Chinese Stories in English
Opposite Shore (Page 10)
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. Look at These Two Gents 4. It Wasn’t the Watermelon
2. Lucky Star Shines on High 5. Help Me
3. Missy Bean 6. Foresight
1. Look at These Two Gents (看这爷儿俩)
Gu Wenxian (顾文显)
"Why do you want to mess up something that’s part of the native ecology, Dad?"
Old Peng had spent a lot of time and effort teaching his son, and he didn’t expect the boy to speak with such an attitude. "The saying goes, ‘Clothes make the man, and gold decorations make a Buddha.’ The wrapping is what sells goods. Everyone understands this principle."
His son, Autumn Peng, shook his head in bewilderment. "I don't get it. The sulfur stinks. I only know it repels snakes. I never heard it had any benefit as a tonic. Besides, I'm afraid it’ll cause health problems if it's smoked at high temperatures."
"You don't need to worry about that, or anything else." Old Peng didn't plan to continue tangling with his son. The child lost his mother when he was young, and his behavior, daring to go toe to toe with his father, indicated Old Peng must’ve spoiled him. Old Peng got stressed out just thinking about it.
Autumn wanted to argue, but Old Peng stopped him with one comment. "Didn't you say you can’t tell a book by its cover? Let me ask you, what's wrong with Little Gem next door? Why do you look down on her, anyway?" Autumn had no answer.
Lots of the neighbors said the two youngsters were a perfect match and were working hard to get them together. Autumn just didn’t like her dark skin, though, so the matter went nowhere. Old Peng’s idea was that his son might be chasing her around close enough to smell her farts if she had skin as white as this processed balloon flower! Autumn let his father win this round and found an excuse to slip away.
Old Peng didn't go nagging after him. He thought, “If you’re not willing to do what I want, just finish your schooling for me. The Peng family doesn't need to go uneducated for generation after generation.”
Old Peng was born with a mind for business. He’d planted balloon flowers all over his land three years before. They can be used as a medicine, and they can also be made into Korean-style kimchi. In fact, it’s the most popular of the dozens of ingredients that can go into kimchi. As he expected, the price skyrocketed this year, and Old Peng was in like Flynn. But while he was harvesting his ten thousand plus kilos of the stuff, he had second thoughts and decided to hold on to it rather than sell right away.
He noticed that vendors used sulfur to fumigate the dried balloon flower after harvesting. It turned the leaves white. He went to help in the fumigation and learned the entire process in just a few days. Not only that, he also figured out a new trick to make the finished product whiter and crispier than ever! He was so excited that he didn't sleep for several nights. Brilliant! Now he could process his own product and sell it off slowly, saving effort and earning more money to boot. Really the icing on the cake!
He was fully confident about letting Autumn know that his father hadn’t wasted his time. He never expected the boy to spout off about the native ecology. The balloon flower that gets sold in town every day is all smoked white with sulfur. If no one worries about it, that proves it's okay!
A young man bought twenty kilos of balloon flower that afternoon, and Old Peng had sold three hundred kilos before dark. He’d long forgotten the anger he felt toward his son. The dried product was eighteen yuan and sold for twenty-four yuan after processing. Based on the afternoon’s sales volume, he figured his entire inventory would sell out before or shortly after the Spring Festival, yielding a net profit of seventy to eighty thousand yuan.
But after a few busy days, Old Peng felt something was wrong. The number of customers had dropped sharply, and customers who would’ve placed large orders had disappeared. At this rate, his inventory wouldn’t sell out until early autumn next year! While he was worrying about it, a young man came along. It was the fellow who’d been his first customer on opening day, wasn't it?
The young man asked Old Peng to let him see his inventory. He nodded his head when he saw it and said, "You don't need to process this balloon flower, Sir. I’ll buy it all for twenty yuan per pound. I don't have a warehouse, so I’ll take it from here in batches, but I’ll pay for it all at once. How about it?"
