Sick Boy[s] Paddle Club↓

The Coldest Place of the Sun

Jiang Yi 蒋以

Translated by: Eva Yang

Open the cage
door
let the bird fly freely
out
and fly
In
to the cage
from where it becomes
the sky.

— The Birdcage, Fei Ma

Southwest of the fir woods, there is a pond no bigger than a pea to the naked eye, its surface tinged with a pale gray clarity.

If the weather were clear, it would surely be a pleasant scene, shimmering with rippling light. It’s a pity that a fine rain had already been falling for four hours by the time we arrived, with no sign of the sun coming out.

We continued along the winding mountain path, moving more and more slowly. At least the scenery didn’t disappear from view in an instant. Looking back, the ground was strewn with ginkgo fruits, crushed underfoot into pungent juice that seeped into the muddy earth.

The smell was strange to me. Detected by the cells inside my nose, it resembled the stench of a decaying corpse. Yet I could not recall ever encountering anything like a corpse. I truly could not explain why I associated that smell with such an image; it was simply the sensation that surfaced in my mind.

Hongsheng paused beneath a sweetgum tree. A few sharp calls of a thrush rang out. Hearing such birds at this time of year was indeed unusual. Within minutes, the muddy path was covered in sluggish yellow and red leaves. We stepped over the collapsed beams of the wooden hut and came to a steep, cobblestone-paved slope. One careless step on the moist ground would lead to a stumble. Hongsheng was carrying nothing and moved lightly ahead, occasionally glancing back to check on me.

Songzhuang seemed to rest at the tip of his outstretched finger.

He muttered with a hint of irritation that he had lived here for twelve years, yet remembered almost nothing. This return was only to handle his mother’s funeral. I had heard bits and pieces of his past before. His father was a compulsive gambler, often fighting, and had ended up in prison early on. His mother was also pretty distant, and neglectful. Rarely caring for him. Since childhood, he had only been close to his grandfather.

He told me the room I would stay in belonged to his eldest aunt, and I could just go to her if I felt uncomfortable or if there were any problems with the heating. She was on her way over, he said, and told me to wait a moment. I nodded.

Having told me what I needed to know, Hongsheng darted alone into the compact maze of dark eaves and white walls. At the entrance stood a leaning utility pole tangled with wires. Hanging from it was a weak, yellowing bulb, stretching Hongsheng’s shadow into a thin, elongated stain. It had also illuminated the shape of the rain; Drizzling steadily, denser and heavier than before. With no umbrella, he shielded himself with his hand.

The room was sparsely furnished with only a coffee table, a dining table, a sofa, a television, and an air conditioner. The kettle was coated with a layer of dust, with a flame no longer strong enough. The armrests of the sofa gave off a faint smell of paint. A subtle one, like the barely perceptible scent of chlorine in a swimming pool.

It has been seven years since the last time I swam when I was still studying at a university in the city. I was a complete non-swimmer when I was a freshman, couldn’t even master the simplest breaststroke, and had never managed to finish fifty meters; my classes always ended with my stomach full of water. I failed the course unchallengingly, with everyone else passing.

Failing the compulsory swimming course could delay graduation, making it difficult to obtain a degree on time. My parents were very concerned about this and urged me relentlessly, since they had already secured my future: After enduring four years at university, I was expected to work at our family's textile factory and, eventually, take over as head of personnel once I had gained enough experience.

During that summer vacation, I took the subway back and forth between my apartment and the swimming pool every day. At first, I only dared to stay at the shallow end, practising holding my breath, breathing, and kicking. Most of the time, though, I was simply spacing out: The saffron afternoon light was shattered into quiet ripples, and the water gently undulated. The weightlessness of the buoyancy fascinated me, as if I were naked in a vacuum, hugging and kissing the sun. Staying in the shallow water with nothing else to do was one of the happiest moments of my life.

It took me about two weeks to move from the shallow end to the deep, but the mental preparation lasted for six months. I took it as one of those inevitable ordeals of everyone’s adulthood. So I closed my eyes, bit the bullet, and pushed off from the edge. I should have imagined myself as a frog, paddling leisurely with my webbed feet and breathing easily with my throat pulsing gently. 

The method worked. I managed to swim about twenty metres.

That faint smell of chlorine slipped into my nose halfway through. It wasn’t strong, just like a simple drop of milk dissolving into clear water. Yet it carried a trace of suffocation, quietly brewing inside my lungs. Like a fragile clam secreting nacre to wrap grains of sand and other intrusions, I tightened my abdomen, trapping that suffocation within a knot the size of a bayberry.

Though small in size, the sense of suffocation was dense and solid, weighing three kilograms. And because of that imagined weight, when I tried to breathe again, I couldn’t lift my head despite all my effort.

I didn’t feel as though I was about to die. I was completely unaware of my impending fate: an unavoidable train roaring towards me. I was just flailing, driven by instinct and the urge to survive. With my eyes open, I could see that the ladder was still dozens of metres away. Bubbles rose in clusters in front of me, like evaporating souls.

Hongsheng held onto me and swam with me back to the poolside. That was how we first met.

Whenever he needed to relax, Hongsheng would head straight to the swimming pool. I wasn’t as devoted as he was - he spent three or four days a week immersed in the water. Only occasionally, when swimming alone became dull or tiring that he wanted to talk, would he come to me. Hongsheng would hold his breath, dive, and eventually surface again. I, lacking both patience and skill, would lean against the edge of the pool after one lap or so, gazing at the scattered streaks of light left on the glass dome above.  Sometimes shimmering, sometimes murky.

Fluid in my lungs seemed to rise and fall with the water pressure; my chest tightened, and breathing was uneven. I stretched my neck, entranced by a single thread of light. Was it a reflection of headlights? Or the echo of waves? Within each subtle breath, I sensed a sadness whose origin I could not name.

Whenever we rested, we would lean against the tiled edge or simply sit on the anti-slip mats and chat. Our calves submerged in the water, swaying idly, Hongsheng would begin to talk about that part of his life that remained for only twelve years. His memories began with a stack of earthen walls and a lake. The walls were made with rammed earth. There was mud mixed with crushed gravel, poured between wooden boards and compacted through repeated pounding until solid. They could be found everywhere in Songzhuang.

But the lake only appeared in fragments of his speech. He could only remember fumbling around for clam shells there. These days, there was no sign of the lake around Songzhuang; it felt more like an invention, something fabricated by the mind.

As I was recalling those memories in the water, rain drifted in through a half-open window, rain drifted in through the partially open window and fell softly, collecting in the cracks of the oak floorboards.  I shut the window and took a cigarette and a lighter out of my inner pocket, holding the cigarette close to my lips.

The rain grew heavier, beating down on uneven surfaces and making the interior seem even quieter. My legs ached slightly, so I sat down on the sofa. After a moment, the door was suddenly pushed open. A woman in her forties or fifties entered, wrapped in white satin with a black cloth pinned to her sleeve. She folded her umbrella and put it in a ceramic jar by the door. I assumed she was Hongsheng’s aunt.

Something darted through the maple tree under the light, shaking its branches. After a brief tremor, it was revealed to be a bird that sounded like a thrush. It chirped intermittently for three minutes, as if in a drunken haze.

“Thanks.” She poured a cup of tea. I took a cautious sip, swallowing only saliva.

“What do you do for work?”

‘I’m the head of personnel at a local textile factory.’

I blew lightly at the tea, and the bits of stems and broken leaves that had escaped the strainer slowly sank to the bottom.

“That’s a good position.”

The rain seemed to pause during this faint track of exchange. The window stood silent as well, revealing only a patch of pale light.

“No, it’s useless—and the factory is about to be demolished anyway.”

The smoke thickened; I could hardly make out anyone’s face.

I flicked the ash and casually dropped it into a jar. Unhurried, I asked where I would be staying in the next few days. She said that there was a back door through the corridor, turn right out of it, and it would be the first room on the left.

Although the chill had not yet faded, warmth spread across the bedding and through the entire room within minutes. I rolled over and faced the east-facing, pomegranate-patterned lattice window, through which sunlight was pouring. The seasonal rain had just ceased. Droplets rolled along the roof ridge and fell onto the bronze door studs, vanishing without a trace as if dissolving into an endless ocean.

