​​         Chinese Stories in English ​  

Ordinary People 08
Stories published in 《百姓人家》(2023), 秦俑/赵建宁选编
Page citation and link to online Chinese text noted after each story.

                                                      1. Do You Love Me?                 3. Snapshot                  4. Rafting
                                                      2. A Practice Dialogue                                                    5. The Ugly Wife

1. Bottom Line, Do You Love Me? (你到底爱不爱我)
Chen Lijiao (陈力娇)

      They were classmates in graduate school and would receive their degrees in twenty days. Their relationship hadn’t yet ripened, mainly because she continually put him to the test. Giving yourself to another shouldn’t be done rashly. You must see something of a person’s true self before you can completely surrender your heart.
      One day they went to the grasslands to collect folk songs. The whole class, more than thirty people, belted out songs along the way as they pushed on towards a place where the wind blew through the grass and cattle and sheep could be seen. They were both in the group, but they couldn’t walk together because she wasn’t ready to make her relationship with him public. They kept at a distance, but their eyes never left each other. Sometimes he helped her carry her bag, and she let him. He hurried forward with it to join other students, while she lagged behind to talk and laugh with others.
      There are three famous “Heavenly Pools”: Tianshan Pool, Changbai Mountain Pool and Arshan Pool. The scenic Arshan Pool was their destination this trip, and everyone was eager to see it, but the stairway from the foot of the mountain has more than four hundred steps. Someone who’d been there before and taken many photos by the Pool told the group it wasn’t as enticing as the Changbai Mountain Pool. To put it bluntly, it was just a blister on the land.
      He’d grown up near water and wasn’t impressed by water scenery. When he heard that he’d have to climb hundreds of steps to see a blister, he turned around and headed down. He met her as she was coming up, alone. She was behind the others because she’d changed clothes in the bus. When he saw her, he told her not to continue to the top because everyone said it was just an uninteresting blister. She shook her head and replied, “No, I want to go on, and you should, too. If you don't go on up, it's like you’ll have nothing to show for your trip.”
      She continued on up, thinking he would follow. She was deeply surprised when she noticed that he’d kept going down and hadn’t followed her. She was pregnant with his child and felt very weak, so as far as she was concerned, climbing the four hundred steps was a test. If he’d asked her not to go to the top out of concern that she couldn’t handle all those steps, the right thing to do would’ve been to follow her to watch over her on the way.
      But he went down the mountain alone.
      And she went up the mountain alone.
      Everyone was getting ready to go down by the time she reached the top. She hurried to get a few shots of Heavenly Pool with her camera. She was the last one taking pictures, and mixed feelings crowded her heart. She was moved to say to the Pool, "It wasn’t easy for you, raising yourself up to this height."
      Next they were going to climb Rose Peak, an hour's drive from Heavenly Pool. She spent the hour thinking. First, she thought he shouldn't have refused to climb to the top with her, for the sake of his child even if he didn’t care to for himself. This made her wonder what kind of person he was. A steep climb is indeed daunting, but he was motivated solely by his own wants.
      They arrived at Rose Peak, which is famous for standing tall and straight, like a sharp sword piercing the sky. If getting to Heavenly Pool was difficult, climbing Rose Peak would be even more so. The steep, rugged path is winding, dangerous, and lined by jagged rocks. Its grandeur lies in the fact that it’s so outstandingly lofty and precipitous.
      If he hadn't wanted to climb to Heavenly Pool, he’d want to climb Rose Peak even less. She didn't understand why he’d come on the trip at all.
      But climbing without him wasn’t as enjoyable. Her heart had obviously stayed with him at the foot of the mountain. Her legs began to tremble when she reached the halfway point and she wanted to phone him to tell him to come on up. When she looked back down the mountain, though, she saw only a crowd of people who looked like ants. She couldn't tell which one was him, so she gave up the idea at once.