Old Peng signed the contract. He thought: "It's okay, but it's too bad the fumigating and roasting skills I learned are being wasted. Could this kid have better skills than me?" He told his old employees to look after the store while he went to investigate in person.
It wasn’t a big city -- you could walk across it in two hours. Old Peng found a shop in the same business as him, and the shop owner complained, "It's the road to perdition. What gets me is, no one’s buying this year. Pisses me off that I gotta sell pronto at a bargain price. I sell it off bit by bit before someone turns out the lights."
He asked around and learned that this guy was selling for only eighteen yuan a pound! Old Peng was quietly happy that he’d been able to make more than twenty thousand yuan! Then he visited several other companies in the same business and found they all saw that prospects weren’t good -- they were also selling off their product at eighteen yuan per!
How could the situation have changed? Old Peng inquired further and was told that a new store selling balloon flower had appeared at the northernmost end of the city and its business was red hot. What was going on? He rode his electric scooter over there. “Oh, an abandoned garage converted into a balloon flower wholesale point.” The street outside its door was crowded with people and vehicles, and all of them had come to buy product. What kind of dubious business was this guy into? Old Peng put on a face mask and sunglasses and walked in.
A ton of people inside were busy making deals, one of whom was the young man who’d been his first customer! The youngster didn't recognize Old Peng. "You here to buy balloon flower, sir?"
"What's the price?"
"Twenty-six yuan, firm." The young man pointed at the woven bags piled high against the wall, "Dry as hell."
"You're selling it just like this?" Old Peng was surprised. "Unprocessed?"
"It’s in its natural state. Won’t harm your health. We got processed stuff over there for fifteen yuan."
When a basket of balloon flower was brought over, the old man was stunned again. The balloon flower they were selling at such a low price was Old Peng’s unique product!
"Such clean white product -- why are you lowering the price?"
"Wha’d’ya think?" the young man asked with a wicked smile. "This stuff looks beautiful, but it's actually been smoked with sulfur. You might sell it to someone else, but you for sure wouldn't want to use it yourself.”
Fuck! Old Peng was so mad his legs shook. He took off his sunglasses. "You punk! You tricked me! That’s unfair competition!”
"Please calm down, old fellow." The young man recognized him now and quickly smiled. "Go see our boss. He uses this pricing method to remind consumers that original ecological food is the healthiest. Oh, yeah, he sent me to your shop to buy it, and he gave you two yuan per kilo over the going price."
"Which one’s your boss? I want to talk to him."
When the boss came out of the storage room even before Old Peng finished asking for him, the old man almost dropped his sunglasses. The boss turned out to be his son, Autumn!
"Son of a gun! You hoodwinked your own father!"
"I registered a brand name in the provincial capital last year, Dad," Autumn said with a sly smile. “I researched and developed a special sterilization method. No one else could figure it out. I came back home mainly for the good raw product. It's too bad your sulfur ruined the stuff. I'm just growing my campaign here -- later I’ll have to relocate to the provincial capital...."
Old Peng was confused: "Aren’t you studying in Beijing? Why would you go to the provincial capital?"
"Dad," Autumn said with a roguish look, "I’m not the scholarly type. Going to college was a lie you forced me to tell."
"Old Peng couldn't keep from smiling bitterly. "Sheesh. So this is what our family’s come to.”
Translator’s note: Lots of East Shandong dialect in the Chinese text.
Chinese text from 《彼岸花》at p. 105. Also available here.
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2. Lucky Star Shines on High (吉星高照)
Sun Yanmei (孙艳梅)
Rice Family Noodle Shop was the most popular breakfast café in North Bucket. Customers came in droves every morning, like chives growing in a field. Its special "grits noodles" were a light meal unique to our Yimeng Mountain area in Shandong Province.
One reason why people patronized Rice Family Noodle Shop is that Second Rice cooked good noodles. Others went there for Twiggy, one of the employees. She had a unique technique for making "scrambled egg drop". First she beat the eggs in a bowl, then she lifted a bowl of boiling noodle soup up half a meter. She flicked her wrist and the soup rushed down into the bowl of eggs like a waterfall, without spilling a drop. Eating the soup was a pleasure, but just watching her technique was also fun.