After a while, with a scarf wrapped around my neck and a cotton coat on, I stepped outside and saw the Ji Temple[1] in the mountains. I yawned, not expecting a thin veil of mist to form before me, brushing against and dampening my face. “Did you sleep well last night?” Hongsheng asked with a mock-like seriousness as we stepped down the stone stairs.

“This year’s winter isn’t that cold,” he said, though his nose was red like a bayberry, so I took it as bravado. “In previous years, it would have snowed several times by now. Dressed like you are, you’d have frozen to death.”

Instead, he chuckled and began teasing me, his ears turning red at the tips. Soon, ridges and side peaks unfolded in hurried, winding folds. The morning light spilt like scattered gold, sweeping away the chill of the ravine. To be honest, I couldn’t imagine this place covered in snow. Though beauty suits both light and heavy adornment, this place was already naturally graceful. Snow here would feel like unnecessarily applied powder to such beauty.

He handed me a cigarette. I waved it away with no desire to smoke before breakfast.

The old house still had wooden doors; slogans like “Eliminate Capitalism” and “Fewer, Better Births” were still faintly visible on the earthen walls. Years of wear and tear, coupled with wind and frost, had torn open the cracks in the door, which could no longer shut properly. Hongsheng didn’t eat the noodles; instead, he smoked alone as he slid the latch into place.

A pale light reflected by the grease in the bowl. I asked about his plans. He replied expressionlessly that he would go to the mourning hall to accompany his aunt. After some hesitation, he invited me to take a walk with him, for it would be just less than three hours in the morning.

We walked along the downstream of a creek toward the hills. Sunlight poured through gaps in the uneven branches, as if a layer of frost lay over the mountains and rooftops. The terrain was steep; after just a few minutes of climbing, Hongsheng was already bent over, bracing himself against a waist-high stone block, breathing heavily. At his feet seemed to be ruins; looking closer, it was a stone lion missing half its face, the auspicious ball[2] once in its mouth was gone, its surface now covered in green moss, seems to have been damaged long ago.

“I wasn’t like this back in college,” Hongsheng said, grasping the tip of a leaf. It was a plum tree, but it had no blossom left. Only withered leaves remained. Its brown, winding branches were tied with talisman papers, leaving only a few drooping leaves hanging desolately. He rubbed his belly, which looked like a comical, water-filled balloon. “I’ve gained quite a bit of weight over the years. I doubt I’d even float if I fell in now.”

“We used to go swimming every week,” I said. “Now that you’ve stopped, of course you’d gain weight.”

“Yeah, people can’t go without exercise.” Our footprints pressed into the mud, stretching along the narrow path, “With no movement, people’ll just rot.”

The shade of the trees lost some of its winding complexity around noon, spilling forth in an unrestrained, straight stream. The path stretched into the distance as if leading to a pitch-black sea. Beside a clump of southern bamboo, a half-length pillar of red lacquered wood suddenly rose from the ground. Looking inward, I could see a courtyard no larger than three zhang. I followed Hongsheng over the four-inch-high threshold and, immediately before us, saw images of Qin Qiong and Wei Chiyu[3]. They were faded and incomplete yet still emitted a faint, musty scent of damp wood.

“This used to be a clan hall[4],” said Hongsheng, pointing to the centre of the room. The incense burner decorated with a Qiu dragon[5] was coated in layers of ash that resembled late snow, and only a few scattered specks of gold hinted at its copper composition.

“Who is worshipped here?” I asked.

“Before you asked, I didn’t know that I was quite sure myself.’ In the empty hall, echoes bounced back into our ears. Hongsheng stroked his chin, gazed around for a moment, then scooped up a pinch of ash from the brazier. ‘The hall had already fallen into disuse before I can remember. I’ve never seen anyone come here to pay their respects.”

We didn’t stay long before continuing. A few steps east of the clan hall lay a bamboo grove. There were traces of felling here and there, with bamboo stalks strewn haphazardly, as if someone had deliberately set up obstacles. The sunlight here formed a strand of deep, mysterious purple; there was no remaining warmth, only a chill that lingered in the air. Suddenly, my heart seemed to sink deep into my back, stopping for a moment. That chill clogged my throat, tugging at my brow muscles, causing a slight tremor: it was an impulse to sob.

“Did you know there’s another temple up on the mountain?” Hongsheng asked in a deliberately mysterious way as he approached the bamboo grove.

“I’ve heard you mention it before,” I said. “It must be dedicated to some local deity, right?”

“I’m not sure.” He tapped the ash from his cigarette, making a soft, rustling sound. His gaze lingered on the Ji Temple atop the mountain for several minutes.

Feeling a slight chill, we began to think about heading back. Unexpectedly, a tremor erupted from the yew forest to the west, like the echo of an elephant collapsing after being shot. Hongsheng and I tiptoed toward the haystack and, without a word, poked our heads out.

There was a thrush that died recently, with its eyeballs popped from their sockets, still blue like the veins in a hand. That kind of blue that seemed to be someone’s shadow. Witnessing this, my chest suddenly stopped rising and falling, filled with the same overwhelming suffocation I’d felt while swimming back then. I’d smelled this scent before. The scent of a corpse. The scent she and I had smelled together.

Her shadow had been a little blue on that day. Inexplicable. Similar to the glaze on blue-and-white porcelain. That impression was the only thing that remained vivid in my mind.

Seven years ago, I was a junior in college. My grandfather was hospitalised with pneumonia, and the textile factory was struggling. The family was in urgent need of money, so I spent my days worrying about how to make ends meet. Lost and aimless, I took a part-time job as a tutor in my county. It was one-on-one instruction in middle school math, with an eight-hour shift on weekends. The tutoring agency was located at the end of an alley less than a hundred meters from the campus, inside a high-rise office building with dozens of floors; hallways partitioned into various compartments, arranged in a staggered pattern.

My classroom was on the twenty-fourth floor. Whenever I had a lesson there, I had to take the lift up for several minutes. Sometimes it stopped at several floors and moved with no sense of rhythm or pace. My eardrums would throb and swell, and an invisible pressure would squeeze my chest and lower back, leaving me gasping for breath and hunched over. It was as if I were being slowly steamed in a copper pot: my body was swelling while my spirit was shrinking. 

Throughout December, I felt so constricted that I could squeeze into the tip of a ballpoint pen, slide down its smooth interior, and become a few drops of ink that would never reach the paper.

The office was stuffy and dimly lit, frequently filled with the sharp, dry scent of disinfectant. It wasn’t overpowering, but still clearly made its existence. In fact, it was so potent that, later, whenever I passed the restroom, the cafeteria or even my grandfather’s hospital room, where he was lying asleep, I was invariably reminded of Lu Yan. Even though she didn’t smell of disinfectant at all.

We sat across from each other. During the twenty-five-minute break between classes, we’d sneak in a few words, joke around, and gradually get to know each other better. We didn’t chat much on WeChat, but after work, we’d occasionally go out for dinner, hang out, or take photos together. She wasn’t like most modern people who live for pleasure; she just liked to take leisurely walks around the park. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I simply accompanied her on her walks.

The park used to be a wasteland, with the riverbank bare and barren. As the old city underwent renovation, this wasteland was also cleared and cultivated. The project was completed in just a few months. The park is separated from the road by a greenbelt planted with many camphor trees and a single osmanthus tree. Sunlight filtered through the trees, falling onto the large oval clearing in the centre and casting patches of dense shade that looked like oil stains. To the south lay a cobblestone path that, on sunny days, would give off a haze of turquoise.

Further down the river stood an arched bridge. It was an open spandrel arch', modelled on the Zhaozhou Bridge. The stone railings were quite high and there were three stone piers at each end. In the pavilion by the bridge, there were always a few elderly people sitting around, playing chess or listening to transistor radios and yawning constantly.

The more time I spent with Lu Yan, the more I came to know her quirks. Lu Yan liked to walk along the river embankment on the east side of the park, sometimes for three hours without tiring. I was wearing a woolly coat that didn’t quite fit me. The wind felt cool, and just breathing it in seemed to soak into my very core; my throat grew prickly, as if lined with tiny barbs. She wore a thick, knee-length down jacket and even in the light rain, her cheeks remained rosy. The warmth radiating from her body reached me, providing a rare sense of warmth on a winter's day.

