The New Venture

One day in the second semester of third year of middle school, Xiao Man made his way mysteriously to Class Two to find Xia Lei: “Good news — Grandmother’s mixed vegetable stall is closing down. We’re going to open a newsstand.”

“Why is it closing?”

“A newsstand is less trouble than a vegetable stall,” Xiao Man said. “Magazines are sold on consignment — no need to worry about expiry.”

“Wonderful! We won’t have to pay for books anymore!”

“Right, we’ll sell magazines and rent books too — Jin Yong, Gu Long, Yi Shu, Xi Juan and all of that. In a few days, come with me to the factory library to dig through their collection. They’re clearing out old books by the kilogram.”

That Sunday afternoon, the two of them hauled four large bags of old books back from the factory library and spread them out all over the floor of Xiao Man’s room, a riot of color and paper.

“The heaviest thing in the world is metal. Second heaviest is stone. The third heaviest,” Xia Lei said, wiping away sweat, “is these books!”

“Absolutely!” Xiao Man was so exhausted he simply flopped down on the pile of books. “I am now floating on an ocean of knowledge!”

Xia Lei lay down too, pulling a book out from under his back. “Hmm, the French Around the World in Eighty Days.” He pulled out another: “Hmm, the Japanese The Minsk Attacks.” Then he pulled out a third: “Whoa — Chinese A Wedding Night Guide!”

“I’m reading that first! I picked it!” Xiao Man immediately launched himself like a dolphin breaking the surface, snatching the Wedding Night Guide from Xia Lei’s hands. He flipped left, right, front, back through the whole book, but couldn’t find the illustrated page.

“Clumsy hands — let me!” Xia Lei snatched it back, turned to the table of contents and found the chapter on “The Wedding Night,” looked carefully, and found the page numbers skipped!

“Who on earth would do something so inconsiderate?!” Xiao Man pounded his chest in fury. “Such a little bit of ‘Liu Bei,’ and they still tore it out!”

“If we’d known, we would have taken that copy of Tea-Break Entertainment instead!” Xia Lei also lost his enthusiasm and fell back down onto the ocean of knowledge.

Before the tin newsstand opened for business, Grandmother used an awl and shoe thread to bind the back issues into bound volumes, and wrapped the old martial-arts and romance books in kraft-paper covers. Xiao Man arranged a row of books and magazines for rent on the shelves inside the stand, displayed current issues of Reader’s Digest, Ancient and Modern Legends, and Mysteries on the window ledge, and spread TV Weekly and Sports Weekly in the front window.

Niche magazines like Weapons Knowledge, Naval and Merchant Ships Knowledge, and Audio-Visual World also had their loyal readers in Xi Tie Cheng. Each month Xiao Man ordered two or three copies of Audio-Visual World, one of which was a standing order on behalf of Xiao Dan.

Xiao Man suggested: “That magazine is quite pricey. I can just lend you mine — you don’t need to buy your own.”

Xiao Dan said: “No, no — I want to buy it. I want the large poster in the center spread.”

One day, Xiao Man was sitting in the newsstand idly flipping through TV Weekly when he turned to the Readers’ Letters column. There he found a letter where a reader asked: “Dear Editor, please tell us about the current situation of Hong Kong actress Zhou Haimei,” signed “Dai Xiangdong, Xi Tie Cheng Agricultural Chemical Factory Secondary School.” Xiao Man looked again carefully — sure enough, the name was Dai Xiangdong: the head of the Chinese Language department at the secondary school!

The editor had presumably published the real name by oversight. Normally reserved and refined, Teacher Dai had just made a tremendous fool of himself! Xiao Man held up the newspaper, unable to contain his laughter, when someone knocked on the window glass. He slid open the small window — it was Xiao Dan.

“What are you laughing at?” Xiao Dan asked. “Has my copy of Audio-Visual World arrived?”

“Take a look at this,” Xiao Man handed the newspaper to Xiao Dan. “Teacher Dai has made a huge blunder. He’ll be kneeling on the washboard tonight.”

Xiao Dan read it and dissolved into laughter, nearly doubling over: “Teacher Dai is so romantic! Young at heart.”

“Do you think Zhou Haimei is beautiful?” Xiao Man asked.

“She really is beautiful — I think Teacher Dai has good taste!” Xiao Dan said.

“If even you say she’s beautiful, then she really must be.” Xiao Man flattered her. “Speaking of which — you have such high standards of beauty. What kind of boys do you find attractive?”

“Give me my Audio-Visual World,” Xiao Dan said in an open, easy manner. “This issue has my idol in it. I’ll point him out to you.”