Twiggy was busy working in the café one morning when Mrs. Wang from the town came in through the flowery door curtain. "Hey, Twiggy,” she said, “your husband’s passed the civil service exam to become a town clerk. You’re an official's wife now, so why’re you still doing this job?"
She spoke loudly and all the customers looked at Twiggy, which made the usually outspoken woman shy. "How do you know that?" she asked.
Mrs. Wang pursed her lips in the direction of the town government office. "They’ve posted the notices."
Time started to pass slowly for Twiggy. She waited impatiently until the sun moved to the big locust tree in front of the café, then headed home happily with a plastic bag of noodles and two deep-fried bread sticks.
Second Rice, the boss who also doubled as the bread stick maker, watched Twiggy leave the café. He drank down a cup of water but still felt his throat burning from despair. He'd once confessed his love to Twiggy, but she went for the tall, thin and bespectacled Hercules Zhao. Second Rice called the guy "four eyes" out of deep-felt contempt. He thought the grown man lived like a woman, hiding at home every day and relying on Twiggy for support, always with a book in his hands. Now it seemed Second Rice was just a dog scorning a human.
They say that when Twiggy got home with the noodles and fried bread sticks, the door abruptly opened before she even took her key out of the lock. A thin figure jumped out and hugged her around the waist. With her feet off the ground, Twiggy kept shouting, “The noodles! They’re spilling! They’re spilling!”
Hercules carried Twiggy inside at a trot and finally put her down on a chair in the family room. “From now on,” he said, “every bit of the gold and silver I earn is yours.” He gestured with his hands in front of his chest as if he really was holding a mountain of gold and silver.
Twiggy played along. She snatched the "mountain of gold and silver" from Hercules and made a show of staggering under its weight. “It's so heavy!”
Second Rice was surprised when Twiggy reported for work at the café as always at five o'clock the next day. Twiggy was quite clear-headed. How can you make a pile of gold and silver as a clerk? She’d have to act as a guardian for Hercules in the future.
It wasn’t long before she had to start her guardian’s duties. When she brought noodles and bread sticks home from work that very day, she saw a roast chicken on the table as soon as she entered their condo. Hercules tore off a chicken leg and handed it to her. He told her that Old Wang from the roast chicken shop had given it to them. “What?” she demanded. “Did he give you a roast chicken for no reason?”
Hercules boasted, “It's because your man’s a handy guy to have around!” When Twiggy demanded that he give it back. Hercules’ expression turned sad. He looked at the chicken with one missing leg and asked, “Can't I just not accept it next time?”
“No!”
She wouldn’t let him take another piece of the chicken. She put the noodles from the plastic bag into a bowl and told him, "We’ll have fewer worries if we only eat this." Since he couldn't persuade her to keep the chicken, he tore off a piece from one of the bread sticks and dunked it in the soup.
When he took a third bite, something got tangled in his mouth. He spit it out and saw it was a long hair. Twiggy said guiltily, "It must’ve got in there by accident when I was beating the eggs." But Hercules had already lost his temper. He threw the bowl down onto the floor.
Twiggy went home to mother in a rage and spent three days there without cooling down. Hercules didn’t come to pick her up, and Twiggy stayed mad. She knew Hercules had a bad stomach, though, and eventually she got worried about what he’d eat when she wasn’t around, so she went home.
Hercules wasn’t home when she arrived, and there was a ring of rust in the rice cooker. She finally found him in a tavern next to the town government building. He was sitting in the guest of honor seat, surrounded almost entirely by smiling people. One especially solicitous woman was toasting him.
It was Twiggy who proposed the divorce. She planned to wait for him to cry and beg for forgiveness as he usually did, but this time, to her surprise, her dear Hercules agreed to it. After the divorce, she was sitting on the roof of the bell tower in North Bucket Town, almost floating in the breeze like a piece of paper. Someone rushed up from behind, faster than a rabbit, and grabbed her and pulled her back. "Don't fall, really, I want to try showing you something."