Lu Yan stepped on a twig and, startled, she told me it looked like a gecko—she was so scared she almost screamed. I said there’s no way a gecko that big could exist in this world, and even if there were, the odds of us running into one were minuscule. Lu Yan didn’t believe me. Her nostrils flared, and she suddenly furrowed her brow. I’d seen her look like this before when the smell of disinfectant was too strong in the office, so I instinctively assumed there was some foul odour in the air.

At that time, the osmanthus flowers were falling in torrents, covering the ground in a sea of brown and ochre, all piled up along the shore; compounded by dozens of days of freezing rain, they had rotted and moulded in the pond. After sniffing for a moment, I assumed it was just some rotten osmanthus, but Lu Yan didn’t believe me and insisted on walking around to investigate. After about four minutes, right beneath the osmanthus tree, she crouched down and said she’d spotted a dead white-eye. I was sceptical but didn’t go closer to look. She didn’t say a word either; her silhouette was splashed across the cobblestone path, a patchwork of light and dark blue. She was lost in her own sorrow, though I didn’t know what exactly she was grieving for.

The arch bridge was deserted, and the silence was so profound that it felt almost surreal. A weary osmanthus tree swayed, tracing arcs at the tips of its branches. All sound had faded, leaving only the rustling of the wind. Lu Yan did not linger; she walked alone toward the oval clearing on the south bank of the bridge. None of us was quite accustomed to this desolate stillness; it felt as though everything were observing a moment of silence for that dead thrush.

Lu Yan rarely spoke of her childhood; as far as I could recall, this was the only time she ever did. She remembered that before moving here, she had lived for eighteen years in resettlement housing on the east side of a certain street. It was a typical county-town street, adjacent to a chemical plant, where the smell of formaldehyde from dyes hung in the air day and night. Quilts and clothes hung from the railings along the building’s edges, resembling the multicolored flags of the United Nations fluttering in the breeze.

The sky was a tangled mass of power lines, making it impossible to tell whether it was sunny or cloudy. The asphalt road ran in only one direction, with vendors and peddlers crowding the sidewalks on both sides, making the street even more congested. The sand-yellow reinforced concrete walls and blue-tinted glass windows had all become living fossils, offering clues to the fragments of her childhood.

Many of the shops along the street sold traditional Chinese medicines, herbal remedies, funeral garments, and incense, and there was also a flower and bird market. As they strolled leisurely to the end of the alley and back along the bumpy brick path towards the other end of the street, her grandmother’s warm, calloused hand always held hers.

Lu Yan said that she had suddenly missed her grandmother deeply. She felt that simply running her fingers over the rough lines on her grandmother’s palm would make her homesickness vanish into thin air: the homesickness she felt living as a guest in her stepfather’s home; the homesickness she felt because her busy job never saved her any money; and the homesickness she felt because she struggled to provide herself with even the most basic sustenance.

Lu Yan's father passed away from pneumoconiosis when she was four. After her mother remarried, contact with her father's family was largely severed, and it was her grandmother who raised her with tireless devotion. During the hardest times, when the family couldn’t scrape together tuition fees even by selling their possessions, her grandmother applied for poverty assistance while searching the streets for scraps — yet she never had Lu Yan go hungry.

All these years, Lu Yan has only been close to her grandmother. During her turbulent teenage years, she confided in her grandmother about all the confusion and backstabbing she experienced; she trusted no one else with her secrets. As she gradually lost the ability to help Lu Yan cope with life's hardships, her grandmother would simply stroke her hair and gently say, "Good girl, cheer up, give me a smile."

She spoke in her soft, gentle local dialect.

When Lu Yan was in her ninth grade, her grandmother bought her a thrush from the pet shop. It had bright, moist eyes and a slanted white streak across its upper eyelid. Its feathers were reddish-brown with white spots. 'It's just as pretty as my little darling,' her grandmother used to say, and they both cherished it dearly. That thrush was very attuned to human emotions. It would sing punctually at five in the morning, knowing that Grandma was about to get up. It would fly wherever she called it, never wandering off. When being fed, it pecked gently, as if it were deliberately controlling its strength.

One evening, Grandma hadn’t come home yet. Lu Yan had finished cooking and, feeling bored, went to play with the thrush in its cage as usual. Noticing that its feathers looked dull, she decided to give it a bath. As soon as she dipped it into the basin, the thrush clamped its wings tightly and went completely stiff. Its beak opened and closed a few times, and then it went still. Lu Yan was so distraught that she couldn’t stop sobbing. The moment her grandmother walked in, Lu Yan threw herself into her arms and wept.

“Cheer up, good girl” Grandma said, patting her on the back of the head. “Give me a smile.”

Although the image of her grandmother in Lu Yan’s memory had long since faded beyond recognition, she could still recall the intonation, tone, and timbre of those words with crystal clarity.

It was hard to imagine that more than a decade later, we would be strolling along the path beside the camphor tree grove in the park. This path was also paved with bricks and stones, yet it was weathered and missing many bricks. Had someone deliberately pried them loose? Or had they been kicked loose by accident? Lu Yan stared blankly at the gaps in the path, her voice catching in her throat. Was she empathising with the chill exposed on the surface, much like the void in the palm of her hand?

I looked at Lu Yan; even when she smiled, she appeared lifeless. All that I saw was an indescribable bitterness in her eyes, as if she were walking alone in a calm, still river, wandering and pacing around the borders of death.

We reached the oval clearing, and the once-rampant wind had come to rest, leaving only a few crisscrossing rays of sunlight. The light was pale and murky, like protein precipitates in concentrated nitric acid. Exhausted, Lu Yan and I sat on a wooden bench, overcome by drowsiness. It felt as though a cluster of cypress branches hung down, oozing resin, enveloping us completely and burying us deep within the deep earth. Years passed, and a piece of amber formed. Within the translucent crystal, the drowsy figures of the two of us were frozen in time; even the passage of years stood utterly bewildered before this sight.

By the time we had finally finished lunch, it was already after two o'clock, and I followed Hongsheng to the temple to pay our respects. Situated to the southeast of Songzhuang, the temple was nestled among a grove of maple trees. It was secluded and tranquil. The courtyard was filled with camphor and osmanthus trees, the green and yellow hues of which evoked an inescapable sense of sorrow. Several columns with overhanging eaves stood in the courtyard, their bases shaped like plain inverted bowls adorned with lotus flower patterns. The cinnabar paint on the columns had flaked away, exposing the cedar wood beneath.

The congregation sat in the central courtyard, surrounded by monks and nuns. As soon as the temple bell rang, they began chanting sutras and invoking the Buddha. The verses were brief and mournful, likely the Heart Sutra, the name of the Buddha, or a dedication verse. Feeling dizzy and disoriented, I retreated to the annex beneath the stupa. The low walls were overgrown with mugwort. The damp branches, left wet by yesterday's misty drizzle, reminded me of a moment long ago when I had briefly encountered this very scene. It was as if I had experienced that sense of wabi-sabi years ahead of time, gradually giving rise to a surge of vitality. It was akin to the moment when a foetus's eyes first develop, feeling the tremor of humid, warm sunlight through the amniotic fluid and the womb's wall for the very first time.

As the final toll of the bell faded away, I suddenly found myself unable to breathe. It was as if I had stumbled and fallen into the Mariana Trench: a slow, suffocating descent; a process of extinction unfolding in real time.

Halfway through the memorial service, Hongsheng beckoned me outside the temple.

“The coffin will be sealed tonight, followed by cremation. It’ll all be over soon. Peacefully.” We lit two cigarettes and took a drag each.”

“Was your mother a Buddhist?”

“Yes, she was a nun.”

“A nun?”

“You could say she took up the life halfway through her time.”

I strolled with him into the Buddha Hall. In the centre of the sandalwood altar sat a censer, covered in dust. Lost in thought, I gazed at the Buddha statues on the altar: Bodhisattvas, Arhats and celestial beings. The Buddha was seated in the lotus position with his hands resting on his knees, while the Bodhisattva stood upright with his left hand held slightly lower, palm open and fingertips pointing downwards.

Most of the statues were covered in dust, and their eyes were closed as if they were in a deep slumber. I imagined them appearing in a magnificent hall surrounded by the rich fragrance of incense and cast in the shadows of soapberry trees, their solemn faces revealing tear-filled eyes. The Hall of Dharma Transmission is filled with the murmur of voices, and the days and nights spent there are steeped in the hazy hues of ink wash. Whether thick clouds trudge or rain has just cleared, the mountain ridges are always bathed in pale, fish-belly-white light, as if illuminated by the Buddha’s radiance.