      The impact of Rose Peak shaped the core of her life. When she reached the top, the smallness of the other mountains she could see, plus her feelings of contentment and pride, led her to redefine herself. When God created humans, he haphazardly gave the woman's other half to the man, and she wanted to get it back to restore herself. She’d thought he was the one, but now it seemed he wasn’t.
      The Genghis Khan Mausoleum rounded out the day’s excursion. The lofty temple excited her imagination, but she encountered a problem as she mounted the first step -- a sharp pain in her lower abdomen. In fact, she’d felt some pain while climbing Rose Peak but had insisted on ignoring it.
      But now she couldn't ignore it anymore. She couldn't take another step, and a pool of water had flowed like a river from her lower body. As a mother, she knew what was happening, so she took off her coat and tied it around her waist to hide her secret. Then she returned to the tour bus as calmly and leisurely as someone without a care in the world.
      When the others finished touring the temple, they found that she had changed her seat on the bus. She was now sitting in a window seat where her classmate, Young Equal, had been sitting. Young Equal of course took another seat.
      She was thus able to sit next to him without any hassle. He was surprised when he came back and saw her sitting there, but he smiled at her and she smiled back. Then she noticed something strange: the silk string around his neck had turned from black and white to red. She understood at once that he’d traded the "rabbit" ornament he’d been wearing as a necklace for another. He must have bought a more satisfactory one at the temple.
      She also noticed a string of brown Dzi beads flashing with a ghostly sheen around his wrist. She felt her heart drop and whispered in his ear, "You bought quite a lot." He didn't realize she was unhappy and admired his bracelet with delight. She could tell from his expression that he’d only bought things for himself, and nothing for her. She concluded that that was his nature, not just thoughtlessness on this occasion.
      The bus started to move. She sat beside him and didn't say anything. She just looked inside her body and said a silent prayer: “Child, take one last look at your father and then be reborn somewhere else.”
      Later he spotted the two lines of tears that hung on her pale cheeks. He heard her phone her husband and ask him to drive over to pick her up as soon as possible, without a moment’s delay.

Chinese text from《百姓人家》at p. 227. Also available here.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. A Practice Dialogue (对话练习)
Yuan Shengmei (袁省梅)

      On the phone, the father asked his son to come home for a visit and told him to bring his wife with him. He had something he wanted to discuss with them. He tried to keep his tone as gentle as possible, but it seemed a bit like he was begging.
      The son said OK but then added, "I'm busy these days. Let’s talk on the phone, instead."
      The father didn't answer at first, but then said, "So wait until you’re free. There’s no rush." He spoke hesitantly, carefully, cautiously, trying to be circumspect to hide that he was worried. A thin layer of sweat appeared on his forehead when he hung up the phone.
      The father didn't know when it started, but he’d lost his manner of speaking when talking to his son. He used to be the king at home, and his words were final.
      Back then, what a good time it was.... His eyes grew a bit moist. He hadn't expected that his temper would soften as he got older. He could no longer be tough in front of his children. No matter what, though, he still had to talk to his son about that matter.
      He was considering what he’d say his son and daughter-in-law about the matter and began to feel a little uneasy again. He sat alone in silence for some time before picking up a stool and a wood block from the floor and putting them the bed. He started talking to them. "It's nothing. Just the way it is."
      What? He took a look at the stool and the wood block. He noticed a scar on the block, black and round, like an eye. A red flush spread over his dark purple face. He coughed twice, deep in his throat, and rubbed his hands together. He lit a cigarette and exhaled a thick cloud of white smoke in front of his eyes. He told the stool and the wood block, “I just want to discuss something with you. That person from Lower Cow Hill.... Your second aunt said her husband’s been dead for many years....”
      It was that Velvet Flower.
      He cleared his throat as a puff of warmth crossed his face again. He stood up abruptly and glanced at the stool and the block of wood. Then he cast a quick eye on the various sized picture frames on the wall. The photos in them, some color and some black and white, compressed decades of familiar and unfamiliar figures, caught in motion or rigid, cold or warm.
