◎ A Young Man and Some Dates ◎

Gu Qiao finally caught the bus she needed.

She leapt onto it in one bound, quickly hauling her fertilizer sack up from below with both hands. This bus wasn’t as packed as the last one — still no seats, but the space was noticeably more comfortable.

Gu Qiao made her way to the middle of the bus and found a spot to stand. She glanced to both sides: on her left sat a middle-aged couple; on her right were two young men. The one in the seat closest to her looked about her age — certainly no older than twenty. Though at that age, calling someone a “young man” rather than a “youth” would have been perfectly acceptable too.

But Luo Peiyin’s first impression on Gu Qiao was that of a young man, not a youth. At the time, Gu Qiao’s distinction between the two was simple: a youth was someone who earned his own living, while a young man was someone still kept by his family.

He was wearing a black backpack, and what stood out most were the yellow headphones covering his ears. He glanced at Gu Qiao standing before him with her sack — on which the brand name of a well-known compound fertilizer was printed, the kind that had been appearing frequently in television commercials lately — and then simply stood up from his seat. It was only once he stood that Gu Qiao realized how tall he was. She had to tilt her head back to look at him. Having just cut off her long hair, she was paying particular attention to other people’s hairstyles, and she noticed his was quite nice.

Gu Qiao stood frozen for a few seconds before it occurred to her that he was giving up his seat for her. She wasn’t elderly, weak, ill, disabled, or pregnant — no one was obligated to offer her a seat. She politely said thank you, but received no “you’re welcome” in return. He didn’t look at her; his gaze had already turned back to the window outside. After standing for so long, Gu Qiao was more than ready to sit down. She tucked her sack a little further in to give the standing passengers as much space as possible. As she looked down at the sack, she happened to catch a glimpse of the young man’s sneakers. The brand logo looked vaguely familiar. She remembered hearing her father Lou Deyu say that some shoe factories were now making sneakers and deliberately attaching foreign brand labels to them, selling them to domestic buyers at several times the price. And people still thought they were getting a tremendous bargain. Swindlers really were everywhere, Gu Qiao sighed.

She had assumed he would get off in a stop or two, but five stops passed and he was still standing beside her. She was well rested by now, and thought she ought to give back the seat.

Gu Qiao stood up, and — worried he might not hear her over the headphones — nudged him lightly with her elbow, pointed toward the seat, and called out in her clear, bright voice: “Take it. Sit down.”

He took off the headphones and glanced down at her. Gu Qiao repeated herself: “I’ve rested enough now. You sit.”

“No need. I’m almost at my stop.” He put the headphones back on and returned to gazing out the window. Gu Qiao couldn’t tell whether this kind-hearted young man was genuinely about to reach his stop, or simply making an excuse to be polite. She was still turning the two possibilities over in her mind when a plump middle-aged woman settled herself firmly into the seat Gu Qiao had just vacated.

Well. Neither of them would be sitting now.

Gu Qiao stood beside the young man when the bus braked sharply. She lost her footing and lurched forward. The young man beside her reached out and steadied her. Before she could even get out a “thank you,” the hand at her waist had already withdrawn. Gu Qiao instinctively looked at his hand. He had very long fingers.

Once she had regained her balance, Gu Qiao fished two large dates out of her sack, wiped them vigorously on her handkerchief, and nudged the young man again with her elbow: “Dates. Very sweet. Have some.”

This time he didn’t even take off his headphones — just shook his head. Gu Qiao thought to herself: this helpful young man was probably shy by nature, reluctant to interact with strangers, and even more reluctant to accept food from them. In that case, she wouldn’t disturb him. She didn’t put the dates back in the sack either — instead, she bit into one herself. They were wonderfully crisp. Munching on a date, she let her eyes wander around the bus.

How she wished Lou Deyu would appear on this very bus. If he had once built a modest little livelihood from nothing, then surely now, even penniless and swindled bare, he could work honestly and eventually clear the debt and rebuild their household. What kind of a person leaves a disaster behind for his wife to manage? Gu Qiao truly hoped Lou Deyu would come home soon — even if he went back to treating her the way he always had. There were people who treated her well now, and there would be more in the future. She wasn’t short of that from him. It didn’t matter anymore whether he was kind to her or not. But her grandmother, her mother, and her sisters needed him to come back.

As her eyes swept the bus, she noticed a man in a floral shirt with a crew cut, using a blade to slit open a middle-aged woman’s bag.

Gu Qiao still had half a date in her mouth. As a child, she hadn’t been able to hit a hundred out of a hundred with her slingshot, but nine out of ten was no exaggeration. She took aim at the man’s hand and flung the half-eaten date.

