◎ What a Coincidence — You’re a Luo Too ◎

While Chen Hui was up listening to the English-language news broadcast, he discovered that Gu Qiao had already risen and was in the kitchen helping his mother wrap steamed buns.

From the start of summer vacation, Chen Hui had enrolled in his university’s TOEFL preparation course. Outside of class, all his remaining time was devoted to English study. Early in the year, he had set his mind firmly on studying abroad in America. He had heard from upperclassmen in his department that a TOEFL score above 600 was enough to apply to American universities without much difficulty. But then he heard that Luo Peiyin from his department had scored over 660 on his first attempt, and felt a sudden urgency. Though it was only a rumor — Luo Peiyin himself had never disclosed his score. The rumor did gain credibility, however, when combined with another piece of gossip: that Luo Peiyin had developed feelings for a female upperclassman in the English department and had been regularly attending her classes uninvited. The upperclassman, however, had a boyfriend — a celebrated talent in the English department. The boyfriend, unable to contain his fury at having his girlfriend pursued, decided to teach Luo Peiyin a lesson. The result was that it was the boyfriend who ended up getting beaten.

Chen Hui always heard such departmental gossip secondhand. He neither participated in producing it nor in spreading it. He found it all rather tedious. It genuinely baffled him that some of his classmates were so devoted to circulating this kind of news. All he could conclude was that intellectual growth and enthusiasm for gossip were evidently not inversely proportional.

The sound of Gu Qiao’s laughter coming from the kitchen puzzled him. How could she possibly be laughing so brightly right now? She really seemed to have no cares in the world. Chen Hui had a slight worry that Gu Qiao was settling in to make this her new permanent refuge. It was almost the 1990s, but Gu Qiao was a girl from the countryside — she might still set great store by her parents’ arrangements, and might believe she was eventually destined to marry him. But what kind of parental arrangement was it? Just his father rambling drunkenly. Nothing more.

Chen Da Ma had stepped out of her room early that morning and was startled to find Gu Qiao standing under the big tree in the courtyard, staring into space. Her heart nearly stopped — what if this girl was having thoughts of self-harm right here in their home? She urged Gu Qiao to go inside and rest while she made her something good to eat. Gu Qiao said she couldn’t sleep and volunteered to help make breakfast. She chopped vegetables and mixed the filling; Chen Da Ma rolled the wrappers and folded the buns. Once the buns were in the steamer, Chen Da Ma asked Gu Qiao to keep an eye on them while she stepped out briefly. The kitchen was separate from the living quarters, set in the middle of the courtyard. Gu Qiao glanced at the steamer — still a long way from done — and came back out. She spotted Chen Hui reviewing vocabulary, and thought: up this early memorizing words even during summer vacation, he really is devoted to his studies.

Chen Hui looked up at her. Gu Qiao smiled at him naturally. She had always been quick to smile, and since the trouble had started she had smiled more frequently, not less. She kept reminding herself: the harder things get, the more you must smile.

The smile was offered casually and without any particular intent. To Chen Hui, it carried some other meaning. He felt he needed to have a frank conversation with Gu Qiao, to prevent any misunderstanding about the nature of their relationship. But just as he was about to open his mouth, Gu Qiao had already turned and walked away.

Not wanting to disturb him while he was studying, Gu Qiao hadn’t tried to start a conversation with Chen Hui, and had gone to check on the laundry rack, feeling the clothes she had washed the night before to see if they were dry. In summer, after hanging in the wind all night, they were dry by morning. Eager to retrieve them and go back to change, Gu Qiao paid no attention to the expression on Chen Hui’s face.

For breakfast, Chen Da Ma had gone specially to the early-morning snack shop and bought fried glutinous rice cakes for Gu Qiao, and — worried she might not be accustomed to the tangy fermented bean juice — had bought her hot sweetened soy milk instead. The usual accompaniment to bean juice, salted shredded radish, was set out as always, but today Chen Da Ma had also added pickled vegetables from the Liu Bi Ju store.

Chen Da Ma had gone to such elaborate lengths with breakfast that Gu Qiao wondered whether she’d assumed today’s visit to her cousin would mean she wouldn’t be coming back. Gu Qiao ate in silence.

Chen Qing praised the cabbage buns, saying they tasted better than usual. Chen Da Ma took the opportunity to heap praise on Gu Qiao: “That’s because Qiao’er seasoned the filling. Your Qiao’er jie is not only pretty — she’s clever with her hands too. I’d love to ask your Auntie Gu to send her over here to be my own daughter. I’ve always envied women with two grown daughters.”

Chen Qing glanced at her brother and teased: “That’s simple enough. Whoever Mum wants as a daughter, she just needs Ge to marry — and then they’d be family naturally.”

Chen Da Ma realized the conversation was going in a bad direction and was about to intervene when her son spoke first: “Don’t talk nonsense! That is absolutely impossible!”

