massaging bathers’ backs. At fifty copper coins, bathing in Azure Pond certainly wasn’t cheap! A backrub was even more daunting -- one silver dollar.
One of Boss Arrow’s catchphrases was, “Whether you love massages or not, a backrub from a Yangzhou master is a real pleasure, truly the life of Riley!” Arrow ate soup dumplings for breakfast every day and had a bath with a backrub every evening, so his life was three times better than Riley’s.
People said Boss Arrow himself had mastered the art of giving backrubs, but he’d only massaged two people’s backs in his life! One was his elderly father -- Arrow massaged his father's back respectfully every year on his birthday. The other was his first wife -- Arrow always knelt down and rubbed her back on their anniversary. He told her, "You gave birth to my children and continued my family line. You’ve worked hard and given me a lot!"
One time a certain Commander Tang of the Kuomintang’s Third War Zone came to Jing River to inspect the military situation. He bathed in Azure Pond and ordered Boss Arrow to rub his back. Arrow declined politely at first, and then refused firmly. Commander Tang got angry and asked his adjutant to get a stack of silver dollars and put it on top of Arrow's head. He told Arrow, "I’ll aim for the dollar at the bottom. If I hit it, the money’s yours. If I miss, your life is mine!" A shot rang out even before he finished speaking, and the stack of dollars clanked to the ground. Arrow hadn’t moved at all, not even a blink.
Commander Tang left in a huff. Arrow picked up the silver dollars and threw them into the river.
A tremendous blessing finally came to Azure Pond soon after Arrow received that letter from Wisdom Liu. Kuomintang soldiers armed with loaded rifles held the entire Ancient Town of Red Beach under martial law, and two machine guns were mounted on the roof opposite Azure Pond. Boss Arrow, wearing a brand new Zhongshan suit, stood respectfully at the bathhouse door. He watched as a heroic-looking middle-aged man in a Red Army uniform strode towards him, his heels clanging on the granite alleyway.
“The water in Azure Pond has been heated, General Ye. Today we’re honored to be open just for you.”
“You’re Boss Wang, right? Thank you, thank you! I’m a prisoner of war like Lü Zhi of the ancient Han Dynasty, who was held hostage for years by the Kingdom of Chu. I cannot live with unkempt hair and a dirty face, but thanks to Commander Wisdom Liu’s "gracious consent", I can bathe to my heart's content.” The visitor laughed out loud when he said this.
Arrow lowered his head and turned his face away at once. He turned back after he’d wiped the tears from his eyes and said, “We’ve prepared some food and wine in the inner room, General Ye, including your favorites: braised harp fish and Cloud Peak rice wine.”
“Thank you! Thank you!” The visitor shook Arrow's hand firmly before they went to the inner room together.
Boss Arrow was reluctant to see the general off from Azure Pond. He felt that the time had passed too quickly. The general saluted him at the door and laughed, "The bath was so refreshing! Boss Arrow is a master at giving back massages!"
Arrow lowered his head and turned away. “Shame on me! Shame on me for taking your money! But you insisted, didn’t you?”
Arrow watched the general walk away, step by step on the granite alley, his head held high. His vision grew hazy and he blurted out a poem:
“Azure Pond was fortunate to bathe the prisoner of war.
“War’s dust hasn’t yet been washed away, and I’m ashamed.
“Heaven and earth each have their own righteous path.
“The iron army’s spirit will last a thousand years.”
Azure Pond closed down without warning, and Boss Arrow was nowhere to be found. "He" did return decades later, however. That is, his ashes did. They were scattered over Arrow River.
*This is a line that appears in many ancient poems.
Text at 《彼岸花》 p. 035, also available here and from 99GuiYi at
https://www.99guiyi.com/content/685637.html
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2. A Wooden Speaker and Camel Bells (木音箱与驼铃声)
Wang Qin (王溱)
The wooden speaker at the head of her bed was as old as the wooden house. She took off her high heels and threw herself barefoot onto the bed, then raised her foot and tapped the speaker with an arched toe. The sound wasn't a "thwack" -- more of a "thump". They were indeed equally old.