That someone was Second Rice. He held up his cell phone so she could see the screen saver -- it was a smiling headshot of Twiggy that he’d taken surreptitiously when she wasn’t looking. He loosened his grip, and the phone with the smiling picture fell to the ground. Twiggy screamed, "Ah", and closed her eyes, as if she herself had fallen.
"Are your bones stronger than a mobile phone?” Second Rice asked. “Don’t take my word for it. Go down and see what that foreign toy looks like now."
Twiggy looked at the twinkling lights of thousands of homes in the distance. She was silent for a while before saying, "I want to leave this place."
Rice Family Noodle Shop soon moved a hundred miles away to the city, like a tree spreading its branches. Business was better there than in the town and the café hired a few more people. Twiggy saw that one of the new girls was very clever, so she taught her the trick of making "scrambled egg drop".
She gave birth to two sons for Second Rice. He was so happy that he kept saying, “Twiggy, you’re my Rice family’s lucky star, the lucky star that shines on high!”
Sometimes news spreads faster than the wind. Hercules became the deputy mayor and fell in love with a typist at the same time Twiggy gave birth to her first son. When she gave birth to her second son, someone told her that Hercules had been sentenced to prison and the typist had divorced him. She sighed when she heard the news. What did any of that have to do with her?
One bright, crisp autumn morning, when Rice Family Noodle Shop was about to close up for the day, a man wearing glasses came in from out of the blue. Twiggy's face changed drastically and she hurried to hide in the inner room.
The new customer had messy hair and a hunched back. He ordered a bowl of rice noodles with two fried bread sticks and ate them slowly. In the inner room, Twiggy had no time to feel upset because a little fellow with thick legs came up to her, crying for his mother and pushing against her. She opened her arms, took the little fellow in and held him to her breast. He looked up at her with black, calf-like eyes, completely satisfied, which calmed her down. She held her sleeping little son as she listened to the conversation between the man in the outer room and the new girl.
The man asked, "Can you put a hair in the noodles?"
Stunned, the girl asked, "What?"
“I once ate a bowl of noodles that had a long hair in it. It was the most delicious bowl of noodles in the world. Unfortunately, I... I...”
Chinese text from 《彼岸花》at p. 108. Also available here.
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3. Missy Bean (豆娘)
Xiong Junhong (熊君红)
He’d been waiting for a long time, but Missy Bean still hadn’t shown up for supper. Mr. Yang, the Master of the Manor, paced back and forth in the living room. His steward responded to his concern in a whisper, "We’ve already sent a third maid to ask her to come home."
"Forget it. I've spoiled her." Master Yang waved the steward off. "The girl wants to make soy sauce. Hrumph, she’s got bats in her belfry!"
The Yang family ancestors had opened a soybean processing plant which became famous for its soy sauce. The current master of the family was fifty years old when his wife gave birth to their daughter, Missy Bean. His wife got sick and died when Missy Bean was one and a half. Master Yang feared the girl would be abused if he remarried, so he never did. He raised his little jewel by himself. She turned out headstrong enough that she cried and made a fuss about going to a private school when she was eight years old. To his dismay, the neighbors laughed at her.
When she was thirteen, Missy went so far as to surreptitiously disguise herself as a boy to attend the Yuelu Academy in Hunan and study the “new learning”. For two years, she even made friends with male “skylights” (as schoolmates there were known). It was an out-and-out violation of the will of heaven, but fortunately, the Yang family wasn’t short of money. Now she’d returned home from school, still demanding to make soy sauce. It made Master Yang's head spin.
The family’s soy sauce business was booming. Their sauce was deliciously rich in flavor, nutritious, and had a long shelf life. It was commonly known as “ice sauce” because a thick layer of ice crystals formed on the surface of the sauce during winters. Legend had it that Emperor Qianlong traveled south of the Yangtze River one year and tasted dishes made with it. He was so pleased that he ordered some sent to him as a tribute.