      A black and white photo taken when he was young showed several youths sitting in a row or standing behind them. He stood in the back with a girl next to him, Velvet Flower. She leaned against him gently and was smiling shyly. They were the age of newly sprouted branches and green leaves, flourishing, plump, full of vim and vigor. It was so good back then. He squinted and gazed at the picture until his eyes were sore.
      Turning away, he saw the stool and wood block on the kang and remembered what he wanted to say. He croaked out a laugh and told them, "What your second aunt meant was, can I ask Velvet Flower to come over to my place? What I mean by seeing you is, I want to see what you think."
      He spoke like he was reciting a tongue twister. His face was flushed and his words were awkward.
      What had happened between him and Velvet Flower was long in the past, at the time of the black and white photo. His son and daughter-in-law both knew about it because his wife had often told the story when she was alive. She made fun of him about Velvet Flower, saying how the girl had “slipped him a sweet treasure” on the qt and how he’d waited for her on the way home....
      He just chuckled when she talked about it. He’d needed his father’s permission to get married, but the old man had a grudge against Velvet Flower's father and wouldn’t approve, so he eventually had to find someone else to marry. His wife didn’t mind talking about it. Sometimes she even served the story up to their kids. She was just joking about it, but after decades of being together day and night, she understood him more clearly than anyone else.
      The wood block chuckled -- that is, he knew his daughter-in-law was sure to laugh. She laughed whenever his wife mentioned Velvet Flower and always asked if there was anything else to tell. What else? His daughter-in-law said she hadn't imagined that he was so romantic. That made his son unhappy. The young man glared at his wood block wife and said, "What’re you talking about? You’re being disrespectful."
      The son and daughter-in-law had once quarreled about this. They were home for a visit during the Dragon Boat Festival and his wife had cheerfully brought up Velvet Flower again. She said, “There was no one more beautiful than her in the surrounding ten miles and eight villages. Who knows how many men had been enthralled by one glance from her almond-shaped, crystalline eyes. Your dad…."
      He’d interrupted his wife and asked why she was still telling that stale old story from so many years in the past. The daughter-in-law brushed her husband's leg with her arm and raised her eyebrows. Gesturing in his direction with her chin, she’d said, "No wonder. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree."
      He remembered that he hadn't clearly heard what his daughter-in-law muttered at the time, but he heard his son scolding her for talking nonsense. The daughter-in-law rolled her eyes at her husband, curled her lips and retorted, "Like father, like son, nothing cockeyed about that." He’d heard that clearly.
      When he thought about it now, the hand holding his cigarette trembled a little. He looked at the block of wood and asked, "Like father, what? My wife’s been gone for five years. You have to fire up the kindling if you want to have some soup. When you get hot-headed at night and it hurts, you have to pour cold water on it....” He felt a little sad saying that. He sat there puffing on his cigarette until he was cloaked in smoke.
      After a long while, he told the stool and the wood block, "You guys talk it over and see what you think. Would it be OK?"
      “Velvet Flower’s a good person,” he continued, “and hardworking. If we‘re together, she’d just be my companion. We’d spend the days as partners, one day at a time.
      “Don’t worry about how we’d make a living,” he went on. “The crops in the fields are enough for us.
      “What’s more”, he added, “she said she doesn’t need you to take care of her while she’s alive, and when she dies, she’ll be buried apart from me. She doesn’t need you guys to spend a penny on her.
      “Further,”, he said, “When I’m old and get soiled up to my neck, you guys can keep doing your own thing. With her here, you won’t have to worry about me.”
      He looked at the stool and the wood block and concluded, "If you don't agree, don't say anything."
      The stool and wood block didn't speak. No one was there to speak to him. He was just practicing what he’d say to them, using the stool as his son and the wood block as his daughter-in-law.      Eventually he asked, “What do you think?”