The reason she tapped it was because it wasn’t working. Have you ever seen an eighty-year-old hippie dancing the cha-cha? The speaker was like that. It presumed to play any kind of music, but only an approximation and only intermittently.
It wasn't completely off. She put her ear to it and listened. She could still hear a faint sound, too low to hear clearly.
It was playing “Desert” sung by the Taiwanese artist Chyi Yu. People said the lyrics were from a poem by Sanmao, also Taiwanese. She especially liked the line, "The wind whistled in the emptiness and swept away the road of no return" because she felt it was about herself. This city in South China had no wind whistling in the sky, though, only a wind rushing down the road and sweeping up a few fallen leaves, but she felt that was about her, too. Strange -- every song she listened to seemed to have a line about herself.
Which part of the song was playing? She couldn't hear clearly.
"I’ll turn it up." She reached out to twist the dial, but hesitated. After all, the wooden house didn’t have good insulation. One time when she’d turned up the volume a little, the next-door neighbor had knocked on the door that very minute to complain.
“I’ll just turn it up a notch. So what if I do my own thing….”
She loved to listen -- needed to listen -- to the notes blundering around between the wooden stairs and wooden wall panels just as rashly as she did. No one blamed them. Sometimes she even felt that all the wood filling this room would’ve preferred being made into a big speaker.
But a house isn’t a speaker, of course. Music squeezed out of a speaker through a filter of weathered wood gets spit out as just some rustling noise. The volume doesn’t change it.
Feeling uncertain, she put her ear up against the speaker. How could this be? The volume button was turned almost all the way up. “Could there be something wrong with my hearing?” She shuddered at the thought.
"Are you deaf? Can't you hear the customer calling you?"
That roar came from the head waiter. It happened at noon, after lunch, when only one table of customers remained. They’d basically finished their meal, paid the bill, and were sitting there chatting. She figured there’d be nothing more for a waiter to do, so she sat down on a chair against the wall and kept her ears open. The restaurant where she worked was beautiful all right, but she couldn't hear the background music clearly. The crowd noise usually drowned it out. Music made the work easier because her feet didn’t ache from standing for most of the day, and the chafed spots on her heels didn’t hurt.
Who could’ve expected that the customer would want to refill the teapot before leaving? She certainly didn't hear him. The head waiter announced with a stern face that he was going to dock a hundred yuan from her pay -- breakfast money for a month or half a month's bus fare. She started thinking about whether to skip breakfast or walk to work. She didn’t need breakfast. She’d just bear with it until noon when the restaurant would provide a filling lunch. And walking to work would be a real hike. She couldn’t have found such a cheap room to live in if it wasn’t so far away.
Jingle! Jingle!
She heard the familiar sound of camel bells! That sound had filled her entire childhood while she was growing up in the desert.
How could she be hearing camel bells in this place? She listened hard, out of habit, as the jingling got louder and louder. It seemed like a line of camels coming towards her. Camels used to carry merchandise when she was a child, but no longer. Now they just carried people. Transportation of goods had come to an end, but not the people. Tourists kept on coming in droves. She could still see dull-eyed camels strung together in a line, walking along a fixed route over and over again. She’d seen with her own eyes how the worn-out camels knelt down and refused to get back up, and how her father pulled their nose ropes and shouted for her to raise her whip. The nose is a camel’s most vulnerable part, and people have long used it to control the animals.
She’d insisted on coming south to work because she couldn't stand raising a hand to whip the camels. If she really whipped one, its howls would play in her mind for at least a month, and no music could cover it up.
There were no camels here in the south. Just restaurants opening one after another.
Putting on work clothes and a mask, and carrying menus, that was her daily routine. She stood at the door waiting for customers, and when they came, she stood by the table saying “Welcome" or "What would you like to eat?". She poured water when customers asked for it, and went to the kitchen to press the cooks if customers thought their food was too slow coming. The same thing day after day, never a difference because no differences were allowed.
Jingle! Jingle!
The sound of camel bells was getting closer and closer.