Xiao Man took the magazine down from the window ledge and handed it to Xiao Dan, and the two of them leaned over it together. That issue of Audio-Visual World included a feature on the Johnnys Entertainment family from Japan. The second-inside cover page was filled with youthful pop groups: the “Shonen-tai,” “Hikaru Genji,” “Otokogumi,” “Shibugaki-tai,” and the later-famous “SMAP.”

“So many handsome boys! Which one exactly do you like?” Xiao Man asked.

“I’m overwhelmed — I like all of them. The more the merrier,” Xiao Dan said.

“Aren’t you afraid of being worn out?” Xiao Man curled his lip.

“You look quite like Uekusa Katsuhide,” Xiao Dan said, looking Xiao Man over.

“Oh please, don’t go comparing me to Japanese people,” Xiao Man quickly waved it off.

“I like Kimura Takuya, and also Uekusa Katsuhide.” Xiao Dan rolled up the magazine, tossed her hair, and walked away.

The other student who was willing to spend five yuan and twenty cents on Audio-Visual World was Zhuang Qiang, a student in the third year of high school. Zhuang Qiang was the preeminent eccentric and trendsetter of Xi Tie Cheng. Xiao Man always politely called him “Brother Zhuang,” while others called him “Zhuang the Rule-Breaker.”

The reason Brother Zhuang subscribed to Audio-Visual World had nothing to do with columns like Gold Record Chart or Modern Talk, nor did he care that Qi Qin had released Heartless Rain, Heartless You that year, or that Nirvana had released their New York Unplugged. He only looked at the color pages for celebrities’ clothing and hairstyles — Zheng Jun’s long hair, Qi Qin’s leather trousers, Guan Shuyi’s fisherman’s hat, Wang Fei’s fishnet stockings.

After Xiao Dan left, Brother Zhuang also came to the newsstand to collect his copy of Audio-Visual World. He flipped through the color pages and frowned.

“What’s wrong? Is the binding loose?” Xiao Man poked his head out of the small window.

Brother Zhuang shook his head, pointed at a color photo of Andy Lau in the center spread, and asked: “Xiao Man, in your opinion — why does Andy always wear shoes without socks?”

“Who’s Andy? Isn’t this Liu Dehua?” Xiao Man asked.

“I didn’t realize you were such a country bumpkin.” Brother Zhuang turned his head and looked at Xiao Man. “You don’t know that Andy is Liu Dehua?”

Brother Zhuang was Xi Tie Cheng’s leading fashion icon. Back when every middle school student wore the forty-yuan blue-and-white school uniform — stuffy as a plastic greenhouse and thin enough to be transparent — Brother Zhuang had a sister who had married into Japan and regularly sent him fashionable clothes, making him a vivid vessel of color in a sea of blue and white.

In summer, Brother Zhuang came to school in an alligator polo shirt carrying a leather bag, and was grabbed by Old Cai for a dressing-down: “What do you think you’re doing, playing the profiteer? Go home and change your clothes!” In autumn, Brother Zhuang came to school in a trench coat, and Old Cai stopped him again and bawled: “Only spies wear trench coats — get back home and put your school uniform on!” In winter, Brother Zhuang wound a brilliant red scarf around his neck. Old Cai said nothing this time — he simply yanked off the scarf and confiscated it. The next day, that scarf appeared around Old Cai’s wife’s neck.

Whenever he had new shoes or new clothes, Brother Zhuang would dress himself up first thing in the morning and parade through the school yard during six different breaks between classes. If that wasn’t enough, he’d stroll through the residential district after dinner for three passes up and down the road, asking everyone he met: “Do you watch TVB and ATV? Do you watch The Greed of Man? Liu Songren in it wears exactly this style.” The unfortunate thing was that Xi Tie Cheng’s asphalt road was not the runways of Paris or Milan; the passing audience only knew Liu Huilin, not Liu Songren, and Brother Zhuang was always catching a faceful of black exhaust from passing diesel trucks.

After a day of parading, Brother Zhuang would fold his trousers along their crease before sleeping, and hang his shirt on a hanger to keep its shape — a practice that in the Xi Tie Cheng of those days was roughly the equivalent of a mild mental disorder. To regard clothing as more important than eating — “a stomach of corn grits, legs in polyester trousers” — was something the working class of Xi Tie Cheng could not comprehend.

Brother Zhuang was Xi Tie Cheng’s chief fashion icon and the number one eccentric of the secondary school. When he was in second year of high school, he dated two girlfriends simultaneously. Not one after the other — simultaneously. This act was like a bolt of high-voltage lightning in the sky above the secondary school, blowing through the mental circuits of every teacher and student.

