13 - Tongzhou's water and soil is no good

T/W:

1. Huang Ye’s anti-Japanese sentiments

2. paragraph where Zhou Yanling thinks about his crush(?) on an old teacher with slight sexual symbolism

Zhou Yanling found Huang Ye in car 6. Huang Ye looked like a chocolate bar, with dark skin and fine bones. His cheeks were covered in age spots and his short hair was receding, grey like winter grass splashed with white. He took off his soft rubber army shoes. His body leaned forward as he massaged his feet. Between his toes were clumps of dirt which dropped to the floor and crumbled as he scraped them off with a fingernail.

Zhou Yanling sat down next to him. With a Tongzhou dialect, he spoke: “Respected older brother, I’m sorry to inconvenience you but I’ve broken my phone. Could I use yours to make a call? I need to report to my boss that it went well.”

Huang Ye waved his hand impatiently: “Go ask someone else.”

Zhou Yanling pasted on his business smile and continued to beg: “You’re the third person I’ve asked. Respected older brother, please be charitable, ba. Just for five minutes. I’ll sit here. You can watch while I call and I’ll return it to you immediately. If I don’t call, my boss will try to have me sacked.”

Even after all these coaxing words, the other man still didn’t want to lend his phone. He even became angry.

“Why are you acting so shady? I said that I’m not going to lend it to you, so stop being so annoying or I’ll break you.”

“Well, good. If you’re not going to lend it, then you’re not going to lend it,” Zhou Yanling withdrew, physically backing away, putting some space between them. Still, he wasn’t going to leave immediately. Instead, he put on an expression of despair, as though he were tired and unwilling to move. Waiting for a food cart to pass by, he asked for two beers: one for Huang Ye and another for himself. The pull-top cans were freezing. The cold stung his palm until it became numb. He grit his teeth and endured.

If Huang Ye was the person he was trying to find, he might be suspicious that he’d been discovered if Zhou Yanling 1 locked the door. If Huang Ye didn’t come to a decision, then he might contact that mystery person who had urged Zhou Yanling to board the train. After that, Zhou Yanling might receive another text message.

The half-full can swayed as he paced back and forth. Zhou Yanling spoke: “Respected older brother, how about this: I give you the message and you relay it to my boss. I’ll give you the phone number, and you can just write a short sentence. I would be very grateful.”

Huang Ye hesitated for a while before finally nodding. He took out his cell phone and, as Zhou Yanling had requested, quickly typed in the number and the dictated message. Zhou Yanling repeatedly thanked him and passed over a pack of cigarettes, which was refused. The two sat silently. Zhou Yanling parked his ass and didn’t move an inch, pretending that he wanted to hear back his boss.

To their side, a small girl in a pink cotton skirt ran past and almost fell. Huang Ye’s hand quickly shot out and steadied her, a sincere smile on his face.

“Our family’s child also has a skirt in this color that I’d bought for her. She looks so cute in it, like a doll.” Huang Ye pointed to the receding figure of the child and said, longingly: “Everyday she calls, making an uproar about me returning home to see her because she knows that, when I return, I’ll have a present.”

Zhou Yanling wasn’t very interested in children. He was an orphan and wasn’t very familiar with these feelings of familial love. However, he quite respected those who were full of such affection. Huang Ye had suddenly taken the initiative to speak in such a sentimental manner, almost as though they weren’t strangers who had only recently met but friends who were chatting. Zhou Yanling couldn’t help but wonder, what had Huang Ye meant by that?

“Your daughter will definitely be filial when she grows up.” Zhou Yanling said.

Huang Ye shook his head: “It’s rare that I come home even several times a year. It’s enough that she remembers me fondly.” He was full of sorrow. Like a clam, his mouth slowly closed. Zhou Yanling believed that he had just seen the pearl nurtured inside this tired and coarse middle-aged man’s heart. His suspicion, that this was the person he was looking for, that this was the secret sentry with a dagger at his breast, wavered. Such a person wouldn’t have been affected by a child in a skirt.

Neither spoke. It wouldn’t have been difficult for Zhou Yanling to ease the atmosphere with a few words. He was an expert in that sort of thing. But he wasn’t sure if that would be appropriate. Although he was unexpectedly starting to feel like he was connecting with Huang Ye, it would make it harder to control the flow of the conversation.

Huang Ye regretted not being able to spend much time with his daughter, while Zhou Yanling would never be able to meet his parents. The two were lacking in familial ties. However, just because they both lacked family didn’t mean that they could understand and sympathize with each other. Or at least, Zhou Yanling couldn’t. He could still recall the beds crowded side by side in the orphanage; the sour smell of moldy old wood that permeated the air all year round; the bathhouse’s darkened and mossy brick corners; the large cockroaches birthing small cockroaches; and the summer nights that he’d peed in a plastic bag, which he then threw in the garbage, rather than daring to get up on his own.

