◎ A Plant ◎

Gu Qiao looked at the gifts in Luo Peiyin’s case and then at the Chinese-character display pager he had brought her: “Where did you get the money for all this?” Luo Peiyin was better off than her, but only by a limited margin.

“Do you have enough money in America? If it’s not enough, I have some foreign exchange certificates — you can take them to exchange for US dollars…” Although Gu Qiao currently wanted to put every yuan into her business, where every cent going in or out had to be carefully accounted for.

“What are you thinking? I have plenty of money.” Luo Peiyin looked at Gu Qiao — dressed in her countrified padded jacket, making sweeping generous offers, as if her pockets were stuffed with money.

Gu Qiao felt slightly uncomfortable under Luo Peiyin’s gaze. In any other setting, she would have met his gaze and stared right back, but at this moment Gu Qiao seemed to have suddenly acquired the virtue of shyness and lowered her head: “You haven’t had lunch yet, have you? We’re having dumplings today. My grandmother made the filling — it’s something special; far better than what I make. You absolutely must try it.”

“I’ve bought train tickets for us both — we’ll leave together tomorrow.”

Gu Qiao had originally planned to leave the day after tomorrow, but this time she didn’t hesitate for even a moment and simply said: fine. Then she asked: “Can you still get tickets now?”

“Still possible.” He’d managed to find sleeper tickets for both of them at a premium from a scalper. Luo Peiyin had paid extra to get berth tickets for the two of them.

“If my dad asks whether tomorrow’s tickets are easy to get, just say they’re sold out. I’ll give him my return ticket for the seventh.”

On her way back from the brigade headquarters, Gu Qiao had already decided she absolutely had to go to Erlian Haote — sourcing goods, finding a truck, hiring people to accompany the cargo, all of these were things to handle. With so many matters, she needed a helper. She might as well have Lou Deyu go with her. He was family, after all, and although Lou Deyu had once been led astray and cheated, in the years before that he had been to many places and gained considerable experience. With him there, the two of them could discuss things together; she could trust him and wouldn’t have to be on guard against being swindled. Besides, her parents felt deeply uneasy about having used her money to repay debts and had even insisted on writing her IOUs. Border trade was far more profitable than running the canning workshop. Rather than taking on an outside partner, she might as well bring in Lou Deyu first. In any case, the canning workshop had nothing much happening in the first lunar month. And once money was truly earned and divided, Lou Deyu could choose to keep working with her or use the money to buy equipment and expand the canning operation — either was fine.

Having Lou Deyu come back to Beijing with her to help source the leather jackets would actually be best if they traveled on the same day. But Gu Qiao knew very well that Luo Peiyin’s plans definitely had no place for her father.

She added: “My dad’s got nothing pressing in the first lunar month, and I happen to be short of help — I’m thinking of having him come over to assist me for a few days.” Gu Qiao didn’t go into specifics about the plan to find a truck for Erlian Haote. With the distance between them and no way to reach her, Luo Peiyin would certainly worry. Never mind Luo Peiyin — even she herself felt a little uncertain about it in her heart. But to have any returns, you couldn’t avoid some risk.

“Tell me the details later when we go out for a walk. Are you cold in those clothes?” He was more particular than she was about appearances. She looked down at what she was wearing, slightly embarrassed.

Gu Qiao’s mother had long since heard the commotion in the courtyard, and now seeing Lou Deyu come in, she asked: “Which relative is this? Let me go out and say hello.”

“Three-time… my cousin’s stepson. I’ll take care of hosting him — you don’t need to worry about it.”

“What kind of way is that to talk? Why has he come here?”

Gu Jingshu hadn’t seen her cousin’s stepson since her cousin’s wedding.

Grandmother chimed in to ask: “How old is this child?”

“Over twenty — already graduated from university.”

Grandmother asked again: “What does this child do now?”

Lou Deyu replied vaguely: “Still studying.” Whenever he mentioned people around Gu Qiao’s age — or even older — who were still in school, he always felt he had let Gu Qiao down. Though Gu Qiao always said she had had no interest in continuing her studies, if not for that incident of his, would Gu Qiao really not have even sat her university entrance examination?

Grandmother asked: “Could it be that Jinghui is too busy to come herself and sent this child instead? She didn’t give us any notice either — we’re not at all prepared.” Although Grandmother had her grievances about Gu Jinghui arranging work for Gu Qiao through Zhou Zan, these grievances were nonetheless the kind you have with family. Grandmother’s view of relatives and stepsons still resided in the agricultural age: she believed that a stepmother was, at the very least, the equivalent of half a mother to a stepchild.

“No need to prepare anything — he can eat whatever we eat.” In his heart Lou Deyu thought: where would Gu Jinghui ever be able to order this stepson of hers around? Not that Gu Jinghui ever even visited the house. But Lou Deyu didn’t argue this point aloud — he didn’t want to worry his wife. He had never told her about Luo Peiyin and his previous concerns. As for talking to Gu Qiao about relations between men and women, he felt awkward enough; but this time he intended to have a serious conversation with Gu Qiao.

“That’s no way to treat a guest.”

Lou Deyu replied: “You don’t need to concern yourself with it. Tonight I’ll treat him to a meal at a restaurant in the county town, and put him up for the night at the guesthouse. I guarantee he’ll be looked after properly — he won’t have come all this way for nothing.”

Lou Deyu went to find a teacup and returned to the main room, only to discover the table was suddenly covered with a great many new things: American ginseng, chocolates…

Gu Qiao said to Lou Deyu by way of introduction: “These are gifts my cousin brought for the family.”