      The father looked at the stool and the wood block and took a hurried puff of another cigarette. Before it left his mouth, his heart began to ache. Then he laughed and scolded himself for being so stupid, really thinking the stool was his son and the block of wood was his daughter-in-law. Who knew, when he actually talked to them, maybe they’d agree to it.

Chinese text at 《百姓人家》 p. 230. Also available here. Translated from 辽宁日报 (edited
version) at https://epaper.lnd.com.cn/lnrbepaper/pad/con/202304/07/content_187175.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Snapshot (抓拍)
Chen Min (陈敏)

      Old Fan said I owed him a life. That shocked me.
      The story begins with a business trip I took two years ago. It was a winter morning, and I was going to an academic seminar on garden landscaping in a northern border town hundreds of miles away. I was planning to take a long-distance bus to the provincial capital, and then a train to the border town.
      I heard an announcement that the bus would be delayed an hour just after I bought my ticket. I was looking for a quiet place to sit down and wait when I turned around and saw Old Fan. He was carrying a crossbody bag, the type popular at the time, and got out of a bus that had just arrived at the station.
      He shouted my name and rushed over to shake my hand. He told me he’d just returned from a business trip in Fuzhou. He also wanted to know my itinerary and, when he learned I was going to that distant border town, he immediately decided, "How about if I go with you? Do you know Changer Wang from our home village? He’s the mayor there. Mayor Wang! Do you believe it?" His eyes sparkled when mentioned Mayor Wang.
      "Ordinary people don't care about politicians!" I replied, thinking he was joking with me. I thought there was no way he could travel so far just after coming home from a long business trip, unless he had a problem with his brain.
      Before I knew what was happening, he grabbed the bus ticket from my hand, turned around and went up to the ticket counter. He came back with two new tickets and said, "I returned your ticket for a refund and bought you another one. We’re good to go. It’s leaving right away!" He pulled me onto a different bus before I could say anything.
      I was silent during the journey, but that didn’t in the least stop Old Fan from talking. He remarked on the scenery and recounted his past experiences all the way. He laughed heartily when he mentioned that Mayor Wang was not only a little imp but also a "bed-wetter" when he was a child, completely ignoring the looks from the people sitting near him.
      Once in a while he also expressed concern for my health. He said it wasn’t good for a person to be silent for a long time and suggested it might be a precursor to a serious illness.
      We arrived at the provincial capital railway station at around 1:00 p.m. We were short on time, so I bought the tickets and we went straight to the train. The tickets cost 450 yuan apiece, and out of courtesy, I took it on myself to buy them. After we found our seats, Old Fan suggested I pay his travel expenses and we could settle up when we got back. When I didn't say anything, he started talking about this thing and that.
      He told me he was calling Mayor Wang and some acquaintances. It was two hours later, when his phone’s battery died, before he stopped talking. He took a power bank from a welt pocket to charge his phone and said it retailed for more than ten thousand yuan but an agency head in the provincial capital had given to him. A full charge could power his phone for a month at no cost. He finished by telling me, rather magnanimously, that he’d let me use it as long as I wanted once his phone was charged.
      When that didn’t get much of a reaction from me, he lifted the tips of his shoes up so I could see them. "What do you see?" he asked.
      I wanted to say I saw a stinky foot, but then I thought better of it. I just spun my head around to look out the window.
      "You don't know quality when you see it, do you? These are genuine handmade custom leather shoes! The president of a pharmaceutical company had them made for me! They’re the most expensive shoes in the world, more than eight thousand yuan a pair! Unless you have connections, you could spend a month on a waiting list and you still might not be able to buy them.”
      At midnight, the train was running faster than usual through some huge mountains. Old Fan finally got tired from all the bragging. He put his head on my shoulder and fell asleep. I hadn’t been sleepy to begin with, and now, with another head on my shoulders, I was really put out. The little bit of a good impression I’d had of Old Fan faded away completely.