However, an ancestral precept stated that the family’s secret recipe should be passed down to men, not to women. The traditions of such a treasure could not be contravened. What a dilemma! That was precisely why Master Yang was so worried.
"Missy Bean, you said you’d study music, chess, calligraphy and painting. Needlework, too. Which one of those is so bad? Making soy sauce is a job for rough, uneducated people." Master Yang asked a maid to take the young lady back to the women’s rooms.
"Mom…." Missy Bean shook off the maid's hand after a few steps. She knelt down and wouldn’t stop sobbing. The sight of his daughter crying for her mother touched a sore spot in Master Yang, and he had no choice but to give in. "Okay, okay, go to the sauce workshop to help out."
It wasn’t long before the clever Missy Bean was able to handle things on her own. Eventually she was permitted to brew several jars of soy sauce by herself. Master Yang came into the workshop and sat down on the day her batch finished fermenting. He watched while she used a long-handled ladle to scoop up some of the sauce and pour it into a small, blue-flowered, gold-rimmed bowl. She brought it to her father and he leaned forward to sniff it. He frowned slightly, took a tiny sip and abruptly spat it out. "Pah!"
Alarmed, Missy Bean asked, "What's wrong, Dad?" He didn’t answer. He stood up and left, a gloomy expression on his face.
Missy Bean whispered to the steward, "What’s with my father?"
He answered cautiously. "You threw things together in slapdash fashion, Miss. Some of the soybeans you used were moldy and gave the soy sauce a bad taste."
Missy Bean investigated the matter thoroughly and found that the blame lay with her father’s nephew, her cousin. Master Yang’s brother had talked her father into letting his ne’er-do-well son work in the soy sauce workshop. He entrusted the boy to Master Yang in the hope he'd learn the techniques for making soy sauce. The boy's habits proved hard to change, though. On the sly, he replaced good soybeans with rotten ones in the ingredients Missy Bean was using, and sold the good ones for money to buy liquor.
Master Yang punished Missy Bean for the spoiled soy sauce by making her cook eight loads of soybeans. The steward whispered to him, "The young miss is being wronged. She’s taking the blame for someone else."
"You think I didn't I know?” Master Yang replied. “A girl’s place is in the home, reciting poetry and doing embroidery. Those are good things, but she insisted on making soy sauce. Hrumph, I took the opportunity to make her give up that idea!"
A maid later reported to Master Yang, "The young miss is lying in bed. She hasn’t eaten or drunk anything for several days and has become as thin as a bag of bones. I’m afraid she won't live long at this rate...."
The news greatly distressed Master Yang. He paced back and forth in his room and said, “Fate has struck back at me! I really did spoil her....” He ordered the maid, “ Go tell Missy Bean that I’ll let her to return to the sauce workshop."
One night sometime later, the steward rushed into the main room. "Master, we’ve caught the criminal red-handed! Your nephew...."
Master Yang asked in astonishment, "Was he adulterating the soy sauce again?"
"Not only that,” the steward stammered, “he also stole the good beans and resold them."
"Send that useless piece of trash back home to my brother…. Wait, remember to make him return the salary I paid him."
Another batch of soy sauce came out of the fermentation tank. Master Yang tasted it and nodded with satisfaction. "It's still some ways away from the authentic Yang's Soy Sauce, though, so you need to work harder." He then taught Missy Bean all the secret methods passed down from his ancestors. He even chose to include her in business discussions and taught her to read books of account.
Another two years passed, and Mr. Yang felt like he had a ball of cotton stuffed in his heart. Matchmakers used to come to the Yang family like shoppers rushing to a sale. They’d practically broken down his door three times. But now... sheesh, he didn't want to think about it.
One day Missy Bean dragged a young man to the Yang family’s door. "Daddy", she shouted, but Master Yang was thinking about something and didn't pay much attention. Missy Bean pulled the young fellow over to her father and whispered, "Kneel down." The young man was in a fog.