“You… thank you.” Lou Deyu couldn’t quite work out what this person’s game was. What on earth had he come here for?

“Dad, before dinner I’m taking my cousin for a walk around the village.”

“It’s nearly time to eat — don’t go wandering. How about I take young Luo around instead? You haven’t been home in a while; you’re probably not all that familiar with the village yourself.”

“Get some rest, Dad. We’ll be back in a little while.” Gu Qiao turned to Luo Peiyin and said: “Wait a moment — I’m going to go change.”

Gu Qiao trotted off to her room. She rummaged through her wardrobe and pulled out a fresh padded jacket and scarf, and also took out a new pair of lambskin ankle boots — but in the end she only changed the padded jacket. Changing everything at once would surely raise suspicions at home.

Lou Deyu watched Gu Qiao trot away, and the suspicion he had been reluctant to confirm pressed ever closer to the surface. He could not allow Gu Qiao to tread the same path as her mother. Back then, all Zhou Zan had been longing for was to return to the city — yet the young man standing before him was preparing to run off to America. What made it worse was that Gu Qiao and Luo Peiyin had met because of him. If something really was going on between Gu Qiao and this young man, he had no way to escape responsibility. Lou Deyu cursed himself under his breath.

Lou Deyu then said to Luo Peiyin, quite abruptly: “If anyone ever dares to mistreat my family, I’ll risk my own life before I let them get away with it.”

“I hope you can make good on that.”

Lou Deyu suspected he had heard wrong. Then he heard Luo Peiyin say to him: “Stop letting Gu Qiao get into trouble because of you. She has already shouldered pressures because of you that someone her age should never have to bear.”

Since when is it your place to lecture me? Lou Deyu was furious inwardly — yet his willingness to lay down his life for his family had so far remained only on the level of words. And the troubles he had genuinely brought upon his family were all too real. Being scolded to his face by this insufferable young man, he found he had no words to fight back with.

Gu Qiao came back from changing and found Lou Deyu standing there with a deflated, hangdog expression: “Dad, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Go for your walk and come back — we’re waiting to eat!”

“I know! Cousin, let’s go.” Gu Qiao kept her hands in her pockets and maintained a distance of at least twenty centimeters from Luo Peiyin. If it narrowed even slightly, she would immediately widen it again.

Gu Jingshu came out of the kitchen just as she saw her daughter walking alongside a young man. Gu Qiao called out immediately: “Mum!”

She introduced Luo Peiyin to her mother: “Mum, this is my… cousin.”

Luo Peiyin followed Gu Qiao’s gaze to a middle-aged woman: “Hello, auntie.” He had in fact met Gu Qiao’s parents at his father’s wedding, but he had absolutely no memory of that occasion. This was a person whose entire manner was at odds with Lou Deyu’s, but Luo Peiyin was not one for making a show of surprise.

Gu Jingshu looked the young man up and down — the one calling her auntie — and smiled: “Hello.” With Gu Qiao out there on her own, what worried Gu Jingshu as a mother was whether she was safe, whether she was doing well. Although she herself had already been falling in love at Gu Qiao’s age, for some reason she always thought of Gu Qiao as still a child, and always felt that romance and marriage were something very far away from her daughter.

Gu Qiao thought she had concealed it well. But Gu Jingshu saw through her in a single glance. Her daughter was altogether different from usual.

Gu Jingshu had once told Lou Deyu: a person makes themselves miserable by thinking too much of themselves. Better to think of yourself as a plant — sunshine comes your way, that’s natural; wind and rain come your way, that’s natural too. Once the wind and rain pass, the sun rises again. That is life.

This was how she had spoken to Lou Deyu, and how she had lived these past years. Yet when it came to her daughter, she could not bring herself to think of Gu Qiao as a plant — could not simply let her face wind and rain without care.

Gu Jingshu had never believed that carrying Gu Qiao had been a mistake, not even when Zhou Zan wrote to break things off with her. The night she received the breakup letter, Gu Jingshu had even felt a rush of relief at being pregnant — simply because she was pregnant, Zhou Zan would have no choice but to marry her. She bought a train ticket, didn’t say a word to her family, and went straight to the train station. She stood on that train for more than ten hours. On the journey she thought of Zhou Zan, imagining the expression on his face when he heard she was pregnant. She found that she could not picture Zhou Zan looking happy; every expression she could call to mind was one of pain and despair. Her child was an obstacle to his future. At that thought, she began to hate Zhou Zan — *You want to throw me away for the sake of your future? Then if you don’t marry me, forget about having any future at all!*

Gu Jingshu’s original expectations had transformed into the gratification of revenge. As long as Zhou Zan wanted his future, he would have to marry her. And how desperately eager to advance himself he was — to compete for the title of Model Worker, he had transformed himself from a man who could neither lift nor carry anything into a seasoned laborer capable of running with two hundred jin on his shoulders. His hands never had a day without cracks and cuts. Her eyes blazed with a fire, and standing pressed in that crowded carriage she felt not the slightest weariness. When the train arrived at the station, she was carried out by the crowd, still burning with this hatred, pushed forward by the surge of people. Then all at once, without warning, she burst into tears.

Everyone around her turned to stare. Gu Jingshu, normally so particular about her dignity, at that moment cared not at all what anyone thought. Swept along by the crowd with no feeling or awareness, she moved with the flow until she reached the exit of the station. There she stopped, as if she had suddenly come back to herself. She did not leave the station. Instead she queued up and bought a return ticket. She waited in the waiting hall without eating or drinking for ten hours, and finally boarded the train home.

Zhou Zan vanished from her life completely from that point on.