      The train arrived at the border town’s railway station at five o'clock the next morning, an early winter morning on the northern border. The temperature had dropped to more than thirty below zero and the cold air made it difficult to breathe. Old Fan was so cold that he stamped his feet. Hopping along like a monkey, he told me, "Changer Wang is the mayor in this city and whatever he says, goes. I’m not bragging, but he’s my fellow villager, so the ground will shake when I walk by. If I stride, I could cause an earthquake! If I break the traffic rules, the cops won’t dare fine me! In short, I can walk like a prince in this city!"
      When I saw him puff out his chest like a hero, I had to laugh out loud. Eventually I got a taxi to hurry off to the hotel where my meeting was being held.
      Old Fan said the mayor would pick him up for lunch at noon. He bid me a brief farewell and said proudly: "Now that I’m in with Mayor Wang, he’s sure to provide my meals for a few days."
      The two-day meeting was over before I knew it. On the train home, Old Fan was as talkative as he’d been on the way north. He blabbed nonstop all the way, chatting with the passengers on the upper and lower bunks. Eventually he started talking about photography.
      Ah, yes, how could I have forgotten that Old Fan was a photographer! Although many of his behaviors disgusted me, he excelled at photography and I admired his skill to no end. He was obsessed with taking photos of birds in their natural surroundings and had traveled all over the country to do so. He had thousands of photos of birds, all of them beautiful masterpieces. He was especially good at candid camera shots and boasted that only the greatest photographers in the world have that skill.
      We’d just arrived at the station when I woke up. I could see through the train window that it was a rare sunny day.
      When we were leaving the station, Old Fan whispered to me, "Changer Wang has indeed changed. He didn't come to see me even once. He said he was on a business trip and asked his subordinates to arrange a hotel for me. He sent me on my way after a few buffet meals. But I saw him on TV and he was clearly still in the area!"
      Rare disappointment showed on his face. When we parted, he left without looking back. He never mentioned the expenses I’d paid for him on the trip.
      One day I was busy working on a painting in the studio when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Startled, I turned around and saw Old Fan. I was peeved and warned him, "Don't sneak up on people like that. You’ll scare someone to death."
      Old Fan brushed it off. "What's wrong with patting you on the shoulder? You owe me a life, after all!" He handed me a newspaper... a copy of the "Island City Daily" from the previous week. He pointed to show me a news item near the center seam of the paper.
      The bus I was supposed to take to the provincial capital the week before, the one that was late and Old Fan had prevented me from taking, had fallen into a ravine in the Qinling Mountains. Twelve people had died in that major traffic accident! I stood by a table for a long time, speechless. I stopped what I’d been doing, sat down, and spent the entire afternoon drinking tea with Old Fan.
      Half a year later, I was getting an album of my work ready for publication and needed a recent photo. I had several from professional photographers to chose from, but none of them fit the bill. A portrait that Old Fan had happened to take of me on the train was the only one with "flavor". I ended up using it as the press photo on the back cover of the album.

Chinese text from《百姓人家》at p. 233. Also available here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Rafting (放木排)
Jiang Dongmei (蒋冬梅)

      The rafters set out in June. They started from Everwhite Prefecture and chased the waves like their ancestors who’d ridden on giant fish. So many rafts sailed down the river that they covered the entire surface. The rafters weren’t out to conquer anything; they just wanted to go with the flow of nature’s will and live their lives to the fullest.
      The river is a highway out of the mountains. Trees that have listened to the mountain winds for hundreds of years abandon their bodies to the river after they’re felled. Fate may lead a tree to get caught up at a checkpoint or be torn apart in a rough stretch of rapids, but if it survives those dangerous obstacles, it will come up intact on a South China Sea dock. That would be a perfect ending for the tree.
      One needs good eyesight, as well as strength and luck, to float a raft down the river, but Senior Xu, leader of one crew, is half-blind. He wears a pair of small round sunglasses all year round. All disabled crew members have to seek guidance from the river itself. Although the water may be pliant, it’s also more rigid than a knife. People and fish alike have to struggle against it with complete abandon.