Hongsheng pointed to a muddy puddle. Resembling a shattered Buddha statue, it retained its serene expression.

“This temple was built during the Northern Song dynasty. It's as old as this village. During the 'Campaign to Eliminate the Four Olds', all the Buddha statues were smashed to pieces, and the temple was demolished, leaving only two crumbling walls. What you see now is nothing but replicas. I suppose you could call them antiques — they’ve been around for quite a while.”

Outside the window, branches trembled wildly, their rustling punctuated by the faint, raw chirping of birds. With wisps of smoke drifting sparsely through the air, Hongsheng stared intently at the statue of Shakyamuni for about two minutes, remaining silent.

“My grandfather was a mason. Back then, the village used brick earthen stoves for cooking. He wanted to learn a trade, so he followed my eldest uncle around, painting stove designs, making plaster reliefs and sculpting Buddha statues. When he was young, he applied for a job at the local Bureau of Historic Architecture and later worked with historic preservation experts to restore this temple.”

He flicked his cigarette butt into the incense burner.

“A few years later, he had my eldest aunt and my mother. My mother was born two years later; she lived with my eldest uncle when she was little and wasn’t close to my grandfather. After I was born, she just left me at home and didn’t take care of me—it was my grandfather who raised me all along. When I was eight, my mother became a nun and donated all her possessions, leaving nothing behind. Grandpa got so angry that he fell ill and passed away not long after. The last time I saw her was at Grandpa’s funeral rites.” He said, “I don’t really have much feeling for her. I don’t like her, but I wouldn’t say I dislike her either. That’s just how it is.”

It was the first time Hongsheng had ever told me about his grandfather and mother. We walked a few more steps outside the temple; the air was humid.

“During the ‘Four Olds’ campaign, this Ji Temple was the only one left untouched. The villagers were ashamed to see those temples and clan halls being torn down, so they secretly moved lots of things here to hide them in the Jì Temple.” He waved away the smoke in front of him and continued, ‘My grandfather even hid a glazed chimaera figurine there.’

The smoke curled and floated in the air. He pointed towards the Ji Temple on the mountaintop and took a drag on his cigarette.

Years ago, I heard stories about the Chiwen: “The dragon begets nine offspring, and the Chiwen is the ninth. It has a lifelong fondness for swallowing; the beast’s head atop the palace ridge today is its likeness.” When Emperor Wu of Han was building the Bailiang Palace, a great fish with coiled whiskers and a curled tail was said to live in the sea. It stirred up rain and waves and devoured all things. So they placed its likeness horizontally on the roof ridge to pray for rain and ward off fire.

“My grandfather used to take me there all the time. I’ve been there many times,” he said. “Come with me to take a look later.”

We stood under the temple eaves, smoking. The smoke wasn’t thick, but it smelt of incense and candles burning unevenly, with a faint hint of elm.

The sound of Buddhist chants drifted softly through the air. A branch of osmanthus suddenly caught my eye, jutting out from among the wreaths and funeral banners. The osmanthus blossoms had withered, leaving only a smudge of ink so black it could not hold any colour. It looked like layer upon layer of folds, as if the world were folding in upon itself.

Through the smoke, I fixed my gaze on the shattered Buddha statue, feeling a lump rise inexplicably in my throat. It had no cause; the air in my lungs squeezed into the shape of clusters of unripe grapes. Before the suffocating sensation could transform into an invisible hand clamping around my neck, the thin mist lost its flowing form and became slightly stagnant. Others interpreted that lump in my throat as deep contemplation, devout prayer or even melancholy steeped in agnostic sorrow.

For nearly seven years, I had misunderstood it. In truth, that lump in the throat was nothing more than a lump in the throat.

That day, I went to visit my grandfather. The hospital was located on the outskirts of the city centre, which made the commute fairly convenient. As it was around New Year, the weather had warmed up, and many patients were strolling and sunbathing in the garden. The garden was serene during the off-season, with few vibrant blooms; even the marigolds were all a uniform bright yellow. A ginkgo tree stood in a small garden by the pavilion. As a gentle breeze blew, the ginkgo leaves trembled on the branches. Like a fluttering skirt, they scattered like silver grains, covering the entire lawn and even drifting all the way to the eaves of the building.

After helping the family to pay the overdue hospital bill, I peeled a mandarin orange for my grandfather. He asked me to leave it on the bedside table, saying that he would peel it himself later.

This building has good feng shui: with just a turn of the head, you can see the apricot blossom. The sunlight was sparse, casting a dappled pattern that looked like tiny shards of gold. An artificial lake lies a few blocks away, which is also clearly visible from here. Leaning against the window frame, my grandfather told me that someone had been performing opera in the garden these past few days. I didn’t quite believe him, so I suggested it was probably just a stereo. He stammered that he wasn’t senile—he could still clearly tell the difference between the sound of live opera and that of a stereo.

Whenever the conversation turned to that topic, he would almost certainly start reminiscing about the glory days of running his textile factory. Before he could begin, I made up an excuse to use the restroom and slipped out to sleep on the bench outside the ward. The hallway was quiet; the patients and their families were all asleep. The cleaner had just finished mopping the floor, and the air was thick with the smell of disinfectant. Just as I was about to light a cigarette, I suddenly thought of Lu Yan. It had been over ten days since she quit her job and we had lost touch, but only this scent gave me a tangible sense of her presence.

To my surprise, Lu Yan invited me to visit the Geological Museum with her the next day. She said she’d already bought the tickets and had originally planned to go with another friend. That friend had stood her up, and since the tickets couldn’t be refunded, she’d had no choice but to ask me. I was delighted to hear this and readily assented.

The museum was housed in a temple, which was used for local rain-praying Buddhist rituals. The main hall was positioned so that it faced away from the sun, and slanting sunlight and tree shadows spilled across the stone path. Back in college, I had taken an elective in the history of ancient architecture, which had covered the mountain gate — the main entrance to a temple. Temples were once built in mountains and forests to escape the mundane world, hence the name. It is also known as the 'Three Gates'. These are the Three Gates of Liberation: the Gate of Emptiness, the Gate of Formlessness and the Gate of Non-Action. The structure is hall-style. Feeling cheerful, I chatted with her about these things, but she didn’t seem to pay much attention.

The exhibition's theme is Triassic palaeontology, with ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, crinoids and other creatures on display. Rather than displaying fossil specimens, the exhibition features patterns transferred onto raw Xuan paper. Looking at these rubbings, I was reminded of Dong Yuan’s Streamside Landscape. Jagged roots and rugged bony plates breathe life into the surroundings, down to the smallest detail, as if I were experiencing the warm, humid Triassic period first-hand — a time brimming with the infinite mysteries of biological evolution following the Permian mass extinction.

Lu Yan paused before a print of an ammonite. Her pale lips trembled slightly as if her soul had slipped into the coiled shell crisscrossed with chrysanthemum-like grooves of varying depths. Seeing her eyes redden, I wondered what had happened. After about a minute, I patted the back of her hand as though caressing a stone Buddha statue in a quiet corner of a temple. I took a few steps back, and only then did she slowly turn to look at me as though she had merely been lost in thought for a few seconds.

As we stepped out of the museum, it began to pour with rain.

Without umbrellas, we all hurried to take shelter under the temple eaves. The halls and pavilions were arranged in a circle and were bathed in candlelight. The air was filled with the refreshing scent of incense. The path was quiet, with people walking softly and barely making a sound. Lu Yan sat down on a bench along the path leading to the Buddha hall and dozed off, lost in her own world. I crouched on the threshold of the western courtyard of the stupa, watching raindrops tumble from the branches of the Bodhi tree. This tree is also mentioned in ancient architectural history; its Sanskrit name, 'Bodhi', means 'enlightenment' — like waking from a dream, a sudden clarity or complete awakening. According to history, the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, attained enlightenment under this very tree.

Hearing a rustling sound, Lu Yan looked over in that direction. I teased her, asking if she had been meditating. She smiled and said that she had just been lost in thought.