“Why are you snapping at me? If you don’t want to, fine — who asked you to take it out on me? Did I do something to you? Go find whoever offended you and deal with them!” Chen Qing, stung by her brother’s outburst, had no appetite for the rest of breakfast. She turned and went into her room.

Chen Da Ma hadn’t expected a perfectly pleasant meal to unravel like this. She blamed herself for saying too much and touching off the whole thing; blamed her daughter for joking without any sense of proportion; and at the same time resented her son for being so harsh, not leaving even a shred of dignity for Gu Qiao. If he wasn’t willing, he wasn’t willing — there was no need to say it so viciously.

Chen Da Ma reassured Gu Qiao: “The two of them are always bickering. It’s not aimed at you. Don’t take it to heart.”

Gu Qiao hadn’t felt that Chen Hui’s words were directed at her at all. She had always resented the attitude common in the village — men with a son, or even just a brother, would parade about as though conducting a beauty selection at any moment, asking girls: wouldn’t you like to come and be our daughter-in-law? She even thought it was good that Chen Hui, as a man, had stood up and flatly rejected the suggestion himself. His words had essentially expressed her own feelings too. Still, as a guest who had just witnessed a family quarrel, she felt a degree of awkwardness.

The Chen family took Gu Qiao’s awkwardness to be the awkwardness of having been rejected by Chen Hui. To ease her discomfort, Chen Da Ma kept pressing more food on her.

When she heard that Gu Qiao wanted to leave for her cousin’s that morning, Uncle Chen said: “No need to rush. You must have been exhausted yesterday on the train, and then you were up at the crack of dawn today. Rest a while. I’ll drive you over this afternoon.” The official’s car was needed in the morning, and Uncle Chen couldn’t get away.

When Gu Qiao insisted on going in the morning, Chen Da Ma said: “Chen Hui, why don’t you go with Qiao’er? She’s new here and doesn’t know the city. She’ll get lost on her own.” She had a neighbor’s child’s one-month celebration to attend and couldn’t go herself.

Before Chen Hui could object, Gu Qiao said: “Please don’t put your older brother to any trouble. I found my way here from the train station by myself — I can find my way anywhere.”

Chen Hui, hearing this, found his blunt refusal stuck in his throat: “I have a TOEFL class to get to today. Why don’t you wait and let my father take you this afternoon? There’s no need to be in such a hurry.”

But Gu Qiao was in a hurry. She couldn’t wait any longer. The whole Chen family assumed her urgency was born of the fact that Chen Hui had just made his verdict clear — absolutely impossible — and that a girl’s pride couldn’t bear another moment under this roof. Chen Hui, at that moment, felt a sudden pang of sympathy for Gu Qiao. Honestly, he didn’t dislike her. But he could not allow anyone to pair him with a girl who had only a high school education and came from the countryside. He and Gu Qiao simply weren’t from the same world.

Because of this sympathy, Chen Hui asked Gu Qiao where her cousin lived, so he could map out the bus route for her and save her going in the wrong direction again. When he heard the address, he couldn’t help asking: “What does your cousin do?” Some of his classmates lived in that area, and their parents all held fairly senior positions.

Gu Qiao answered honestly: “I’m not entirely sure.”

Chen Da Ma had assumed this cousin was a reliable relative who could be counted on — but it sounded like the contact between them wasn’t even as close as with the Chen family. She told Gu Qiao: “Leave your backpack and clothes here. If your cousin treats you well, you can come back for them later. If things don’t work out, you can stay here with me. One extra pair of chopsticks makes no difference — you’ll never go hungry here.”

Gu Qiao found the address on the envelope without a single wrong turn. Just before she had left home, her grandmother had secretly pressed an envelope into her hands. “If things get truly desperate,” her grandmother told her, “go to this address and find your little maternal cousin. Don’t tell your mother — she’s too proud to want to trouble anyone. But your little cousin lived in our house; it was your grandfather and I who raised her. Your mother saved up money out of her own mouth to pay for her schooling. All these years we’ve never once asked anything of her, and now our family has hit rock bottom. It’s only right that she helps.”

When changing buses, Gu Qiao spotted a watermelon seller at the corner. A farmer from the outskirts had brought a whole cartful to the roadside. Gu Qiao had been worrying about what to bring to her cousin’s. She was the younger generation, and going empty-handed to ask a favor would be graceless for an elder to overlook. Yet her cousin didn’t know her, and she was showing up as a representative of her mother. Her mother was a proud woman; Gu Qiao felt she ought to mind her manners too.