      Trees on the mountain grow crooked, and a person’s path through life is likewise not always straight. People with disabilities must be exceptionally capable just to be considered able. Senior Xu could clearly distinguish every bend in the river from Two River District to the South China Sea by merely listening to the water’s sound. He also had a terrifying temperament, like anyone who’d fought the river with his life. No one in his entire crew dared disobey him.
      Even the longest journeys eventually come to an end. As soon as a raft enters a peaceful harbor, the bright silk skirts of women on the shore glide over to it. The rafters know that life is meant to be colorful, and these women color their days. And not only the women; the South China Sea itself is kaleidoscopic, with multicolored ships’ flags fluttering in the sea breeze. The whole world is a riot of colors. People who live by the seat of their pants don’t care about their lives when they let loose. Rafters who’ve relinquished their fate to the water, to the rocks, and to the one hundred sixty-three checkpoints along the way that held their lives for ransom, now turn themselves over to the pleasures of the South China Sea coast.
      On the night his raft arrived at the coast, Senior Xu spread the word to his crew: if you go ashore looking for intimacy, just avoid the women by the river wearing silk skirts. He said nothing more after that one dictate. The men were all in a hurry to get to shore, and when they saw the women by the river wearing silk skirts, they let themselves be led away without a second thought.
      The river follows its channel out of the mountains, and bad people follow their own channels to make money. The rafters have been floating on the river for half a year, and people on the shore have been waiting for them that half year. They set to work picking the rafters’ pockets clean with their bag of tricks, swindles and ruses. After the rafters have been milked for all they have on them, they put their red fingerprints on IOUs, regretting what they’d done.
      They’d remember how the river suddenly narrowed after they passed Black Rock Boulder. When they got around the dangerous rapids and came to placid water, they’d seen the women standing on the shore wearing clothes made of new cloth, with flowers in their hair and powder on their faces. Their new clothes still bore creases, but when they unbuttoned the fronts of their jackets, the rafters could see patches on the inside. These women looked like plants that had just been covered with frost. Some color remained, but most of them were decent women whose families had suffered misfortunes. As they stood on the shore waving to them, the rafters looked on eagerly but couldn't see their faces clearly. Still, they couldn't tear their eyes away from the colors flashing between the water and the sky.
      Senior Xu knew that the two types of women, those wearing cloth and those wearing silk, were like two separate roads. When the rafters met them, it was like coming to a fork in the river. But men can rely on a pole to help them choose the way at a fork, while they have only their first impression to guide them when meeting these women. Somehow, when Senior Xu had passed Black Rock Boulder that year, he was moved by just one look at the creased new cloth clothes of the woman on the shore. He seemed to be able to see the patches inside and the hardship of her life. He followed her silently to her home with dark windows on a distant cliff.
      Senior Xu’s story sinks to the bottom of the river like driftwood. He’d floated back and forth on the river for his whole life. He could no longer make out the red lanterns hanging in the brothels on the shore, nor could he see the peony-like patterns on the women's silk skirts. He listened to the cacophony of their opera songs, but they were no match for the wind on the river. Everything was blown away when the wind came up. Even the lights from the lamps dissipated one by one like spray from the waves.
      He didn't get off the raft this time. He sat on the bow all day, rolling two stones around in his hand, two ordinary lava rocks from Everwhite Mountain. But what stones don't come from landslides? Having them in his hand was like holding millions of years.
      A new rafter named Righteous Feng returned to the raft after playing around for three days. When Senior Xu asked him why he wasn't womanizing anymore, he said he’d just wanted to have a taste of that life. He’d risked his life for the money he had and shouldn’t lay waste to his life now. Senior Xu told him: "The river can't swallow you, and the women can't tie you down. You’re like these two stones in my hand -- if I throw them into the water, they won't sink to the bottom."