She covered her ears, gritted her teeth and turned the volume up to the maximum. The wooden speaker was no match for the copper bells, though. The music only got a little louder, not enough to cover up the jingling. She also had to deal with faint complaints from customers and reprimands from the head waiter.
“It's broken, the speaker must be broken.” This time she didn't tap on it. She slapped it, bang, bang, bang, quite hard. She got scared once she stopped. The landlord owned the speaker, and if she broke it, she’d have to pay. How could she afford that?
Bang! The door flew open. The landlady stood there holding a key and glaring at her.
"It's too loud! The whole building’s shaking!" The landlady rushed over and unplugged the speaker. She looked at her stunned and motionless tenant and berated her, "Your next-door neighbor said he knocked on the door for a long time, but no one opened it. Are you deaf?” It turned out that the speaker wasn’t broken. She was the broken one.
"I'm deaf! Oh, oh, oh, I'm deaf!" She buried her head in her pillow and burst into tears. “How can I take orders from customers if I'm deaf? I wished I was deaf when I got chewed out, but that was just “talk". I can’t be deaf. What’ll I do if I’m really deaf? I don't have money for doctors. All my money in the bank is for buying another camel for the family, one more camel to use in rotation so they don't all get so tired.”
A hand patted her on the back. She didn't dare to look up but knew it was probably the landlady. She wouldn’t have rent money if she lost her job, so how would she be able face the landlady? If she cried or continued to cry, or cried louder, maybe it’d cover the jingling of the camel bells.
After a long, long time, or no, maybe it was just a moment, jingle, jingle! The sound of the bells rang in her ears again. And along with the bells she could hear Chyi Yu's voice:
"The desert turned into a well,
“Inside the well, a pair of watery eyes….
Sanmao's poem! She stood up in surprise and looked around. Yes, it was coming from the speaker. It was so loud that it almost shook the old wood into flying chips. She turned down the volume right away. The sound was lower, but she could still make out Chyi Yu's voice:
"Showing a smudge of a smile….”
Where's the landlady?
She was gone. She’d left, closing the door behind her. She’d apparently plugged the speaker back in before leaving.
Text at 《彼岸花》 p. 038. Also available here.
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3. Tuition (学费)
Guan Baohua (关宝华)
"Son, after you graduate from junior high, come with me to the production team and earn some work points. Your mom and I really can't afford the tuition for high school." My father puffed on his pipe and knocked off the ash. He kept his head down as he spoke, focusing on the worn cloth shoes on his feet. The patches on the top part of his shoes looked like helpless eyes. He was mumbling, but his voice sounded like thunder on a clear day to my ears.
It was 1967. People in the countryside could barely afford food and clothing, and my family was less well off than most. My two younger sisters and a younger brother were all still in school, and tuition for four children burdened the family.
But I loved learning. My grades had always been among the top three in my class, and I had a good chance of getting into the county high school. After high school I could always be a private teacher, even if I didn't get into college, or at least I could work as an accountant in our village. In a word, good things happened to people who went to high school.
I really didn’t want to say goodbye to the classroom, so I stammered, "I'll find a way to earn my own tuition, Dad. You... All you have to do is give me permission to go to high school."
He sighed deeply. "Earn the tuition,” he replied, “then we’ll talk about it."
A pound of pork cost fifty cents at the time, and a pound of rice was ten cents. A strong laborer could earn ten work points a day, worth only fifteen cents. High school tuition would be five yuan per semester, and my father thought I had no way of earning that much.
I returned to the village as soon as I finished the high school entrance exam. After dinner, I went to see the team leader, Uncle Bright Dai. Uncle Bright, a big, strong man in his forties, wore a full beard. He had a no-nonsense look but was fair and kind, eager to help others. The villagers loved him deeply.
"Uncle Bright”, I stammered, “my family can't afford the tuition for me to go to high school next semester. I want to earn the money myself. Can you help me find a job?"
He thought a minute before asking, "What kind of job can you do?" Then his eyes lit up and he said, "Why don't you go to South Mountain Ditch and haul bricks? The kiln there is short of workers right now. You can make good money if you’re not afraid of hard work."