Gu Qiao had a gift for picking watermelons. Back home, she was always the one sent to choose them, and even Lou Deyu, in this department, had nothing but admiration for her eye. She had never once picked a melon that wasn’t sweet. In the countryside, you didn’t buy melons — you traded for them with grain, sack by sack, and stored them in the root cellar. When you wanted one, you’d draw it up cooled in freshly drawn well water, then slice it open and eat it together as a family in the shade of a tree in the evening. The whole summer seemed to pass in a haze of watermelon. Round and round the melons went into her youngest sister’s belly, until her little sister’s belly was just as round. This summer, Gu Qiao had eaten only a single slice. The family had too little grain to spare for melons, and besides, with debts still owed, having the leisure to sit about eating melon would have been scandalous. But her mother’s appetite was poor, and to coax her to eat, Gu Qiao had secretly traded a bit of grain in the next village for two melons. Her mother, of course, being who she was, shared them with everyone — so the whole family ended up with melon after all.

Gu Qiao selected two large melons weighing over ten jin apiece — excellent value. But they were almost too cheap. Afraid her cousin would think the gift too modest, she went to a shop and bought a bunch of bananas as well. The bananas cost more than she had expected; the same money spent on melons would have bought far more by weight.

The address on the envelope took her only to the name of the residential compound, with no specific door number. Gu Qiao stood at the entrance with one melon in each hand, intending to find the gatekeeper and ask. She knew both her cousin’s name and her husband’s.

She was just about to walk in when she saw a boy riding a bicycle toward the entrance. Gu Qiao recognized him immediately — it was the same one who had given up his seat for her on the bus. Today he was wearing headphones again, though he’d swapped the yellow pair for black ones. Yesterday, while wondering about her own future, she had also spared a thought for whether the man in the floral shirt had managed to catch up with him.

Gu Qiao’s hands were full of melons, leaving no way to wave, so she called out in her clear, bright voice: “Hey! Hello!”

Luo Peiyin did not at first believe Gu Qiao was calling to him. Though he had recognized her from her hair, her yellow blouse, and that voice of hers as the girl on the bus who had carried compound fertilizer and thrown dates at people, the two of them had no real acquaintance beyond that one encounter. He only confirmed she was calling to him when she set down a melon and waved.

When the young man braked in front of her, the first thing Gu Qiao asked was what she had been wondering about all along: “That man in the floral shirt didn’t come after you the other day, did he?”

“No.” Why would she even ask that? Did he look like someone who regularly got beaten up?

Seeing him begin to pedal away, Gu Qiao quickly grabbed her bunch of bananas and snapped off five from it. She meant to put them into the basket on his bicycle — then reached out and found his bicycle had no basket.

Gu Qiao held out the bananas and smiled at him: “I’m the one who threw the dates at that man. You took the blame for me — without you, I would have been in real trouble. Thank you so much. Let me treat you to some bananas.”

“Keep them for yourself.”

Gu Qiao was insistent: “Have some. I hear they’re very sweet.”

“I’m allergic to bananas.”

“Allergic to bananas? Really?” Gu Qiao had never heard of such a thing. She looked down at her two melons. “Are you allergic to watermelon?”

Luo Peiyin had never met anyone quite like this. She clearly wasn’t a resident here — and this kind of naïve girl was exactly the sort who got taken advantage of. He looked at her two melons: “You’re here to…?”

Gu Qiao saw no reason to hide it and said straightforwardly that she was visiting a relative. She thought to herself: if this young man happened to know where her cousin lived, she’d save herself the trouble of asking someone else. The apartment had been allocated to her cousin’s husband, so his name might be more widely known.

“Do you know which building Luo Bo’an lives in?”

“Luo Bo’an? Who is he to you?”

“My auntie’s husband.”

“What’s your auntie’s name?”

Gu Qiao said her cousin’s name. Seeing the expression on the young man’s face, she quickly added: “It’s fine if you don’t know — you go ahead, I’ll ask someone else.”

What she hadn’t expected was that he actually did know — he gave her the exact building number and door. She just hadn’t anticipated the compound would be so much larger than she had imagined. She’d thought she was almost there, but it turned out she still had quite a way to walk. After he finished giving directions the first time, Gu Qiao said, a little embarrassed: “Could you possibly repeat that? I’m afraid I didn’t catch all of it.”

Luo Peiyin glanced at his watch, then looked at Gu Qiao, then looked at the melons and bananas again. His eyes settled on the melons. “I’ll take you.”

“Is that really no trouble?”

“Just get on.”

Gu Qiao didn’t stand on ceremony any further — out of consideration for not wasting his time, she hopped onto the back of the bicycle with practiced ease. It was the fastest bicycle Gu Qiao had ever ridden, only slowing at the turns to check the road. She thought: how lucky she’d run into him, otherwise this really would have been difficult. The compound was divided into several sections, and her cousin’s section was enclosed separately with a guard post. Once through that gate, the five-story apartment blocks gave way to standalone two-story houses.

“Thank you very much. My name is Gu Qiao — Gu as in the grain millet, Qiao with the feather radical. What’s your name?”

No answer came. She thought perhaps he simply didn’t want to tell a stranger his name, and quickly offered them both a way out: “A true good person, doing good without leaving a name.”

“Luo Peiyin.” Three syllables, delivered with flat indifference.

“What a coincidence — you’re a Luo too.”

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