      The other rafters returned a few days later. Senior Xu knew from the sound of their footsteps that they hadn’t all come back. A person can only go one way on the river but can go thousands of ways on land. Those who didn’t come back had gone ashore to learn a lesson about doing business from the people there, and maybe they’d hooked up with a woman and braved the sea to head south. Anyone who did come back would have to risk his live on the river again, to get another load of wood, so he could go ashore next year and chase after a woman in a silk skirt. His brothers and his fate are on the river; stability and traps awaited him on the shore. He’d walk a path from the river to the land, only to circle back to the river. He’d always end up on the water.
      The calm river surface reflected the green mountains on the way back to Everwhite Prefecture. The rafts moved against the current like paintings being rolled up on scrolls. Not enough men were going back to make up a log crew, so there were fewer and fewer rafts every year. After selling the wood and sharing the dividends, each man weighed the money in his left hand and his life in his right hand; many sighed and decided it wasn’t worth it. When they landed on the beach, Senior Xu told them he would not stop anyone who wanted to get off the raft. Some left the first night without saying goodbye. Senior Xu sat at the stern of the raft, rolling the two lava rocks in his hands, his lonely shadow reflected on the water.
      The wide river abruptly narrowed when the raft passed Black Rock Boulder again. The waves became turbulent, the wind strong and the current fierce. A huge wave swept over the raft and the men, but the raft was still upright in the water when the wave receded. Only then did the men realize that Senior Xu was gone. They searched the bow and stern, but found no trace of him. They only saw those two rocks sliding along the deck.
      Righteous Feng picked up the two lava rocks and threw them into the river alongside the raft. They bobbed up and down a few times in the water, then stayed on the surface and floated away behind the raft. Figures in flowery clothes on the shore waved to the men all the while, but the raft swept past them in a moment, leaving no trace of color.

Chinese text from《百姓人家》at p. 237. Also available here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. The Ugly Wife (丑妻)
Zhao Shuping (赵淑萍)

      Second Li's farm produced better than any other large field in Small Periphery Village. It was lush and green all year round. Leeks, broad beans, Chinese mustard, pickled mustard, cabbage…. He was a hard worker and his land didn’t lay idle. He harvested crops every season.
      He and his wife spent almost every day in the field. If it started to drizzle, they were too busy weeding to notice. If the rain got heavier after a while, they still didn't seem to take note until their daughter, with a pair of flower bows in her hair, brought raincoats out to them. In the autumn when it got dark early, he’d ride his tricycle home slowly, carrying farm tools or harvested crops, while his wife followed closely behind. Sometimes, if there was no farm work to do, they’d go for a walk in the fields.
      His wife had a stocky frame, a square face, short hair, thick eyebrows and a plain figure. Not very feminine – more like a gourd with a sawed-off mouth. She never conversed with anyone and showed no expression on her face. Her reactions were a bit slow due to a childhood bout with meningitis.
      And what about Second Li? He’d studied hard and got good grades when he was a child, and he eventually graduated from a vocational high school and got a job as an accountant in Windy Way Township. He was considered a person of status at the time, sucking on the government’s tit. However, he came from a family that owned nothing but the four walls of their house, so the siren’s song of wealth was too strong for him to resist. He embezzled hundreds of thousands of yuan, which was a big deal back then, and he got sacked. He returned to the village and spent every day thereafter in his private field, getting up early and going to bed late, and deliberately avoiding the eyes of the villagers.
      When it came time to get married, no attractive girl would have him. His family was too poor, his looks were nothing to write home about, and he had a checkered past. He ended up marrying a Plain Jane.
      When he and his wife worked together in the fields after they married, Second Li was often more cheerful than before. He’d greet people calmly as he strolled down the road. His wife, on the other hand, always worked and walked with her head down. They had a daughter before long, a beautiful and affable girl.
      Second Li's wife also began to go shopping in the town with her sisters. She bought beautiful clothes for her daughter but seldom bought any for herself. Over time she even learned to braid her daughter's hair. She tied a pair of flower bows on the girl’s pigtails which fluttered when she walked, looking very beautiful. In due course the young miss went to school and did very well there.