For this, Old Cai hauled Brother Zhuang to the disciplinary office for a working-over, prodding his ribs with the drumstick: “At your age, carrying on with two women at once — have you no shame? Grow up and you’ll turn into another Chi Zhiqiang!”

“Ow, ow!” Brother Zhuang protected his ribs and argued shamelessly: “They’re not even from our school — it’s none of your business, Vice-Principal Cai. If you’re jealous, I’ll give you one of them!”

Old Cai trembled with rage, swung the drumstick, and swore he’d smash Brother Zhuang’s insolent head. Brother Zhuang flung open the disciplinary office door and took off at a sprint.

Old Cai chased him from the teaching building all the way to the schoolyard, and from the schoolyard all the way to the little grove of trees, until he finally ran Brother Zhuang right out of one of his leather shoes. Old Cai raised the drumstick high, triumphantly hoisting the captured shoe, and flung it into the cesspit of the dry toilet. Watching this spectacle from a distance, Brother Zhuang, hopping on one leg against a tree, cried out in anguish: “Those are from Daili — you’ll have to pay me back!”

Old Cai had been right — two-timing does not end well. One day, both girlfriends summoned Brother Zhuang to the little grove for what they called a three-way summit. All the way there, Brother Zhuang was calculating how to choose — keep A and drop B, or drop A and keep B? When he entered the grove, he found A and B chatting and laughing with each other, with no sign of rivalry whatsoever. Brother Zhuang was standing there in puzzled concentration when the two girlfriends pounced on him like tigresses descending from a mountain, extending four sets of sharp claws, and jointly scratched his face into a patchwork of claw marks.

Brother Zhuang took medical leave at home to recover. Restless with boredom, he read through all the back issues of Audio-Visual World six times over. When Xiao Man came by to deliver the new issue, Brother Zhuang proactively offered to teach him to play guitar.

“Is guitar hard? My fingers don’t move very independently,” Xiao Man asked.

“Not at all! If you know how to scratch someone, you know how to play guitar.” Brother Zhuang said, touching his own face as he spoke.

“Your girlfriends really scratched you good!” Xiao Man looked at Brother Zhuang’s face, which still showed scratch marks and bruises.

“You have no idea how strong they were,” Brother Zhuang shook his head repeatedly. “They were both from the city sports school — one threw the javelin, one threw the discus.”

Brother Zhuang stayed home for half a summer, and it was nearly autumn by the time his face had healed and the scabs had fallen off. Restored to his former air of superiority, Brother Zhuang once again led the fashion vanguard, becoming the first in the whole factory to wear a fashionable red suit. Many young people followed his lead, and more and more red suits of various styles began appearing in the streets of Xi Tie Cheng. Eventually Brother Zhuang stopped wearing his altogether. He said fashion was not about flooding the streets — everyone’s red was wrong. Red came in many shades: rose red, magenta, dark red. The only shade in vogue that year was wine red.

He said this while drawing hot water from the boiler room of the school, dressed in a full denim outfit with holes and loose threads all over the trouser legs, the highest hole near his upper thigh.

The school caretaker Hu asked him: “Those trousers of yours — did you strip them off a beggar?”

“These are called raw denim jeans. That’s the whole point,” Brother Zhuang explained.

Old Hu laughed uproariously: “Enough of that — what kind of ‘raw denim point’? You’re barely covered at all.”

In nineteen ninety-five, Xiao Man’s newsstand had a metered telephone installed. Brother Zhuang had just got his hands on a pager and came to the newsstand to show it off: “Phoenix brand, fifteen hundred yuan. I’m the first one in our school to have one. Even Principal Hou doesn’t have one.”

Xiao Man clicked his tongue admiringly and asked: “Is anyone paging you?”

“I’ve made some new girlfriends recently. They all like to meet up with me.”

“Are they from the sports school again?” Xiao Man teased.

“This time they’re textile factory workers from the city. All gentle types,” Brother Zhuang, ever incorrigible, bragged as always.

For Brother Zhuang, the pager was less a communication device than an accessory for showing off. He was forever sneaking it out in class to study the various functions. During one lesson, when the English teacher explained “AM is morning, PM is afternoon,” Brother Zhuang — sitting in the back row — suddenly slapped his thigh in enlightenment, finally understanding why his alarm had been going off at dinnertime.

Once he figured out the timer function, Brother Zhuang’s pager would go off every midday. As soon as it beeped, he’d lift his shirt and pretend to check the number. Classmates around him would ask: “Who’s paging you?” Brother Zhuang would boast: “Oh, a girlfriend in the city. She’s very clingy. Never mind her — let’s continue.”