I bowed to him. "Thank you, Uncle Bright. I’ll go to work there tomorrow."
The next day I had breakfast and headed for South Mountain Ditch at the crack of dawn. The kiln master was just directing the workers to fashion adobe bricks when I got there. He looked at me and said, "Since you’re a novice, I’ll put you on brick drying." He pointed to a flat open space next to the kiln and continued, "Haul the wet bricks to this open space and stack them upright. Keep a finger’s distance between them. Let them dry in the sun for two days, then move them to the kiln for firing. The pay is piece-rate, one cent for one hundred bricks." I nodded repeatedly, like a chicken pecking at grains of rice.
The kiln master walked away after he finished telling me what to do, and I started working right away. I did the numbers in my head: one hundred bricks, one cent; one thousand bricks, ten cents. If I worked hard, I should be able to make twenty cents a day.
I was too optimistic, though, because it was the dog days of summer. It got hotter and hotter as the sun rose high in the sky. Sweat poured off me like rain and I panted like a cow hauling those bricks under the scorching sun. My chest felt smothered, as if weighed down by a stone, and my throat was hot and dry. I don’t have the words to tell you how hard it was.
The sun was high in the sky by the time I’d made it through hauling five hundred bricks. It was time for lunch and I went to eat with the kiln workers. We had white steamed buns with vegetable tofu soup. I was so hungry I downed six buns in one go.
We took a short break before we went back to work after lunch. We didn't finish and go home until the sun set and the weary birds were heading back to the forest. I’d hauled two hundred more bricks that afternoon. All together I made twelve cents that day.
I got home and ate dinner, then took a cold shower and went to bed. I felt sore. My whole body hurt and it took me a long time to fall asleep.
After that, I gritted my teeth and got to work hauling bricks on time every day. It took twenty days to get the entire lot of twenty thousand bricks to the kiln, and I ended up earning two yuan for all my sweat and hard work.
Next, the kiln master instructed the workers to bring in firewood. The bricks in this round were considered done after eight days and nights in the kiln and five days cooling off. By then the second round of green bricks was ready to be fired. As before, I went to work hauling bricks on time every day.
One evening, after everyone else had gone home, I was still at work hauling bricks. Before I knew it, the sky became overcast and I heard thunder. A heavy rain was coming. I looked at the bricks on the ground and thought, “The rain will damage these bricks for sure. It’s not my job, but I can’t stand by like a spectator while everyone's hard work gets ruined.”
So I ran to the shed to get a thin nylon tarp. I hurried to the upwind side of the bricks and put a big rock on one end of the tarp to hold it down. Then, aided by the wind, I spread the tarp out to cover all the bricks. Finally I weighed it down with rocks on all sides. It was already pitch dark and pouring rain by the time I finished. I was soaked through when I got home, like a chicken getting its feathers removed in boiling water.
I found Uncle Bright at the worksite when I got to work the next day. He pointed at the undamaged bricks with a smile and told me, "We’ve talked it over and decided to reward you an extra two yuan. Great job!" I was so overjoyed I didn’t know what to say and just stood there stammering.
A little more than twenty days later, the second round of bricks was in the kiln and school was about to start. I’d earned four yuan, plus the extra two, for a total of six yuan. I got the money from the brigade cashier and made a special trip to the commune’s non-staple food station*, where I bought a pound of pork for fifty cents.
My mother made dumplings for us that evening, with pork and green onions for filling. We hadn’t had such a delicious dinner in a long time. My brothers and sisters were so elated, you’d have thought it was a holiday. Mother’s and father’s eyes were red from crying. Father quietly turned his back and wiped the tears away.
*Translator’s note: At the time, to facilitate the rationing system, “staple foods” (rice, noodles, soy sauce, tea and a few other items) and “non-staple foods” (everything else) were distributed through separate outlets. Rationing was phased out gradually beginning in 1984. See https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1127087/.
Text at 《彼岸花》 p. 041. Also available here.
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4.Time Thief (时光窃贼)
Pedant (迂夫子)
I’d always boasted that I was the most gifted thief in the world. Then I met Time Thief and realized that my allegedly superior pilfering skills were nothing compared to his.