The half-date missed his hand and only struck his arm. He snapped his head around alertly, and Gu Qiao quickly looked away toward the window.

When she turned her attention back to the interior of the bus, the man in the floral shirt still hadn’t stopped — he was at the bag again.

Gu Qiao let fly the second date, and this one landed true, hitting his hand squarely.

The man in the floral shirt let out a yelp. Gu Qiao had assumed a pickpocket would want to keep things quiet — once discovered, the sensible thing was to slink away quietly. After all, this was theft, not robbery; even thieves should have their principles. But this thief did not believe in keeping a low profile, and instead of backing down, he bellowed: “Who in the hell just threw a half-eaten date at me?”

Although Gu Qiao’s reason for throwing it was entirely justified, this thief was so brazen — and had a knife, and possibly accomplices on board. Exposing him might drive him to turn violent out of humiliation. Only now did she feel a real pang of unease. This wasn’t her home village. Traveling alone in a strange place, it was better not to court trouble. She pretended not to hear, kept her hand on her fertilizer sack, and turned her gaze back out the window. The department store out there looked considerably grander than anything in the county town.

The man in the floral shirt with the crew cut repeated himself: “Which son of a b***h threw a date at me?”

Gu Qiao noticed that the young man beside her was looking at her. Before this moment, he had essentially been ignoring her existence. She became aware of her own heartbeat. He wasn’t going to stand up and call her out, was he? She had offered him dates earlier — he must have figured out she was the one who had thrown them. He’d been staring out the window all this time, so he certainly hadn’t seen the thief cutting the bag. Someone generous enough to give up his seat probably also disapproved of littering. He’d probably think she was the one behaving badly.

The man in the floral shirt sauntered over to where Gu Qiao was standing and asked in an oily voice: “Little girl, tell me — which son of a b***h threw a date at me? Tell the truth, and I’ll buy you some chocolate.” He was certain the throw had come from her direction, but had decided the perpetrator must be male.

Gu Qiao’s heart was pounding, but she kept her wide eyes wide and guileless, her voice clear and steady: “I didn’t see anything.”

The man in the floral shirt reached up and yanked at the young man’s headphones. “Was it you, punk?” Everyone on that side of the bus was either slight and small or wore glasses — none of them looked like they’d have the guts. Except for this one, with his yellow headphones, dressed like some kind of little foreigner. Men like this, the floral-shirt man knew all too well — the flashier the outfit, the bigger the coward underneath. Scare him a little, he’d crumble faster than any ordinary girl. And the boy looked like he had money on him.

Unfortunately for the floral-shirt man, he wasn’t tall enough. Despite the force of his lunge, he couldn’t pull the headphones off. The young man simply removed them himself, letting them hang around his neck, and looked down at the floral-shirt man. “Now I see it. You’ve got terrible eyesight. Stop slitting people’s bags and go practice your observation skills for a few more years before you come back to pick pockets.”

Gu Qiao hadn’t expected him to stand up and claim it for her — and had he really needed to be so blunt about it? His voice wasn’t particularly loud or soft, but nearly everyone on the bus had heard that the man in the floral shirt was a thief.

The man had a knife. Gu Qiao was about to warn the young man when she heard a sharp cry — the man in the floral shirt had dropped to one knee on the floor.

At that moment, the conductor announced the next stop. Gu Qiao turned to look, but the young man was already pushing his way to the doors. He grabbed the frame and jumped off just before they closed. The floral-shirt man, still recovering, scrambled out after him just in time.

The bus was immediately crowded again as new passengers surged on, blocking Gu Qiao’s view of the window. She could see nothing but bodies.

Gu Qiao kept wondering whether the man in the floral shirt had managed to catch up with the young man — so preoccupied that she barely registered the conversation happening on the bus about the “unfreezing of national assets.”

An elderly woman who had just boarded was telling another old woman that her husband had last year taken out all his retirement savings and handed them over to a fifty-year-old man as startup funds for some scheme to unfreeze national assets at Citibank in America. The promise was that a few hundred yuan would become tens of thousands. Now not a single cent was to be seen, the man had vanished, and her husband had been so furious he’d fallen ill.

After getting off the bus, Gu Qiao was still thinking about the young man. She walked for several hundred meters before reaching Zhenbi’er Hutong. Uncle Chen lived in a large communal courtyard at the very end of the lane.

According to Lou Deyu, he and Uncle Chen had grown up together as childhood friends. Since Uncle Chen was older than Lou Deyu, Gu Qiao called him Uncle Chen. When they were young, Uncle Chen had fallen into a river and Lou Deyu had saved his life. Later, Uncle Chen went into the army, and after being discharged, he now worked as a driver for a government official.