In truth, Brother Zhuang’s social circle wasn’t that complicated, and no one paged him for a long time. He began to wonder if the device was broken, so he ran to the newsstand and paged himself, and only relaxed when he heard the pager beeping. Xiao Man poked his head out of the stand and asked: “Brother Zhuang, why are you paging yourself?”

Brother Zhuang brushed it off: “Just testing the machine. This machine… isn’t quite under warranty.”

Many things are ruined by bragging. One midday, Brother Zhuang rode his bicycle hurriedly to Xiao Man’s newsstand.

“Someone really paged you this time?” Xiao Man slid open the glass window and asked.

“Yes, a girlfriend in the city.” Brother Zhuang grabbed the phone and dialed the return number. “Hello, who is this? Who paged me?… What? My surname’s not Liu! You paged me, and now you’re asking my name? Who are you trying to reach?… Did you dial the wrong number?”

Xiao Man laughed from inside the stand. He had waited so long for one page, and it was a wrong number.

“I thought it was my girlfriend. The numbers looked similar.” Brother Zhuang waved at Xiao Man, got on his bicycle, and left.

A short while later, the phone rang. Xiao Man picked it up and heard the voice on the other end ask: “Is this the newsstand’s public telephone?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Was the man who just returned the page still there?”

“He just left. What for?”

“Can you call him back? I need to reach him urgently!”

“He rode off. If it’s not urgent, I can pass the message this afternoon?”

“What? You know him?”

“I do — what’s the matter? Say it quickly, I can pass it on.”

“Wonderful!” The voice on the other end shifted from surprise to excitement. “Your phone booth is at the Xi Tie Cheng crossroads, isn’t it?”

“It’s at the crossroads… by the way, how did you know?”

“Xi Tie Cheng crossroads, you’re the stall owner, correct?”

“What exactly do you want?” Xiao Man was growing impatient. “I’m begging you — don’t speak in circles!”

“We’re from the Public Security Bureau. We need you to cooperate with us for a moment. We are currently…” the voice said.

“Get out of here!” Xiao Man had encountered similar prank calls before. He hung up and said, “If you’re the Public Security Bureau, then I’m the Public Security Bureau’s grandfather!”

A few seconds later, the phone rang again. Xiao Man picked it up — it was the same voice. The tone was quite serious: “I’m telling you responsibly — this is not a joke. We are the Public Security Bureau’s special case unit. We…”

“I’ve got to eat lunch. I don’t have time for this nonsense.” Xiao Man snapped the phone down.

That afternoon, while Brother Zhuang was napping in class, Old Cai and Principal Hou walked in with a plainclothes police officer, grabbed him, cuffed him, and marched him to the disciplinary office for questioning.

“Tell us yourself — what have you done wrong?” The plainclothes officer handcuffed Brother Zhuang to the radiator pipe.

“Officer, what is your honorable surname?” Brother Zhuang couldn’t stand properly or crouch, and could only bend awkwardly at the waist.

“Leng!” The plainclothes officer displayed his criminal investigation identification.

“Officer Leng, I think there must be a mistake. I’m a genuine, upstanding law-abiding citizen,” Brother Zhuang was confident he had nothing to worry about.

“A law-abiding citizen?” Officer Leng let out a cold laugh. “Look at you — dressed like you’re indecently exposed, and your hair’s all pomaded. Tell me — what law are you abiding? What part of you is abiding?”

“Officer Leng, although Zhuang Qiang dresses oddly and is not very hardworking,” Principal Hou intervened on his behalf, “this boy is not seriously troublesome. Committing murder or arson — he definitely doesn’t have the nerve for that!”

“Ah? What… murder?” The moment Brother Zhuang heard the word “murder,” he became completely incoherent. “I… I’ve never even killed a chicken! It definitely wasn’t me!”

“Then who did it? Do you have accomplices?” Officer Leng pressed.

“Accomplices?” Brother Zhuang was even more confused. “What… what is going on? Who was killed? Who was murdered?”

“The principal is present, so I’ll give him face and not use the electric baton on you.” Officer Leng glanced at Principal Hou, then turned and gave Brother Zhuang a slap across the face. “But don’t squander my goodwill. Confess at once!”

“Officer, my only bad habit is that I like to show off a bit, and I dated two girlfriends at once. That’s the extent of my faults.” Brother Zhuang burst into tears and a long thread of snot descended to the floor. “We’ve already broken up now. I get beaten on top of that, and heaven and earth are my witnesses — I’ve never killed anyone!”

“Who hit you?” Officer Leng asked.