Lu Yan often zoned out in certain places, such as parks, courtyards, temples, and secluded, gloomy, deserted spots. She would take a deep breath; her eyes were still heavy with sleep, and lashes and pupils blending seamlessly to create an appearance of intoxication bordering on drunkenness. Lu Yan’s expression remained unchanged. Or, more accurately, her features were nothing but ambiguous shadows, as she continued to stare in one direction. Perhaps she was looking at a mysterious, forested ridge or a mountain range shrouded in gathering storm clouds. At that moment, it had become the world’s eternal enigma. The only thing I could sense that mirrored her was a similar sense of stifled emotion.

The sound of the rain grew faint and sparse. I struck up a conversation, asking her why she had resigned. Lu Yan then told me about being hired at the downtown library, submitting CV, signing the contract and joining the publicity department. Her duties consisted of managing the official WeChat account, planning reader events and coordinating with guest speakers. All in all, she was luckier than her peers, some of whom were unemployed or freelancing.

Stepping out of the temple gate, the asphalt was lightly veiled in a layer of moisture. It was a little cool, so I put my hands in my pockets. Lu Yan looked as radiant as ever, her fair complexion flushed with a healthy glow. She was heading to the city centre and, since the hospital where I cared for my grandfather was on my way, I silently accompanied her. The streetlights cast a dim glow, and their slanting shadows melted directly into the dense shade of the camphor trees that lined the road. She slowed her pace beside an old building.

A few months ago, Lu Yan had moved out of her stepfather’s house and rented this cheap apartment. It was a two-bedroom, one-bathroom property of about seventy square metres. Facing north, it was located on the outskirts of the city centre. At 1,800 yuan a month, it was spacious enough for one person. Due to the layout, sunlight barely made it inside in the afternoon; the rest of the time, it was as dark as a tomb.

During those weeks, I would take my course materials and graduate school entrance exam practice questions to the East Wing of the library, where I would spend the entire afternoon. In the evenings, I would head to the hospital to chat with my grandfather and listen to music, before rushing back to the dorm before curfew — a rare instance of a regular routine.

The main building of the East Wing is centrally located, built alongside an artificial lake. Its green glazed tiled roof features a hipped-and-gabled ridge with a hanging fish ornament at the apex, flanked by outward-extending eaves in the style of a hall roof. The ground floor has bamboo-canopied balustrades and wooden columns and beams, and the exterior is adorned with bracket sets, corbels, carvings of immortals and mythical beasts, and colourful paintings on the beams and brackets. Taihu stones[6] and potted lotus plants are arranged on either side. The lattice-paned doors and windows are modelled on Song dynasty designs with double-crossed, four-paned, diamond-shaped frames and are lined with rice paper. The skirting boards feature relief carvings of flowering branches, creating a harmonious contrast that exudes rustic charm. On the first floor, the Osmanthus Hall houses a collection of ancient texts, stele rubbings and letters, offering a faint whiff of history's incense. Yet the study room on the second floor remains largely unknown, its lattice windows half-closed, with tall willows casting shade. Near the entrance stands a bowl with a colourful glazed lotus-leaf design; I sit there reading and daydreaming.

When sitting made me tired and gave me a backache, I would walk a few laps around the artificial lake. Ferns clung to the damp, glistening path. Perhaps due to thermal expansion and contraction, a few mud-stained leaves had become lodged in the cracks between the bricks. Pinewood soaked in the riverbed, releasing a faint sandalwood scent. Occasionally, I’d run into Lu Yan and her colleagues strolling along the lakeshore. We’d exchange greetings before going our separate ways.

That night, light rain fell and apricot petals scattered chaotically across the water and streets. Feeling tired, I returned to the ward and fell asleep. The bedding mimicked the contours of a mountain range. He was leaning against the cabinet, saying that he wanted a mandarin orange. His expression was listless, like the five-dot tile in mahjong. I peeled one for him with little patience. He was picky and, when he noticed that I had cut myself while peeling it, he scolded me for being so clumsy and said it was full of germs. About nine minutes later, I found out that a call had come from home. They said he would have to drink with the bosses from the building materials factory during the Chinese New Year festivities.

"Daughter's Red," "Niulanshan," "Shikumen" — he told me to pick any of them if I wanted a light drink. I knew exactly what he was like: a drunk old man who would get completely wasted the moment he let his guard down. I tried to talk him out of it, saying that he shouldn't drink while he was unwell. I plucked a segment of mandarin and popped it into his mouth, adding that whether he drank a little or a lot, it would be like scratching through a shoe – it wouldn't do any good. He immediately pretended to be offended, shouting, “Does it matter where I drink?” Hunching his back, he curled up under the covers. The wind rustled softly, not exactly discreet, mingling with the sound of him chewing on the mandarin segment, but I didn’t hear any snoring.

On the day Grandfather had the nasal tube inserted, two mandarin oranges were still sitting on the bedside table. My family had hired a carer to tidy the hospital room, and once the radio had been tucked into a drawer, the music stopped playing. Deep into the night, the stillness was broken only by the rattling of the windowpanes in the wind. A few ginkgo leaves drifted down, and a light, slanting rain fell, drop by drop, onto the granite surface, resembling the veining of a swallowtail butterfly.

During that time, I stayed in the hospital room, helping the nurse to wash and turn my grandfather over every two hours. I often didn’t have time to eat, so I’d just buy some bread at the convenience store down the street to stave off hunger. He’d yell at me to go back and do my homework, and, as he shouted, a few tears would fall. I paid him no mind. In my spare moments, I would curl up in a corner of the ward and idly leaf through miscellaneous books such as Six Records of a Floating Life, Miscellaneous Notes from Youyang, and The Classic of Tea, reading until late into the night. As the lamplight danced and the apricot blossom thinned, a small cluster of misty light began to drift over the artificial lake. A deep green like jade, its waves were delicate and gentle; even where they curved, they were somewhat gentle and somewhat like fireflies. Gazing closely, it was a streak of stardust.

I raised my head, my breath faint and my gaze wandering. As I gazed upon the Four Symbols and the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions, I became lost in that speck of stardust. The Astronomical Observatory recorded the movements of the stars, sun and moon in order to observe changes in the world and discern omens of fortune or misfortune. A yellow star appeared at the border between Chu and Song, foretelling Cao Cao’s great victory over Yuan Shao fifty years later.[7]

A few celestial bodies, passing each other in a fleeting encounter, move according to a certain, discernible pattern. Countless people seek to explain, deduce, and ascribe meaning to them, hoping thereby to glimpse and interpret the course of fate. Yet these are merely the workings of gravity, devoid of any partiality: all things are bound by subtle ties by virtue of their existence.

That evening, the sky was clear, and the breeze was gentle. A wisp of mist bathed the walkway around the artificial lake, with flecks of azure suspended within it. As dusk fell, two rows of camphor trees stood densely packed and veiled in a pale, inky haze. Through the sparse gaps in their branches, the verdant eaves of the library could still be glimpsed. I was strolling along the shore when I happened upon Lu Yan, lost in thought as she leaned against a pavilion. After a few casual exchanges, she mentioned that she came to the lakeside alone every day after work for a walk — it had become something of an addiction. We bought two cups of coffee and chatted idly, our conversation naturally drifting to the artificial lake.

Just a few years ago, I told her, someone spotted a dark shadow in the middle of the lake, rising and sinking, accompanied by ripples that seemed to sway. They said it was a huge fish, lying dormant at the bottom of the lake, occasionally swimming up to the surface and stirring up a few small waves. She chuckled, saying this lake has never dried up since it was built; perhaps there really are some naturally peaceful creatures dwelling and hiding here. I said there was a passage in Zhuangzi that mentioned this already, describing how the great fish "rose to the surface in a flurry and flapped its fins until the white waves rose like hills and the waters were lashed into fury. The noise was like that of imps and spirits, and spread terror for a thousand li.”[8]

She took my words partially and continued on her way. Along the path, ancient trees stood in countless formations, birds sang, and flowers fell; suddenly, the lake’s surface erupted with several strange sounds. They were muffled yet ethereal, like tangled roots and intertwined branches, as if a majestic whale were falling in its silent and solemn way. She said the strange sounds were the continent’s labour pains. As the mantle erupted and the crust tore apart, the man-made lake was gradually being swallowed up, from east to west. Over time, the entire town would be reduced to a murky pool of water. Her words lacked any inflexion, as if she were watching ants build their nests and file past one by one. I could not fathom it, waiting only for her to release it from another kind of choking silence.