There was once a female teacher with ‘Jing’ 2 in her name, who had left a good impression on him. Early each morning at five o’clock, she would sit near the pond behind the kitchen peeling garlic and picking vegetables. Beneath her bottom would be a small plastic bench, which she would straddle, a leg thrown over each side. Between her legs would be a growing pile of shining white garlic, cushioned with bunches of cauliflowers and scallions, light greens gradually transforming to dark greens. Zhou Yanling would clean her cutting board, the five inch silver kitchen knife chopping downwards with a pa pa 3 . There he would place a round clove, and there she would chop the round clove. The white juice would splash, and the flat surface of the knife would be moistened with lustrous beads.

Later, she died on the delivery bed birthing her second child. No one would know what she had experienced before she’d died. Zhou Yanling had heard the other teachers talking about how she had labored for ten painful hours before dying, keeping the little one alive in exchange for her own life. Children hadn’t been allowed at the funeral. Unluckily, Zhou Yanling wasn’t old enough to see her and pay his respects. At five o’clock in the early morning, the sun and the moon stood opposite each other in the sky, both disks identical, and the vault of the sky was a lifeless pale blue-green of livor mortis. Zhou Yanling had stood in the middle of the heap of garlic and mistook its scent for the stink of rotting flesh.

“Respected older brother, are you a native of Tongzhou?” Zhou Yanling lazily extinguished his cigarette and smiled: “Your accent sounds Tongzi. I’ve heard that a lot of factories closed down on that part of the mountain pass and the economy is in a slump. Is it difficult to find work now, ma?”

Huang Ye snorted coldly. This time he was much faster in opening his mouth: “Can’t make do here. People are going up to Baihe.”

Zhou Yanling quickly glanced under his feet at the plastic paint buckets which contained, not only a tool belt but also an electric drill, some rope, a glue gun and other things. The scent of paint was so faint as to be nearly imperceptible. Still, Zhou Yanling had spent time running around construction sites. He could probably even distinguish the smell of dichloroethane from trimethylbenzene.

“Why are they all going to Baihe?”

“If you don’t want to go south, you can only go to Baihe. The factories are all going north, one after the other. If you want to find work, you have no choice but to follow.”

“I don’t go there often. If it weren’t for work, I wouldn’t want to go north this month. It’s already cold in winter and food is scarce. It’s reasonable to say that there’s no advantage to running a factory in Baihe. Tongzhou is much warmer. Why move the factory to the north?”

Huang Ye kicked on leg over the other, his naked feet swinging back and forth. The sleeve on the arm holding the cigarette fell up, exposing the scars on the back of his hand. Only he knew the story behind these scars. Others would see them and feel that these injuries were dreadful, but Zhou Yanling wanted to know what he felt when he saw them.

“The water and soil in Tongzhou is no good. It’s can’t support people and also has a lot of yīn qì 4 .” Huang Ye narrowed his eyes and slowly exhaled the last drag of his cigarette. He spoke with self-restraint as though afraid of scaring Zhou Yanling: “You’re young and don’t know. The elderly say that Tonzhou is where the Japanese devils 5 tested biological weapons on the living. A lot of people died. Everything grown in the soil is poisonous. The water is also filthy. Later, a coal seam was discovered. In order to mine the coal, a lot of people descended but never returned. In ’82 there was a mining disaster. There was a cave in and almost two hundred people died. In my hometown, they say that at night they can still hear the sounds of their ghosts weeping. After the Reform and Opening 6 many went south to do business. Later, fewer and fewer people had children. Nothing can be done.”

Contrary to his expectations, Zhou Yanling laughed: “I know about that matter in ’82. Of course that black-hearted boss, who had neglected to take into consideration the workers’ safety and made light of people’s lives, died.”

Huang Ye nodded: “So many people died. Who would want to do business somewhere so unlucky? At the end of the ’90’s, Americans came to Tongzhou to run factories. The foreigners weren’t worried about the bad luck. They thought it was just outmoded superstition. I had heard others telling the tale that, when they were digging out the foundations, they found the bones of the dead. They tossed them all into the river causing the water to swell. After nothing happened, they got the factory up and running. Others saw that nothing happened to the Americans, so they slowly returned to try to find work. In the 2000’s, a lot of Japs 7 and Germans came. We all used to work for the foreigners because it was unexpectedly prosperous. The Westerner’s factories had good safety measures, so there were fewer accidents. If something bad did happen, they were well compensated. Everyone was willing to work there.”

“Are there still accidents?”