“My girlfriends. They were both from the city sports school — the discus and the javelin.” Brother Zhuang pointed to his own face. “Officer, look — here, here, and here. All injuries. Just healed.”

Officer Leng frowned and shook his head. This pathetic wretch couldn’t even stand up to his girlfriends — he clearly wasn’t the type for murder and robbery. After pacing for a few rounds, he uncuffed Brother Zhuang from the radiator and continued his interrogation: “Then why did you have the victim’s pager?”

“Oh — so that’s what this is about!” Brother Zhuang finally understood. He hurried to recall: “I was passing by the west market one day, and someone was selling a second-hand pager — only three hundred yuan. I thought, if I had a pager hanging on my waist, wouldn’t that be really impressive? So I bargained down to two hundred and bought it…”

Principal Hou and Old Cai both let out long sighs of relief upon hearing this. The explanation was entirely consistent with Brother Zhuang’s character.

“This is a murder case — it’s serious.” Officer Leng turned to Principal Hou. “Even if this kid isn’t the perpetrator, I still need to take him back for a formal statement, and possibly a blood type test. He definitely can’t go home today. You explain the situation to his parents.”

“Officer! Take as much blood as you like — drain me dry if you want. I truly never killed anyone. I just bought a second-hand pager.”

“Then think carefully. What did the person who sold you the pager look like? If you can’t describe them, you remain the only suspect.”

For the following full month, Officer Leng dragged Brother Zhuang to various saunas and KTV venues every day, searching everywhere for the person who had sold him the pager. Eventually the criminal suspect was apprehended in another city, and the police finally let Brother Zhuang go. By the time he returned to school, his classmates had already submitted their university application forms.

And so, without even being informed about university exam registration, Brother Zhuang drifted through the end of his high school years in a daze. It was only many years later that he learned Beijing had a fashion design institute, Shanghai had a textile university, and Suzhou and Hangzhou both had silk industry colleges — all schools with fashion programs that genuinely interested him. Unfortunately, Xi Tie Cheng Secondary School had no capacity to cultivate arts students, and even someone with his distinctive qualities could only follow the crowd and ultimately end up in the locksmith class at the factory technical school.

Xi Tie Cheng Secondary School was an ordinary factory school. The majority of its graduates were destined for the factory’s vocational training school. In the thirty years since the school’s founding, only one student had been admitted to Peking University — the year Halley’s Comet happened to be passing overhead. For the people of Xi Tie Cheng, it was hard to say which would come sooner: the next visit from Halley’s Comet, or the next Peking University admission. Most likely the former.

Each year after the university entrance examinations, the prestigious Experimental High School in the city would post a massive banner along an entire wall, beginning with: three admitted to Tsinghua, five to Peking University, several to Fudan, several to Jiaotong… Xi Tie Cheng Secondary School, unwilling to be left out in the cold, also posted its announcement — a single sheet of red paper with eight or nine lines of large characters: “Congratulations to our third-year students So-and-so, admitted to the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering College; So-and-so, admitted to the Chemical Engineering College; admitted to the Normal College; admitted to the Physical Education College…” The two announcements echoed each other from across the city. Everyone said the city school’s banner was for the top, the eyes, and the head of the rankings; while Xi Tie Cheng’s banner was for the bottom, the rump, and the hindquarters.

This cutting comparison put the people of Xi Tie Cheng to shame. How could a large factory like ours have such a weakness? The factory workers’ representative congress unanimously passed a resolution to generously reward students who were admitted to universities: three thousand yuan for key universities, fifteen hundred for regular undergraduate programs. These were not small sums at the time, but those who claimed the reward were few — each year, those who passed the undergraduate admission threshold numbered fewer than the fingers on two hands. At every factory management meeting, the director and deputy directors would tease Principal Hou: “Every year we set aside thirty thousand in the prize budget, but Old Hou, you always save us half of it — should we nominate you for a post-conservancy merit award?”

The reason Xi Tie Cheng Secondary School was consistently weak in university examinations was not only the insufficient teaching staff, but also the quality of its students. The top graduates from middle school all applied to the city’s prestigious Experimental High School. Once they left, the high school division of the secondary school became like a pyramid with its apex shaved off.

Xia Lei was the top student of the third year in middle school, and had a near-certain chance of getting into the Experimental High School in the city. From the moment third year began, his mother watched over him like a political prisoner, terrified he would become distracted by early romance.