After sitting by the lake for a while, she got ready to leave, saying that she needed to go home and cook dinner as she was feeling hungry. I rubbed my stomach and nodded. She asked if I had eaten yet. When I shook my head, she invited me into her apartment for dinner.

The hallway was filled with the smell of cooking, and the kitchen was just inside the door. She washed her hands and started clattering around with pots, pans and utensils. As she wiped them clean and put them away, she told me to make myself at home. There were a few kumquats piled in a fruit bowl. I couldn’t sit still, so I carefully peeled one of them. The peel was soft with a greenish, mouldy tint, and when I squeezed it, juice oozed out. On closer inspection, I could see that they had been rotten for quite some time. In the corner of the balcony, two pots of green plants that looked like monstera were basking in the sun. An empty birdcage hung from the washing line while the light outside grew increasingly murky.

Lu Yan didn’t use much oil or seasoning; her meals were simple and plain. She didn’t mind the effort of cooking, steamed a whole perch and sprinkled it with scallions; simmered tofu soup with a few scattered egg drops. I picked up a piece of fish with my chopsticks, but couldn’t taste any meat. I told her that I was just freeloading, but she said that eating alone wasn’t much fun either and told me to relax. I asked her if she ever felt lonely living alone. She said that her home used to be quite lively with a cat and a bird she kept. The cat then ran away, and the bird died of illness in October. She didn’t feel too bad; her emotions simply flowed away like a river. Now that she has more free time, she watches TV and writes fiction, and could say that she is living a carefree life. I took a few token bites and mentioned that I was always writing random things too, and letting my mind wander. She asked what I wrote. I lied and told her I loved poetry and had written a thick stack of poems following Liu Yong’s. Her eyes lit up, and she cupped her ceramic teacup in her hand. Her lips touched the rim. She must have been blowing on the tea to cool it. The tea leaves bobbed up and down a few times, growing increasingly bland.

Once we had eaten and drunk our fill, she urged me to wash the dishes. The rippling water reflected off the bottom of the bowls, forming patterns as intricate as the growth rings of an ancient tree. Bubbles swirled around the rims, appearing and disappearing in a whirl. I teased her, smiling as I said that she certainly knew how to boss people around. She didn’t seem annoyed, merely mentioning that she usually ate very little. Gathering my courage, I asked if she was free on the first day of the New Year. She blinked and said she had no plans, her demeanour detached. When I asked again if I could come over for dinner, she smiled and said that she didn’t want to spend New Year's at her stepfather’s house either – we’d just have to make do.

As I was about to leave, she didn’t make much effort to keep me. She stood alone by the window. A willow branch draped over her shoulder as she mumbled a barely audible goodbye. A short distance from the old building, in the direction she was staring, the streets were ablaze with lights and bustling with people. On the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, fireworks lit up the sky. Her eyelids drooped slightly, and her pupils reflected no light, as if she were gazing into a pitch-black void — a small, empty space.

On the first day of the Chinese New Year, I grabbed a few beers and headed over to Lu Yan’s house. I didn’t know when she had put up a pair of Spring Festival couplets on her door. I knocked on the door, and she pushed it open a little, peeking out with half her face visible. Seeing the beer in my hand, she puckered her lips before casually tossing me a pair of cotton slippers.

After clearing the dishes, I took a sip of beer. She curled up on the sofa, clutching her tablet, and said that she had a deadline to meet. I glanced at the screen – it was crammed with dense text. She shrugged and told me that she was gathering oddities and anecdotes for a novel. She’d just been so busy lately that she’d had to scour historical anecdotes and popular gossip for inspiration. When I asked her what kind of story it was, she told me it was still about the artificial lake. Apparently, the site had previously been a rotary kiln factory. Decades ago, a fire broke out, causing the factory buildings to collapse and the kilns to crumble, resulting in their closure. In the 1990s, the government decided to develop the area, beginning construction of the artificial lake in the central section. However, something strange happened: they simply couldn’t lay the foundation for the library, which caused endless delays and left them at a loss. Then, a feng shui master travelling through the region sensed something was amiss. He told the construction crew that they had to bury two stone lions beneath the library’s foundation with their mouths facing the artificial lake. They followed his instructions to the letter, and the project was finally completed without a hitch, though no one knows the secret behind it.

She said that the strange sounds that night had troubled her. It was as if something were churning at the bottom of the lake, involuntarily. A turtle? Or a bird? Perhaps the veins of underground roots had converged to create a home for some solitary, colossal creature, undisturbed by fishermen or woodcutters. She gathered the graceful hibiscus, the swiftly growing tree, the tiny mustard seed and the short-lived mayfly in the palm of her hand, kneading them into a hazy contemplation. Suddenly, she choked up, her eyes reddening slightly as she sank into an unspoken emotion. I sat silently beside her, watching. After taking a few deep breaths, she said, “It's nothing, just a tightness in my chest.”

It was also that night that I was asked to accompany her to a certain place.

I accompanied Hongsheng back to the clan hall. As we walked, the river glistened with ripples, winding like a snake’s scales. It trembled gently and, in its hollows, a few slender yellow leaves floated listlessly downstream. We puffed on our cigarettes, taking deep drags. The cold smoke seeped through our throats and into our hearts, causing a prickly sensation like lychee spines in our lungs and a slight sting.

“Let’s go up and take a look.” He parted the reeds and squeezed through the low wall, which seemed to offer no passage. At barely three feet high, one had to bend the knees and stoop to enter — it reminded me of Sen no Rikyū’s 'Tainai-kuguri' teahouse[9]. Hongsheng told me that this was the only path leading to the Ji Temple and that it was known only to a handful of elderly villagers. Fortunately, his grandfather had often taken him up the mountain as a child, so he could navigate the tunnel easily in the dark, avoiding many bumps and bruises. I pressed my nose against his warm, damp back so that I wouldn’t lose him or get lost.

The path was short, and the forest was eerily quiet, the only sound being the rustling of our knees brushing against the ground as we walked. In just five minutes, we emerged from the darkness into a patch of light. This was the highest point of the mountain that humans could access; the summit seemed about four storeys away, but the path ended here. The first things to catch our eye were several sections of bamboo stumps arranged in dense and sparse clusters with clean, even cuts. We stepped over them with ease. Further in, there was a circular clearing where a yin-yang symbol, made of cobblestones, could be faintly seen. It was surrounded on three sides by yew trees, each about ten metres tall. This was the only open space, offering a panoramic view of the entire Songzhuang landscape: rows of rooftops stretching out like fish scales; a babbling stream cascading down from the southern ravine; a temple; and a pagoda.

The evening glow stretched long and slanted, its dense light and sparse shadows resembling soft fibres interwoven into the dusky white of the sky, resembling a painting.

The Temple of Ji stood directly opposite. While it was not as elegant as imagined, it bore a striking resemblance to the dilapidated wooden huts we had seen by the roadside. A maple tree grew by the entrance, its leaves ablaze with crimson, almost resembling a mountain fire. Beneath it stood a broken stele inscribed with Tang-style regular script. However, the text had become so eroded that only about a third of it remained barely legible. One passage read: 'The World-Honoured One further addressed the youth, saying: "There are sentient beings who do not discern good from evil, harbouring only greed and avarice... hoarding wealth and treasures. When beggars come, their hearts are not glad... as if their own flesh were being cut away; they feel deep sorrow... yet they do not even enjoy these treasures themselves. They are reborn in the realm of hungry ghosts or in the animal realm...

We paused by the small pond in front of the Ji Temple. The water was crystal clear, and the maple leaves seemed to float in the thin mist. As the first light of day broke, the water refracted a pale yellow hue, making my head spin. Back in college, I took a general education course that discussed the ‘Four Waters Converging in the Courtyard’ feature of Huizhou-style architecture — the concept of ‘water gathering at the centre of heaven’, a place for storing and accumulating fortune. This small pond gave me the sensation of being a place that harbours souls and dreams, absorbing the essence of all living things around it. In reality, I hadn’t moved a step, yet my soul wandered freely and involuntarily. As light as a wisp of cotton, it drifted to all the corners of the earth.

I scooped up a handful of water from the pond; ripples spread out, faint sounds drifted in the distance, and reflections danced on the surface. I splashed and wiped, the tip of my thumb tinged with a touch of cool moisture. Where the shade was sparse and the flames faint, I could make out the direction of the temple. Monks were carrying the bier, preparing for the cremation. Hongsheng lit another cigarette and, without a word, had it burned a third alone. By the time the cigarette was down to the filter, the residual heat had faded, and the scene felt strangely familiar. Often, I find myself perplexed, trying to find some reason to explain this sensation. Perhaps it is the subconscious, or a misinterpretation of memory; in any case, it has no beginning or end.