I leaned against a balustrade in the square on a scorching afternoon, pretending to have nothing on my mind as I searched the crowd for a mark. I wore a well-tailored brand-name suit, a rather costly one, because dressing well counts for a lot in our line of work. A handsome and charming face makes the look even better, of course. I was fortunate enough to have both, which explains why I considered myself a cut above anyone else.
Out of the blue, I felt someone tap on my shoulder. I turned around in surprise and found a smiling fellow even more elegant and handsome than me. I felt relieved because I figured he wasn’t a plainclothes cop. Judging from his fashionable attire, he was obviously from a rich family. I assumed he’d fallen into my trap and I began to plan how to go about it.
"Don't waste your energy thinking about it,” the young man advised. “You can't steal what I have." That shocked me and I turned to run away. He grabbed my arm and continued, "I’m a thief, just like you!" It shocked me even more that he pronounced the word "thief" so clearly. We professionals regard it as a highly taboo word, you know. No thief in the world would dare proclaim himself a thief, but this guy wanted me to believe he was an exception. I would believe it, of course, if he could use those well-manicured fingers to pick a wallet from a mark to prove it.
"I don't steal anything visible." He seemed to read my mind.
My jaw dropped and my mouth remained wide open for a long time. "Then, what do you steal?"
"Time,” he declared. “I only steal time. Please call me ‘Time Thief’, okay?".
I thought he was kidding me and shook my head. I didn't want to waste this beautiful afternoon chatting with a so-called "Time Thief". I’d already spotted a paunchy man nearby who looked quite rich.
"Don't you want to know how I steal time?" To tell the truth, he had piqued my curiosity. Before I could say anything, though, he started jabbering away.
"Just last night I stole the youth from a fourteen-year-old boy. Fourteen is a rebellious period, and kids that age make excellent prey. As soon as I got into his body, he started playing games, going to dance clubs, drinking -- burning the candle at both ends. His time sped by at many times the normal rate and he turned into a gray-haired, middle-aged man overnight. I exited his body at my leisure and, when I strolled over here where you are, I could still hear the howls of that youngster -- no, that middle-aged man -- looking at himself in the mirror. Too bad, the most precious things in the world are those you can't get or have already lost. Isn't that the truth?" The young man flicked the stiff collar of his suit and continued, "I get a year younger every time I do it."
Under the dim streetlights, the dust that flew from his collar looked like a swarm of fireflies. That made me wonder.
Time Thief noticed my wariness. "Okay,” he went on, “let me share the fruits of another of my victories with you. Just last week, while I wandered around looking for prey, I came across a girl who’d run away from home. She’d tired of her parents' constant inquiries into her life and the heavy burdens imposed on students every day. She wanted to find poetry in distant places, and I for sure had no doubts about tagging along. I indulged her desire to live in the outside world for seven days, but made up my mind to leave her when she decided to go home. You can imagine how she must’ve let loose an earth-shaking cry when she knocked on the front door, with its paint all mottled, and saw that the people who answered each had one foot in the grave. They were her parents, and she was already middle-aged! I had to leave her before that, though. After all, it would’ve made me a little ashamed about stealing her youth...."
I’d started to believe the young man in front of me. He seemed younger and more handsome than when I first saw him. He smiled. "I should leave now. I'll go hang around a place with more people, maybe find some better prey. Ta-ta!" He turned and strode away.
I stood there in a daze, feeling lost as I watched him disappear into the morning light. He never even looked back. Wait, why was it morning light? It’d been scorching hot just now. I’d only talked to Time Thief for a few minutes, but.... I looked around in trepidation for a mirror or glass or anything else I could use to see a reflection of my face.
Just then a man and a little boy passed by and I could clearly hear their conversation. "Dad, that old man is so pathetic. Can we give him some money?"
"You’re a good boy, son. Here, give him this coin!"
I looked around and didn't see any vagrants, and the little boy was walking straight towards me. My hair stood on end as I realized that my suit, which had been so well ironed, had turned into a pile of faded, filthy rags, and my beard was more than a foot long....