Missy Bean tore off her headscarf and her long, black silken hair cascaded down like a waterfall. The young man was so startled that he retreated several steps, but Missy Bean turned around and smiled at him. The young man quivered as he knelt down before Master Yang. "Father-in-law, please allow your son-in-law to pay his respects!"
Father-in-law? Was the young guy just throwing out random epithets? Missy Bean blushed and explained, "This is River Wang, one of my senior skylights from the Yuelu Academy...." Master Yang was pleased to see that the young man was handsome, robust and apparently sincere. He welcomed River into the family as a second child.
Masted Yang was beaming on the day of Missy Bean and River’s wedding. He placed a few yellowed pages marked with a seal "Yang Family's Soy Sauce Shop" in Missy Bean's hands. Beautiful, small calligraphy of the family’s ancestors on the yellowed manuscript read: "Techniques for Producing Yang's Soy Sauce".
Translator’s Note: See here for video of the process of producing soy sauce.
Chinese Text at 《彼岸花》 p. 111. Also available here. Translated from
刊参考王at https://www.fx361.cc/page/2023/0303/21868924.shtml
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4. It Wasn’t the Watermelon (不是一个西瓜的事)
Xu Guoping (徐国平)
After the communes were broken up and the land distributed to each household, my father got into the habit of planting about a third of an acre in watermelons every year. He squeezed the melon plot out from the land he had to plant in grain to pay his taxes and feed his own family.
People from the neighboring villages praised him for being a capable melon farmer. He said it takes time and effort to grow good melons. You can’t do sloppy work when you’re planting the seeds, caring for the seedlings, pruning, shaping the vines, watering -- every step in the process. The key is the fertilizer base: you have to apply a mixture of fertilizer and soybean meal to the soil. That’s the only way to make your watermelons taste different from the ones forced to ripen quickly by chemical fertilizers.
Once the melons were ripe, he’d stay in the watermelon shed day and night. The plot was close to the road so passers-by, sweaty and thirsty under the scorching sun, couldn’t resist slowing down when they saw the ripe melons. Father kept an eye out for them while he was in the shed. He’d raise his hand in greeting and shout, "Come, have a watermelon to quench your thirst."
Passers-by jumped at the chance to come in and sit down. Father would bend down to dig a watermelon out from under the wooden bed in the shed, put it on the small wooden bistro table and tap it with a knife. Bang, the melon would split open, revealing its red, sweet and grainy flesh. The guests would praise it to no end as they munched: "Great melon!"
Father became particularly enthusiastic whenever he heard such praise. He’d chat with his guests about all sorts of things. The more they talked, the closer they became, until eventually they became more than just passers-by -- they were acquaintances. And since they were acquaintances, father naturally felt embarrassed to accept money from them. The guests, on the other hand, weren’t embarrassed about wiping their mouths and walking away without paying.
As father's acquaintances increased, fewer and fewer melons remained in the field. I watched it happening and complained to him, asking him not to keep cutting up melons for passers-by to eat. But he didn't care a whit. He said they were acquaintances, farmers and shopkeepers all. Besides, it was just watermelons, so why should he ask for money?
That’s how father planted melons every year but, in my mother's words, lost money to gain shout-outs. I never understood what he was thinking.
One autumn, father and mother drove a horse-drawn carriage carrying grain to sell at the township Grain Management Office. It had been raining and the road was slippery, and the carriage accidentally overturned. Mother got pinned underneath. Father couldn't lift the cart by himself, but passers-by rushed forward and worked with him to turn it over. They moved the bags of grain and pulled mother out.
She suffered a fracture in the accident. An old man in an orchard beside the road took down a door panel to serve as a stretcher, and several strong men took turns carrying her to the township hospital. Father was very grateful but they all said there was no need to thank them. “We’ve eaten your watermelons, brother, and we’re all acquaintances.”
After mother got out of the hospital, several people came to our home to visit. They brought herbal medicines like forget-me-not root to help mend her bones and twigs to soothe her tendons. They also explained their generosity by saying they’d eaten my father's watermelons.