Around Christmas that year, Xia Lei received more than a dozen greeting cards. He organized them carefully and pressed them to the bottom of his drawer. The moment he left for school, his mother went and pulled open the drawer, reading carefully through every card signed by a girl. One card stood out for its particular elegance, with the lines: “How can I thank you — when I walked toward you, I intended to gather up a handful of spray from the waves, but you gave me the entire ocean.” It was signed with the initials “SLL.”

That evening, before the dinner dishes were even cleared away, his mother slapped the card down on the table with a sharp crack: “Who sent this greeting card? What is this soft, sticky rubbish written on it?”

“What are you guessing at?” Xia Lei explained: “These are lines from a poem by Wang Guozhen!”

“Do you think I don’t know it’s a poem?” His mother grew angrier. “I’m asking you — what is all this nonsense about oceans and waves? Who is plunging into the sea with whom? Who is getting carried away with whom? What does all this mean?”

“What meaning could there be? Don’t read anything into it — they’re just classmates.”

“Girls have complicated minds. Even if you don’t mean anything by it, what if she does? I’m going to find your homeroom teacher tomorrow and ask.”

“Please don’t go to the teacher! I beg you! Don’t make me lose face!”

“Then confess right now — who sent this card? Tell me, and I won’t go.”

“My seatmate, Sun Lulu.”

Sun Lulu — SLL — that accounted for everything. His mother glared at Xia Lei, then turned and dug out his photo album, found the class photo and pointed: “Is it this girl with the buck teeth?”

“Can you not put it so harshly?” Xia Lei was nearly speechless with indignation.

His mother sniffed to herself. “Sun Lulu, Sun Lulu” — she’s so plain. And she thinks she deserves him?

Within a few days, Xia Lei’s seatmate had been changed to a slow-witted boy called Xiao Bai. Xiao Bai didn’t talk much to Xia Lei in class, only staring blankly at the blackboard, whether or not the teacher was actually teaching.

Xia Lei negotiated with his new seatmate: “Brother, could we swap back quietly — put Sun Lulu back in this seat?”

“Not a chance. The homeroom teacher told me to come sit here — I’m the insulator!” Xiao Bai threw up both hands.

“What insulator?”

“Are you really that naive or just pretending?” Xiao Bai said. “She’s here to keep you and Sun Lulu apart, of course. The teacher said your mother was afraid that you and Sun Lulu were actually developing feelings for each other.”

Xia Lei heard every word and understood everything. He was so enraged he wanted to bang his head against the wall. When he got home, he shut himself in his room in silence, trying to stage a hunger strike in the manner of India’s Gandhi. Unfortunately, his mother had none of the British Empire’s decorous and hypocritical restraint. She pounded on the door and shouted: “What kind of achievement is a hunger strike? You want to see who’s tougher? If you don’t get into the Experimental High School, I’ll jump off a building and die to show you! When I’m dead, you and your father can live together by yourselves!”

The Examination Incident

Before the middle school graduation examination, the “spiritually wealthy” Xia’s mother had bought the mosquito net and bamboo sleeping mat needed for dormitory life, all ready for the day Xia Lei passed his exams and entered the Experimental High School in the city. Nobody expected that on the final day of the examination, a thunderclap from a clear sky: Xia Lei was removed from the examination hall for cheating.

By his own abilities, Xia Lei could certainly have passed the Experimental High School examination. The reason he cheated was to help the student in the adjacent seat — Yan Xiaodan. Xiao Dan’s ordinary academic results were not outstanding enough to reliably pass the Experimental High School entrance exam.

Their cheating device was a plastic ruler. The ruler was twenty centimeters long — forty half-centimeter intervals. Within each half-centimeter interval, there were four millimeter gradations. The first millimeter corresponded to A, and the fourth to D. For instance, if the answer to question five was B, Xia Lei would make a small dot at the second millimeter mark in the fifth interval. This was essentially using the ruler as an answer sheet — more concealed and reliable than passing a note.

From a cryptographic standpoint, it was the simplest possible scale cipher. But as luck would have it, the invigilator they encountered was Physics Teacher Gu, from the Experimental High School.

Teacher Gu was an amateur scientist who enjoyed studying semiotics in his spare time, and had a personality that was eccentrically unsociable. Old Gu held up the ruler that Xia Lei had passed to Xiao Dan, held it up to the sunlight, and spent three careful minutes studying it — until he finally deciphered the meaning of those dots: with one twenty-centimeter plastic ruler, Xia Lei could transmit the answers to forty multiple-choice questions to Yan Xiaodan!

Having discovered the cheating scheme, Old Gu was so excited he lit his cigarette backwards. The burning filter tip was bitter and acrid, but Old Gu inhaled it into his lungs without even noticing — he felt himself to be the combined incarnation of Morse and Holmes. Regardless of Xia Lei’s bowing and Xiao Dan’s tearful pleading, Old Gu was unmoved, and with one sweep of his pen voided both their scores for that subject.