Hongsheng did not wait for me; he stepped over the threshold of the temple first. Inside, the candles were burning low, and the smoke was thin; a whiff of musty dampness from years past crept into my nostrils. A few beams of light seeped through the cracks in the tiles, spilling onto a corner of the mud wall, half-covered in moss, with spider webs and the chirping of birds. The central statue was partly broken, its face appearing solemn. He rummaged through the storage box beneath the prayer mat on the altar. Yet the box was empty, devoid of anything else.

The driver turned the steering wheel halfway, and I leaned to the right, coming to rest right next to Lu Yan, who was sitting close by. Feeling a slight chill, I pulled my hand back. She was resting her chin in her hand, with the car window wide open, gazing out at the mist-shrouded street scene. The locust trees rippled like water, a pale brown glow filtering through the clusters of leaves, while fireworks burst in the distance.

Is it already this cold? Rain tapped against the window, tracing the shapes of the wind. A velvety droplet fell onto my right cheek, the biting chill of which, so different from my body heat, made me shiver slightly. Without a second thought, I pulled my cotton coat tighter around me and tucked my hands into my sleeves.

The taxi slowly made its way down the hill. She told me that once we had passed this final stretch, we would reach the old street. She hadn’t been back since the relocation. Her excitement was clear, with cheeks that were flushed, and the tossing of her key into the air repeatedly. She said she’d kept it hidden ever since her grandmother died. She’d lost it a few times along the way, but by some stroke of luck, she’d always managed to find it again. The brass key was mottled with grime, its edges worn to a shine like a pale, wavy tide.

It was pitch black by the time the streetlights finally came on, casting a wavering streak of brownish light. The branches of the camphor tree had been stripped bare, leaving only clusters of leaves curled up in tight bunches. One moment, they were leaning against the water-washed stone wall; the next, they were nestling against the railing. A few seconds later, they returned to their original stillness. The houses on either side had brick walls painted white. A short distance away lay a colossal structure—a chemical plant. It exuded desolation and loneliness, a stark contrast to the abundance I remembered.

Lu Yan and I wandered up and down the old street, stopping now and then. It was nothing more than a return to our former, aimless life. It wasn’t a matter of convention, but simply something that happened naturally, becoming a sort of habit. She drifted toward the apartment building, her steps light yet resolute. The building had yellow sandstone walls, and its blue-tinted glass windows shimmered faintly in the lamplight. I thought that must be the public housing unit where she used to live, so I followed silently.

The stairs were covered in dust. As she climbed the steps, she stirred up a fine cloud of dust. Her footsteps sounded ethereal and distant, ceasing on the fourth floor. She stopped before a door, first tapping it slowly with a dull, almost inaudible knock. Then, with a sense of desolation, she fumbled in her pocket, closing her eyes and holding her breath as she concentrated. Her transparent bewilderment seemed like a piece of amber frozen in time.

An apricot tree, dense and withered; a lake, vast and fading. One place flourishing, the other withering. She went about creating her own gravitational pull, cultivating a steady, solid state of mutual conflict and erosion, leaving me to sink, transform, and remain half-understanding.

She came downstairs quickly. We sat on the lawn at the foot of the building, a light rain dusting the air, the wind blowing in sudden gusts. She buried the key in the soil and, with unflinching calm, began snapping off branches. The twigs oozed a pale green sap, quivering with sorrow. Feeling a bit tired, she rested her head on my shoulder for a moment, as if floating in mid-air—with nothing to support her, her weight seemed to vanish. She said she wanted to take a hot bath later. Her gaze was hazy, as if she had just awakened from a dream. I didn’t speak, but simply watched the unrestrained fireworks, letting their light cast a few strands of clarity over her mood. Red or yellow, mottled and chaotic—a kind of vague, intangible metaphor for melancholy. Not once did I see her cry, even as Lu Yan moved to another provincial capital, relocating and quitting her job in one swift motion; there was only a choking silence.

Unable to find the glass-enamelled chimaera, Hongsheng and I slowly made our way to the foot of the mountain. The maple groves along the shore swayed gracefully, their crimson leaves falling in a flurry. Where the mountain ridges wound their way, a hazy mist shrouded the landscape, and the branches of the maples trembled faintly in the distance. The entire sky was steeped in a deep green mist that spread out into several crooked streams pouring headlong into the low, dense forest.

“Do you remember the fortune-teller we met by the river?”

Outside, the light was dim, and Hongsheng lit a cigarette.

“I'm not really sure.” I lit the cigarette in his hand. As I tried to recall what had happened by the river, I realised that the memories were already fading.

That day, I had gone with Hongsheng to swim in the river. The early spring breeze was gentle and pleasant. We walked down the steps towards the riverbank, where a group of elderly people was warming up before diving into the water and splashing around. In the middle of the river, several cargo ships with propellers churned up ripples of slanting waves. There was no sunlight. Hongsheng sat on the rocks for a few minutes, showing no sign of moving; he just stared at the desolate river. Occasionally, he would let out a loud sigh, as if it were coming from his chest, and it dissipated into the vast, distant sky. Suddenly, he said he didn’t feel like swimming anymore and called out for me to wander off somewhere else.

There wasn’t much to see along the riverbank. To the northwest of Shanzhi [EY1], the land was flat and open, dotted with graceful sycamore trees. An old man was sitting beneath them, pulling all sorts of faces — clearly a fortune-teller. I wasn’t interested, but Hongsheng was eager and dragged me over there. Truth be told, we didn’t take it seriously; everyone said the old man was spouting nonsense and was unable to make any sense of it. Yet these fortune-telling, divination with bamboo sticks and cryptic prophecies, as elusive as aftershocks in ruins, were quietly lifting a corner of the veil on our fate.

“I still remember that old man saying you’re destined for trouble with water,” said Hongsheng, puffing on his cigarette.

“He was just bluffing,” I said.

“Yeah, I didn’t believe in this stuff either at first.” Hongsheng exhaled a puff of smoke that hung in the air like a strand of silk, draping over his face like a veil. I was completely at a loss, so I could only glance at him out of the corner of my eye, as if I’d picked up a dry twig but found myself fixated on the cicada shell clinging to it. “That old man said I have weak ties with my relatives or friends and that people will drift away from me, taking my wealth with them. Looking at it now, it  is just as he said.”

He stamped out his cigarette and looked towards my aunt inside the house. I followed him and sat down on a wooden stool. The ashtray sat untouched on the edge of the table with half a cigarette inside it.

“Leaving tomorrow, right?” his aunt asked.

“Yes.” Hongsheng picked up an enamel bowl and poured the last of the hot water from the teapot into it. It was no longer very hot, so he took a sip. “I have to go to work tomorrow. I’ve already packed my clothes and bedding.”

“Don’t forget to take these with you.” Probably because she was frozen stiff, she couldn’t manage a smile. ‘Is the food good where you are? Would you like some cured sausage or pork? We still have plenty at home. Would you like to take some with you?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “There's enough to eat where I am, so I won't need anything extra.”

“Don’t spend money recklessly while you’re away – be frugal. And don’t get into trouble; we’ll be worrying about you at home.”

“I know.” His words faded into the hazy white reflection of the teapot.

“Will you come back for the Chinese New Year?”

“I won’t be coming back.”

On the mountain path leading out of Songzhuang, I saw that same pale-grey pool of water as always. The shallow, muddy shore rippled slightly, as if formed by a dried-up lake. A gentle, moist west wind blew, and the deep, distant sound of birdsong drifted through the air. A thrush, having fallen into the water from an unknown height, stretched its neck to drink. Its plumage was glossy and clear.

Three months later, Hongsheng invited me to the swimming pool. He plunged headfirst into the water. A strange, indescribable pulsation suddenly arose from the bottom of the pool. I began to feel suffocated as my breath grew faint and weak, so I clung tightly to the edge. After just a few laps, he started to pant heavily, too. I told him not to swim if he couldn’t keep going. He nodded and smiled shyly as he sat down on the non-slip mat. He told me that a business owner from another province had hired him to work in e-commerce, and that he would be leaving in two weeks. He said he probably wouldn’t see me again. I told him that was fine and that he shouldn't forget his friends if he struck it rich. I was still waiting for him to return in glory.