The little boy tossed the coin to me, but I didn't catch it. No wonder -- the agility I’d had before was gone. The coin clanged on the ground and spun around like a top.... It seemed like it would keep spinning for a century.
Text at 《彼岸花》 p. 044. Also available here.
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5. Lotus's World (蓉儿的江湖)
Sunshine Wheat (阳光麦子)
The miniseries “Legend of the Condor Heroes” [射雕英雄传] was showing on TV when Lotus was in fifth grade. The martial spirit of that world grabbed hold of her, especially the brave warrior’s hearts and talented musician’s souls of the two main characters, Pacify [郭靖] and Healthy [杨康]. The attraction became an obsession when it occurred to her that she shared a name with the main female character, Lotus [黄蓉]. She imagined a day when she might meet her own "Brother Pacify".
She got into extracurricular books when she was in middle school. She often rented martial arts novels and carried them around in her schoolbag. Reality defeated her, though. She had to drop out in her sophomore year because an elderly member of the family fell ill and there was no money for school. Her dream of becoming a martial arts hero never died, however.
In the spring of her eighteenth year, Lotus saved up one yuan and rode her bicycle to the bookstore to rent a martial arts novel. All copies of the one she wanted were rented out by the time she got there. She still had her ID and money in hand and was feeling depressed when a thin boy approached her. "Look at you,” he said, “your face could stop a donkey in its tracks. Not a sight I want to see.” He handed her the book. "Here, you take it. Just remember to return it.”
She took the book, and the boy turned around and left the bookstore on a bicycle that was even more worn out than her own. She snapped back to her senses, shoved the book into her pack and rode off to catch up with him. "Hey, wait!" she shouted.
The boy turned around, then planted his feet on the ground to stop his bike. It moved forward a meter before grinding to a halt.
Lotus handed him her money. “I don't want to owe you anything,” she explained. "We don't even know each other. I'll pay a fee just like I was renting the book from you."
The boy pushed the money aside and thought for a moment. "How about this. You read it now, and I’ll read it after you finish. Today’s June the fifth, and we'll meet at the door of the bookstore on the fifteenth. You give it to me then, and I'll return it on the twenty-fifth after I finish reading it. That way, two people get to read it for the same price one person would pay. Also, my name’s Respectable Zhao, not Hey."
Lotus laughed out loud. “Respectable? That’s funny. Sounds like Re-spectacle, like some kind of magic glasses!"
Respectable squinted at her and was about to ride away, but Lotus abruptly parked her bike and came over to him. She told him to get off his bike and said, "You, sir, are a man of the world. Since you trust your underling so much, I'd like to show my appreciation by exchanging bikes with you. We can trade back on the fifteenth. I trust you because a gentleman always keeps his word."
Before Respectable could reply, Lotus pushed him aside, got on his bike and left.
In fact, Respectable was also a martial arts fan. At age nineteen, he wasn’t an easy fellow to understand. He’d seen Lotus many times in the bookstore renting books. From the first time he saw her, he wanted to talk to her about martial arts but couldn’t find a suitable opportunity. Today he happened to rent the same book she wanted, so he plucked up his courage and handed it over to her.
He rode her bike gingerly on the way home, not daring to use too much force for fear of breaking it. When he got home, he wiped the bike down over and over again, and even covered it with a plastic sheet to keep it from getting dusty again.
When his parents noticed the bicycle, they asked him, "Where’d you steal this thing from, kid? Where’s the old one?"
Respectable lied. "This one belongs to an old classmate, Mom. We ran into each other today and decided to trade bikes for a while." But he lowered his head and wouldn’t look her straight in the eye.
His father saw how red his son’s face got. He pulled the boy’s mother aside and whispered, “Our son isn’t usually so shy. I think the bicycle belongs to a girl.”
Respectable felt pretty good, but Lotus was miserable. She hadn't ridden his bicycle far when the chain fell off because it was decrepit. She had to fiddle with it a long time to fix it, and her face got smeared with grease. She let down her hair to hide it.