Xia Lei walked out of the examination hall in a deflated state, unable to find Xiao Dan anywhere. He sat alone in a corner of the schoolyard. The sun’s shadow slowly slid westward. He sat there like a withered stump for two hours. The disgrace would spread across a thousand miles before long; the typhoon of blame and ridicule was forming. He didn’t know how to face the coming storm.

He thought of the mosquito net and thermos flask prepared at home, of his mother’s fervent hope turned to soap bubbles. He wished he could transform himself into Nezha, draw a sword across his throat, and return his flesh and bones to his mother. A thousand thoughts tangled in his mind with no solution to be found. At last he made a decision: to run away, leave behind his troubles, leave the school, leave Xi Tie Cheng.

Xiao Man had handed in his examination paper and gone straight back to the newsstand. He didn’t yet know what had happened at the examination hall. When Xia Lei came to the newsstand, Xiao Man was busy renting out books to factory workers just off shift and hadn’t noticed Xia Lei’s somber expression.

“How did you do? One more day and you’re free!” Xiao Man asked.

“A bit of bad luck… Can I borrow three hundred yuan? I just lost a classmate’s personal stereo and have to pay them back.”

“That much?” Xiao Man opened the cash box and scraped together two hundred and thirty yuan. “That’s all there is today. I’ll see what else I have tomorrow.”

“I might not be able to pay you back for a while,” Xia Lei said, pocketing the money and putting it in his bag.

“No need to be polite — get going!” Xiao Man, too busy to even look up, waved him off. “Don’t let my grandmother see you — she’ll get upset.”

There had once been a rumor circulating at the secondary school: every year after end-of-term examinations, children from all over the country would run away from home, and railway police would specifically check lone, brooding adolescents and detain them.

When Xia Lei reached the Xi Tie Cheng railway station, this rumor suddenly came to mind. He hesitated for a long while before summoning the courage to approach the ticket window and say: “One hard seat to Harbin.”

Fortunately, the clerk at the window didn’t look up at all, just accepted the money, and in less than half a minute pushed out the ticket and change.

Xia Lei pocketed his ticket and spent some time at a magazine stall in the station square, then bought a boiled corn cob and a few tea eggs. When it was time to pass through the gate, he attached himself to the back of a middle-aged man, pretending to be traveling with his father. Just before boarding, he seized the moment when a migrant worker’s large bag blocked the attendant’s line of sight, converted three steps into one, and leaped onto the train.

The green train rumbled into motion. The scenery along the route gradually unfolded — the vast Songliao Plain a boundless sea of green, endless cornfields stretching to the horizon. The evening wind poured into the carriage. Directly opposite Xia Lei was a girl slumped over the fold-out table, sleeping. Fearing she would catch cold, he lowered the window.

As the train headed north, Xia Lei pressed play on his personal stereo. Through the earphones came Zheng Zhihua’s song: “Go, go, go, go, go…” The refrain repeated endlessly, beating against his helpless heart together with the train’s rhythmic clacking. When the song faded, the next one began in his earphones: “Your birthday makes me think of a friend from long ago. It was a cold winter, and he was wandering in the streets…” Xia Lei suddenly remembered: next week was his own sixteenth birthday. Ah — sixteen! Sixteen years old, stepping onto an unknown road!

After listening to music for a while, Xia Lei gradually began to feel drowsy. He closed his eyes and slept. When he woke, he heard the attendant calling out for ticket inspection.

“Come on, wake up!” The attendant shook the sleeping girl opposite.

The girl didn’t wake.

The attendant shook again. The girl still didn’t wake.

“Has this child fainted from heatstroke?” another passenger suggested.

The attendant pinched the girl’s philtrum — still no response. She quickly pulled out her walkie-talkie to report to the train chief. Shortly after, the train’s loudspeaker crackled to life: “Urgent announcement! There is a passenger in carriage six suffering from heatstroke. If there is any medical personnel on board, please make your way to carriage six to assist.”

Soon a man carrying a medical bag arrived. He first felt the girl’s pulse, then lifted her eyelids and looked, and let out a startled cry: “This isn’t heatstroke — she’s taken sleeping pills!”

“So young, and already feeling hopeless? Quick, search her — is there a note?” The passengers were greatly alarmed. Seven pairs of hands searched through the girl’s clothing, finding only twenty-odd yuan in change — not a scrap of paper.