      Although Second Li's wife was ugly and not the sharpest knife in the drawer, she respected other people's property. In this regard she differed from Wang Wu's wife, who lived on the east side of the village. That woman had also suffered from meningitis and was left with slurred speech, but she loved to talk to people. She was always picking things from other people's fields and fruits from other people's trees. Whenever anyone said something about it to Wang Wu, he'd reply, “She’s stupid, so why bother arguing with her?”
      Second Li's wife didn’t have sticky fingers. Once, when her daughter picked tomatoes from someone else's field, she beat the girl with the handle of a sickle, but had to stop when tears welled up in her own eyes.
      She worked slowly, but never lazily. One job she did quite well was harvesting shepherd's purse. When that plant grows on dry, hard soil, like the side of a road, its leaves are relatively hard and crawl tightly on the ground. But when it grows in soft, fertile ground, like in a field next to vegetables, the leaves are green and succulent. Second Li's wife was so skilled at picking shepherd's purse from their vegetable plot that she could fill an old Hangzhou-style basket in no time. Her daughter’s favorite food was fried rice cake with shepherd’s purse.
      The hardworking couple never quarreled or spoke crossly to one another. While the villagers all pitied them, they secretly suspected that the couple loved each other. They wondered whether Second Li was good to his wife.
      One year Second Li built them a tall, magnificent house. It made people look at them with new eyes. His pumpkin harvest was so abundant that year that he took truckloads to market and sold them for thousands of yuan. Unfortunately, his wife suddenly lost consciousness that day. When he found her, she had no pulse and her hands and feet were cold. Although she seemed to have died, Second Li insisted that his daughter call an ambulance, as if he was expecting a miracle.
      The doctor told him she couldn’t be saved, and the life seemed to go out of Second Li as well. He was like a deflated ball. When he got home, he took the money he’d put aside for finishing the home’s interior and told his wife's family, “The funeral must be done in a grand manner. Nothing can be left out. She must not be treated as second-rate.” When the day came, he dressed his wife in new clothes and hired someone to put makeup on her. People said, "In fact, she looks rather nice when she’s dressed up."
      Second Li kept watch over his wife's spirit for three days and three nights, as tradition required, and was beside himself with sorrow. He lamented, as he sat beside her coffin, “I always thought you had endless energy every day. I never thought you’d tire or get sick....”
      Second Li had a load of pumpkins piled up that he was going to take to market, but he just left them to rot where they were. His family’s land lay fallow after that, taken over by weeds. Leafy stems of shepherd's purse grew tall, with dense flowers on top. His wife wouldn’t have let them grow so old; she would’ve picked the tenderest leaves to make rice cakes for their daughter. People said, "Second Li’s had no energy to farm since his wife died."
      One day his daughter told Second Li, "Dad, I want some fried rice cake with shepherd's purse. Mom used to make it for me." Father and daughter went out to the field the next day.
      Three days after that, the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, would be the Lantern Festival. The locals customarily "burned the fields to kill the bad insects" on that day, but Second Li started burning early. Soon, while the weeds and dead branches were turning to ash, someone shouted, "Hey, Second Li, wait until the fifteenth to burn."
      "The weather will change in a few days," he replied. His daughter, wearing a ponytail and a hairpin, was there to burn the field with him. The little girl seemed to have grown up suddenly.
      They planted seeds on the burned ground. “When the rains come in a few days," he told the people standing on the path by the field, "the seeds will start to grow right away.” But he thought to himself, “In fact the vegetables are already growing. The shepherd's purse will grow fat and tender among them, so that my daughter can eat shepherd's purse fried rice cake again.”
      In a daze, he thought about his departed wife again. He always felt she was still in the field. After a long daydream, he walked off into the field again....
Your translator is reminded of Jimmy Soul’s 1963 ditty “If You Wanna Be Happy”.

Chinese text on p. 240. Also available here. Translated from 新浪博客
at https://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4d4d0a390102z21f.html