“These past few years, things have started going wrong again. Don’t know what we’ve done to cause such misfortune.” Huang Ye counted on his fingers with an air of mystery: “In the fall of ’11, an American hung himself in his office for seemingly no reason. Two groups from his embassy arrived with a lot of police and surrounded the entire factory. During the investigation, they frisked everyone, and all the women on the assembly line were interrogated. It went on for more than a week, but the newspaper didn’t print a word of it. Afterward, they arrested one woman. They said that she had been caught stealing so in order to silence him, she strangled him and then staged the murder to make it look like a suicide. But who could believe that? The American was so large and strong. How could a woman kill him so easily? Still, the woman’s family dared not protest this injustice, and she was sentenced to death. In the end, it didn’t take half a year for the factory to close because of debts. All the workers were laid off, and two more Americans killed themselves. Everyone said that it was the woman’s revenge for having been killed unjustly.”

Zhou Yanling stubbed out his cigarette and stretched. The story he’d just heard about the dead was provocative, but it wasn’t new. The financial crisis of ’11 was still ongoing, and many more Americans had committed suicide. This woman had been used as a scapegoat. Even before this, the factory had probably been deep in debt and was about to close because of bankruptcy. Even without this woman, many more people would die.

Huang Ye spoke enthusiastically, still continuing: “And for the next two years, several bad things happened at other construction sites, but none could be called major events. All were said to be accidents, either someone fell to their deaths from inside a building, or someone fell into a ditch in the middle of the night, or died after crashing into a wall. Some were bosses, others were common workers. Everyone said that it was because of the heavy yīn qì that it was so easy to make mistakes and not avoid taboos, so why would anyone be willing to open a factory here? Although Baihe is very remote, at least its cheap and the manufacturing costs will be low. Eventually, they will all move there…..”

At that moment, Huang Ye’s phone rang. He’d received a text message that only read “good”. He had actually used Wu Fengrong’s number. Zhou Yanling figured that Wu Fengrong wasn’t the type of person to remain indifferent. He would try to find him now that he knew that Zhou Yanling’s 8 “phone was broken”. He should meet up with Wu Fengrong. Zhou Yanling patted Huang Ye’s shoulder in thanks, then stood up to leave.

Zhou Yanling was a little disappointed that there was no proof to show that Huang Ye was the snitch. He took out his cell phone to call Wu Fengrong, but Wu Fengrong didn’t answer. An alarm sounded in Zhou Yanling’s heart, and he turned to run back to the conductor’s office. There was no sign of Wu Fengrong in car no. 8. Zhou Yanling approached a random crew member to ask after Wu Fengrong, but the crew member shook their head and said that they didn’t know.

Zhou Yanling’s heart sank to the very bottom. Where did Wu Fengrong go?

By the window in the conductor’s office, he bowed his head and continued to dial the number on his phone. Suddenly, someone shouted his name from behind him. In the window’s glass, he could see the reflection of two transit police approaching. There wasn’t enough time to think. Immediately, he fled. He tried to put his phone back in his pocket, but it slipped from his hand and fell to the floor. He didn’t stop to pick it up. The footsteps behind him grew closer and closer. He knocked into a woman as he fled to the back of the car.

“Zhou Yanling! Stop–” He heard an officer shout, loudly.

Zhou Yanling secretly cursed his mother. While he was worried about Wu Fengrong’s safety, he was also plotting out ways to escape. The sounds of shouting rang in his ears, almost as though it were coming from his lungs. His lungs themselves flapped like a bellows, fanning heat to his brain, making it difficult for him to think, and scorching the soles of his feet. He breathed through his mouth; his lips, already chapped, hurt even more.

The entire trip was spent bumping into others and being shouted at. As soon as he was within ten paces of the rear of the car, Zhou Yanling came to an abrupt halt and turned around. The officers who were chasing him were at the mouth of the car when they saw that he’d stopped. Even though the other passengers in the car were fearfully backing away to the sides, they didn’t immediately catch up with him. Zhou Yanling slowly knelt, both hands in the air. His heart was racing, but there was no expression on his face.

“I want to see your train’s conductor.” From beginning to end, that was all he said.

The author has something to say

Mr Zhou remembered that, as a kid, he dared not pee by himself so he went inside a plastic bag. This was from Director Cai Ming Liang’s movie 《你那边几点》 9

T/N:

added for clarity 菁 : leek flower; lush; luxuriant I wasn’t sure if the author meant to imply a crush or sexual longing or anything along those lines in this paragraph. Perhaps it’s all in my head. Nevertheless, I’m including the pa pa because it seemed intentional, what with the white juices and the straddling and the lustrous beads 阴气 : like a deathly energy. 日本鬼子 : common term of abuse in wartime China 改革开放 : the 1978 open door policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Door_Policy , 小日本 : derogatory word for someone Japanese added for clarity “ What time is it there”. https://movie.douban.com/subject/1294540/ )