The train chief, seeing the situation, grabbed his walkie-talkie and made a series of urgent calls in the space between the carriages. He then returned to ask for help: “When we reach Shenyang station, the railway bureau will send a vehicle to take this child for gastric lavage. At that point, I’d be grateful if someone could lend a hand carrying her off the train.”

Without a second thought, Xia Lei raised his hand: “I’ll help!”

The train arrived at Shenyang North Station at nine o’clock in the evening.

The attendant and Xia Lei carried the girl off the carriage together. On the platform there was only one railway uniform-clad woman waiting — large, possibly two hundred and fifty catties in weight, clumsy and slow-moving, struggling even to take a step. Fearing she would waste time, Xia Lei turned to the attendant: “I won’t get back on the train. Let me help take her to the hospital.” With that, he summoned his strength and hoisted the girl onto his back, then climbed the footbridge.

Just as expected: by the time Xia Lei had carried the girl down the other side of the footbridge, the large woman was still panting her way up. There was no time to wait for her. Xia Lei held the girl tight and ran toward the station commuter exit, where an idling van was waiting. The driver wasted not a second, hit the accelerator, and raced at full speed to a railway hospital in the northeastern corner of the city.

The emergency doctor quickly put the girl on IV, took an electrocardiogram, and wheeled her into the gastric lavage room. Xia Lei waited in the corridor. He gazed out the window at the glittering city lights below, never imagining he would enter this strange city in this manner. He was a rescuer; he was also a wanderer. He did not know what he might be in the next moment. He counted the money in his pocket — seventy or eighty yuan already spent, and he hadn’t even left Liaoning Province.

The day had been exhausting. Xia Lei sat down on a corridor chair and quickly fell into sleep. When he woke it was deep in the night. The duty doctor told him the girl had come to. Xia Lei walked into the observation ward and asked her several questions in succession. The girl didn’t answer a single one — only the corners of her eyes brimmed with tears.

“I’m going now. Take care of yourself.” Xia Lei reached out and touched the girl’s face, wiping away her tears.

The girl nodded. Tears ran from the corners of her eyes again.

“Stop being foolish. Go home soon — this is for your fare.” Xia Lei took a hundred yuan from his bag and placed it on the pillow beside her. “You must, must go home!”

Walking out of the hospital, Xia Lei stood on the unfamiliar street, unable to tell east from west. The midnight city had sparse traffic. This was his first time leaving home alone. Now he could go anywhere, but had nowhere to go. He could only follow the road aimlessly. Eventually he walked into a children’s playground in a residential compound and lay down inside a plastic slide. He was utterly exhausted, yet could not sleep, and from the depths of his heart a children’s song welled up faintly: “The tea gardens of my hometown are full of blossoms, and my mother’s dearest one wanders at the edge of the world…” As he thought, his eyes grew moist. The advice he had meant to give the girl had, in the end, first persuaded himself.

By the time he had endured the night until dawn, Xia Lei bought ten steamed buns from a street vendor. He ate five while walking, and brought the rest to the railway hospital. He walked through the ward but couldn’t find the girl. He asked the duty nurse and learned that the girl had slipped away first thing in the morning, leaving only a note on the bed that read: “Thank you. Goodbye, Auntie.”

Xia Lei stood in the corridor with his bag of buns and sighed. The two of them — two strangers, two young people — had encountered each other by chance in an unfamiliar city. Each carried enormous troubles. Xia Lei had found a way to overcome his; the girl had not yet found hers.

When Xia Lei took the bus back to Xi Tie Cheng railway station, it was precisely four o’clock in the afternoon. The instant he stepped off, he felt a settling of everything in his heart — he even caught the familiar smell of the chemical factory. After this one day and one night of wandering and upheaval, he had finally thought it through: the only solution to the problem was endurance. Endure the pressure, endure the blame, endure the mockery. For the three years of high school ahead, he could only endure in silence.

Xia Lei followed the flow of passengers toward the exit. Just as he reached the station square, someone grabbed his arm. He turned around — it was the owner of the magazine stall.

“Weren’t you the one who bought a boiled corn cob yesterday afternoon?” the owner asked.

“What’s it to you? I paid you, didn’t I?”

“I’m not saying you owe me money!” The owner kept hold of Xia Lei’s arm. “Last night your parents came here with your photo looking for you! You useless boy — how can you cause your parents such worry!”

“Well, I’m back now, aren’t I? Let go of me!”

“Not a chance — I’m afraid you’ll run off again. What’s your mother’s work phone number? I’m calling her to come!”

“Don’t call anyone!” Xia Lei wrenched free of the owner’s grip, broke into a run, and shouted back as he went: “You can rest easy — I’m definitely going home!”