Gu Qiao had assumed Uncle Chen lived in a proper independent courtyard, but when she arrived she found the yard shared by several households.

Gu Qiao carried her sack and backpack into the courtyard. The moment she mentioned Uncle Chen’s name, an older woman led her to the entrance in the northwest corner: “Hey, Chen Da Ma — you’ve got a visitor!”

Uncle Chen’s family had two and a half rooms in the northwest corner of the yard, with a kitchen separate from the main living area. Gu Qiao hadn’t seen Chen Da Ma since many years ago, when she and Uncle Chen had returned to the hometown together. Neither of them could recognize the other by face alone, but when Gu Qiao introduced herself as Lou Deyu’s eldest daughter, Chen Da Ma, though uncertain why Gu Qiao had come to her home, welcomed her warmly inside.

Uncle Chen and Chen Da Ma had two children: their elder son, a university student who would be entering his third year when the school term resumed after the summer; and a younger daughter attending a vocational tourism school, due to graduate the following year. Chen Da Ma was very proud of both her children. Her daughter was renowned for her beauty, and her son had come first on every exam since childhood, and had gone on to one of the finest universities.

Chen Da Ma had watched Lou Deyu prosper over the years. When he had come to visit last year, he had brought two cartons of Yunnan cigarettes and a case of fine liquor. Uncle Chen, not being a high official, was rarely given such expensive gifts. He was genuinely moved when he saw what Lou Deyu had brought — that was what it meant to be true brothers. The two of them drank together until they were lightheaded, and then Lou Deyu had brought up the idea of a match: you have a son, I have a daughter — two families joining as one, making them in-laws. Lou Deyu had gone on at length about how bright and capable his eldest daughter was, saying she’d make a fine match for the Chen son. Uncle Chen, sodden with wine, kept agreeing.

Chen Da Ma had never once quarreled with Uncle Chen — but when she learned of his wine-soaked promise to Lou Deyu, she gave him a proper scolding. “You know perfectly well how high our son sets his standards. You go and promise him a village girl, and if he refuses, haven’t you offended Lou Deyu for nothing? You don’t even know what you’re saying when you’re drunk.” Uncle Chen privately regretted his loose-lipped moment too — times had changed; a father’s word no longer guaranteed a son’s compliance. He could only hope that Lou Deyu would sober up and forget the whole arrangement. He felt guilty inside, but found fault with Chen Da Ma’s phrasing to cover it: “What’s wrong with being from the countryside? I myself am from the countryside — a man shouldn’t forget where he came from!”

When Chen Da Ma saw Gu Qiao, she couldn’t help but think of that proposed match.

“How lovely. You can’t find produce this fresh in the city. You must have been exhausted, carrying all this. Come and rest — I’ll make noodles with soybean paste for you.” Chen Da Ma praised everything Gu Qiao had brought, then made sure to ask what she most wanted to know: “If I remember correctly, you should be in your final year of high school this year. How did your university entrance exam go?” Lou Deyu had mentioned when he visited last year that his eldest was in her second year of high school, so she should have graduated this year.

“Auntie, I’ve left school.”

In the region where Gu Qiao lived, the preliminary examination system wasn’t abolished until 1990, but Gu Qiao happened to take her entrance exam one year early. The university exams were in July, with the preliminary qualifying exam held in May. Only students who passed the preliminary could sit for the actual exam. The day before the preliminary, a neighbor came to Gu Qiao’s school to find her and told her that her mother had fallen ill at home. When she left for home, she still told herself she would get up early the next morning and cycle back to school to sit the exam. She had often heard Lou Deyu talk about people who had made their fortune in business, and she didn’t believe that university was her only path forward. Besides, the county high school only sent a handful of students to universities and colleges each year, and more than half of those were students who had retaken the exam after failing the year before. Her rankings sounded impressive enough, but even if she sat the actual exam, getting into even a vocational college was no sure thing. Still, after studying for so many years, she had wanted at least to go and try — otherwise she’d feel she had let herself down.

But when Gu Qiao got home and learned the full extent of her father’s debts, and saw the emptied, disheveled house, and looked at her sick mother and her little sisters, she had no mental space left to think about any exam. And the bicycle she had planned to ride back to school on had been taken by the creditors anyway.

It was August now. The university exams were long over, and the acceptance list had probably already been posted. But none of that had anything to do with Gu Qiao anymore.

When Chen Da Ma heard that Gu Qiao had left school, the expressions that passed across her face were many and complicated.

But Gu Qiao wasn’t paying attention to Chen Da Ma’s expression. She had just learned that Lou Deyu’s last visit to the Chen household had been the previous summer, and the news drained the last of her hope. Where in the world had Lou Deyu gone?

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