Lotus got home late and hid Respectable’s bike in a recess of the woodpile so her parents wouldn’t see it. Then she washed her face with soap and went to her room to read. She couldn’t concentrate on the words, though. When she opened the book, she saw the thin face of "Magic Glasses" on the page. This “peeved” her a bit, so she closed the book and pouted, but soon she stopped pouting and looked in the mirror. "A face that’d stop a donkey in its tracks," she giggled.
Her parents heard her moving around from outside the room. Her mother wanted to go in, but her father, who was also a martial arts fan, stopped her: "Don't go in. Our Lotus might be practicing some esoterica from the Condor Hero’s world. You could easily hurt her if you go in, like waking up a sleepwalker."
The fifteenth came after what seemed like a long wait. It was a busy market day. Respectable got to the bookstore early and Lotus was already there. She handed him a book wrapped in a newspaper cover. He opened it and found that it was a different book. Lotus blushed. "Oh, I must’ve been distracted when I was putting the book cover on last night."
"Now what?” Respectable asked stupidly. “Should we come back tomorrow?"
Lotus smiled. "No, come with me to my place to get it. Let's go!"
And off they went, each on their own bike. They both noticed that their bikes were cleaner than they had been.
When they arrived at Lotus's home, Respectable didn't dare to go in and waited at the door. "What’re you afraid of?" Lotus asked.
He scratched his head but still wouldn't go in. She looked around and didn’t see anyone nearby, so she said softly, "Now you know where I live. Anytime you want a book to read, come over and borrow one from me. My father has a lot of books stashed away."
She tossed her hair back and smiled as she went inside to get the book. Respectable finally understood that she’d brought him the wrong book on purpose so she could “show him where” she lived.
Lotus's parents had already seen the two youngsters in the courtyard. Her father recognized Respectable and said, "Seems he’s the son of the Zhao family from the other side of the village. He’s a good kid, no doubt about it."
From that day forward, Respectable often went to Lotus’s home to borrow books. Sometimes he also brought his own books to loan to her. As they got to know each other, both sets of parents saw that the youngsters were compatible, so they asked a matchmaker to propose marriage. Thus a beautiful thing came to pass.
They were married three years later. Lotus stuffed a lot of martial arts novels into a cabinet her parents gave them as a wedding present. She wanted to take those books with her because they held her martial arts dream.
The couple found married life very sweet. They’d rented books in the past, but now they didn’t rent anymore. Respectable often bought old martial arts novels which he kept on the woodpile so that Lotus could read them in the flickering firelight. However, as both sets of parents grew older, the young couple felt more and more financial pressure. Then, after the birth of their first child, they found that they needed more money to cover all their expenses.
One night Respectable suggested, "My parents can handle the few acres of land we have, and the old folks can take care of our child for a few years. If you want, we can go look for jobs outside the village. Look at my cousin and his wife. They went away to work for a few years and made enough to build a house.”
Lotus nodded. As long as they could make some money, she was willing to venture into her Condor Heroes world with her "Brother Pacify".
They went to southern China and tried two different cities before finally settling down at an electronics factory. They were able to clear more than five thousand yuan a month, after expenses, which they socked away for the future.
One year, on the eve of the Spring Festival, the couple went home to celebrate the New Year. While a fire burned in the earthen stove, Lotus reached out to get a book to read from the woodpile. She found a thick martial arts novel that had only a dozen thin pages left in it.
"I used it for kindling to get the stove going," her mother-in-law said. “It worked really well.”
Lotus smiled and put the book back on the woodpile. A few days later, when the kindling was gone, she took another old book from the house, one wrapped in a newspaper cover. It was the martial arts novel that she’d deliberately wrapped in a cover to return to "Brother Pacify".
Lotus brought it to the stove, tore off a page, lit the fire and started cooking. She told her mother-in-law, "Mom, that one’s used up. You can tear pages from this one to use for kindling.”
Lotus knew that the martial arts world in her heart had once again fallen victim to the necessities of life. But isn't that the real world of the Condor Heroes?
Text at 《彼岸花》 p. 041. Also available here.