“I’m not coming back.”

He told me that a few days ago, his aunt had fallen ill and suffered a stroke. I didn’t speak and just stared at him, lost in a dreamlike daze. He said he’d always wondered why his mother had abandoned him to become a nun, but he’d never dared to ask. Later, his aunt told him that, in the 1980s, the birth planning squad would conduct inspections and make arrests. If caught, people faced fines or had their homes demolished. His mother was that extra child. Hongsheng’s grandfather worked at the Bureau of Historic Architecture at the time. Fearing dismissal and the ensuing trouble, he simply hid her at her eldest uncle’s house, where she stayed for seventeen years. Hongsheng’s expression was detached, as if he were merely stating a fact or a concept.

Hongsheng has not been seen anywhere for several years.

I often recall that night when I accompanied Hongsheng in search of the glass-and-jade roof finial. To the southwest of the cedar grove, where birch and elm trees cast their shade, a cobblestone path wound its way through a grove of slender bamboo, which was sometimes sparse and sometimes dense. The grove was surrounded by a quiet, desolate gloom that seemed to fade into the distance. Where could it be hidden? Or perhaps it never existed at all? It was merely a fleeting notion, yet it led to repeated moments of hesitation and letting go. I recalled a town from a dream. Bathed in the light of flowers and the shadows of trees, it was a place where the wind blew, and the sun was obscured. It was a place without history. To the west stood a tall tower, unmatched in its grandeur. I took a measuring rod and a rope and climbed the tower. Leaning my chest lightly against the railing, I gauged the humidity of the desert and the density of the cumulus clouds. When finished, I would ascend to a higher level, repeating the process over and over. Looking down from the top of the tower, I saw thick smoke gathering and gloomy clouds forming, utterly unaware of where they were headed.

After the demolition of the textile factory, I felt nothing in particular. I just sat by the artificial lake, lost in thought and feeling a sense of justified indifference. The weather was just as nice when my grandfather passed away. The apricot branches were lush and green, and the air soothingly warm. I peeled a mandarin orange for him and divided it into four, then eight segments, placing them beside his bed. He mumbled that he was cold, so I tucked the blankets around him, but there wasn’t much heat left in his body.

Growing tired of gazing at the lake and the mountains, I crouched on a stone pedestal and leaned my head over the cliff’s edge. A single leaf drifted slowly across the lake’s surface. Its tip pointed in no particular direction, like a malfunctioning compass; as if a thread of the Earth's spirit had gone missing. I had often imagined what it would look like when a leaf fell. It might circle around its stem, flutter from side to side like goose down or be blown by the wind, rising and falling.

When the leaf finally touched the ground, I had an epiphany. No longer captivated by superficial chance or detachment, I turned to perceive the flow of life, slowly drifting towards its destination.

译者按：

在最温暖的地方，人却感到最深的孤独与寒冷。作者的文字沉静而细腻，整篇作品予人一种时光辗转的尘雾之感。几个家庭、几代人的故事往返复沓，同样的主题在不同人物身上不断变奏，仿佛我们永远跳脱不出那无谓的凝噎，只能承受着静默中悄然消逝的时间。

小说里反复出现各种静止的水体：游泳池、松庄灰青色的潭水、人造湖。这封闭、幽深的死水与西方文学中勇者征服的大海相比，显得格外阴郁。在《红白蓝三部曲之蓝》中，主角朱丽叶·比诺什在泳池里沉浮，于生死交界处游离；而本文中的“我”，却是在迷惘中困于一方又一方堵塞的命运之间。在泳池中是失控、窒息、刺痛，难以凭借自身找到方向。

于我而言，这篇作品还有一种强烈的酷儿气质。自述者从未言明的性别，主角之间模糊不明的关系，以及在故乡与世界之间不断流浪、难以言明自身身份的状态——这种不安定感，最终归结为注视生命如河流般缓缓流动的姿态。正如中国古典道教哲学所揭示的：在谦卑中顺应地势、向下流淌的水，正是人世间最清净安宁的所在。

Translator's note

It is in the warmest places that people feel the deepest loneliness and cold. The author’s serene and delicate words evoke a sense of time passing like a haze of dust throughout the entire work. The stories of several families and generations intertwine and overlap, with the same themes constantly reimagined through different characters. It is as if we can never escape that futile stagnation, condemned to witness time quietly slipping away.

Various still bodies of water recur throughout the novel, including swimming pools, the grey-blue pond at Songzhuang and artificial lakes. Compared to the vast oceans conquered by heroes in Western literature, these enclosed, deep, stagnant waters appear particularly gloomy. In Blue, the third instalment of the Red, White, and Blue trilogy, the protagonist, Juliette Binoche, floats in a swimming pool, hovering on the threshold between life and death. In contrast, the 'I' in this text is trapped in a state of bewilderment, caught between one blocked path of fate after another. In the pool, there is a loss of control, suffocation, and stinging pain, making it impossible to find one’s way on one’s own.

For me, this work also possesses a strong queer sensibility. The narrator’s unstated gender, the ambiguous relationships between the characters, and the state of constant wandering between one’s homeland and the wider world—a state in which one struggles to define one’s own identity—this sense of instability ultimately converges into a posture of observing life as it flows slowly like a river. Classical Chinese Daoist philosophy reveals that water flowing downward and humbly conforming to the terrain is the purest and most peaceful state in the human world.

[1] Ji represents Houji, the ancestor of agriculture in Chinese primordial legends.

[2] Auspicious ball, originally called “Ruiqiu （瑞球）” in Chinese. It refers to the decorative ball often held in the mouth or under the paw of traditional Chinese guardian lion statues. It symbolises power, protection, and the ordered cosmos, and is commonly associated with authority and auspiciousness in classical architectural ornamentation.

[3] Qin Qiong （秦琼）and Wei Chiyu （尉迟恭） are two Chinese military general who lived in the early Tang dynasty. They are worshipped as door gods in Chinese folk religion.

[4] A clan hall (also known as a ancestral hall, family temple, or ancestral shrine) is a traditional Han Chinese building where, based on the clan system, ancestors are venerated and honored through rituals, and family affairs—such as weddings, funerals, birthdays, and celebrations, as well as the enforcement of clan regulations—are conducted.

[5] Ancient Chinese divided dragons into four types: those with scales are called Jiaolong, those with wings are called Yinglong, those with horns are called Qiulong, and those without horns are called Chilong.

[6] Taihu stone (太湖石) or porous stone is a kind of limestone produced at the foot of Dongting Mountain (洞庭山) in Suzhou, which is close to Lake Tai. Due to long-term surging by water, this kind of stone features pores and holes.

[7] From *Records of the Three Kingdoms: Book of Wei: Annals of Emperor Wu*, during the reign of Emperor Huan of Han, a yellow star appeared in the celestial region corresponding to the provinces of Chu and Song . At that time, Yin Kui, a native of Liaodong who was well-versed in astronomy, predicted based on this celestial phenomenon that fifty years later, a “Destined Man” would rise in the Liang and Pei regions (namely, Qiao County in Pei Kingdom, the hometown of Cao Cao), and his momentum would be unstoppable. Exactly fifty years had passed from the appearance of the yellow star to the fifth year of the Jian’an era (200 AD). That year, Cao Cao decisively defeated Yuan Shao at the Battle of Guandu, laying the foundation for the unification of the North.

[8] Translation source https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/what-comes-from-without.

[9] Refers to an extremely small thatched tea hut. This design embodies the highest expression of Rikyū’s “Wabi-cha” (the tea of simplicity), compressing the tea room’s space to its absolute limit to create an atmosphere of darkness, intimacy, and absolute stillness—akin to being inside a mother’s womb or entering a narrow cave—allowing tea drinkers to focus entirely on their inner selves and the essence of the tea ceremony.

[EY1] 这里原文是山畤西北 ，我不太确定“山畤”的意思。查了一下或许是祭天坛厂？

Jiang Yi 蒋以

Jiang Yi, born in 2006, a slow-writing enthusiast. Works have appeared in West Lake and Writer and etc. Simply enjoy writing, like what Chekhov once said: Life is an extremely unpleasant joke, yet it is not very difficult to make it beautiful.