Father was proud and told me, “See? This is the result of my popularity for letting people eat my melons.” He had sufficient reason to say that, and I had nothing to say in reply.
Another year, little rain fell due to a drought. The wheat harvest naturally suffered but, fortunately, father’s watermelons grew well. He noted the old aphorism, “Plant melons in dry years and dates when it's wet,” and predicted that his melons would be sweet and fleshy. The family had a lot of expenses that year because of mother's poor health, so father decided to sell his melons in the city to earn money for her medicine.
I’d just been admitted to the township’s middle school at the time, but the school was on summer vacation. I picked melons and filled the cart the night before market day, and father woke me up before daybreak the next morning. We drove the cart out of the village together.
Our hometown was over ten miles from the city and it was already dawn when we arrived there. Father had just parked the cart and tied up the draft animals, and hadn’t even taken a break, when he got into a fight with someone.
The troublemaker was a street vendor. When he saw the good quality of father's watermelons, he started pestering us to sell them all to him. The price he offered was too low, though. Father thought for a long time, but was reluctant to sell because he wouldn't even get back the money he’d spent on soybean meal for fertilizer.
The peddler wore a flowered shirt with the front open to reveal a tattoo on his chest. He spoke with a slight stutter. He was thin and rather short, with a fierce-looking face. At first glance he looked like the type of thug who’d bully others in the market.
When the skinny guy understood that father wasn’t going to sell him the melons, he moved in front of the cart to block us. He pointed at father's nose and stammered, "This...this area’s been my territory… for a long time. Get...get out of here!"
The skinny guy's rudeness got my father’s dander up. He pushed him away and said, "It’s all first come, first served. Besides, this is public property, not your bedroom."
When he realized father wasn’t so easy to scare, the guy grabbed a watermelon from the cart and threw it to the ground. It was a huge one, the king of that year’s crop. I’d slept with it in my arms after I picked it the night before. I’d wanted to keep it, but father had quietly loaded it onto the cart in the morning.
I was scared silly and quite put out. What right did that bully have to throw my watermelon to the ground? I hid behind the cart with tears in my eyes.
Father knew the guy was just looking for trouble. He was so angry that his hands were shaking. He pointed at the guy and said, "I don’t care if you eat one of my melons, but don’t think you can bully me by smashing one on the ground."
The thin man shouted furiously, "What's wrong… wrong with busting a melon? I'm gonna… gonna… bust you one, too." He grabbed father's collar and punched him savagely in the face.
Father stumbled and fell sideways onto the cart. I couldn’t believe it when father, who’d always been rather faint-hearted, suddenly turned into a wild tiger showing off his might. He picked up an iron weight from the carriage and rushed at the troublemaker with fire in his eyes.
He was in his forties, and this was the first time I’d seen him fighting with anyone. His nose was bleeding. Bright red blood dripped onto the smashed watermelon at his feet.
In the end, the skinny guy didn't gain anything from his bullying. Once he got hit by the weight in father’s hand, he muttered something about being unwilling and retreated.
I went up to father and hugged him. Sobbing, I exclaimed, "You usually give so many watermelons to people for free and don't feel any regrets at all, but today you risked your life for a watermelon. Why’d you do it?"
He wiped the blood from his nose with his hand. Once he’d calmed down, he told me, "Today wasn’t about a watermelon. The melon represented the fruit of our family’s labors. I give away melons as a token of friendship and do so willingly. But I can't stand by and watch our labor being wasted. And I can't let anyone bully me!"
I stopped crying at once and nodded vigorously.
Text at 《彼岸花》 p. 114. Also available here.
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Bonus Stories from Stories Magazine Compilation #145
《故事会合订本145》上海文化出版社
5. Help me (帮个忙)
Ma Jian (麻坚)
One day Mr. Wang’s wife asked him to sell a rooster at the farmers’ market. When he got to the market, someone offered him 15 yuan a pound for the bird, but he didn't know how to calculate the price. While he was worrying about it, he saw a man called Fuzzy, a resident of a neighboring village, who was shopping in the market with his new girlfriend. His eyes lit up and he called out, "Fuzzy! Come here and help me figure this out!"
Fuzzy frowned and said he was busy, but his girlfriend said, "It won't take much time. Go help him!" Fuzzy agreed.
After he got home, Mr. Wang’s wife asked him how much he got for the rooster. When she heard the number, she got in his face and chewed him out. "You old fool, the rooster weighed 6.3 pounds, and 15 yuan a pound comes to 94.5 yuan. How did you figure it was only 93 yuan?"
Mr. Wang scratched his head. "I didn't know how to calculate it. Fuzzy from the neighboring village did it for me...."
“Since Fuzzy did it,” she replied, "it’s his fault! You should go get him make up the difference!"
"That’s not a good idea, is it? We only lost 1.5 yuan, right?"
The old man's wife got more agitated. "I hand-fed millet to that rooster. You think that was easy? If you don't go, I will!" Mr. Wang was worried about his wife getting into a quarrel, so he had to go to the neighboring village.
Fuzzy had just returned from the market when Mr. Wang got there. "What are you doing here, Mr. Wang?" he asked.
Mr. Wang blushed. "You shorted me a buck and a half when you figured the bill for me. My wife wants you to make up the loss...."
Fuzzy responded angrily. "See here, Mr. Wang. I didn't ask you to make up my loss, so why are you asking me to make up yours. I’m telling you, I lost a lot more than you did!"
"What did you lose?"
"I lost my girlfriend!" Fuzzy replied dejectedly. "She said she couldn't spend her life with someone who can’t even calculate a simple price...."
Chinese text from 故事会合订本#145, p. 2-093. Also available here.
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6. Foresight (先见之明)
Shao Fujun (邵福军)
Pretty Lin went to one of the better high schools, and her mother helped her with her studies. The mothers of Pretty’s classmates, Zhao and Qian, also helped their daughters. The three families were friends and had dinner together every weekend.
The school was in a remote suburb with only one store nearby. The three mothers always went there together. One day the clerk strongly recommended that they buy down jackets. "An exceptionally cold front coming. The temperature will drop sharply in a few days and we’ll have a once-in-a-century heavy snow." Pretty's mother was going to buy one, but the mothers of Zhao and Qian were unpersuaded. They whispered to her, "It won’t be as bad as he said!" They talked Pretty’s mother into changing her mind and the three of them left the store together.
The clerk's prediction came true a few days later. The three girls were adolescents and last year's down jackets no longer fit, so they needed to buy new ones. Zhao's mother and Qian's mother went to the store together and found that the down jackets had been sold out. They told the clerk, "Get some more in right away!" but the clerk replied in embarrassment, "The heavy snow has tied up traffic – nothing can get through.”
The two women looked at the heavy snow outside the window and regretted not listening to the clerk before.
Pretty's mother was supposed to host dinner that weekend, so the two women went straight to her home. On the way, they wondered why they hadn't seen Pretty's mother rushing to buy a down jacket. They also worried that she’d blame them for persuading her not to buy one that day.
Not long after the two women arrived for dinner, the three children pushed the door open and came in. All three were wearing thin clothing and shivering from the cold. It seemed that Pretty’s mother hadn't been able to buy a down jacket, either, but she was all smiles and had no intention of blaming her two friends. Pretty, on the other hand, was unhappy. "I'm really cold, Mom, and you're still smiling!”
Her mother opened the cupboard right then and took out a down jacket. Pretty tried it on and found it was tailor-made for her! She smiled and said, "You’re so foresighted, Mom! When did you buy it?"
The other two mothers were flabbergasted. They also wanted to know when Pretty's mother had purchased the jacket.
Pretty’s mother looked at her daughter lovingly and smiled. "I bought it when you were in the first year of junior high. I’ve just been waiting for you to grow into it!"
Chinese text from 故事会合订本#145, p. 2-094. Also available here.